Hi, I'm Kim Mullenix, a beef cattle extension specialist at Auburn University, and today I wanted to share some success stories of using temporary electric fencing on producer farms in Alabama as well as share some experiences regarding our use of temporary electric fencing on our research station farms. First I wanted to go over some examples of using temporary electric fencing at our research center operations around the state. The first of those is the EV Smith beef unit. This is located in central Alabama and we have a cow herd there that's about 200 head. And so every winter we typically plant winter annuals but they also feed hay and supplement during the early part of the winter as well. So this year we started a demonstration project with our station managers there looking at bale grazing or essentially where the bales of hay are set out in the pasture and a group of animals is given access to a bale at a time using temporary electric fence to separate each bale in the field. So what this does is obviously this past winter it was very wet conditions as you can see in the photo. Historically this particular pasture area is very muddy because it is located very close to a river area and it accumulates water and it tends to get muddy with the entry of the tractor in and out of the pasture putting out hay in the winter. So instead we decided to try this bale grazing approach where all of the bales were set out prior to the start of the feeding season and this group of about 20 heifers was then sequentially moved from bale to bale as they went through a single bale at a time. So what this did is it saved from a labor standpoint of having to go in daily to feed that group of animals but also it really decreased the amount of mud in the area because we were able to not have as much traffic going in and out of the pasture. If we look at a closer look of how did we use temporary electric fencing to separate that area off basically we just ran that polywire off of the permanent fence and gave the animals access to one single hay bale at a time and we were able to do this by just moving that tape across the field periodically over the season. One thing we also looked at as part of this demonstration is how did the overall quality of these bales change during the period that we were bale grazing them and we were started out with a fairly low quality warm season forage product that we were feeding at the time but from the time that we did this demonstration which was from roughly December through February there was only about a one percentage point decrease in terms of digestible energy of that forage as well as crude protein value of the forage. Our next example is at the Wiregrass Research and Extension Center which is located in Hedlin, Alabama in the southeastern corner of the state. At this station we do a lot of work with grazing cool season annual forages and this is really part of a cover cropping system that we have there at the center so this particular station is located in the heart of a strong row crop agricultural area and whenever those row crops are not being grown in the winter months they plant cool season annuals in these areas and we graze those for research projects. So this year we started a cover crop grazing trial looking at what is the appropriate length of time that we should graze cattle on cover crops and what impact does grazing have on overall cover crop biomass production as well as overall row crop production subsequent seasons and so in the photo here this is just an image of what that project looked like this winter but you can see that this row crop field that we planted in cool season annuals has now been split into several smaller paddocks for our study primarily using temporary electric fence. We typically have a contract with a local producer to bring in stocker cattle to graze these forages as part of our cover crop test and whenever we do that we essentially have to bring those animals in and train them to get used to using the temporary electric fence system. Most of them have never been exposed to that before and so essentially we would frame up a pin made out of temporary electric fencing material that looks a lot like this and feed those animals in that pin area for a period of time get them used to being around the electric wire and around people by that feeding period and then turn them out onto our research project where we have the temporary electric fence separating each of the individual paddocks so we do have a bit of an acclimation phase for those cattle who have never been around temporary electric fencing before but once they acclimate it's a great system and it allows us a lot of flexibility to be able to section off these larger fields into smaller bites for our research purposes. We've also used temporary electric fencing at this station to forward graze stockpiled forages this photo is a picture of a stockpiled Bermuda grass trial that we've conducted at the station and you can see the temporary electric fence going across the paddock area and we just move that fence forward to be able to provide about two to three days worth of grazing for those grazing animals. By this approach we're able to still give those animals access to water. There is no back fence here so the animals simply just have to walk back to that water and then continue to move forward as they're allocated new sections of forage. So what this does is it really improves our overall forage utilization of these stockpiled forages because we're decreasing, trampling, and decreasing how selective we can let our animals be as compared to if they just had free choice access to this whole pasture of standing forage. In the last year we've started a demonstration program in collaboration with NRCS where we purchase what we call several grazing kits or basically a starter kit that has the items that you would need to try temporary electric fencing on your farm on a small scale basis. And so we put together just a basic kit that has several different components mainly including posts, polywire, a geared reel, the solar charger, a fault finder as well as a ground rod. With the idea being that we wanted to give these kits to some producers that have not used temporary electric fencing in the past and then be able to go out to those producers' farms to show them how to use the kit appropriately and then collect some information about their experiences with using the kit over time. So we started that program in fall of 2018 and we are tracking through this spring of 2019 collecting some information back from those producers. But I wanted to just give you a couple of examples of some success stories as part of that program. The first is we have a producer in Walker County where we looked at doing an on-farm demo. He has 36 cows, they were around 1,100 pounds each, and he used his temporary electric fencing kit to be able to forward graze an area that was planted in annual ryegrass. So this is a photo of that annual ryegrass field. It was about 13 acres in size. And we actually did a program with that producer where we invited other producers to his farm and we estimated how many days of grazing would we be able to get out of this 13 acre field whenever we are using temporary fencing to section off the forage for the animals versus if we were just to turn them out and let them have continuous access to the pasture. So on that particular day of the program, which was around mid-March, we estimated that there was 17 days of grazing by using this fence to allocate them small sections of the pasture at a time versus if they had continuous access under continuous stocking, which would have provided about 11 days of grazing at the time. So again, this was just on that particular day we were able to get that estimate, but we know that this forage was really actively growing because March is the time period we would expect that annual ryegrass to take off and really start to be productive. And because of that, he would have certainly been able to get more grazing days out of that particular area. But it goes to illustrate again that the temporary electric fencing kit was able to help him improve his forage utilization in that field and therefore get more grazing days per year out of it. Also, we asked him about his experiences in terms of how long did it take him to move the fence to be able to provide a new section of grazing for his animals. And he indicated that it actually saved him time relative to if he had been feeding hay. So it took him about 30 minutes to put out the temporary fence and move it to a new location in the pasture to provide a new section of grazing versus what he said would be typically about 45 minutes if he had to bring a roll of hay out to those cows in that field to feed them on a daily basis during the winter. Another on farm demonstration in Talapusa County, this one was a little bit larger acreage. The fence was used on a 40 acre piece of property, and there were 36 cow calf pairs grazing that area. So this particular demonstration site, the producer was using the kit to graze stockpiled tall fescue. So much like the photo I showed you of the stockpiled Bermuda grass where we had the fence where we were forward grazing that. This is the strategy that this producer was using on stockpiled fescue. And by doing that, he was able to get about 55 days of grazing on his stockpiled tall fescue compared to more like 30 to 35 great days of grazing if he had given them continuous access to the area. Some other comments that this producer noted was that it added flexibility to his system. He could alter the number of grazing days being allocated to the cattle. So maybe one day he would give them a three days worth of allocation, but he could also use the fence to give them five days worth if he was not able to get back to them as frequently as he wanted to. So it gives us some flexibility then to be able to allocate them the needs based on our labor needs as well. Just a few more examples of some other on-farm success stories. This is a producer farm located in northern Alabama. And this was a picture that he sent me in November of 2018 of an annual ryegrass field that had been planted in September on a prepared seedbed. And you can see that, number one, there's a lot of growth of that annual ryegrass that occurred by planting that on a timely basis, which allowed him to have early winter grazing. But then number two, he was also looking at ways that he could really extend the use of this annual ryegrass. And so he had started by trying to forward graze that annual ryegrass. But then later he used his temporary fence as really an access point to allow cattle to go in and limit graze that field. So by limit grazing, he essentially gave them access to the field for a few hours each day, would turn them onto the pasture and then turn them off later in the day to just give them kind of a short period of access to that high quality forage. So by doing both of those practices, he was able to better extend the use of this annual ryegrass during that early winter period when he typically was facing a forage gap. Some challenges and comments that we've seen from producers as part of this program is just really, if they've never done it before, it's trying to learn how to use the kit efficiently and getting used to moving that system. What is the most efficient way to do that? And that's going to really depend on farm to farm and the field conditions at hand. So just that learning curve, I think, is kind of the first step in moving forward with temporary electric fencing on the farm. Also, like Kent mentioned in the earlier part of the webinar, under dry conditions, it makes it a bit harder to move those posts and kind of decreases the flexibility associated with this system. And then really the third piece of information we got back is that from our kits that we distributed that only had one reel and one wire, producers were interested in maybe having another reel and another wire, again, to have something to increase the flexibility of how they set up that system in the field. So although that is a challenge, I think it's also a testimony of how that system was working for these producers and they wanted to try to have more additions to those kits to provide greater flexibility. So with that, if you would like additional information on this topic related to temporary electric fencing, we would encourage you to visit our website, which is alabamabeefsystems.com, for additional information on how temporary fencing can be used on your farm.


