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tv   Worlds Apart  RT  June 16, 2019 6:30am-7:00am EDT

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is a challenge you know i'm not you know in the book we point out this happened in the 19th century in the united states and the system was able to respond to that you know the inclusive political institutions was able to kind of respond to the enormous increase in inequality in the political challenges that create is about to the american constitution was written in the in the late 18th century james madison and other people who formulated it they were worried about populism in the 17th eighties so i think populism is an old thing inequalities and old thing you know what we try to argue in the book is that you know these challenges of being met successfully in the past in inclusive societies like the united states but that's not to say that that's inevitable mr robinson you mentioned inequalities in all thing in the us i think you would also agree that it's been exacerbated greatly by globalization and at least to some extent this wave of populism especially as
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represented by donald trump is the push against globalization and the very specific set of facts that has an american society now many in the united states believe that trump is a russian a creature but regardless of russia suppose that they're all in those elections don't you think that those grievances with globalization would have materialized anyway for all his idiosyncrasies president trump is able to capitalize on some of the problems which are being created by globalization i think that's absolutely right you know that people the politicians in the united states have not they've not understood the you know the distress and dislocation that's being caused by globalization and you know and so so i think he's able to capitalize on the new the democratic party hasn't done enough to help a lot of its historic constituencies in the midwest who suffered as a consequence of globalization. you know that something has to be done about that
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you know i think the problem is the president doesn't really have a effective policy for dealing with that you know his policy is to blame blame the chinese or blame the mexicans or that doesn't actually address the real problems that face people in the midwest in the united states really because he's policies seem to be quite decisive when it comes to china and other countries for example in germany which has benefited from globalization in his view unfairly so it is trump really all about the rhetoric because i mean from this pirate part of the world it seems that he is a vision as. simplistic as it is it may seem at 1st to actually has a blear pretty elaborated philosophy behind it i don't think it's a very coherent philosophy i mean it's an emotional philosophy i think you know the front of the matter is that you know china china trade with china benefits people in the united states enormously so blocking trade with china is just going to drive
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up the price of goods that many of president trumps constituents by that's not going to make them better off and it's not going to miraculously make the u.s. steel industry come back or any of the other things you know so what's needed is a much more systematic attempt to invest in education and retraining and trying to find a kind of feasible employment i don't see those more targeted more realistic policies i don't think just you know driving up the price of chinese imports is going to help people quite the opposite actually so it's a kind of emotional reaction it's very much like populists in latin america you know populist in latin america like to blame the united states for everything and now we're blaming the chinese i don't know who the chinese blame but but it's not you know it's rhetorical a very successful but it's not really addressing the real problems i also heard you call populism not only leaders but also. and pluralistic and an exclusionary
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strategy and i wonder if that's really the case because these people the proverbial deplorable how been excluded from the political debate for quite some time either really the ones who are excluding these so-called believes because they believe still have the control over institutions over and the media over barack or c. and song i think you know when i when i talk about when i was talking about populism i sort of said those 2 elements to populism there's this you know there's this anti elitism and there's this sort of notion of the people you know that the real people should be deciding what happens but they're not because of this elite capture of the system but i you know i 1st of all you know i you know i don't think the united states is you know we're not it's not colombia. or peru or you know so i think i wouldn't you know i wouldn't go too far to think that the elites have you know captured the system you know i think i still think there's
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a lot of problems with the u.s. political institutions and democratic institutions but you know i think how the elite captured the system president trump would never been elected in the 1st place but i would say the issues are less than they were historically in the united states you know if you go back a 100 years the issues of elite capture of the day in the days of the robber barons of 150 years i would say were more busy severe than they are now and if you go back and look at what president roosevelt tried to do in the noisy thirty's for example completely undermine the autonomy of the supreme court president trump hasn't done anything like that so let's get things you know let's get things in perspective my view is that you know president trump you know he has a very strange chemistry a lot sure i completely understand it but he understood that there were grievances that the politicians were not dealing with so so so it's up to the democratic and republican party to kind of reinvent themselves and think about how to. addressed
