Welcome back to why in the morning, you know, when it's Tuesday, it's a good music and catching you informed, entertained at the same time as you also acquire information when it comes to business that you may venture into. In this particular session, we dive into an interview that looks at tour and travel and in studio, I am joined by K. Tansefai Kenya, the founder who is none other than Kevin Ovinno. Thank you very much, Kevin. Thank you for having me too. I appreciate. Kevin, so earlier on before we got here on set, we have a conversation of where you study your background. Tell us more about what you studied in school. Okay, so my name is Kevin from K. Tansefai. So I was born in Nairobi, raised up in Madara Slums. I go to study, went to high school, and then I joined the Masahimara University in Narok. Yeah, so Masahimara University, it's a university that is, I think it's less known. I see memes on Twitter what you're going to enjoy at it. They are modern facilities, great accommodation for students and also it's a nice place. What is your background when it comes to education that is? So in primary school, I started like I said in Madara, a place called Madara Community Outreach. Then high school, I went to Rambo Boys High School, which is in Siaya County, or Bondo. Then campus I pursued towards and travel management. Yeah, so it was my passion. I love traveling, so that's the course I went for because it's fitted with what I wanted to do in life also. Okay, so talk to us about K. Tansefai is Kenya. So how did it happen? How did you go about it? So how did it start? So K. Tansefai is Kenya is now four years and some months old. In October this year, we turned five. So we started in 2016. Yeah, so I graduated from Masahimara University in 2016, and I got employed for around three months. Then I quit to start K. Tansefai. So right now, it's four years and some months old, and we're still growing. So we mainly focus on domestic tourism because we think it's a niche that is less exploited and also that has a very good clientele. And also it's the most the fastest growing market in the tourism industry. And when you guys were starting off, what was your sort of kind of capital? Starting the business. Okay, so the business started from scratch because I started like on a, I did it as a personal business first as it began. So there was not so much capital that I had, but I leveraged on the use of social media to market my tours and travel. We do mostly events, especially during the weekends. So like you get every weekend we have a trip happening. Yeah, so from the little savings I had from campus, let's say around 50,000, I pumped it into the business, started marketing, like posting and sponsoring posts on Facebook, on Instagram, and also doing posters, doing t-shirts. Most of it went to marketing and also the business registration. Someone is watching us and they wonder, what if they don't have the money, like to just put it into the business, like in your situation. Is there a possibility that they can get into this business? What are a couple of ways they can do that? There's a lot of potential in the industry and you don't really need to have too much money to begin with. For example, right now, like I said, social media is giving guys a platform to showcase what they have. If you have a talent, if you have a business you want to do, all you need to do is put it out there and putting it out there is simply marketing it. How do you market it? If you are on social media, this is a quote that I picked from Johnson Maccazzi. He said that if you're on social media, you own a media house. So showcase what you have and start from somewhere. The moment you do your first trip or your first sale, you will have kicked off and start rolling. So showcase what you have. Someone who is interested in it will probably buy and then you start from there and you grow polo polo. How did you get your first client? First trip we did a day trip somewhere in Nyeri and I had only three clients. So I added a few of my friends to join us. We went, we were about six. So the clients were happy. They enjoyed the trip. The following trip we had 12 guys turning up and then slowly slowly we had 15, 20, 25 until when we were turning one year old, we had around a hundred guys turning up for a trip. So that's the progress. It started from like six to now we do trips every weekend and we have guys turning up. So when starting off, as you've said, we start with a small number and it grows with time. How do you build credibility when potential clients come to you? So for your business to be approved by clients, you know for tourism, what you sell is a promise. It's not like selling a shoe that someone can see and touch and feel. What you are selling in the tourism industry, it's a promise. I promise that when you join us for a trip, you're going to have fun. So my work or our work as catering safaris is to deliver that fun. If we fail to deliver that fun, then we fail in our promise. If we tell you we're going to take you to Naivasha for a three legs tour in one day and we go to Naivasha and we just get to Lake Naivasha, which is one lake, then we will have failed in delivering our promise. So when you market something, you tell someone you're going to do something or you're going to offer a service, just make sure you deliver that. If there's going to be photography, make sure it's there. If there's going to be food, make sure it's there and it's good food. If there's going to be swimming, if there's going to be whatever you promise, deliver. We're not like the government. For someone who is watching this and they want to get into this business, okay. The other thing, because I know there's a part whereby we see posters, we are going to curator, we are going to Ngong. And then there's the other aspect, the business aspect of it whereby you guys are sitting down with the owners of these places that you're taking us and striking a deal. Give us top three negotiation tips, skills. In generally, when striking a deal, when striking a deal for someone who's watching this and they want to get into this space. Yes. So negotiation skills number, the three top most is, okay, for my industry, number for the niche that I'm in is numbers. Yeah. When you have numbers, then you can simply negotiate your way through, through, maybe you want to take guys to a place and it's a villa. They're charging maybe 30,000 per night for one villa that sleeps 10. So you tell them, I'll be bringing you 15, 15 guys every weekend, you see, and you reduce for me the rate of the villa to around, let's say, 20,000. You know, that person will look into the bigger picture that he will be in business for three consecutive weeks. So he'll be able to reduce the cost for you because of that. Oh, you've been business for a long time. Yeah. They reduce on cost and he will actually make his money actually. Yes. He will make money like twice, rather than he gets one person who pays 30K in one day and then for the rest of the four weeks, he doesn't have business. So it's better. If you have numbers, it's easy to negotiate. Yeah. Number two is just honesty. Like, if you're given a deal and the other person also has an expectation, you live up to the expectation of that deal, whatever you guys discussed and agreed upon. Yeah. And the third negotiation skill is confidence. You know, if you're not confident, you're not going to go