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0:00Okay. So, welcome back from the break. Today, I want to talk about an incident that happened in October 2015 at Yale University. What happened was this. Um Halloween is coming up.
And on Halloween, people like to dress up silly, get drunk, have a good time. And a university department called the Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email to students saying, "It's Halloween. You guys want to have fun. That's fine, but please be sensitive about the feelings of other people. So, for example, do not dress up like a panda because we have Chinese students and they might be offended if you dress up like a panda." Okay, so this email went out to all the students at Yale.
And one teacher who works at a residential residential college called Silliman. Okay, so Yale, the university, is divided into dormitories called residential colleges. And she is a dean with her husband of this college called Silliman. And to her students, she writes an email and says that she didn't agree with the university email. She says that a university is a place for you to explore, experiment, and make mistakes.
So, yes, be sensitive about the feelings of others, but we trust you to make mistakes and to recover from them. Okay? So, um the debate was it's actually over safe space versus free space. The
2:00university said that safe space is important. We must respect the feelings of others. But the dean of Silliman, her name is Erika Christakis, she believes in the idea of free space. So, a university is a place for debate, for questioning, for experimentation. And yes, feelings will be hurt.
That's part of the growing up process, the intellectual process. So, let me ask you a question. Do you guys agree with number one who argues for safe space or number two, Erika Christakis, who argues for free space? What do you think? Okay.
So sorry sorry can can can can can Can you speak into the mic, please? Of why don't don't I
Yeah. Why do you believe number two is co- number one or number two is correct? Well, because I think that university is place that you could explore yourself, you know, jump out of your comfort room and try the things that you never had experienced before. Okay. Who disagrees?
Who believes it's more important to respect the feelings of others? Um like if the the college prohibit these um dressing that may be a be an offensive to others students, it's just in the campus. If you like walk out in the society, it's still have the people like wants to um dress with maybe like a panda or something. So, um I think it's I think it's like necessary to like to um to Well, I Uh yeah. Okay.
All right. Any other opinions? Okay. So, you say respect the rules, right? I think I think it depends on who decided.
If it's like for myself, I think free space will be more important.
4:00I need to explore what I want. But for being as a leader, being as a head of the college, I think safe space will be more important for them cuz they need to take in control. Okay. Right, but the problem is this is a conflict, right?
Mhm. If the teachers care about safe space, you cannot have free space. Mhm. Right? So, the question then is, what do you think in principle is more important, free space or safe space?
Safe space. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.
Okay. So, yeah, so most students believe safe space is more important. And this marks a generational shift because when I was growing up, there was no debate. It was just assumed that free space is more important because if you're not allowed to make mistakes, you're not allowed to explore, you're not allowed to argue with other people, if your feelings don't get hurt, you will never grow as a person. Okay?
So, this marks a generational divide or generational gap. Okay? So, um we're going to look at what happened because of this debate. So, the students who read the email were offended that Erika Christakis was arguing for free space because they believed that by doing this, you're going to hurt our feelings. All right?
And so, let's look at what happened. And remember, this is Yale University. Okay. So, what's happening is that when Chris Nicholas Christakis, the husband of Erika Christakis, went to a meeting, he was surrounded by students. And they're confronting him.
They're confronting him. They're arguing, okay?
6:22Okay. So, look, I'm not saying which side is correct. Okay? Both sides have legitimate points. Both sides have problems.
But you will notice that he, the professor, he's much older than the students. And the students are treating him, you can see their faces, right? They're treating him with some contempt. And that's not appropriate. And when I was growing up, we didn't do this.
If you didn't like a professor, you thought, "Well, he's an asshole." And but you know what? Most professors are [ __ ] because they're professors. Okay? You didn't You did not go and like stalk the guy and complain to him. That's kind of disrespectful.
All right? So, the question then is, why is this happening? So, I want to show you another video. And this video is kind of crazy. Okay?
This video. Okay. So, this is not appropriate. Okay? Again, both sides have legitimate points.
But this is not appropriate, right? Because what she's saying to him is, "You work for us. Your job is to make us feel at home." And his response is, "But my job is to help you learn.
8:22My job is to help you grow, and that means openness. That means debate. That means pain." And her response is, "I don't want that crap. I want to feel good. I want to feel at home.
I don't be challenged." And if you think think about it, that defeats the entire point of university. So, again, I'm not saying who's right. Um I'm not saying who's wrong, but clearly there's a problem here. And when I went to Yale a long time ago, we didn't have any of this. In fact, this sort of incident where a student would curse a professor, it was unimaginable to us.
Okay? So, the question then is, why is this happening? And there are three explanations for why this is happening. The first explanation is parenting. These kids grew up in very privileged household, and their parents are very protective of them.
And their parents treat them like friends. And so, these kids are spoiled, okay? That's the first explanation. The second explanation is the idea of a consumerist mentality. So, in a university, the idea is that the students are consumers, they're customers, and the customers are always right.