The shitty versus BAM decision was about whether the elected Board of Regents should have the power to change admissions decisions at public universities at Michigan. The lower courts had said that boards of regents who were elected to make decisions about university policy were the right people to make decisions about affirmative action. But the Supreme Court decided that citizens of Michigan through the referendum process were able to say that they wanted universities to abide by matters of principle no matter what else the universities thought were important. When race or gender obscures talents then organizations can't select the right people and those organizations don't get the kind of talent that they would benefit from. So affirmative action doesn't really help the cause of racial justice as much as it helps those organizations who would have a lesser group of talent than they would otherwise have if they didn't use affirmative action. Racial equality and affirmative action are different. One does not necessarily bring about the other but that doesn't mean affirmative action isn't important. It's important for a specific and limited purpose to create strong organizations that recruit the best people. The Supreme Court's decision is the last word on Michigan's constitutional amendment. There won't be any other court cases and the University of Michigan and other Michigan universities will now not be able to use affirmative action as they have not been using it since the amendment was passed in 2006.


Hello students, welcome to today's live stream. I am Robin Shaw, your English teacher. I hope to help you study English. If you have any questions, let me know. And of course, let me know that you can hear me and see me. That would help. Some other settings. Alright, let's check the chat room. Lots of people here. Layla and Fayaz. Shike. I don't know how to pronounce your last name. Sorry. Sleepwalkers here. Kavino. That's it. I don't see anyone else. There should be a few more people here. If you're here watching, let me know. Dewey. Alright. I'm assuming you can hear and see me. Alright, if you have any questions, let me know. Start getting those questions in. That's why we're here. I hope you're out with your English. I had a very active day. I was filming today a little bit with a teacher from South Africa. And we were filming in the morning. We filmed for about five hours. And that's a tough day for me to film five hours. It was exhausting. And we didn't finish all the filming we wanted to film today, but we did finish a lot. Hello, Lolly Lolly. Thank you, Layla. I can hear you and see you. Layla, I can read you. I cannot see you. Sleepwalker and Layla, I usually don't like to tell personal info on chats, Layla. Well, Sleepwalker, I know I understand the need for privacy, Sleepwalker. Sleepwalker, you're causing some frustration, Sleepwalker, because Sleepwalker, we have known you for years. We have talked to you for years.  And naturally, Sleepwalker, we want to get to know you better and we want to talk to you more as a friend. So, you know, Layla asks a question and I want to ask you questions and I hope to talk to you more. But, you know, we really don't have any opportunity to talk to you other than this chat. So, Sleepwalker, help us to be your friend. We want to talk to you. We want to engage you more. If you don't want that, okay, but we're very sad.  So, I understand Layla's curiosity because Layla likes you and wants to be more friendly with you as I do and probably other people. Okay. Hello, my name is Fayaz. Okay, welcome. Rita. Hello, I'm doing well today. I was a little bit dizzy in the morning, but I'm okay now.  I'm seeing these days once or twice a day. And Layla has her questions. Let's take a look at Layla's question and we will go to our digital whiteboard. Here, I'll get rid of my comments. Post, I only have two monitors today. One of my monitor cables broke. I know I'm complaining. I only have two monitors, but with three monitors, two big ones and one small one. That's really easy to do things. All right. So, the question, when I get a pain in my teeth, which one of the following two sentences make more sense? Okay, let's take a look. My teeth hurt or my teeth hurt me? Hmm. I think the best sentence is just my teeth hurt, but certainly you're going, you're going to hear native speakers when they're speaking say, oh, my teeth hurt me, but probably just my teeth hurt this best, but certainly you might hear this. So, I'm going to say this is the best, but this is possible. All right. Let's check the questions. Sleepwalker, I understand. I have a degree in psychology graduated from the university, but Sleepwalker, we want to know all your deep private secrets and details of your life and all your, all the things causing you stress and we want to be a part of your life. I know you can't tell that stuff here, but hopefully one day we can find a place where we can chat and no more, no, no more about each other. Like, you don't know everything about me on a live stream. I don't tell everything on the live stream. I got lots of background stories happening in my life. Kavino, hey, Robinson, we were chatting during this week and today, yes, Kavino, you are in the group. And yeah, keep, keep, keep participating, but please follow the rules. And Sleepwalker has a question. Let's take a look at Sleepwalkers. I'm pleased. Let's fix this. I'm pleased with your work. Mm-hmm. I'm pleased by your words. Okay. With, oh, it's one of these questions you're, you're, you're looking at with, let's highlight and by. Let's highlight. With, by, are both correct or is there a rule? A rule. I'm satisfied. Okay. Got another example here. And I'm getting scared of this question because it might be difficult. I'm pleased with your work. I'm pleased by your work. I'm drinking peach tea today if you're curious and I'm sure you're not curious. You're more curious about the answer to the question. And I'm going to cheat here because I want to check if there is a rule. All right. The rule is suggesting that with is the correct answer. Let's put it green, I guess. That doesn't mean native speakers follow these rules. There's probably confusion and because native speakers like me continually use with and by, which doesn't mean we're correct. It just means we will probably use both. But it seems the rule is more for actions. We're going to use with and pleased by your words. Yeah. Both this could look actually the rules don't make sense. She asked a good question, but I'm not the teacher to tell you. I'm trying to read the rules very fast and I'm a fast reader. All right. Another, another one says I'm pleased by your work, but actually I read two articles about with and by and they both seem to contradict each other. So is there a rule there might be a really there might be a rule? I'm sure there's a rule somewhere, but every grammatical rule, there are exceptions. I cannot go through every situation, the thousands of different situations in my mind. From what I know, yeah, sometimes we're going to use with sometimes we're going to be used by, but sometimes we native speakers will use both. This one I'm satisfied with seems more natural to me depending on what you're saying. Sorry, sleepwalker. I cannot give you I know you're looking I want the exact answer the exact rule. I don't know. I'm not I don't know the answer to that question exactly. Perhaps another teacher. I don't know any grammar teacher usually native speakers are terrible grammar teacher teachers. You got me on that one sleepwalker one point for sleepwalker. All right, sorry, sleepwalker. I have to move off. Do we teach a Robin? May I know how's life in Canada life? If how? Okay, let's fix up your question. How's life in Canada? You got life twice. You don't need life twice compared to Korea. All right, that is a question. So let's put a question mark. And Korean Korean which is more expensive. You don't need to use spend because expensive already means using money which is more expensive. Okay, how's life in Canada compared to Korea, which is more expensive for living. All right, now this, this is an easier question. Sleepwalkers question. But I do like sleepwalkers questions. So don't stop life in Canada. I haven't lived in Canada for over 20 years. So it's been a long time. But life in Canada is more, more social, of course, I would say meaning if, if I was living in Canada, I would be able to talk to and engage people, strangers, shop clerks more. And so that people are friendlier in Canada than Korea. Now Koreans can be friendly, but as strangers Koreans really don't really talk to strangers or not they're not so open to strangers and I understand that but Canadians are more open to immediately talking to strangers. So I miss that about Canada that I can be more social with strangers and wherever I could go, wherever I can go, I could talk to people. Also, there's a language barrier here. So in Canada is fun. You know, there's a lot of nature in Canada, you can go camping, you can go to the lake, you can go many places outdoors in Canada. But it is cold in the winter. Korea, Korea is a very safe country. But Korea is more about working, making money. That is really the focus here, making money, saving money. Whereas in Canada, the focus might be more on living, enjoying yourself. But not so much in Korea. That's my opinion. If you talk to another native speaker or Korean, you're going to get a different answer, which is more expensive for living. Canada is more expensive.  