Feb. 16, 2025

Government Efficiency

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Season 3

Europeans are confused with what's going on across the Atlantic. Is Trump really as bad as people make him out to be? Aren't businessmen the best people to put into office? How can we make sense of recent events using business administration management theory? In this episode we dip our toe into the quagmire that is current American politics.

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To solve , uh, inefficiency in the state. Isn't it a good idea?

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Uh , no. .

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Okay .

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Yeah, because , all right , well first off,

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People

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Have been asking me to make sense of what's been going on lately. So I invite them down to the studio and we sit down and they get to say , I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions, and I want them answered

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Immediately. Give these people air , give these people air, come on

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Co . Hagan , give these people air .

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My name is Mitri . And today I wanted to speak about one topic that's quite popular among quite a lot of people around the world. This topic is Trump.

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Yeah. .

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So the question is , uh, is very simple. I just hear quite a lot of news and I hear other people speak about what is happening in the world. Now, a lot of people say that Trump is doing quite a lot of bad things to the world and to the economy and to his own country. At the same time, I see quite a lot of things. Well, it's been how many, two or three weeks since he was , uh, inaugurated. Right . And I see quite a lot of action, or at least I see it. I don't really know what is happening. But I see quite a lot of action. And I think it is positive because how many years before, a lot of people tried to achieve quite a lot of things. Mm-hmm . But nothing was really achieved. A lot of discussions, a lot of concerns and discussions, and again, concerns. And now the guy comes into his second , uh, term and he's , uh, doing quite a lot of things. So why is that ?

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Well, I mean, I guess we have to ask , uh, from what perspective are we talking about ? Because if you're an American citizen or if you have a stake in America, that's gonna be one answer. If you're a European citizen, I'm gonna have a different answer. And if you're a Russian citizen, I'll have like a complete different, so if you're asking about why is he bad for Russia, that'll be a different thing. I'm going to say that . Is it , why is he bad for America? So like, which perspective? Or do you want multiple perspectives or what?

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Yeah, that's a very good question. Let's start with American perspective. So whatever he's doing right now, is it bad for America and Americans?

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The short answer, yeah. Obviously it's bad. And generally almost everything he's doing is bad. Now, of course, there are some things if you wanna look at it , uh, well , not if you want to, I guess, because you should be looking at this kind of, from a neutral perspective without too many biases. There are some things that he's doing maybe in a very unorthodox way, but I would say like are legitimately good. But of course, I hate to bring, you know , 'cause everyone like brings Hitler to this, but it's basically like, okay, like , like Hitler made Volkswagen

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On the second, the second minute. And , uh,

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Yeah , yeah , exactly . Now my , everyone talks about Hitler 'cause it's such an easy thing to bring to it. It immediately crystallizes the thoughts. So like, okay, Hitler brought Volkswagen, right? He made Volkswagen and Volkswagen's a really good company. So objectively that's a good thing that Hitler did. But the question is, is it worth all the bad things that he did to make Volkswagen? Or is there another way where he can make Volkswagen without all the nasty stuff? So when I caveat things to say , even when I'm talking about, okay, there are some things if I'm trying to be very neutral and objective that he's doing that are maybe good, is it worth all the bad things that he's doing? So there's always that subtext to it. So I guess obviously he's done a lot of things. I I , I wanna push back 'cause he hasn't done a lot of action. He's done a lot of noise. Very few of the things that he's done is actually actioned, well, I shouldn't say that e either because they haven't been materialized yet. 'cause obviously it won't been two weeks. And the danger is they are going to be actionable. But yeah, he's, he's done a lot of noise and there's a lot of moving and shaking whether that's going to result in concrete action. That's to be determined. But Sure. I mean , uh, yeah, he's done a lot of things. So like what specifically do you wanna talk about or what general things? And then we could like talk about it.

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Okay. I expected this , uh, with this kind of answer because of course it is quite early to , to assess two weeks. Yeah . Or

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The beginning. Yeah. But like to your credit, like when Hitler was doing , everybody hit up , because the thing is like when Hitler was doing all this in , uh, was it like 1932 or 1933? When was the enabling act? Uh, that was like after, wait , the restock fire was, was that 32? I forget. But basically, yeah, he's doing a lot of things in 34 and you're like, oh, is this gonna be , uh, you know, a problem? Like, not that that's the time to analyze it. You don't wanna wait till 1939 when Germany's already off the deep end. So to your point, yeah, it's good to analyze it now before it becomes 1939 Germany .

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Okay. I agree with you. There is quite a lot of noise. But let's, instead of speaking about actions, because there is no action so far, let's consider this noise as intentions.

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Yeah, sure. Yeah , no , that's fair.

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So if for example, if we could have , uh, somebody else being the president of the United States or any other president, there would have been like first hundred of days of preparation, another couple of years of doing a lot of measurements and discussions and and so on and so forth. So from this perspective, the difference for me as a foreigner to the US is that there is a person who knows, well, he came prepared first of all.

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Yeah.

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He knows what he's going to do.

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Yes.

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Uh , yeah . First I should have done the disclaimer. I'm not his supporter. I'm just Sure, sure. I need to understand how it works.

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Yeah, of course. So

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He knows what he needs to do. Mm-hmm . He knows what is good, I hope for his country and probably even he knows what is good for rest of the world, for like Greenland, Europe. And , uh, again, that's what I feel. I mean, the guy has an agenda. Yeah. So the first good thing, let's go step by step . The first good thing is that if it were somebody else, we could have spent like couple of years just for preparation. Now he just, he steps in and he ttt you know, doing whatever he wants to do. Yeah. Isn't it good or isn't bad?

