Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - On the MOVE with Parag Khanna: Where Do We Go From Here?

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Migration, climate change and immigration - all topics are at the top of our agendas. But why are people moving, and what can we learn from history to map out a possible future? Anthony discusses that and more with Parag Khanna, renowned globalization scholar and author of MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and welcome to Open Book, where I talk about. with some of the most interesting and brilliant minds in our world today. In this show, I'll bring on guests in business, politics, entertainment, and more to go deep into a piece of their work, whether it's a highly anticipated book, an in-depth feature story, or an opinion piece that has captured my attention. We'll dig into why it matters to you and how their work is shaping our future. On today's episode, I talk with the renowned globalization scholar Paragana. Climate change has become a crisis sooner than expected. Economies are collapsing.

Political systems are fractured. We're seeing conflict, an aging population, and technological advancements. It's fair to say there's a lot going on. We face many global challenges, and a lot of change is coming our way. Paragana is a renowned globalization scholar, his recent book, move where people are going for a better future is a real eye-opener and makes a powerful argument for why mass migration is inevitable and more than ever necessary in the coming decades. Parag talks us through how we can navigate these changes. He shares his vision to revitalize America,

engage young people, and redefine the American dream. And we ask the question, where will we go to survive climate change. Spoiler alert, like my mom will tell you later on, even with all to talk about moving, there's only one person switching the lights off in New York. I'll let you figure out who that is. So, Parag, and I just so you know, my production team has it spelled out phonetically for me. But now that I know that you're an Indian from Queens, I'm sort of feeling better about my own accent.

Congratulations on the book. I've got it right here. Okay, the book is called Move, where people are going for a better future. fascinating book. I've got so much to ask you about, even about the ancient world. But I want to start with what I think is arguably one of the most powerful quotes in the book. Society only functions normally if we can move. Let's start there. Tell me about that. First of all, thank you. Great to see you. Great to be with you in a chat across the oceans. And we don't even have to move to have this conversation, which is great. So I was making an analogy there to civilization as a bicycle.

You don't pedal that bicycle, it's going to fall over. And what we take for granted is that society is just this organic functioning entity and that it just sort of maintains itself. And it doesn't. It requires this constant movement of people, of goods, of services, of capital, of technology, of ideas, knowledge. All of these things have to be moving. The circulation, right, of all of these things is what makes society function.

And just a big part of that is the physical mobility of people, the services economy, the stuff that, as you know, stood still during COVID. Why do we say that the great lockdown had such enormous cost on our economy? Because suddenly people were not physically moving. So that's just like one micro episode that brought to life how important it is to not take for granted the movement of people. Within a city, across our country and across borders. That's how civilization works. We move. It's a brilliant, top-down macro explanation about civilization.

When I was reading the book, a couple of things came to mind, and not to bore you, but I took a lot of Roman law, Roman literature. One of my professors, I just want to test this theory on you. As I was reading your book, I was thinking about this. One of my professors took out a map, a little different from your map, but it was a map of the old Roman Empire. And what he basically said is if you look at that map, that's how the West developed, off of the ideology of Rome and ultimately the Western canon of Roman law got incorporated into French and British law and then out to the United States. And so this concept of individual rights

and individual liberty, even though we had a dictator known as Caesar Augustus, it really spawned from that. And if you look at the map, it goes that way. Up into the right or the Slavic nations, including Russia, this is the nations where Rome had a very hard time with. They were called barbarians back in the day. They could never contain them and a result of which their laws manifested and evolved very differently than the laws of the West. What say you to that analysis based on this book that I just read? So empires extend themselves through infrastructure, through highways, railways, that's how the Romans did it with the famous roads. The Russians and the British to through railways, and you extend your capacity, your reach, your rule, your writ,

and that expresses itself in the laws, in the rule of law. Now, obviously, with various empires, you have degrees of autonomy, right? So the ethnic characteristics, the political characteristics may differ, but fundamentally it is about the spread of law. And it moves in tandem with that force projection, which very often historically has been as much or more through that physical infrastructure as through military. Or they go hand in hand. Arnold Toynbee, the great British historian, used to refer to the Roman sentries

who moved forward and extended the perimeter, the borders of the empire, as the marchmen. Again, he's implying those who march, those who move. If you do not move your troops, your merchants, your traders, and others, you are not extending your empire.

