Balaji 與 Curtis Yarvin：民主與君主制之爭

0:00開場

0:00謝謝大家大老遠跑來。今天談的是美國君主制、去中心化民主。我們聊這個題目有一段時間了。我想請你……嗯，可以來回討論的方向大概十五種，不過我先拋幾個說法，你再告訴我同不同意之類的。So, thanks for coming all the way out. So, American monarchy, decentralized democracy. We've had a conversation for a while. I want you to—well, there's 15 different things we can go back and forth on, but let me throw out a few statements. And then you tell me whether you agree, disagree, and so on and so forth.

0:29首先，你還是相信美國可以扭轉、可以修復？絕對可以。你真的這麼想？厲害。好好修？好。是靠現有體制，還是像重開機那樣？嗯，重開機意思因人而異。我覺得需要的重開機程度，肯定遠超我們在川普政府任內看到的，而且更深。So first, you still do believe America can be turned around; it can be fixed? Absolutely. You do? Amazing. Properly? Okay. And as its current institutions, or as, like, the reboot? Well, what a reboot means, I think, varies a lot. I think the level of a reboot that's needed certainly goes much farther than we've seen with the Trump administration, and much deeper.

0:57有可能嗎？絕對有可能。不過你知道，我講重開機的時候，既要說明我講的嚴重程度，又別嚇到大家，我常用的例子是一九四五年德國的重開機。當時基本上假設所有既有德國機構都徹底被納粹污染了，你要怎麼重建？怎麼在沒有……嗯，沒有那種暴力的情況下造出一個新德國？You know, is it possible? It's absolutely possible. But, you know, when I tend to think about reboots, in order to simultaneously describe the level of seriousness I'm talking about and also not frighten the horses, one of the examples that I use is the reboot of Germany in 1945, where essentially it was assumed that every existing German institution was completely contaminated with Nazism, and how do you restore that, and how do you create a new Germany even without any, like, violence?

1:31戰爭本身當然很暴力，但大家要面對的是另一回事……你知道，那是個被宣傳洗得很深的群體。他們真的相信國家社會主義，大家原本預期戰後要把德國人重新洗腦會是非常棘手的問題。Like, so obviously the war is very violent, but people expected a lot of, like—you know, this is a very propagandized population. They really believe in National Socialism, and people expected that this would be a very tough problem after the war, to reprogram the Germans.

1:48結果比大家想的容易多了。那是因為他們被揍到一種程度，腦子裡什麼……軟體都能裝進去。沒錯，他們被揍慘了，但還有一層……我的意思是，一戰時他們也被揍過。And it turned out to be actually a much easier problem than people thought. Well, that's because they had gotten beaten down to such an extent that any— software could be installed in their heads. Sure, you know, they'd gotten beaten down, but also, you know, the condition—I mean, they got beat down in World War I as well.

2:08比較像是轉型轉得夠徹底，會在人腦子裡扳一個開關。而且你知道，人天生會追隨權力，程度高到多數人不願承認。順便說一句，今天我們看到的，不管是 Hasan 還是其他人，又開始……哦，搬出 Stalin，或者……你知道，Hitler 那套。And it's more like the sort of the completeness of the transition kind of flips a switch in people's heads. And, you know, human beings are natural power followers to an extent that most of us don't like to admit. So one thing on this, by the way, is, you know, with the whole—one thing we're seeing today is people, whether it's Hasan, you know, they're going back to, oh, invoking Stalin, or others, you know, like, oh, you know, the Hitler thing.

2:39極左極右與二戰教訓

2:39我覺得部分原因是，極左或極右的人都以為越極端越好：極左覺得能給工人更多錢，極右覺得能給國家更多權力。And so, and I think part of that is people on the far left or the far right think that going more extreme leads to, in the far left's case, more money for workers, or in the far right's case, more power for the country.

2:55但從實際結果看，二次世界大戰和 Hitler 的德國反而讓國家權力變少。我認為原因是這樣：極左我們知道他們不懂私利，對吧？不懂資本主義。極右則是不懂他者利益，不懂外交，不懂對方視角，把一切都想簡化成純權力關係。But empirically, World War II and Hitler's Germany led to less power for the country. And I would argue the reason for that is, you know, with the far left, we understand that they don't get self-interest, right? They don't understand capitalism. They don't understand this. But I'd say the far right doesn't understand other-interest. They don't understand diplomacy. They don't understand the other guy's point of view, and they want to reduce everything to pure power relations.

3:23但他們沒有建立足夠大的聯盟，想要權力，外交卻做得不夠，拿不到。有點像極左想要財富，卻不夠會做交易，或……你知道，不夠尊重對方的私利來達成目的，對吧？But by not building a large enough coalition, they want power, but they don't do enough diplomacy to acquire it. Sort of like how the far left wants wealth but doesn't trade enough or, you know, respect the other guy's self-interest in order to do it, right?

3:38誇張地說，極左想要不勞而獲的錢，極右想要不付代價的權力。我認為德國戰敗部分也是因此：他們推崇很具體的、肉搏式的、一拳打鼻子那種做法，而不是外交，以及真的……你知道，建立聯盟。So, like, to caricature, the far left wants money without working for it, and the far right wants power without working for it. And I'd argue that's why, part of why Germany got defeated, is that they valorized a very— tangible, physical, punch-them-in-the-nose kind of thing, as opposed to diplomacy and actually, you know, building coalitions.

4:01對比比如 Reagan 抗共的方式，他確實建立了大聯盟也做成事。所以我會說中右或中間比極右好，就算用他們自己要的最大權力這條標準來衡量；就像中左比極左好，用他們自己要的最大工人財富來衡量一樣。To contrast versus, let's say, Reagan's way of resisting communism, which did build large coalitions and do things. And this is why I would say center-right or center is better than far-right, even on its own terms of generating the maximum power, just like center-left is better than far-left in terms of its own terms of generating the maximum amount of wealth for workers.

4:25我先停在這裡。你剛才講了很多歷史，還有很多定義……極左極右是什麼，左右本身是什麼。大體上我看二戰，先部分同意你一點：你會發現二戰另一邊的那些強國，並不是在打一場世界大戰。Let me pause there. Well, there's a lot of history that you went into there, and a lot of definitions of, you know, what defines far-left and far-right, or what even defines left and right. I would say, generally speaking, when I look at World War II, I think, just to sort of agree with you there, what you notice is that the powers on the other side of World War II were not fighting a world war.

4:52他們沒把自己想成要聯手統治世界的聯盟。德國在打種族戰爭。日本在打一種很傳統的歐洲式……你知道……他們表現得像十八、十九世紀的歐洲列強，卻沒意識到地方性列強那個時代已經結束了。They were not thinking of themselves as an alliance to gain control over the world. Germany is fighting a race war. Japan is fighting a very traditional kind of European, you know, sort of—they're behaving like European great powers in the 18th and 19th century, and don't realize that the age of local great powers is over.

5:14軸心國視野與蘇日戰線

5:14他們其實是在爭取恢復那個時代。所以你會看到這些勢力之間的協作其實非常、非常差。對。這也反映在……你知道，常有人說沒有右翼國際之類的、之類的、之類的。That's an age that they're actually fighting to restore. And so what you see is that collaboration between these groups is actually very, very poor. Yep. And, and, and that's sort of mirrored in, you know, it's a sort of common saying that there's no right-wing international, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

5:34我覺得那句話的來源可能跟你以為的不太一樣。部分原因是這些團體和強國沒有全球願景，是因為他們一直被指控有全球願景，一直被說在謀求世界霸權，其實他們並沒有。I think that actually where that comes from is maybe a slightly different place than you think, though. I think that, you know, part of the, part of the reason why these groups and powers had no global vision is that they were constantly accused of having a global vision. They were constantly accused of sort of aiming for world domination in a way that they really weren't.

5:59被冤枉的時候，本能就是否認。所以部分原因才沒有那種《高堡奇人》式的、德日要建立的歐亞秩序，結果是四一年到四五年蘇聯基本上在美國直接補給下撐過來，就在日本眼皮底下。And so when you're accused of something falsely, your natural instinct is to deny it. And so that's one of the reasons why there's sort of no Man in the High Castle-world, Eurasian order that the Germans and Japanese are aiming for, and the consequence of that is that the Soviet Union is basically supplied by America directly under Japan's nose from 1941 to 1945.

6:24所以基本上我在某種程度上同意你：沒有真正的軸心。但我覺得那是願景太窄。關於這個，Sean McMeekin 的《Stalin's War》談到二戰也許最重要卻未被認清的戰場：蘇日戰場。So, so there's kind of, there's essentially, I'm agreeing with you to a certain extent, there's no Axis, basically. But that comes from a smallness of vision in my mind. So on that, right, so Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War talks about maybe the most important unrecognized theater in World War II, which is the Soviet-Japanese theater.

6:46沒叫的那條狗是：德日為什麼沒兩頭夾擊蘇聯。你可以談開頭的哈拉欣河戰役之類，但日本仍然戰略上有理由往北打。The dog that didn't bark is why Germany and Japan didn't attack the Soviet Union from both ends. You know, you can talk about Battle of Khalkhin Gol and so on at the beginning, but, you know, there's still a strategic reason to go north for Japan.

7:00他的論點是蘇聯間諜其實讓日本……你知道……去打美國，反之亦然。但我覺得還有更深一層：德日因為是極端民族主義者，而且……你知道……他們是視覺文化，不是文字文化。And his argument is that Soviet spies actually made Japan, you know, go and fight the Americans, and vice versa. But I think there's another deep point, which is the Germans and the Japanese, just because they were ultra-nationalists, and, you know, they're a visual culture, not a verbal culture.

7:16他們是民族主義文化，不是國際主義文化。所以沒有……很多既懂德語又懂日語的人。沒有……人與人之間那種橋梁。他們基本上都在反共，對吧？都在反共產國際協定裡，正式名稱你是知道的，但他們不是在為同一件事奮鬥。They're a nationalist culture, not an internationalist culture. So because of that, there weren't, like, lots of people who knew both German and Japanese. There weren't— Person-to-person bridges there. There weren't, you know, like, they were basically against communism, right? They're both part of the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was a formal name, as you know, but they weren't for the same thing.

7:38民族主義與共產的失敗模式

7:38在我看來這就是極右，或者說民族主義……少點貶義……民族主義的失敗模式，尤其是法西斯那種。民族主義失敗模式是只想到自己部族。反過來共產主義的失敗模式，理論上是想到所有人，所以很會招募、很會佔領土地，但運作不起來因為沒有私利觀念。And so this is, in my view, the far-right, or the nationalist—let's be less pejorative—the nationalist failure mode, especially, and especially the fascist failure mode. The nationalist failure mode is that they're only thinking about their own tribe. And then conversely, the communist failure mode in theory is thinking about everybody, so they're great at recruiting and great at taking territory, but then they can't operate because they have no sense of self-interest.

8:04民族主義者把私利做得太過，共產主義者做得不夠，中間的資本家、民主資本主義者能建立儘可能大的聯盟。這可以說就是二十世紀民主資本主義擊敗右翼也擊敗左翼的原因。So the nationalist overdoes it on the self-interest, the communist underdoes it, and then the capitalist in the center, the democratic capitalist, can build the largest possible coalition. Which is arguably why the democratic capitalists beat the right and beat the left in the 20th century.

8:21請說。我要潑幾盆冷水。看冷戰，我們會發現 Stalin 式社會在幾乎所有方面都比西方對手、競爭者右傾得多。它是君主制。基本上從一九二一左右布爾什維克那種自由戀愛……還有無子女稅……一路到蘇聯非常強的文化保守主義。So, like, I mean, go ahead. To throw a couple of monkey wrenches into that, when we look at basically the Cold War, we actually see that a Stalinist society is much more right-wing in just about every way than its— than its opponents, or really its rivals, in the West. It's a monarchy. It basically goes, you know, from Bolshevik free love in 1921 or whatever—it's got a tax on childlessness, you know—to a very strong level of cultural conservatism that existed in the Soviet Union.

8:56所以在很多方面其實……很像法西斯。美國人被教的是……這讓他們很困惑，因為被教說這是超左翼政權，還有歷史起源……共產主義當然不是發源於俄國。And so it actually, it sort of, you know... It resembles fascism in many ways. And so Americans are taught, really, it's very confusing to Americans because they're taught that this is an ultra-left-wing power, and this is its historical origins, you know, because communism, of course, does not originate in Russia.