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these grievances you know i think it's the same in britain a lot of people say oh this referendum was such a disaster i don't think it was a disaster i think bret's it is a disaster but i think the referendum showed that there were immense grievances in british society that the politicians were not addressing and that's good they should be discussed and they should be addressed and that's a healthy thing for democracy i think many of those grievances whether it is in relation to bracks it or in relation to donald trump they were economic in nature and they were related began to globalisation and. i heard you say that they're always incentives for individuals to make stuff more extract extractive if they can get away with it and you'll often mention bill gates where says carlos slim as an example so how and nation state can encourage innovation while controlling the excesses in the era of globalization who can do that latter part of preventing big business from extracting too much because i think that they argument both the back
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50 years and don't know trump supporters and making that that you need a nation state in order to control those multi-national leaves who respond to no one i mean i think it's true that the failures of regulation i think that people don't really you know there's a very intense kind of debate in the economics profession going all the moment about what's the best way to regulate these industries and some says these industries are made enormous amounts of money by capturing information that people didn't really understand they were providing or people didn't understand it was valuable and you know and so they're getting it for free and then they're selling it you know. so there's all sorts of issues about how you value information and how you control this and i think you know this is like technological innovation running ahead of humans ability to understand it and control it and regulate it and you know we're all trying to catch up at the moment. you know and that's that's that's
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a process that's you know that's i think you see that many times in history you know you see it in the industrial revolution when the industrial revolution happened you know there was child labor that was all sorts of exploitation and we didn't have the institutions to control it and it took time it took time to catch up with that i think you know if you look at the history over the last couple of 100 years you know innovation has created many challenges like that and you know the optimistic view is that you know we'll be able to catch up catch up with it before it's kind of the right an inclusive society ok well professor of and we have to take a short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments statement. so
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you say that brings this to the end of the series if we could just let josie marino walk away and say we decided to treat upstart host to a very special farewell party and by god. we walk along an interesting path as a team but this time to go back to the punchline and thanks for putting on such a good body. with a red carpet the only thing that i didn't enjoy was my then sink. in moscow my dancing. on ice. it. made it.
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well actually we nailed it literally there we go. a paradise with some around turned into a round experimentation field but agricultural chemicals we know that these chemicals have consequences they are major irritants there's no question otherwise why would that the chemical company workers themselves be geared up that suited up locals attempt to combat the on regulated experiments but often in day you have many of these people one foot into the biotech pharma and the other foot in the government regulatory bodies this kind of collusion is reprehensible while the battle goes on the chemicals continue to poison hawaii and its people so one has to ask the question whether there is a form of environmental research going on in hawaii whether these companies feel they can get away with this because the people have less political power.
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welcome back to worlds apart and james robinson prominent political scientist and author of why nations fail professor robinson before the break we talked about nominally inclusive systems let's talk about extractive wants to which you delegate both russia and china and i would agree with your main thesis is that collective societies often create the potential for client client to listen but they also come with higher demand on the state what the state is supposed to provide in terms of public goods is it really so binary inclusive versus extractive as opposed to being both inclusive and extractive at the same time i think there's a lot of agreement to most economists about what it takes to have economic prosperity you know it takes innovation that takes on ship and you know for that
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people you know you need to have a set of economic institutions which can harness all that latent talent and ability in your society but all of you as you know you can't have the whim of some dictator or autocrat or some communist party you know you need to have genuine political participation and accountability to guarantee those economic institutions and so i think you know you see many instances in world history of sort of transitory economic success. you know based on extractive economic institutions but it never lost you know you gave the example of the soviet union between the light and you know the kind of mid late 1920 s. and 1900 the early 1970 is you know that was a very successful experience of economic growth but very narrowly focused you know based on innovation and except in a few very specific spheres you know like military technology and you know china to us. and there is in is in that category too you know since the 1970 s.