And it is, again, it was always through the movement of people. So these things have always gone hand in hand today, we look at, you know, we talk about, we use terms like fifth column, you know, when we're talking about various diasporas, right? The movement of people can, as they accrue in number as minorities that come larger and larger in other countries, they can change the political characteristics of societies, because especially in a digitally connected world, they may be as deeply rooted at home as they are in their new countries. So again, the movement of people plays such a crucial part in shaping these geopolitical dynamics. So it's, it's,

laws, its culture, its language, all of these things are actually coming from the manifestation of infrastructure and the manifestation of movement. Fair to say? Yes, but most of all, I mean, the thing that's fungible, you might say, or that's a commodity, is the infrastructure, right? We, you know, every country that has economic capacity and power can build highways, railways and so forth. That's what we're seeing right now. America has done it. Europeans have done it. China is doing it. But ultimately, if you want to actually have lasting control, it's not just about building bridges and tunnels and stadiums around the world the way China is doing. Ultimately, and this is what the British did so well, you install your own viceroy's, pro-consuls, and other, the administrative

apparatus of the state around the world in order to have direct influence. You can't rely purely on proxies who don't necessarily share your interests, right, and who may be manipulating you from afar. So ultimately, again, the countries that actually send out their people in a loyal way to do their bidding and actually extend that influence in a lasting fashion, those places are going to have lasting influence. And so it does become about numbers to some degree. Now, this all seems so old-fashioned.

And we're talking about, like, you know, demographic expansion in a world that's actually declining or will soon be declining in population, right? That's one of the key parts of the book. As you know, I talk about peak humanity, a world population that this year, actually, United Nations is going to announce on November 15th this year, 2022, that the world population has reached 8 billion people. I don't think it'll even reach 10 billion people. And so what I'm actually arguing is that collecting people is collecting power. And that's one of the central geopolitical tenets of the 19th century is that population size, is actually one of the crucial metrics, a measurable indicator that contributes to the power of a society.

So people like me and I think you agree that America needs to always not have wide open borders to anyone, no, but needs to think hard about demographic strategy because it's a component of your industrial capacity, your economic output, your demot, your vibrancy, your innovation. all of their things do still stem from people doing things and achieving things, not just from having a few good roads. And you make this case so well in the book. And obviously, you and I are product of immigrant families. America is a great immigration story, which you regale us within the book. But we have a fractured political system now, and we have some tribalism going on. And one of my theories about that is that we just disconnected a very large group of people, lower and middle class people.

feel disconnected. They feel like they're not getting a fair deal like they once were in our society. So what would you do? How could we revitalize America? How could we turn the tables? You detail some of this in the book. And so I just want you to share that with some of our people. Sure. Well, the first thing is to not mix up apples and oranges. I mean, yes, it is true that people feel disconnected. They feel alienated. They feel that they've gotten a raw deal from trends in the global economy and in America. America's domestic politics and economy. To blame that on immigrants doesn't actually make a lot of empirical sense, as you know. So it's perfectly fine to say, hey, globalization has led to the offshoring of jobs and we as workers haven't been sufficiently compensated. But it's not true to say, oh, well, therefore, immigrants are to blame, right?

These are literally apples and oranges in many, many, many measurable, demonstrable ways. Now, as we become more and more of services economy, as a result, of deindustrialization. Well, the services economy depends on, guess what? People, right? It depends on people doing things or other people. And you don't have people, right? Ultimately, you're limited in what kind of growth you're going to achieve. And quite frankly, in an economy where, in an aging society, where people should be caring for, teaching, taking care of, being doctors, nurses, physical therapists, gardeners, cooks, cleaners, drivers, and whatnot for each other, we actually need people. I don't consider it particularly civilized that in our country and in many developed countries,

whether it's Japan or parts of Europe, old people die alone because our immigration policy, our migration policy, our labor market policies don't sufficiently account for the fact that elderly people need care. I'm just taking this one example of it. There are other places where you say, hey, look at parts of Italy where they don't pick up the trash. Well, that's not particularly civilized either. and maybe you need a labor market policy that involves immigration where you bring in more trash collectors, right? That would be civilized.

