2320 FBF: Adapting to Change with Jared Diamond Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ & ‘The World Until Yesterday’

Today we have Flashback Friday and a 10th episode show. All of you regular listeners know that every 10th episode we do a topic of general interest. It always seems to relate to finance and success in life and success with our portfolios. But the topics are More General. Every 10th episode show and today we combine a flashback Friday with a 10th episode.

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com.

Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing. Fresh new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman and we are now at episode number 340. Thanks so much for joining us today. Today, as in our long standing tradition on the Creating wealth show, this is a tenth episode and we will have something that is off topic that is of general interest. And today we have the very famous Jared diamond on the show. Now you've probably heard his name, he is the author of many books including the World Until Yesterday, Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel, the Third Chimpanzee. Why Is Sex Fun? There's a title for you and a whole bunch of other books. So we have Jared diamond coming up here in, in just a few minutes. But first I've got Steve here to talk about a couple of economic, financial and real estate things that I think will be important to you. And then we'll get to Jared Diamond. Steve, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing well. I was just laughing at those book names if I won't say which book. But if you can't figure that part out on your own, I think you're just missing the point entirely.

And there you go. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll get to him. And you know, by the way, I have to say I find Jared Diamond's work very interesting. I've been following him for several years now and know about his work and he's a professor of geography at UCLA and You know, he's a scientist. He began a scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeology, or button, sorry, biogeography, I should say. I'm sorry, I misread that. And you know, he's been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and just like really super interesting stuff. But I gotta tell you, on a future episode, when I have time to talk about it, I'm gonna blow a big hole in one of his major theories. I can't remember if he talked about this today because I recorded this a while back his, his segment here, but stay tuned for a future episode because I don't know if anybody's thought about one of his very major theories in, in the way I've thought about it. Maybe I'm original in this way, maybe I'm not. I'm not sure. But I think I poked a big hole in one of his theories. So.

Well, let's see.

Don't let me forget that because we got to talk about that in the future. But for this episode, we've got a few things on the agenda and you know, we tend to go a little long, so let's get right into it.

Steve, we better giddy up. Yeah, we just got back from the Equity Trust event in Florida just yesterday.

Sorry, Sunday night. It's Tuesday already.

Well, I got back on Monday because of my layover in lost wages.

Lost wages? Nevada. The place that you should be very careful if you consider it a real estate investment. You know, we haven't recommended Las Vegas in quite a while and you should definitely not be gambling because gambling is a loser's game.

Well, we found some gamblers at the event and I think we'll get to that in just a minute. But I was really impressed.

Yeah, let's talk about where we were. So this is the Equity Trust, Equity University event that they have annually. And There were about 500 people. People there. So it was in Orlando, Florida. We flew out on Thursday and I met you out there. You picked me up in a rather impressive rental car. That was. What was that? Rental car? I was impressed, I gotta tell you.

Well, I show up and they just start giving me awesome cars. But it. Well, you'll be shocked to know that it was a brand new Chevy Impala.

I didn't think Americans made very good cars.

It's not bad for a government car.

Yeah, yeah, Government Motors. You mean gm.

Yeah, yeah, we liked it. Unfortunately, we drove it to the hotel and parked it for three and a half days and then drove it to.

The airport after that that wasn't very much use of it. But that was a really nice car, that Chevy Impala. I was pretty impressed. I wonder how much those things cost. I mean that was like, had a beautiful interior. Really. It drove very well.

Anyway, that must have been the very top, top model because I'm not used to, to being inside of those. And that's good because cops use Chevy Impalas.

Well, I was pretty impressed. I thought I was getting into like a Mercedes S Class or something. I was surprised, but yeah. So Equity Trust is the largest self directed IRA company in the nation. And get these, these are some amazing statistics you're about to hear. Okay, so they have about 13 billion with a B billion dollars in, I don't want to say under management because they don't manage it. But in their Self Directed IRA accounts, otherwise known as SD IRAs. Self Directed IRAs, which we highly recommend by the way because you don't have to fall victim. I mean you don't have to be, be one of the sheeple that fall victim to, you know, the Wall street type investments. You can really plan your future and you'll be smarter about it than anybody else because of course it's your money. So you're going to be more careful than the guy at Merrill Prize, Merrill lynch or brokerage houses that you go to. So, you know, with self directed IRAs, of course, we've done many shows on this. People can invest in real estate. They can invest in notes or trustees or mortgages and be a private lender or hard money lender and other things too, tax liens, which I told the story of how I think I got ripped off. And amazingly those guys were at that show. It's funny because one of them, I saw him walking around and you know, he's a nice guy. I mean, I hope this guy didn't rip me off because he seems like kind of a jolly nice guy. And I saw him and I, you know, he was kind of walking near our booth and I said, hi, Don. And he came over and that was Don Fulman with Pip. West. And he came over and Steve, you weren't at the booth at this time, or maybe you were, but you were talking to someone else. But he came up to me, shook my hand. I said, hi, how you doing? I was very cordial. And he started sweating profusely like he had a guilty conscience and knew he did something bad. Like it was. And it. Remember how cold it was in there too. That room couldn't have been more than 67 degrees I mean, it was, it was chilly. I was getting a cold and everybody else was complaining about it.

That you had to work to sweat in that room.

Yeah. Oh, totally.

Or be under some serious psychological stress for whatever reason.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I said to him, I said, hey, is, is Charles Sells gonna say hello to me? You know, I've never met him, didn't talk to me all weekend. You know, I didn't approach him because I didn't want to. I didn't want to get in an argument with a guy. But yeah, Don was sweating like, whoa. I thought, wow. He was sweating like someone who got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Today we have flashback Friday and a 10th episode show. All of you regular listeners know that every 10th episode we do a topic of general interest. It always seems to relate to finance and success in life and success with our portfolios. But the topics are more general every 10th episode show. And today we combine a flashback Friday with a 10th episode. You will see. Listen folks, I'm gonna let you more know more about this because that whole tax lien thing was pretty interesting to me. I had him on a show a long time ago and he actually spoke at our very first masters event many years ago. And you know, I liked the idea. But I gotta tell you, I think these guys just, I think they just, they just snake me. So I'm not, I'm not happy about that at all.

Now the body language would back you up. We'll have to see. The jury's still out.