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No. Okay. I , I , I agree with you. Okay. So the thing is, or we say he knows what he needs to do, we have to like remember that. Yeah. In his mind, he knows what he needs to do. That means like someone listening from the outside looking and it's like, okay, this guy's clearly an idiot and he's wrong. Okay, fine, fair, that's fine. But all we can look at it from his mind is he has an idea, however stupid or Right. It is. And he's saying, okay, I'm going do an action on it and I'm going to do it. And to your point, yes, he's good at that. 'cause he's just coming in, he's not waiting around for this like first a hundred days bs he's like basically first a hundred minutes, you know, with that whole like, scene of the signing a ton of , uh, executive orders. So, and part of the problem with in America is the frustration of the electorate is that the government is not doing enough. And there's, there's a lot of inaction. There's a lot of hemming and hawing. Now , that's my design, I think because of , uh, some of the partisan bickering. But to Trump's credit, you know, I , you know , I try to be like, as fair as possible. Yeah. He as bad , again, personally, I think it's bad disastrous agenda. But to his credit, as bad as disastrous as I think it is, he came in and says , I'm gonna enact this agenda. And he's moving along with it. So, yeah, you're right. And , and that assuming if it was a good agenda that I would support, I would say yes, that's a good thing. So I'd have to hold myself to be honest and say yes by itself without looking at the actual agenda. Yes. It's a good thing. 'cause he's action and , and America needs an action. 'cause we've been floundering since the nineties.

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Okay. So first we realized that it is good to have a plan. Right. The second thing I was thinking of is we don't know the full agenda, because I just , uh, remember the news from, I think it was yesterday when he was with Netanyahu and he wanted to move all of the people from Gaza. And ,

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And did you see his expression? He's like, .

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I , I , yes, I've seen it , but we don't know the full picture. Mm-hmm . Because probably only couple of people in the world knows that. So maybe he doesn't even know what he's going to speak about in the next couple of minutes.

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I think that's the more accurate statement . Yeah.

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Which I, to be honest, I don't really believe in because when you are , how old is he? Like, almost 80 or over?

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Yeah. I think he's like 82.

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82. So you should be super stupid if you don't know what you're going to say in the next couple of minutes when you are 80. So you have, the guy has experience. But again , let's take a couple of seconds before we , we get there. The second thing, he has agenda and whatever he, he has made so far, his first intention is to think about America first. I mean, he wants to make America great again. Again. I

00:09:07.245 --> 00:09:08.365
At least that's what he says. Yeah , yeah ,

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Exactly. Exactly. In general, is it a bad thing? I mean, no . Yeah . The president is thinking about America and , uh, he's not thinking about how to make the world better and this so and so forth .

00:09:19.735 --> 00:09:39.465
Well, I mean, at the surface level of your statement or question, yeah. It's , it is a good thing. But of course you have to analyze the saying is , is what he doing a is it for, is it actually for making America great? And b, is what he's doing actually going to make America great? And those two things, I would answer to the contrary.

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And to be honest, I don't know what, what was the definition of great and what is the definition of making America great and why, again, I mean, those are the, all of the questions I think all the rest of the world is asking mm-hmm . But at least the second point that he's making is that he's making his country better. Again, we're looking into the, the rule of other presidents mm-hmm . Who wanted to go to different countries to invade this , this and that. Uh , he's at least what he says, he's focusing on his own country. He doesn't care about everything else. Again, at least what he says is the second thing. The third thing is that he hires, and this is , I I , I wanted to to speak about that as well. He hires the top richest man in the world and the most efficient person in the world as he thinks

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Allegedly.

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Yes. Allegedly to solve , uh, inefficiency in the state. Again, isn't it a good idea?

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Uh, no

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Okay.

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Yeah, because all right , well first off, being rich doesn't necessarily , uh, make you qualified for anything. And that , that's like, that , that's one of my biggest problems with all of this, is that people tend to listen to rich people just because they're rich. And that's not, I'm saying there's a difference between rich and successful. If you're successful and you also happen to be rich, obviously let's listen to you and , and let's listen to you in the field that you're, you know, you became successful in. But the thing is, with Musk, I'm assuming that's who you're talking about, right? Yes, sir . Is that okay? Uh, I describe this , I wanna get around, I'm gonna sidestep that for a second because I don't even know how to formulate that. But the thing is, making the government efficient is not what you want to do. A business person is the last person you want to be in the government, because a government and a business are basically two sides of a different coin. But he's not in

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The government, per se. Well , he is hired, he's external per , he's a contractor working for, for as

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Far as I know. Well , that makes it even worse 'cause he has not beholden to anything or anyone. Well,

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He has some interests. I don't know what , what exactly.

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No , we know what his interests are. His

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Okay. Yes. Yeah . So again, I'm a president. Yeah. I'm in inheriting that inefficient machine with thousands and tens and thousands of bureaucracy, people pushing the paper from one table to another. Okay. And I see that I need to do something with that. So if I'm using the old methods mm-hmm . That my predecessors were using, I , I wouldn't be successful in a couple years. And , uh, I think Trump has only four years for to , to achieve whatever he wants to achieve. Okay . So he's hiring somebody Yeah . Who is absolutely like an external consultant. Mm-hmm . Who is , uh, really focused on doing what he's doing and regardless of his interest, he has his plan , how to optimize things . Right.

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You know ? Okay. Well then there's three things I want to answer to that. Well, first off, as you know, with consultants, right, you want a consultant that doesn't have any stake in the , uh, in the situation, right? You don't , you don't want conflicts of interest, correct? No . Okay. So if you wanna hire this guy, okay, fine. Just forget about the government for a second. If you hire a consultant for your business and they have like stocks or whatever in a competitor, would you trust what the consultant is saying?

00:13:12.715 --> 00:13:13.375
Not necessarily.

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Not necessarily. Or no, .

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Well, I believe that , uh, they, they didn't have any other person, the better person to choose from. So I ,

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I know population of 360 million or whatever, you don't have,

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That was the choice. Well ,

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That was his choice, but there's multiple choice .