They like striking the other Lee Parach. Believe me, those are my ancestors. I get those. Okay. They don't like picking up your luggage either, by the way, when you land in Rome. That's a whole of the top. So you've got to get someone to do it until the robots do it. And guess what? The robots aren't doing it right now and we have the need right now.

So I bring it back to something that all of us can just relate to. And when I'm in Europe in particular, I really use this. this point loud and clear, look people straight in the eye and I say, do you want your parents to die alone? Because that's actually what happens when you don't have. And we saw this in COVID, by the way. If we had had more nurses and so forth, we wouldn't have had the degree of excess mortality and so forth among that we had. It's not civilized. It's literally not civilized, Anthony, right? Right. Yeah, no, listen, I think it's very compelling. I mean, you're writing a compassionate a book, but you're writing a book. What I love about your book, among many things, is the macro

observation of what is going on. You can distill it into laws, culture, the way we think about each other, and the way we're working together. And of course, you and I both know more movement leads to less racism, more movement leads to less biases, tribal biases, because we realize, you know, it's like Mark Twain said, the more you move around, the more you realize we're very similar. There's not a lot for us to fight about. We all have a common cause. I want to address something that you write in the book. You discuss something called peak humanity, which I want you to explain to people, what is peak humanity? What did you mean by that? And where do you think we are right now? Sure. And by the way, just one more thing on your previous point, because you rightly said that, sure,

we've got tribalist tendencies appearing in our politics. But as you just mentioned with the Mark Twain, quote, we're also urbanizing rapidly and society, cities are becoming more diverse. The world is looking, the big cities, the world are looking more like New York City in London and Dubai in terms of that being melting pots. So the truth is that for every tribalist anecdote, there's also that melting pot reality. You see it especially in cities. So I actually think the trend is inexorably towards more demographic blending. So just putting that out there in terms of the global which is a good thing, though. I mean, correct me wrong. That's a good thing because it, It calms us down.

It makes us less primordial. Right. It makes us more community oriented. Right. You know, cities are not the places where you see as much of that, that huge skew in terms of national, popular, xenophobic sentiment. They're the, the bulwarks against that. So now anyway, so peak humanity, world population, as I said, reaching 8 billion people this

year, probably not to cross 10 billion people. and we've massively overestimated, going back even just 15, 20 years in the recent past, what the peak human population would be. You and I remember when just 15, 20 years ago, people thought it would be 15 billion people, and we would have this Malthusian crisis of overpopulation. Well, actually, a world of 10 billion people, which is, again, the max, in my view, is not a world that's overpopulated. Yes, there are particular places that have a,

excess population density problem like South Asia, right? But the world has more than enough land area, livable, habitable land area for 10 billion people. It's quite manageable, right? The bigger question is the distribution question. That's what I'm getting at. 10 billion people today, most of the people alive today are young under the age of 40. And so I really drill down on youth, right? Because how can you write out the future and only see the world through the lens of old people? We won't be old people won't be around. I don't want to be crude about it, but you need to see the future through the lens of the people who will inhabit it. And those are the young people. So I'm talking about the peak humanity of 10 billion people. I'm talking about most of those people being alive today.

And most of those people are millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. So I focus on millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, and those are 55, 60% of the world population today. And I ask this simple question, where will they be physically in 2030, 2040, and 2050? And I'm telling you one thing, Anthony, you and I have done public policy, economics, and all these things. But if you ask me, what is the one thing that distinguishes winners and losers among societies and nations in the 21st century, I would boil it down to this. Are you gaining young people today? or are you losing young people today? If you are like Russia or Bulgaria or any number of other countries

and you're losing your youth, you're not going to be around, you're not going to be a meaningful player, you're not going to be a role model, you're not going to be an empire, you're not going to be an innovator 20 years from now. So it's really simple. I look at the movement of people as the single most young people in the global war for young talent

as the single most important metric for success of societies. I mean, it is dead center correct, in my opinion. You have all of these free agents. People are able to move now. They can go anywhere in the world. They can also use Zoom and all these different technologies so they can transport their intellectual capital anywhere in the world, which people have to be careful about as well. Talk about peak humanity from the following perspective, which is our balance between our evolving societies and the threat of our our own self-destruction. You know, when I first read peak humanity in your book, I was like, I understood it later as I continued to read, but it made me think peak humanity is, oh, my God, have we evolved to the point where we're going to kill ourselves? Because, you know, a lot of sociologists say, I have the capacity to bond with and have empathy for about 100 people. That's my biological brain operating. So I can't bond with 10 billion. I'm drinking out of this plastic bottle. I'm to throw it in a non-recyclable, you know, because I'm not capable of understanding it.

