The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 271. How Black Lives Truly Matter | Magatte Wade

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Magatte Wade is a serial entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and visionary business leader with a passion for creating positive change in Africa. She is the founder and CEO of SkinIsSkin.com, “the lip balm with a mission,” and is dedicated to reducing racial discrimination while creating jobs and prosperity in her home country of Senegal.Magatte joins Dr Peterson to discuss her emigration from the third world, and how this influenced her unmitigated belief in capitalism and the free market.—Links— Visit Skin is Skin here: www.skinisskin.comVisit Magatte’s website here: www.magattewade.comSee Magatte’s social media here: https://linktr.ee/magattewVisit Tiossan Academy here: http://www.tiossanacademy.org// SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL // Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.co... Donations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES // Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personality Self Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.com Understand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS // Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-... Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m... // LINKS // Website: https://jordanbpeterson.com Events: https://jordanbpeterson.com/events Blog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blog Podcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL // Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson Instagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.peterson Facebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpeterson Telegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPeterson All socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson#JordanPeterson #JordanBPeterson #DrJordanPeterson #DrJordanBPeterson #DailyWirePlus #Psychology

Hello everyone, I'm pleased today to be talking to Ms. McGat Wade, who's known for advocating for a prosperous, innovative Africa through entrepreneurship and economic freedom. She is the founder of SkinIsKin.com, a skin care company that manufactures in Africa and sells products in the US. And as a practicing and successful African entrepreneur, can bring her experience to the table when discussing obstacles to doing business in Africa as compared to the US. Magat has concluded that those who purport to care about Black Africans should support free markets and affordable and reliable energy, including fossil fuels,

who are forthcoming book The Heart of Achita, available soon through magatwaid.com, will provide detailed suggestions for how to accelerate progress for Africans. She is a blunt, straight talker who has little patience for the anti-capitalist's piety's favored by many so-called allies of black people. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. Thanks for having me, Jordan. It's a pleasure being here. So let's start with a bit of your history, let's talk about your company and where it's founded,

and how you managed to establish it, and what sort of obstacles you did face. Sure. So whenever someone asks me, Magat, tell me about your story, I take you back to where I was born and in Senegal, the west coast of Africa, and where I primarily really, my story started with when my parents, right around age two,

I was done with breastfeeding. My mother decided that it was time for her and my father to go and seek better pastures, you know, to afford us a better life back home. And that's when they made the journey that so many Africans make, you know, to provide for a better life for their families. And it's at a time where they decided to migrate from Senegal to Europe. where they decided to migrate from Senegal to Europe. Unfortunate, many people have made the same journey before them and after them. Many unfortunately did not make it under as good circumstances as they did

because they could do it in a legal way, which means you can take legal pathways and routes but are not as dangerous as others. So my parents become economic migrants, like many other Africans before them and after them, went to Europe and of course, you know, managed to build a very good life for themselves. And so they left me behind to be with my grandmother. And right around age seven, it was time for me to be reunited with the family unit that

my father and mother have, you know, constitute. And so it was decided. Now you're going to Germany. And Jordan, I will never, ever forget, when I first sat foot on that continent in that country, my first time ever leaving my village. And I just remember being like, wait a second, how come they have that?

And we don't. And the that was, I was just looking around, you know, all of these paved streets, compared that to unpaved streets back home. Walking around my feet are always dusty, ashy, always have to wash them back when I go home. How come they have that? Meaning, you know, back home, to get a shower,

my grandma would have to heat a pot of hot water, put it on the stove. And when I say stove, it's not, you know, back home, when it's to get a shower, my grandma would have to heat a pot of hot water, put it on the stove, and when I say stove, it's not, you know, you're going to your kitchen, you turn the stove and, you know, the burner comes on. No, no, no, it's like she's establishing like a little stove, literally that's off of the ground, just like when you go camping, you know, where you put the charcoal,

so put the charcoal in, has to get it going, and then she put the pot of water on it. Then it boils, and then we bring a bigger bucket, put that hot water, mix some cold water to it, and then one of my cousins, stronger, would drag it to the shower area, and there, with a smaller pot, I would then go on to have my shower. Compare that now to Germany, and my mom is like, my god, time to shower. I'm like, so you mean I jump in there, and I turn then go on to have my shower. Compare that now to Germany and my mom is like, my God, time to shower. I'm like, so you mean I jump in there and I turn the knobs on? You know, this one, this one, and then the water comes down at the temperature I needed. And all of that took a blink of an eye to happen. Are you kidding me? If when you walk into the stores,

everything is aced in the summer, hated in the winter, it's just like, this is of life. I think that's what as a little girl I was seeing, this is of life, what are you talking about? And so eventually that question of a little girl of how come they have this and we don't became with time, how come some countries like mine, Senegal, and other many African nations are poor while nations like the United

States, France, or the rich, how come? How come some nations are poor while others are rich? And it's a question that never left me and it defined my life, that question defined my life. Well, so let's walk through that because that is a crucial question. I read a book a while back by a Harvard professor emeritus called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and it addresses that very question. And one of the surprising conclusions he comes to is that a huge part of what makes some country's rich and other countries poor is the presence of an almost universal trust in matters of trading. And so for him,

I think his name was Landis, the most valuable natural resource is actually trust. And I would say also a bit of lack of envy because with envy, it makes it impossible for anyone to have anything because everyone else is jealous and angry about it. And well, that's one of the pathways, let's say, to wealth. What have you concluded? I mean, you've been thinking about this your whole life ever since you went to Germany when you were seven. Right. So I've been thinking about it my whole life and looking for answers, my whole life.

And as I was growing up and moving around, I heard it from some very people who with a straight face will invoke the IQ theory or darling, it's not your fault, you see, because in a world where you being black, it varies a theory out there that you're just not as smart as white people. I've gone to conferences where there was panels and people talking and making that case.

I heard people say, oh, darling, it's just because, you know, malnutrition, you know, you guys are just not well-knowished and just because, you know, others say, oh, if only if you had access to greater education. And I'm like, you go say that to the countless young Africans in my country, Senegal, you know the joke is the first job of a graduate is to be a street seller.

How many of these people on the street do you see them hustling in between cars in a very dangerous way under the hot sun? And you ask them, what did you study? And they'll tell you, I have an MBA in finance, in math, and they're right there doing what they're doing. I was just talking to a person in a Swesiland, in a Swatini, it used to be called Swesiland.

I mean, beautiful math background. And I said, what are you doing now? Because I'm considering hiring her remotely. And she said, well, I'm raising chickens. All she can do right now is raising chickens. So if you're gonna just make it about education, you go talk to those people first and you come back and talk to me about it.

And then other people just, oh, maybe if I give you some free shoes, if I give you some shoes, you'll be better off. Tom's shoes, buy some shoes, so that some other people have a better life. All of this nonsense, Jordan, I've been hearing throughout times. But guess what, none of them made any sense to me.

Because if you're gonna make it also about, let's say you even use the IQ, which I should not even give a minute to, but then how come the same person, same background, same education, let's take even my parents. All of a sudden, they make it to Europe and voila, they can manifest their greatest potential. So I'm starting to think, maybe it's not about this person.

Maybe there's something else that's not about this person person in this situation. And then I'm like, maybe it has to do with a place they get to be in or not. And so that was starting to brew in my head. So as all of this is happening, I'm living my little life. I, from Germany, a couple years later, my family decided we're going to move to France for instance in Europe for many reasons, because you know, France used to be the collar, used, uh, Senegal is an ex-colonial France. And then after my business school in France, I decided that France was gonna be too small

for my ambitions, I gotta get outta here. I don't wanna be in a country where you have to be, if you make it to the right school, you kiss the right behind for the right amount of time, then you can hope maybe for some type of promotion. No, that was not for me. I'm not saying that everybody does that, but it was just not a good option for me.

