YouTube video transcript

Speaker A

Okay, so let's talk about history. Okay, so what we did last week is look at the cultures that have emerged at the Project Collapse, which are now going to dominate history. Okay? They are the Greeks, the Persians, and the Israelites. Okay? Now we're going to look at how these ideas.

Play out in history for. But for us to do that, we first need to understand how history works. Now, I've identified three different patterns of geopolitics, okay? And I want you guys to remember these patterns. The first pattern is this. This is really important that I didn't understand. Companies within nation states are what matter, okay? Competition between nation stones don't really matter, or they're not as significant as competition within nation states. And the idea we have here is elite of production. So what drives a lot of conflict is the fact that domestically you have these different competing factions, and they're all competing for power, okay? So you have too many elites, too few status positions, and so they're competing against each other. This drives a lot of conflict, okay? So that's the first idea. Second idea is that the elite have shifting loyalties, okay? Think of Game of Thrones.

I'm not sure if you guys have seen the TV series or read the books, Game of Thrones, but everyone wants to be king, right? And they're gonna kill their brother, they're gonna kill their father, they're gonna kill their mother to be king, okay? And so the elite don't really have loyalties except to themselves.

The world is just a Game of Thrones, okay? The third thing is that war can be a mechanism to protect the status quo, all right? The idea of equilibrium in that sometimes the conflict is really bad. So what you do, you start a war so you can set off people to get killed, okay? And that way you can maintain equilibrium within your system. And what? And we'll see this. We'll see this pattern throughout human history. Okay? So these are the three ideas I want you guys to remember as we move on and discuss world history.

All right? So I'll give us an example for us to understand. Okay? Think of the Warring States period of China before the emergence of the First Empire, the Qing Empire. Okay? And as you can see from this map, China is divided into different warring states that are all powerful. And at this time in history.

The Qing Empire, sorry, the Qing state is the poorest. It's most isolated, and it is the least advanced. Okay? You can see that Chu Zhao, they are more powerful. And you could argue that eventually one one of them would emerge to unite all of China. But they did not. It was the Qing, the isolated, marginalized, backward state that came to conquer. And so the question is why this happened. And so if we use our three principles right, we can understand why these three states, these different states are not competing against each other. It's the elites within these states are competing against each other, okay? Lead overproduction. So the way they manage this is for them to use warfare in order to maintain the status quo, to create equilibrium. Okay? And how we know is from this time emerges the idea of Chinese chess, right? What is Chinese chess?

Chinese chess is the idea of warfare that is regulated, that is ritualized. Okay? So when we go to war, we battle each other. We have to respect each other's.

The rules of the warfare. That's stupid. War should be about killing the other guy. It shouldn't be about following the rules, okay? Also, another piece of evidence is at this time in history, Xunzi wrote the book the Art of War. This is one of the stupidest books ever written. Okay? I guarantee you, if you follow this book, you're gonna lose the war badly. Because this is really about how to cheat in a heavily regulated game. Okay? So things like using spies, oh.

Making a high ground, okay? You have to have all these rules and guess what? In actual war, none of these things actually work, okay? So if you look at history, I'm going to tell you exactly how to win a war, okay? And the way you win a war is, first of all, you have to be completely committed to winning this war, Total warfare. Second is that if you want to win this war, you have to make sure that talent arises. So you have to be open and meritocratic, okay? If an officer of a general is winning this war, you promote him. That sounds easy, right? But not if you're status quo power. Because what's important to you is to maintain that your family is always on top. So if a general arises who is very innovative, who is really talented, you kill him because he's a threat to you, okay?

So the third principle is make sure your soldiers are happy. I know it sounds really simple, but again, if you're a statistical power, you don't really care. Okay? Destroy enemy civil centers. Siege warfare. Okay? Go and destroy the city. Because that's how they produce their.

War capacity, right? The food, the soldiers, right? Kill civilians.

Destroy supply lines. Overstretch your enemy. Divide and conquer. Strike fear in your enemy. Kill their gods. Okay? If you really want a war, if you really want to win a war, this is what you have to do. And we know because this is what the Romans did. This is what the Prussians did. This is what the Aztecs did. This is what Conquestos did. This is what the Mongols did. Every single power that has conquered everyone else has done all these things, okay? So when they don't do these things, it's because these different warring states aren't actually at war with each other, they're actually friends, okay? They're all intermarried with each other. They're all trying to maintain the status quo. They use war as a game in order to maintain the status quo, to create equilibrium. Okay.