The jury out. We will see more to come on that. But yeah, so they've got $13 billion in these self directed IRA accounts. They're the biggest custodian or I guess administrator of self directed IRAs in the nation. And what was interesting is the stats we heard there's about $60 billion total in self directed IRAs. So they've got almost 25% of the market, which is huge. I mean, and I think they said that company has about 500 employees. Of course their competitors would be the people we've had on the show nt accuplan. And you know, there are many others out there too. But here's the amazing number, the really amazing number. Only 2% of IRA money is self directed, Steve. So that means 90. Talk about a growth industry. Okay, yeah. I mean, if they can convince the other 98% of the people to become self directed, which not all of them actually can because some of them have restrictions that won't allow them to. But I mean, that's like Trillions of dollars. Right. I haven't done the math on it because you got to reverse into it. But that's a lot of money, okay? Who cares? You know, it's just a lot of money. And it is amazing. Like there's all this talk about the government and this used to be like wacko, tinfoil hat, conspiracy theory type stuff, but now it's becoming very much more mainstream. I mean, it's really becoming a lot more mainstream about the government taking over people's retirement plans. Because look, let's just face it folks, our government is broke. They're looking for money. They try to get it through taxation, they try to get it through inflation, which is the liar and the thief, which is, as I've said many times, the invisible tax that destroys your wealth, that pickpockets you, that takes the savings out of your savings account, that reduces the value of your brokerage account, but it also thankfully reduces the value of your debt, which is what we call inflation induced debt destruction. The thing we so love because that makes real estate investors, that puts them in a very enviable position and makes them far more wealthy. It's really the hidden wealth creator in the income property investment game. And then of course, the income property is pretty much indexed to inflation. Why? Well, just historically, history wise, it typically appreciates a little bit faster than the consumer price index. And what's it made of? Commodities and commodities, all of those. That basket of commodities, the ingredients of a house, copper wire, lumber, petroleum products, concrete, glass, steel, etc. They're very indexed to inflation. They're traded globally. They're not attached to any one currency like the dollar, which is wonderful. They're a real thing that humans need around the world and will continue to need. So that's fantastic. But the self directed IRA thing, it's pretty refreshing to see so many people like we met at this trade show in this convention taking advantage of this, isn't it?

Yeah, it's really cool. And these people were very savvy, educated investors. They'd come up to our table or we'd chat with them in the main conference room and they really knew the score. Our message resonated with them. I think it's because people are starting to realize that it's not what you were talking about earlier. It's not a tinfoil hat deal where the government might have to dip into the private sector. Even though when you talk about how much money there is in retirement plans, even if you reversed into it, we're obviously somewhere in the trillions Well, I mean, what's the national, what's the deficit every year?

Yeah, so I mean that could solve a lot of problems for the government if there's some sort of crisis and the government comes along and says, hey, we gotta make sure we protect you little people, you hoi polloi you and the masses. And so, you know, we're going to nationalize your retirement plans. And the low hanging fruit is going to be all the retirement plans that are not self directed, it's going to be all the brokerage accounts and just the simple normal stuff that's out there that the sheep will do. The people that aren't really thinking, that aren't really paying attention or maybe they just don't really have the choice or the option to self direct. And I tell you, they could really, really suffer pretty, pretty badly.

Yeah, yeah. And the self directed IRA people are not the low hanging fruit. You need to get a crane and a pair of pliers to get up to them. You have to really want it.

That's too hard because all the assets in a self directed ira, they're so fragmented. You got a property here in one jurisdiction in one state, you got another property in another state, you got a couple of notes or mortgages over here that you've invested in and you're the lender on, your IRA is the lender on. So that's just too hard. The government can't deal with all that fragmentation.

They can't, they can't. And I was kind of saying that it's not very far fetched because we already have two things happening here, somewhat of a precedent that happened in Cyprus earlier this year. It wasn't retirement accounts per se, I'm sure there was some, but they went to the private banks and they put caps on what people could take out of the country. They were really going to make a move on that kind of a thing. And number two, we were talking to Lisa Taylor, the syndication attorney.

Oh yeah, she was there. She was one of the speakers. I spoke at the event and she also spoke at the event. So yeah, we just had her on the show.

Yeah, we had a. Just an informative yet exhaustingly frustrating conversation about California and also about all these new crowdsourcing laws that are a part of the JOBS Act. And she and I were laughing about it because she said, you know what, Steve, it looks to me that as we get into this law about how you can raise money and what the SEC will regulate that, it's going to be a lot harder than it was previously. And we were laughing, saying, I can't believe we were stupid enough to think that the government would make something easier and less complicated. They just don't know how to do that. It's not in their DNA. And then she was also telling us about how in the state of California, these laws that they're enacting. I could have this wrong, Jason, but remember she was saying that, let's say there was an investment property in Kansas and you lived in California and you had a business partner in Arizona.

Oh, yeah, that was, that's what a mess. The California laws are just unbelievable.

You form an LLC to take title to that property in Kansas, California is going to try to tax your Arizona business partner individually. And I told her, I said, well, if they did that to me, I just make a copy of my middle finger and send it to him. And she's all, yeah, and you could. But they're building, and these were your words, Jason, an economic Berlin Wall around California. They're trying to discourage the Californians from doing business with people out of state, investing out of state. They're trying to keep them there because they just don't have any money.

Yeah, right. What we are seeing is there's an old saying about the long arm of the law. Well, the long arm of a bankrupt state, California, essentially, not formally bankrupt, but essentially bankrupt. We're seeing them trying in so many ways to build this economic Berlin Wall. I remember the first time I went to Berlin, Germany, okay. And that was, I don't know, 12 years ago, maybe a little more than that. I wish I would have gone there when it was still communist because that would have been so interesting. I just would have been scared, though. I'm certain it would have been very scary to go across through Czech Charlie and go into East Berlin. But I went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and I spent about six hours there. And I got to tell you, I got a little teary eyed several times that day because it is just mind boggling to me that any, any dictator could, could not see the writing on the walls. They could be so evil and so cruel that so many people were trying to escape their clutches and get out of their country that they put that Berlin Wall up basically in a weekend. I mean, it was fast because. And the reason they put the Berlin Wall up, the reason it happened in the first place, is because the east, you know, where people could just sense there was no opportunity, they were experiencing this brain drain. Everybody was trying to leave East Berlin and go into West Berlin where they could be paid based on their merits and they could have ambitions and they could succeed and, and even fail in a free marketplace and experiment. That's human nature. Free market capitalism is. Although we don't really have free market capitalism in the US today or in many places in the world in any real way, but we still call it that.

Yeah, that's what it is now. Not in its pure form.