9:19它是西方信仰體系。但我們一想到晚期 USSR 的頑固、傳統、甚至……沒能融入資本主義，又會對立起來。這些從表象上看並不真的是左翼的東西。反過來，資本主義多數美國人被教成非常右翼，要跳出同溫層才會看到資本主義和共產主義的接近，兩者都源自十九世紀早期英國自由主義，都對……It's a Western belief system. And yet we sort of oppose it when we think about the stodginess, the traditionalness, even the, like, failure to integrate capitalism of the late-stage USSR. These are not really, you know, left-wing things in a phenotypic sense. Conversely, you know, capitalism, which most Americans have been taught to see as very, very right-wing, it takes a while of getting outside your bubble to see the closeness of capitalism and communism, both of which originate in early-19th-century English liberalism, and both of which are sort of somewhat foreign

10:04馬蹄曲線與二十世紀意識形態

10:04前現代古典理解有點外來。我說幾句。一國社會主義，Stalin 版，和國家社會主義，Hitler 版，就是馬蹄形。有幾個也許明顯的參照。愛沙尼亞出過一部片叫 The Soviet Story，其實把大概二十張宣傳海報並排給你看。看得出來。to the premodern classical understanding. So let me make a few remarks there. So, you know, socialism in one country, you know, the Stalinist version, and National Socialism, the Hitler version, there's the horseshoe. There's a couple of maybe obvious references. You know, Estonia put out a movie called The Soviet Story, which actually shows, like, 20 of their propaganda posters next to each other. You can see.

10:28舉拳頭那個人之類。納粹版一份，蘇聯版一份。還有一部分……Larry Ellison 有句名言：「慎選競爭對手，因為你會變得很像他們。」納粹在爭德國工人這個搖擺票，蘇聯訴求是工人身份，納粹訴求是德國人身份。You know, like the guy with the fists and so on. There's a Nazi version and a Soviet version. And, you know, part of this is also, like, you know, Larry Ellison has this great saying, which is, “Choose your competitors carefully, because you become a lot like them.” And so the Nazis were competing for the German worker, who was a swing vote, and the Soviets were appealing on the basis of being a worker, and the Nazis on the basis of being a German.

10:51所以他們在宣傳和實質上變得很像，因為那是……爭同一票倉的頭號對手，對吧？這些你都知道。我說這個是因為，蘇聯戰後其實……你可能也知道，有無子女稅，……你知道，沒生孩子的女性可能被課更高稅率之類。反過來美國是九成邊際稅率，而不是百分之百。So they ended up resembling each other in propaganda and in substance because that was, like, their number-one competitor, you know, for that vote bank, right? All the stuff you know. But the reason I say this is that, you know, actually in the Soviet Union, you probably know this as well, but post-World War II, there was a tax on childlessness, like, you know, women who didn't have children could be taxed at higher rates and so on. And conversely, America had 90% marginal tax rates rather than 100%.

11:20所以只是……沒那麼中央集權，但還是很中央集權。二十世紀這些形態越打越像，因為互相競爭。不得不加功能，找不到更好的說法，來競爭。但我核心想說的是，就算用他們自己的標準，中間產生的權力比右翼多。右翼基本上把權力看得高於一切，但更多軍事權力是中間造出來的。So it was just, like, less centralized, but it's still very centralized. So those forms in the 20th century all grew to resemble each other because they were fighting each other and they were competitors. So they had to add features, for lack of a better term, to kind of compete. But I think my core point is, even on its own terms, the center generated more power than the right. And so the right basically valorized power over everything, and more military power was generated by the center.

11:51就算用他們自己的標準，中間給工人和民眾的錢和福利比左翼多；左翼承諾工人天堂，交付的是古拉格，對吧？右翼承諾……納粹承諾千年帝國，交付的是被炸平的德國。And even on its own terms, the center generated more money and welfare for workers and people than the left, which promised the workers' paradise and delivered the gulag, right? So the right promised, like, you know, the Nazis promised the Thousand-Year Reich, and they delivered a bombed-out Germany.

12:09極左承諾……工人天堂，交付的是蘇聯解體。中間有它的毛病，但至少那時候比左翼或右翼都更會協調更多人。不是……天真。對，我覺得你要區分一下，大眾意識形態和制度性權力結構。And the far left promised, you know, the workers' paradise. They delivered, like, the defeat of the Soviet Union. And the center, for its faults, at least at that time, was better able to coordinate more people than either the left or the right. It's not, like, naïve. Yeah, I think you need to distinguish, in a way, between mass-market ideologies and institutional power structures.

12:33英美深層權力結構

12:33如果你看一九〇〇到一九五〇年驅動英美世界的核心制度性、基礎權力結構，這些在一九〇〇年已經很深。很大程度上以英格蘭為中心，就整個……國際社群……世界而言。If you look at the kind of core institutional, foundational power structures that are driving the Anglo-American world between 1900 and 1950, these are power structures that go very deep in 1900. They're very much centered in England, inasmuch as there's a sort of center to the whole sort of international-community world.

12:57Exeter Hall 更早，那比較是自由主義。但很多這些機構其實可追溯到一個人，Cecil Rhodes。所以有 Rhodes 獎學金，也有 Royal Institute of International Affairs、Chatham House 和 CFR，大西洋兩岸基本上都是由 Rhodes 同情者創立的。Well, Exeter Hall is earlier. That's sort of liberalism. But really, a lot of these institutions date back to one man, Cecil Rhodes. And so you have, you know, the Rhodes Scholarships, but you also have the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, and the CFR, both founded by basically Rhodes sympathizers on both sides of the Atlantic.

13:22一戰前長兄是倫敦。一戰後長兄是華盛頓、紐約。你看這些人怎麼對待公共哲學和公共信念，我不確定犬儒是不是正確的詞，因為我覺得他們很在意權力，但在某種……更高層次上在意。The elder brother before World War I is London. The elder brother after World War I is Washington, New York. And, you know, when you look at how these people related to kind of public philosophies and public beliefs, I'm not sure that cynicism is exactly the word, because I think they were very concerned with power, but they were concerned with power at a sort of, at a higher level.

13:51某種程度上就像……我覺得你講 Hitler 對權力的態度有點意思，因為他當然不是來自……他沒有那種個人家族……他不是貴族，所以對權力有點暴發戶態度，如果你把權力類比成金錢；而西方深層機構對權力非常、非常世襲地自在，所以不會做那種……開名車到處撒錢的事。In a way, it's like— It's sort of, when you compare, you know, I think you're getting at something with the attitude of Hitler especially toward power, because, of course, he's not at all coming from—he has no sort of personal familial—he's not an aristocrat, and so he sort of has this somewhat nouveau riche approach to power, if you analogize power to money in a way, whereas, you know, the kind of the deep institutions of the West were very, very comfortable in a hereditary way with power, and so they're not sort of doing the equivalent of, like, driving up in a Lambo and throwing money around.

14:36關於這個，我覺得十九世紀末基本上同時有四件事，今天也有鏡像：工業革命、德國統一（如你所知，在歐洲史上比多數人想的晚很多）、猶太解放（猶太人走出 shtetl，是漸進過程，但你可以說在十九世紀末達到頂點），還有強勢但在衰退的盎格魯帝國，就是你說的世襲權力。Well, so on this, right, like, I think— In the late 1800s, you have basically four things happening at the same time that I think are mirrored today, which is you have the Industrial Revolution, you have German unification, which, as you know, came much later in European history than most people realize.

14:54十九世紀四股力量

14:54我覺得今天都有對應：網路革命、中國加入 WTO 與全球貿易、印度……解放或網路化，隨你怎麼叫，像是印度進入全球市場，還有在衰退的美國帝國……這些都有點對上。You had Jewish emancipation, where Jews came out of the shtetl, and that was a gradual process. But you can argue that it reached its culmination late 1800s. And then you also had a dominant but declining Anglo empire, which is the hereditary power that you're talking about.

15:12二十世紀初所有混亂裡，德國人、猶太人和盎格魯人能一起合作的地方是美國。是海外那塊土地，對吧？所以冒頭的才華，德國人才、猶太人才和盎格魯人才可以在這片新土地、配合工業革命合作。And I think all of those are sort of mirrored today, where you have the Internet Revolution, you have Chinese accession to the WTO and Chinese global trade, you have Indian— emancipation or internetification, whatever you want to call it, like Indian access to global markets, and you have a declining American empire that, you know, all of those things are kind of lining up.

15:37今天冒頭的才華，印度人才、中國人才和美國人才可以在網路這個新領域合作。它……各群都有貢獻，因為其實是為網路而建，而不是被網路顛覆；就像二十世紀的美國可以說是為工業革命更新的英國。下一個可能是為網路革命更新的美國，可能跟美國的差異，就像美國跟英國的差異一樣大。And what happened with all the chaos of the early 20th century is that the place that Germans, Jews, and Anglos could work together was America. It was the land overseas, right? So the talent that was coming up, the German talent, Jewish talent, and the Anglo talent could all cooperate in this new land with the Industrial Revolution.

15:56這是我的一個宏觀框架。很想聽你的想法。And the talent that's coming up today, the Indian talent, the Chinese talent, and then the American talent can cooperate in this new sphere of the Internet, which is—it has contributions from all these groups because it's actually built for the Internet rather than disrupted by it, just like America in the 20th century was arguably Britain updated for the Industrial Revolution. Whatever comes next will be America updated for the Internet Revolution, which may be as different from America as America was from Britain.

16:26嗯，你知道，這……那裡有很多大跨度類比。我的意思是，十九世紀的美國在某種程度上還是很像英格蘭的第三世界附屬地。其實很多這種文化大雜燴是在倫敦發生，別忘了一八一五之後世界進入單極秩序。一八一五之後英格蘭沒有對手、沒有直接競爭者，當然英格蘭的哲學是世界主義。This is one of my macro frameworks. I'd love your thoughts. Well, you know, it's a— There's a lot of broad analogies there. I mean, America in the 19th century remains sort of very much a third-world annex, in some ways, of England. And in fact, it's really London in which a lot of this sort of cultural mélange is taking place, because let's not forget that after 1815, the world enters a unipolar order. You know, after 1815, England has no rivals, no direct competitors, and of course, the philosophy of England is cosmopolitanism.

17:10舉例，Marx 是德國猶太人。他與猶太教疏離，走上政治。像很多德國人一樣，他在一八四八前後離開德國。我忘了……我想稍早一點。他離開是因為德國反動的政治迫害。很多人來到美國，成為美國If you take Marx, for example, Marx is a German Jew. He's estranged from Judaism. He becomes political. And like many Germans, he leaves Germany around 1848. I forget the—I think it's a little earlier. But he leaves because of reactionary political persecution in Germany. Many of those people came to the United States and became an important factor in the U.S.

17:371848 革命與意識形態輸出

17:37內戰等因素裡的重要力量。但你有一個龐大的自由派離散社群。你也有一種情況，各國或各人群開始關心他國事務，在那個年代非常奇怪、不尋常。例如一八四八年革命，一大因素就是……幾乎字面意義上……英格蘭的狂熱觀眾。確實英格蘭很在意維也納、布達佩斯等地誰掌權，在歷史上很奇怪、前所未有。Civil War, for example. But you have this huge liberal diaspora. You also have— a situation in which countries are starting, or populations are starting, to take an interest in other countries' affairs, which is a very strange and unusual thing at that date. So, for example, in the revolutions of 1848, a huge factor in the revolutions of 1848 is just the sort of, almost literally, like, the fan audience in England. Like, definitely, England cares very much who's in charge in Vienna and Budapest and so forth, which is a historically strange, unprecedented thing.

18:16我想談一下這個：可能看起來怪，但如果一種意識形態會傳教、另一種不會，前者在數學上就會壓過後者。對，基本上就是這樣。甚至 Hitler 都說過，國家社會主義不是用來出口的。So I want to talk about that for a second, which is: it might seem strange, but if you have one ideology that evangelizes and another one that doesn't, the first will mathematically just outcompete the second. Yeah, basically. And, I mean, you know, even Hitler used to say that National Socialism is not for export.

18:37就是啊。如果你的東西不出口、對方的要出口，你基本上是以地方對抗普世，所以……當然在二戰、一戰時期，甚至美國And it's like, well, exactly. If your thing is not for export and their thing is for export, basically you're parochial against something universal, and so. There were certainly attempts by right-wing intellectuals at the time of World War II, World War I, and even the U.S.

18:58內戰時期，右翼知識分子都曾試圖闡述某種更寬、更大的真理。你知道，我覺得……我不確定哪位右翼知識分子說過，我們打仗的目的是廢除法國大革命，對吧？所以我們活在一個非常……把法國大革命神聖化的世界，那在很大程度上是英國政治觀念注入法國。Civil War, actually, to sort of articulate a sort of broader and bigger truth there. You know, I think it was—I'm not sure which right-wing... Intellectuals said, you know, the purpose of our fight is to repeal the French Revolution, right? And so we're living in a world which has, you know, very much sacralized the French Revolution, which is very much the injection of English political ideas into France.

19:29對。是，但關於那件事我有兩點想說。法國大革命我們記得斷頭台、記得那些畫面，但裡面至少還有兩個部分，我覺得今天偏右的人更該認真面對。Yeah. So yes, but one thing, two comments on that. One of the things about the French Revolution is it— It had a lot of interesting—we remember the guillotine, we remember all of that. But there's at least two parts of it that I think people who are right-of-center today should contend with more.

19:49第一，就算經歷那麼多動盪，最後還是冒出這個統一的六角形，一個能橫掃歐洲的強權。你一般會以為，比方說公司內部要是內鬥嚴重，更別提砍頭之類，應該就沒法協調、沒法組織，對吧？The first is that even after all of that chaos, what emerged was this unified hexagon, this power that could smash its way through Europe. So you'd normally think that, like, within a company, for example, if there's lots of infighting, let alone guillotining or something, that it wouldn't be able to coordinate and organize, right?