So I looked around and I could go anywhere, literally, as I wanted, and I thought about the United States, this one country where you can, anyone can become anything they want as long as they put in the work, and that's what the desire to do. And so I came to the US, and when I came to the US, I was first headhunter in finance in Silicon Valley

in the heydays of a debt come. I used to go to Netflix when Netflix was a tiny office in San Jose. Google, when most people didn't even know how to pronounce Google, it was one little building in the Silicon Valley. And so there I got to see all of this entrepreneurship happening. And so, Jordan, this is where at some point something happened. And I'm taking a little detour here, but this detour is so important. Because I will, I will, I will get you to my answer because it's right there. So while I was in Silicon Valley, I was pretty much steeped into what they call the ecosystem of the entrepreneur. And just this idea of two people getting together, have they have an idea of riding

in the back of a napkin? This was, it sounds cliche, but I lived it. I've seen it. And then they go to a lawyer to start their business, to start, you know, the company legally, find some investors and this whole ecosystem that comes around them. And then I start to be like, wow, this is clever, amazing. And I think it's in Silicon Valley that I discovered the magic of entrepreneurship

is to create something out of nothing. And that to me was so powerful, so powerful. I was living it in my bones. And from there, as you pointed out, there are a lot of moving parts in that system, aren't there? Absolutely. You need people who have an entrepreneurial vision and who think of themselves that way. And then you need a group of people around you like that to talk to.

And then you need early stage finances who around you like that to talk to. And then you need early stage finances who are often friends and family who are willing to contribute time, effort, money. And then you need later stage financing. And there is a whole and the ability to work with customers and the willingness to market and sell. And so all of these pieces have to fall into place before anything like prosperity can can back it. So you encountered this in Silicon Valley and what did that do to you? Yeah, so I encountered with Artistic Avali, but just before you go, when you were talking about early investment, you're family and your friends,

we like to talk about the three AFs, family, friends, and fools. So the fools are there. Right. So in any case, so here I am in Silicon Valley, and I was doing extremely well for myself. At age 25, I was making six figures, both my home with a pool in one of the most expensive zip codes in America, and I say it more for what can happen in this country. I could never, ever have dreamed of such a life,

in such a young age, being who I am back home in France. So right there, you know, the American dream does exist. It was real for me, an immigrant from Africa. So, but, you know, Jordan, with all of that success, one day I lost it, one day I was driving down Big Sur, one of the most beautiful roads he asked me in the world. We've been... Highway one. Highway one, we've been passing it.

Man, it's something, eh? It's so beautiful. You cannot not believe in God when you're on that path, okay? That's how beautiful it is. Especially if you're taking hairpin corners in a... Convertible. Yes, yes, absolutely. And you know, Jordan, it was one of his moments. That day was one of his days when the sun was, as usual, shining. The ocean was beautiful. I was, you know, listening to some Usendor in my car, great in English musician, and just feeling so much gratitude and also so much

pride in myself for what I was able to accomplish. And so much gratitude and also so much pride in myself for what I was able to accomplish. And so much gratitude for everyone and everything that helped me get there. And just as many times, just like it happens, every time I got to that moment of bliss, right away my mood turned. Everything became dark as it usually does,

because why? Because right at that moment, I started thinking about the people that I had left back home. And it happened oftentimes, through my life, you know, because how else do you feel when you're growing up and you hear your parents or you read the news, you hear

the news and it's saying that a body dropped from a plane somewhere above England. Because someone decided to migrate to Europe for a better life, just like my parents did but they did it again under better conditions. And they thought it would be a good idea to hide into a landing gear. But somewhere above, you know, land above England, the body falls. Or they opened the plane and they find the cargo section of a plane, a frozen body. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to hide in the cargo section of a plane. No one told them, they get so cold up there.

Or, you know, this boat just tipped. This little fisherman's boat just tipped, you know, this boat just tipped. This little fisherman's boat just tipped, you know, somewhere along between the coast of Senegal and Spain, which is the first entry into Europe for these people. But the boat tipped over. It is not equipped to make this journey. And in the boat, you have babies, you have young people, primarily young people. And these are some of our most entrepreneurial people, the people that we need to build the prosperity back home. And where are we now, lying at the bottom of the ocean,

serving as fish food? How else would you feel if, for years, growing up, these are the stories that you have, you're hearing. And yet you- Why do you think your conscience bothered you at that point? I mean, you had been... Yeah. You had been...

You'd come to the States, you'd become successful, you had this beautiful day. And so, why all of a sudden, do you suppose your thoughts turn to the people that had been left behind, so to speak? I mean, it wasn't your fault that they were in the state they were in. I know. I know. It wasn't my fault, for sure. It took me a long time. I know it wasn't my fault for sure. It took me a long time to accept that it wasn't my fault.

So what happened that day is I no longer was able to play this just a framer game, but I played my whole life. I was no able, no longer able to, the coping mechanism that I had developed up till then, no longer was holding. The coping mechanism that I had developed back for all of these years was as soon as I started thinking about it, I would like to tell myself, this is not your fault, you have a life to live,

it is not fair, I would tell myself all of these stories, and then I would just shrug it under the rug. Atta as if it, but that day, for some bizarre reason, it just no longer worked. And I lost it. I lost it. My body was feeling so violent that my body jerked literally. And it's a miracle that I'm talking to you because my body jerked so much that we've it steering wheel. And I was going to end up down below in that ocean,

but for some reason it didn't. And as soon as I found a spot to stop, I stopped. And I got out of the car. Something major had happened. I still don't explain what it was, but at that time, Jordan, I surrendered. I surrendered. I said, God, from here on, I'm showing up.

And I promise you, and I want you to help me make sure that every breath I take from here on is going to go towards the bettering of my continent. I just made a deal with God. I said, this is what I'm showing up for this. I present and I offer myself. Why did you think this was between you and God, so to speak? Because it was so big. It was so big. And it was so big. And he's the only one that I trusted to help me with that,

the only one. And most importantly, I had no idea what to do about it. But I knew that faith would be my best ally in this until I could figure it out. Well, faith, faith sometimes is the courage to do difficult things. You know what? It's a very good way to look at it and maybe that's what happened that day because that day I was definitely not not willing or let I say not capable at least of being a coward about it anymore. Because my whole life I was pretty cowardish about it. If you think about it.

Why, why, why cowardly? Why would you say that about yourself? I don't know. It's just because the idea that in order to no longer feel the pain, I would have to push it under the rug. I don't find that very courageous, but I didn't know what else to do because otherwise the pain was just going to drag me into places, but at least I had the sanity to know we're not safe or healthy for me until I knew how to get into those dark spaces, right?

Which by the way, I learned afterwards, because afterwards I used knowledge to my rescue. Understanding really helps settle everything. Yeah, well it is a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing to look on the poverty and the corruption, let's say, of an entire continent and in some sense the entire world and to contrast that with your own prosperity and then to realize at least in principle that you have a moral duty to do something about it. That's exactly. That's no trivial undertaking.

That's exactly. So you're on the side of the road and you've pulled over and you've had this realization, so continue. Yeah, so I pulled on the side of the road. I had this realization and eventually I said, from here on, this is the path I'm taking and I want you to help me. So show me the way.