00:13:31.014 --> 00:13:47.095
Yeah , true, true, true. For good or bad reasons. Yeah . But I still want to focus on, on Trump. So he's hiring somebody even with some side interest that is likely possible, but he's hiring somebody who is external and who is committed to bringing an efficiency . Well,

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No , I would push back there 'cause he's not external.

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Okay.

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Okay. Because I , I mean, I understand where you're coming from, thinking like he's externally, he's not in the government. Yeah. But the fact that he has government contracts and the fact that his portfolio is reliant on what the gov actions of the government are, he is strict definition of what external is and what most people are like telling about external, he is 100% not external at all. He has a vested interest in moving the levers of government in a specific way that enriches himself. And even if you're saying, oh no, it's not there , religion himself, well fine, but he has like clear conflict of interest there, which under normal circumstances would require someone to recuse themselves from doing it. In industries that have professional ethics or even in law there you have ethical obligations where you would have to recuse yourself. So that, and again, he's 100% absolutely not external in any way because he wealth comes from what actions the government takes. So from the very beginning, I would say that's a ill-formed question or statement because he's absolutely not external.

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Okay. Let's forget about this external part of the question. There is somebody who is committed to do optimization in your government. So you are inviting somebody who, okay, not external, he's part of the system, but he knows what needs to be done.

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Does he ?

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Uh , that's a question. I'm still holding my role and I'm, I'm definitely external person and not American and looking from, from outside. Alright .

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Okay. So there's two things that here that I want to discuss. First is what optimization, efficiency, and also who actually does the optimization efficiency. So make sure I I touch on both of those things. Okay. So the first thing is, my problem with business people working in the government is that they don't understand what the role of the government is. A business Yes. Has to be efficient. Because the point is you wanna maximize your profit so that you have more resources to , uh, create the goods and services that is like classic , uh, economics, right? So the more efficient, the more lean you are, the more of an opportunity you have to use the resource that you garner to , uh, make more stuff so you can make more profit. Right? And even if you're not a capitalist, you can look at other economic systems. But again, the point is you wanna be efficient so that you enrich yourself some way or somehow even if you're a communist, okay? You wanna be efficient because it's each to their , uh, was it each according to their , uh, means and needs . Needs . Yeah . Yeah . The first part . Yeah . Right? Yeah, exactly. Each , each according to their , uh, means and each according to their needs or however the expression goes, right ? So you want to be efficient with that. So do you only do what you're able to do and you only give enough for people's needs, right? So all economic systems are all about efficiency. Governments are not supposed to be efficient, they're supposed to be resilience or robust because business can fail. If a business fails, you can make a new business, right? It's not a big problem. But a government, it needs to be able to stand against stresses. And if you're efficient and lean, that means you don't have any backup or resiliency where something bad happens that the government, the system can progress.

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So you wanna say that government cannot be efficient,

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Not only cannot be, it should not be. And here's the distinction here, because what I think a lot of people confuse is that, okay, well the government is inefficient in its processes, okay? Processes, yes, absolutely should be efficient, but systems should not, and this is something that we like, do like in the military, because you don't want a military to be efficient, right? Because for example, I mean if you wanna talk about like, you know, the Ukraine invasion, Russia was super efficient with its three day special military operation. Putin provided only the bare minimum amount of people forces to go and capture , uh, kyiv. And , uh, and supposedly that should have been enough for Ukraine to capitulate. But of course, because there was resistance and everything like that, and because he provided such an efficient force at the first sign of distress, the entire invasion collapsed. And then now we're in year three. Whereas with, you know, Americans or the West, usually when they commit to a military action, second Iraq war , notwithstanding, again , that's a whole entire different discussion, you overcommit your forces so that they can withstand the pressure of the enemy, right? Because , you know, I could say in the military, with any plan strategy that you have, the enemy has a vote as well. So you want to be able to , uh, weather the storm of any complication. And that by definition is not efficient.

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Let's come back to the government. We just realized that we cannot define government in terms of efficiency, right? That's what

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Well , no, you could define them as , uh, in terms of efficiency. But the thing is, if a government is efficient, then by definition then they're not resilient. They're not robust, which means they're prone to collapse. And governments, that's what keeps societies basically together. And they need to be resilient. They need to be weathered . The stress and the storm of things. Class example is, you know, our old people, they're a drain on the economy, you know, if you will, because you know, they're not contributing to the economy. And if anything, we're giving them money with social security and all this other stuff. So technically they're not efficient. So maybe are we gonna do like Eskimo and put 'em on a iceberg and let them flow out into the ocean and die? No, we take care of 'em because that's what the social contract requires of us to do. And that's not, that's not efficient, but it's robust and resilient because it allows people to say, Hey, I'm going to stay within this country because I know as I get older I'm gonna be taken care of. Right? And these are the systems of the government. But the thing is, sure, when you're actually doing , uh, undertaking a system or a bureaucracy or whatever like that, the processes within the system or the processes in the, in the bureaucracy, those can be inefficient. And that should, yes, those should be fixed, but that's not something you go into the budget and say, oh, I'm gonna cut the money from all that. Those are public policy things. Those are not economic or financial decisions. And I think that's what people confuse, because in their mind they're thinking, okay, why does it take 27 documents for me to change my driver's license when it should only take like one document, right? That's a inefficiency in the process. But the ability to be able to transfer a driver's license from one country to another, that's a system that should be implemented and cutting it out and saying , no, that's like inefficient. Everyone should just have only , uh, go through the, you know, your country's driver's license procedure. And we don't want other, we don't want the , uh, inefficiencies of trying to integrate other people's, other country's driver's , licensees. You could make that argument, but that's not a good argument because you want people to come to your country. You want immigrants, right? High scale , high skilled people, and you want them to be able to easily transfer their driver's license. You know, that's like a specific example. So there's a difference between having system efficiencies and process efficiencies. Okay. Now,

00:20:37.414 --> 00:20:38.493
So sorry for interrupting you . No ,

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Go

00:20:38.934 --> 00:20:46.015
Ahead . How efficient America right now in terms of this , in terms of system efficiency and process efficiency?