20:11法國大革命與國家動力

20:11但說來奇怪，法國大革命整體上還是造出一個後設有機體，一個能勝出的法國。沒錯。沒錯。英國的 Cromwell 也是。很多方面，英國國家是 Cromwell 建起來的，不是國王。但 Cromwell 其實比十七世紀任何英國君主都更像國王，領導更一元，對吧？他不是國王，是平民，但比國王還像國王。But somehow, on net, the French Revolution created a meta-organism, a France, that could outcompete. That's right. That's right. That's right. And you see this also with Cromwell in England. In many ways, the English state is created by Cromwell, not by the kings. But Cromwell is really more a king than—has a more unitary leadership than any English monarch in the 17th century, right? So, you know, he's like— He's not a king, he's a commoner, but he's more a king than the kings.

20:48Napoleon 也一樣。比方 Napoleon 倒台、波旁復辟之後，法國大革命基本上毀掉法國傳統的區域架構，用幾何劃線的省區取代歷史區域和歷史社群。And the same is true of Napoleon. So, for example, when the Bourbons are restored after, you know, the fall of Napoleon, basically, you know, Napoleon has, or the French Revolution basically destroyed the traditional regional framework of— France, and replaced historical regions with historical communities with, like, geometrically drawn departments.

21:13有人跟波旁說，我們要恢復舊貴族結構。波旁說，不，我們其實挺喜歡這些省區，對吧？因為他創造了這套……老法國國家完全被摧毀，除了某種白紙重來，別無選擇，Napoleon 那套運作體系很多留到現在。And somebody comes to, you know, the Bourbons and is like, well, we're going to, you know, restore these old aristocratic structures. And the Bourbons are like, no, actually, we kind of like these departments, right? You know, because he created this, I mean, he— Really, I mean, the old French state was completely destroyed. There was no alternative but to sort of create this clean-slate reboot in France, and so much of Napoleon's operating system has lasted until the present day.

21:42老實說，Napoleon 倒台之後法國幾乎沒什麼根本變化。所以一個教訓是……讓我再延伸兩點。其一，法國大革命儘管有 Carlyle 寫的那些毛病，它確實製造了權力。Really, almost nothing has happened in France since the fall of Napoleon. So, one lesson from this is that—let me give two other thoughts off of it, which are... A, that the French Revolution, for all of its faults, all the things Carlyle has written about, all these things, did actually generate power.

22:01雖然那是左翼的事，它還是製造了權力。很多這類左翼意識形態，左右兩邊都不會直接把它想成造權力的東西，但牠們就是，這是第一點。第二點比較有意思：今天右派常自稱民族主義者，但當時法國的民族主義是左翼，這又是保守派像慢動作自由派的一個例子，因為民族主義當時比地方主義或次國家層級的部落主義更普世。Even though it was a left-wing thing, it somehow generated power. A lot of these left-wing ideologies are things that neither the left nor the right thinks of as power-generating, per se, but they are, number one. Number two is, which is interesting, the nationalism of France, normally a rightist today will call themselves a nationalist, but the nationalism of France at that time was a left-wing thing, which is a little bit of another example of conservatives being, you know, liberals in slow motion, where nationalism was a more universalist thing than provincialism or tribalism at, like, a sub-national level.

22:37民族主義的左右光譜

22:37所以它確實抽象出「民族」這個概念。我們今天視為理所當然，但當地有很多方言根本不是法語。有人寫過，那個區域可能只有兩成的人會講法語。數字我可能記錯，但 Benedict Anderson 寫過這些。重點是，當時這是左翼的民族主義想法，現在變成右派重新拾起、或右派以為是自己那一套。So it did have this abstraction of the nation. Which we take for granted today, but, you know, there were all these French dialects that were not French. You know, people have written that only, like, 20% of people in that region spoke French. I'm getting the number wrong, but Benedict Anderson has written about this. So the point being that this was a left-wing idea of nationalism that is now the right's—the right has reclaimed, or thinks of it as right-wing.

23:01但極右其實是小型部落的部落主義，造不出權力。你知道那個迷因，極左以為石頭和整個宇宙都有……對對對。鐘形曲線迷因。對。問題是，民族主義這概念歷史上很難抓，因為很多民族主義根本不是民族。比如六〇年代，越南和阿爾及利亞都有叫 NLF 的運動。But ultra-right-wing is actually tribalism of small tribes that doesn't generate power. You know the meme with the, where, like, the far-left person thinks rocks and the whole universe, you know, have— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bell curve meme. The bell curve. Yeah, yeah. So, so the thing is, you have to isolate, like, nationalism is a very tricky concept historically because— There's a lot of nationalism that actually is not really national at all. You know, it's like, if you look in the 1960s, both Vietnam and Algeria have movements called the NLF, the National Liberation Front.

23:38我就想，哇，是阿爾及利亞人從越南人那邊學的，還是反過來？不是。那其實是世界上最不民族主義的東西，完全是國際主義，正因如此掛著民族主義的旗子。民族主義。And I'm like, wow, did the Algerians get the idea from the Vietnamese, or the Vietnamese get the idea from the Algerians? No. It's actually the least nationalist thing in the world. It's completely internationalist, and it is basically flying, for that reason, under the flag of nationalism. You know, nationalism.

23:58愛爾蘭有很長的民族主義傳統，今天的愛爾蘭民族主義完全……他們有 George Floyd 那套。就是反對。就是反這反那，其實也不是真為愛爾蘭。對。問題是它一度很容易包裝成「為愛爾蘭」，英國人走了之後，真面目就露出來了。You know, Ireland has this long tradition of nationalism, and Irish nationalism today is this completely, you know, it's—they have George Floyd. It's just oppositional. You know, it's just opposing things, and it's not really even really for Ireland. Well, yeah. The thing is, it was sort of easy to sell as something that was for Ireland at one time, but after the English left, its true nature was revealed.

24:24這是我覺得大家太容易陷入「負面民族主義」和「正面愛國」的區別。大家太輕易去找「那不是我們」。比如說誰不是美國人？相對容易：在中國講中文的中國人，真正的外人。好。但難的是你要什麼，不是你反對什麼。太輕易煽動仇恨，把部落定義成「反對什麼」。And, you know, this is something which I think there's a negative nationalism and a positive patriotism, and I think that people too easily— go to, hey, that's not what we are, which is, you know, like, it's relatively easy to say, for example, who is non-American?

24:41因為大家對「要什麼」合議不起來。我覺得愛爾蘭民族主義某種程度上就是這樣，因為那不是愛爾蘭愛國，比方說。當然很多種。大家都說自己是愛國者，但某種程度上這是客觀問題。It's a Chinese person in China speaking Chinese, like a true outsider. Okay, fine. But the hard part is what you are for, not what you're against. And it's too easy for people to, like, drum up hatred and try to say that a tribe is what it's against.

24:57否定式民族主義

24:57從我的角度看，很難論證今天的愛爾蘭民族主義很愛國，當然各人角度不同。讓我換個話題，拉回現在，因為我們講了很多歷史，對吧？好。Because they can't agree on what it's for. And I think that's what happened with Irish, you know, nationalism in some ways, because it wasn't Irish patriotism, let's say, you know. Well, there have been many. I mean, everybody claims to be a patriot, but it's to some extent an objective question.

25:15美國君主制、去中心化民主，我們剛才多半在講過去。來談現在和未來。我先講我的世界觀，再聽你的。And, you know, I think it's hard from my perspective to argue that today's Irish nationalism is very— patriotic at all, but of course different people have different perspectives. So let me switch gears for a second, which is, let's bring it to the present day, because we've done a lot of history, right? Okay.

25:32我的看法是：西方在一九五〇年代的主導地位是歷史異常。有個迴旋鏢圖顯示世界經濟中心在亞洲，工業革命後往西移，二戰時其他都被炸爛，中心就落到美國。So American monarchy, decentralized democracy, like, you know, we've just kind of talked about the past. Let's talk about present and talk about future. Let me give a worldview, and then I want to hear your worldview. My worldview is that— The West's dominance in 1950 was a historical aberration. There's, like, a boomerang graph that shows that the world economy was centered in Asia. Then it went west after the Industrial Revolution, and in World War II, everybody else was blown up and it got centered in America.

26:01那時候國家數量最少，中心化程度最高。從那之後又迴旋回來，比當初過去還快。世界經濟移回亞洲，東西在這裡造，工程師在這裡養成，諸如此類。另一個美國的繼任者，一個大的是中國，接走了共和黨那套製造業和軍力。And you had the fewest number of countries at that time, and the maximum amount of centralization. And since then, it's boomeranged back. Much faster than it came. And so the world economy has moved out to Asia. The stuff is made here, the engineers are made here, and so on and so forth. And the other successor—so one big successor to America is China, which has taken over the manufacturing and military might of the Republicans.

26:27另一個繼任者是網路，從民主黨那邊接走媒體和貨幣權力。網路顛覆民主黨，中國顛覆共和黨。這是我眼中的繼承者。下一步是什麼？即使美國人某種程度想要秩序，他們其實也不願跟任何人。And the other successor is the internet, which has taken the media and the monetary power from Democrats. Which is, the internet disrupted Democrats, China disrupted Republicans. And so those are the successors, in my view. And what is coming next, even though people want order in some ways in America, they don't actually want to follow anybody.

26:48他們不是為了什麼，是反對什麼。所以我覺得美國的未來比較像美國無政府，而不是美國君主制。因為極左還在想像二十世紀的共產主義，Hasan 那種人。They're not for something, they're against something. And so I think the future of America is more like American anarchy than American monarchy. Because I think you have people on the far left, and they're imagining this 20th-century communism, you know, Hasan and guys like that.

27:06穿 Mao 裝，用錘子與鐮刀符號撩人，以為會有大工人遊行、把錢全搶過來之類。但組裝線沒了。至少對西方人來說，男人不會每天早上在實體世界協調成一支芭蕾。They're in Mao suits. They're, they're, they're, you know, they're using the hammer and sickle to get a reaction from people, and they think they're going to have, like, some giant workers' march and take all the money and so on. But the assembly line is gone. For at least Westerners, men do not wake up every morning and coordinate in a ballet in the physical world.

27:281950 年的西方與繼任者

27:28所以西方左派男性只在按手機。下一波政治運動長得像按手機，不像遊行，不像二十世紀任何東西，因為那個習慣不在了。So what Western men on the left are only doing is they're hitting buttons on a phone. So whatever the next political movement comes from looks like hitting buttons on a phone. It does not look like marches. It does not look like 20th-century anything, because— Just that habit isn't there.

27:43不是早上醒來跟工頭去工廠，除非你在越南或中國。反過來，右派有鏡像，無政府法西斯。4chan 那些希特勒迷因的。是 Hasan 的 Stalin、Mao 迷因的鏡像。他們也覺得會有大遊行。兩邊都誤解的是：有組織的暴力裡「有組織」那部分才難。暴力本身不難。It's not like you wake up in the morning and you go under a foreman and work in a factory, unless you're in Vietnam or China. Conversely, the right has a mirror image of this, which is anarcho-fascism. And then these are the guys, 4chan guys who have the Hitler memes and so on. It's a mirror image of Hasan with the Stalin memes and the Mao memes. And these guys also think that some giant march is going to happen. And what both of them, I think, misunderstand is the organized part of organized violence is the hard part. It's easy to do violence.

28:13這些人一直吼「我們好怒」「看我們多怒」，以為像電玩開怒氣模式就贏。其實是合作模式。對對對。讓我先同意你。要搞有組織的暴力，其實需要兩件非常分開的事。All these guys are like, they keep yelling, you know, "We're so mad." "Look at how mad we are." And they kind of think it's like some video game where they go into rage mode, and rage mode means they win. But actually, cooperation mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me just agree with you. Actually, you know, to engage in organized violence, you need actually two very separate things.

28:35你需要組織能力，也需要暴力能力。第一部分難得多……對，兩邊都難，而且美國很多政治公理很像活在歷史角色扮演裡，因為是為十八、甚至十七世紀那種真實美國人口設計的。You need the capacity for organization and the capacity for violence. The first part is so much more— And yes, and, and the, well, they're both, they're both hard, and, you know, a lot of the sort of the— The political axioms of America, you know, are very LARPy, because they were designed for the very real American populations of the 18th and even the 17th century.

28:58我們對十七世紀美國記得比十八世紀少，但更激烈。舉個例子：所謂英國的光榮革命，Boston 一聽到，就「啊哈，可以甩掉 James II 強加的 Dominion of New England，把 New York 和 Massachusetts 併在一起」，當時兩邊都很不一樣，有點彆扭。And we remember the 17th-century America much less well than 18th-century America, but it's, like, even more intense. So let me give you an example of this. So, for example, when there's a revolution, the so-called Glorious Revolution in England, as soon as they hear of this in Boston, they're like, "Aha, we can get rid of this thing called the Dominion of New England, which James II imposed, which combined New York with Massachusetts," which was a little uncomfortable for both, because they were very different places at that time.