What do you say to those people? And what do you say to that concept of peak humanity? Well, this is definitely where we have to bring climate change into the picture. Because when you're bringing these two things together on peak humanity and number, but also peak humanity in terms of our existential crisis, this is what it effectively, this is where they come together. Because if you look at the present distribution of the 8 billion people in the world, the majority of, the majority of humanity is kind of trap behind borders, right? Living in parts of China, in the South Asia, in particular, South Asia is the most populous region of the world. There's 1.8, 1.9 billion people. So way more people between just three countries, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, three countries that,

of course, were just part of the British Empire as recently as the 1940. And Africa and South America and so forth, places that if you look at the climate models suggest that they're becoming less and less livable over time. So here's the moral conundrum. The majority of the world population that need to show solidarity with because of the climate effects that they're suffering, which have largely been brought about by our own economic activity, are trapped behind borders in some of the more increasingly unlivable, uninhabitable places in the world. This is particularly true in South Asia. So that is a major, I would say this is the most perverse moral fact in the world, or most perverse fact in the world that has moral consequences is that the majority of the world's

young people, not just the majority of the world of people, but our demographic future of our species is mostly located in places that are becoming rapidly unlivable. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to reconcile that human geography, which is really what this book is about, human geography. How are we going to reconcile that with our political geography of borders and the resource geography of where people can and should live in terms of stable habitats and environments? And so I come to two conclusions. I say, you know, if you want to do something good for the world, you're doing one of two things. You're either moving people to where there are resources or you're moving technologies to where people need them. That's it. Let me repeat to keep things

really simple. You're either moving people to where they can survive or you're moving technologies to people to help them survive. If you, in your day-to-day life and whatever it is that you do and companies, investments, government service advocacy, you're not contributing to one of those two things. I'm not sure you're doing a whole lot of good, right? If you measure yourself by if you're contributing to those two things, I think that you can be part of the solution. I think it's incredibly well said. I want to go to the next American Dream chapter where you discuss what will happen

in major cities like New York and Los Angeles and why mobile homes are on the rise and even Warren Buffett being an investor and things like them. Touch on this force. Tell us how the American dream is going to be redefined. It is really as fundamental as that. You know, we think

of the American Dream as a home and a degree right, to boil it down to its, you know, to the kind of bumper sticker. And I rephrase that, you know, in this book. I say that it is going to be not about the home and the degree, but about mobility and skills, right? Mobility meaning physical mobility, because the literature, the research makes very clear that the best pathway to socioeconomic mobility, which is part of the American dream, is physical mobility. If you physically move to where you will get a better

education of access to better jobs and higher income, that is the best way to achieve the American dream is to get up and move to a better place. So physical mobility and skills, not just degrees, but actual skills. And that may mean lifelong learning. It means a different skill, different time, different place, learned in different places, right? Learned in some classrooms and sometimes online and sometimes in an academic institution, other times on the job. But physical mobility and building relevant, useful skills. That should be the American dream. And therefore, it means you're not, you can be pinned down, right? Now, young people today, are very cautious about buying homes. Well, given where interest rates are, there goes that anyway.

But they are cautious about buying homes. And what we found, you know, during COVID is this accelerated acquisition of mobile homes, which I thought was fascinating because maybe you or I might be too old to think, oh, yeah, of course, I'll buy a Thor RV instead of buying a suburban McMansion. But a lot of Gen Z out there were like, no, actually, this remote work thing is great. Let me get an RV and get Starlink and, you know, mounted on top and off I go. And you know what? Wherever the hurricane strikes, I'm not going to be there, right? But I'm going to be a remote worker, not even to pay state taxes.