I will be a good disciple. And so, and his things started to change. With, and he started to, and with a few months later, my husband, who was French and I talk about him in the past tense because poor soul he passed away Shortly after you know after all of this like we barely we had maybe a year together I didn't know that then but I took him home to Senegal to see the place I came from and there He was asking me about this viscous beverage. I've been telling him about forever

You know, you know, how it is when you're not from the same culture, but the first thing you do whenever is what you love about your respective cultures. And that's how a better culture is born out of that mixing. In any case, we're there and it's like, where I want to try if I have a business you're talking about. So everywhere we go, at the restaurant,

or within my friend's, family or friend and family homes. You go there and they all bring you to the plate. Coke, fanta, Pepsi. I'm like, where is the Hibiscus? Girl, where have you been? So basically what happens is what has happened. Anybody who feels like is a somebody drinks the Western soda pop brands,

the ones I just talked about. And the bottom of the pyramid, which is the bulk soda pop brands, the ones I just talked about. And the bottom of the pyramid, which is the bulk of the people, they drink knockout brands, those knockout brands. And in between the traditional indigenous drink that we used to have is squeezed out. And with them, the livelihood of the women who are primarily the ones who used to grow the raw material,

which is the hebeskas. So now these women are leaving the countryside, going and packing themselves in the cities, and there, you know, begging on streets, prostitution, maybe working in people's homes, where they're being treated horribly. So anyway, the cycle of poverty is just keeping going. And there, I thought I was done with being depressed, sometimes about the situation back home. I fell in a literal depression. For three days, my body was not willing to obey me anymore.

It was just like, I'm done. I was so disappointed with the world because now here I am. Not only do I have my people now dying, but now I also have my culture dying because my Hebeska's drink, which is called Bissap. Bissap is called, it's the juice of Teranga. Teranga means hospitality. That is where the people of Senegal are known for. So this is a part of our cultural identity. Yet it is not on that

plate that they brought me. So when I think of a plate, I think of a world stage. And when I think of a drinks on it, I think of a cultures of a world that matter. So much, but they're on that plate. Well, what am I seeing? I'm not there. And that's a big problem. Because if you're not there, it means your culture is disappearing. And if your culture disappears, the only time people might remember me in the future is learning museums. Why do you use the metaphor of the table?

You know what? I never thought about it. I don't know. It's just something that came to my mind when I sow that. It was just like, I sowed it plate, I sow the drinks on it, and it was just, our world was right there. The plate was a divine symbol, right? That's an ancient divine symbol. In some sense, the collective table, the table of the gods, to have a seat at the table is to be part of the conversation and to be part of the elect

in some real sense, to be welcomed in with hospitality and to share and to distribute and to mutually enjoy. It's a very, very old idea. It's very striking to me that that was the metaphor that sprung to mind because we want everyone to come to the table. Don't we? That's the plan. We do. And that's the plan. Absolutely. That's a very good point. I never made the connection, but now that you're bringing it up, it makes it it does make perfect sense actually. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's for sure that's for sure. Interesting. Well, you. Wow. You started that part of our conversation with a bit of an introduction to a religious experience

that you had while you were driving. Yeah. The fact that that table metaphor popped up there makes perfect sense from a symbolic perspective. You also want the table to be laden with the finest of produce, right? And you want it to be a place of plenty and generosity as well as hospitality. And an invitation to everyone to enjoy, that's all part of life more abundant.

And bringing everyone to the economic table is a way of moving forward towards that goal, right? Okay, so the Habiscus drink, that really bothered you. Yes, so I got ill for three days. I was just shut down. I could not move anymore. I was pissed off. I got ill. For three days, I was just shut down. I could not move anymore. I was pissed off. I was disappointed.

I was sad. I was depressed. And my husband's like, my God, this anger of yours, it's energy, but it's negative energy. You've got to find a way to turn it around and do positive energy when it becomes inspiration. And then you use it to fuel yourself. And with that, and this old concept I grew up with, I've criticized by creating its Michelangelo's,

but that's very much the rules on which I was raised. I don't need you to have a right answer, you know, my grandma or my father would say, but I need to know that you have thought of alternatives. They don't have to be the right ones, but I want to know that you have thought of alternatives. They don't have to be the right ones, but I want to know that you have thought of the right of solutions, because when you're in solutions mode, you no longer are a victim. It's a completely different mindset, and I think that's more what they're going to do. Well, you know the other thing that's interesting about that, too,

I think, is that, first of all, I think that's a good rule of thumb, but also, people have problems, and they're often annoyed and oppressed by the fact they have problems. But first of all, you don't have all the problems in the world. You have your problems and the problems that bother you. And you might ask yourself, well, why do those problems bother you and not other problems? And I would say maybe it's because in those problems you actually find your destiny.

And those are often things you don't want to look at. Like you didn't want to look at the poverty of your continent and no bloody wonder who wants to look at that. But it was something that bothered you. It turned out that was your problem. And if you faced it, well, then you figured out on that road that that was your destiny, properly thinking, properly speaking.

Yes, and it was not always easy for me to recognize that or to sit as clearly as I do today. But yes, if I did not pursue that question, I would not be sitting here talking to you right now because there would be no reason for it. So there, we've criticized by creating, turned this anger, energy into positive energy, into inspiration. Then I'm starting to come back to life.

I'm like, you know what? Yeah, if I've got a problem with this situation, I got to fix it myself. So I'm going to start a company. I'm going to start a brand and we're going to sell it first in the US because I'm going to do reverse colonialism on my people. If the only time they can respect something

is if the West has said, oh, now we welcome it, then I'm going to trick you the same way. Hoping that the second generation, the next generation that comes after you, luckily for them, they won't need that type of validation because they were born in a world in which they were just fine, in a world in which they were the eight people, right? So, but this is a detour I need to take, let's take it. So, with that, I just became very galvanized. And so we started this business, and my hoping was I'm gonna start a brand. I don't wanna start an NGO telling people,

you should respect Africans, oh, you should respect this ingredient, or this poor woman, I don't know, no, build a brand because brand have such a power to influence culture. And I was dealing here with a cultural issue first and foremost. And so build a company, hire people back home, and make the brand pop in the US,

and then you have your virtual circle where the jobs are created back home, and your culture also takes its rightful place at the table. And that's exactly what we did. I studied this company in my kitchen, and eventually by the time you look around, you have on my board, Roger and Rico, the ex-German of PepsiCo.

You have a German gentleman who started, so be that was sold to Pepsi, and then also Adwala, which was sold to Coca-Cola. So all of these who's two of the business of the beverage world, we're sitting at my table helping me run this company. Again, something like this, I could never have done this if I was not in this country.

So this is where we are now, but you know what, Jordan, then what happened there? I was starting to get my answers. Because as we built this company, the sister company was based in Senegal, and it was mostly for the supply chain side. Then another sister company was built in the US for more marketing, R&D, sales channels.

But what the sister company was doing. Would you know that as I was building this company, at least back then, it took, it would take you a quick 20 minutes, maybe faster, depending on how fast you type, to establish an LLC online. Compare that to the almost two years, it took me to legally register the sister company in Senegal. Right. So let's just focus on that for a minute. Okay, so you're comparing 20 minutes to two years. Right, so then you have to ask yourself, and I'm sure you have,

there's how much time and energy do people have. It's not an easy thing to set up a business. It's a daring thing and there's a tremendous amount of risk involved and you'll probably fail. That's the risk side. Now, you might succeed beyond your wildest dreams, but if you exhaust all your hardworking and entrepreneurial people by forcing them to jump through idiot hoops, nonstop, all that you do is keep people absolutely impoverished.

And so that we've got a key issue with regard to poverty right here, which is the presence of a stunning amount of unnecessary red tape. So how is it do you think that the US has managed to make it so that you can register a company in 20 minutes, whereas in Senegal, it takes two years. And, you know, I read a great book called The Mystery of Capital, Herando de Soto. De Soto, I was going to bring him up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, de Soto's great man. That's a great book. And he points out that in some of the so-called developing countries, especially the more corrupt ones, not only does it take multiple years to do

anything at all legally, but by the time you jump through all the hoops to do it legally, the laws have been changed so that what you do is no longer valid. That is absolutely, that is absolutely the case. So you're asking me a very good question. And the way I will go about that is there I'm going to try to take this opportunity to debunk a myth. Because this whole conversation with you, I take it as my opportunity to debunk so many myths about African poverty, hence, what would it take for African to build African prosperity? Because I'm not interested in alleviating poverty.