29:32光榮革命消息一到，Boston 的 Yankees 立刻起義，逮捕皇家總督，恢復他們 Puritan republic，那個瘋狂宗教國。幾乎是自動的。所以機構能自發形成政治體、形成 Sons of Liberty 之類的，這是舊美國民兵概念。這些全沒了。系統還在神話化這些力量，其實不存在，是我們這時代矛盾之一。And as soon as they hear about the Glorious Revolution, the Yankees of Boston just rise up, arrest the royal governor, and restore their Puritan republic that was their crazy religious state. This was almost automatic. And so the sense of an institution being able to form, spontaneously form a political body, spontaneously form, you know— People would form, like, Sons of Liberty or whatever. They would, you know, this is the old American idea of, like, the militia. These things are totally gone, okay? And the fact that we have a system that basically mythologizes the existence of these forces when, in fact, they don't exist is one of the contradictions of our time.

30:20左翼按手機、右翼迷因

30:20但讓我用一個你可能沒看過的角度回你。某種程度上可比羅馬從共和衰落成帝國，因為 founders 愛角色扮演的古羅馬共和，這兩種能力都很充沛。羅馬發生的是，公元前一世紀，羅馬平民大致上失去有組織暴力的能力。But— But, but let me respond to you with a perspective that you haven't seen. This is in a way comparable to the decline of Roman society from the Republic into the Empire, because, of course, the ancient Roman Republic, which our founders loved to LARP, had both of these qualities in abundance. And what happened to Rome was that by, you know, the first century BC, the Roman civilian population had largely lost the capacity for organized violence.

30:56還能某種程度聚眾鬧事，那通常是最後才消失的。但羅馬軍隊兩種能力都十足。所以事後看很合理……Napoleon 有句精彩的話，說最有能力的人掌權的政府最安全。They could still kind of mob up to some extent. That's really the last thing to go. But the Roman army had both of those capacities in spades. And so it became very logical that, you know, there's a wonderful line of Napoleon's where he said that every government is safe in which the most capable people are in power.

31:17所以共和被取代，就像早期羅馬國王被羅馬共和取代一樣，事後看很明顯，羅馬帝國的到來也是。美國左右很多人沒真正意識到的一點，也是我認為最被低估、最容易導致美國重組與改造的因素。And so, you know, the sort of the replacement of the republic, just as the replacement of the old kings of Rome with the Roman Republic, was sort of obvious in retrospect, so was the coming of the Roman Empire. And one of the things that basically people don't really realize in America, on the right and on the left, and I think the sort of the factor that is most underappreciated that can most easily lead to the sort of the reorganization and reformation of America.

31:50大家都把這股力量想成非常強，其實非常弱。所以 Hasan Piker 或 Nick Fuentes 都說「我們煽動群眾，煽動就能換新政權」之類。Everyone models this force as very, very strong, whereas it's actually very, very weak. And so people on both sides, whether they're Hasan Piker or Nick Fuentes, are like, "We're going to rile people up, and we're going to get the new regime by riling people up," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

32:08就是角色扮演，就是網路娛樂人，沒用。但大家以為組織與有組織暴力的能力還在，就說「絕對不可能重組美國國家，因為人民會起義」。And it's just LARPing. They're just internet entertainers. It doesn't work. But— But what everyone assumes is that, because they assume this capacity for organization and organized violence is still there, they're like, "Well, it's absolutely impossible to reorganize the American state because people will rise up."

32:30我說，不會。我們看到，Trump 幾乎無意間搞垮 USAID 時，大家驚訝他可以直接這樣。我以為華盛頓特區街頭會起義。我說他就算廢掉國務院，華盛頓特區街頭也不會起義。And I'm like, no, they will not rise up. And one of the things that we saw, for example, when, almost accidentally, Trump destroyed USAID, is that people are like, wow, he could just do that. I expected an uprising in the streets of Washington, D.C. And I'm like, he could abolish the State Department, and there would not be an uprising in the streets of Washington, D.C. C.

32:55羅馬衰落與組織能力

32:55你知道國務院有多少人？大概三萬。你見過三萬人聚在同一個地方嗎？就算沒武裝也嚇人，有武裝更嚇人。他們會組織嗎？會武裝嗎？不會，只會回家。You know how many people, you know, work at the State Department? It's like 30,000. You ever see 30,000 people in one place? Even unarmed, they're terrifying. Armed, they're terrifying. Would they organize? Would they arm? No, they would just go home. Okay, well, okay, so several things I want to respond to there. The first is that I do think that Trump is—Trump 2 is the end of an era, in that... In the future, like, let's say this whole period will end—it's ending Democrats' faith in democracy and Republicans' faith in America.

33:29好，我想回應幾點。第一，我確實認為 Trump、Trump 第二任，是一個時代的結束……未來這整段時期會結束，終結民主黨對民主的信心，也終結共和黨對美國的信心。我認為整件事會走向那裡：不完全是 Trump，而是整個債務危機、主權債務危機，八十年、一百年，怎麼叫都行，凱因斯泡沫的尾聲。我也認為裁掉那些人會造成 blue MAGA，現在變成藍營覺得飯碗被翻，長大的那個國家不見了。I do think that's where this whole thing goes. Not really Trump, but just this whole debt crisis, sovereign debt crisis, we're at the end of an 80-year, 100-year, however you want to call it, Keynesian bubble. And I do think that just laying off those people is something that causes blue MAGA, where now it's the Blues who feel their livelihoods have been overturned, that the country they grew up in has gone away.

33:54你可能看不到立刻的反應，但類似 Saddam 和 Ba'athists，復興黨知道怎麼組織，失勢後成立了 ISIS。And while you may not see an immediate reaction, you have something similar to what happened with Saddam and the Ba'athists, where the Ba'athist Party did know how to organize, and when they were no longer allowed to be in power, they formed a thing called ISIS.

34:09你說得對，從組織能量來看某方面確實很低。但我看到的是左邊的 Luigi 和右邊的 Brenton Tarrant 類型。很討厭我會記這些名字，基本上是無政府共產槍手在左、無政府法西斯槍手在右，去開槍殺人。And I do see, you're right that in some ways that energy is low from an organizational standpoint. But what I see coming is Luigis on the left and Brenton Tarrant types on the right. I hate that I know these people's names, but these basically anarcho-communist shooters on the left and anarcho-fascist shooters on the right, and they go and shoot and kill.

34:33然後幾百萬次觀看，像緩慢連鎖反應，另一個人被鼓舞接續。美國有第一修正案和第二修正案，所有吶喊和所有槍擊，但沒有十誡打底。如你所說，這些權利原本是給有德之人，那早就沒了。And then it gets millions of views, and then it's like a, you know, slow chain reaction where another guy is inspired by it and continues with it. And because America has the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, all the shouting and all the shooting, but without the Ten Commandments underlying it, like the Ten Commandments, as you said, these rights were for a virtuous people. That's long gone.

34:56第五誡是不可殺人，第二修正案是我可以有槍。第八誡是不可作假見證……很好笑對吧。有意思，誡命和修正案混在一起。對，我沒聽過這個。第八誡是不可作假見證，第一修正案是我想說什麼就說什麼。那些責任原本撐住權利，是為假定有美德、假定是基督教或猶太基督教傳統的那種人。And the Ten Commandments, the Fifth Commandment is, thou shalt not kill, but the Second Amendment is, I can have a gun. And the Eighth Commandment is, thou shalt not bear false witness about— That's funny, right? Yeah, it's an interesting mix of commandments and amendments. Yeah, right. I've never heard that one before. Okay. And the Eighth Commandment is, thou shalt not bear false witness about others. And the First Amendment is, I can say what I want. And so those responsibilities were underpinning the rights. They were meant for a virtuous people that were sort of assumed to be Christian or Judeo-Christian, or however you want to call it.

35:34國務院與政權更迭

35:34現在責任都沒了，只剩權利。美國人還會緊抓那些權利，保守派若判斷正確，會覺得反對第一或第二修正案的人想讓他們噤聲、解除武裝，在美國語境下他們判斷是對的。And now all those are gone, but only the rights remain. But Americans will cling to those rights, because they correctly, if they're conservative, they think anybody who's against the First or Second Amendment wants to silence them and disarm them, and they're correct about that in the American context.

35:52民主黨想這樣。反過來你注意，Luigi 槍殺 Brian Thompson，那個 CEO，從背後開槍，史上首次，民主黨沒談槍枝管制。他們也轉向第二修正案。因為他們表面挺第一修正案，掌權時變反對，失勢又變挺，某種程度上現在又不在權力中心。Democrats want to do that. And conversely, if you notice, after the Luigi shooting, or, you know, when Luigi killed Brian Thompson, the CEO, shot him in the back, first time ever, Democrats didn't say anything about gun control. They have now gone to the Second Amendment as well. Because, and now they're actually, you know, they veered from pro-First Amendment in a superficial way to anti when they were in power, and now pro again because they're actually out of power in some ways.

36:20所以現在你有無政府共產、無政府左派支持吶喊和開槍，無政府右派也是。我看問題和二十世紀相反，二十世紀是極權主義的馬蹄形，中心化科技導致全面控制。So now you have anarcho-communists, anarcho-leftists that are in favor of shouting and shooting, and anarcho-rightists that are as well. And you have, in my view, the opposite problem of the 20th century, where the 20th century was the horseshoe of totalitarianism, where centralized technology led to total control.

36:38本世紀至少一個問題，我不是說監控國家不存在，待會再談，但美國的問題是美國無政府，兩邊這些槍手很難阻止，因為意識形態是分散的。And in this century, at least one problem—I'm not saying the surveillance state doesn't exist, I'll get to that—but the problem of America is American anarchy, where you have these shooters on both sides that are very difficult to stop because the ideology is distributed.

36:52他們會隨著無人機和各種新武器越來越危險。北美就會有不斷的恐怖主義，很難阻止，因為沒有任何文化配方能在某種程度上節制網路。And they're going to be more and more dangerous with drones and all these weapons that are coming out. And so you just have constant terrorism in North America, and it's very difficult to stop because there's no cultural formula for moderating the internet in any way.

37:09所以我認為這世紀東方有優勢，無論是俄羅斯沙皇制圈、中國集體主義、西亞的宗教，或南亞的 dharma，亞洲內有某種配方，能在網路之上維持秩序，但不是靠武力。And I think that's why the East has an advantage this century, because whether it's the Russian sphere of tsarism, Chinese collectivism, West Asia's religion, or South Asia's dharma, there's some formula within Asia where you can have order on top of the internet, but it's not force.

37:29這可能是我和你最大的分歧點之一，你糾正我如果錯：美國和西方右派確實感覺事情在墜崖，反應是拔槍或威脅暴力。And that's, I think, you know, one of my biggest points of divergence, perhaps, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is I feel that people on the right in America and the West correctly feel things falling off a cliff, and the response is to pull out a gun or threaten violence.

37:47但那無法恢復秩序，反而加深問題，另一邊的人更感到威脅。所以在我看來，你得找出非暴力的合作方式。說比做容易，因為有那些瘋狂槍手、瘋狂的人。你得找新的領域、新的空間，可以和平合作。然後連到你說的美國一六〇〇年代，我其實一直在研究那段時間。But that doesn't restore order. That actually furthers the thing because the people on the other side get even more threatened. And so what you actually have to do, in my view, is figure out nonviolent ways of cooperating. That's easier said than done because you've got these crazy shooters, crazy people there. So you have to find a new realm, a new space where you can peacefully cooperate. Then I'll link it to one other thing you said, then give you the ball. You mentioned the 1600s in America. I'm actually, I've been studying that time.

38:17權利留下、責任消失

38:17我的意思是，也許不像真正學者那麼鑽，但你知道，《Albion's Seed》那一套我都看過。而且那個時代非常有趣，在我看來跟我們現在處境很像，因為《Albion's Seed》講的是清教徒、騎士派、貴格會跟蘇格蘭愛爾蘭這四支英國「部族」的祖先，在不同時間離開英國。I mean, perhaps not as intensively as a true scholar, but, you know, Albion's Seed and all of that kind of stuff. And it's a very interesting time because it's very similar, in my view, to the current time we're in now, because— You know, Albion's Seed talks about how the ancestors of the Puritans, ancestors of the Cavaliers, ancestors of the Quakers, and of the Scots-Irish, these four British tribes, left at different times.

38:41有些人預見英國內戰要來就先走，有些人在戰爭中途才走，他們落腳美國不同地方，因為在英國當時是左派那套「善」的願景，也就是清教徒那套，跟右派那套「善」的願景，硬要疊在同一個社會上。You know, some of them saw the English Civil War coming, some of them left in the middle, and they left for different places in America because in England they were trying to superimpose the left vision of the good, the Puritan vision, and the right vision of the good on top of each other.

38:59但在美國他們可以各自從零建起自己的版本，對吧？今天我看到的是那些部族在加密部族上的鏡像，不管是 Bitcoin、Ethereum、Solana 還是 Zcash，都已經從美國法幣秩序那套脫離，他們只需要在世界的另一邊把自己「印出來」。But in America, they could just build them on their own, right? And today I see the mirror of those tribes in the crypto tribes, which, whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Zcash, have all broken away from what the American fiat order is, and they just need to print themselves out on the other side of the world.