They are expensive. They are very expensive. Whether you're just living, eating, going to school, using public transportation, everything is expensive. It's really expensive to live in highly developed countries. There's high tax rates and just everything is expensive. So Korea is a lot cheaper. I'm in Korea because I can save more money than if I was in Canada. All right. I answered enough for that. So thank you for the question. I'm going to move on. And Leilas, how have you broken the third monitor? Well, I didn't break the third monitor because I was moving around my studio. I broke the cable as I was moving around. So I just ordered a new cable, which was about $6. So that'll come probably tomorrow. Not a big, not a big problem at all. Okay. A glass of chilled, fresh cold beer. Which adjective is better to use? Thanks. Well, they're all great to use. I'm not going to choose the best one because, you know, the beauty of English is that we have so many ways to express. And you might be thinking, well, you might be thinking how would a native speaker express it, or the most common way to express it? And all of these are, I'm going to say, common and a beautiful way to express it. I have a glass of chilled beer. I have a glass of fresh beer. I have a glass of cold beer. Of course, chilled and cold are more synonyms. Fresh is more of the feeling and the taste. All of them work great. I'm not going to choose which is the best one. Yay, Ning. Hello. Welcome. Okay, sleepwalker. I share your struggle with, with or by. That might be something I do in a future video, but that is something I would really need to prepare. That would take, when I prepare those kind of videos, that usually takes two or three hours of research before I, they understand them fully. I might do that. Oh, that's a, that's a tough one. All right, Leila's got some tag questions. Let's take a look. You, these are, these are called tag questions. So that means they're going to go at the end of the sentence. And she wrote some examples here. So let's take a look.  That looks good. I'm an English, I'm an English student. And yeah, am I not? We would say am I not? Or aren't I? You haven't watched my last video have you? Okay, you teach English. Don't you? Yeah. She's at home, isn't she? Yeah. So I'm an English student. Am I not? So this one's a little strange. I'm an English student. I want to say aren't I, but I might be wrong. I'm going to check that. I'm right. This one's special. Let's put it, give it a special color purple. All right. So these are good tag questions. You're you, let's use a contraction.  Because we have our we have our not you. That's how you make the tag comma here. Yeah, we need that comma for tag question. And this one's special with I am I'm an English student, student aren't I? Although we have am, we do use aren't. I don't know why don't ask me, that's just what we do. You had I'm an English student. Am I not? I think that's possible. It's just not common. You haven't watched my last video have you? It's a good one. You teach English, don't you? Yes. That's correct. And she's at home. Isn't she? Yeah, that's correct to those. So those are all good tag questions. All right. Farida has a question here. Well, we got this underlying option a I'm glad you're okay option B. I'm glad that you're okay. Which one is correct? Both are okay. Again, you're using that here. There might be a rule I don't know the rule. Most native speakers are not going to know this rule. But both of them are correct. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad that you're okay. Both are fine. Robin the expression I'm smitten. Should we use it only towards people or is it okay to say I'm smitten with these pictures? My initial reaction is no. And I'm going to go to Euglish. And this is how I, you know, there's so many different ways to express English.  So looking at Euglish, they're going to take samples. I'm smitten with the girl. So that's a person. I own the water. I'm smitten with my, oh, that doesn't have my smitten with. Traction business and, you know, with my dad and it was funny because we're here. Oh, there's only one. There's not even enough examples of I'm smitten with. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. Now, I'm going to say, should we use it only? Okay, so should we use it only towards people? Yes. And I guess I should tell you guys, you can say I'm smitten with and you can say, switten by. Going back to your old question, some people say I'm smitten with and some people say I'm smitten by and just to catch people up, smitten with or by would mean deeply affected with or struck by strong feelings of attraction. So if you're smitten by someone, yeah, you have, oh, you're deeply something suddenly attracted to someone. So you're most of the time you're smitten with people, you're attracted to them. And sleepwalkers act asking, can you be smitten to a picture? Technically, you can make that sentence, but a native speaker wouldn't use that. So yeah, to quickly answer. I know that's this is not a quick answer, but to answer only people. And you could use with or by why I don't know, and Kovino. Sorry, I've heard that a word like busted. When a native speaker was speaking with a person, he was saying my phone and radio have busted. Okay. I don't know whether I've heard that phrase before. So that is a dictionary word, Kovino. And I just go to the Oxford Oxford learners dictionary and you just put the verb bust. And right there, it says bust something to break something. So Kovino, if you do not understand a word before you ask me, check the dictionary because I'm not a dictionary, right? So these in the future is right in the Oxford dictionary to break something. So my phone and radio have busted. That would mean my phone and radio have their broken, broken bust. Let's take a look. When we got the time for lunch, which one is sentence correct? Should we say did you have time for lunch? Well, okay. These are different tenses. Did you have lunch? Do you have lunch? You're asking questions. So this is a past tense. So you would put a, did you have lunch yesterday? You're asking someone, do you have lunch? Do you have lunch? So this is present tense. Do you have lunch now? Do you have time? You might ask someone, do you have time for lunch? But the question if they're eating lunch now is are you eating present continuous lunch now? Because it's right now we want to use present continuous. So this is past tense. Did you have lunch yesterday? You want to talk, you're asking about the past or did you have lunch yet? You might ask someone, did you have lunch yet to your coworker? Meaning did they eat lunch? And if you want to ask them about the future, do you have time for lunch? Or right now, do you have time for lunch? Let's go to lunch. I'm not sure if this helps you. If it doesn't, please be more specific. I have seen a heart rendered accident on the way. Ooh, what's this? Covino. I have seen a heart rendered accident on the way. Got the meaning of heart rendered from the dictionary. But I need to correct it, sir. Heart, what are you reading? Heart rendered accident? I don't even know. What are you reading? What is this from? Yeah, I don't I need to know where this is coming from. You have this in capital letters. So I'm confused. So Covino, you got to give me more information where you saw this. Where did you read that? Yeah, but yeah, this is the word they use when you talk to and describe the barking dogs around the list of sounds from the group, isn't it? Because I heard. So Layla. In the WhatsApp group, we have a WhatsApp group. If you want to get into that secret WhatsApp group, not everyone's loud. You've got to send me a message or talk to me and I'll let you in the secret WhatsApp group. Layla, I have a rule in the group. And so so if Robin talks to student A or here, student B asks questions about the conversation. I do not answer. So Layla, what does that mean? So Layla, when I talk to you about something in WhatsApp, so maybe I'm talking to you about the weather. So Layla, I say to you in the group, hey, Layla, and we're having a conversation about the weather. So you're your student A, Layla, and student B will say Michelle. He's not here today. So we won't pick on Michelle. We'll pick on who's here from the group. Who's here for the group? Just you Layla's here from the group. Okay, we'll just use Sleepwalker. Well, Sleepwalker's not in the group. All right, I'll go back to Michelle. Michelle asks questions about the conversation. So if I'm talking to you Layla in the group, and we're having a conversation, and another student starts, another student doesn't understand our conversation. So the other student starts asking questions I don't answer. So because I talk to you Layla at your level, and I talk to other students at their level. And then other students can feed and watch, but if they're asking, if they don't understand the conversation, and they're asking questions, I don't answer those questions. So you'll notice you asked about the YAPITY question I didn't answer. And also Grace asked some questions I didn't answer. And you students might think, oh, Robin's rude or Robin missed the question. It's just the way I am. I don't want to, every time I have a conversation with you, or with Alyssa, or with Grace, I don't want to explain it to the other students. I don't want to always be explaining the conversation. So what's the answer to your question? Yep. Yep. I don't remember what I said. Let's let's just quickly go. Well, I went to the dictionary. I typed, I typed in YAP and you know, it's a dictionary word YAP, a high sharp noise made by small dogs that some people find annoying. So YAP, noisy dog, which was part of the part of the conversation I had with Alyssa. My English is getting better day by day. I hope you test me one day. So yeah, this is this is good work. This is good news. I hope everyone here, your English is getting better day by day. That's what I like to hear. Keep going. We, Anna, was that Anna? Is that Anna from Costa Rica? Hello there, Costa Rica here. Welcome. Say, Parker, I know they're again, both versions with by Justin Nask. Okay. Casio. Hello. All right. What then is the equivalent of the phrase, I am smitten for things, not people. I'm amazed by these pictures. Sounds good. Yeah. I'm here's a good one. Captivated. Captivated. Here we everyone listen up. We've got a new vocabulary word. It is a great word in a steel. Let's highlight it. Captivate to keep and that mean captivate to keep someone's attention by being interesting attractive. So if you're captivated by something, you're really attracted to it.  