00:20:46.585 --> 00:22:36.345
No, no , that , that's a very fair point. There are a lot of quote inefficiencies in the government. There's a lot of process inefficiencies, okay ? Right. And sure, there might be system inefficiencies too. But the point here is that that's not what Musk is doing. That's not what Donald Trump is doing. Because you can't go to the budget, the national budget and say, oh, these things are inefficient and I'm gonna get rid of 'em . 'cause that doesn't address the inefficiency. Finance has no say in finance is the outcome of inefficiency's, the result of inefficiency. It's not the the input for inefficiency. So you can't just say, oh, I'm gonna remove this , uh, the funding for this system that I don't like because it's inefficient. No, first off, with the government, there's a decision, like through democracy , it's through the, you know , will of the people and through autocracies, through the will of the autocrat. But either way, it's the will of the government, of the country, of the state, of the sovereign to say, we need to have the system. And with that, we're going to fund the system so that it can operate by removing the funding of that system. You're not making it efficient or inefficient, you're just going against the will of the state. You know, whether it's, again, is through the people or the autocratic doesn't matter, right? The point is the government has made decision, this system should be in place and therefore we should fund it. Now you can argue that, okay, the system that you put in place is not efficient, good, but the financial decisions of funding that system has nothing to do with it. That's a public policy thing. That's where you, like, you pass laws or pass regulations and say, okay, I wanna make the system efficient and it make some public policy decision. Finance has no bearing on it at all. And that's the issue here. So what Musk and Trump are doing by cutting off the slashing lines from the budget, first of all, it's completely illegal, which we'll get back to, but to address your point here, you're not addressing any inefficiency. You're just cutting it out and you're going against the will of the state

00:22:37.694 --> 00:22:48.505
Fair points . And I was thinking about that as well to me , uh, and again, maybe it's , uh, false thinking, but to me, running the government is very close to running an enterprise.

00:22:48.944 --> 00:22:50.625
I I wouldn't say it's the complete opposite.

00:22:50.805 --> 00:22:55.345
And this is what I probably, if again, I told in the beginning that I'll be asking very stupid questions. No, no ,

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No , no, please , no , no , no .

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Uh , I've spent like last , uh, 20 years in the enterprises, right ? And I know quite a lot of, quite a lot of things about democracy . Oh, sorry, democracy. Yeah . bureaucracy. , that's a nice one. Bureaucracy in the enterprise. Yeah . So, and I think this is where we see things differently. And if by the end of the conversation I'm understanding the answer to this question, I I'll be super happy . Yeah,

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Sure.

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Now, I truly believe that when we have a huge enterprise, there is , uh, you know, tens and thousands, well, hundreds and thousands of people, yeah , you need to, even though there is some , uh, some profit that you need to deliver, even if it's private company or not private corporate , it doesn't matter. But you have to maintain this hundreds, thousands of people. Somehow you need to provide some policies, you need to provide some motivation and so on and so forth. Now, the same I think is happening to the government because you have, okay, instead of 200,000 people, you have 300 million people. Okay? This is one of the differences. But also you have the same people. You have to motivate them. You have to give them means to work, to maintain their lives, to bring the profit to the government, to bring it back to the country. So, and for me, again, I understand the country doesn't have any concrete goals. You just need to live on and prosperity and so on and so forth. But for me, running a country and running the enterprise to some extent, not fully, but to some extent is the same thing. You need to take care about the people. You need to take care about the processes you need to , to take care about the resilience. As you mentioned. I , I agree with you, you need to take care about the bureaucracy because it exists here and there. And in this regard , optimizing the both is basically the same task. So there is a guy, and I'm coming back to that. There is a guy who knew CEO coming to run the huge enterprise who says, okay, I'm the smartest one here, so I probably will make mistakes, but we'll go there maybe. And what you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago that they are doing something, he's doing something that has not been voted for. So prob first, some of the things are legal. Second, those tasks have not been voted for, if I understand correctly. So it is just purely his own will. Now, he might make his mistakes. And of course, and this is the role of, of the country , uh, of course quite a lot of people will be against that. And he will receive , uh, immediate feedback, of course. So he will repeat himself and again and again, again. And in the end, it should be okay again, if I'm understanding this process ,

00:25:36.724 --> 00:25:38.285
Uh , I'm lost. I understand .

00:25:38.394 --> 00:25:51.644
Okay. So he, the , the guy is running his country and he has a agenda . He wants to optimize quite a lot of things to run things smoothly. He has, he's doing that in front of everybody, so everybody can give him feedback.

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Okay? But notice what you just said, he wants to optimize things that can run through smoothly. Yes . So that your question or your statement implies that there's a system in place and you're trying to optimize the process behind that system, right? Yes. That's not what Musk and Trump are doing because they're not trying to optimize the system. They're just removing the entire system all together. The process and calling that efficiency, it sounds like I'm being nitpicky here, but this is the fundamental, this is like the crux of the issue here. It's like you have to distinguish between efficient systems and efficient processes.

00:26:27.055 --> 00:26:31.305
Okay? So let me ask you straight, sorry for interruption, for cutting your short . Do you understand what they want to achieve?