39:17他們其實改不了既有體系，但價值觀還在。所以我才覺得十七世紀那段、托克維爾寫的那些，他十九世紀還在寫美國怎麼自我組織，你剛才提到的公民社會，當時是存在的。And they can't actually reform that existing system, but they still have the values. And so that's why I think the 1600s period, you know, the Tocqueville thing, and, you know, he was still writing about when America could self-organize in the 1800s, the thing you mentioned, civil society existed.

39:35那在美國已經不存在了，但在網路上有。網路美國人會自我組織。他們辦 hackathon、搞開源專案、自己拉群組聊天，諸如此類。網路美國人會自我組織，我們確實有公民社會。但就像殖民者過了好久才把自己當美國人、而不是英國人，網路公民也要過一陣子才會把自己當網路原住民，而不是所謂的「美國人」或他們原本那個法幣國家的公民。That doesn't exist in America, but it exists on the internet. Like, the Internet American is capable of self-organizing. They organize hackathons. They organize, you know, like open-source projects. They do self-organized group chats, all this kind of stuff. Internet Americans are capable of self-organizing. They do have, we do have, a civil society. But just like it took a while for Americans, or rather the colonists, To think of themselves as American rather than British, it's taking a while for the Internet citizens to think of themselves as Internet natives, as opposed to, quote, American or whatever their legacy fiat country was.

40:15所以我覺得我們正在經歷這種認同的形成。我先說到這。對，我們都是 X 世代嘛，對吧？可能都在邊界上。對，邊界。1980 算不算？我覺得算邊界，但我不確定。我肯定是 X 世代。So I think we're in the process of that identity formation. Let me pause there. Yeah, well, you know, we're both Gen Xers, right? And so we both—maybe on the border. Yeah, on the border. 1980, does that count? I think that's the border, but I don't know exactly. But I'm certainly a Gen Xer.

40:36但我們在很多方面都是在九〇年代長大的。我第一次用網路大概是 1986 左右。所以我對八〇、九〇年代我們怎麼想網路記得非常清楚，我們把它想成跟現實社會分開的另一個地方。你一定記得 John Perry Barlow 的〈網路空間獨立宣言〉，那基本上是九〇年代網路主義最純的表述。But, you know, we both, you know, in many ways came of age in the '90s, and, you know, I first, I think the first time I ever used the Internet was 1986 or something like that. So, you know, basically, I remember the way we thought about the Internet in the '80s and '90s very, very clearly, and we thought about it much in this way, as, like, a different place that was separated from the societies that we live in. You must remember John Perry Barlow, the Cyberspace Declaration of Independence, you know, which is sort of a really pure expression of '90s Internetism.

41:20十七世紀殖民地與加密部落

41:20隨著那些東西演變，今年稍早我在一個叫 Web Summit 的活動上講話，我就想，為什麼叫 Web Summit？跟 web 根本沒關係。名字來自 web 還算一回事的年代。我記得 web 還是「一個東西」的時候，而 web 變成無所不在之後，某種意義上也變成什麼都不是。And, you know, as those things, like, basically, you know, it's like I spoke at this event earlier this year called Web Summit. And I'm just like, why is this called Web Summit? It has nothing to do with the web. And it originated in a time when the web was, like, a thing. And I remember when the web was, like, a thing, and the web, having become everything, in a way also becomes nothing.

41:47變成大家共用的背景。你也很難再靠它來組織。比方說，二十五年多一點以前，舊金山網路上有個很棒的服務，當時舊金山所有酷人都在上面。And it becomes something that's sort of common to everyone. You can't really organize, like, for example. You know, on the Internet in San Francisco 25 years ago, a little more than 25 years ago, there was this wonderful service where all the cool people in San Francisco were on it.

42:06你要買賣東西、發活動公告，反正那就是該在的地方，叫 Craigslist。一旦網路變成無所不在，Craigslist 現在被看成龍蛇雜虼的窩，當年卻時髦到幾乎無法想像。You wanted to buy or sell something or announce an event. Or whatever, it was the place to be, and it was called Craigslist. And, you know, as soon as the Internet became everything, you know, Craigslist, which is now seen as the sort of wretched hive of scum and villainy, basically was, like, chic in a way that's almost impossible to imagine.

42:28所以數位世界越普及就越平淡，也越難……我判斷認同的一個測試是，大家會不會用名詞來稱呼自己。例如去 Burning Man 的人自稱 Burner，對吧？And so I think that that— as the digital world becomes more commonplace, it becomes more banal, and it becomes hard to—it's like one test I use for identity is whether people use a noun for something. Let's say the people who go to Burning Man, for example, call themselves Burners, right?

42:51他們有非常深的認同層次，還不到宗教，但若你想理解十七世紀早期清教徒的社群與認同強度，拿 Burner 那種能量乘以一百或一千。And so they have this very... deep level of identity, which is not quite at the level of religion. I would say that if you want to understand the sense of community and identity that the early Puritans had in the 17th century, take the energy of being a Burner and, like, multiply it by a hundred or a thousand.

43:14大概就那個量級。到那裡就真的進入類邪教的領域。加密也是，Bitcoiners、Ethereans。人會這樣自稱。這是我認為即將到來之事的中間步驟。我的論點是這樣。我們的分歧在於，我基本上把現代人看成很像羅馬帝國公民，我認為他很難建立這種深度社會連結。我看現場這些數位遊牧族，我很想……Or something like that. At that point, you're really very much in cult territory. So, say crypto is that—Bitcoiners, Ethereans. So, I mean, yeah. So people will use that. It's an intermediate step towards what I think is coming. That's my argument. I mean, yeah, and I think where we disagree is that— I basically see modern man as very much like the citizen of the Roman Empire. I think he's very incapable of forming these kinds of deep social ties. I think that that's actually, like, very—when I look at, you know, the digital, you know, nomads, you know, in the room here, I'm tempted, I won't do this, but I'm tempted to—

43:57網路是另一個地方

43:57很想請大家舉手說這房間裡多少人已經有小孩，對吧？先別這樣。但這題其實……你要的話也可以。對。在 Network School 我們其實有 NS.com/families，第一場婚禮也在 Network School 辦了，還有九場在排。所以我有些實證給你，是這樣。ask people to raise their hand and say how many people in this room have kids, right? Let's not do that. But so actually, on this topic, I mean, we can do it if you want. Yeah, yeah. So, well, actually, at Network School, we actually have NS .com/families, and we actually had our first wedding at Network School. We actually have nine more weddings queued up. And so I actually, I have some empirical data for you, which is as follows.

44:25我覺得「東方」廣義上繼承了，我說東方是最寬的意義，比方歐洲以東。東方基本上還有文化、傳統、完整家庭等等。在邊緣、被美國影響久一點的地方，就比較少。I think the East has sort of inherited, and when I say the East in the very broadest sense of, like, let's say east of Europe, right? So the East basically has, you know, culture, tradition. Intact families, and so on and so forth. You know, on the edges and in places that have been American-occupied for a while, less so.

44:47但大體上東方有完整家庭、繼承來的社會連結。如你所說，西方尤其美國非常原子化。但我觀察到一個現象：把美國人跟世界各地的人放在 Network School 或類似新創社會實驗裡，他們會開始對齊格線。But broadly speaking, the East has intact families and sort of inherited social bonds. And as you correctly point out, the West, especially America, is very atomized, you know, and so on. But an interesting phenomenon that I've observed is, if you take you know, Americans and others from around the world, and you have them in a place like Network School or like a startup society experiment, they start snapping to grid.

45:13那些公民社會該有的東西真的會發生。我用的概念叫「把網路印出來」，好？你有一個加密部族，不必是單一鏈像 Solana，也可以是對加密友善的一群人。And actually, like, all of those civil society things actually do happen. And, you know, the concept that I have is, you know, I call it print out the Internet, okay? You have this crypto tribe. It doesn't have to be a single crypto tribe like Solana. It can be crypto-friendly people.

45:30他們透過社群網路跟別人連結，有錢，有機動性因為帶著筆電，也在找社群。你只要給對的物理地點，社會連結就會重新長出來。They have connections with other people via social networks. They have money. They have agility because they've got their laptop, and they're seeking community. And so you just have to kind of have the right physical location for that to happen and for the social bonds to reemerge.

45:47在美國，左派會講汽車把人隔開、缺乏可步行性，右派會講犯罪，其他人講成本。種種原因讓美國很難有非正式、可步行、友善、零犯罪的鄰里，所以人們才這麼原子化、窩在網路上。In America, in many ways, a left— someone on the left would talk about cars keeping people apart and lack of walkability. Someone on the right would talk about crime. Others would talk about cost. For many reasons, it's difficult to have informal, walkable, friendly, zero-crime neighborhoods in America, which is why people are so atomized and they're on the Internet.

46:09但把他們印到別的地方，就開始運作。這是實證觀察。我先停這。你看到的是，我要部分同意、部分反對，在這些年輕人身上非常明顯有各種形式的社群渴望。But if you print them out in just some other location, it starts to work. This is an empirical observation. Let me pause there. What you see is that there's actually, like, among these—I'm going to agree in part and disagree in part—what you see among these young people is that there's very much kind of a thirst for community of various kinds.

46:30把網路印到現實

46:30所以他們大學畢業後本來預期要當原子化個人，卻會說：不要，我要找室友、找共居空間，甚至不妨說組多元伴侶關係，對吧？抱歉。我提這個是有原因的，因為有一個社群我不在其中，但地理上離我最近的是東灣理性主義者圈子，他們基本上又往前一步，找到非常準宗教的信仰對象，就是 AI 安全這種奇怪教派，對吧？And so you will see them, for example, they graduate from college and they're expected to live as atomized individuals. And it's like, no, let me find roommates, let me find a co-living space, let me form even, dare I say, a polycule, right? You know, and sorry. And so, you know, there's a reason I mention this in a way, because one of the communities that I'm not part of, but I'm sort of most geographically close to, is sort of the East Bay rationalist scene, who have essentially taken—they really have gone the next step in a way and found something very quasi-religious to believe in, which is this strange cult of AI safety, right?

47:18崇拜 AI 的力量是一回事，對齊這套塔木德式教義我們可以各持己見。但這幾乎是完美案例，因為首先確實有社群需求。And, you know, worshipping the powers of the AI is one thing. We can disagree on, like, the Talmudic doctrine of alignment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But in a way, it's a sort of perfect case, because you see, first of all, there is this demand for community.

47:39他們某種程度會生育，總生育率大概 0.2，但還是有人生。Scott Alexander 好像有小孩。但若跟早期清教徒、尤其是前科技時代生活的強度比，我不知道科技上怎麼回到那裡。They reproduce to some extent. They probably have a TFR of about 0.2, but, you know, there is reproduction that does happen. Scott Alexander has kids, I believe. And so, you know, but if you compare them to the early Puritans and the sort of the, like, the intensity of especially pre-technological life, I don't know how you get back there technologically.

48:12好，我有些想法。第一，巨大差異是他們沒有餘地、沒有空間。例如哈薩克在人類發展指數高的人口裡生育率很高，大概 3.1，那國家在物理奧林匹亞常跟第一名並列。Okay, so I have some thoughts on this. First is, one huge difference is they don't have elbow room or space. Kazakhstan, for example, actually has one of the highest fertility rates among high-HDI populations there. They've got, like, a 3.1 or something like that, and that's a country that's tied for number one in the Physics Olympiads.

48:36因為人口密度低。面積是新加坡三千倍，人口只有三倍。我覺得一個維度是灣區房價貴、人擠在一起，很難想像生大家庭，這是傳統的生育壓抑效應。對，沒錯。所以第一步是成本極度通縮。但那其實不夠，必要但不充分。第二，我其實該寫成文章，有一個針對少子化、不靠國家而靠網路的解法。Because they've got low population density. It's 3,000 times the size of Singapore with only 3x the population. So I think one dimension is being really cooped up with very expensive Bay Area real estate makes it harder to contemplate having a large family. That's a traditional reproductive suppression effect. Yes, that's right. Exactly. So step one is hyperdeflation of cost. But that's actually not sufficient. That's necessary, but not sufficient. A second thing is, you know, I actually have a—I should write this up as an essay, but there is a solution for the birth dearth that is not the state but the network.

49:14社群渴求與 AI 安全

49:14我稱它為：「十億美元、一百萬追蹤者之後，下一步是什麼？」一千個後裔。成為「千裔族」。做法如下。不是我們認識、不便點名的那些同事，N 個小孩 K 個女人那種。我說的是一個配偶。純思想實驗：十八歲開始，生十個，子女十八歲也各生十個，再下一代亦然，算下去到八十歲，And I call it, "After a billion dollars and a million followers, what's next?" A thousand heirs. Become a thousandaire. Here's how you do it. Not in the—I'm going to leave them unnamed, but colleagues that we know who have N children by K women. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about with one, you know, one spouse. If, just as a thought experiment, if you start at age 18 and you have 10 children, and then they start at age 18 and they have 10 children, and then they start again at age 18 and 10 children, if you work out the math, by age 80,

49:49你有一千名後裔，Mitt Romney 加強版，好？沒有任何非法，甚至都不接近人類極限。但生命週期完全不同，要早很多結婚生子，才能得到高複利。you have a thousand descendants, like Mitt Romney-plus, okay? Nothing there is illegal. Nothing there is even impossible. You're not even close to human limits. But it means a completely different life cycle, where you're actually getting married and having children much, much earlier in life to get a high compounding rate.