What the customers want, you have to give them. So, if the customers want a safe space, they want to come and enjoy their time at university, and they don't want any challenge, the professors have to meet their demands. Otherwise, he should not have this job. Okay? And this is a mentality that we call neoliberalism or consumerism.
Okay, that's the second explanation. Okay? The third explanation is
10:23ideological. So, the idea is that at universities, universities are overrun by left-wing professors who teach students that society is racist against minorities who happen to be, you know, black and female. And they must overturn the white racist supremacist structure. And you do that by telling white professors who are privileged that they are racist. Okay?
So, these are three standard explanations for why this is happening. Because this sort of stuff is happening quite a lot in America. What I want to argue to you today is that there's actually another explanation, which I think is much more compelling. And the explanation is that universities have become bureaucracies. Before universities existed to teach you how to think, to help professors do cutting-edge research that helps a society improve or innovate.
But today, universities, including Yale, Harvard, all the universities, have become bureaucracies that exist in order to promote the interests of the administrators who want to sit in their office, get really nice uh get get a really big salary, and feel good about themselves. Okay? That's the argument I will make to you today. And what I will show you is that this is not just true for universities, it's true for every major organization in America and in the Western world, and arguably around the world. Okay?
That's the argument I will make to you today. Any questions before I begin?
12:24All right. Okay? So, today's lecture is death by bureaucracy. How the idea of bureaucracy, the bureaucratic mindset, is taking over the world. All right.
So, let's talk about another incident at Yale. Okay, this is Yale Law School, and a student named Trevor Coe Berg, he sends an email. He has a party, he sends an email to all the students at Yale Law School. And there there are actually not that many students at Yale Law School. There's maybe 300.
Okay? But all the students get it, and he says that he's going to organize a party, and it's it's a trap house party. And, you know, it's it's a bit of a joke, because trap house means actually a drug house, a place where drug dealers sell uh drugs. But black students, African-American students, read the email, and they're offended. And they're like, "Are you making fun of black students?" So, they write a letter of complaint to the deans of Yale Law School, and there are two deans who investigate.
Okay, their names are Eldik and Cosgrove, okay? And they sit And what Trevor Coe Berg does is he he actually records the meeting, okay? Secretly. So, for 20 minutes they talk. And basically, Coe Berg does not believe he did anything wrong.
He sent an email, and he said it it was a funny email. He thought it was funny, okay? But the deans tell him, "You think it's funny, but other students found it offensive. So, you need to apologize." And Coe Berg's like, "Okay. Well, I'll tell you what.
If these students thought that what I wrote was offensive, then I will talk to them. We will talk together about why they found the email offensive, and we will settle this amongst ourselves." And the deans are like, "No, no, no. We want to We want to help you guys out. We want to protect you guys. We're afraid that you guys meet, you guys will fight
14:25even more." And Trevor Coe Berg's like, "Well, I want to hear what they think. I don't want to hear this from you, I want to hear what they think, okay? And And then what happens is that the deans start to threaten Trevor Coe Berg. They basically tell him, "These things apply over time. So, you must apologize right away for your sake." Okay?
And they tell him, "Listen, if you do not apologize, then this might affect your career. This might affect your social circle." Okay? So, they're threatening him. And what they say is, "We're doing this for your sake." Okay? Eldik says he worries about the email affecting students' reputation, not just here, but when you leave.
You know, the legal community is a small one. And he says, "You know what? I will write the email for you. I will craft the apology for you." And Cosgrove warns that escalation is a possibility if the student doesn't apologize, okay? So, this is coercion.
And again, the student It's not clear what the student did wrong. Some students found it offensive, but it's not clear what rules or laws or what regulations Trevor Coe Berg broke, okay? It's not clear. So, why is this happening? Okay?
My argument to you is that it's happening because these guys, Cosgrove and Eldik, they need things to do. Because being a dean of a university is not a real job. Right? There are professors who teach, there are researchers who do research, but deans actually don't do anything. So, when you have a bureaucracy, bureaucrats go make problems for everyone in order to create solutions for everyone.
Okay? So, another saying this is,
16:2520 years ago, 30 years ago, when I was a student at Yale, if you had a problem, you had to go talk to a professor. Because there was no one else to talk to. Nowadays, you can talk to like 20 or 30 different deans. Dean of student affairs, dean of student faculty relations, who knows, okay? But there are like all these offices they can go to.
And quite honestly, it's the same at the school as well, right? If you don't like me as a teacher, there's like four or five different people you can complain complain you can complain to. And quite honestly, a lot of you do complain, okay? So, I know about this. And the And what is happening is these universities have become bureaucracies.
Now, the question then is, why the bureaucracies? And the answer is, in the beginning, as a university, you have to build your reputation, right? So, you work hard, uh you focus on teaching, you focus on research. So, it's a struggle to become a global brand. Once you become that global brand, there's nothing else to do.
There's no more ideology, there's no more struggle. So, what happens is the people in charge start engaging in rent-seeking behavior. They take advantage of the position in order to make their life easier. And then they pass on this privilege to their friends, and then to their children. And this creates a bureaucracy.