I'm not interested in just like, ooh, can there be a little bit less poor? No, I wanna be prosperous. I think my people, like anybody else, should be prosperous. So we should also point out, let's point out very clearly since we're debunking myths that that's actually a high ethical aim is that we want life more abundant for everyone. We don't want to limp along, lowering our carbon footprint, barely scraping the surface. We want people to be prosperous and free and life to be abundant and everyone to have enough educational resources and to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive. And to thrive.

And to thrive. To thrive. To thrive. Human flourishing. To me, it starts and it ends with it. Human flourishing. Now, what it means for somebody to flourish, it's going to be up to them to decide. But, douche, should everybody have access to human flourishing, you betcha. So, here, I will, going back to the question and why the US and in Africa not, and in her not-a-dose so-to, making the case that oftentimes corrupt countries make it so hard.

So there, the myth that I debunk is so often, you know, I talk to people and they're like, oh, Africa, this country's, it's this region is so corrupt. And I'm like, yes, my country might be corrupt, almost as bad as Chicago, you know what I mean by that. So corruption is, if you will, everywhere, but the way it manifests itself is different

from place to place. And so I would like to argue on the order and the relationship between corruption and these laws that her and under the soda was talking about, the more they corrupt and the more you have to jump through hoops and everything. I like to argue that corruption is a cause of senseless laws, is a cause too many laws and also senseless laws. When you have those together, then you breed corruption.

Give you an example. This is another example that we have to go through. My current company is a skin care company, skin-to-skin. So for that, we have to import some ingredients because if you don't have, you need the inputs that you need at the standard of quality that you need them in order to remain competitive in your marketplace. My marketplace is the United States, that's where people have money to spend all of this, to spend all of our products, the understand our products, this is just, it's one of the

best markets for us, for many different reasons. We select companies, we select places like Whole Foods Market. I don't have to tell you, it's one of the most beautiful change of course, the stores in the US. You can imagine that the buyers are super sophisticated and they don't just bring any product in that chain, but they bring us, so which tells you, the level of standard we're playing at,

with world class, world class. So it means that everything behind the scene has to be world class. The whole chain up and down has to be world class. And so ingredients, world class. So it means that everything behind the scene has to be world class. The whole chain up and down has to be world class. And so ingredients no different. So we have to bring in some ingredients. Well, guess what, Jordan? For some of my ingredients, the tariff is 45% to enter the country, 45%. Others, almost 70%. How do you expect me to be competitive if you're slapping such Terif on some of my inputs? How? Because for every 50 cents you add on Terif,

I have to sell my products two dollars more than I would have in order for me to actually make it. I become very uncompetitive, very quickly, quality for quality product for the product. So, there we had to, so now, if instead of making it a 45%, how about maybe it's a 0% like it is in the US? When I have, if I had to bring the same product here in the US,

0% tariff on it, or make it 5%, or 2%, 3%, something that makes sense. So, when do you really think that I'm going to try to jump through the hoops of avoiding that 45% something that makes sense. So when do you really think that I'm gonna try to jump through the hoops of avoiding that 45% or that 70%? There's no need. Pay it and move on because you've got better things to do.

See how bad laws and senseless laws breed corruption because people will then, it is cheaper and faster for people to pay the bribe and move on than to adhere to the law. You see? So, that's what we have inherited in most African nations. As I noticed, the discrepancy and the difference between doing business back home and doing business in the United States. At first, I was like, well, well of course it's like this,

it's just because we're a poor nation, we're messed up and that's why, that's why everything else is messed up. And then eventually I started to really think about it, to think it through and it's around the same time that God, again, brought some interesting people in my life because at that time, my company, my first company, at least, was now I had moved into the nonprofit. We had started a nonprofit because my goal was,

how can I help replicate whatever success I was able to have? How can I help many of the migats or my male counterparts from Africa do exactly what I did with whatever product they deemed to do it with? How could I help with that? And it is during that journey that I eventually even learned about the work of Hernando de Soto. And when I heard about his work, he was right there telling me, what you went through, what you're going through, experientially speaking, is not an anecdote. This is very, very, something very systemic about this.

And it is called economic freedom. How easy or hard it is to do a business, you have indexes that measure this. The most known of them, being the doing business index ranking of a World Bank. And then you have a Frazier Institute Economic Freedom Index as well well and others and others. Well, what do they all have in common? They all show you one after the other that it is harder

to do business in anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa than it is anywhere in Scandinavia. And I stick Scandinavia purposely because people who are anti-business, you know, they need to know that Scandinavia is more business-friendly, is more pro-capitalist, I'll use a dirty word, than almost any subterrant African nation. And very... Right, and so the Scandinavian choice is a very interesting one, because the rabid and idiot anti-capitalists of the West often point to Scandinavia as socialist countries. But that's not...

Yeah, but not to. ...and they're, well, they're socialist on the edges and capitalists out the West, often point to Scandinavia as socialist countries, but as you point out. Well, they're socialist on the edges and capitalists out the core and in a very, very effective and efficient manner. So they are business-friendly and precisely the manner that you described. Those principles that you elucidated, minimum necessary laws, that's part of the English common law tradition, minimum necessary force of enforcement, that's another good one. Yeah. And, and well, and what is it?

And clear and you have this. And you also have clear and transferable property rights. And you also have the concept of a rule of law as well. Right, right, right. So, so those are the some of the metaphysical and legislative substrates that make a free enterprise system possible. Because people often also think about only the market working, but you need a set of regulations and also customs that the free market can run on top of, like an operating

system. Exactly. And I love that you use a word of practice to say, because this is going to take us to something else. But before we go any further, there I want to point that, as I was learning from the work of people like her, under the so-toe, as I was learning from people like the man who

became my husband, I like to joke and say, he brought me the answer to my little girl's question. I rewarded him with love. So I married him. As I was looking at the work of people like him, Michael Strong, you know, people like John Mack he has whole foods market, their friends, so that's how I got to know John. But they made me really get into a whole nother world

of people who truly care. But what was different about these people is that they cared not on their own terms. They cared, but on the terms of the truth. And we might go into that at some point, but let me just keep it there. So there. So what happened in that time of my life, as I was trying to see, how can I, how can I multiply my whatever success? I, how can I multiply my whatever success? I found out the answer. I started to connect with dots and I learned that eventually, wow, yeah, wow. So you're poor because you have no money. No money because no source of income,

a source of income for most of us is a job. Where do jobs come from, the private sector businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, then don't we, shouldn't we think about the environment of those businesses in which they get to thrive or not? I think we do. But then where, when I look there and I look at these indexes, they're all telling me one thing and one thing only is, your region is a poorest in the world because it happens to be the most other regulated in the world, meaning that as many people fight for freedom and supposedly fight for Africa's rights, no one fought about one of the most

important of rights and freedoms. After you have managed human rights in its global way, economic freedom. Well, you list here in one of your articles where you make reference to these rating systems, the bottom 10 countries for doing business in the world, Chad Haiti, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, there's a lovely example, Eritrea and Somalia. And so there are three exceptions in the African ecosystem. Mauritius, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia, you pointed out in your prospectus.

Is it prospectus? Yeah, the prospectus article of... Right, right. ... institute. Right. That Mauritius is a rising star. And Rwandan is in some wise comparable to Georgia. So some of these countries have started to get this right. Yes.