00:26:32.204 --> 00:27:13.355
Yeah, of course. And everyone knows, I mean, it's project 2025, and it is basically just like Hitler did, mind confide and he explained everything there. The Republicans and Trump speci , you know , and his team, they wrote everything down in project 2025. They literally just wrote everything there. And that's exactly what they're executing. So again, when we initially started this line , uh, a line of conversation, yeah, I have to commend them on the fact that they came in with a plan, a bad plan, obviously, I think, but they have a whole book and they're going to do it just like Hitler. He had a whole book and he said, this is what I'm gonna do. And yeah, sure he did it. Obviously it's, it's a plan, but, you know, yeah. But so we , we know what he's going to do, and you know what he's planning on doing, it's all written right there. So let's

00:27:13.595 --> 00:27:16.154
Pretend I don't know this plan, could you please elaborate a bit about

00:27:16.315 --> 00:27:20.555
It ? I mean , it's like got 800 pages or whatever it is, so it's kind hard to do. But, but

00:27:20.714 --> 00:27:22.714
There is a core idea about that, so,

00:27:23.144 --> 00:30:34.884
Well, yeah. The core ideas is, if I'm being very generous to them, is that they want to run the government like a business and basically make it completely lean, which basically would mean a disastrous end to the country because okay, you were talking about, okay, if a CEO comes in and he wants to make things efficient in the business, it's like, okay, yeah . What a business does is they're trying to gain resources, right? And then basically whatever is efficient, whatever's profitable, that's what they're going to do. So they're not gonna go work in a unprofitable sector. And in fact, like, you know, with private equity and leveraged buyouts and things like that, you know , like the Bain guys, you know, BCG types, those people, you know, what they do is they come into a company, right? They buy it out, right ? And say, oh, this company is inefficient, and what do they do? They fire people and they slash some business sectors and say, this market's no longer profitable, so we're not gonna go work with that. We're gonna work on this super lucrative thing. And a lot of times they end up cannibalizing the IP and selling it out because they don't realize all the, the value chain. But that's a different story in entirely. But the point is, they slash a whole bunch of things, they've removed systems, right? And make a super efficient lean or essentially super profitable, and then they sell it at a profit, right? And that's what a good quote , good businessman does. Okay? But if you're a government though, you don't want to do that because if you're running Russia, running things in Moscow and St . Petersburg might be pretty efficient because it's a big city and there's a lot of people. So it is very efficient and like things can be very cheap. But the service that you provide in Moscow, you also have to provide it in, you know, I don't know , Ketter Greenberg , gimme another, like really out there city, all I know is the Kettering Berg , no , yeah, Nova severe , right? But the thing is, providing the services to Nova risk is not efficient at all because it's way out there. It's hard to get there. There's only a couple people there to service, right? So if I'm going from a CEO business mentality, I'm just be like, oh, forget Nova severe , I don't really care about them and just let them flounder because it's not very profitable, it's not very efficient. I'm only gonna focus on Moscow and St. Petersburg, right? But if you do that, what's the point of the country? And, you know, you can lead to like other problems and riots and everything like that. The thing is, a government doesn't have the option to say, okay, let's divest from this sector. It's like, no, you have to, you have to provide services to everyone, and you have to provide for the lifecycle of whatever system that you're trying to give. So if you're going to provide food to Nova for the citizens and Nova bearers , you also have to worry about the sanitation. You can't just be a businesses give 'em like , Hey , whatever happens afterwards, that's not my problem. It's like, no, everything, the entire life cycle from the cradle to the grave is all your problem. You have to work on it. And a lot of these things may not be efficient, may not be profitable, and , and this specifically, I mean, I I'm saying Nova Spirits because like , you're Russian , but even for like Americans, right? America, I mean the Republicans, they always say, oh, look, it , it's a Red America with just a couple of blue dots. But yeah, well, those little tiny blue dots, that's geographically, that's where all the population is. But to their point, most of America is pretty much empty land. But the thing is, like when we run the postal service Yeah. Running the postal . Sorry ,

00:30:34.884 --> 00:30:36.765
When you say land , what do you mean? What do ,

00:30:37.045 --> 00:32:50.214
When you say empty land , like it's hardly anyone lives there. Like you look in the middle of Texas, outside of like Dallas, Austin, Houston, whatever, there's like hardly anyone there. So if you're , like, for example, if I'm running the postal service or I'm running electricity mm-hmm . Yeah. It's super efficient and super profitable to provide electricity or postal service to people in Austin or New York City or Los Angeles, right? But the government doesn't have an option to only work with those people. I mean, matter of fact, the whole point of the , the system of the United States from the constitution, when they were arguing even before the constitution, the Declaration of Independence, there's the question of, okay, should we secede from Great Britain or not? And then , you know, all the northern states, because they were very industrial, like yeah, you know, the king, right? Like the hounds in the game of throats, . But then , but , but like all the southern states were more agrarian. They're like, no, no, we don't wanna do that because, you know, they had different wants and different needs. And also, again, an agrarian places everyone's spread out, providing services to these people is not efficient at all. And it's not quote profitable. So you can't have a business CEO come in and be like, okay, I'm gonna run the country and I'm gonna cut out all these services. Right? I mean , that's like essentially what's going on with France right now. You know, like Macron, he's like, oh , I'm , you know , business and everything like that. I'm like really good at all this stuff. And he is like, oh , I'm gonna cut out all these social services and then what , what's happening? And everyone's off at him. Well, of course people him , because you can't run a government like a business. You have to provide service to everyone, whether it's profitable or not. Profit or efficiency, again, from the system level is irrelevant. Whatever the will of the government is, whether it's the people or the , the sovereign, you know, depending on what type of government it is, that's the will of the state. And you must enact the will of the state. Again, processes sure can be efficient. If you wanna find a more efficient way to bring mail or electricity to someone out in Nova , severe score , you know , Aho , Arizona, that's fine. But you still have to provide the services. You don't have an option to divest like, like a businessman does. That's the main issue. And again, even if I'm wrong, which I'm, you know, obviously I'm not, but , but the thing is like trying to address inefficiencies, you can't go to the balance sheet, right. Or the income statement and just cross things out and claim that's sufficiency. That's not,

00:32:50.595 --> 00:33:24.755
That's that's clear. Yeah . I , I understand. I'm coming back to my question. Yeah. Uh , you mentioned that 800 pages , uh, yeah , yeah , yeah . Code of conduct or whatever it's called, you are saying that they definitely know what they want to achieve mm-hmm . But from the outside or somebody from outside of the , of the us the only thing which is seen, and again, I'm , IM talking about absolutely stupid person who hasn't read all of that. But what we can see is that , uh, he is trying to achieve the best for , uh, majority of the people in the US again, as seen.