And the university starts to exist in order to empower these people at the expense of students and professors. Okay? All right. So, to show you how ridiculous this has become, here's an example. This is from CNN, okay?
And this is the year 2020. A University of South California professor is under fire for using a Chinese expression students allege sounds like an English slur, okay? So, there's a Chinese word that sounds like an racial slur, an insult, in English. These two words actually do not sound
18:25the same. Okay? You know what the word is, right? Na ge. Na ge zuo ci, na ge dian nao, okay?
They It's not the same as the English word, but it sounds a bit similar. So, what happened was some black students, African-American students, who were not in his class, okay? Wrote a letter of complaint. And honestly, if you read it, it sounds like a joke. It sounds like a prank.
All right, so let's read it together. Let's Let's Okay, so this is a professor, Greg Patton, and he's just teaching communication Chinese. He's just teaching Chinese to his students on how to communicate in China when you do business, okay? And he And he says, "Look, na ge is just a filler. It doesn't really mean anything." And he says it a few times.
But there's no there's no bad intention what he's saying, right? I mean, he's he's just pointing out a fact. So, what these students write is, "This phrase, clearly and precisely before instruction, is always identified as a phonetic homonym and a racially derogatory term, and should be carefully used, especially in the context of speaking Chinese within the social context of the United States." Okay? So, this is a ridiculous idea. And honestly, it sounds like a joke, okay?
It just sounds like these students are playing a joke. And And the prof- And the administration just ignore this, right? Guess what happens? The dean, okay? The head of the business school announced that a different professor would take over teaching Patton's class.
He fired Patton. And then he said, "Professor Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I'm deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt, and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better." Okay?
He's being [ __ ]
20:25It's a joke. It's a prank. And And he's taking it very seriously. Why? Because he's trying to protect his job.
He's trying to look good. He's trying to explain why I'm the leader because I protect everyone. Okay? So, then again, what is Why is this happening? Well, I again, the idea of bureaucracy.
So, this is the University of California, San Diego. This is student enrollment, okay? So, you can see a slight increase in student enrollment. But look at this. Senior management, deans, administrators, managers.
Boom, okay? Boom. This is called rent-seeking behavior. This is people in power taking advantage of their power to give jobs to their friends who do nothing every day. And because of that, they're always looking to cause problems for everyone else, especially professors who do real work.
Okay? So, let us look at universities. As you can see, um the blue is teaching. So, what's really interesting is that the investment in teaching has gone down. Okay?
Sorry. The investment in teaching has gone down, the blue, okay? But look at this. The red is administration. So, over the past from 1980 to today, over the past 40 years, universities have put less money into both um administration as well as maintenance, but have put more money into administration, into bureaucracy.
Okay? This is where your money's going, guys. All right? So, this is Illinois. You see a massive surge in managers, but at the same time, student enrollment is going down.
It went down 3%.
22:28All right? So, this is a paper written about the Swedish education system, the higher education system system, okay? It's It's no different anywhere else. All right? So, let's So, the argument is that bureaucracy is ballooning in Swedish higher education.
So, let's look at some interesting statistics. All right. So, what's happening is that this chart tells you that teachers are teaching more and more students. Okay? Teachers are teaching more and more students, but administrators are managing less and less students.
And the reason why is teachers are fewer and fewer, but managers are more and more. That makes no sense. Okay? Um So, you can see that teachers and researchers, it's pretty flat, okay? It hasn't really gone up that much, but secretaries, people who do real work, it's going down.
But managers are going up. Okay? So, if the university is facing problems, the first thing you should cut are the people who do no work, right? But it's the opposite. People who do no work, the managers, keep their jobs, and in fact they pay themselves more, and the professors and the maintenance and the secretaries lose their jobs to cut costs.
Okay? Um This is how much they're paid. As you can see, over the same time period, secretaries are getting paid less and less, teachers are getting paid less and less, but look at this. Managers are getting paid more and more. Uh these are the different departments, okay?
of a university. So, as you can see, okay, the the jobs the departments that do real work, IT, uh HR, they're going down, but management is going up. All right? So, the people who do actually no work, their jobs keep on going up and up, and they get paid more and more.
24:30And as I said, the problem with bureaucracy is not only do managers do do nothing every day, but they expect others to do more work, okay? So, professors, researchers, teachers, they're doing more work because the managers are giving them more paperwork to do. Okay? Like evaluations and all that. So, professors spend all now almost 20% of their work day on paperwork given to them by managers.
And this paperwork is not necessary. It's just given to them to justify the jobs of the managers, okay? This is America. We go back to America. And as you can see, um this is a university called Gallaudet.
And as you can see, over a 20-year period, these are blue are the salaries of professors, and it's pretty stable, okay? You went from 72 to 86, not a huge increase. But look, for managers, okay? The president, it doubled from 141 to 280 to 80. It doubled.
Right now, the salaries are over three times as much as faculty. Um This is Connecticut. At Yale, the president makes $200,000 a year, and Wesleyan, he makes $3 million a year. Okay? Um This is a private university called Stratford University.