You are captivated now. You're all watching. So things like a movie, pictures, scenery, these things can be, oh, you're watching them. You are captivated. So I hope that's a good word for you sleepwalker. If it isn't the word you're looking for, well, at least you learned captivated. I think that's a good word to use for that situation. All right, Leila, what's I found this phrase? What's on what's on this afternoon? Okay. Could it be what happened? Well, no, it can't be what happened because this is past tense. And it's not asking about the past. So it's more of what will happen this afternoon, future, or what's, what's happening? Let's use the same grammar. What's happening this afternoon? So it's more of a future question. So what's on this afternoon? Yeah, common, you should know it, but this is mainly a spoken phrase, English expression. And what's on this afternoon? What's going on? What's happening this afternoon? Or what kind of events are happening this afternoon? Okay. Or read. Oh, for read is also from the group. Yeah, that's right. Do we any other groups because I'm still living in the oldest group Robin? I'm going to check where is we think you're in that group. There's just the if Leila's in the group, you're in the group. Oh, thank you. All right, do we as a question here, teacher Robin? That's me. Which which is which is which one is correct? You and I or you and me. But I guess the correct one is you and me. But when I listen, a song key point here, I heard that you use you and I. Well, both are going to be used. You and I, you and me. Which one is technically correct? Let's take a look. Put a good example. These are just examples from the internet. Let's highlight. So you and I, you and me, both native speakers are going to use both. So I wouldn't worry about it. But here, if we look down here, if the subject of the sentence is you and I, I use you and I, if that's a subject, so you and I are going to be late. If the subject is something else, Harold watched you and me. Okay, so that's the rule. Do native speakers follow this rule? No. So you, you might hear a native speaker say you and me. Well, probably they're not going to break this one. But they will probably break this one. Harold watched you and I. So a native speaker will probably break this one and say you and I, it's wrong, but native speakers are going to do it. And you and I, so it depends what the subject of the sentence is. All right. Anyway, I want to talk about songs quickly. English in songs. We'll title this. I'll give a quick essay. All right. So when you're listening to songs, songs are using all kinds of English. And it's not always grammatically correct. It's not always, you know, common expressions. And sometimes it's new poetic expressions that only that singer uses in the song. It's not common. It's just in the song. So songs are great for practicing your listening.  Okay. So if you hear something that sounds like a grammar mistake in a song, it probably is a grammar mistake. Don't copy the grammar from a song. It's great for listening. Do not learn grammar from a song. Dewey. Yes, teacher. I'm still with Layla and Jonathan too. Well, Dewey, you're not so active, so it's hard to remember. You're even there. Please be more active. Ro, hit, Tinku. Hello. Cavino. I missed your question. Okay. I'll go back. What was your question? I don't see a question. I read your comments. I read all the comments, but if it's not a question. Yeah, I read your comments, Cavino, but I don't see a question. If there's a question, retype the question. Yeah, sleepwalker. They often break grammar rules in songs for rhymes. Yes. All right. Cavino has something here. Cavino. It would be a fantastic motivation in the future. This is what the sentence that I had mentioned earlier. Is it true? I don't understand the question, Cavino. I'm going to go back to heart rendered. So I've seen a heart rendered accident on the way. I don't understand this. It would be fantastic motivation in the future. So again, I don't understand this heart rendered accident. So you got to explain it a little more. Part of learning English is how to learn how to ask the question. Layla, I don't remember what I said to exactly what I said. Yappityap. I don't remember exactly. All right. Rohit Tinku. Okay, let's take a look. Sir, what is the difference between these? Number one, there is a man at the door. Number two, there is some man at the door. Okay, interesting question. What's the difference? Basically, they mean the same thing. You have a door. There's a man. Now, there is a man at the door. You are just stating a fact. There is a man, a door, no other information, nothing negative, nothing positive. There's no, we say connotation. But number two, there is some man at the door. This is a little more negative because this man is unexpected. And maybe he's annoying you or you don't really want him at the door or you don't know why he's at the door. So there is some man at the door, just stating the fact. But if I said there is some man at the door, it's a little bit negative. Like I don't want him there. I don't know why he's there. Go check out why he's there. Hope that helps. Kavino, you can ask in the group any questions. Could I say to my friend, you are dopey? No. No, your friend doesn't, that's a negative word.   Probably not. Unless it's just a joke. But don't say that to your friend. Oh, I get it. Don't learn a grammar from a song. Yes, please. Because I thought I could get new vocabularies from songs. Yeah, there's vocabulary to learn, but the grammar, no, no, no, no, no. And we talked about songs a lot here before because songs use a lot of the word ain't. If you listen to a lot of American pop, hip hop, even R&B, they're gonna use a lot of the word ain't. Very common in songs. Ain't. But I don't like the word ain't. I don't want my students using the word ain't. It's very common in the songs. But for speaking, just normal everyday speaking, don't use ain't. It's more common just in songs. Gwee, heart rendering isn't in a harmless, I don't know what heart rendering is. Palavi, how do I read my, how do I improve my vocabulary? Palavi, you don't like this answer. The best, most efficient way to improve your vocabulary is read every day. Do nuts. You know, it frustrates me so much because every day I see students studying vocabulary lists. English is a science. English is a science. Or how to learn English is a science. What does that mean? Researchers have studied which methods are best to learn grammar, learn vocabulary, practice speaking. There's research. They've studied this. It's a science. The research shows vocabulary lists memorizing, you know, in Korea they try to memorize 100 new vocabulary every day, the students. The memorizing vocabulary lists help you in the short term. So if you need to write a test next week, yeah, memorizing a vocabulary list is very helpful. But to actually acquire new vocabulary, you need exposure to those words in real situations, whether you're listening or watching videos or reading books. You got to do a lot. And you're going to hear that vocabulary, how it's used multiple times. You're going to learn it. You're going to acquire it. And then you're going to use it to get the exposure you have to read. In 2022, nobody wants to read. I think this is a problem with the cell phone culture. Books are not so common anymore. Reading that sort of reading of paper books or even reading books on the screen. I'm going down. People's attention, not enough to read books of 300, 400 pages. That is the best way. Whether you like it or not, reading is the best way to improve your vocabulary. But you're not going to read. So what are some other ways to improve your vocabulary? Well, instead of reading books, yeah, you can read Instagram posts, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, shorter posts, shorter passages to read, read those, go on Twitter, start reading, go on Facebook, go on Instagram, read there. But that's not the best way, but that's a way. But do not study vocabulary lists because going back to the research, they researched one group of students who studied vocabulary lists and researched another group of students who read books. So the group of students who studied the vocabulary lists, after two weeks, their vocabulary was better than the students who read books. After one year, students who read books vocabulary was far superior, far superior than the students who used vocabulary lists. So if in the short term, if you have a test tomorrow, study the vocabulary list. But if you actually want to improve your English, read the dictionary I use. It's just the Oxford Learner's Dictionary. I'll try to get a close up next time I use it. It's just the Oxford Learner's Dictionary. That's the best dictionary in the world, or Cambridge. And Sleepwalker is going to come in with some wisdom. Life goes faster. Everyone is busy. Reading books takes a lot of time. So people need less. And that is right. Even I read less. But if you if if I'm learning a language I would read if I wanted to if I if today I decided I'm going to learn German, I don't know any German. But if today I decided I'm going to learn German, German, I'm going to master German. The first thing I would do is start learning the basic words. And once I got the basic words, I would immediately go to children's books and start reading, reading and reading and reading. If if I'm really serious about learning German, I would focus on reading. And of course, just listening and speaking and writing, you have to do it all. But to really get exposure and acquire the language, reading row hit, please tell me the difference between these well, okay, let's take a look. There's a pair of socks missing. There's a couple of socks missing. We are always going to use a pair of socks. So this is correct. Let's use green. We are not going to use there are a couple of socks missing. Now you could say there's a couple to we would actually say two pairs of socks missing that is possible. We wouldn't say a couple we would say there's two pairs. So your one pair is two socks and another pair is two socks. So you could have two pairs missing. But if there's just one pair, we're just using this. There's a pair of socks missing. We're going to use this expression not the other Tolstoy. Okay, Frida just get other content is great. I know books are the best, but other content, great, whatever you can do, do it. Right. I'm going to finish up the live stream now. Thank you everyone for participating today. Let's go back to the main screen. Camera's close. Maybe I should move this back a little. If you're new today, welcome. Let's move this front of me. Hopefully I'll get my monitor cable tomorrow. We have a lot of interesting questions today. Thank you very much for your support. And I will see you next week. Same time. Sunday, 1330 London time. And I don't know what else to say. Thank you guys and see you again.