00:33:24.984 --> 00:33:27.115
Yeah, well that's the propaganda that you saying . Sure . Exactly.

00:33:27.305 --> 00:33:45.994
Exactly, exactly. I totally understand that. Yeah . Uh , I totally understand that this is the reason for this kind of conversations because , what I wanted to hear, and this is what I partially received already, for which people in the US it is becoming better from whatever he's doing. I hope it is not just two people in in the US that are profiting from what is being done.

00:33:46.275 --> 00:33:49.994
There's a lot of people probably, okay , there's a whole organization behind that project, 2025

00:33:50.535 --> 00:33:56.674
And , uh, who is , uh, going to lose 'cause of all of the changes that are going to be done.

00:33:57.065 --> 00:35:41.885
Well, most people are gonna lose from it because if , okay, if I'm being generous to these people, yes, I'm gonna say is that they're not evil, they're just misinformed. Again, if I'm trying to be like super generous to these type people , there's this erroneous belief that hey, if you strip down the services of the government, the sizes of the government, right? Then, you know, they don't have to spend so much money on, on services or whatever. And so therefore all that will be money savings, which means then now you could like lower taxes and if you to lower the taxes, then there's more money for them, right? And that's ultimately what they wanna do, is they don't want to pay taxes. I mean , we literally were born because we didn't want to pay taxes, right? In know our country, right? So there's a big like anti-tax thing, which is, you know, it's fine. And like who, who the hell wants to pay taxes? But the point is you're basically sacrificing the government, right? The executive branch. So that again, to be generous to them, they're logical . Hey , if we make it so that the government doesn't provide any of these services, then the government doesn't need to collect the taxes from us to pay for these services. So let's just cut out all these services and we can keep, we , we don't have to pay taxes. We keep more of our money and let the free quote, free market provide all these services to people, right? But of course, we just explained that the free market can't provide all these services, which, because again, the free market might be able to do it in like, you know, New York or la but they're not gonna be able to do it for the rest of the country. And therefore, and if you don't have the rest of the country there, the agrarian and the rural areas, well then the country will collapse because the whole country is based off the interaction of the rural and the urban areas. Again, I'm being super, super generous and it's all about cutting the government to the bare minimum so that we don't get taxed so much or more like they don't get taxed so much.

00:35:42.574 --> 00:36:02.085
Maybe I'm not seeing quite a lot of other things, but , uh, so far we have discussed that he's going to cut well lines in the balance sheet. Yeah . Um, is there anything else that he's trying to do or probably doing behind the scenes from, again, from the person from outside, I see that he wants to take over Greenland.

00:36:02.474 --> 00:36:28.034
Yeah, those are, I mean , he's trying to do a lot of different random things , but that goes back to your original question of like, okay, he wants to make America great . Well , first of all , he doesn't want , he wants to make himself great again. But you know, that's neither here nor there. You're saying, okay, you wanna make America great again. And in his mind, what makes America great is expanding the land. 'cause he wants to get Greenlands, he wants to get Panama Canal. He wants the what ? You don't agree. I

00:36:28.195 --> 00:36:29.155
I see differently. What,

00:36:29.155 --> 00:36:29.715
How do you see it?

00:36:29.954 --> 00:36:51.155
I see it as , uh, he doesn't want to get Panama O okay, let's start with Greenland. He doesn't want to get Greenland as such. He wants to use it for some reasons, which will serve back to America. He doesn't want Canada per se. Yeah . He wants to use Canada for some reasons that he just says like , uh, be our 50 stake , for example, right.

00:36:51.894 --> 00:36:53.474
To have access to Arctic

00:36:54.235 --> 00:37:13.554
Actually Exactly what? To have access to Arctic. So, yeah . Uh , he doesn't want land as such. If you can be our partner, trusted partner that we can have everything without ruling everything, that will be perfect. I don't see that he wants to expand . I he wants to use , uh, external territories for the sake of the,