I'm not even going to pay city taxes. I'm just going to go wherever I feel like being and I'm going to work. And a lot of people are thinking like that. And I applaud young people for thinking and acting like that. It's a fascinating way to think about things because if you are a governor of a state or you're a mayor, of a city, you got to start thinking about your revenue planning because there will be that level of mobility. And of course, people are already doing that. Look at the migration out of New York, etc. What to test something on you related to the world and the current world order, which I would say

is still a post-World War II world order, redefined after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, but it's still an American-centric world with American-centric systems and acronyms like the World Bank, IMF, et cetera. You recall the professor from Oxford, you remember McKinder? So McKindier basically talked about the Eurasian plane. Obviously, Europe is connected into Asia. That continent is really, we say it's two continents, but if you look at the landmass, it's one very large landmass. And of course, McKinder felt very strongly that whoever controlled.

all that land mass, frankly, controlled the world. Okay, so the Chinese know their Morkinder. The Russians, with their 13 times zones, know their mokinder. And so does the United States. And so the question always is, is the United States out there disrupting that land mass? You know, there's theories that, you know, we're pushing for the Germans and the Ukrainians to be against the Russians so that we can continue to hold the hegemony of the world by having no centralized power on the Eurasian continent. What's your response to that? So I've long advocated for multipolarity in Eurasia precisely because that power that controls either what McKinder called the geographic pivot of history, this was the operating key, key term in his work, by which he meant literally the space behind me in the middle of my map, which is that Eurasian heartland. If a single power were to control that and by extension, the Eurasian landmass, then effectively you're controlling the majority. the majority of the Earth's population and surface area and resources and so forth. So Eurasian multipolarity should be the goal of American foreign policy in a continuous, non-controversial, you know, kind of in terms of our grand strategy of Eurasian multipolarity.

However, we're not a Eurasian power as everyone who knows even the basic geography or our continents would have noticed. One of the things that I've argued is that, remember, we're not even an Asian power. We're a Pacific power, not an Asian power. We are a European power by way of alliances, not by way of imperial colonial possession. You know, it was obviously the reverse. We were a European colonial possession. Now, do we lead an alliance with European members?

Yes, of course. And do we have, again, Pacific allies like Japan and South Korea and Australia? Yes. But we are not ourselves, you know, rooted on this Eurasian landmass. And that's problematic. You know, our relationships can be fleeting. Sometimes, you know, NATO has been in sometimes on the ropes. You know, back in the late 90s, we used to say it's an alliance in search of a mission, right?

And had it not expanded, at the time, people said, you have to go out of the area or out of business. And not long after those debates came to 9-11 terrorist attacks. So then NATO had a new sort of lease on life and so forth. And we invaded, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. But again, temporary positioning, right? Even our Gulf bases, which are, you know, again, quite. firmly anchored, you might say, pardon the pun, right? UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and so forth.

But again, we don't own these places. It's an age of sovereignty, and that's quite different from the world of the immediate, you know, the mid-20th century. And then, you know, that's rapidly decolonized. Anyway, long story short, we need to continue to support independent poles of power in Eurasia. And that means Europe. That means India. That means Japan.

that means Southeast Asia, that means Kazakhstan and so forth, to avoid a single power like China being able to control either Asia or Eurasia. So, Parag, if I understand you correctly, you like movement because that's the lifeblood, the arterial structure, the circulatory flow of civilization, but you also like decentralization because you find that with decentralization, people have more freedom. So what do we do about places, autocracies like China and, and, and, Russia? And are they going to be vexed with this dilemma of the fight for young people, the migration? What do you do? First of all, am I right? You're a proponent of movement and decentralization.

So what do you do? Yeah, of devolution is the key term, right? Devolution to me is the most powerful political force in the world. It's more powerful than democracy. And I've written quite a lot about this over the years. The fact is that if there's, if there's one political fact on the world map, since 1945, it's that empires have been splintered. And, you know, we have to triple the number of countries today than we had at the end of World War II. So devolution is a fact of geopolitical life, and that is decentralization of power. Now, there are, there are specific states like China and Russia that remain highly centralized, or actually not remain, but sometimes are volatile and vacillate between chaos, if you will, and,

and centralization, but both today are obviously centralized authoritarian political systems in their countries. But that doesn't mean that the world geopolitically is not devolving because it is. If you go from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, of course, that means that you have devolved power, right? Power is now spreading. And that is something I'm advocating for because I believe then that coalitions of powers can keep each other honest.