Swedish historian Johan Norberg is the author of The Capitalist Manifesto, why the global free market will save the world. Which caught the eye of Elon Musk, who recently tweeted, This book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right. Norberg wrote the book to combat a growing belief on the right and the left that libertarian values of individual autonomy, property rights, limited government, and free enterprise are failing to raise living standards and need to be ditched in favor of more centralized power and control over virtually all aspects of our lives. A senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Norberg shows that life is actually getting better for all of us, especially the world's poor, and that economic globalization, political liberalization, and cultural freedom are the main drivers of improvement. Johan Norberg, thanks for talking to me. Pleasure is all mine. First off, let's start. What's the elevator pitch? Or do Swedes call it the lift in English? What do you go with? Is it a lift or an elevator? We call it a hiss. A hiss. Okay. What is the hiss pitch for The Capitalist Manifesto? The hiss pitch is that we have wide discontent with capitalism and free markets and free trade, it seems like. Politicians on all continents have all agreed that we need to repatriate production, redistribute resources that inequality and global warming shows us that free markets doesn't work. My point is that on each of, in every area, free markets, entrepreneurs, innovators have performed spectacularly well, and that most of these things have been misunderstood.  Let's start by talking about, it was like about 20 years ago that you and I, I think, first talked and you were pushing a book called Indefensive Global Capitalism. Kind of sketch out, what were the circumstances that that book needed to be manifested? Well they were the same as they are today. Politicians and interest groups blamed global capitalism and free trade for all the problems of the world. Like then a leftist current of anti-globalization and reducing free trade around the world. And I thought I had to gather the argument because I thought that was, I was seeing around the world was that the very countries that began to integrate into the global economy, they did better than they had ever done before. Technology was decreasing, opportunities were improving, and cutting them off from globalization would destroy that. Yeah, what were the big arguments emanating? And I mean it was, I guess it was center and the center, from the center going towards the left especially. The right wing seemed to be, at least in America, was broadly supportive of globalization and trade. George H.W. Bush had started NAFTA. Bill Clinton, who was a centrist Democrat, finished the job and everything, but we were high off of winning the Cold War. But by the end of the decade you had people dressing like sea turtles and smashing Starbucks and McDonald's in Seattle. What was the main complaint coming from the anti-globalizers then? Well it was portrayed as a justice movement. The very idea that yes, multinational companies and big brands and free trade, they might benefit us in the rich world, but it will come at a terrible cost in poor countries. Exploitation, widening inequalities, increasing poverty. So basically a zero sum idea about how the world works if we benefit they will lose. And ironically, I get the same thing today, but the positions have been reversed. Okay yeah, let's talk about that because yeah, I mean you flash forward 20 years or so and it seems like it's more right wingers are now saying, you know, what we need to nail down the borders, we need to build more walls, globalization benefits these global corporations, not the little guy. Quite right. And actually they sound very much like ATAC did 20 years ago, this French left wing protectionist organization, but now from a right wing nationalist perspective. And in a way they have the same idea that the world is a zero sum game, but this time around they think that we are losing because everybody has seen with their own eyes that capitalism is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the world's poor. We've reduced extreme poverty by 135,000 people every day since I wrote in defense of global capitalism. Now lots of people in the West and in the US, they see that and think that but they still have the idea that the world is a zero sum game so they must be thinking that somebody else has got to be losing out. So probably we are this time around losing good jobs, the industrialization and widening inequalities back home. And you know, let's you know part of the argument and I think what's really urgent about the capitalist manifesto besides you know the title and and a defense of it is like you actually work through a bunch of things around the globe but also in the United States and in Europe. You know, things are getting better. You know, let's talk about you know, general standards of living have increased. But you know, how do you how do you measure that and how do you how do you demonstrate that? Yeah. And I mean, I can see I wake up every morning thinking that the world is going to the dogs as well because we got all these disasters, shocks, financial crises, inflation, pandemics, wars and stuff like that. So I can sympathize why it looks bad. And but that's why we need something more than just looking at headlines and trying to feel our way to to a worldview. We have to look at indicators of living standards. And then we can see things like how extreme poverty every every day we complained about neoliberalism destroying the world. One hundred and thirty five thousand people were aced out of extreme poverty around a third of all the wealth that mankind has ever attained. If we measure it by GDP per capita was produced over these twenty years, which is pretty impressive, even though some of it might be coming from debt and other worrying circumstances, a third of all the wealth ever. It's it's impressive. Looking at indicators like child mortality, it's been reduced by almost half over twenty years, meaning four million fewer children died last year than in two thousand and two, despite all the headwinds, despite the pandemic and all the slippage that we had back then. You at one point you quote Bono from you to talking about how, you know, he was he was a big crusader for ending global poverty. And he was like, hey, you know what, we kind of won. And it was done through trade, not through aid. Can you talk a little bit about it's not just that these things were reduced, but it's it was done through globalization. Exactly. I mean, it doesn't didn't happen everywhere. Poverty has increased in certain places and hunger as well. But in the countries that have managed to reform, liberalize, integrate into specifically global supply chains, they've been able to raise their productivity dramatically. That's where we're seeing the the reduction in poverty, increasing living standards. Specifically, many Asian countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, Indonesia, India and China, we've seen tremendous progress. They are doing what we did over 50 to 100 years in just 20 years. Well, how does that compare to at one point you talk about how in the early sixties and, you know, in the first kind of burst after decolonization, it looked like Africa was going to be, you know, the continent on the grow. And it was actually doing phenomenally well in Asia was doing terribly.  What what happened there? Yeah, no, that's interesting when you go back and listen to development economists and leftist economists like Gunnar Mirdal in the 1960s who famously or notoriously and angrily shared the Nobel Prize with Hayek, right? He was like, I don't want to go if I'm sharing it with this insane right wing reactionary. Exactly, because Mirdal knew who understood the world. He saw African countries that they had strong governments, they had a strong natural resource base, and they would see tremendous growth in the future, whereas Asia would be wracked by problems. And yeah, all they had were people in rice, right? You know, whereas all the minerals in the world were in Africa. Exactly. And of course, that's what destroyed many African economies. It created a resource curse. It made a few people incredibly wealthy. So everybody fought over power instead. Whereas the places that didn't have much of natural resources, metals and minerals, well, they had to instead work harder and work smarter rather than harder and beginning to integrate first with Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, trying to understand how do we fit in an international division of labor and then attracting foreign investments and trading with the rest of the world and being the first of the new wave of poor countries really integrating into the developed world. And I mean, you show strong correlations between economic freedom and wealth. Is does anybody really challenge that anymore? No one who looks at the data challenges that I don't really think you can see. It's such a strong correlation. First country starting to reduce extreme poverty. It's Britain early in the 19th century. Then we have a next wave of Western European countries. We get Germany, America. Then eventually in the mid 19th century, Sweden and the Scandinavian countries. Late 19th century. It's Japan. And then in the next wave, the first countries in East Asia, the Tigers. And what happened at that precise moment? I mean, it's it's a matter of within minutes almost after having starting to liberalize markets, securing property rights, trading with the rest of the world, then it takes off. And, you know, on the theme of Tigers, there's the Celtic Tiger, right, Ireland, which my grandparents, my father's grandparents, my father's parents came from for a thousand years, partly because of colonialism, imperialism, mostly because of bad governance. I mean, what does the rise of Ireland in the late 20th century say? Like, do you need the right people to be living there in order to get stuff done or is it mostly a systems based approach that if you free up the economy, you know, anybody can become rich. Well, what I've learned from economic history is that it happens in the most unexpected places. And that's what we can tell from the old forecasts by all these mistaken economists who thought that it can only happen in certain places and at a certain time. Well, you know, that's what they say until unexpected places begin to to liberalize. You know, in Ireland, I remember reading a Swedish newspaper article about Ireland 10 years ago, and they had this little box with facts that they apparently took from an encyclopedia. And it said that even though it wasn't related to the article at all because the article was about sort of Ireland's success, right? But in that box, it said that, oh, it's a hopelessly poor country and everybody is leaving it. And this was such a sharp contrast because the people hadn't changed. It was the institution, suddenly the incentive to to work and take risks. And it also puts to mind or puts to rest the idea. I remember I started at reason 30 years ago. And there were a lot of people who were kind of chasing the dragon of Max Weber or something. They're saying, well, you know, Catholic countries in Europe were poor.  You know, they don't need enough meat on Fridays. And then yeah, it's like, yeah, maybe religion doesn't explain it. You know, IQ doesn't explain it. I mean, it's kind of liberalism, right? That's right. And Max Weber famously had to write about why Asian economies doesn't develop and basically saying. Naming the precise factors that everybody is now mentioning to explain the success of Asia. He took that Confucianism and strong families rather than individualism. Those are the things that makes it impossible for them to thrive. But then after 1979 in China after 1991 in India, suddenly they just take off. And then everybody is talking about, oh, it's this Asian mentality and then giant, it's Confucianism and it's the strong families. That great trust and collectivism that we saw. What is the 2008 Beijing Olympic opening games where there seem to be a billion Chinese beating drums in the stadium? That is, yeah, in America, you know, a lot of people would say, well, you know what? Since, you know, China joined the World Trade Organization in the 21st century, we have just seen, you know, massive deindustrialization. The Midwest is, you know, is beyond the rust belt.  