00:37:14.914 --> 00:41:32.815
Okay, so first of all , that's wrong because he absolutely wants to use 'em for those things. But again, to be generous, the things we already have access to the Arctic A, we have Alaska and you say, oh, well that's not enough. We need to have a Canada and Greenland. Well, first off, we already have an agreement with Greenland where we already have troops there. We basically we're in charge of their, the defense of Greenland. And if we wanna put more troops in Greenland, Denmark is like, yeah, sure you can do that. They're like, there's no upside right now of buying Greenland. If anything, there's a downside because now all the costs are on you right Now we have like to use Trump's like word. We have the best deal with Greenland because we get to put our troops there for essentially for free for nothing. And Denmark pays for it. Like he always talks about, oh, we're America's being screwed 'cause we're doing this and no one's paying for all this. Like, other people should pay for it. That's exactly what we have at Greenland. Denmark's paying has all the problem , all the costs associated with Greenland, and we get to put our troops there for free. Now , one of the reasons why they wanna do this is because there's a lot of minerals and like , uh, oil and gas, you know, nearby the exclusive economic zone, the EZ around Greenland. And that's the main , the main reason why they want to do that. But again, if you're a capitalist, which I'm assuming Americans are, again, maybe you're not a capitalist, you don't agree with this, but we're talking about Trump and you know, the quote Trump, the Maga Americans, you know, they would say, oh yeah, I'm a capitalist. communism. Right? Okay, well if you're a capitalist, then why would you want Greenland? Because the whole point of capitalism is like to do trading and expand like goods and services and use the profit motive so that you can enrich yourself. So if we do more free trade with Greenland, Greenland, and by extension Denmark becomes more powerful, more rich, which means we make do more trade and more back and forth , uh, we can enrich ourselves and we can, all of us can make more and more profit. So as a capitalist, there's no sense in buying Greenland to do that because we can just as easily to trade with Denmark and, and enrich ourselves from that. And same with the thing with Canada, for example. I mean obviously, you know, like Norad, right? That was like the , the thorn in the Soviet Union side is that we have, obviously we have a ridiculously good relationship with Canada. And since the days of like when , um, when Soviet Union launched their first intercontinental ballistic missile, we've developed a system of NORAD where we can use Canada, Americans can use Canada to monitor , uh, what's going on in Russia in the Soviet Union. And also we have access to all the resources that , uh, Canada like our military can go in and operate in Canada. And we can monitor, for example, the submarine activity around the Arctic circle and all that stuff. So we already have access to , to the Arctic. None of this is necessary. And you're saying, oh, well, again, back to your original point , okay, well, well we want to get Canada and uh, Greenland because we wanna expand our territory 'cause that's what's gonna make America great. It's like, okay, fine. From a very narrow perspective, that might be true. But the thing is, the whole hegemony of America is based on the fact that we have this , this new rules-based international order where basically we're not gonna go try to like do wars of conquest and everything like that and everything is gonna be trade. 'cause again, Americans we're like the evil capitalist pig dogs , right? As the Soviet Union would say. So for us is we don't want wars of conquest 'cause that's bad for business. Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, well ask Putin that actually. Yeah , to be fair, he cares about the Russian Empire, right? But yeah, but the thing is, yeah, so it's like as the quote evil capitalist that we are, you know , America, we don't want wars. 'cause wars are bad for business. And if anything, we don't want to buy or conquer Greenland in Canada because all that does is give incentive to our enemies like Russia and China and Iran to destabilize and fight and like try to conquer other lands, which again is ultimately it's bad for business, it's bad for capitalism. So from a very naive and narrow perspective, sure, in the short term it might be good to grab all this stuff, but all that does is upend the international rules-based order, where now everything's back to before World War ii , where hey, we're all like balanced of power and we're all fighting to get more and more land, which is obviously bad for business, bad for capitalism, and America's power is based our major power, you know, source is business. So is he

00:41:32.815 --> 00:41:34.485
Stupid or shortsighted? No, no.

00:41:34.605 --> 00:42:27.925
He , he both, again , like I , the things a lot of people think like, oh, well how do you know? You know, you don't know him or like , but no, but the thing is, like, I specifically myself, I'm a New Yorker, okay? I grew up in New York City and in the eighties and the nineties, I would listen to the , the morning radio. I don't know how it is in like in Russia or even in France right now, but like usually in the morning radio you have like the top 40 music, but then you also have the DJ there and they're usually funny and they have like interviews and talks and everything like that, right? So, and one of the things is like Donald Trump would love to come in and like talk, right? 'cause he was like the New York businessman. Everyone knows him. And he would come in and he was like freaking hilarious. 'cause he, he , he's hilarious 'cause he's stupid. But, but we all loved him because like, he's a moron, but he's funny and he has an opinion on everything. And because it's like, you know, funny morning talk show. We just listened to him and he says like, Hey, he's an idiot, but he's our idiot. So

00:42:28.144 --> 00:42:30.005
That's why America elected him last year.

00:42:30.005 --> 00:42:50.005
Yeah, exactly. But , but like New Yorkers were like, what ? Yeah , I, we acknowledge that . Yeah, he's funny, but he's an idiot. Like he's great to be on a , on a radio talk show, but he is absolutely not the person you want to, you know, be running in charge of anything, not just the business. 'cause again, all his businesses failed, but, but more importantly, the freaking governments. But

00:42:50.005 --> 00:42:52.724
I guess Democrats also would listen to his podcast, right? Uh ,

00:42:53.125 --> 00:42:56.324
Yeah , everyone. 'cause he was , 'cause back then he was considered a Democrat. So why

00:42:56.324 --> 00:42:58.284
Didn't they find somebody to oppose him?

00:42:58.675 --> 00:44:40.525
Well, well, yeah, exactly. That's a good thing. And that goes back to your point here is like, yeah, like what Trump was doing is that hey , he has this plan and he is like in , you know, he's doing everything he can to enact it within the first like a hundred minutes rather than a hundred days. And I think that's comes to the point of , uh, the broader point for America is that Americas have been frustrated that since the 1990s when we were considered like the top of the world, you know, end of history , Soviet Union collapse , America's number one now. And then we've been solely declining. And they're saying like , why isn't anyone doing anything to , to help us? And the Republicans were like, you know, obviously they didn't care 'cause they wanted , they had their own objectives. But the point was the democratic party was supposed to be the party that was supposed to stop this and like actually move things and do things. And they haven't done that. And people have been frustrated and sure you can see and you go look at, obviously I don't support him , but yeah, I'm impressed with the amount of action or noise that he's been doing. Right? And that speaks to a lot of the frustration of Americans is that okay , things, something should be happening. The government should be doing something, but they're not doing it. And the main reason for that is because the Republicans have been purposely hampering the abilities of the government and shoestring hand tying whatever the government so that they can't do it. So therefore the government now is inept because it doesn't have the power to actually do the things that it's supposed to do. And right now what's changed with Trump is that the government still doesn't have the power to do anything because again, like most of the stuff he's saying is noise. But he's doing this boisterous stuff that's making a lot of news press . So people thi a, they think that something's going on, even though it's not happening and the things that are going on are absolutely 100% illegal. Like if you don't care about the legality of things, yeah, of course you could do whatever the hell you want.