So this is true for Mesopotamia, okay? Mesopotamia is important because, remember, this is the cradle of civilization. This is where the first empires will emerge. This is where most technological innovation happens. This. This was for the longest time, the wealthiest part of the world, okay? So remember, the idea of Mesopotamia is that the first city state is Uruk. And then they will develop colonies throughout the Tigris and Euphrates. And then these colonies will come into war with each other. And they're all friends with each other. They're all intermarried. And the elite create these highly ritualized warfare, okay? And one really important rule is that you don't kill each other's God, okay? Because in their religion, the God lives in their temple. So you don't attack their temple. But guess what? All their money, all their gold is in the temple, okay? So you're not allowed to steal each other's gold.

That's stupid, okay? Because now you really don't accomplish that much with warfare. So for the longest time, this was the sansko. And then what will happen is a.

Man named Luca Zagazi, okay? And you can think of him as lower nobility. So what we'll see in history is that within a city state, there's always going to be conflict between the upper nobility and the lower nobility, okay? The upper nobility is in charge. They want to maintain the status quo. The low nobility want to steal that power. Okay? This will happen in Rome where Julius Caesar is of the lower nobility, and he will steal the power from the upper nobility, okay? The people call the ultimates. And so Luka legacy is from Uma. And he's like, you know what? Screw this. These rules are stupid. I want to conquer everyone. I want to be the top dog, okay? So what he's doing that's very different from previous times is he's now going and ransacking each of each city's temple. So now he has the capacity to people build an empire, okay?

But by Doing that, what happens is that the other city states recognize him as a threat. And so they invite mercenaries, place called Akkad to come and help them. Okay? And this leads us to the first.

World Empire called the Akkadian Empire.

Named by Sargon of Akad. Now, his name is interesting. His name means legitimate ruler, which probably tells us he's not a legitimate ruler. He's probably a mercenary like David who stole the throne. Okay? He saw an opportunity, stole the throne. But this is a pattern in history where if there's competition among different city states, the competition is not resolved amongst themselves because they have an equilibrium. So what happens is that an outsider, a mercenary, usually comes in who doesn't respect the rules and he's able to unite everyone, okay, through innovations. So this, this is why the Qing Dynasty and not the Jiao or the Chu or the Wei were able to unite all of China. Because the Qing Dynasty was committed to total warfare. They didn't care about your rules. They didn't care. They wanted to win. So let me explain. How do you rule empires usually?

Okay, well, the traditional way is you control trade routes and access, okay? So people have to pay you a tax to go through your trade routes. That's a traditional way. You can also use fear and conquest, and that's what the Assyrians were known for. They would come and they would kill everyone. If you disobeyed them, you took hostages. That's a very common thing where you conquer people and you take the children of the king as hostages. Okay? Intermarriage, religion. But what the Persians did really well that allow for the Persian Empire to be so huge as well as to be really well managed, are four things, okay? Effective administration. Again, when you have a religion, Zorationism, where people can't lie, that's really good because these bureaucrats will now report real facts to the emperor and that allows him to make better decisions, okay? Elite cooperation, meritocracy.

And the idea here is that if you have a very effective administration that allows for local elites to focus your energies on trying to join this administration as opposed to rebelling against you. Communication networks, okay? So things like roads, things like.

Postal networks, okay? So the Persians create the first global postage system. And it was really effective. Where you want to send mail from Egypt over to Mesopotamia, what would happen is you would have these royal roads where people would ride on horses and they could stop at a, basically a hostile rest and then keep on going, okay? And that way you can, you can very quickly move information from one core of the empire. To the other, and the last is to divide and rule. Divide and rule is really important. So what they did was they basically had different power centers within a region. So you have the satraps, which were the local governors, but then you also have the local. You also have the bureaucrats. Okay. You also had the world representatives. So these are different factions within a region. Okay. So dividing rule is probably the most effective way to control an empire.

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