And so what's the consequence of that? And what does right mean? What they have understood, what these countries have understood is that economic freedom is at the center for prosperity building. Ronda, for example, Paul Kagame, the president of Ronda, is explicit about it. He said he wants to be the Lee Kwon Woo of, he wants to be the Singapore of Africa, and Lee Kwon Woo is his model.

Now the dirty mouth is going to start shouting, oh yes, see! A fort here in, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Me, I want to talk only about the economic side. If you take Lee Kwon Woo and Singapore as your example, then it means that like him, you're going to have to be serious about economic freedom. And that's exactly what he did. That's what Singapore did.

When Singapore figured that out, they went on to put in the right reforms to make their environment the most, some of the most business-friendly environments in the world, one of the most free markets environment in the world, and you saw the magic of Singapore. Today's Singapore is richer than its ex colonizer, Great Britain.

So when I hear people selling me today, oh, Africa is poor because of colonization, I'm like, please, let's move on from that. Does it have maybe a tiny percentage in where we are today? Maybe, maybe, and I don't know. But I know it's not the cause. Because if it were many countless countries have been colonized before, and by the way, colonizing one another is humanity's history. It just happened that maybe Africa

has been one of the last colonized region in the world. So in up psyche, it is there, and it acts like nothing happened before to others. But flash news, it's the history of the world. We've been capturing each other back and forth all of that. So anyway, but the true phase, Singapore, Richard and Great Britain today, and then Hong Kong happened. And then because Hong Kong happened, China even today happened, because China is like, wait a minute, what went on over there? And then China went on to do exact same thing with its SZs, the special economic zones, some of the most free markets

zones in the world. And then look at it happen in communist China, who when it comes to economics decided that we're going to do the free market, we're going to be capitalist. Because that's the only way we tried everything else. We killed hundreds of millions of people. And we have nothing to show for it. But now that we're tired of being disrespected members of society,

because guess what? That's the other thing, too. You want to be respected in this world. You're going to have to be among the prosperous ones for other reasons. Would it be nice to be respected just because? Absolutely. But that's really not the world we live in. So when China got tired of being disrespected, maybe we got to build also some prosperity here because then we're going to hear us.

And today, China, being one of, you know, being where it is at, even Hollywood, Hollywood, who tries to sell the world, how to think, is being told by China, what movies to make, and how to tweak stories, and history, in order to be palatable for them. You see the power that comes with being prosperous. What would you recommend concretely to countries like Senegal to get the hell out of the way,

let's say, of the people who would like you would try to do everything they could to try to make it better? One of the things that happened with India is India established the Indian Institute of Technology, which is a deadly engineering school. And a huge number of its graduates went to Silicon Velios, you well know. And many of the successful Indian graduates of IAT started to dump money back into India and build a capitalist infrastructure there, help build a capitalist infrastructure there. So this sort of thing can really take hold. If you were making recommendations to governments who wanted to get on board and stop being like Chad, Heidi, Central African Republic, Congo, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Venezuela,

et cetera, what concrete steps should they take from the bottom up to get the hell out of the way? Exactly. So two things we've been doing because I'm a practitioner as that's my entrepreneur journey. I'm an entrepreneur, so I practice what I preach. But I also preach. I preach for free markets.

And so when it comes to that, one of the hats that I wear is as the director for the African Center for Prosperity of the Atlas Network, the largest organization in the world of free market, think tanks around the world. And so what we do there is we work on reforms around the world to take down barriers of entry for local entrepreneurs. So that's one thing. But as we all know, that's a great initiative to take.

And we've been making some really good advances in many countries, especially in Ghana. We've been making a lot of progress with our partners very many, but that is peace meal legislation. It takes forever. It is hard as heck. And by the time you made a gain here, you made 20 losses over there and it's a continuous problem. But until we get better, we've got to continue at it.

So that's one thing we've been doing. And so that's a hat I wear working with free market think tanks to try to make it easier for local entrepreneurs to join in the party. Additionally, I'm going bold, I'm going radical. For past few years, we've been advocating an idea for Africa that found some of its roots in Latin America. And again, I'm related to the people who are involved in this.

My husband, one of the key figures in this movement, a movement called the Charter Cities, Paul Romo calls it like that. He's a noble laureate in economics. Others call it the Free Cities. I like to call it the startup cities. So the best way to think about it, Jordan, and it goes back to what you were talking about earlier when you said, when you use the word operating software.

Most of the poor, developing, most of the low income nations, so meaning back in the days where we used to call it, is poor nations are, they have regulations for poverty. They're basically regulated for poverty, meaning the laws, the law, poverty, it's only calls poverty. And so what some of these folks have thought about looking at the Dubai example,

Dubai just recently entered the top 10 of international financial centers of the world. And what Dubai did at some point is think about it and be like on this bare, you know, sand, plot of sand, that's technically worth nothing right now as is, this 110 acres of land, sand everywhere. They're like, well, maybe Shureo Law is at the best for business.

We gotta think about better set of laws for business. We're talking about only about business, not family law, not anything else but business. And they decided there's gotta be something better. And so they looked around and that's actually when to take one of the terms you used earlier, they're starting to realize, hmm, common law is actually a better way for business, specifically British common law. So, at that point, and I'm oversimplifying here, because otherwise we can totally geek out on it, remember this is one of my latest things that I've been involved in, but latest has been the past 10 years, and I'm going to share with you a win.

So Dubai is like, we have to adopt British common law, primarily British common law. We're going to hire retired British common law judges to come and educate the law here, train our own people. And that along with many other reforms to also become a top center when it comes to, and in the free market when it comes to the finances, do buy British common law, that British common law system. So it's very, very interesting theologically and metaphysically. So it's predicated on the idea that people have, every individual has all the rights that there are,

except for those that are specifically regulated and limited by legal necessity. And then generally that realm of necessity has emerged only as a consequence of disputes between people. So you're free to do whatever you want, unless you have a dispute with someone else. Then the dispute is adjudicated, according essentially to Constitutional and Theological principles,

and then a precedent is established. Then the whole body of law built up that body of precedence. Yeah, and it's bottom up, no, it's top down, eh? It's totally nice. And English-Carmen Law is a gift from God, man. It's something else. Absolutely. And that's the key word there when you said bottom up So common law is so much better for bottom up approaches and we all know that markets work better in a bottom up approach and also when they have to educate the law and Resolve and dispute they're gonna be much more respectful to the contract that was passed between the two parties than say civil law would be, right?

And so anyway, so from this standpoint here, you have Dubai who is not only to put all of this together, and eventually they put a set of laws together that would now be conducive to being a top international financial center in the world, and voila, in less than a generation, in less than 25 years, Dubai completely unrecognizable, completely. But they did not invent it. In that short period of time. In that short, I know, you know, the Chinese, the purchasing power of the average Chinese citizen is doubling every seven years. Yes, every seven years. It's insane. It's insane. So we know it can be done.

And the root of that is the same thing. It's economic freedom. It's allow people to free them to enterprise. And Dubai did it. So Dubai was one of the most recent ones to do it. Now the UAE and Abu Dhabi is going the same way. And they're even trying to outbeat each other in terms of who is going to be even more free market.

So that's something beautiful going on there. So people, some folks have looked at that model and then be like, wow, so maybe let's just think about a plot of land, ideally an unoccupied plot of land. So you're not being accused of displacing people or confiscation any of that. So English is only my fourth language, Jordan. me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, that rule that plot of land as you operating software. And to start to think about governance as a new frontier. And so now what you have is these governance and topreneurs. And it's definitely where I have gone into. I'm like, forget this new legislation.

We're going to keep doing that until we have better. But in the meantime, I'm working in this radical idea. So for the past decade, I've been working on convincing African governments to do this. And finally, I can't disclose the name today here, but we've signed an MOU a month ago with one of Western African nations who said, yeah, and it's funny because when we approach them Jordan. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a major achievement. Thank you. That's like a world-shaking achievement.