50:08當我這樣當思想實驗講，有人會問：幹嘛要這樣？我說：幹嘛要登 Everest？是同一種人格。順帶一提，若有一千個千裔族、各自再有一千，一代就能建一個國家。And, you know, when I say that as a thought experiment, someone says, "Well, why would you want to do that?" And I say, "Well, why would you want to scale Everest?" It's the same kind of personality that would want to do that. But that means, by the way, a thousand thousandaires, if they each have a thousand, then you can build a nation in one generation.

50:27你能建一個 Estonia，一百萬人，一千個千裔族，他們會希望兒女彼此通婚。美國大致就是這樣。對。每人真的十個小孩嗎？不，但是，一，從他們角度看是新開墾地。當然有原住民，對？他們想填滿的新空間，有空間，有昭昭天命、相信自己會成長。還有其他邊疆型的人進來，用遺傳生意模型的角度看待，意思是……You can build an Estonia, which is a million people, a thousand thousandaires, and they'll want their sons and daughters to marry each other. And that's roughly what America was. Right. Was it actually ten children per person? No, but it was, A, a new open terrain from their perspective. Obviously, there are Native Americans, right? A new open terrain that they wanted to populate. They had space to do it. They had a manifest destiny and a belief that they were growing. And there were other frontier-like people who came into that domain and looked at it from the perspective of a genetic business model, meaning—

51:02取得繁殖所需資源、砍樹、拓地，從十八世紀幾百萬人成長到今天三億，跟俄羅斯一億、中國十幾億同一量級。it acquired the resources for reproduction, chopped down trees, gained space, and it went from a few million people in the 1700s to 300 million people by today, on par with, you know, Russia, which has 100 million, with China, which has hundreds of millions.

51:18那種指數級人口成長，是空間加上自願加入社群的函數。所以對我來說，大課題是怎麼重新打開邊疆。現在有 Starlink、全球大量空地，我們反而面臨人口崩跌。Like, that gigantic exponential population growth was a function of the space and the opt-in community. And so, to me, a big thing is figuring out how to reopen the frontier. And now that we've got Starlink, now that we've got all of this empty space around the world, we've actually got a population crash.

51:35千位繼承人與重開邊疆

51:35日本有九百萬空屋。你可以遠端工作。機器人、無人機之後，我們能「印出」城鎮、村莊、城市。我還要辦一個獎：自建造房屋，當自駕車的續集，你知道的。There's nine million empty homes in Japan. You can work from anywhere. Now with robots and drones, we're going to be able to print out towns, villages, and cities. I'm going to hold, actually, a prize for this: the self-building home as a sequel to the self-driving car, like, you know.

51:49無人卡車開來，機器人下來蓋東西。這都可能，重新打開邊疆，再有一次十七世紀，但是和平的方式。讓我反駁一下，因為早期美國經濟上有一件事：早期美國是勞力短缺之地。Driverless truck pulls up, robots come out, build something. So all of that is possible, where we can reopen the frontier and have the 1600s again, but in a peaceful way. Well, let me push back on this, because one of the things economically that you saw in early America was that early America was a land of labor shortage.

52:11所以工資高、缺工，你為來這裡的開銷、困難和危險得到補償，參與的是非常非馬爾薩斯式的社會。而我們在這裡還沒真正聊到的，當然是大家都愛的題目：AI。And so it was a land of high wages and labor shortages, and you were compensated for the expense and difficulty and danger of coming here by participating in a society that was very non-Malthusian. And the thing is, you know, one of the things we haven't really talked about here is, of course, everybody's favorite subject, which is AI.

52:35有人覺得 AI 會用迴紋針毀滅世界，我完全不是這派。但我看到的是，AI 本質上是資源詛咒的經濟等價物，因為資源詛咒就是任何對人力需求很低的 GDP 來源。And, you know, there are people that feel that AI will destroy the world by making paperclips. I'm not at all one of these people. But what I see instead is that AI is essentially the economic equivalent of the resource curse, because the resource curse is any source of GDP.

53:00在資源詛咒的國家，六個人插管進地底就能抽出沙烏阿拉伯整個 GDP，那裡石油很好抽，你也知道，其他人都變得沒用。That has very low demand for human labor. And what you get in a, you know, nation cursed by resources is you get an environment where six guys can put a pipe into the ground and pull out the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia, which has very easy oil to extract, as you probably know, and everybody else is useless.

53:23問題在於，對我來說，第三世界體系的定義是：大多數人對經濟沒用。你去那些第三世界國家，會看到人閒晃、站著，沒在幹活，想辦法弄到吃的，因為經濟在撒錢，但本質上對經濟沒用。And the thing is— For me, the definition of a Third World system is a world in which most people are useless to the economy. You will go to these Third World countries, you will see people milling around. They're just standing there. They're not doing something. They basically find a way to eat because this economy is throwing off money, but they are fundamentally not.

53:48在經濟上或軍事上，對國家、社會都沒有用。所以我其實沒那麼擔心，至少就迄今為止的實證。第一，AI 你還是要下提示詞。過去四年我們有 AI，數學很神，寫程式可以快速原型，同時 Uber 有質變式變好嗎？Airbnb 呢？你日常大部分軟體有看到質變改善嗎？還沒有，對吧？Economically, they're not useful to the state and the society, economically or militarily. So here's why I'm not that concerned about this, actually, at least empirically, how things have played out. First, AI is—you still have to prompt it. And over the last four years, we've had, you know, AI. It does some amazing, obviously, math, you know. And if you're coding, you can prototype things fast. At the same time, has Uber gotten transformatively better? Has Airbnb have, you know, have you seen transformative improvements in most of the software you use and other things? Not yet, right?

54:25日本空屋與 AI 資源詛咒

54:25對，影片可以做得更好，但因為還是要下提示詞、要驗證輸出，瓶頸其實比我們以為的大，這是一。它其實讓聰明人更聰明，是放大智慧而不是人工智慧，這是一。二是，我覺得很重要的一點，AI 因為提高惡意程式、垃圾訊息、詐騙、大量群發訊息做行銷銷售的速率，其實會降低數位部族之間的信任。Yes, you can make videos better, but because you still have to prompt it and verify the output, it's actually bottlenecked to a much greater extent than we think, number one. It actually makes smarter people smarter. It's amplified intelligence rather than artificial intelligence, number one. And number two is, and this I think a really important point, AI, because it increases the rate of malware, spam, scams, basically mass messaging, you know, mass messaging people for marketing and sales, it actually reduces trust between digital tribes.

54:59我們會大幅增加的，是監考、驗證這類工作：假履歷、有人站在旁邊確認你是人類才讓你做事。那是半技術甚至非技術工作。我已經在 Network School 看到，考試我們會雇監考。And it's going to radically increase the amount of proctoring and verification work that we have to do with fake resumes, with people standing over your shoulder and making sure you're a human as you do something. That is semi-skilled or even unskilled work. I'm already seeing this where, you know, proctors, we hire proctors for tests at Network School.

55:18不需要高技能，只要是人、有點可信、可靠就行。Ben Horowitz 也講過，科技拿掉哪些工作很容易看見，但它創造哪些工作很難預測，對吧？They don't have to be skilled. They just have to be a human who's, like, somewhat trustworthy and reliable. And, you know, Ben Horowitz has talked about this, where it's easy to see the jobs that technology takes away, but it's really hard to forecast the jobs it creates, right?

55:33那是自我安慰，我跟你說為什麼。哦，真的？好，你說。我覺得是自我安慰，因為若找實證，AI 對經濟最簡單的類比就是美國的外包衝擊。我們聽過同一套話。That's cope, and let me tell you why. Oh, really? Okay, go. I think that's cope because, essentially, one of the things that, you know, if we're looking for empirical evidence, basically the simplest equivalent of the AI shock on the economy has been the outsourcing shock in the U.S. economy. And we heard all of the same things.

55:53我們聽過：「這是李嘉圖式的改善。」聽過人會找到新工作、新人生意義，大多數並沒有。你若去美國中西部，不知道你最近有沒有去。這就是中西部。對，基本上一切都腐敗、被掏空、在崩。外包並沒有帶來全美繁榮。We heard, "Oh, this is a Ricardian optimization." We heard people will find new jobs and new purpose in life, and mostly they didn't. And, you know, if you go to the Midwest, I don't know how recently you've been to the U.S. Okay, this is the Midwest. Yeah, you know, it's basically like everything is rotten and hollowed out and falling apart. And, you know, outsourcing has not led to, like, prosperity across America.

56:23而是少數……去 Ohio，Ohio 什麼在興旺？好，好，但我的重點……我不同意，原因如下。這點我們可能會差很多。其他國家在這條軸上崛起得比美國衰落快得多。有點像問：網路有沒有讓 Blockbuster 更繁榮？沒有。但 Netflix 崛起超過 Blockbuster 衰落。消費者剩餘更大，對吧？美國就像之前的英國……英國，可以說……發明全球資本主義這場遊戲的地方。也可以說荷蘭等等。It has led to a few—go to Ohio, and what is thriving in Ohio? Okay, okay, but, but, but my point—but I disagree, and here's why. And on this we'll probably disagree quite a bit. Other countries have risen much more than America has declined on this axis. It's a little like saying, has the internet led to Blockbuster's prosperity? No. But Netflix rose more than Blockbuster declined. There's a larger consumer surplus from that, right? And so America, just like Britain before it—Britain, let's call it... where they invented the game of global capitalism. You could say maybe the Dutch did it, and so on.

57:03AI 瓶頸與外包教訓

57:03不管誰發明，美國把它做到極致。美國打開這些市場，用軍事基地建帝國，基本上……就像 James Naismith 發明籃球。James Naismith 發明了籃球，但後來發現加拿大人不一定最會打，對吧？塞爾維亞人、非裔美國人：很強。同樣，美國人創造了全球資本主義這場遊戲，長期很會玩，現在有新玩家也會玩。Whoever you say invented it, America perfected it. America opened up all these markets. America created the empire with all these military bases. It basically—it's like, you know, James Naismith, who created basketball. James Naismith created basketball, but over time it turned out that, you know, he wasn't, you know—like, Canadians weren't the best at basketball necessarily, right? Serbians, African Americans: very good. And so in the same way, Americans created this game of global capitalism. They did very well at it for a long time, and now there's new players who can play.

57:34所以正在發生的是這個。不是邏輯錯了，而是現在有幾場輸了。我覺得最糟的結論是，美國保守派、自由意志派會想，一，這場我贏不了，二，我不該玩，或要孤立、加關稅，還有最近常看到的說法：「美國人應該輕鬆贏，不該是苦戰。」And so that's what's happening. It's not that, you know, the logic of it was bad. It's that they're losing some games now. Now, I think the worst conclusion out of this is for, you know, like, American conservatives and libertarians to think, A, I can't win this game, and B, I shouldn't play, or I should try to isolate or have tariffs, and/or this kind of argument recently we've been seeing where people say, “Oh, an American's supposed to win effortlessly, and it's not supposed to be a grind.”

58:02你不該當那種拼命往上爬的人，諸如此類。重點是，學業成功會帶來科技成功，科技成功會帶來經濟成功，經濟成功會帶來軍事成功。要是你沒在念像航空、航太這類東西，你就做不出真的能好好飛的無人機。You're not supposed to be a striver, and so on. And the thing is, academic success leads to technological success, leads to economic success, leads to military success. And if you're not studying, like, you know, aviation and aero-astro, you're not going to be able to build a drone that actually flies properly.

58:21於是軍事實力就會消失。現在我們看到很多把關稅或傳統蠻力捧高的說法，在我看來那是自我安慰。因為從今以後全是無人機、機器人、程式。要是你在地球另一邊輸給一個程式設計師，你就該練好。And therefore military strength goes away. A lot of the valorization that we're seeing now of tariffs or traditional muscle, that is, in my view, cope. Because it's all drones, all robots, code from here on out. And, you know, if you're losing to a programmer on the other side of the world, then you should get good.

58:41練不好也沒辦法，對吧？我是說，你可以發火，但沒用。你結構性在輸，其實是因為中國願意用這些工具，美國不願意。中國願意像重商主義強權那樣行事，明白它最根本的國家資產是人民，而人生的目的不是享樂。And if you can't get good, then you can't, like, rage at that, right? Well, you know, I mean, you can, but it's not productive. You're losing structurally because, actually, China is willing to use these tools, but America is not. And so China is willing to behave like a mercantilist power that understands that its fundamental national asset is its people, and the purpose of life is not pleasure.