up there. You're not going to try out new things. You're not going to reach out or you're not even going to make that step of wanting to do something. So if someone realizes that you're confident in what you're doing or what you're saying, then they'll take you seriously and you can sit anywhere and tell anyone anything and they can agree with you if you're confident. Yeah. So those are the three most. Okay. So Alon, you mentioned that your niche is in the domestic tourism. Yes. What is the gap that you saw there that you actually fulfilled? Yeah. Domestic tourism has been ignored for quite a long time. Like, I think COVID opened the eyes of many guys because they're depending on the international tourism a lot, but the local market is there. Like throughout, you know, in the international market, there are seasons. There's a low season. There's high season. There's peak season. There are all that seasons, but for the domestic market, Kenyans are there throughout, whether it's raining, whether there is a sorry to say this, whether there's a bomb in Lamu, they will not stop going to Kisumu because maybe there was a terrorist attack in Lamu as compared to the international tourism where if something happens, it's very fragile. Something happens in Kenya, maybe they're going to Masaimara and there was an attack in Mombasa. They will fail to go. They will cancel. They will get all these travel advisories. But you know, for us Kenyans, we are here. We know that the situation on the ground. So Kenyans are there always and Kenyans travel a lot. Kenyans travel a lot. I can tell you in the last five years, I've been in the industry, Kenyans travel. So it's a gap that they need to travel and they want someone to assist them in coming up with packages and taking them for trips and making things work for them when they are in the trips. What are your packages? What packages do you offer and are they at an affordable price? Yes, yes. I think we're the most affordable company in Kenya because we do date from day trips. We do starting from 3000. From 3000, you can go to Naeversha, have lunch, do some boat riding activity, have photography. In all our trips, we have photography and also we have very nice food in our trips. So that is a day out in Naeversha. If you want to do an overnight from as low as 6k, you can go for a camping vacation or even accommodation from as low as 9000. So we normally do group trips. You know, when we do a group trip, the cost is shared amongst everyone. So it's become cheaper than if you travel alone, if you did self-drive, you will cater for the cost of fuel, energy, you get tired, and then also you'll pay for the accommodation with the high rates because for us as a group, we negotiate the rates and they get better rates. Okay. So I've seen this a couple of times that everyone is now venturing into train travel. There's so many people in this particular space. So how have you guys branded yourself to just be different? It's true that so many are venturing into the industry, which is a good thing, but the market also usually filters itself. As a time, those who are quacks, they'll simply be filtered out. But for us what we do is we maintain our quality standards. Like I just said, we deliver our promise. Each and every time, each and every trip is a special one for us. We just make sure that we deliver and at the end of the day, that client will retain them for the next trip. When it comes to the train travel space, it's quite easy. I have friends, right? I can just create a poster and they call it Netamboggi, Trinanda. So what would you say about that particular perception when it comes to this industry and for people who are looking for to get into this space or for someone who got into this space with that kind of mentality and things didn't go just as planned? Yeah. So like any other business, it may look easy, but it involves a lot of risks. That's number one. Number two, there's a lot of hard work to put in it. Like for us, we've been here for five years. So we've really worked hard to have a base, a clientele base, such that if we form a trip, we're sure that it's going to happen.  When you tell them we are going to Naivasha, usually you're many, you're like 10. I'm a 15. I'm a, let's say 20. Then three weeks to the trip, you're seven. One day to the trip, Mkotua willy. But you see, for us now we come to solve that. Mkua willy, you wanted to go to Vasha.  So we provide that solution. We give you a trip to Vasha. You join others. You meet new people and you get to interact with them and all that. And also there are a lot of things that we take care of. Like if you, if you did a self-try to Naivasha, by the time you're getting there, you'll be tired because of driving or even you don't know where to go, what to do. So for us, we have that knowledge. We know what to do. We know even some places that people don't know. Did you know that there's a lake called Lexonachi? No, I didn't know that. Yeah. You see, so if you go to Naivasha and it's just the normal Naivasha boat riding, maybe you go somewhere, night out and all that. But if we come in, we give you even more. We reveal to you things that you didn't know. Yeah. So that's where we fall in. Okay. Real quick, the process whereby you guys go out, you know, I don't know if it's to survey for new joints, destination hunts. So the process, what is the process like? And now before you actually now come up with a poster. Yes. So before you come up with a trip, normally as a tourism travel agent, number one, you need to ask the question, where? Where, what, when? Those three things are very important. Where you'll have to pick the location. It has to be accessible. If it's a hike, there has to be a route. There has to be a trail. And then when this one comes mostly in terms of weather, the weather has to be good for you to go. Like you can't go to water rafting in Sagana when the river is dry, you see. And then where, when, and what? What to do. Yeah. What to do. Yeah. So you have to find out the activities. So this is, we call it a pre-visit. It's very important for a successful trip. And you have to go through those three processes before a trip becomes successful. All right. So how can people find you across all the social media handles? We are on Facebook at Ketan Safari's Kenya. We are on Instagram at Ketan Safari's and also on Twitter at Ketan official. All right. Thank you very much, Kevin Ovino there. The founder of Ketan. Yes, Ketan Safari's. Yes. Thank you very much for creating time with us today. Thank you. All right. So we're talking about to and travel the business aspect of it. So make sure you don't tap that dial, it'll be right back. So at Y2F4Channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle Lashira. So you can find me across all my social. Thank you. All right. So it's the time, our time frame. It's a really, look, time you may end up, nasi jaona. Just enjoy this conversation. So guys, we have come to the end of the show. So make sure you create time next Tuesday. The time frame is seven till 10 a.m. as usual, right here on entrepreneurship Tuesday. And remember at Y2F4Channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle Lashira. Is where you can find me across all my social. Remember also, follow faith across all our social media handles. So next Tuesday, same time frame. Have a nice day. Enjoy the rest of you viewing right here on Y2F4Channel.