Yeah, it's not in its pure form, certainly, but that's what people wanted. It's in keeping with human nature. And so California and the United States is also doing it on a national scale where you see we're reaching into every other country. You know, if you're an American, good luck trying to open up a foreign bank account. They just, it's like Obama has made it so no other country wants to do business with an American because America just puts too much pressure on them. And here's what they do. I mean they do a lot of things, but you know, one of the things is real simple to understand. So you used to have, and I guess you still do all these Caribbean nations, you know, a lot of them are sort of banana republic type, little podunk places. Right. But they'll institute some very favorable laws and doesn't have to be in the Caribbean, it could be in the Southeast Asia, South Pacific area, you know, wherever around the world. Right. And they'll institute a lot of very favorable laws to try and bring in business. It's just like, look, you try to, if you're in traditional business, you try to have a better product or a lower price than your competitor. So you bring in business. Well, on a government level this happens of course, from state to state. There are certain states that are more desirable to do business in, to incorporate in and that that all happens among the 50 states or. Well, Obama thinks there's 58 states but close enough for government work.

Well, what do you expect from somebody who's not from here?

Well, good point.

I went there.

Are you a birther?

I actually watched that, that movie called Dreams from My Real Father.

Oh yeah, I got to see.

And their whole reason that he didn't release the birth certificate and that he's cagey about his past is not that he's not from here, it's that his real father is not that guy from Kenya who he looks nothing like, by the way, but it's really Frank Marshall Davis, a well known communist revolutionary.

Yep.

Yeah.

It's surprising how little we know about our president, isn't it?

Well, yeah, it's surprising and it's sad. Too, because we're talking about the evils of communism here. But I think if you told most of America today, yeah, Obama's father was a communist, most people would go, okay, well, why is that bad? What's wrong with that?

Oh, God, that's a scary. Wow.

Well, don't you think. I mean, a lot of these people that just show up and vote and don't pay any attention, they probably don't even know what communism is.

They don't. I tell you something. Hey, listeners, you know what you've got to do. And I'm trying to get him on the show, but Mark Dice, watch some of his videos, you know, find him on the web. I'm sure he's got a huge YouTube channel on a giant following, although I've never looked it up. But some of his videos. Videos are just, you know, there's an old saying. Never overestimate the intelligence of the American electorate.

That's right.

And I, you know, of course, present company excluded, because all of you listeners are. I know you're really smart because I've dealt with a lot of you and talk to a lot of you, but the general public out there is pretty scary. Mark Dice will go up to people and, you know, I saw this on Jimmy Kimmel Live just the other night. He did the same thing. Yeah. And he walked up to people and, and ask them, what is the First Amendment? And nobody had any idea. The closest someone got was, oh, it was about your rights. Oh, which right.

I don't know how.

And Jimmy Kimmel tried to, he tried to hand it to them. He said he would say, well, you're doing it right now. In other words, you're speaking. They still didn't get it. Anyway, whatever.

That's amazing. Well, it's. I, Yeah, I was saying, I just, I don't know how they can flag down a taxi or, or get to the polls or these very basic things with some of these answers that they even, I'm sure those, those Kimmel interviews, he excluded 90 people for the one gem that he got. But.

Well, I don't know. They don't. I don't think they're that bad. Of course, I'm sure they do that. You know, they, they don't show you everybody. And some people got it right. But just do your own informal survey and you can find that it's not that far off.

Anytime I have a hard time believing something, I usually say to myself, well, Obama is president, so it's like anything could happen.

Hey, but look at what was the alternative. Well, this last time around, Romney, I think he was pretty good. But you know, McCain, I mean, come on, what a joke.

McCain drives me nuts.

Yeah. Anyway, where were we? Economic Berlin Walls. Right. Here we go again.

We were talking about IRAs and why it's a good idea to have one because California has taken a page out of the Obama playbook here where Obama, the government, whoever you want to say, is making it really unattractive for Switzerland or Panama or whoever to do business with US Citizens. And now California is making it really unattractive for Texas or Oklahoma or Tennessee to do business with Californians. That's right out of their playbook.

Yeah, yeah, it's true that economic Berlin Wall is only going to get stronger and more effective. Oppressive. So if you are a California resident, or if you are a resident of any state that is similar to California in that way, meaning broke and desperate and liberal, then I would highly recommend that. And those are a couple of bad ingredients. I would highly recommend that you have some affairs outside of that jurisdiction asap, because the sooner you do it, you spread your chips around and diversify a little bit. Very wise thing to do that is.

And this crowd full of investors, they were very educated, very intelligent. That didn't mean, however, that we didn't have pretty good pitches.

Land people. Yes, those land people.

Boy.

Well, here's. Okay, so let's just give them some context, the listeners here. Steve. So when I did my speech, of course I said the usual thing I say, which is a really on my PowerPoint slide. This part is in bold. It says understand that anything that does not produce income or in parentheses, rent, is not an investment but rather a speculation. In other words, you're gambling if you invest in anything that doesn't produce actual income, like a non dividend paying stock. Well, I think any stock is a huge gamble because that's Wall street and that's a whole nother problem. But say it's real estate, you know, you notice that I try to call it income, property, because that's what I like. Okay, I don't like vacant land. I think vacant land is speculative. It's highly risky. Now granted, do some big players in the vacant land world and occasionally a little guy make money and sure they do. Of course, you know, you get some vacant land and the path of progress and you can make some money. But it's the exception, not the norm. Unless you're a big developer like Pulte Holmes or Dr. Horton or one of them or some big commercial developer. I mean, those Guys, they have huge resources and they've land acquisition people that study this stuff all the time. And most importantly, they have huge influence with the government, whether it be the county or the city, as the case may be, where they can get them to do things and make huge deals with them that will raise bring tons of property taxes or sales taxes into the coffers of that municipality. Well, this isn't going to happen with a guy who buys an acre and a half.

Right. If you're saying, I wonder if I should invest in raw land and if I could get an acre parcel and how I should do that, if you're asking yourselves those questions, raw land speculation is not for you unless you can go into your room of research dorks from Harvard that will analyze the economic trends. If you've got those guys on your team, that means that you are a developer, you work for a huge investment company, then you should be in raw land. But otherwise you are gambling. And that's exactly what these people were proposing. They came to the table, and I'll let you finish this story off, Jason, but they came to me while you were off somewhere else and they just let me have it about raw land for a half hour. I glazed over and thought about something else.

She was mad at me for saying that from the stage.

I know. So they came to you.

Oh my God. It was mind boggling. Yeah.

And she was trying to show this.

Piece of real estate in Valencia, California, near Magic Mountain.

Yes. And she kept saying, and in 2006, this was available for this amount and now it's available for this. And it was like what, 20%?