And it went bankrupt. Right now, more and more universities are going bankrupt because obviously you have too many managers, and all they do is um get huge paychecks for doing nothing, eventually you're going to go bankrupt, right? So, yeah? I can start Sorry to interrupt, but the school The school board is not stupid. So, I mean, this is a fact, and so why why don't they just change anything?
That's a great question, okay? The reason why is they're all friends. The
26:30school board, the president, the vice president, they're all friends. And that's why they can do this. Because they can do all the power. They're all friends. And it's in their best interest to steal together, right?
Cuz if you steal by yourself, then you might get caught. But if you steal together, then you're untouchable, okay? So, this is exactly what happens at Stratford University. The university goes bankrupt, and because the president and the vice president are stealing from the university, stealing because they are um not only collecting huge paychecks, but they're also expensing everything to the university. So, for example, for example, they buy a car or they have a gym membership, they charge the university.
And if the university can't pay for it, what they do is they lend money to the university. Okay? All right? So, Schultz is the president. He lists himself and his wife as the biggest creditors, claiming that the university owed the couple 2.5 million for eight promissory notes, okay?
So, the university could not pay uh their cars or their house mortgages, and they're like And the Schultzes are like, "Don't worry about it. We'll lend you the money." And then when the university went bankrupt, they were like, "Okay, now you have to pay me back." All right? So, So again, how were they able to do this? Because The filings also shed light on payments to university insiders in its final year of operation. The college paid out of over 230,000 in payments to seven trustees.
So, the people at the top were getting paid off even as the university was going bankrupt. Though the filing doesn't differentiate which expenses were Richard's and which were Mary Ann's, the filings for 2020 alone showed over 18,000 in lease and insurance payments for the Schultzes' cars, okay? So, they had cars, and they were making the university pay for these cars. Over 4.7 million in loan payments and collateral returned to Eagle Bank on behalf of the Schultzes, okay? So, they're also making the university pay for their houses as well.
28:31And then you're like, "How can they do this?" Well, the answer is because in America, the rich always wins in the court system. So, whoever is able to hire the best lawyers always wins out. And they have a lot of money. The university is bankrupt. They don't have a lot of money.
So, they will win out. Okay? So, I point this out because this is going to What This is what's going to happen to many universities over the next 5 10 years in America. Because you have a system where you have the managers at the top, they're all best friends, they're all stealing from the university together. And eventually the university will bankrupt.
So, that's America. Okay? But it's not Again, it's not just the universities. It's every bureaucracy. It's every organization is happening like this.
So, you look at Canada. In Canada, you can see a rise of that percent in the population, but look at the government, okay? It's gone up by 26%. Um in America, you can see a stark decline in manufacturing jobs starting in about the 1980s because these jobs are being offshored to China. But at the same time, you can see this steady increase in government jobs.
Okay? So, people in America are doing less real work, And more and more people are becoming bureaucrats. Okay. So, as you can see the growth in the government is usually in management, okay? People who do real real work, no, it's pretty flat.
But, look at the managers, look at the administrators, okay? They're going way up. And it's a pretty steady increase. All right. So, how do we know the government doesn't really do anything?
Okay. So, there's a study that shows us that um they it's looking at rules, okay? So, rules help society be more efficient. So, as you can see um the number of rules have gone down, actually. The number of significant
30:31rules, rules that actually impact you day-to-day, have gone way down. But, this is interesting, the paperwork has gone up. Okay? So, this tells us the managers, the administrators in the federal government of of the United States, they don't do anything but produce paperwork that's meaningless. That has actually no impact on the lives of ordinary people.
Okay? Okay, let's look at the military military. So, everyone believes that America has the world's greatest military because it spends the most on the military and has all these high-tech weapons, right? The problem is the bureaucracy in the military right now. So, you see what's happening is an increase in management because the ratio of manager officer to soldier is going down, okay?
So, you have more officers and less soldiers. That's a problem if you're fighting a war. All right, so um in Civil War, and this is the 1860s, you had one officer for every 14 soldiers. Now, it's one to four. Okay?
The biggest problem is the increase in generals, okay? So, you can see three- and four-star generals have increased the most. In World War II um America had about 12 million soldiers. They had seven generals who are four-star. Today, America has about 1.2 million soldiers.
They have 40 four-star generals. And this is a huge problem. Why? Because if you're a four-star general you have a lot of privileges beyond your salary. So, uh this is from Raymond Dubois, who works in the Pentagon, and he writes about the perks of a four-star general.
A four-star has an airplane. A three-star often doesn't. Can a three-star get an airplane when he needs it? Not always. Okay?
So, a four-star general always has his own personal
32:32airplane. What is his personal airplane? It's called a G5. This is what a G5 is, guys. This is what a G5 is.
This is his own personal plane. It's always there for him. If he If he doesn't want to fly, it's waiting on the tarmac for him, okay? You can see how luxurious it is. This costs 50 to 60 million dollars per plane.