Last week marked the 135th anniversary of the birth of Livvivan Mises, and that's an appropriate moment to revisit Guido Hulsman's brilliant biography of this great man last night of liberalism. I commend this book to you, incidentally not simply as a profile of a seminal figure, but also as an outstanding work of intellectual history. As I reread the concluding sections I was struck as I have been frequently by the difference in temperament between Mises and Murray and Rothbard, his great seminar student for more than ten years, at least in terms of their outlooks on our prospects. Murray became known for his long-term optimism, Mises, not so much. Over the course of the 1950s, for example, George Reesman, one of the few students to earn a Ph.D. under Mises, thought that he was seeing more and more progress. More and more people he encountered seemed sympathetic to the cause of the free market. Mises was less sanguine. Reesman, he said, was a young man in the process of meeting existing supporters of free enterprise. There was no growth occurring. In fact, Mises went so far as to compare his own writings to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which might be found by someone a thousand years in the future. Rees did not anticipate that his friend, F.A. Hayek, would win the Nobel Prize for his work on Misesian business cycle theory. Much less could even imagine that a full-fledged Mises Institute, with its scholarly conferences and publications, week-long student immersion programs, and consistent and diverse forms of outreach to the general public, would one day flourish. When difficulty evident in Mises' day was that supporters of the free market, far and large, signed on to the emerging conservative movement, where by process of elimination they thought they belonged. There had been neither a conservative nor a libertarian movement before World War II, and what we call the old right, as Murray Rothbard dubbed it, was a series of individual writers and thinkers, the occasional periodical, the American First Committee, was a real movement to be sure, and a great one, but it dissolved on December 8, 1941. Within six years of Mises' arrival in the United States in 1949, the cause of laissez-faire was coming to be associated with a broader movement called conservatism. Remnants of the old right persisted after World War II, but before long they had also become a distinct minority within a conservative movement that began with the creation of national review in 1955. Murray tells the story in his posthumous book, The Betrayal of the American Right, which is at once history and memoir and a great book. What exactly did conservatives want?  As time went on, stop became slow down. Eventually became, hey, we'll join you in a minute or two. Conservatives bought foreign interventionism hook, line, and sinker. With the obsession with conservative came essentially a reconciliation with the status quo. Important conservative leaders began to describe Franklin D. Roosevelt, the nemesis of the old right, as one of the greatest American presidents, well, if I remember Ronald Reagan's of that. It had been a mistake from the beginning to adopt the word conservative, and an even bigger mistake for libertarians to consider themselves conservatives. If a high exaversion to this word is well known, thanks to his essay, Why I Am Not a Conservative. Murray Rothbard noted that in the days of the old right, no one called himself a conservative, and why should he? The old right had no intention of conserving the institutions of the American government of their day. Those institutions were to be overthrown. Less well known as nemesis felt about being called a conservative. Even though in culture, temperament, dress, manners, many, many other ways, nemesis gave the impression of being a conservative. He too considered the term a misnomer. When Yale University invited him to speak as part of its conservative lectures series in 1954, nemesis declined. To conserve, he said, means to preserve what exists. It is an empty program, really negative, rejecting any change. To conserve what exists in the present day, he said, is tantamount to saying that the laws and institutions that the new deal and the fair deal have bequeathed to the nation is a good thing. Today the conservative movement is in the shambles. Its constituent parts are at war with one another. Nobody can figure out what constitutes a, quote, true conservative. And the ease of which Donald Trump laid bare this astonishing fact that the seemingly formidable ray of magazines, think tanks, and pressure groups that constituted the conservative movement, none of which could stop him, had been paper tigers all along. The decline of conservatism has been accompanied by a tremendous growth in libertarianism. That growth has been the combined result of a huge number of young people, oftentimes because of Ron Paul, who became libertarians immediately never having gone through a conservative phase, as well as a considerable stream of refugees from the conservative movement, where many libertarians, where many libertarians finally realized they didn't really belong there. Mises of course did not live to see any of this, nor did he foresee it. Although Mises' activities and public appearances had slowed in the 1960s, it wasn't until 1971 that he actually ceased working. After physically recovering from an infection that year, Mises found himself no longer able to work. Even though he had been pessimistic about the progress of liberalism in the European sense of course, he still had a drive to carry on. So his poor health was