It had to be the stupidest argument I have ever heard. I mean, she was a raw land broker and investor. And it's funny because I finally found out what were they selling? Was this just land that was available, you know, listed by someone else? Do they have the listing on it? No. The owner of the company is selling off their own land and hired, according to her, a bunch of salespeople to sell their own land. Well, of course I sell stuff that's a good deal sometimes that I think has a future prospect just to, you know, we all move some money around and line up our own ducks. And that doesn't mean the next guy does. Guy doesn't get a good deal. But if you own all this land in a given area where you've got like, like a bit of a, not a monopoly, but a sort of monopoly, and, and you're in a market like this where the market is most definitely Appreciating, I mean, by and large, I mean, things are going pretty well right now. Of course, a whole nother discussion. I think it's a fake recovery, etc. Etc. And I interviewed Harry Dent yesterday. That was a fascinating interview, by the way. He was on for the third time. And that'll be published very quickly here in the members section. That's going to be a members only podcast for a little while because he gives some pretty major predictions and I make him drill down and get specific about that stuff.

Oh, that's great.

So that'll be available to the members. First, if you're not a member, here's my little sales pitch. 10 bucks a month, jasonartman.com join. You get discounts on a whole bunch of things, blah, blah, blah.

You just have to click join in the top right corner of jasonhartman.com and.

Then you'll get your details and wasn't my sales pitch good, Steve? And you get a bunch of things, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah, you're making sales trainers roll over in their grave right now.

I know, I'm terrible at this stuff.

I guess that's why people like the shows, because we don't just sit there and blast them with that kind of stuff.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Like the landlady did to you. Because, oh my God, she was letting you. She just kept saying it was available for this in 2006. And you kept asking her, what did it sell for? And you. She would say, well, Warren Buffett invests there. And you say, great, what did it sell for?

What?

What? She was. What she was doing just to tell the listeners, okay. She was trying to give me a comparison. Terrible sale. And when I drilled down on it, what I found out is that the property never sold. It was just listed only for sale. So listing prices are fantasy land, sales prices are reality. Okay, and. And she's showing me a nearby parcel that was never sold and trying to tell me this is the comparable sale. And I said, you have to show me comps that are sold in closed, not for sale. And it's not even for sale now. They took it off the market because they could never sell it in 2006.

It was ridiculous.

And then she's telling me her own story. She's got only one story of success, one story of her own. Now. She said she owned like 40 other parcels and they wouldn't let her buy anymore. I don't know why, but they wouldn't let her buy anymore and she couldn't buy anymore. And she had this One deal that she made some money on. And she's telling me, jason, you don't understand. Jack in the boxes next to it, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was just the most idiotic argument I've ever. I couldn't believe how stupid it sounded. It was mind boggling.

Well, it was starting to draw a crowd too, because you, you kept demanding from her a simple answer. Did it sell? And she was spinning. I mean, this was the most shameless spin, trying to not answer that question.

I literally had to tell her, stop talking and let me ask a question.

Oh.

And she finally stopped talking and like everyone around was, look, I can't believe Jason said that. Well, I didn't say shut up, okay? I said stop talking.

Well, apparently she wasn't getting the hint. Some people you just have to tell stop talking.

Exactly. But, but crazy stuff. So listen, folks, if you want to gamble, this is not the show for you, okay? Yeah, this is, this is the show for prudent, real long term investing that makes sense. That properties that make sense the day you buy it. Granted, things don't always go well. There are problems, there are bumps in the road. Nothing is perfect. We're just trying to get as close as we can to that perfection. Okay? And properties that actually rent out now. And you know how you can always tell how good something is is whether or not the banks will finance it. And you know, I've always said this with cars. You look at the Tesla right now, Tesla Motors. I've been following this electric car that's kind of a good looking electric car. But I think by and large it's going to be a flop if they worked, then bring them into the free market without a bunch of government financing, which is what Elon Musk got. He got a bunch of Obama financing there to start the company and to support it. And I'm talking to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe maybe even half a billion, I'm not sure. And supposedly I think Tesla's like profitable. Are doing pretty well. I don't know the details, but they didn't have any financing. Right? No one would finance the car. And then they finally came out with some sort of a lease program. But get this my understanding, I could be wrong here because in Arizona, in Scottsdale shopping center, they have a, like a showroom, but they can't talk to you about the details because they do not have a car dealer's license. So they have the showroom. You can go in and see a car in the mall and. But it's not a real dealership. You have to go to California. And I said, well, you can't tell me how the lease program worked. Nope, you got to go to California. We can't sell them here. You know, okay, whatever. And the deal is it's a. Instead of being a closed end lease where you can return the car at the end and just give it back after, you know, leasing it for three or four years, which that would be fine with me because then I would know what my exact cost is. See, when you lease a car, you don't take. And you do it on a, on a lease where you turn it in at the end, you don't take the risk of depreciation. Whereas with an electric car, that may be the next Edsel, you know, and an Edsel is a flop. If you don't know what an Edsel is, look it up. That may be the next disastrous flop. The bank, they only want to do an open end deal where, yeah, you pay the lease payment for three years. And then we don't know if you can turn it in or not. It kind of. We're gonna just see what the marketplace says and if these cars, you know, if we can resell them, we'll take it back. If not, then you're stuck with it. And that's the deal. So anyway, you just look around and see what financing is being offered. If you walk in and you want to buy, you know, a Hyundai Genesis, great financing. You want to buy a new BMW 5 Series, fantastic financing, right? The Hyundai's a little better because it's a better value, but on a car like that, you can't get normal good financing. And so that's the same thing on the vacant land. No financing, all cash, period. End of discussion, zero financing.

That's it. And it's a red flag if there isn't financing available. And you and Michael talked about this on the last podcast. Thank you. I got hit up on Detroit probably five or six times at this event. People just won't drop it. And it's that argument that you made of, well, it can only go up. And it's just a purely speculative thing. And I bet you I haven't looked into it, like, ever. But there's a net population decline happening in Detroit right now. Banks are going to have a hard time financing properties there in the inner city.

Yeah, Detroit is a disaster. Okay, let's move on. So anything else on the conference? Good event. What else? Self directed IRAs. Definitely the way to go. Make sure you have one. I Don't know if there's any other takeaways.

There's a couple of possibilities on some different products that we might be able to offer to everybody. Stay tuned. We're digging through some due diligence on that right now.

Okay, good. Let's talk about some properties, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, we've got a couple of properties here.

One of these is so gorgeous by the way. You know, my mom's building her. Well, I think she's done building it. I can say I never really know if that house is exactly finished, but building her mansion in Alabama, Southern Alabama. And I mean this house, she'd love that house. You know, with a four, it's got four columns in front of us. Gorgeous house.

Oh, totally. It looks like it's just like your southern house in Memphis.

Southern, Southern. Little mini southern mansion.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And the great thing about it, I don't see this a lot in Memphis. This thing was built in 2002. A beautiful looking property. It's 2100 square feet and the projected rent is 1250amonth.