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they've experienced rapid economic growth by making economic institutions much more inclusive than they were before so that part is fine but but they don't have the political institutions necessary to really sustain inclusive economic institutions and i you know i think to me if you look at history it's very compelling the chinese case you know i mean what's been happening in china since the 1970 s. is extremely familiar from chinese history going back 2000 years in china they always also late part was and forth between these 2 models you know wall model of kind of really micromanaging and controlling society and then a much more sort of relaxed model based on you know confucian principle and norms of good governance you know that's what created economic prosperity in the past isn't to be pretty skeptical about china's ability to save lives growth rates primarily because of the communist parties control but that control seems to be very adaptive and when it comes to the high tech sector it's much alas imposing in
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fact i've met many chinese and even washington interpreters who say that they can grow their businesses in china silicon valley much faster than in america in the west coast i wonder if you are under asked to mading the adaptability of the chinese system i think you know the most the thing which is most telling about that you are talking about is that what is it that most chinese or interpreters want to do with their children their money that they want to get them out of the country why is because they have no faith in they have no faith in the in the system of course they say that they have to say that because they've been told to say that that's why they join the party why is jack more a member of the communist party because that's what you have to do survive in that system i'm not an advocate of the chinese system but if you're trying to be fair you can see that many institutions are in the united states or in the west. broadly
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are also not particularly inclusive if you take for example school system china schools by and large are much better inclusive than american schools that especially private schools in some areas if you take the public how fast a sector i would argue that russians have a much better access to public house by and large than the americans i mean when you talk about inclusiveness are there any specific sectors that aid the economic growth or are you claiming that it has to be across the board no i think i mean i think you're right that you know there's many problems in the united states and i think there's always sort of gray areas you know talking about inclusive or extractive societies you're sort of taking an average you know and i think the if you look at the history of the united states there was a lot of kind of dirty deals done to create a you know what's on that what's kind of broadly an inclusive society you know black people that was a slave economy and if you go back to the time of the constitution there was a very dirty deal done to preserve the slave economy and since that collapsed in
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the civil war that's been enormous discrimination against minority communities against african-americans and you know that's a drawback of the society and it's and it's an impediment to what the united states could be but are the things haven't undermines you know the general inclusiveness although some you know some people have much better opportunities than others that's for sure i mean i tend to think that's a kind of inevitable aspect of inclusion some level of inequality is inevitable and you know i would certainly say that northern european countries about she does a much better job of dealing with those issues than the united states has but you know the united states had a much more difficult problem to solve historically you know you had this problem of solving you know how to create all 4 of the next you know create an institutional structure over this huge continent. that you know they solved the
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problem it was a difficult problem they sold it a lot better than latin american countries did but with lots of imperfections as you're pointing out i always say i often hear the same kind of argument from the russian officials and i want to ask you about russia now i find it somewhat ironic that the forward for the russian edition of your book was banned by none other than anatolian wise the person responsible for the profit privatisation of soviet properties which was carried out in a extremely extract if way benefiting only a very very limited group of people now mr tobias is also a strong proponent of institutions but he now argues that it is very very difficult to make western institutions work in russia as in tandem do you have sympathy for that kind of argument because he for one bad if it from that campaign of privatization my interpretation of what went on in the 1990 s. was you know it was a failed attempt to create a more inclusive society you know maybe it was
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a failed attempt because because the people who were running it you know were never really committed to actually creating you know an inclusive society and that of course includes westerners who you know who helped them rule so enrich themselves you know in the process. so i you know i don't know enough about it to know how well intentioned people people were here's the way i think about it you know. i think you know humans all over the world you know very similar you know west the westerners did not invent democracy democracy everywhere in world history in india in china if you go far enough you know human society historically going back is very egalitarian democracy and inclusion was created all over the world you know and it has a checkered history since then but it's not a western invention ok how inclusive institutions actually look like in japan is nothing what they look like in english england is nothing like sweden or the you know. it states either so so i agree that creating inclusion in soviet union
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after $990.00 was not a matter of adopting the us constitution it was a matter of finding what works in that cultural context but i do think you know the intuition about inclusion in this is the whole point of the language of inclusion and extractive institutions it's meant to be flexible enough to apply to different cultural parts different parts the world with different histories and you know and so i think that's a struggle that is for russians you know to build a set of inclusion of institutions with which which resonates with them and this legitimate with the often mentioned centralization is a necessary component of successful development and i think this is something that's or it's hereon or sammy authoritarian systems are pretty good at do you mean to say that the authoritarian legacy could actually be an advantage labyrinths well well that's an interesting question that's you know that's like the question of how