Every four-star general has this plane. At the same time, guys, what's happening to soldiers? The soldiers don't have enough to eat. There's 1.2 million veterans on food stamps. Okay, that's 8% of all veterans in America.
The people who actually fight, the people who actually make sacrifices for their country, don't have enough to eat while the generals fly around in like these really nice planes. That's the state of the American military. All right, so it's not just military, it's every single US government department, okay? All the administrator you see massive increase in administration. All right, so people who do real work, it's in the red.
People who do actually no work, it's in the blue, okay? So, people who do science, math, engineering, 621. People who do administration, 782. So, in every federal bureaucracy, you have bloat. You have managers who do nothing, and you have very few people people who do the actual real work.
It's It's It's true for every single federal organization in in America. So, this just shows you how the ratio of managers is compared to other employees. What's really funny about bureaucracy is evaluation is very important. Who does the evaluation? Managers do the evaluation.
So, at the end of the year, they do do they do performance review, and what happens is they tell they evaluate
34:33themselves and their friends and say, "We did a great job." And then look at other people who do the real work and says, "You guys could do better, okay?" So, outstanding is the highest uh performance review for the government, right? 62% got outstanding, okay? Managers who do nothing every day. 47% got outstanding for every other job. All right?
So, it's a rigged game. Same Same thing with hospitals. The The brown is the growth in doctors. You can see it's pretty steady. But, look at the administrators.
Okay? The yellow are the administrators. It It's blowing up, okay? And so, it caught It forces health care costs to go up. The reason why health care is so unaffordable in the United States is not because it has the best health care in the world.
It doesn't. It's so It's expensive because it's got so many administrators who do nothing every day. All right? So, what do they What do these managers do? Well, the managers always think of new ways to screw everyone else.
Okay, so these are health insurance companies. And this is their denial rates, okay? So, you work hard for 40 years, you pay your health insurance, okay? And then maybe you get cancer. And then you go to a doctor, the doctor charges you like a million dollars.
And you're like, you don't have a million dollars, but you have insurance, so you go to the insurance company. It's like, "Hey, I paid 40 years of insurance fees. Can you help me out?" And then And look, the insurance company you don't have health care about a third 32% of all claims are denied. And they do this as practice because if you fight them, they'll say, "Okay, you know what? We'll We'll We'll We'll agree to pay you back, okay?"
36:34But, if you don't fight them, then they're like, "Great." Okay? So, it's extremely unethical. And so, that's what what managers do every day. Think of new ways to screw over their patients and doctors. All right.
So, why is this happening? All right? Why is America like this? Why is the West like this? Why Why is the entire world like this?
So, this is Franz Kafka. And he was writing before World War I. This is his most famous book called The Trial. Okay, I'm not sure if you guys have read this book or heard of heard of this book, okay? It's very good.
And the novel, it's a very interesting novel because the main character, Joseph K. He works at a bank. He's a black bank clerk. And he has never gotten any into trouble his entire life, okay? He's very obedient, he's very nice, he just sticks to himself.
And then one day, the police come and arrest him. The police don't tell him why. And Joseph K. tries to figure out why, but he He does not know what he did wrong. He does not know why he's being arrested.
And then he's put on trial. And the judge doesn't tell him what he did wrong. Okay? And Joseph K. is trying to figure out why is this happening to me, okay?
And this And And And this is his answer. "Its purpose is to arrest innocent people and wage pointless prosecutions against them, which, as in my case, lead to no result. How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning?" Okay? Because society has become a bureaucracy, and bureaucrats need things to do. So, they go the police go and arrest innocent people and then send them to trial, okay?
Now, what he doesn't say is the police could arrest criminals, right? But, the police don't want to do that because the criminals might fight back. Or the criminals might
38:35uh be mean, okay? They'd rather arrest an innocent person because they know the person will be compliant. Okay, that's the logic of bureaucrats. How do I justify my existence by doing as little work as possible? Okay?
So, this sounds strange, but let me tell you a story. This is a true story. I'm in Toronto with my two boys and I let them run around the park, okay? And we've been doing this for two months. So, I trust them.
One of my boys, he's 4 years old he went too far. And I lose track of him, okay? A stranger finds him and starts talking to him. But, my boy doesn't speak any English. So, people now surround my boy, like, "Where Where's Where your parents?" And he is scared.
Because he doesn't speak any English. So, he faints, okay? That That's what he does. He faints to protect himself. So, they call the police, they call the the paramedics.
They come, and make sure he's all right, okay? Now I find him. Okay? And now the police interview me, they interrogate me, and I explain to him what happened. And at this point, they just let us go home, right?
But they insist on taking us to the hospital. I'm like, "If we go to hospital, we could be stuck there for like 12 hours. We we we could be in line and like the paramedics, the EMTs had already told us there's nothing wrong with him." Okay? It's not a heat stroke, he just fainted. But he's fine.