Right.

And the purchase price is 10, 6, 9.

Unbelievable. I know. So more than 1% RV and this house is $51 per square foot. It's 2100ft. And the overall ROI projection here is 41% annually. 41% annually. And that's just like a nice family neighborhood, you know, that's a great looking. I mean go to Jason Hartman.com and look for the property in Memphis built in 2002. This house is flippin gorgeous. I mean it's brick exterior, kind of.

A good colonial southern look. It's and I'll spell it out for people here, this is built in 2002. We have well over a 1% rent to value ratio on this. I don't see this. I don't get these hardly ever. I would more expect to see a cash on cash of 5 or 6 on this thing.

Yeah. With the way the market is today, it's better. I mean a renter drives up to that house who's been living in an apartment and paying $1,000 or $1,100 per month and maybe is doing a little better now so they can spend another 150 bucks per month. They drive up to that thing and they're gonna go wow, wow, right?

Yeah. If you want more information on this one, just email your investment counselor because it's a good looking. I don't think it's gonna hang around long. It might be gone before we air this.

You're Right. Okay, go, next one. This one's in Houston, right?

That's correct. I want to remind everybody about the great new construction we have going in Houston, which is booming.

Houston. Yeah. I mean, Houston is just such a strong economy. You know, the only thing in Houston is the supply is not very constrained. I mean, it does move out from the center of the city and they've got the loops, the freeway loops there, but you're moving out further and further as time goes on. But I tell you, the economy there is so strong. I mean, of course, Texas is arguably the most business friendly state in the US and the energy sector and the medical sector in Houston are phenomenal.

They are. And they can build out around Houston, keep expanding it. But what I've read lately too, and I think a lot of listeners have probably seen some of these articles, there have been multiple articles lately about how they're having a tough time getting raw land to build in Houston fast enough. The demand is very high.

Well, maybe they should go see that lady at the Equity Trust conference.

Yeah. Have her get some land in Houston.

Yeah, she, she could get them like an acre. They could build two, four, maybe four houses.

Yeah, that's, that's great.

Next to a Jack in the box.

She kept saying, Warren Buffett, he bought land there. That was her fail sale.

Oh my God.

If you asked her a question, she didn't know will Warren Buffett. And you're just supposed to say, roll over and say, here's my wallet.

What a joke.

I know. So this is one of the new construction properties. We do. These take about 60 to 90 days to build. Our local market specialist there helps you pick out a lot in one of the developments. They're solid properties. They lease very, very quickly. People love to move into a brand new property. And this is probably outside of the triplexes in Kansas City, which were sold out on. This is the only place where we have reliable new construction.

So the triplexes are officially sold out. Yeah. Yeah.

I talked to our local market specialist the other day and he said, yeah, I'm sold out on that. He's put on another development.

So we sold an entire tract of triplexes in Kansas City. And did we even ever mention them on the podcast? Yeah, we did, because we had Jessica on talking about that a little bit.

I think we did, but I'm pretty sure they were, they were already spoken for before that.

Wow, that's crazy.

Well, that local market specialist is great and did a lot of business and a lot of people wanted to invest with him again, but this one in Texas, the projections on it, it's a 1350 projected rent with a 32% projected total return on investment. This is a brand new property. So like I said, 60 to 90 days to build. We probably don't have too many of these left. They've been threatening for a few months now that they're towards the end and I don't know that we'll be able to do too many more of these in this particular location. I think we'll have another development come up.

Yeah, I hope he gets some more inventory because for the past year and a half we've just been struggling with lack of inventory.

Yeah, yeah. So if you want something that's just a very smooth deal, brand new property, the system runs very, very well with this local market specialist in Houston. Call your investment counselor or go to Jason hartman.com.

Yeah. Okay, good. And what else do we got to talk about? Let's talk about the Fed's lockup room for media real quickly. This was on the news this morning and I thought this was kind of fascinating. It was about how last week when the Fed said that they're just going to keep creating fake money out of thin air. In other words, no tapering, which.

Hang on a second, did you really ever expect Ben Bernanke to not do this? I mean, it's.

You mean helicopter Ben?

Yeah, he's a Keynesian. This is all he knows how to do.

John Maynard Keynes is his hero and so he is a. He is the money printer of the universe. Even better than Alan Greenspan was, who was a total sellout money printer also. Right. Yeah.

The kangaroo is still hopping. What do you know, it didn't start swimming.

No surprise. So in other words, last week what happened is basically, you know, the Fed made the big announcement that they would not do any tapering of their bond buying program of $85 billion per month. And what that means is that we are in right now a pure, unadulterated money printing. Inflation is coming. Inflation is coming. Paul Revere, you know, type of thing. And you may say, well, hey, there's lots of deleveraging and you know, even Harry Dent, he thinks there's going to be another crisis. And I agree with that. The only question is, and this is what the deflationists never get, and I disagree with Harry a little bit on this, is that I do believe there's another crisis coming. However, I think that there is an unlimited ability to print your way out of it. And Harry Dent and I on the interview yesterday talked a lot about Japan and a lot about China and using Japan as the case study for the past 2.2.3 decades, 23 years, where they've been in the, you know, the lost decades. And the US Is different. I mean, it's not the same, okay? We have the reserve currency and we can print, and other people, they can print too, but it's just not the same when you print and you don't have the reserve currency.

Well, can you clarify on quote, unquote, print your way out of it, because that makes it sound like the US Is just going to sail off into the sunset all hunky dory.

Yeah, well, okay, so creating money out of thin air, and it's not really even printing anymore. That's just a metaphor. But we're increasing the money supply, which the deflationists say, well, you can't print enough money to inflate. Well, sure you can. You can. It's unlimited. I mean, it goes to, as Buzz Lightyear would say, infinity and beyond.

Right?

Okay.

Buzz Lightyear, the next chairman of the Fed.

There is no limit here to what they can do. And remember, inflation is the best business plan for governments. It's really the most politically tolerable way to get one, to get them out of a mess. And it's what they're going to do. It's just what they're going to do.

So I'm still laughing about. It's not going to be Larry Summers, everybody. Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story is going to be the new chairman of the Fed.

I think he's already there.

I think if you actually got the cartoon Buzz Lightyear, he would probably do a better job.

Yeah, right. Yeah, probably. Probably. At least he's probably a lot more honest than the central bankers in there now.

So what's this media room that they've got?