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you term how you transition from extractive to inclusive political institutions i mean busy i do think that you know the experience in my experience in parts of the world you know which don't really have centralized political for a tea for example in sub-saharan africa is terribly difficult to create if you don't have it you know and if one says africans have never had it but the problem is that you know once you have it centralized authority can be used to repress inclusion i think the real story of you know how places like you know western europe developed inclusive societies that is these things came together you know that centralized authority was built gradually with with with deeper inclusion political inclusion that sort of balanced path i think you know if you have china for example you know which i know much more about than russia is that you know if you think about china you know if you went back 2 and a half 1000 years china wouldn't look so different from europe for example but then
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this you know this very sort of autocratic model. wins out you know with the change in the city in the start of the chinese do not stick history and not start that model has dominated chinese society ever since you know so so we know that seems very likely to me to persist see some natural process of broadening inclusion or modernization like some academics like professor huntington a professor fukuyama would argue will george w. bush thought that economic growth would just democratize china i think that's that's just not consistent with what we've seen from chinese history or the logic of how things work one prominent discourse in both russia and china is one about technology not only as a vehicle of growth but also as a vehicle of essentially collapsing. the power structure and making it more efficient for example here in russia you know once tronic taxation has been
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introduced the e.u. can actually see very well who is abusing the state power for their own purposes or who is trying to use state institutions for richmond do you think there is anything to it seeing technology as a way of essentially making political power in these other private societies last personalised the more sort of technocratic and serving the benefit of society as a whole well i think that all depends on who's who's making decisions and how the state is governed i think technology on its own has no kind of implications you know for freedom or inclusion i would think you know if you think about the child what's happening in china at the moment with the construction of the social credit system where they're basically monitoring people penalizing them or rewarding them that's just sort of massive you know it's something like george orwell's 19 eighty-four you know we're all well wrote big brother is watching you know big brother didn't
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actually have the technological capacity to watch you but now. it does so i think that's that's likely to be to have horrific consequences for inclusion and just the quality of people's lives so i don't think you can you could guarantee the technological improvements like that in a dictatorship would would have some technocratic benefits i think it just it just facilitates the manipulation of society by by autocratic elites in my opinion but they only tell never so only that i mean it's usually not the one group of people who are just enriching themselves it's usually you know competing interests why abusing or using the state for their own benefit and i think it's often the case that there are the literature of the political leadership of the country may not necessarily be interest i'm sure secretary she or president putin are not making money out of being the leaders of that country at least not directly do you think that will give them better control of all of the all of the powers that be who are
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operating within the confines of a systems well i don't know about president putin the mill i don't really have any insight into what he's attempting to achieve obviously he has geo political agenda you know which involves you know an exceeding the crimea interfering in kind of super power politics you know in the middle east and the way the soviet union used to be i don't really understand what he's attempting to achieve with that or whether he's interested in material rewards you know we certainly know that the chinese elites in the communist party are benefiting staggeringly economically from corruption and you know extracting wealth from this process of economic growth that may not be what's motivating them either you know i think it's very simplistic to think of individuals as just being motivated by material payoffs you know sure president putin has a project which has nothing to do with the question or understand what it is but
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i'm ready to believe that it has nothing to do with with money. but it does have a lot to do with powell you know he seems to repress opponents the media you know he wants to stay in power. so you know i'm sure he's willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power and that's clear with the chinese communist party you know the thing that try these called this policy most care about is this ideology of political head gem in the competition or challenges you know thoughts and that's you know that's seated in they just inherited the mandate of heaven you know but now it's called no it's an old theme in chinese history it's also very old argument on the part of the last of the young people in russia and china have. capita basis have become a little bit 3 chair than they were let's say 10 or 15 years ago as opposed to people in the west who have become poorer m.p.'s i fortunately are out of time to have that argument i have to leave it here and thank you for being with us today my
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pleasure i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to see same place same time here on the walls apart. normal goggles. a memory real world will be open orders when you're watching cruiser. up on the board.
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with the. ocean all. you need is new york city for times to. leave you to surround us. more than one in something you believe there are these should. be a few of the locals will suggest this on. your own or one loop your means lucas a chance to start a new digital ship to look at you lucas which you. like the ones. in the welded which there are the americans that the chinese the indians the russians etc europeans can only read to be
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a player at that global top table by standing united and we are already united on the economic front and we increasingly understand that we have to do so also on the fence from. came here where did you work before you came here when you live. in many us states capital punishment is still practiced convicted prisoners can spend years waiting for execution but most of the time. the victims' families they are very much in favor the death penalty there are some people because of what they did have given up the right to live among us somebody even proven innocent of 2 years on death row but how many more exonerations is it going to take before we as a society realize that this is not working and we actually do something about. it when lawmakers manufacture consent to step into public wealth. when the
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ruling classes protect themselves. when the crime and larry go round lifters only the one percent. to ignore middle of the room sick. i mean real news is. that. i'm. wrong.
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in the stories that shaped the week of a u.s. accuses iran of attempting to oil tankers in the gulf of oman with tehran branding b. accusations quote sabotage the mistake. survivors of london's gren fell to our fire started legal action against. on the program more than a 100. people.

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