Thank you. And we have a top team to work on this. And so, but it's so funny because when we first met them, the gentleman said, he said, my God, what do you mean by common law? Because you know, they belong to a civil law like many French, ex-French colonies by the way, because see, that's another difference. When France supposedly, you know, at the end of colonizations of many African nations,

the British, but British colonizers said, you can do whatever you want. Keep common, do whatever you want, whatever. Turns out most of us countries kept the common law. And it's actually easier when you want, whatever. Turns out most of us countries kept the common law. And it's actually easier when you are, it's actually easier for an African nation or any other nation or culture to actually build on top of common law.

Then it is to build on top of civil law. So, see, Anglophone. We should shout that from the rooftops. Exactly, I agree, that's absolutely right, man. Common law is deadly. Is that civil law is deadly? So, So, so, so, yeah, I civil hand. That's okay. That's okay. So basically, what happened there is, so all of these francophone countries are still operating, uh,

francophone African countries are still operating on civil law for most of them, for most of them. And that world doesn't know about that either. Just like when we started talking to this country, they said, what do you mean common law? Isn't there only civil law that exists? I was like, I almost fell over. And then even that, because you live in your world, you take so many of these understandings for granted, because remember, I've been spending my life

asking about these questions and drilling and drilling and really learning. And then even the work of someone like George A. Yete, a Ghanaian economy, who just passed away, but he's my intellectual favre on all of this and I will bring him up in a minute. So anyway, so here they're like, whoa, so when they discovered about always common law, there's civil law, civil law happens, that's be so good for business, blah blah blah and blah, and all of it. And so now that's what's working on. And I'm telling you, Jordan, I don't know where this party is going to go.

But even if we only make five steps with it, the floodgates have been open. I believe that with all my heart, because all you need is for a door in here to open up. Yeah. Yeah. That's all you need. That's a major door, the one in there. All you need. So these countries who are at the bottom of the economic freedom index, what sort of ideas do you think possess them to constantly run interference in relationship to people who are trying to be entrepreneurial?

So I know one of the things that's happened, since the Berlin Wall fell and the collapse of capitalism is that because the people who were pushing communist ideas are not quite as noisy and horrible as they once were, although they're certainly making a comeback, that many countries around the world have been freed up to try to have not the worst economic policies they could possibly design. But there's still this lingering resentment

and hostility towards entrepreneurial, free market capitalism, especially at the local level that you're describing that's unbelievably toxic. So what is it that's possessing these countries that are at the bottom of the economic freedom index? Venezuela is a good example. No, you're giving me goose bumps by asking me this question

because you're by asking it, you're gonna allow me me to share something that once again is also part of a myth basting and something that is totally unknown to people. And I'm going to talk only for the case of Africa because I'm sure for Latin America, the situation might be similar, but let me just talk about the case of Africa because it is a big continent enough that it should matter. So, and this is where the work of George Aide takes all of its power and importance. George Aide is a gun in economist, like I said, passed away recently. But George gave me the last piece to the queue of my answer, because once I discovered that we're poor because of our lack of academic freedom, Because once I discovered that we're poor

because of our lack of economic freedom, that's the reason why we're poor. Then my next question was like, but why? Why is it that Americans get to enjoy this economic freedom and we don't, what happened? Where did it happen? How have we always been this way?

There's a mystery. Well, you know, the thing, it's really is a mystery too, because it doesn't require much of an explanation to explain poverty and corruption, right? Because we're born poor because we don't come natural state of man. And corruption is corrupt, that's right, that's a natural state of man. And so the real mystery, and this is a bloody mystery, that's for sure, is how any country

ever managed to escape that. And the common law tradition is definitely a piece of that. And of course, America was fortunate enough to be founded on those principles. And so, okay, so continue, if you want. Yes, so, yes, so my question was just like yours. Once I discovered it, I'm like, and still, why is it that these people have it? And we don't, what happened to us? What's going on? And most importantly, so now I'm understanding also this battle between socialism and capitalism, the ideologies and how they're fighting each other. And for some bizarre trench reason, the world, including Africans, developed this idea, this understanding

that we are more socialist than we're captors, naturally, culturally. And I'm like, I'm like, I call BS on that, because I call BS on that because you think, again, the same Africans, you bring them to a country where there's economic freedom and voila, let them manifest. I mean, did you know that most black doctors in the US are from Nigeria? Did you know that?

Right? And that, yeah, well, I know that immigrants, I know that black immigrants to the US do much better proportionally speaking than black people who are born in the US. Right. So, so very bad. But then I want to ask that question. It's when George Aida and his work brought me my, my, my answer and that was the last piece of a puzzle and then everything made sense. Okay. Where our region is a porous in the world because it's the most other regulated region in the world. Hmm, how did we get there?

George takes me back. George takes me back to a time that most people don't think about, including myself at first, because when most people think about the story of Africa, Africans, and Black people in Africa in general, we go no further down than slavery. It seems like our collective history starts with slavery. And George is reminding us, no, no go no further down than slavery. It seems like our collective history starts with slavery.

And George is reminding us, no, no, no, they were, they were before the white man ever sat foot on the continent. Black people were there. They had different types of, you know, like many different cultures, many different society groups, name it. Yet, and then George made the case with his research, but actually pre-colonial Africans, were actually practicing the free markets,

they were practicing free enterprise, and it makes sense. So what we were doing back then, in Africa, you could find some of the most sophisticated trade routes in the world. You would go to places like Great Zimbabwe, where basically you would see these homes, buildings built in a round shape with stone. Whoever built that in those times was at the top of their craftsmanship at the top of engineering skill sets something quite unbelievable, so unbelievable and advanced that when the white people came, they said there

is no way a black person, black people could have built this. You see, so this is who we were. And the chief, the chief could never say, oh, my god, you made your bread. Now you come to the market and you're at the market here, you cannot sell it for one dollar more profit than I allow you to to Jordan. Now such rubbish. Didn't exist with us. You had basically also this idea that we have to wait every four years or five years to

vote. No, we voted with our power of exit. And you could exit every second that you wanted. If you don't like this chief and what he or she is practicing, vote with your feet. Get out. You go join another group or you go start another group. You name it, but you're not going to sit and fight with other people there just so that things can go you way. You go and make it happen you way or you go join others who are doing it your way.

And so for the longest time what we had was tribes maintaining the peace. Did we have battles among us? You betcha. That's again human nature. But what was happening? We were tribes working with each other and keeping the peace. Even knowing sometimes we went to try to intermarry so that we even keep the peace more. And then they came and they said, oh gee, aren't you guys savages? And we're going to civilize you. And to civilize you is we're going to bring this top-down governance approach to all of

us. We were practicing decentralized governance before. And they showed up and they said to be educated is to have centralized governance. What did you do when you do that? Now the tribes are fighting among each other to take control of that centralized government. And what is this? There's a real tension there, because it's very difficult.

It's very advantageous, obviously, for people to be in mesh together in large-scale groups, like the United States, 320 million people. But then the question is, how do you put in all the subsidiary levels of organization? So that just doesn't become a monolithic state. Right.

And then the question too is, well, how do you introduce that large scale integrated governance without absolutely demolishing the micro societies that make a part of it and bring people together without undue bloodshed. Right. So real catastrophic problem from a historical perspective. It really is.

It really is. So then we went to go back to the story. We go from having tribes to now tribalism because of his introduction. So anyway, so when they started, when they came, they said to us, so, so, okay, so all of that was going on and then eventually we were leaving our lives, mining our own business, doing fine, and I would argue that if we have been left alone, we probably would be more, more richest continent in the world today if we had continued.