His vital signs are fine. But the police kept kept on insisting. Meanwhile, there's a fight going on at the park, okay? And I'm thinking to myself, "Why are you guys bothering me and not going to arrest those guys who are fighting somewhere else?" And the answer is because it's easier to deal with me than it is to go arrest those guys, okay? That's how bureaucrats think.
40:35They're always thinking of ways to justify their existence, but not do real work. Okay? And that's the message of the trial. Eventually, society becomes so bureaucratic that the bureaucrats only think about how to make problems for ordinary citizens because life becomes easier for them. Okay?
Does that make sense? All right. Let's move on to the origins of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt is a 20th century's one of the 20th century's most uh powerful intellectuals. And she's writing about how Nazism came to dominate Germany, how communism came to dominate Soviet Russia.
And how these two regimes led to the deaths of tens of millions of people. How they started World War II, how they created the Holocaust, how they created the famine, okay? And in her book, she she says that these two regimes are religious cults. They're evil cults. And they have three defining characteristics.
Okay? The first is that they are removed from reality. They don't care about reality. They have a religion, they have a faith, they have a mindset, and they want to impose their faith on reality, okay? They don't care about reality.
They're removed from reality. That's the first thing, okay? Second thing is that when you're removed from reality, the your only logic is movement, expansion. Okay? You only know if you're right if you're growing.
Okay? So, if the Nazis, their faith, their religion would lead to the destruction of Germany, but their membership was increasing, so they were right. They were winning these wars against European countries, therefore they're right. Okay? They cannot use logic to explain their actions, so they use movement to
42:35to justify their actions, okay? That's number two. One and two means number three, which is the Nazis and the Soviets hated reality. They defied reality. They fought against reality.
So, even though the Nazis were losing the war, even though it's clear they could not defeat the Soviet Russia, they doubled down. Because in their religion, movement is what matters. Defying reality is what matters. And that's what led to the destruction of Germany. Okay?
All right. So, and she explains that totalitarian regimes have these three characteristics. They are removed from reality. All they care about is expansionism, and they want to defy reality as their true test of faith. What she does not say in the book is that these three can can be applied to all bureaucracies, all governments, meaning that over time, all governments, all bureaucracies will tend towards totalitarianism.
Because they have That's the only way they can justify their existence. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. So, let's let's talk about this concretely, okay?
What do I mean by this? So, this is a book by James Scott. It's an excellent book, by the way. Uh called Seeing Like a State. And he's trying to explain to us how bureaucracies bureaucracies work, how governments function.
And for him, governments actually create more problems than they solve. Why? Well, he lists four reasons. The first is that he All they care about is the administrative ordering of nature and society. So So, another way of saying this is a bureaucracy is a machine.
It's a hierarchy. It's static. It's mechanical. But society is like a forest. It's diverse.
44:35It's an ecosystem. It's organic. For a state to exist, it must turn the forest into a machine like itself. So, it destroys diversity. It destroys spontaneity.
Spontaneity. It destroys imagination, okay? All right. So, let let's use an example of this, all right? So, my question to you is like, who are you?
Can Can you Can you tell us who who are you? Like Like who are you as a person? Tell us who you are as a person. Yeah. Yeah.
Just Just use 1 or 2 minutes just to to introduce yourself. Who are you as a person? Hi, my name is Banker, and I I grew up in Beijing. Uh and I came to Moonshot, this this school in 2024 last year, and uh Okay, wrong. Wrong, okay?
That's That's not the correct answer. The right answer is you're a teenage boy. Oh. Okay? That's the correct answer.
All right? You believe that you are an individual with individual aspirations, ambitions, with a past, with a history. The state doesn't care. The state needs to classify you in a way that can that I can use you, okay? You're a teenage boy, which means like 2 years time you can be employed in a factory, or I can send you to war.
Okay? That's all I care about. Okay? I don't care about your name, I don't care about who you are, I don't care who your parents are, I don't care about your past, I don't care what you like. All I care about is the fact that you are a teenage boy, and therefore I can I can exploit you for labor.
Okay? That's how states think. Okay? So, the bureaucratization of society. Second is the idea of high modernist ideology.
So, because the state is a monopoly, the bureaucracy is a monopoly, it becomes arrogant. It has hubris. It's overconfident. And it it wants to impose its ideology on everyone else. It believes that through its own planning, it can achieve paradise.
Okay? Um so, it becomes authoritarian, meaning
46:37it refuses to listen to criticism, to feedback, to questions. It does It is not open to debate. It It imposes its will on people. Okay? Which creates a weak civil society.
And if if as an organization you're not getting feedback, you're not allowing for openness, then you will wither and die. Okay? And that's why states, governments will always fail in the end. Okay. So, he uses two examples.
The first example is what happened in the late uh 19th century Germany. So, in Germany there's there's lots of forest. And the state is thinking of ways, how can we how can we best monetize the resource of the forest? Well, there's certain trees that you can cut down for lumber, right? The problem is that in a forest, most space is occupied by useless shrubs or greenery or trees.