Okay, so they have this, I think it was called the media lockup room. And what it is, is they call certain reporters in in advance of a Fed announcement, which is, of course, the whole market around the world reacts to this, right? So they call them in and they tell them what they're going to say, what the announcements going to be. Well, it turns out there was a leak. They think there was a leak. And this is how you cannot win as a small investor because what happened is it takes 7 milliseconds for the speed of light, which is 186,253 miles per second per second, not per hour. That means light can circle the Earth more than seven times in less than a second. BLOOP okay, well, there was a trade on the Chicago exchange that appears to be a reaction to the Fed announcement before it was announced. And so what they're questioning now, there's an investigation going on that this could not travel faster than the speed of light. That literally. They said that on the news today. And there's a leak. And, and that's what it is. And the high frequency traders are going to always win. Okay? So if you think you can be in the stock market and you can outsmart the high frequency traders and the quants and the dark pools and the insiders, good luck, you need it, because you're gonna lose. Okay.

With your broadband connection from Cox Cable.

You may have your Level 2 screen and your broadband connection, but. And even if you pay for the faster broadband like I do, no way. I mean literally, these high speed or high frequency traders, they locate their servers, these incredibly fast computers, not like your top of the line Mac like I have. Okay, it's not like that. They locate them literally right next door to the exchanges so that they can go the 7 milliseconds faster than the people a thousand miles away.

This because the speed of light is not fast enough. You have to be next door.

Not fast enough.

Yeah, that's crazy. So it must have not been, it must have been such a big trade right at that time that they couldn't just say it's a coincidence of regular trading. Somebody obviously was making a play on this announcement and had early information.

Yep, that's right.

Well, I'm not shocked. My jaw has not hit the floor, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, right, Exactly. And Barney Frank was on the news this morning and he's kind of an idiot if you ask me.

Kind of.

But no, he's on that.

We still have to listen to him.

You know what? He said something pretty smart today, I think, unless any now my job cracking. They were, they were nailing him on his prior quotes and saying he was changing the story. But he talked about homeownership and I thought that was pretty interesting and how homeownership is not that important to an economy. And I, I've said this before, I agree. I think homeownership, it is overrated. I'm just gonna tell you that's not.

What he was saying back in 2004.

I know that, I know that. But homeownership, for all the reasons I've talked about in prior episodes, is overrated. I think being a renter is just fine, especially if you're renting a high end property where the rent to value ratio is favorable to you, the tenant. And in addition to that, you rent a lot of low end properties to other people. So I think that's good. It serves both needs. People can move to where the jobs are. You have a lot more flexibility. There's nothing wrong with being a renter. Okay. Anything else, Steve? We got to get to Jared diamond here.

To infinity and beyond.

All right. Thanks for joining me today. We will be back with Jared diamond in just a quick moment.

Have you listened to the Creating wealth series? I mean, from the beginning? If not, you can go ahead and get book one that shows 1 through 20 in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information go to jason hartman.com.

It'S my pleasure to welcome Dr. Jared diamond to the show. He is an author, a psychologist, an evolutionary biologist and a biographer. And you're going to like what he has to say. He makes some very interesting connections between science and culture, a lot of new thinking that you haven't heard from anybody before unless you've read one of his six books, which you may well have. They're very popular sellers. And it's my pleasure to welcome him to the show today. Jared, how are you?

I am fine. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

Well, the pleasure is all mine. So your latest book is entitled the World Until Yesterday. Why don't we talk about that first and then I'd like to touch on maybe two of the others.

Sure. The World Until Yesterday, my newest book, the that just came out December 31, is it took off from my experiences working in New guinea for the last 50 years, studying birds, but living among traditional people, that's to say, small scale societies where you deal with people that you know and you don't encounter strangers. That was what all human societies were like for 6 million years until things began to change with dense populations, 10,000. And traditional societies are still widespread today in New guinea and Africa, and they're embedded within the United States. Rural areas of the United States still are largely traditional. So the new book, the World Until Yesterday is about what's fascinating in traditional societies and what we can learn from them because traditional people face the same problems that all of us do. They have to bring up their children. They grow old. They want to avoid dangers. They want to stay healthy. They learn languages, they have to settle disputes. And many of the ways that they've come up with to deal with those basic human problems are ways from which we can learn and which we would like to adopt into Our own life when we've heard of them. So the book is written partly because of the fascination of the material and partly because we can learn from all these natural experiments and how to run a human society.

And just to give people some context, you mentioned that 10,000 years ago populations became much more dense. I wouldn't have put it that recently or, you know, or that long ago. I would put it more recently. But when you say dense and the more traditional, sparsely populated communities, what sizes are these? I mean, you know, what population numbers are you talking about? Where in a tribe or a community where everybody knows each other, for example, is that 100 people? 530? What's the number like?

Good question. Just to calibrate it, the United States has 310 million people. And my campus at the University of California, UCLA, has 32,000 people. And the state of Montana, where my wife and kids and I spend parts of our summers, has somewhat under a million people. And the smallest state in the world, the smallest government in the world, which is probably a Pacific island called nauru, has about 10,000 people. All right. By comparison, human societies throughout history were tiny. What are called bands, societies, especially of hunter gatherers, few dozen people, what are called tribes, villagers, often farmers. There's a few hundred people, what are called chiefdoms, where there is a chief but no bureaucrats, few thousand people. And it's only when you get to something like 10,000, 20, 50,000 people that you need a centralized government with bureaucrats and politicians. But until agriculture began 10,000 years ago and started a population explosion, there weren't such big societies. And the first society was big enough to require centralized government was until about 5,500 years ago. So traditional societies are until yesterday, and big societies are new.

Okay. And so it really came about as a result of agriculture then. I didn't make that connection. So that's very good to know. Well, tell us about some of these lessons. I mean, you talk about conflict resolution, all of the normal human problems we all face, but what can we learn from these societies?

Let me give you a start by giving you a really banal example that affects most of us, namely, how to bring up children. There were all these debates about what should we do with our children? Should we spank them or not spank them? And should we give them as much freedom as possible or not? And should they sleep in the same bedroom as their parents, or should they sleep separately? And then a really elementary thing that you would think is not going to be a matter of passionate debate. How should we carry our infants. Usually we Americans carry our infants in baby carriages. We push them on their back or we carry them in pouches. Where they face us, they face backwards. But in the great majority of traditional societies, infants are carried vertically, not in baby carriages facing forwards. And so the infant has the same field of view as the person carrying the infant. And that means that the infant feels more in control, shares the same field of view with the caregiver, develops neuromotor skills faster. That's a really simple example that I never would have thought of until I learned about it from traditional societies.

But that really has a major effect on the infant. I mean, in their development and so forth.