That's a more colloquial way of putting balance of power theory, you might even say. that alliances are automatic among them because, of course, they are self-interested and they'll choose whether or not to get involved. But yes, I think decentralization of power is in general a good thing. It prevents centralized authoritarian powers from being able to extend their influence globally. Now, in terms of the war for talent just really quickly, this is important because, and this really gets at one of the key points I make in the book, it's super relevant in the Russian-Ukrainian context, because I have a whole section of conscription. And I wanted to take this idea of like civilizational states and nationalism and strong men as the key trend of our times, which a lot of people seem to argue.

And I said, yeah, prove it. Show me how nationalist these countries are that you're talking about. Because we talk about Turkey and Russia and China and India as again these strongman populist states. And that's the muscular kind of society that's going to dominate the future. I'm like, hmm, why don't I? Why don't I look at the average 18-year-old male in each of those countries? And lo and behold, what did I find? I think you know the answer.

They want to get the hell out. The right of passage for every young Turk, most young Indians, and God knows every Russian today, turn on the TV, wants to get the hell out. So where is your nationalist society? Don't kid yourself. Judge a country not by its regime. or don't conflate a regime in its people. Look at the people.

And the young people definitely want out of those places and they want to be in, call it free, open, inclusive, liberal, democratic societies. And in that sense, of course, we have a phenomenal advantage if we will take them. And this becomes a very daily, day-to-day, important policy subject because we're talking about should we be banning visas for Russians, right? And, you know, the fact that a lot of people are seeking to leave China if they can get a passport and so forth. And my view is resolutely brain-grain them.

Brain-brain them. Take every single one that wants out. Do not penalize them for being born in, raised in a country through forces beyond their control and being subject to authoritarian dictatorship. They have a right to ex-human right, an enshrined right in the United Nations charter to actually be able to leave, in the Declaration of Human Rights,

to leave a country, right? and I believe we have an obligation and a strategic advantage in taking them. Listen, I think it's brilliant. And I'm listening carefully because I think you have a correct worldview, but you also have a very decent understanding of where the policy should be, you know, for our country. You know, less xenophobia, more inclusion. I love the commentary related to devolution. So I'm in a cab 10 years ago in South Palo, and I'm driving around, and the place looks beautiful

to me and the cab driver says to me, you know, God was talking to the angel Gabriel and explained to him the construction of the world and he was going to make seven beautiful continents. One would only be inhabited by the penguins, but the other continents would be magnificent. And so he said, okay, that's great, God. But it seems like the South American continent you built unfairly. It's unbelievably beautiful. It has great coastlines and rivers. It has the Amazon rainforest. It is absolutely spectacular, loaded with natural resources. So don't you think you were unfair to the other six continents with the construction of South Africa? Do you know what God said to the angel Gabriel? Tell me. Wait to you see the people I put there.

Exactly. Wait to see the people. Okay. So describe South America to me. You tell us this to lost continent. Is it a lost continent? That's a term that's been used for, I think, more than a century, actually, about South America. And it's obviously now taken on mostly economic. you know, policy overtones, right, a place that can't seem to get its act together for long enough to maintain what was at the time, actually, the 90s called the new left consensus. You know, we actually posited a period of stability in which rather than vacillating between military junta's and strongman regimes and socialist governments and communist ideology, instead, you had this new left consensus that was pro-poor, pro-influpture, countercyclical, all of these

kinds of things that we now think of as a political norm. But lo and behold, look at Brazil again, now, look at Argentina, you know, and so forth. It's in Venezuela, of course, some of the biggest countries in South America just can't get their act together for very long. We know the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed. We know that it's a difficult continent to exit physically. You know, and in this book I talk about the geography of mobility. It's going to be harder, Anthony, for South Americans and Africans to escape because of geology. right now this is not me making some kind of a political or ideological statement it's literally geography right so in a way the people of south america just like the people of africa are going to

have to get things right in their own on their own continents because most of them will never leave their continent so is it a lost continent well i hope not because again some of those god-given resources and the potential is there it's certainly there in africa to But we're not in the colonial era anymore. We're not even in the post-colonial era anymore in the sense that we were in the late 20th century. Countries that still blame colonial meddling, intervention, legacies for their ills are not going to get very far. So when I'm traveling and I'm evaluating, judging, advising countries, I'm kind of, you know, kicking the tires mentally, psychologically. I'm saying, is this still a place that thinks that other people are responsible for what's going on here?

or are they going to fix their own problems, you know, take the bull by the horns? And that's what I want to see. And that's what's happening in Southeast Asia where I live, this region of the world, where you don't hear people saying, oh, the French and the British really messed it all up. And so where they're saying, you know what? What's done is done. bury the hatchet. Move on.