an especially difficult cross to bear. According to his wife, Margit, he told her, the worst is that I still have so much to give to the people, to the world, and I can't put it together anymore. It's tormenting. Mises did receive some degree by the way of professional recognition in his lifetime, a fact that he might have overlooked in light of his lack of a salaried position at New York University. He received honorary doctorates from NYU, University of Freiburg, Grove City College, as well as the Austrian Medal of Honor awarded by the Austrian Embassy in Washington. He was even elected a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association. But it was not this recognition, welcome as it was, that motivated Mises, who was the only rebuke of himself in his memoir's notes and recollection, was that he hadn't been uncompromising enough. He lived his life as an incorrigible truth seeker, regardless of the professional consequences. This is one of the many reasons he was such an inspiration to Murray and why it continues to inspire the rest of us. For the most part, Mises' economic views to say nothing of his epistemological arguments ensured that he would be scorned or ignored by his own profession. And of course, by the political classes, he would receive no large institutional backing from any source. How then do we account for the continued growth of Misesi in thought? Here's Guido's answer. The main explanation of the present-day growth of the Misesi in paradigm is the extraordinary vigor of the ideas that inspire it. Mises is a classic, but in our day he is more than that. A classic author has given mankind a tireless formulation of essential questions and sometimes time-tested answers, but these questions and answers are not necessarily the ones that move us today, nor they may be relevant to the problems that we confront, not so in the case of Mises. All these years after his death, his writings still strike the reader, academic and layman alike, as relevant and thought-provoking. His books and articles are still being bought by many thousands each year, and most of all, ribbed. How many economic students today, Guido asks, actually read something by Adam Smith or David Ricardo? Any teacher of economics knows the answer. The same answer holds true for the writings of the 20th-century luminaries, such as Gustav Gasel or Frank Knight. It holds even true for the writings of John Maynard Keynes. The greatest champion ever of interventionism is constantly referenced in the classroom and in the media, but few people have ever held one of his books in their hands. By contrast, Mises is still read and studied attentively all over the world, and of course, as Guido points out, he is indeed. As our Mises University summer program, which attracts eager students from all over the world, demonstrates year after year. At our most recent Mises U, Walter Block were called an interesting exchange he'd had with Murray Rothbard in the late 1960s. Walter asked Murray, how many libertarians there were in the world? Murray answered with a bleak figure, 25. Not 25,000, but even 2,500, but 25. By that standard, and that figure, by the way, is the relevant benchmark. How can we be anything but delighted with our progress? Especially when our views are on counter to virtually everything that's taught to everyone in every school in America. And frankly, libertarianism is something truly new under the sun. It's true, of course, that we have intellectual forerunners, the 19th century individualist anarchists, French liberals like Frederick Bastiat, 17th and 18th century thinkers like John Locke, and groups like the Lovelers and the late Scholastics, to say the very least. Is that a consistent and systematic approach to the world that takes liberty as the non-negotiable foundation? There frankly was no such thing until the 20th century. Even the heroic figures that came before us, with the occasional exception like Gustav de Molinari, did not consider the possibility that so many state functions they took for granted could be provided within the market nexus they otherwise admired. For brand new philosophical school, and the one most people encounter only in caricature at the hands of the media, intellectuals and political figures who despise it, were doing extremely well. Our views are the opposite of what the ruling classes want to be here, and the opposite of the superstitions those classes seek to spread among the public. There are millions of us now. We have a greater ability to reach and educate people than ever before, and thereby increase our numbers still more. Libertarians of the future will look back on this period in history and wonder why many of us are so gloom. This was when the explosion and growth occurred, and we were too busy comparing ourselves to Democrats and Republicans. Libertarians we know, know that a lot of the news the public thinks is good is actually not so good. Whether it's the passage of destructive legislation with pleasant sounding names, or economic news that sounds positive but in fact indicates bubble conditions, we're skilled at finding hard truths beneath the sacred and sacrament, saccharine surface of state propaganda. When it comes to the growth of our movement and the spread of our ideas, but any reasonable standard, the news is all good. Let's recognize it and build on it. Thank you.


Everybody's doing this. There you go. I won't even roll the guy. This foot will stay there. I'll never roll the guy. I got to relax. I got to bring you in. I got to get this, 14 in my brain. All right? Let's grab a splash. You guys have fun now. Go!