It's thought to have an effect together with other things. It's not just that traditional infants are carried vertically facing forwards, and otherwise they're brought up exactly in the same way as are American children. Other differences are that in really small traditional societies there is no spanking whatsoever, no hitting a child. For an African pygmy, if one parent hits the child once, that's grounds for divorce. Other differences, and this is big difference, is that children, even young children, even infants, are given much more freedom to make their own decisions. And a result of this is that kids grow up in New guinea and other traditions, societies with virtues that we Americans would like for our own kids. Namely, they become self confident, they can make their own decisions, they don't have adolescent crises, they can negotiate, they are socially skilled. But the way we bring up American kids, we do everything possible to prevent this by micromanaging our kids and tell them what to do all the time.

So the takeaway from that is that modern Western cultures are over parenting and maybe practicing too much smother love.

That's one lesson.

I would certainly say that's true with Gen Y, the current generation.

It is a lesson. But I'd say the main lesson is that there are lots of other things that traditional societies do in bringing up children and we can learn from all those lessons. Traditional societies are natural experiments in how to organize a human society.

Yeah, yeah, Very interesting, very interesting. Okay, what else can we learn?

What else could we learn? We can learn how to stay healthy. Most Americans, you and I and most of our listeners are going to die of what's called non communicable diseases, non infectious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, which are the main killers of Americans. But in traditional societies, people don't die of these diseases at all. And that's because of lifestyle. Because when New Guineans within the last 40 years have been starting to adopt the western lifestyle. They too start to get diabetes and stroke and heart disease. So here's a simple example. Namely, features of the traditional lifestyle protect people against the non communicable diseases that will kill us. Elementary things that my wife and I have done is that we don't have a salt shaker or sugar shaker on our dining room table and we eat lots of vegetables and fruits and non fatty meats and fish. Those are some simple things about diet. Plus I work out three or four times a week with my 26 year old sons and I'm still healthy at age 75 and I hope I'll stay that way.

Well, we do too. We want to see many more books from you. Do you want to move on and talk about some of your other work or should we. Should we talk a little bit more about the world until yesterday?

No, if you like move on and let's talk about whatever you would like to.

You know, I think what's on so many people's mind nowadays, especially with the peace problem around the world, the economic problems around the world, and you know, I don't know how much you address these, but certainly we can learn from your work and that is the concept of collapse. Many people nowadays are comparing the American Empire to the Roman Empire, talking about how no empire lasts forever and there's a lot going on in the world, fast changing place nowadays. Maybe tell us a little bit about collapse.

Sure. My book Collapse was an examination of societies in the past that either survived or didn't survive in order to learn what it is that promotes success or failure of a society that might help us today. Because today we in our mind societies are facing problems that people faced in the past. Problems of population, problems of resources, problems of overfishing, problems of water and topsoil. There are societies in the past that solved those problems and societies that fail to solve those problems. You mentioned that empires don't last forever. Well, the reality is there are societies that have carried on for a long time. The Japanese Empire has lasted from its beginning. Japan has never been without an emperor. Japan has had long standing continuity going back and back something like 14, 18,000 years. And in New guinea there have been people for 46,000 years and still no signs of collapse. So there are societies that have solved their problems and there are societies that spectacularly collapsed, of which some well known examples are the collapse of Maya society, of the Yucatan in Guatemala about 1200 years ago and the collapse of the Khmer Empire, which used to be the most powerful empire in Southeast Asia and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. So yes, there are societies that collapsed and maybe we can learn by not repeating the mistakes.

Yeah, well, a lot of people talk about resource management and you mentioned it. And that of course brings up the Malthusian ethic. And people have long predicted that resources will become scarce. I mean, especially just looking back recently to the seventies. The survivalist movement was huge back then. And you know, a lot of those problems were. I think you could argue that they were solved. Maybe not. Maybe they were just the can was just kicked down the road further. But talk to us a little bit more about resource management issues and environmental issues, if you would.

Yeah, let's talk about resource management in particular level. Talk about the belief that the problems that were foreseen in the 1970s have been solved. These are resource problems of farming and water and fish and forests and other natural.

I mean people were. There was a lot of talk about population problems, famine. You look at some of the movies at the time, I remember, like Soylent Green. It was very interesting. I mean, I don't know. Go ahead.

That's right. It is interesting. It's interesting from an American perspective. So here I sit in Los Angeles and Americans sit anywhere in the United States and if you talk about resource problems and collapse and famines, famine, most people will say, what on earth are you talking about? We solve that. It's true that the United States is not the richest country in the world, but it's maybe the, the fourth richest country in the world and we do not have national famines. On the other hand, if you think that we solve these problems, there are billions of people in the world. Nearly half the population of the world has a marginal or submarginal calorie intake. So half of the world's population is malnourished. The lifespan in the United States and in developed countries, countries is longer than in many, most other countries in the world. From the perspective of the developing world, from the perspective of Africa and much of most of Latin America and much of Asia, if you were to say we solve those problems of the 1970s, all those population problems, that would be an obscene untruth.

Well, fair enough, fair enough. And I don't mean to say that we've solved them, but I do mean to say that, and I want to get your reasoning for saying that the US is the fourth richest country. That was an interesting statement. But before we go to that, I don't mean that we've certainly solved them, but when you look at the Population growth that has occurred since then. I mean, listening to the doom and gloomers in the 70s, it would make you think that we would have long been wiped out by now, given the population increases we've had. Yet you look at globalization that has lifted about 300 million people out of poverty. I'm not saying they're living extraordinary lives. You know, I believe that the. Not, not exactly like kicking the can down the road, but a lot of the consumption is really not not financed, but financed environmentally by outsourcing pollution to places like China, which is not a solution by any means. So that's what I'm really saying. I'm not saying the problems of course resolved. We've got, got huge problems facing us. But in comparison to the talk then and adding into that equation the population growth we've had since then, you know, a Malthusian would say, how did this happen?

I guess, yeah, there is legitimate debate about the number of people that could be supported on earth sustainably. I was talking recently with someone who said, so now we've got 7 billion. 7 billion, that's too many. The world could support sustainably only 1 1/2 billion people and somehow we have to get rid of or not replace five and a half billion people.

But there's debate who gets to decide.

Who gets to the decision may not be a rational decision, but another point of view is that in fact we know how to manage fisheries sustainably and we know how to manage forest. There are some fisheries that we do manage sustainably, such as Alaska wild salmon and west coast whitefish fisheries. So we know how to do it. The problem is that we just don't manage most fisheries and forests sustainably. But it's calculated that if we did manage all of the world's fisheries and forests sustainably, then we could feed and take care of the needs of 7 billion people for the indefinite future. Not 14 billion, not 20 billion, but 7 billion. So one can make an argument that even the world's present population we could support, but we can support the way we are behaving now. We have to operate more sustainably.