Let's build the future. Yeah. Right. You know, when I finished the book or I had three things come to mind. And I want you to say yes, no, or true or false. The first thing came to mind is I'm actually more optimistic about America weirdly. I actually think that we're such a decentralized government and we have so many free market forces happening inside of America that it's still quite appealing to the rest of the world. True or false.

Short answer, yes, true. Okay, short answer, yes. Second thing I thought to myself is that most of the world is going to get better. The technology, the information that we have, the devolution that you're referencing, the world's actually going to get better, that like the gloom and doom people, we should put them to the side for a second and recognize that things are gradually improving in places around the world. Also, yes, state capacity pre-COVID, you know, was really improving. And again, do we have the capacity, the technology? Like I said, the connectivity and the technology.

Can we move people to resources and resources to people? Yes, short answer. Slight asterisk is we didn't have to let things get so bad as they. are either in terms of geopolitical disruptions or climate change, right? We could have had a better world than even the good world that we are capable of and might still achieve. So I'm disappointed, but I'm still cautiously optimistic. All right. So the third thing I just need you to react to is not really true or false. I finished the book and said in 2050, I'm going to be in New York. Okay, if I'm alive, I'm going to be in New York because I'm a New Yorker. I'll be shutting the lights off

on the place. I don't care. I'm not leaving. I'm going to pay the taxes and I'm hanging in here as a New Yorker. Where will you be in 2050, my friend? Berlin. Probably Berlin. Tell me what? It's my like home away from home. I've been going there since literally the wall fell. So since 1989, I've lived there multiple times. I feel like at home. I mean, I'm a New Yorker too. You and I, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker, But you asked me where my wife and I feel we are going to retire in a climate resilient, hopefully climate resilient place where we love the bohemian culture and have, you know, lots of friends. Oh, this is a beautiful. I love going to Berlin.

It's a beautiful city. You wrote a fantastic book. I want to applaud you for it. The book is called Move, okay, where people are going for a better future. You know, what I love about the book, too, is that there's complex ideas in the book and you make it easy for people to understand. You didn't simplify them because I didn't think you can't simplify complexity, but you made it easy for people to understand. And I applaud you for it. And I want people to go out and buy the book. Thank you again for joining us on an open book, bro. Thank you so much.

I mean, great to be with you. Move is a thought-provoking book. It cuts through the noise. It provides a real macro observation of what's going on. I couldn't resist throwing down some McKinder in there as Well, I'm sorry about that, but that's the walkishness of following geopolitics and world history. If we consider the history of Western civilization, its conjoinment with Eastern civilization, this book is necessary for us to understand where we're all going. Whether we like it or not, our cultures are melding. The world is getting smaller. And while the world is getting smaller, our reaction has become more tribal.

But maybe the best solution is to pick and choose great things from each other's culture and be open-minded to it, perhaps share in the ideas from each other, the best ideas that have impacted the West and the East quite favorably. The world is certainly changing. I believe it will change for the better. So does Baragana. The future is very bright. You should read its book, Move, where people are going for a better future.

All right, Ma, I got you back on the show. Are you ready for this week's episode? Go ahead. All right. How are you doing, by the way, Ma? I'm okay. I'm kind of fighting sciatica right now. All right.

Well, that's part of old age. You're doing just fine. You know, you're like a warrior. Let's talk, Ma. I just had somebody on the show. His name is Parag Khanna. And he's talking about where people are moving to around the world to take advantage of opportunity in the future. But I told him that I'm never leaving New York.