Okay, we're back. We're alive. We're doing community matters today with Kevin News, and we're going to discuss about appropriation, not necessarily as a legal thing, but misappropriation as a violation of artistic principles. Is that a correct statement of it, Kevin? Well, more generally, cultural, but art definitely comes into it. Do you remember the good old days before COVID? We used to get worried about things like cultural appropriation. So I'm trying to ease us back into something that resembles normal, where things like that really matter to people. And so I've been spending some of my time whilst under lockdown, contemplating, well, what does cultural appropriation actually mean, and what is not cultural appropriation? There's been a lot of discussion of this, probably in the last 10 or 15 years. The issue for some is that it can't surely be that it's inappropriate for one culture to learn from another. That's one of the key drivers of human civilization. If it weren't for that, for example, we got from China the compass, the clock, paper, gunpowder, what would we have done without gunpowder? There's no Nobel prizes. So clearly ideas migrate across cultural and national boundaries, and often to the general betterment of civilization. So it surely, at least to me, can't be that, well, there'll be no more cultural exchange. So where's the line between legitimate kind of benign cultural exchange and something that is pernicious or damaging? And that's what I've been trying to figure out. So I came up with a theory that, and it's based on your discipline, not mine. So I'll name you if it all goes south. It's the notion of the legal notion of no harm, no foul. If nobody got damaged, then nobody should be held guilty. And that's the kind of premise if we go to the first slide. So we're talking about infringement of a kind here. That's what we're talking about. Right. And the two types of cultural harm, or at least harm then that I considered were loss, you know, you can lose income, you can lose property, you could lose identity, and offense, you know, somebody could just be harmed, you know, if I hurt your feelings, you're harmed, right? So two types of harm, psychological and one is more sort of, well, not entirely tangible, if it's cultural, but something is lost, something necessarily important. And that brings me to the second slide. The criteria that I propose would be that the thing that is lost or taken without permission has to be significant. If it doesn't matter to anybody, then it doesn't matter to anybody. It needs to be recognizable in its new context. And it needs to be taken by a dominant culture. I'll come to the second part, but the recognizability part, Jay, if I were to steal your car, and I know that you've got a really nice car.  Would it still be yours? I don't have a really nice car. I've never had a really nice car, but we can continue this conversation anyway. Let's pretend that you had a nice car.  I took it to a shop or whatever. It's still your car, right. But there seems to be a significant fundamental difference between a material property or possession like that, and a cultural possession, where if I take something from your culture, and change it such that you don't even recognize it, it's hard, I would argue, to claim that it still belongs to you, or vice versa, to me if you took it from me. If I walked past it and didn't even recognize it as mine, then when I learned that you did derive it from me but you changed it so much, then I get offended. It seems somewhat, I don't know, fake. If you don't even recognize your own thing, when it's not a material possession, then it seems to me that it's, it's tough to make the argument that it still belongs to you. So those are the premises, Jay. So I looked at some examples that would not qualify under those criteria in order to make some kind of a useful distinction so that people are not left in their current state where people will make accusations of cultural appropriation, and it's hard to defend that. When there's no criteria, there's no definition. In the end, it starts to become very subjective. If somebody takes offense, then, you know, well, it must be called for misappropriation, then. And that's the other point that appropriation, of course, is not inherently bad. I believe Congress has an appropriations committee, and I'm sure they're up to all sorts of nefarious things, but that isn't automatic, right. So appropriation is a neutral word or was. There's a perfectly good term for the abuse of appropriation that's misappropriation. So I prefer to use cultural misappropriation, because I think some appropriations of other cultures are legitimate, and that will probably get me into trouble. But I'm trying to make that distinction so that people can have a decent conversation based on some sort of objective criteria rather than sort of subjective. Well, I think it is and somebody else thinks it isn't. Which ones are legitimate? How would you define that, Kevin? Well, if one of those criteria, if the original form or idea wasn't significant, or it isn't recognizable in its new context, or it was adopted by a non-dominant culture, from a dominant culture, then it seems to me that little harm, little or no harm is done. If one of those criteria is not met, right, it could be significant but unrecognizable, in which case, where's the offense? Where's the harm? Where's the undermining of the culture? It could be that it is significant and recognizable, but it came from the dominant culture. Usually, dominant cultures like to project their own image onto other cultures, so usually they're not offended. They're quite the opposite, probably flatter. And if it's not significant, as I said, in its original context, and then it gets adopted, well, if it wasn't significant to start with, why does anybody need to be offended by its adoption somewhere else, even if it is recognizable? So those are the three criteria. They raise other questions, which we'll talk about, but let's go to Image 3, which is a couple of architectural plans. One is a fairly ordinary traditional Japanese house plan, and one is a house plan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who we talked about a couple weeks ago. And I believe that one is, the second one on the right, is based loosely on the one on the left. Although you would be hard-pressed, and so would a Japanese, I think, to recognize that because in the three-dimensional form, which is what you actually see in the real world, not the plan, it doesn't look remotely Japanese. So for two reasons, that form was not particularly special, it wasn't culturally significant, and it was not recognizable. It wouldn't qualify as cultural misappropriation by the criteria that I'm proposing. If we go to the next one, another architectural plan, and I'll stop with the architectural plans after that. The plan on the left comes from Pergamon, an ancient Hellenistic Greek city on what is now the coast of Turkey. And on the right, a modern library by the Finnish architect Alvar Alter. And again, I believe that he derived his plan from this ancient plan. Now, there aren't many Hellenistic Greeks left because, you know, most of them died a long time ago. But even a contemporary Greek would have a hard time, again, recognizing that. So you could argue maybe it was significant, but it's really, to all intents, unrecognizable in its new context. So no harm, no foul, not misappropriation by my criteria anyway. And then if we go to the next one, and this