That's not really true, right? I mean, among other things, you talk about how income ability, you know, income ability is either increasing or it has been constant since 1971. What's going on there? Yeah, the middle class is shrinking, but that's because it's moving up if you look at those indicators. And specifically, if you look at not just dollars and cents, we should do that too, because it's important to lay to rest the whole idea of wage stagnation, which was really a period in the 1970s and the 80s when many sectors had increased wages much faster than productivity.  But after 1990, we've seen rapid wage increases in the U.S. 30% to 60%, depending on whether you take in full compensation, including non-monetary like health insurance and stuff. But also, it's important to mention goods and services. It's not dollars and cents we want. We want to be able to buy something. And we can see how most amenities that were considered luxuries just decades ago are now getting close to 100% distribution in the U.S. People under the poverty threshold in the U.S. Now, more amenities like TV sets, washing machines, dryers, and of course, computers and cell phones, than the average American had in 1970. So it seems like not everything was destroyed. And why is that? Well, one reason is that we did deindustrialize in the meaning fewer people have to work in factories to create the goods we want. We haven't deindustrialized in an absolute sense. We produce more than probably at any other stage in America's history. But it's been a success story. It's the rise of productivity, which means that we can make the goods more automation, make the goods more competitive and affordable to most people. That's what successful countries do. That's what, I mean, even China is losing manufacturing jobs. Around five million manufacturing jobs a year in the past decade. Because they're moving up the value chain, they are getting better jobs with higher productivity. There is a great section in the capitalist manifesto where you talk about kind of the myth of, you know, working in Detroit in the 1950s. And the peak of industrial workers in the United States as a share of the labor force was actually in the 40s. So it was already declining in the 50s. But, you know, people would say, oh, it was great to be an auto worker in Detroit in the 50s. I think you had a stat in there where what was it? Like 10 percent of the GDP or something was coming out of Detroit. But it actually wasn't that good. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, it looked good compared to the rest of the economy because it was awful working in agriculture and in domestic traditional industry. So comparatively, it was better than in many other places. But now when we have this kind of nostalgic rose tinted image of what it was like, it's important to go back. And there are some historical projects interviewing the workers who really did the job.  It's dangerous. It's dirty. And you can lose an arm or two if you're not careful. And also very insecure jobs. A very rapid turnover. And when I look at different cohorts, it turns out that there's one cohort in Detroit the year of 1953, they had fairly secure jobs, got a good decent wage, unionized. And so the whole myth of sort of Western manufacturing. You talk about cradle, grave, you know, employment, generous benefits. All of this is based on one city in one year. And what did they get the ones who got those best jobs? Well, adjusted for inflation, they get what you would get as a starting wage in Amazon warehouse today. You yet, you know, in the United States, we see, and I'm not sure if this correlates throughout Europe or globally, but certainly among men of prime kind of work years, there's lower workforce participation rights than there used to be. There's also deaths of despair. Let's first talk about workforce participation rights. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that fewer men, you know, between the ages of 25 and 54 are actively in the labor force? Yeah, if people are able to work and want to work, that's it's a good thing. They should, they shouldn't be doing other things. That has been declining, but it has been declining for a very long time. That's important to point out. This is not something that happened when China into the World Trade Organization did not happen with NAFTA. It started after the Second World War, basically, and it was actually much faster. The increase in men outside of the labor force was much higher rate in the 1950s, 60s and 70s than in this era of globalization. So it tells you that there's something else going on than just competition. It seems like we are pretty bad at retraining and having the kind of mobility in the workforce that we would want. But most of these people are then counted as disabled and they're in various programs rather than standing in the workforce. You, for a project that you did, a video project as well as other things, you actually went around the United States and you talked to people who were on welfare, who were getting various kinds of, you know, supplemental income and things like that. What did you find in that? Because that also is, I mean, the stuff itself is great. And then in the capitalist manifesto, when you recap that, what was going on with that? How did they describe, you know, who they were and what they were up? Yeah. Well, I learned that you have to be very smart and hardworking to be poor and unemployed in the US because the systems are so incredibly complex and they come from a wide variety of sources and they're based on different metrics and they then are also discounted and lost at various points when you make more of an income than you used to. So what they told me is that it feels hopeless. It feels like there's nothing they can do to change their situation. One of them told me that doing the calculations from four different benefit systems, if she increases her wage from 29,000 to 30,000, so many of the benefits fall away so that she just makes 15,000, half of it. So it means that the, in a way, the marginal tax rate for the poor and unemployed is much higher than for the rich. And they're calculating this either implicitly or explicitly. They kind of understand. Yeah, they know that it's hopeless, basically, to go out there and sacrifice time, energy and transportation costs to get a job because they notice that they don't make money. Is there, you know, probably not. Is there an easy solution to that?  It's just it's definitely shitty compared to any non-factory job. But I remember, you know, in a privileged setting, when I moved from grad school in Buffalo to take a job at Reason, my wife and I, at the time, we realized after we had moved that we basically went our our grad students stipends in Buffalo, which had a low cost of living. We had free health care through the university. We were expecting our first child. We were doing so much better than when we went to one salary starting at Reason in LA that it was like, God, if we had thought about it economically, we never would have done it. But it was also we were playing the long game. Is there, you know, and you take a hit in earnings now in order to conceivably be doing the work you want down the road at better pay.  Well, I wish welfare is complicated. And it's there are no perfect social benefit system. The moment you start paying people when they are unemployed and disabled, you also subsidize it. You also buy more, more of it, and it's difficult to get out of it. But there are versions of kind of a negative income tax that would at least make sure that you always keep more of what you earn. So you don't you create suddenly a 50 percent marginal tax rate or something like that. Yes. And at least and, you know, so that you don't have to do all these calculations and feel like it seems impossible. Many of them I talk to, they have friends and relatives who are helping them to do the calculations and they're sitting there with with pen and paper and trying to find out is there any way to improve my life? Well, with just one simple system, it's never simple, but just one, at least you'd see, you'd understand, you know what you can do to improve your life. Is that an argument for a universal basic income or a negative income tax? Do you think that, you know, people know that there's this lower limit that they can't drop below, but that's also that's it. I don't you know, it doesn't seem like the UBI works out well when it's actually implemented. But but it is an argument in favor of an UBI. And then there might be bigger problems that makes us a little bit cautious when it comes to doing it. It seems like a UBI would be incredibly expensive if everybody is supposed to have it or it wouldn't help the poorest much. So perhaps some sort of negative income tax with which sort of insures or supports wages for the poorest seems like a better way to go about this. OK, but what now let's talk about deaths of despair, which are probably, you know, one of the main examples that people will say where, you know, Norberg, if you're saying life is getting better in America, you know, we have consecutive years, even, you know, the pandemic obviously helps us. But it doesn't explain all of it, you know, where lifespans are declining in America in the 21st century. Can you quickly define what deaths of despair are? And then what did you find when you start looking into what's going on with that? Yeah. Well, it's a famous and depressing concept coined by Angus Deaton, the Nobel Laureate and his wife, Ankees Deaton. Deaths of despair and they're including various sorts of self harm, broadly speaking, could be drug overdoses, alcoholism or suicide. I think when we look at it, this is kind of controversial among scholars, because when you look at it, it might be that we're just talking about a drug overdose epidemic, that that's the real thing that sets this apart. But what they're meaning and what many take away from it is that there's something related to how people live, a sense of despair that makes them live in this kind of self-destructive way. And this has increased dramatically. Why is that? Yes, many say that this is strange as society, as the society gets richer and more open. Some blame it then on ruthless capitalism and free markets. But as Angus Deaton points out himself, you can hear it in the very word of globalization. It's global. It happens everywhere. And so is automation. So all these forces, but it seems like it's specifically happening in the US rather than in other places. And economically, more economically free countries in the West have not had the same increase in deaths of despair to this extent. So and it's not equally distributed among the United States. That's you know, where California and New York seem to have lower rates than Ohio and Kentucky. That's right. And it's a traditional white, blue color working class that's out of the labor force. That it's mostly people who have ended up on, again, the disability benefits and the welfare benefit traps and fails like there's not much they can do to change their lives. And that's not specifically then related to anything that has happened with global globalization to automation, because this was a group that ended up quicker in that section of out of the workforce and stuff like that before. We even thought of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. We saw more jobs being lost in the rust belt in the 1960s and 70s than in the past few decades. If anything, we've seen more of a stagnation since then. And inequality, you know, is flat in the United States or declining globally. It's declining inequality among countries. So what do you do with deaths of despair?  Or or is it, you know, a fundamental misreading of how people live? I don't. Well, I mean, one thing is this might be very much a drug overdose epidemic rather than anything else. So perhaps there are things related to drug laws and the unsafe drugs that are being used on the black market. Closely, you know, tracked with the rise of opioids, particularly oxycontin.  It's that drugs are more potent. They also there was a crackdown on oxycontin and other opioids. So then people turn to black markets for either versions of that or heroin, which is risky, particularly in a black market. So you get more deaths. Quite right. So this this is one angle. Don't think too much about lifestyles and stuff. Just make sure that people don't poison themselves with something that they don't know what it what it's about. But the other thing is that we know that it's bad for your health and you shorten your life if you feel like you're worthless. It's impossible to change your situation. You're not needed anywhere.  