But we didn't continue. Slavery happened after slavery, colonialism happened. At the end of colonialism, this is where I would like to bring the attention of people, because that's what George so well, so beautifully pointing. Just around the time when most African nations were getting their independence, starting with Ghana,

we're talking about the late 50s, early 60s. Remember also what was happening back then. We were at the height of a battle between these two ideologies. Right. On one end, represented by the freedom and their economic practice was capitalism. And on the other, facing off with various forms of socialism, socialism, communism, and primarily their practice was, you know, socialism or communism. And they were at this with each other. Around that time, we're getting our independence.

And you know what they said? At that point, remember, try to put this back in those times, because it's so important. You have these great liberators of Africa, who have fought for liberation. We're talking about Rollins of Ghana. We're talking about Julius Nierreire. We're talking about people like Thomas Ankara,

later down the road. We're talking about these people, right? And they have fought. They have fought for liberation of this continent. They have given it everything they had. And when, but what we don't remember, so what happened with these people is like, oh, so now these two ideologies of fighting, and it looks like we have to take a side because the two ideologies of fighting were looking for influence and we're looking

for influence south, right? So, and everybody's looking at Africa. So, in Africa was trying to, Africa was trying to free itself from domination by, we were, at least, normally the capitalist West. And that's always the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? That's exactly right. Yeah, and that didn't work out so well with the communist. No, and this is where we made the fatal mistake. Because at that point, as we're looking for influence, us Africans freshly liberated, and I put quotation marks

because I'm not sure we have been liberated. Freshly liberated is saying, look, you, West, is who, and slayed me first, then colonized me, I am certainly not gonna party up with you. So we're gonna go in co-hute with the Eastern, with the not so free side. And this is when they have been spending all of their times with Marxist socialists of their times.

And this is also times around which W.E.B. Du Bois did the dirty work. He didn't think it was dirty work, but he is the one who helped all of these soon-to-beers of liberated African nations to really bite into these ideas. Because by then, they had conflated slavery with capitalism, with imperialism, with colonial-

With common law. With everything. For them, the whole darn thing was one big evil to throw out of the water. And so they threw the baby out of the bath water. And when they did that, they had totally forgotten their own indigenous roots because pre-colonial Africans practiced the free markets.

Pre-colonial Africans would have looked at this Marxist socialist and said, this is heresy. You guys are crazy. This is not even part of our roots. We are rejecting this with everything we've got. But it did not happen that way, no. So this is how liberated nations of Africa

got started on the wrong foot, went to bed with the wrong people. And six years later, we have nothing to show for it because we all know what happens to people who follow the socialist route. This does fit in nicely with our earlier comments about Venezuela, because Venezuela's taken exactly the same route and gone from a rich and post-colonial country

to an absolute bloody nightmare in about 30 years. And it's also a consequence of that entire country falling under the toxic dominion of these ideas. But you can certainly understand why that would have been attractive to the emergent African countries of the 1960s, right? I mean, it is a hard thing to think through the idea that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

And a lot of these Marxist ideas, which through the idea that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Yes. And a lot of these Marxist ideas which purport to have the poor in mind, but which truly don't, are extremely attractive, even if you are heartfelt in your consideration for the poor. The problem is that the only systems that seem to lift people out of absolute poverty are free market capitalist systems. And they're equivalent, the kind of equivalent you describe characterizing pre-colonial Africa. That's right.

And that's why it's so important for me, whenever I bring up this part of a story, to always that's why I was saying, please try to put your soul back in their shoes back in those days because I believe that if I had lived in those times, hey, I would have been part of a people who fight for African liberation,

and I probably would have made the same decision to side with a social, with a Marxist socialist. I would have. I think I would have. Well, half the Western world made that decision. In the Chinese made that decision. The North Koreans made that decision. Exactly.

And now we're having a battle about the same damn ideas again. That's the thing. They have invaded the West again. That's the thing. But this't invaded the West again. That's the thing. But this is where I, as an African, will not have it. While I excuse, I think the mistake they made was fatal for us. But hopefully it's a mistake that would have had consequences for only the 60 or 62 plus years.

Since we made those decisions. But today I take it upon my responsibility as a contemporary African to know better. And on top of that, I also know the ways of my pre-colonial favours, which to me now are the only ones I want to look at are pre-colonial favours. Of course, is it that everything they did was right?

No, this is why we have progress in life, right? There are some things we know now, we're not so good, but we have some things that have to pass the test of time and place. So maybe if we should keep. So anyway, so as an African living today, with everything that I know and is available to know everywhere, the research is very clear, the evidence is rock solid. I cannot in all consciousness

and be a person of high morality, I cannot disregard what I have learned and what I have experience and what by now we know to be true. So people like me, the Marxist socialists need to know for the longest time, they have used us for black people to make their dirty deeds. So maybe the black lives matter people, the founders who are self-called Marxist social Marxists, fine, if they wanna go, I say, fine, I'm not fine, I'm not fine.

But if they wanna, if they wanna, I'm not willing to be the useful idiots of the social Marxist any longer. They have used as black people for too long. They have used as suffering for too long. But today, I know better to dissociate myself. And so, they're gonna have to go look for other pions to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to mess their heads with.

But because people like me, I know the truth. And what I love about the truth that I had learned to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to great, great, great granddaughter, thank you. Thank you for looking back to our times and seeing what we were doing. We were no more, we were on the right track girl, we were. So today, I think everybody has to make a decision for themselves, but me, what I have learned that's what I'm taking out. And everything we talked about today, Jordan,

is really not part of a mainstream. Because you asked most people, African included, why are you poor? They're going to say colonialism, they're going to say racism, they're going to say because they're taking all of our natural resources and blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. And guess what?

Those who claim to care in the West, they leave us in that misguided opinion of what the problem is because it took me so long. I was with these people who said that they cared about me. They cared about Africa. But as soon, but I found out every time that they hear that the solution might be for free markets and capitalism, the look of disgust. I think that's a right word. The look of disgust that they have in them face.

If I was not stronger, I would feel disgusted by myself for having those opinions. So, do you really care? Or do you only care when the solution that you're peddling goes to support your own ideology? Yeah, and your own moral claims. Yes. To care. Yes. Right? Because that's the easy way out.

It's like, well, I care. And there's some people who are well off. And those people who are well off have stolen everything they have from the oppressed people. And I'm on the side of the oppressed people, and all I have to do is punish the oppressors and all of a sudden I'm a moral agent. And I can leverage the suffering of genuine poor people whom we know have actually been helped out of their absolute poverty by capital assistance. We absolutely know that to be the case. I can leverage their suffering to bestow on to me

an undeserved moral superiority. That's right. And then I can have my cake and eat it too, because I can still be a denizen of the wealthy West. And I can feel sorry for poor people and be oppressed at the same time. Absolutely. And I feel like you're even being too generous for them

in terms of your work they put in. Because today, that I care care the only way it manifests itself in work and to action, I put a sign on my yard with Black Lives Matter period done. If Black Lives Matter so much, if Black Lives Matter so much, then you cannot with a straight face, tell me in the same sentence that you also are anti-capitalist.

And also, if Black Lives Matter so much, what do you make of a fate of one billion Black people? Because Africa is home to one billion Black people. We're 1.3 billion, but 1 billion of those are black. It is home to 90% of the representatives of a black race, yet to tell me black lives matter. And you in the same sentence are going to be anti-capitalist, the only thing we know to build prosperity and with that respect, huh? You cannot be possibly serious here and guess what? Flash new, new flash. People like me today are here to tell you how

full of it you are because you're full of it and I'm not gonna allow you to no longer have your cake and eat it too. It's just too easy when the sticks are so high and the same thing with your whole thing about the climate change. Oh, gee, climate change. I'm not even gonna go and argue the scientific, you know, argument. I'm not.