will be, I think, yeah, this is the way that the two Japanese solilovers, Katagana on the left and Hiragana on the right, were derived from Chinese characters in the middle. And if you didn't know, as a Chinese, it would be hard to tell that the transformation is so great that it would be difficult to recognize your own texts. So the source is clear when it's set out this way. And if you just showed a Japanese or a Chinese speaker or writer in this case, those Japanese ones, unrecognizable. So in this case, there's no doubt that Chinese characters are deeply significant. But if they're unrecognizable in their new context, then it becomes a kind of, well, where's the harm. And in this case, in the sixth century, at that time, China was the dominant culture, and Japan was borrowing from China. So it doesn't qualify on two criteria, that it's not a dominant culture weakening a less or a minority culture. And the forms are not recognizable, even though they're significant, they're not recognizable in the new context. And then if we go to the next ones, we start to get into a kind of world war. This is the Emperor Meiji, dressed in poor European imperial regalia. And yes, it's, you know, at the time it would have been cultural significant and instantly recognizable to most Europeans. But Japan was not the dominant culture. So where's the harm, you know, most Europeans at the time I would suggest would probably be flattered that Oh, Japan is becoming one of us, you know, that was the big, you know, to become a member of the of the respectable democratic nations of the world.  It's like being a member of the club, right. So, you know, the members of that club would would would be flattered and approve that Oh, you want you genuinely want to be a member of the club. So, you know, there's no cultural undermining there, you know, European culture was perfectly fine it was the dominant culture at the time. So, again, by these criteria, at least, not cultural misappropriation. Suppose I suppose I made fun. Suppose I dress just like him, same kind of outfit in a parlor game in London somewhere, right 19th century, and I intend to make fun. And now is that is that misappropriation putting I'm putting him down you understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I assume then you would somehow have to dress yourself to look Japanese and that I'm not sure if it's misappropriation but it's certainly offensive.  So yes, it would be definitely. Maybe part of your definition is it has to be serious.  It's clearly significant. I'm not talking about the race part of it. I'm just talking about his outfit. Oh, I see. Well, his outfit came from Europe so they would have been making fun of themselves. You know, if you think that was ridiculous, most of the leaders of Europe dress like that. And I'm all for making fun of royalty anytime you want. But it wouldn't be unique to Japan, you know, like I say, is our dress like that, you know, the, the Kaiser, you know, the king, they all dress like that. You can hardly tell the difference in the 19th century they all had these outfits. Exactly. Exactly. So it was. And I might add that in the 20th and 21st century, you had American military uniforms, these are military uniforms that were copied by everybody. Right. And you can hardly tell the difference, you know, between an American military uniform and some developing country military uniform. I'm going to look into that. You know, I don't think anybody complained about it because it was, you know, what do they say is the imitation is the most sincere part of flattery. Yeah, they do say that. As long as they can tell the difference on the battlefield, I really don't mind, you know. What are the next people. So here is Claude Monet's wife. Camille dressed in kimono with the family, etc.  They are instantly recognizable by Japanese. They are empowered by the dominant culture of the European culture at the time. So bingo, we have cultural misappropriation and just to reinforce that at Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I don't know what they were thinking about three, four years ago.  You know, it definitely qualifies on all three camps culturally significant immediately recognizable by the people from that culture. And it's a dominant culture basically playing with the things that identify a minority culture at the time. So if you go to the next one, but it wouldn't it wouldn't be nearly as much a misappropriation. If the individual wearing the same outfit was in fact Japanese. Oh, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if it's your own culture, then that changes everything obviously, but it's the borrowing. It's the assumption adoption of somebody else's.  You'll change your mind. Yeah, I've been told that Hawaiian shirts are not really Hawaiian anyway. I'll probably start a firestorm now. So somebody told me that they came from cut up kimonos. So there you go. Hawaii is the perfect example of mixing of cultures, right? What is the food that is developed your pocket, you know, and, you know, a real kind of smorgasbord of, and it's great. Right. As long as nobody's taking offense. So I'm trying to clarify what's okay. Right. And what's what crosses the line. Well, can we look at that for a minute about the offense part. Different strokes for different folks. Some people would be offended by a given appropriation and others would not. Yep. And a jury of 12, you know, they could go this way they could go that way. It would certainly wouldn't be unanimous everybody would have a different right the word offense. Yep. People have got that got there before me Jay philosopher. His name escapes me Wilson I believe has looked at that and I forgot the exact terms of users but he describes the kind of offense you know that it has to be reasonable. And it has to be. It's not his term but severe I mean. He admits himself though that they raised the question of well just who defines reasonable and severe, you know, so you know, so you answer one question and it brings up another. Well sure it doesn't and offense you know something being offensive that is usually an emotional reaction. Or at least in part of an emotional reaction so it's, it's hard to put them, you know, an objective standard on that. It sounds like that that great old case about pornography that was decided by the Supreme Court in the 50s. I can't define it. But but I was a comment. I can't define it. But but I know when it's there. I know I want to see it right. Yes, I know it when I see it. Thank you. Yeah, I can believe that. Yeah, I mean I think that I joked with you earlier I'm going to give you a test at the end to see whether you can, you know, whether you can, when you know it, recognize cultural misappropriation when you see it right. And then I'm actually this is a lesson. So I'm going to see if I, if you learn or whether I failed to teach you. So what are the next image. Yeah, so here we go. Pretty offensive stuff if you come from either the cultures, you know, a culture that Japan in particular, although the characters of Chinese Zen, at least in that pronunciation is Japanese and then the Hindu culture on the right and Western commercialism, basically trying to sell stuff on the back of culturally significant symbols, and they are instantly recognizable and they're not. And again, it's the dominant culture because in those culture cultures or in those countries, Buddhists and Hindus are the minority, and there was a backlash for both and certainly for the beer which was taken off