Okay? So, their brilliant idea is, "You know what? Here's a simple solution. We'll burn down the forest and just plant trees that we can harvest for lumber." Right? Brilliant.
That's a brilliant use of space. It's more efficient. The problem though is that when you do that, the trees are now are susceptible to disease, to weather changes. A forest is resilient because it's diverse. Okay?
So, that's what This is what Scott Scott says. Monocultures are as a rule more fragile and hence more vulnerable to the stress of disease and weather than polycultures are. Any unmanaged forest may experience stress from storms, disease, drought, fragile soil, or severe cold. A diverse, complex forest, however, with its many species of trees, its full complement of
48:38birds, insects, and mammals is far more resilient, far more able to withstand and recover from such injuries than pure stands. So, nature has diversity because it allows for resilience. Okay? Some part of the forest can die, but the rest of the forest will recover from anything, whether it's disease or drought or weather, okay? And we humans are the same way.
If you let humans do what they want, we are resilient. So, some communities might die off, but other communities will adapt. The problem with the state with the government is that it refuses it sees diversity as an enemy. Okay? So, if there's a natural disaster, it's very likely that a lot more people die off than otherwise, okay?
Another example is forced communism in Tanzania. Okay? So, it's a top-down system. And their idea is, "Okay, these farmers have their little small farms, and they grow their crops, but that's not efficient. What if we just got all the farmers together and had coffee?" And they all, you know, had coffee uh or weed or whatever.
And then we can sell this to other countries. Okay? And of course, you can imagine that this will lead to starvation. Because it's the same principle as the forest. If there's a weather crisis, or if there's a disease, then all your crops die off, and then your people die off.
Okay? What these planners carried in their mind's eye was certain aesthetic, what one might call a visual quantification of modern world production and communi- community life, okay? So, the problem with bureaucrats is they have no imagination. Everything has to them has to be mapped out. They like things that can be mapped out, that that can be a blueprint, okay?
They like to brag about
50:38these things, because because that's how they see the world. But real world nature requires diversity, it requires organic. Okay? All right. So, he gives examples of how the state transforms society.
So, before what happened is that people would just come together and they would organize their communities according to their needs. Okay, it's a bottom-up process, but the state wants to create permanent cities where people are just in one place all the time. Right? That's why you have cities. Um before, what's natural is just for people to live on small farms and share stuff with other people, to trade with with each other.
The problem with this is the state cannot tax you. So, what the state does is it brings you to cities, makes you work in a factory so I can tax you. Okay? The point of giving you a wage is so I can tax you, to exploit you. Um property um before, it was very common for people to share property together, okay?
Now, there's it's all owned and controlled by the state. Uh resources are the same thing. Before, people just used resources according to their needs. But now the state wants to centralize these resources. Okay, so it can tax and exploit people properly.
Okay? So, that's what a state proxy does. So, what are the consequences of the over-bureaucratizing of society? Well, what's happening in America is that while consumer goods like cars, clothing, and cell phones are going down, what's going up are hospital services, schooling, okay? Housing.
Why? Because these are monopolies controlled by bureaucrats. Right? So, what's happening is with the over-bureaucratizing of society, it's
52:40almost impossible for middle-class people, ordinary people, to have a good life now. Here's another really interesting chart. The black shows you the growth in the stock market, okay? And you think you think, "Wow, this is a good thing." Okay? The problem is, first of all, only 10% of people in the United States control most of the stocks, not over 90% of the stocks.
The other issue is this. The other issue is if you look at prices, yeah, it's going up. But if you just turn but if you look at stocks as uh units of gold, if you use gold to buy stocks, guess what? The price of stocks have gone down. That's the blue, okay?
If you use money to buy stocks, it goes up. But if you use gold to buy stocks, it goes down. What is this telling us, okay? Very simple is we are living in a lie. All this wealth generation, it's all a lie.
It's not real. We just think it's real. We we're living in a fairyland created by bureaucrats to fool us to believe that we are prosperous. Okay, does that make sense? The amount of gold that you can buy with stocks has gone down.
Okay? Okay, so the blue is the gold, the black is money. The money isn't is worthless. Okay? All right.
Another problem that bureaucratization has created is people don't want to work anymore. So, in America, this is called quiet quitting. In China, it's called tang ping or bai lan, okay? Lying flat, let it rot. People don't want to work anymore.
Why? Because it's pointless to work in a bureaucracy, right? Leaders don't care. Bureaucracy doesn't need you. You are alienated.
You are told what to do, and you cannot
54:40negotiate. You cannot rise within the bureaucracy. You're you're being asked to work too too much. You feel as though you're just a machine. Okay?
And so, you're And so, the way you rebel is lying flat. Okay, or quiet quitting, okay? So, your over-bureaucratization of society means that people now have become more lazy, more complacent, more more indifferent. And what this also means is that democracy is declining, because people's voice, people people's power is declining, okay? So, you can see that people feel as though democracy is in the decline.