59:07GDP 這事可以講很深，我們沒時間，大概只剩四十五秒。GDP 本質上就是國內總享樂。舉例來說，你去中國會發現，哇，這裡什麼都很便宜。And, you know, when you basically—like GDP, this is a deep discussion, which we don't have, you know, we only have 45 seconds for—GDP is essentially gross domestic pleasure. Right. And the thing is that when you basically—for example, you go to China and you find, wow, everything is very cheap here.

59:28全球資本主義的後繼者

59:28那是匯率造成的。中國壓低匯率、讓本國貨幣貶值時，中國公司出的貨變便宜，中國公司的員工領得少，能享受的現代生活享樂也變少。對，好，你繼續。That is because of the exchange rate. When China lowers its exchange rate, when it lowers the value of its currency, what it's doing is China Inc. 's goods become cheaper, and China Inc.'s employees are paid less and can enjoy fewer of the pleasures of modern life. Yeah, but okay, go ahead.

59:49所以，單靠金融工具把對中國的貿易逆差拉平，這在重商主義上比很多美國傳統做法有效得多，而那些做法，你知道，並不怎麼管用。好，我為什麼不同意，聽我說。我花了一陣子才講清楚：中國那樣做，因為他們等於是在印鈔壓低匯率，人家叫競爭性貶值。And so, you know, simply to equalize the trade deficit with China, which is easily doable with financial tools, is a much more effective way of doing mercantilism than many of the traditional American ways, which were, you know, not. Okay, here's why I disagree with that. It took me a while to articulate this, but when China is doing that—because they are, you know, effectively printing money to lower their exchange rate, competitive devaluation, people call it.

1:00:23我覺根本差異在於他們會分配。通膨是什麼？Milton Friedman 說過，通膨是另類課稅，對吧？通膨就是不用立法也能課稅。但中國一膨脹，他們資本配置比較行。所以中國人真的拿到路、橋、公共基礎建設。美國聯準會一印，資本就丟進像 Obama 的 ARRA 那種黑洞，或是加州那條花幾百億、哪裡也到不了的高鐵。I think the fundamental difference is they allocate. Because what is inflation? It's taxation by other means, as Milton Friedman said, right? Inflation is taxation without legislation. But when China inflates, they're better capital allocators. So the Chinese actually get roads, they get bridges, they get public infrastructure. Whereas when the American Fed prints, that capital is just thrown into some— you know, like, Obama ARRA rathole, or the hundred-billion-dollar California train to nowhere.

1:00:54中國真的用那些錢換到基礎建設。所以競爭性貶值、印鈔這工具，在中國那端結果完全不一樣，因為他們資本配置確實比較好。這算第一個論點。第二，我不會說，很多保守派會說中國做得到，我們為什麼不行？美國保守派常這樣講，對吧？倫理上怎樣都好。但策略上，假設 Facebook 說 Google 在做搜尋引擎，我們為什麼不行？China actually gets infrastructure for it. So the tool of competitive devaluation has a totally different result on the Chinese end, the money printing, because they're actually better at capital allocation. That's kind of argument number one. Number two is, I wouldn't say that they are, I think— you know, many conservatives will say China can do it, so why can't we? And American conservatives will say this, right? And ethically, whatever, that's fine. But strategically, let's say Facebook said Google is building a search engine, so why can't we?

1:01:27答案不是道義上不能做，而是從文化或策略層面，那不適合 Facebook。中國比 MAGA 還 MAGA，網路則比美國還美國。我的意思是，中國就是 MAGA 想變成的樣子：大概百分之九十七 Han，傳統派領導，高度武裝、工業化。And the answer is not you can't do it morally. It's that it doesn't suit Facebook from a cultural or strategic level. And the thing is, China is more MAGA than MAGA, and the internet is more America than America. What I mean by that is China is what MAGA wants to be. It's like 97% Han Chinese under a traditionalist leader, heavily armed, industrialized.

1:01:49匯率與競爭貶值

1:01:49過去十年，自從 Trump 2016 年開始一直喊「中國、中國、中國」，因為中國衝擊了 red America。回到我們前面講的，蘇聯和納粹互相競爭那件事，red America 被中國擾動之後，Trump 開始用美國從未用過的方式跟中國競爭，好比說：「他們搞關稅，我們也搞關稅。」Basically, the last 10 years, since Trump started saying "China, China, China" in 2016, because China disrupted red America, going back to our earlier point about how the Soviets and Nazis, you know, competed with each other, because red America was disrupted by China, Trump started competing with China in a way America had never done before, by kind of saying, "Hey, they do tariffs, we'll do tariffs too.

1:02:12「他們武裝到牙齒，好，我們也要這樣。」「他們在乎台灣，我們也要在乎台灣。」但這全是模仿。像蘇聯末期，Gorbachev 不再做蘇聯自己的事，開始想當一個更糟版本的美國。MAGA 想當更糟版本的中國，但成不了，因為中國是百分之九十七 Han，美國大概只有百分之二十 WASP，對吧？Hey, they're armed to the teeth, okay, we're going to do this. Hey, they care about Taiwan, we're going to care about Taiwan." But this is all mimetic. It's like the end stage of the Soviet Union, where Gorbachev, you know, stopped doing the Soviet Union's own thing and started trying to be a worse version of America. MAGA is trying to be a much worse version of China, and it's not going to be that because China is 97% Han Chinese, and America is like 20% WASP, right?

1:02:39Theseus 之船已經開走了，混個比喻，WASP 這塊底子從殖民時代那種百分之九十、九十九 Anglo 的年代，換成今天這樣，WASP 自己有一半是左派。The Ship of Theseus has sailed, to mix metaphors, okay, where it's been swapped out, the WASP stock, from, you know, the, the— whatever, 90%, 99% Anglo era, the colonial era, to what it is today, and the WASPs themselves, half of them are left-wing.

1:02:55所以不管美國人怎麼想像自己，身份認同會吵成這樣，是因為已經沒有核心身份了。很粗略地講，右派是硬體、左派是軟體，右派是生物、左派是意識形態，那任何硬體賽局中國都會贏，因為他們是百分之九十七 Han。他們已經垂直整合，像 Apple，對吧？軟硬體垂直整合。世界其他地方得靠軟體和想法，因為中國還有一點，中國有And so, like, whatever the self-conception of Americans is, the reason there's such a thrash over the identity is there is no core identity anymore. And if you think of, very, very roughly, the right is hardware and the left is software, like the right is biology and the left is ideology, then China is going to win any hardware game because they're 97% Han Chinese. They already have vertical integration. They're like Apple, right? They're software-hardware vertically integrated. Whatever the rest of the world is going to be is going to have to be software and ideas because China—one more point is China has

1:03:32規模。它是唯一真正負擔得起閉關、極端民族主義這類事的國家，因為它不需要盟友。它的政策是除了北韓以外不要盟友，因為它自成一個文明。它完全能自給。其他人需要外交、需要同盟、需要合作，而這在美國內部大概做不到了，原因可能很明顯。the scale. Like, it's the only country that can actually truly afford autarky, ultra-nationalism, and so on, because it doesn't need allies. Its policy is to have no allies other than North Korea because it's a civilization unto itself. It has total autarky. Everybody else needs diplomacy, they need alliances, they need cooperation, and that's not going to be done within America anymore, for perhaps obvious reasons.

1:03:57但我們有網路，可以跨邊界合作，可以組成我認為打不贏中國、也彎不了中國，但我認為能制衡中國的聯盟，做他們做不到的事。像 Zcash 就是共產主義做不到的事，對吧？那是和平的、非暴力的制衡。這段講很多了，我先停這裡。我大概是這樣想。好。But we do have the internet, and we can cooperate across borders, and we can actually build coalitions that I don't think can beat China, nor bend China, but I do think can balance China by doing things they can't do. Like Zcash is something that communism can't do, right? That's a peaceful alternative, peaceful, nonviolent balance. So this is, you know, that's a lot right there, but let me pause there. That's kind of what I think. Sure.

1:04:20MAGA 模仿中國

1:04:20某種程度上，中國只是重新發現了 Anglo-American 之前的治國術，而 Anglo-American 之前的治國術才是常態。Anglo-American 治國術才是不尋常的。所以「你可以一邊跑巨大結構性貿易逆差一邊成功」這論點，歷史上很多很多年一直被證偽。Well, you know, in a way, China has simply rediscovered pre-Anglo-American statecraft, and pre-Anglo-American statecraft is normal statecraft. Anglo-American statecraft is something unusual. And so, you know, the thesis that you can succeed while running huge structural trade deficits has essentially been falsified constantly by history for many, many years.

1:04:50我仍認為它還對。所以說你把貿易逆差中和掉，其實沒講清你是用什麼去中和。當然，美國，更廣的 Anglo 圈和歐洲圈，發明了資本主義，也大量把它輸出到中國。I think it's still correct. And so to say that you neutralize the trade deficit is not really to say what you neutralize it with. Certainly, I mean, the U.S., you know, the Anglosphere and the Eurosphere more broadly, invented, you know, even capitalism and has very much exported that to China.

1:05:14我們對製造業什麼的並不陌生，諸如此類。我們基本上只是決定歷史規則不適用於我們，而我們在頂端的時候確實如此。但現在我們不在頂端了，又得回到歷史裡活。所以「回到歷史裡活是什麼意思」很有趣，但確實，國家，我不知道我們能不能基本上說，好，美國，比如說，We're sort of no strangers to manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We basically just decided that the historical rules didn't apply to us, and they didn't apply to us when we were on top. But now we're no longer on top, and we have to live in history again. And so, you know, the question of what it means to live in history is an interesting one, but it is certainly true that countries, you know, I don't know if we can basically say, well, America, you know, let's take, say,

1:05:47現金。中國擔心資本外逃，對吧？我們可以當你們所有資本外逃的目的地。所以這就制衡中國。但問題是，靠進口資本其實不是能長期活下去的方式。cash. Well, you know, capital flight is a thing they're concerned about in China. Well, we could be the destination for all your capital flight. So that's what balances China. But the thing is that actually importing capital is not a terribly sustainable way to stay alive.

1:06:06我是說，該制衡中國的應該是，你知道。我覺美中關係的問題之一，是我們一直把他們擅長的東西全給他們。根本上，中國人要自己發明 X、Y、Z 得花多久？I mean, what should balance China is, you know. I think one of the problems with the U.S.- China relationship is that we've been giving them everything that we're good at. I mean, fundamentally, like, how long would it have taken the Chinese to invent X or Y or Z?

1:06:23要是大型語言模型不是從 Google 出來，他們要多久才發明得出來？例如，我不知道答案。你也不知道，沒人知道。但這種 Anglo-American 想法，說我們把全部科技給他們，他們會現代化、加入我們 John Lennon「Imagine 沒有國家」那種迪士尼樂園式的前途，顯然沒成。How long would it have taken them to invent the large language model if that didn't come out of Google? For example, I don't know the answer to that. And, you know, neither do you, neither does anyone. But actually, part of this sort of Anglo-American idea of, oh, we're going to give them all of our technology and they're going to modernize and become part of our future John Lennon, you know, “Imagine there are no countries” Disneyland, clearly did not work out.

1:06:53重回歷史常態

1:06:53對我來說，若要我提中國政策，會是切斷連結，而不是加強連結。我基本上不認為美國有任何好理由要跟中國有網路連線。好，我有幾點回應。第一，我覺得 Silicon Valley 和網路，真的該想成美亞混合體：有美國那種放開的資本主義、創新，也有亞洲那種苦幹、把題目做對、真的讀書、真的會數學、真的會科學。I think that actually, for me, you know, if I were to propose a China policy, it would be a policy of cutting things off rather than connecting things. I fundamentally don't think there are good reasons for the U.S. to even have an internet connection to China. Okay, so I have several responses. First is, I think Silicon Valley and the internet. Really, it should be conceptualized as an American-Asian hybrid, where it has, yes, the American freewheeling capitalism, innovation, but the Asian grind, get the problem sets right, actually study, actually know math, actually know science.

1:07:32難的東西不能隨便揮手帶過。反過來問你的問題：Fuentes 或 Hasan 的追隨者做得了 LLM 嗎？不行。LLM 很大一部分是不是華裔移民建的？是，對吧？他們的票倉做得到嗎？我不確定。因為一百多年前，Bertrand Russell 寫中國那篇，大概十九世紀末，一切都反過來。One can't hand-wave everything, you know, when it's hard stuff. Like, to take—to invert your question, would— you know, Fuentes' or Hasan's followers be able to do LLMs? No. Were LLMs built by Chinese immigrants in large part? Yes, right? And, you know, would their base be able to do it? I'm not sure. And because they don't have, I mean, a hundred-something years ago, you know, Bertrand Russell's thing on China, like late 1800s, everything was reversed.