the market. I'm not sure about the shampoo but but you know, I think that's a fairly clear example of why somebody would be offended it's instantly recognizable it is significant, and it's being used for. What's the word. An unflattering purpose right a base commercial purpose right and taking a religious symbol like that. The swastika right is the classic example of that right, a South Asian symbol that got completely subverted to the point now where lots of us can't look at that without going. Yeah, that's not right. So that's that's an egregious example of cultural misappropriation right where they've turned something and completely inverted its its meaning. It means light in its original context could hardly be more different right so it's right up there at one end of the spectrum of the worst kind of cultural misappropriation. That's the perversion of meaning. On to the next one. Okay this is the saga of Mike Tyson's face tattoo right which apparently seems to have come from traditional South Pacific tribal tattoo forms, and then it gets parodied in this dreadful film The Hangover, which I have to admit I think I did see the first in my shame. And then there was a lawsuit, the tattoo artist who did the Tyson tattoo and Tyson appeared in the film but the tattoo artist tried to claim personal copyright over the tattoo and sued Warner Brothers. And I believe the lawsuit failed. But it seems to me, I mean first of all, the forms are culturally significant, they are recognizable. And this is a dominant culture, basically America, borrowing from, if not Maori than South Pacific culture. And even, you know, if that isn't enough, you know, the appropriation of or misappropriation of their cultural form, then there's the insult being added to that of trying to profit from it and claim copyright over something that you took from from a culture without without which seemed to sort of double the insult. It reminds me of the, the lawsuit between Microsoft and Apple, probably 30 years ago. You know the story that a lot of the technology for them for the Macintosh came from the Xerox labs in Palo Alto. And then Apple, i.e. Steve Jobs, trying to sue Windows or Microsoft for coming out with Windows, which they felt was too close to their operating system. And the argument in court, which actually succeeded was, well, you know, if you went into a window and stole something without permission, and then I took it off you go on the way out. Who's wrong here. And it worked, you know, Apple lost the lawsuit. So, yeah, so I think those kind of examples cover the whole gamut from apparently innocuous, right. You wouldn't even know that, you know, where, where a particular form had come from to, well, it's significant, but you wouldn't know or it's not significant, or it's coming from a dominant culture who wouldn't be offended or have their identity undermined by its use. So now I have, when you're ready, Jay, I have my test ready for you to see a few. Okay, I just want to make a comment though. Yeah. There's a, there's an element that I would build into that. And that is whether there was a sacredness, if you will, about this particular design. To the extent there is a sacredness, you know, that heightens the possibility of misappropriation under this context. I'd agree. Absolutely. I don't know enough about Maori culture. But they did object to the Tyson tattoo and they objected to the lawsuit. I mean, also perhaps, you know. So clearly they felt that these forms were significant and whether they use the term sacred, but for many, many of those tribal forms are with a small s in a way sacred. But they, they are very protective of that culture because it is an endangered minority. And so they're super. I mean, I, I believe some, some nurses in the UK did the hacker recently as a sort of jovial kind of, I don't know, like relief in the middle of the COVID. They were severely criticized by people from the Maori community. I think making fun sometimes is very unfair. I am also reminded Kevin of a program that was conducted at the William S. Richardson School of Law, probably 10 or 12 years ago, I remember going to it and it was, it was really right on this conversation. A study of whether cultural misappropriation or appropriation, if you will, of Hawaiian patterns like Tapa pattern, Tapa patterns, you know, was actionable as a violation of some infringement. I mean, legal infringement. I know you're not talking about legal infringement. We've been talking about something other than legal infringement, but about whether it might be an infringement. And the problem was, I don't remember how it came out or who argued what I, I don't think it was ever met with either an actionable lawsuit, or, or I mean a successful lawsuit, or a change in the law. But one of the problems with it was, well, who owns this, the community owns it. I mean, and what community, who is in the community. Let's assume you make a run at somebody for trying to characterize cultural misappropriation as an infringement, some kind of common law infringement, taking your property.  Yeah, how do they share that the $6 verdict. Well, I mean, this is the issue and as an author, Susan Scafardi, I think I probably crucified her name, who looked at cultural misappropriation or appropriation from a legal stance back in like 2005, I believe. And she points out that what you've just described there that, that whilst individuals and artists in particular can copyright their work, cultures can. And it's not that they shouldn't be able to. It's just that the law, well, there isn't a law yet. You have to have an entity. I mean, if you went out and try to copyright a Maori design. What about all the other Maori's you hold an interest in this design and they don't. That doesn't seem right. So, you know, it's really it's the same kind of thing. It's it becomes property and and and doesn't there have to be some entities where you say, Well, okay, it's the Maui Cultural Association, a nonprofit corporation incorporated in New Zealand. Yeah. Well, who's a member of that. Yeah, and if I'm not a member do I have any right to the whole question of property rights. Interesting. I mean, I, um, yeah, and then there would be disputes over well we've got rival cultural, you know, somebody would think they could probably make a buck out of this and go, Well, I'm going to set up my rival. So, you know, and then there'll be a lawsuit over the split of the, you know, I can see I can foresee the issue with that. But it is odd.  And, you know, the difference between a tangible object and cultural form, which is intangible. And here we are at the other end, you know, the law can only deal with the physical that needs to be physical property. And they're, well, intellectual property is a thing. Right. So, um, but now we're hearing, Well, there needs to be one identifiable physical owner, you can have a culture, which is a kind of a non tangible but if you can have intellectual property. Can you not have, you know, equally an intangible kind of entity as you call it. I don't know. I don't know. It could be that from then till now or at some point in the way along the way, some court has said, Well, this, this is a class action. And when you sue on behalf of a culture, you're, you're actually, you're actually doing a class action and certified as a class action and anyone in the class and I suppose that would be blood quantum or who knows what would have a right to pursue that claim. I don't know the law. No, I'm glad one of us is a lawyer we're making some progress. We're going to make progress into the exam because we're almost out of time. Oh, okay. All right, into the exam into the I always like to take exams very quickly, you know. All right, can we see this. Okay. Two wonderfully poetic post t shirts right one one Chinese characters. The Chinese character one is smite, sorry, fighting elves. Right. I assume you can at least read the one on the right even if you don't understand I don't understand it either. Okay, is this cultural misappropriation or no. And you want to give us a reason or one doesn't relate one doesn't relate to the other I'm sorry. Okay, but there's a court under the criteria right that I would specify. Oh, could you go to the next one. Okay. Okay. So, if we go back one the reason is that they're not culturally significant. They're meaningless phrases right.   