In fact, experts um estimate that democracy, the capacity for people to participate in politics, the capacity for people to influence politics, has declined rapidly these past 10 years, okay? So, we are living in a world that is becoming more and more bureaucratic, and it's killing us. Okay? All right. Questions?
So, as you say, we now live in a very corrupt world. We live in a bureaucratic world. Yeah, very corrupt world. So, what So, I I I I I can't really see the future of no matter it's the mankind or like are there any good side of the current world? Okay.
What What are What are good things about the current world? Well, the good um side is that because things have become so corrupt, people now are forced to think for themselves. Right? Before, you could just trust your teacher. You could just trust your parent.
You could just trust author- authority figures. But now you see them
56:40for the bureaucrats that they are. And so, now you're forced to think for forced to think for yourself. And so, you're now forced to educate yourself. You're now forced to explore different opinions. So, people's minds are opening, and that I think is a very good thing in today's world.
Okay? Any more questions? So, would it help if we canceled uh most of the managers and just I keep one one or two of them? Like Yeah, okay. So, that's a really good question, okay?
If this is a problem, why not just get rid of the managers? And the answer is they have all the power. Okay? They would much rather send you to war and kill you off than to than to lose their jobs. Okay?
So, go back go back example of Stanford University. This That Their mentality is, "How do I maintain my privilege?" They don't care about society. All they care about is maintaining their privilege. Right? So, they are bankrupt society, and then when society becomes bankrupt, they expect society to still continue to pay them off.
Okay? So, these are parasites, and there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah Yeah? Um as we just said, are there less teacher and less professor or like let like most of people would choose to quiet quitting, then who are they going to control if there's less people to work for them? You know, Okay.
That's a really good question. The problem is they don't think like that. They don't think about "How efficient is my organization?" They don't think about like "Am I going to have a job next 5 years?" All they care about is maintaining their position right here and now. Okay? And the way they do that is they hire their friends, or people like them, into other man- and man- management positions.
So, they become like a cabal, or a or a network onto themselves.
58:40And for them, they they become parasites. And what parasites want to do is they want to feed off the host. When the host dies, what's going to happen? They will switch to another host. Right?
Why? Because they're all part of larger networks as well. So, that's how they think. They're thinking, "Well, you know, as long as society survives, I will continue to have a job." Okay? So, maybe this university goes bankrupt, but there's another university I can go to and exploit.
And And you know what? It works. Okay? Because people at the top protect each other. Right?
Okay, does that make sense? They don't care about this hole this hole They don't care about this organization. They don't care if it They don't care if it goes bankrupt, because they can always move on to another organization to bankrupt. Okay? what matters is to maintain their patronage, the political networks.
So, they all help each other. That doesn't make sense? Okay, great. Any more questions? Um is there any possible to stop or even reverse this cooperating system?
Yeah, um I keep on explaining this this this this, okay? They are the ones in power. And so, what has to happen is also society has to society has to collapse before society can regenerate before society can rejuvenate. Okay? But, before society can collapse they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, okay?
So, for example, they can create civil wars where the left and the right fight each other and they're left alone. Or, they can use AI to control you, right? AI is God, guys. Listen to God. Okay?
Or, they can fake an alien invasion. Okay? Or, they can send you to war. They send you all these pointless wars. Okay?
But, whatever it takes in order to maintain their privilege and their power, that's the mentality. And that's how they got to where they are. Okay? And that's how the elite think.
60:43Any more questions, guys? Okay, Mr. Dow. My question is so, I'm a 12th grader. So, if you are in my shoe, like if you are in a 12th grader in nowadays, what would you do?
Like, are you still going to pursue for a further education, higher education, or were you going to like just drop out? Yeah. Okay. That is a great question. So, you are you guys are about to to go to university.
And as I told you in this class, university is a complete rip-off, okay? All you're doing is you're paying for the nice salaries and perks of these administrators at university. You're not really paying for the professors. All right? You're paying for the administrators to have their nice lives.
And so, what I would do is maybe not go to university. What I would do is focus on education, on learning by reading a lot of books, by um asking a lot of questions and doing my own research, by learning real skills. Okay? So, in a society like this where the game is rigged, going to university means that you'll just lose. Okay?
Maybe before like 20, 30 years ago, it was good to go it was good to go to university because you might become a manager. But, now all those slots have been taking taking up by the elite and their children. Okay? There's no space for you. So, the only thing you can do in this context is to really start educating yourself in real knowledge.
All right? Reading books, um meeting lots of different people, exploring the world, okay? Like, really develop real knowledge. Okay? That's that's the best solution.
All right? Any more questions? Does it matter to the major?
No, it does not matter the major. It's all a scam. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay? It's all a scam. Even for liberals?
62:44Uh it's all a scam, okay? Doesn't matter what university you go to, liberal arts, Ivy League, state, it's all a scam. Doesn't matter what your major is, economics, psychology, humanities, computer science, it's all a scam, okay? This system exists so that the managers, administrators can continue to feed off the system. All right?
Okay, guys. So, uh we'll continue this next week, okay? All right. But, thank you for the questions.