Okay. Are you ever leaving Port Washington, Ma? No. Okay. Tell me why. Ma, why are you never leaving? I was born and raised in Port Washington, and I loved the town, and I loved my house. But I lived in Louisiana for almost two years, and that taught me a lesson in my life.

I would never leave New York or Port Washington. Well, we may have some Louisiana viewers, Ma. Go easy on Louisiana, but you love New York. Why do you love New York so much, Ma? I think New York has everything. It has the plays and the opera that my mother used to take me to. It has concerts. It has everything that I love.

And I love the momentum of the city. Okay. And what about Port Washington where you grew up? You like that place? I like Port Washington because I live alone. And if I feel a road board in the summer, I sit down at the town dock on the bench and I watch the water. And people always stop and talk to you. It's very friendly down there.

Okay. Is there anything, anything at all that would make you move from your house? No. Nothing. Unless I'm not. Only if I can't afford it. Okay, well, you don't have to worry about that, Ma. I got you covered on that.

I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about what would make you move. What if I built you a bigger house? You would go to that or you didn't want to stay right where you are? I'd like to stay where I am. I'm in the center of town and I'm 86 years old and I have, I have foot foot in this town. I come alive. All right.

But your family, right, Nana, your father, pop, they moved here from Italy, right? Well, my father, I have a book. He was a pioneer of Fort Washington, and he had many, many businesses in Port Washington, and he was very savvy. Okay, but, you know, he was born in the United States but moved back to Italy, but Nana came from Italy, so they had to have... It came from Italy. Yeah, so they, but they had to have Hutzpah, to use your word, to come to the U.S., right? So what do you think, what do you think made Nana take the risk to get on a boat? and head to New York?

Well, I think they were match made. They were definitely match made. My grandfather in Port Washington was an mason contractor, and my grandfather in Italy was a genius on making furniture. Okay. They both came for money in those days, and they had like a shot, which means they were match-based. Okay. They had a lot of respect for one another.

Did I ever see them being loving to one another? No, but they had a lot of respect. expect that they raised three kids. And I have two brothers that passed away and I never argued with them in my life. And they never argued with each other. So they accomplished a lot by doing that. All right. So let me ask you this though, Ma, it's getting warmer, right? What do you think of climate change? What's your opinion there? I hate it. Okay, tell me why. Well, I have leukemia, and I get cold a little bit quicker than average. But I always like the cold and I love the snow. And when I was a kid, we used to build a port and have snowball fights on Jefferson Street.

Okay, but we don't do that anymore in New York, right? Because it really doesn't snow that much anymore, does it? Right. Doesn't snow that much. But I like snow. I was born in January, and I looked cold, and I like snow, and I don't like summer because I don't swim, and I don't have the ability to swim even though my whole family is to swim, including my children. Okay.

But so you don't like climate change? What do you think is causing the climate change? Ma? I think that all the cars with the fuse of the gas and the plastic bottles that have been thrown out, you know, a lot of garbage. Yeah, different things, of course, that's my opinion. I don't know if it's true or not, but that's my opinion. Okay.

Well, what would you do? What would you recommend that we do, though, Ma? What do I recommend that we do? I recommend that maybe instead of having gas, we need electric cars, I do go along with it, but I don't want my car change. I have a Mar-a-Rotty that my son bought me. Oh, my God. And I feel like a million bucks when I'm in it. It turns me on. I don't see that. I understand that, but that's the problem, all right? Everyone wants the other person to drive the electric car and they want to drive in the, yeah, not you. See, that's the problem. Well, there you go. All right, well, that's the

problem that we're all having, okay? What would you do to me, Ma, if I moved out of New York? I would take you were nuts because New York has been very good to you and you've been very good to New York. All right, well, you don't have to worry about that, Mom. I'm never leaving, okay? I told Spike Lee, I'm shutting the lights out on the city. There's no way I'm leaving. I would have an air mattress and have everybody in it that was related to me. Yes, of course you would, ma. Okay. All right. I love you, Ma. I just, you know, thank you for joining Open Book. You're more popular than I am, so I got to keep bringing you back on the show. I love you, baby. Okay, love you too.

I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listen. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me to chat more about the discussions, it's at Scarabucci on Twitter. It's also at Scaramucci on Instagram. You can text me at plus one, 911, 909-2996. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see on our show next. I'll see you back here next week.