Well you have a poor sense of humor but you know, is that if they applied that test to litigation in general, there's a lot of cases of. Having a poor sense of humor. So here we have you know the the the classic. Everything from, well, slightly less offensive stuff when they're just turned sell stuff to fascism, you know, and the military's got involved as well which really surprised me before the Second World War the swastika was being used on western military as a Western military insignia which I had no idea. So what do you think. misappropriation or not. Yeah, it strikes me as it is misappropriation. And I think the the people where did you say it was in Myanmar. Well, South Asia in general. Yeah, South Asia in general have a good claim against the Nazis they ought to sue him. All right, next. And ask for a lot of money. Yeah, right. The problem is, you have to identify the Nazi organization today. That's interesting. There are actually organizations out there that are still using the swastika. There you go. Can you imagine an injunction against using it that would be something else that would be pretty interesting to say nothing of the damages. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to wait and see with that. What do you think. I can't see the one on the left very well what what is that it's a Japanese Japanese woman. It's a Japanese print. And then to lose the track. Do you think the um Devon Japan is, excuse my french While there is this this is a resemblance, for sure, in terms of the color, the color of the clothing. But is it misappropriation. No, because you are Japanese with thinking, you know, with this be. Is it significant is it recognizable. I don't think it's recognizable. Exactly. And I think that Toulouse Latrec had his own style and it was just an accident. All right. Well, next slide. Yeah, that was my conclusion that, you know, most Japanese, unless they were told would not, especially at that time, would not have said that that is remotely Japanese. I like them both, though. I hang either one of them on my wall. Yeah. And I think that's my, you know, that's my point, I suppose, that, you know, that kind of artistic borrowing, creative synthesis does no harm and, you know, are in general profits from that benefits from that. Sorry. But they can coexist. Exactly. Right. Without anybody being offended. No harm, no final slides, I think. Okay. That's it. I think we got, I think that was it. Yep. Okay. I guess I get 100% on that or an A. You passed.  So what should we leave people with here? I mean, suppose, just to put the cap on it, suppose we find that there is cultural misappropriation in art, architecture, design, what have you. Where does that take us? Do we stamp our feet or what? I think you've called a lawyer. Class action. Yeah, I'm not excited. You'd have to make a lot of calls to find one who would take that. This is why I'm talking to you, Jay.  No, I look forward to the day when, you know, we are having conversations about this kind of thing. You know, it matters. You know, COVID puts everything into the shade, of course, as it rightly should. But, you know, these things did matter and I'm looking forward to the day when they matter again, you know, and we can talk about other things. But clearly, we're not out of the woods yet. But yeah, when we are, I'll be at your office with a class action lawsuit about some of this stuff. I'll be sure to refer you to somebody who might help you. It would take me a while to figure that out. But let me offer this thought. You know, there's an awful lot of infringement goes on all the time. And that's infringement in a legal sense. And that's because we live in a world of images that are easy to obtain and easy to propagate.  There are positives and maybe there are negatives about that. I mean, for example, I hate to see the great Japanese culture be diffused in any respect because I admire it so much. And then so for a lot of cultures. But the fact is that in a globalized society, in a flat world, people are going to emulate what they like. And it is usually a statement of admiration that they emulate this sort of thing. And the people who and the people who say, well, I'm offended by that. I want recourse against you. I'm really ticked off that you took my design or my cultural my cultural rendition.  Well, I admit, you know, many people would agree with you, but lots of people would disagree, you know, that this is a serious thing, sort of identity. They would argue that it's not a flat world yet. And why should we accelerate that? You know, do we all want to be homogenous?  Just as we would preserve species, preserve these cultures and not have them. I have to admit that there is a kind of almost an inevitability about some of this. You know, it's not whether we like it or not. It's just going to happen, right? But I think it's a worthwhile discussion, you know, as to know I came into this really from a sort of from the point of view of creativity, what is originality? And I touched on that a couple of weeks ago when talking about right, you know, people would misunderstand if you had sources. Somehow that makes you unoriginal. And to me, you know, bringing things together that previously existed, but in brand new combinations is creativity is originality. So I didn't set out to look at appropriation per se, but I sort of stumbled into it. Because a lot of what Wright did, I would argue, well, for years and years and years, people didn't recognize it. So almost by default, then it wouldn't qualify as misappropriation, because nobody actually recognized it as Japanese. People would say, well, you know, there's something Japanese about his work or whatever, but we can't quite pin it down. And, you know, I am a little bit too close to Wright, I suppose, but he's where I started on this. And then was sort of interested in, well, if he's not guilty of cultural misappropriation in most cases with his architectural plans, then where does the line, where do you trip over into something that really is damaging? And that's how I got into this.  And let me say that the real inquiry here, recognizing the coming homogeneity of the world, the real question is to recognize the influences in any work and to respect them as influences, to appreciate them, and to appreciate the work itself as a combination of influences. And that is the, you know, to me, that is a very gratifying experience. So, Kevin, thank you so much for this discussion, provocative as it was. And I look forward to our next discussion soon thereafter. Take care, be well, stay well, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks. All right, great fun. Thanks, Yang.