Let's say even agree with you, but world is gonna go to hell in 12 years as they claim. If nothing is done, earth is gonna blow up in 12 years. Let's go and freak out all the kids because you know what, it's justified. Let's say I even agree with you on that one. And then I say, and then we do what?

Because your solution right now is to tell me, we stop all carbon emission, we stop all fossil fuels right now. Right now. But Jonah, what does that mean if we did that? What does that mean if we did that? It means poor people will freeze in the dark and bake in the sun while they starve.

Thank you. You just signed a deaf warrant. And I'm gonna talk about Africa only for now. You just signed a deaf warrant for 1.3 billion people of them, 1 billion black people. And you just told me that black lives matter. So even when you come to climate, you'll follow it.

And I'm willing to say that you're just an idiot because you don't know what's going on, but even there. And if you still with a straight face can say, yeah, well, to sacrifice the rest of the world I'm sorry to sacrifice Bees 1.3 billion African so that the left the earth can can stay. Oh Really? How do you think? Oh, you went from somebody who enslaved me a little while ago. Does my really? My life is worth that Black, black babies are gonna have to die so your white babies can stay alive You know sometimes when I hear the prince,

who is that guy's name? You know, the prince of Diana had two kids, I think the older one, he and with a straight face, the guy popped, by the time he had popped child number four, had the nerve to tell us that the problem with the world is overpopulation, the Earth cannot sustain overpopulation.

But the guy who has four kids, so what are you telling him exactly? Because I'm just... You know, Marian Tupi, Marian Tupi from humanprogress.org, he's published in a book in August called Super Abundance. And he's redone the number of economic calculations, showing, for example, documenting the extremely positive

relationship between increased population and general prosperity. And he calculated that every child born today will produce seven times as many resources as he or she will consume. Right. See is right. And so all these people who are squawking about there being too many people on the planet. There's always other people who are too many. But that's what I was going to say.

But that's what I was going to say. Absolutely. So here's Prince, whatever his name is, telling me that the problem with the world is overpopulation, while just having popped his fourth child. So are you telling me that your child can live, but the other ones cannot? Because that's pretty much what you're saying. Because you popped these kids. can live, but the other ones cannot. Because that's pretty much what you're saying, because you popped these kids. And if that's what you're saying, if you're saying that the other ones cannot,

then go on, keep going with your thinking. Why can't they? Why can't they? Why can't they? Are you a causative racist? No, but causative. We're gonna see this, we're gonna see this play out in the fall. This is coming just as certain as the sun's going to rise tomorrow.

You know, the fact these environmental policies that have emboldened Putin made Europe dependent on oil and gas from Russia. Now we have a shortage and we have a huge increase in fertilizer prices and we know perfectly well that about 150 million people, most of them in Africa and in North Africa and in the Middle East and in Sub-Sahara Africa are going to be suffering dreadfully in the fall because of this. And so we can see right away that what has happened when push came to shove is that the radical utopian Marxist types who are beating the drum about the environment were perfectly willing to sacrifice today's real poor

to the hypothetical well-being of some future poor in their utopian schemes. Absolutely. And that's common right away. No, it's coming right away. And then what I, what I, what I, what, what the, one of the things that the Ukrainian war has brought up to the surface,

because we've been talking about it forever, but and then people are like, oh, you're being too, you're not being, you know, but it's the hypocrisy of these people, the hypocrisy. When I have a green party of all parties, the green party of Germany, I don't know if you heard it, a week or so ago, they came out and they said, oh, we have to keep burning coal a little while longer.

Oh, really? Yeah, a little while. When you ask us on the line, we have to keep burning coal a little while longer. Oh, but no, but the Africans, no, no, no. So this hypocrisy is gonna, the reckoning is coming. The reckoning is coming because I for one, I'm not willing to stand there

and let them get away with it. All of this time they made it sound like they have a moral background and I call it not only BS. That's enough for that. I agree, man. I call BS. That's such a lie. I call BS.

I'm gonna call them what they are. These anti-falsier fuel zealots are the new racists of our times. And we can see clear in their game, and we will not stand for it. Not. So a war is coming. But the war is coming for me. It's not a cultural war. I think the cultural war is too easy for them to take to win in a way. But this one right here is gonna bring them straight back to who they are.

When I see that Jeff Bezos' ex-wife gave a couple hundred million dollars to plant parenthood, and she specifically earmarked it for black women. Lady, can you please tell me your further thinking? And we didn't hear about it by the way in the bigger news. So I'm just trying to understand why does the world think that it needs less black babies? It seems to me that's what it is. So we want to talk about racism.

I think there is racism here that doesn't speak its name. But we're going to have to call it what it is. So it's going to be one thing or another Jordan. We want to talk about racism. I think there is racism here that doesn't speak its name. But we're going to have to call it what it is. So it's going to be one thing or another Jordan. One is you're going to have to, I'm going to hold you, you have to tell me that black lives matter, if black lives matter, then African lives have to matter. If African lives do matter, then capitalism matters.

And if you make that case, we're good. Let's get working. As fossil fuels matter. And fossil fuels matters. And if you make that case, we're good. Let's go. Let's go. And fossil fuels matter. And fossil fuels matters. And so people can burn clean burning fuels in their house instead of choking their children to death on indoor pollution. So you're going to have to tell me about all of that matters. If black lives matter, then it means one billion African black African lives do matter which means capital matter which means fossil fuels matters. If not you're telling me that it doesn't because and you don't have to tell me black lives don't matter for you to tell me it doesn't

matter or you have to tell me is we can have fossil fuels and we can have capital. If you tell me that then I know that the fact of Black Lives that not matter for you, and if Black Lives that not matter for you, then you're racist. Done. You want to go through this whole like what to promise his vase and blah, blah, blah. Today, if you are not in favor of what is going to contribute to my human flourishing, as a Black person? Forget what to promise you, whatever you want to call it. That to me is the new definition of racism.

Let's go. Rom and get, that's a really good, that's a really good place to end. I would say this part of the discussion. I want to talk to you a little bit more. We're going to do this on the Daily Wire Plus network. And I want to talk to you a little bit more about your personal experiences, but I really want to talk to you a little bit more about your personal experiences, but I really want to thank you for having this conversation with me today. And I think it'll, I hope as you said,

it'll break up a lot of these. They're not just myths, they're toxic antitruths, and they're hurting people in a way that we're just beginning to become aware of. And there's going to be all hell break loose this fall. Yes, it's. And I'm really saddened, sorry about that, because it was completely unnecessary.

As you know, we know the pathway forward. Common laws, and that's just, that's such a firm foundation to build a prosperous society upon a proper free enterprise, localized economy, to get the bureaucrats, and they're resentful people to hell out of the way of people like like you and see if we can get prosperity to grow everywhere in the world. And maybe too when people get rich enough, they'll be able to afford to care about the environment a little bit instead of having to be forced into an anti-carbon environment by these idiot environmentalists, zealots.

That's what I call it also a disrespect of a poor. It's total disrespect for the poor. Thinking that you're superior to them. Do you think you're superior to them just because you care about the air that you breathe? Gee, I think you would be just like this poor person. If you had no foot in your belly, child is sick, you don't know how you're gonna take care of it.

You had all of these issues that come straight from your poverty. I think that you two, the quality of the air you breathe, of the quality of the water you drink might be numbered 100 in the priority list because right now you have to survive. So for you to think that something is wrong with them because they don't care about that, well, maybe I'll put you in that position and we'll see when you're gonna start to think about that.

And so this is complete disrespect for the poor and it is unacceptable, it is wrong. Great, I agree with you. 100%. All right. That's great. So, thank you very much for talking. Thank you for having me. Much appreciate it. It was very good to see you again. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com. conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.