1:07:58那時他寫中國人鴉片成癮、遲鈍懶散，美國人精力充沛，那是一個文明在上升、清朝在末期的時候，諸如此類。今天中國可以像自助餐式挑歷史裡對他們有用的部分，拒絕比如纏足這類，再合成、灌進現代科學技術。At that time, he wrote about how the Chinese were addicted to opium. They were torpid, languid, and the Americans were energetic, and that was when one civilization was rising and the Qing dynasty was at its end, and so on. And the thing is that today, the Chinese can be like a cafeteria Chinese, where they can pick aspects of history that work for them, and they can reject, let's say, foot binding and stuff like that, and they can synthesize and infuse it with a modern scientific-technological thing.

1:08:28但那不是簡單的事。不是本來就有大把精力想出一套今天對他們有效的公式。所以我覺太多保守派、太多右派，以為那是送給中國的。But that wasn't like a simple thing. It wasn't like it was something that there was a ton of energy to come up with, a formula that works today for them. And so I think that too many conservatives, too many rightists, think of it as something that was just, like, given to China.

1:08:45例如日本走很遠，後來被 Plaza Accords 打斷腿。中國人更聰明，規模也更大。他們有一件事跟遠見創辦人不放控制很像，對吧？But, like, for example, Japan got very far, and then they got kneecapped with the Plaza Accords. And the Chinese are just smarter than that, and bigger. And they actually—one of the things they did is similar to, you know how a founder, a farsighted founder, won't give up control, right?

1:09:02他們寧可估值低一點。中國做了很多這類事，保留主權，哪怕付出代價，比如防火長城。那是很長線的決定，公關挨了很多打，他們還是做了，類似用較低估值換主控權，對吧？And they'll take a lower valuation. So the Chinese did a lot of things where they kept sovereignty, even at the expense—like, for example, the Great Firewall. That was a very long-term decision that they took tons of PR hits for. And they did it anyway, and it's like taking a lower—analogously, taking a lower valuation to maintain power, right?

1:09:22矽谷是美亞混合體

1:09:22所以他們很多戰略決定做對了，不只是「送給他們」或「抄來的」。而且今天很多 LLM 相關、很多美國創新，有點像美國是 Xerox PARC，中國是 Microsoft。So they made a lot of good strategic decisions, and so it's not just that, oh, it was given to them or they copied it. And there are pieces, you know, like a lot of LLM stuff today, a lot of American innovation, it's sort of like America is the Xerox PARC, and then China is the Microsoft.

1:09:38有點是點子在那邊，執行在這邊。順便說，你知道，美國在工業革命崛起時，歐洲對美國的抱怨就是：歐洲發明，美國這些人只是苦幹把事做成，對吧？You know, where it's the idea, but then it's the execution. And this, by the way, as you know, when America was rising in the Industrial Revolution, that was Europe's complaint about America, is that Europe would invent and that America was like, you know, these, just, grinds that would do things, right?

1:09:55所以我才說自我安慰在於，亞洲模式執行得更好，因為它有合成，更適合網路時代。至於切斷連結，我認為只有中國負擔得起跟世界切斷。And so I think that's why I would say the cope is, like, you know, the Asian model is executing better because it has a synthesis. That works better for the Internet era. And to the thing about cutting things off, I think only China can afford to cut itself off from the rest of the world.

1:10:11它有核武，可以全棧自己來。我不認為世界其他地方負擔得起切斷。貿易逆差最後一點，然後留幾分鐘給你，我們可以收尾。美國從那裡得到東西，因為那些錢交到更會配置資本的人手裡。印鈔機按一下就能造出兆元，你要賣十億支 iPhone、一支一千塊，才湊得出一兆營收，更別提利潤。It's got the nukes; it can do everything full-stack. I don't think the rest of the world can afford to cut itself off. The last point on the trade deficit, and then I'll give you a few minutes; we can wrap up. America got something for that because they were putting all this money in the hands of better capital allocators. The money printer could generate a trillion dollars with one keystroke. You'd have to sell a billion iPhones for a thousand bucks to even get a trillion in revenue, let alone profit.

1:10:37所以美國可以用資料庫裡的一筆紀錄，換越南來的一堆鞋子，最近還開始認定越南在坑美國，因為美國賣的是鞋子的資料庫紀錄。我承認這是進退兩難：有印鈔，最後就沒武器、沒工業底子，諸如此類，你就輸。So America was able to just sell database entries for, you know, bushels of shoes from Vietnam, and then became convinced recently that Vietnam was ripping off America because America is selling the database entries for the shoes. And now I grant that it's a catch-22, because if you have the money printing, then you eventually don't have the weapons, you don't have the industrial base, and so on, so you lose.

1:11:00但要是現在切斷印鈔，剩下把美國人拴在一起的唯一東西，不是宗教，不是族群，民主黨、共和黨甚至不跟對方結婚，連社交圈都不一樣。說白就剩這張破破爛爛的美元紙。它只是一個經濟區，不是一個國家。所以保守派說「這是國家，不是經濟區」，他們會這樣講，正因為它其實是經濟區，不是國家。對吧？還有一些口號我們就不點名了，對吧？But if you cut off the money printing, at this point, the only thing left tying Americans together—it's not religion, it's not ethnicity, it's not, you know, like, Democrats, Republicans don't even marry each other. They're not even in the same social networks. It's literally this tattered piece of paper called a dollar. It is only an economic zone, not a country. That's why conservatives are saying it's a country, not an economic zone. They're only saying it because it's an economic zone, not a country. It's like, right? It's like some other slogans we could name, right?

1:11:31那張破紙一沒，整個就撕裂。沒錯。再一次，我想，也許值得用這個收尾，因為我覺得大家太不懂這點。羅馬共和國末期，也很像一張破紙。You know, and so that tattered piece of paper, when that goes away, the whole thing tears. That's right. And again, I want to, you know—and maybe this is worth— closing with, because this is, I think, the point that people understand so little. The Roman Republic, you know, toward the end of its days, was also very much a tattered piece of paper.

1:11:54中國決策與美元紙條

1:11:54那些破縫裡的一線生機是：更強的共和國，公元前兩百年的那個，其實很容易治理，它甚至不需要 Caesar。它在舊制度下治理自己非常成功。Caesar 時代的羅馬不是，而正是那股力量的流失，讓它找到 Caesar 底下的新組織、新的國家感。而這種能力一旦流失，首先，不管我們怎麼看基因，北美有很多很強的基因底子。And what the silver lining of those tatters was, was that a stronger Republic, the Republic of 200 B.C., would have found it actually very easy to—it didn't even need the Caesars. It actually was very successful at governing itself under its old system. The Rome of the Caesars was not, and that very loss of strength was what enabled it to find a new organization and a new sense of statehood under the Caesars. And it's that loss of that ability. First of all, you have, you know, whatever we think of genes, plenty of great genetic stock in North America.

1:12:39再說一次，這是問題資產。坦白講就是問題資產，但裡面有很多超額潛力，我認為很多超額潛力可以釋放，但不能再靠慣性了。There's a lot of—again, it's a distressed property. Let's be frank about this. It's a distressed property, but there's a lot of alpha there. And there's a lot of alpha that I think can be very much unlocked, but it has to be—it can't coast anymore.

1:12:57得靠有效的全國政府來釋放。你在美國看到有效全國政府會做的事，我認為可以類比，但會跟中國過去五十年看到的變化非常不同。某種程度上，中國，我們前面講 Napoleon、Cromwell。當然中國的 Cromwell 是鄧小平，他很多是向新加坡那位偉人 Lee Kuan Yew 學的。It has to be unlocked by an effective national government. And what you would see an effective national government do in America would, I think, be comparable, although very different from the changes we have seen in China over the last 50 years. In some ways, China is, you know, we talked about Napoleon and Cromwell, you know, earlier. Of course, the Cromwell of China is Deng Xiaoping, who learned a lot from the great man of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew.

1:13:30這層連結大家大致都懂。其實是 Mao 在中國實施西方共產主義那種混亂和瘋狂，造出了，就像法國大革命造出 Napoleon、英國內戰造出 Cromwell，中國革命就是混亂、胡來、野蠻，造出一個國家需要的東西：統一的全國方向。That connection is very much, you know, sort of understood. And it was actually the chaos and the insanity of Western communism in China, as applied by Mao, that has created—just the way the French Revolution creates Napoleon and the English Civil War creates Cromwell—the Chinese Revolution, which is just chaos and nonsense and barbarism, really creates the one thing that a nation needs, which is unified national direction.

1:14:07Mao 這個瘋子造出來的權力交到鄧小平手上，鄧不是瘋子，再落到習近平，習也不是瘋子，中國就發生驚人變化，國家資本，國家的實質、土地和人民，徹底被改造。And once that power that is created by Mao, who's a nut, is handed to Deng Xiaoping, who is not a nut, and winds up in the hands of Xi Jinping, who is also not a nut, astounding things happen in China, and the national capital, you know, the sort of the capital of the nation, the substance of the nation, the land and the people, is utterly transformed.

1:14:34羅馬殘幅與美國變身

1:14:34我不知道美國那種改造會長什麼結構。顯然跟把國家從第三世界拉到第一世界很不同。Lee Kuan Yew 有本書書名大概就是這個意思。比較像是我們已經過了第一世界進入第二世界，得從第二世界回到第零。I don't know what structure that transformation would take in America. It's obviously very different from bringing a nation from the Third World to the First. I think this is the title of one of Lee Kuan Yew's books. It's more like we've gone past the first into the second, and we have to go back from the second to the zeroth.

1:14:54但我絕對是樂觀派，我真的相信做得到，但需要大概一百倍的權力。好，再一輪：各五分鐘，好？原因在這。我覺得我們分歧在於認為自己處在歷史的哪個位置。我認為美國身份像蘇聯身份。蘇聯在八九年解體前，俄羅斯人比例已經降到百分之五十。But I'm absolutely an optimist, and I absolutely believe it is possible, but it will take about a hundred times as much power as— Okay, let's do one more round: five more minutes each, okay? Here's why. I think where we differ is where we think we are in history. I think the American identity is like the Soviet identity. The Soviet identity, at the end of the Soviet Union in '89, it had gone down to 50% Russian.

1:15:20所以俄羅斯人覺得被蘇聯裡其他人剝削，反過來也是。不只是經濟，還有長期被壓抑的民族主義情緒。Yeltsin 站在俄羅斯民族主義者那邊，其他人站在自己民族那邊。整個炸開。然後大家，即使蘇聯身份是血裡鍛出來的、大家有很多共同蘇聯文化，還是都得各自找路。And so both the Russians felt they were being exploited by others in the Soviet Union, and vice versa. So it wasn't just the economics; it was also the long-repressed nationalist sentiments. Yeltsin on the side of the Russian nationalists, others on the side of their own nations. The whole thing burst apart. And then everybody, even though the Soviet identity had been forged in blood and all these people did have a lot of common Soviet culture, everybody had to find their own way.

1:15:48有的變成愛沙尼亞科技業的人，有的變成波蘭天主教徒，有的像 Sergey Brin 或 Vitalik 的父親出國。往很多不同方向走，因為一旦不是蘇聯人，就得搞清楚自己是誰。And some became Estonian tech guys, and some became Polish Catholics, and some, like Sergey Brin or Vitalik's father, went overseas. And, you know, it went into a bunch of different directions, because once they weren't Soviet, they had to figure out what they were.

1:16:05但蘇聯有一個優勢，它才七十五歲：1917 到 1991，七十四年，對吧？問題是美國，不是降到百分之五十俄羅斯人，是降到百分之二十 WASP，第一。第二，它兩百五十歲，沒有一個意識形態之前的時代可以回去。第三，我會說美國共和國到美國帝國的轉換已經發生了。But the Soviets had one advantage, which is they were only 75 years old: 1917 to 1991, 74, right? The problem is, for America, it's not down to 50% Russian. It's down to 20% WASP, number one. Number two is— it's 250 years old, so it doesn't have some pre-ideological era to revert to. Number three, I'd say the transition between American Republic and American Empire already happened.

1:16:30就是 FDR，你也談過。那個美國帝國是有史以來最偉大的帝國，我們正在後照鏡裡看它。第四，Trump 政府、Trump 2 很多在做的事，其實是偽裝成擴張的崩潰。It's called FDR, as you've talked about. And that, you know, the American Empire, was the greatest empire of all time, and we're looking at it in the rearview mirror. Number four, a lot of the things that the Trump administration, Trump 2, is doing is actually collapse in the guise of expansion.

1:16:50例如搞 Greenland、Venezuela、西半球這套，同時航母撤出亞洲、很多，你知道，領土讓出去。所以我認為這更像帝國終結，像476年或蘇聯解體，而不是開端。我先停這裡。For example, going to, like, a Greenland, Venezuela, Western Hemisphere thing has coincided with the aircraft carriers being pulled out of Asia and a lot of, you know, territory being given up. And so that's why I think this is more the end of the empire, more like 476 or the end of the Soviet Union, than the beginning. So let me pause.

1:17:15共和還是帝國

1:17:15關鍵問題，我們得走了，對美國的關鍵問題是：我們活在晚期羅馬共和國，還是晚期羅馬帝國？顯然兩邊都有。好。謝謝您。謝謝。非常感謝。The crucial question—we do have to run—the crucial question for America is: are we living in the late Roman Republic or the late Roman Empire? Obviously, there's aspects of both. Yep. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thanks so much.