Yeah. So where are we going? I mean, are we in danger of. I guess the $64,000 question is are we in danger of collapse? And then the secondary question is, is that globally or certain countries specifically?

Sure. And we can add a third. Are we in danger of collapse? Is it globally or certain countries specifically? And what do I think is going to happen? In answer to your first question, are we in danger of collapse? Yes, we're certainly in danger of collapse because we're operating unsustainably at the moment. And if we continue to operate this way, we can operate this way only for a few more decades. And by 2050, it'll get settled. Either we figured out how to operate sustainably and we have a happy world of our own, choice, or resources limit themselves and we have an unhappy world. Not in ways that we devised, number one. Number two, it's going to happen globally or locally. Well, it's going to happen worse in some areas than in other areas. Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda are already or have been in a state of virtual collapse. But with globalization, if people get unhappy in some part of the world, they now have ways of sharing their unhappiness with other parts of the world through terrorists and immigrants and diseases in other ways. And therefore, if there's a collapse likely to be a global collapse, what I think is going to happen, I say the chances are 51% that we solve our problems and 49% that we don't solve our problems. And those of you who are younger than I am, younger than age 75, those of you who are under 50 will see what happens 30 years from now.

Yeah, and those are pretty tenuous odds. At least they're slightly in our favor, but pretty tenuous. Just back to the Malthusian concept for a moment, and then I want to ask you why, you know, why some societies make such bad decisions and talk a little bit about big business and the environment and so forth, and maybe we can wrap up there. But I think part of the Malthusian thesis that I really struggle with, Jared, is the concept that people are only a cost. Like, they're only a net cost to the globe, to the environment, versus being a resource. I mean, some of these people come up with great ideas that solve problems, great inventions. Some of them spread ideas and create awareness, like yourself. And so when you look at, well, we've got 7 billion people, who knows what the sustainability number of the planet really is? Whether it's 10 billion or 1 billion or somewhere in the middle or 30 billion or half a billion, I don't know. I'm sure you have an opinion on that, which I'd love to hear. But the fundamental question is, are people resources or are they a net cost to the environment?

They're both. You are, of course, correct that people, on the one hand, people consume, and so they require resources. On the other hand, people, or at least some people, produce, and they produce ideas and they produce stuff. So, yes, people are both benefits and costs. The Question is, how many people should we have in order to optimize those benefits and costs? If we had 70 billion people instead of the world's current 7 billion people, or let's say if we had 700 billion people instead of the world's 7 billion people, that means 100 times more people to have ideas and to produce stuff. On the other hand, 700 billion people, I think everybody would agree is an impossible burden.

Yes, I will agree with that one for sure.

Yeah. To get good ideas. Do we, are 7 billion people enough to give us all the good ideas that we need or do we need another 63 billion people? Personally, I, I'm happy with the ideas we're getting from 7 billion people.

Okay, so, so, well, yeah, so that's, that's the fundamental question. And then do you have an opinion on that number, the ideal, optimum number? Did you already say it when you said one and a half billion? Because you did mention that number before, but I don't know if that was, was an ideal number.

Well, we've got 7,100,000,000 now and I think we can live with 7,100,000,000 if we manage our resources properly. In fact, population growth rates have dropped below the replacement level in Japan and in Europe and possibly, possibly though this I'm not sure about among native born Americans. So there are already large parts of the world that are in declining population. That means that it's not a pipe dream. It's not unreasonable to believe that we could stabilize the world's population at something not much above where it is now.

You know, that has some pretty, the zpg, the zero population growth concept has some pretty ominous economic consequences. You look at Japan and that's, I say a big part of their economic malaise is they don't have younger people coming into the system to support the older people. And of course, you know, when you set up retirement schemes the way we've set it up in, you know, Western countries, US and Europe, it creates significant economic challenges. But again, those people, maybe they're a resource, maybe that problem will be solved other ways. Your website, I just don't want to forget to give it out. Jared diamond.org that's jared diamond.org of course your books are available on Amazon.com and at other bookstores. And boy, your books have so many reviews and the reviews are so positive by and large. I mean, you know, four and a half stars when you, when you have 600 reviews of a book, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive. So congratulations on that. And spreading such good ideas. But did you want to close? I know we've got to wrap up here with, you know, any thoughts on disastrous decisions, why societies make them, Business, environment, whatever you like. Just a closing thought.

Sure. Big question. Why do societies make bad decisions? There are lots of spectacular cases of societies making bad decisions. Partly societies make bad decisions for the same reasons that we as individuals make bad decisions. In some cases we don't have enough information or a situation is completely new and we're not prepared for it, or we have out of date values. But there are also extraordinary reasons why groups of people make bad decisions. Reasons separate from the reasons why individuals make bad decisions. In groups of people you may have conflicts of interest. And the conflicts of interest may cause the leaders of society to make decisions that are good for them, the leaders in the short run, but that are bad for the whole society, including the children of the leaders in the long run. And so that's a problem that concerns me increasingly in the United States because within the last decade people have commented on the richer people in the US getting richer and richer and the politicians getting more and more cut off from the electorate. So the concern in the United States is that those making the decisions are not suffering the consequences of their bad decisions.

You are absolutely right. We need to eliminate lobbyists and special interest groups. Groups. That would be a good start, but go ahead.

Well, an even earlier start. Given the lobbyists and separate special interest groups who always can be around, the first simple thing you can do is vote. Here I am in Los Angeles, what? Second largest city in the United States. And we just had an election for mayor, primary election. And 85% of the citizens of LA couldn't be bothered to vote for their own mayor. Only 15% of our citizens voted. Well, a starting point for good decision making in the United States. For heaven's sakes, vote. If you're not going to vote, you're not making any decision.

No question about it. That is an amazing number. I didn't know that. I mean, I grew up in LA. 85% of the people didn't vote in the mayoral election.

In the primary election, 85% didn't vote. But that primary election narrowed it down to and the number of people who vote in presidential elections. You know, in Australia, everybody has to vote in American presidential elections. What, 50%, 55, 60% of Americans vote? If 40% of Americans can't be, can't be bothered to vote for President, one doesn't have to talk about good or bad decisions. It means that lots of Americans aren't making any decisions at all and are just letting passively things happen to.

Well, as the old saying goes, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. And that's unfortunate, as you say. Well, Jared diamond, thank you so much for joining us today. I know you've got to run. I appreciate having you on the show and keep up the good work. Do you have another book coming out?

I will seven years from now, but this book I just finished. So it'll be a while until my next book.

Seven years exactly. Okay, fantastic. Well, we'll keep our eyes peeled for that. And thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Pleasure to talk with you.

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