00:44:41.065 --> 00:44:43.925
So in the end, there will be no harm for that because , uh, you saying

00:44:44.045 --> 00:44:59.005
No , no , there will be harm because eventually the system is going to break because after so many challenges, were going to be missing things. And then sooner or later the dam is going to break and there's going to be the acceptance of a , uh, the illegality of his actions are going to be considered normal or

00:44:59.204 --> 00:45:05.724
Legal . But hold on , uh, if it's illegal , uh, there is a great court which can , uh, stop it or Well , there brought

00:45:05.925 --> 00:45:15.965
Back . Yeah . Yeah. But as you saw, like, what was it two years ago where they said if the president does it, it's not illegal, which all the lawyers are the entire, like American Bar Association was completely bewildered.

00:45:16.025 --> 00:45:19.244
So the whole system of checks and balance doesn't work in the US right now. Yeah,

00:45:19.505 --> 00:45:20.085
It is gone.

00:45:20.594 --> 00:45:22.085
Okay. Because of, and that's

00:45:22.085 --> 00:45:30.925
The danger because of the, I mean, I would say since, since the days of Reagan, the continual erosion of the state by the Republican party.

00:45:31.275 --> 00:45:34.885
Okay? So whatever happens with Trump is basically the natural

00:45:35.675 --> 00:46:06.635
Yeah. Of making the government quote more efficient. Yeah . Right . Because the government is no longer robust, no longer more resilient. It doesn't have the ability to protect itself. Yeah. And going back to the deficiency thing, right? When you get sick, right? Is your body being efficient by raising its temperature and like putting out all these white blood cells and everything like that? You know, a lot of people when they get sick, they lose weight. That's literally inefficiency. You're burning all these calories that are being stored up, not efficient, but that inefficiency allows your body to fight the infection and recover. Right ?

00:46:07.114 --> 00:46:17.594
I , I , I disagree. Um , I respectfully disagree because uh , if you speak about , uh, getting sick and , uh, raising the , the count , the temperature, the objective of the body is to get , uh, get recovered.

00:46:17.605 --> 00:46:27.125
Right? But that's not efficient though. Why? Well, you're literally creating heat. Heat, ah , heat . Heat scientifically is the measure of inefficiency.

00:46:27.635 --> 00:46:33.724
Well, depending on the metrics. So you want to get recovered and that's why spending energy is efficient.

00:46:34.344 --> 00:47:42.405
That's the system. But the process, the process of heating up the defeat the virus, that itself is efficient. But yes , when you're looking at the pure concept of efficiency of the human body, when you burn calories, you wanna burn the minimum . If feel like you're talking about you wanna be super efficient, you wanna burn the least amount of calories, but by definition, by fighting an infection, you're burning more calories than you'd normally do. So by the strict definition, that's not efficient. Now the fact that you're saying that's a ridiculous statement, what you just said, even though it's 100% true, it's still ridiculous. Right. And that's exactly what I'm trying to say here. You're absolutely right to say that's a ridiculous statement. And what I'm trying to show you is that with the government, that's also , it's equally a ridiculous statement. The point is, you don't want the body to be quote efficient when you're fighting affection. 'cause it needs to be resilient and robust to survive. And you don't want a government to be efficient either the , the systems that is because you want it to be able to survive. And by slashing the government, what the Republicans have doing since the days of Reagan is that the government no longer has the means to be able to fight against, you know, this undermining of itself of the Constitution. And now we're starting to see the beginnings of the failure.

00:47:43.505 --> 00:47:46.525
We don't have much time left, I believe, but now I understand you

00:47:46.644 --> 00:47:48.844
Can say that something like, oh , this cheerful note ,

00:47:49.465 --> 00:48:04.885
But now I understand why Alex Friedman is spending five hours just to do the adverts of a drink. Uh , because basically after one hour, you're just getting into the feeling of , uh, the notion of the conversation, the , the , the meaning of the conversation. Yeah.

00:48:04.885 --> 00:48:14.764
And we haven't even discussed the concept of the Absolutely. The legislative versus executive and what that mean exactly. Because there's a difference between Europeans. I mean, should we just continue until we get kicked out ?

00:48:15.565 --> 00:48:16.724
No , I need some sort of closure

00:48:16.724 --> 00:48:46.425
Remarks. I definitely have , uh, my opinion on the closure. So , uh, first of all, thanks very much for , uh, spending this time. Yeah , of course. I, it was a surprise for me and I, I never discussed it with anyone that, I never pronounced it, that running the state and running the enterprise in my head were absolutely common things. I mean , uh, in , in terms of efficiency. Now you brought the seed of , uh, I'm not quite sure about that right now, so I I'll have to rethink

00:48:46.425 --> 00:48:47.545
It. Yeah , of course. Sorry , afterwards,

00:48:48.114 --> 00:49:02.824
First, second you mentioned that 800 pages, which I will definitely have to at least scan through just to understand , uh, what is it about. Yeah . And the third thing is that we definitely need to continue this conversation because we haven't , uh, touched base on quite a lot of things.

00:49:03.375 --> 00:49:32.425
Yeah, absolutely. So forth . And next time on, give these people air . If you would like to comment on this podcast or on the topics covered within it, or you'd like us to raise a new topic in our next episode, please feel free to leave us a message or voicemail on www.co bsm.com . That's charlie oscar delta bravo sierra mike.com . Thank you for listening and see you at the potty, Rick ,

00:49:32.664 --> 00:49:32.664
The .