We can probably afford to have a larger group of people outside of the workforce. We can pay for it all in hand and benefits and they stay at home. But can we afford what it buys this kind, this sense of being rejected, not needed anywhere and not being able to change your life circumstances? So I think there are both things to do with the benefit system, but also obviously making sure that the thresholds to getting new jobs once you once you've lost it. It's incredibly important that they're as low as possible and goes to occupational licensing stuff. It goes to the whole housing market. The fact that it's impossible to live where the jobs are nowadays because of a very much a regulatory issue, right? You know, another accelerator, supposedly in the decline of lifestyle and standards of living in the United States, you know, has to do with China. All you know, China. I was just watching Donald Trump a couple days ago was talking to people in Michigan directed at blue colors and he was saying China, China, China. You know, China has taken all the jobs. There's a version of that that Joe Biden says and Democrats everywhere in America. You have a chapter called China Paper Tiger. So are you saying or adventure argument that you know what?  Right. There is one unifying narrative about China that I get a lot from both the left and the right and the center. And it's that they are so incredibly smart and they have a plan for everything, how to invade our markets and take our jobs with very clever industrial policy and picking certain companies, subsidizing them and dumping their goods here and by cheat, right? They steal intellectual property. Everybody follows the government, right? The orders come down and they're instantly executed. Yeah. And that's not true. And and I must say the worrying implication is that so many Americans say we have to imitate them. We have to be like that in order to beat them. And that's one reason why we get the support for protectionism and industrial policy right now. You know, they do have industrial policy. They are trying to pick winners. They are trying to get the heavy hand of the government back into the economy. But that's a fairly new phenomena. I mean, this happened started to happen around the global financial crisis. And especially after Xi Jinping took power. And this is not what's making China rich. This is what risks making it poor. It's a terrible destruction of resources that are going on. And you can see that that they're handing the subsidies, the cheap credits to the least productive companies, and they become less productive once they do this. It's very important, I think, to get the history of China's economic rise right. And it's showing lower than average growth of Asian countries, right, over the past several years and things like that. So it's like whatever. I mean, in the United States, I don't know how this played out in Sweden or in Europe in the 80s. But, you know, we did a version of this with Japan and the role of China, where I was told, you know, going to college in the 80s, like you better learn Japanese because we're all going to be working for a Japanese company. And, you know, within a couple of years, Japan, Japanese businessmen famously bought Rockefeller Center, you know, the great monument to American ingenuity and capitalism. And we're like, OK, game up. And then it was like a couple of years later, they unloaded it at a loss. Yeah. Do you think something similar is going or something similar as at work with our fears of China? Oh, I think so for sure. China had a good run. It was an impressive rise and it happened precisely in the areas where they began to liberalize and open up big time. So it was a success of market forces in China. Now that's over. They've begun to retreat. The government is back in business. And that's really undermining business. And it comes at a very bad time. China is still a very poor country. It's I mean, it's just that it's big, but it's as poor as the Dominican Republic or Gabon, so they wouldn't need if they wanted to go on the trajectory of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, Japan under their good years then they would have to grow five to seven percent per capita for a couple more decades. That is not happening, partly also for demographic reasons. We we have fewer farmers to put into factories. So the catch up growth is over. Fewer farmers to put into newly built apartments to the real estate boom is over. They are they are in decline. So the question is, will this be a managed decline or will it be a will it end in tears? Yeah. What what what's your guess? I mean, one of the other things about China when after Mao died and China liberalized, it seemed again in the 80s, really, Milton Friedman's maximum that first you get economic liberty and then you demand political liberty was taking place. And then, you know, tanks rolled into the TMN square and it was like, oh, now they're going back to dictatorship, which seemed to be working because that was the way that people like Thomas Friedman and other kind of early kind of champions of of managed globalization. We're like, oh, now we maybe we should be more like China. Do you think, you know, now that China is facing certain kinds of decline, you know, is it going to actually be like, you know what, we're we're going to give up power or is it going to end in tears? Yeah, that's a good question. There was this very sad time when we had this dictator envy all over the U.S. and Europe. And Thomas Friedman famously said that he wanted to be China for a day and then he would fix environmental problems just like that because we yeah, it looked like it worked. But what was it that worked? It was really the entrepreneurs and the innovators who had created stuff. The moment Xi Jinping got back and got interested in various sectors, he began to destroy them. So I think we have to get that history right because then we also understand that they're in real trouble right now. And just like we think that if the dictator points everybody in the right direction, we must remember when he points them in the wrong direction, everything collapses at the same time. And I think we're seeing more of investigations like that now. One very interesting thing that is related to Thomas Friedman is that. Yeah, dictators and planned economies, they're able to fix things rapidly on paper, at least to get the get stuff done. But what is it that they get done? So one thing is that they have now twice as much wind power, wind generate, wind farms than the U.S. And this is what impressed Thomas Friedman and the rest of the world. Look, this is how you solve environmental problems. But now when scholars look at what's going on, those wind, that wind power doesn't generate as much as America's, even though on paper it's twice as much. Why not? It's less efficient. It doesn't always work. Sometimes they're not even connected to the grid because they didn't produce it to generate power or to make money. They did it to fulfill the command of Xi Jinping and the plans. And that's what we're beginning to realize about China right now. And I think they do too. And who knows why that might be a reason why we're seeing this new purges of the party, one Minister of Defense and one Minister of Foreign Affairs disappearing in the past few months.  Is that accurate? Actually, what we've seen again over the past few decades is one of the greatest achievements when it comes to the environment ever. I mean, it's fairly recently as we started to care about the nature and about the future. Now in the past decades, we've reduced most of the pollutants emissions. We're beginning to see growth of forests again in rich countries, in most countries actually around the world. We're beginning to see rewilding going on, cleaner water in all those areas, tremendous achievements. And where does this happen? You know, if you go to the Environmental Performance Index, looking at 40 different indicators of environmental conditions around the world, they point out that GDP per capita is a pretty strong explainer for what's going on. The richer you are, the more you can also afford to care about the planet because you're not making the decision. So the forest or my children's education, you can do both and you can get better technology to deal with it as well. And that is not, I mean, that's an interesting question from a kind of libertarian or classical liberal perspective. Those, I mean, some of that is done through government mandates, right? So it's an odd thing. Like we get richer and then we demand more a cleaner environment. But that sometimes limits what goes on in the marketplace. Quite right. It does. It's not always the case. Some of this is driven by consumers and by businesses just wanting something better and cleaner. But quite often it's also some sort of mandates or taxes. Do you define yourself as maybe as neither, but as a libertarian or an anarchist or, you know, what is that a meaningful distinction for you? I'd call myself self libertarian because nowadays I think we we need some sort of minimal state to at least make sure that we have the. Right rules to rules for the road. One of the best sections of the book because in and in a way this is where people who say the world is getting worse, you know, on a profound level in the 21st century or, you know, since your book in defense of global capitalism, sometimes they'll say, oh, yeah, you can see it everywhere because people are dying sooner and, you know, everything is junk now. And, you know, people are not working and all of that. But they kind of grant that. No, actually, the problem is we have so much stuff now. Everybody's distracted from everything.   And it fails partly because it it it generates loose connections and we don't know how to live our lives. Is he onto something? I don't think he is. He makes a very strong case rhetorically. He explains that we're becoming increasingly separate, autonomous, non-relational selves, replete with rights and defined by our liberty. But insecure, powerless, afraid and alone.   I mean, all of these indicators are are those not happening or are those just misinterpreted? You know, there is an epidemic of headlines saying that there's a loneliness epidemic. But when researchers look at it, it's very difficult to find something like that. Yes, we spend more time alone than we used to. There are more single households than before. But it seems like we enjoy that. It seems like actually single households and people who spend less time with others also often say that they're less lonely than others. So it might be that we're also choosing our relationships in ways that make them more fruitful and important to us.  I mean, and that's kind of a banal level. And I'm also now I'm put in mind that I'm talking to a Swedish person and a Scandinavian and somebody who's watched a lot of Bergman movies. So you're like, no, the greatest world imaginable is one where I am alone in my own dark thoughts all the time, right? But you you do quote a meta study or a meta analysis you know, that shows like mental health issues which we're constantly told we're in this epidemic of loneliness and we're in deaths of despair and people are sadder and more apart than ever. But when you actually look at the social science on this, it it's not there, right? Yeah, quite right. We have to make the reservation that the pandemic might have have influenced this. We were probably seeing the rise of certain mental illness, conditions, more loneliness. But that's if anything, that's an argument to make gains the case that mobility and freedom results in us being alone and weak and and afraid. But overall, when it when you really look at the data, it doesn't seem like we're seeing a rise globally over the population when it comes to mental illness or loneliness or anything like that. What we have been seeing is that many conditions that we saw before we've started to use another terminology to describe them, often a mental illness terminology. Can you explain that? So you were you were sad and you had to lay down for two weeks. That's what we used to say about parents when mom was feeling bad. Now it's depression. Now it's a clinical condition and that's something else. And for good and ill, I think we're over diagnosing some of these things. We might have turned too often to to doctors when we should have talked to a friend. But I also think this is a way in which we take some of these problems seriously for the first time, you know, in my parents' generation, they would never talk about how they felt and their mental conditions. Yeah, you'd go to a doctor if you lost a leg, but you would never do it if you broke your heart or or anything like that. And in some ways that that stigma is gone, even though it might result in over diagnosis, it's also a sign that we're actually we care and we're trying to do something and if we get the right therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, it has excellent results. So doing that is not a sign of a sick society. I think it's a sign of healthy society. I guess, you know, when I would think everybody who reads the capitalist manifesto is going to walk away like, OK, here are the arguments that I keep hearing that are describing the reality I live in. It's a really powerful rebuttal to that. And then I'm left wondering, what are the, you know, how do how do you change someone's mind? Because a lot of people are invested in the idea that these are, if not the worst of all possible times, we're starting to get there. Like our orbit is is degrading and we're falling back into the earth and getting burned up on the reentry or something. I don't know what the right metaphor is. How, you know, I guess my question is like your book is part of an answer to that. It's like, no, like, let's start by talking about what's actually going on. And and it's filled with a lot of kind of stories of, you know, actual people and individuals to illustrate these larger principles.  Yeah, that that is exactly the reason why I wrote this book, because it's an uphill battle right now. And I've noticed that you tend to ruin good dinner parties by explaining that that we're not going to die. And I understand what we should care about global warming. But look, 40 countries have been able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in absolute terms while growing their economies in the past decade. So and people are often invested in their problems and in the problems of the world and it's part of their identity and the fact that they care about it, it's important to them. So telling them that, look, this it's actually better than you think might be threatening, ironically. But I don't really find that among. I find that when you go into single aspects, when you look at every single data point, if you're talking about extinction of mammals or if you're thinking, talking about carbon dioxide separately, if you're talking about poverty in Bangladesh, people pay attention to those things. So and they listen to the data and they're interested in the story. So perhaps we might not need the biggest, grandest narratives because they are also the most threatening. If I'm telling everybody that, it's a good way to get the tension to tell people that look, we've had the twenty best years in human history. But it's also it's a way of starting a conversation, but it's also threatening and it seems weird. But when I talk to them about their concerns in on various issues, then it's possible to break through. So I think we need a million small stories that relate to all of these things. And that's why I try to capture so many different areas of lived experience in the book. What how many kids do you have? Three. And how what's the age range? 12, 13, 16. OK.  And obviously, you know, they may not be the right age to just disagree with you reflexively or not. But I mean, do they seem optimistic about the future? Or, you know, yeah, I mean, I guess let's start with that. Well, they do come home from school and tell me that we're going to die suffocating in plastics from the oceans as well. So there is that. And I noticed that among the generation. However, I don't know why if it's genetics or something else, but they tend to be on the more optimistic side than their classmates. And, you know, thinking about solutions to things. So, for example, my oldest son is sort of always trying to make school projects about nuclear power. And now we can make it cheap and safe. And this will give us unlimited energy for the future. Is there it just as a side note is, you know, does nuclear do you think nuclear power is going to make a resurgence? I think so, but we're going to need something better. And I think actually we ruined it the last time around by having the government picking nuclear power as the winner. That's what we thought in the 1960s. And let's just build them right now. Big expensive because the technology wasn't right there and less safe than it could have been if we had done it slowly, steadily, step by step. The way we do it in any other kind of innovation. The moment the government gets involved, it's sort of one big package. And it became too expensive and difficult to continue with it. Now we are seeing it in another way. Let's hope we don't repeat that mistake, because at least on the. On paper, there are some kind of promising, smaller scale, cheaper solutions. Do you for your kids, what, you know, say, in 10 years, what are their indicators where you would say, oh, my God, like, you know, indicators for their life and their well being where if they were going in the wrong direction to be like, holy cow, we really do need to change what we're doing. Right. Yeah. What would that be, which indicators? Well, obviously, as a parent, any kind of mental illness, loneliness thing. And I think that's the reason why we get so many headlines about this. That is worrying when we when we see that. And that's also reason why we shouldn't take those things too lightly and just talk about epidemics and the worry about cell phones and stuff like that, because it's kind of self-reinforcing in a way. It's it's interesting that, yes, we've seen a rise in mental illness among teenagers, especially girls in the U.S. But hey, we use cell phones in Sweden, too. And in Japan, too. Why haven't we seen the same thing? So there are always some problems in some areas, some places. We do have to look at broader sections of the world population if we're going to find some cause and effect. But sorry, I wonder away from your question. So but that's one indicator, obviously, any kind of self-harm, self-destructive behavior is worrying, definitely. And also, obviously, opportunities in the economy, getting jobs and being able to start start businesses, being able to afford to. Buy an apartment. Right. Yeah, that's always for the from the parents per se. I realize this long after my parents have died that the sign of success is that your kids don't live with you. Right. Yeah. And, you know, for a long time, that was not something civilization could afford, right?  Right. To me, if there's anything that's important, it's that they get and have and keep the sense that they are able to affect their own lives and do something about it. Well, let me throw something at you. And it's, you know, I don't get to talk to Swedish intellectuals very often, not because there aren't a lot of them. It's just, you know, we travel in different circles. But I was thinking a lot lately of work by Par Lagervis, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner, who is best known, at least in the U.S. for his novel, Barabbas, which is a great Christian existentialist novel came out in 1950. And it's about the guy who gets freed in the place of Jesus. And then is, you know, so he's given a new life that he didn't earn, you know, and he doesn't really know what to do. I've been thinking a lot lately that that's kind of where we are as a society, certainly in the U.S., in Europe, I think increasingly in the world, where we have to be the masters of our own destinies. And I took for granted that that is incredible and liberating. I think it's also an unbelievably anxiety-inducing, particularly at the society-wide level. Is this the real crisis? It's not one of material or moral progress. It's that we are all, you know, Sisyphus, and we've got to choose what Boulder we're doing and why we're doing it and how do we get happy doing that? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fond of this Eastern European proverb. If you don't have food, you have one problem. But if you have food, you have a thousand problems. And obviously, you start to think about your life and every aspect of it and how you're going to make sure that things work out for the best. And obviously, that's anxiety-inducing, as Lagerquist or Kierkegaard would have pointed out, until you consider the alternative. Because every time you look at what do people say, what do the young say about their lives and whether they're happy, subjective well-being and so on, yes, this sense that there's so much choice and you don't know what to do with your life is, it feels in your stomach. But if you don't have those options, if you don't have those freedoms, those who say that they have the least chance to change their lives and decide what to do when it comes to education, career and so on, then it shows up in clinical diagnosis. It feels, then it turns into mental illness. So there are different versions of anxiety and some are better than others. But I do understand the temptation. We come from a long prehistory of living in bands and tribes and someone telling us what to do and sometimes it feels liberating just having that strong man telling you, I know the answer to the question. And it takes some novels and some research to really find out that the way in which we really create more decent societies and more fulfilled lives is not to just follow that one rule but to find the way within us. And this is, you're in your discussion of Patrick DeNene and other people like him. That's the refutation of it, right? That they think because there are multiple ways or people are finding their own paths that that comes at the cost of society or meaning or culture. But in fact, it's kind of the ultimate victory. It's so strange when you read them and their idea about what classical liberalism and free markets are all about because they think it's just these institutions and they say they can't give you meaning of life. It's just sort of property rights and free exchange. That's not enough. Of course it's not enough. I mean, we need something more, but what? That's the question. And I'm not sure DeNene knows what we need. He certainly doesn't know what you need, right? Exactly. I need love and friendship and I need good books by Mario Vargas Llosa and I need a System Mercy record at last after just having played live for three decades now. Those are things that give me meaning but it wouldn't give DeNene meaning. So it's important to point out that there are many different ways to many different versions of meaning. And I think we can pick that up by looking at polls because all these claims from DeNene and others, they're so very rarely backed up by any kind of empirical data. They just point out that this, you should all be miserable because how could you vulgar people ever find meaning in Taco Tuesday and bad TV shows? Yeah, I know he doesn't. That's why intellectuals shouldn't run our lives because they have another set of preferences than we do in another meaning of life. But we can pick up in polls how people are doing in individualist societies compared to collectivist ones, rich societies compared to poor ones. And no matter what intellectuals say, it shows up again and again, a very clear pattern. People say that they're happier, more subjective well-being, in rich, free societies, individualist societies, they feel less lonely than they do in poorer and less free societies. And they also think that they have more friends and they can rely upon. They also say that they're more willing to help others when they are in need. So all these indicators, once you stop being so, my hope we can just looking at one year in the US, but look around the world, compare different systems, different populations, then you see that we're actually not in the best of possible worlds, but the best one so far. All right, we're gonna leave it there. I've been talking with Johann Norberg, whose latest book is The Capitalist Manifesto. Johann, thanks so much for talking to me. Thank you very much for having me.