Human Nature Odyssey: Episode 11. Capitalism & Monopoly: Why The Best Board Games Make The Worst Reality

All right, guys, gather around. I got a new game for us to play. Oh, sick. Is this going to take long? I have an early morning tomorrow, and I want to start my bedtime routine. Oh, come on, Wes. It'll be fun. Oh my God. Is that the game? No, actually. Okay, good. That's just the rulebook. This is the game.

Whoa! Here, pick your pieces. Oh! Oh! Where's the thimble? I love me the thimble. What's this piece? Oh, that's a manifestation of one's unrealized hopes and dreams. Yeah. I'll stick with the thimble. All right, let's set up the board. There's not enough room on the table. Just clear that stuff off. Pop my sandwich. Oh, you can forget about that.

This game will take all night. It could take all night. Oh, yeah. This looks super complicated. Oh, it is. But what's the name of this game? World systems analysis. You guys in. Heck, yeah! Plus. Whether I want to be or not. That's the idea.

Welcome to Human Nature Odyssey, a podcast exploring the global game we're all stuck playing and how we might start a new one before it's game over. I'm Alex Smith.

My family loves board games or a board game. Family. It's all about the classics, you know. Monopoly. Risk. Catan. Great games. And these games transform us, right? My grandpa is Wheeling and dealings in monopoly. My younger siblings maniacal monologues before a devastating rampage and risk. And my otherwise mild mannered mother swearing like a sailor while playing guitar. Ever since I was little, it's been a dream of mine to combine these board games and create the ultimate game.

Maybe you take a turn in Catan. Get some resources. Use those resources to get more troops and risk. And in the territories you occupy. You build some houses and hotels in monopoly. I don't know. It's still in prototype. But then I realized the game already exists. It's our global economy. You ever notice how the most popular board games just so happen to reflect core components of our own civilization?

Catan involves the extraction of raw materials. Risk is the imperialism and war between nations. Monopoly was originally created by progressive activist Elizabeth Magpie, who's trying to demonstrate the pitfalls of capitalism, only to have her idea ripped off by the guy who rebranded it and sold it for millions. What? It's true. Look it up. Now, in the real world.

I really celebrate resource extraction, imperialism or capitalism. But damn, the board game versions are so much fun. Maybe that's why we're all playing it on a global level. As horrible as the side effects of these things are. Enough people are having so much fun playing. And not just those winning. Like, sure. Winning is awesome. But don't count out how much fun it is to be down just enough to think.

If you keep trying, you can get back in it. Your competitiveness takes over and you can't put the game down. And then for even more people, they have no choice in the matter. They have to play even though there's no hope for winning. They're just trying to survive and stay in the game. At this point, most of the world has been roped into this game of conquering, exploitation and finance.

We're so convinced this is just normal life. Most people don't even think they're playing a game. But unlike most board games, our global one doesn't come with an instruction manual. That is, until now.

Whoa! Who's that? That. That's Immanuel Wallerstein. Or as I like to call him, Immanuel Bauer. Stein. Okay. Born in 1930, he grew up to become a sociologist, historian and professor at Columbia University and Suny Binghamton. Or, as I like to call it, Suny Binghamton. Oh, yeah. This dude wrote the book on the modern world system, and he called it the modern World System.

Over the course of four decades, Immanuel Wallerstein published four colossal volumes on the subject, totaling 1623 pages. You read 1623 pages. Oh, and he also published World Systems Analysis and Introduction, which is just 90 pages. Really easy. Short read. That's the one I read. Sounds like a good read. If you Google him, you might find this tweet from professor Grace Kao, who's posing for a selfie with him.

The tweet reads with Immanuel Wallerstein. His office is just down the hall from mine. Hashtag world systems theory. Grace's enthusiasm is evident on her face. And Immanuel was 87 years old at the time. His receding hairline is a brilliant glow in the overexposed cell phone photo. His smile is subtle and wise, and with age behind his squared glasses, his eyes are a little crossed.

It looks like he's looking both east and west at once, which makes sense because his viewpoint is global. The tweet was posted on April 24th, 2019. It has one like he died just a few months later. Oh, okay. So Wesley. So some respect a man has died. So even though Immanuel Wallerstein has passed, he left behind a societal framework that still speaks to our world today and the global game we're all play.

What a legacy. Basically, Wallerstein felt that we have a pretty poor understanding of the larger context of things. We're so distracted by the day to day headlines that we have a hard time seeing the larger patterns they're part of. I agree with that. And he also talks about how we usually separate academic study into separate fields like politics, economics, sociology, or divide time into either history, what's in the past or the present.

Current events. And the general attitude tends to be that if you study history, I don't really want to hear what you have to say about current events. Go back to blowing dust off a scroll or something, and then we divvy up current events into the market. The state and society. If you want to study the market, you have to be an economist.

And if you want to study the state well, you better be a political scientist. Well, all these different fields are important. While Stein felt that there was not enough cross dialog because in reality, all of these things are interconnected. This is a complex game we're playing here. It includes all these areas of study history, current events, economics, politics.

We need to find a way for anthropologists and political scientists and sociologists to all talk with each other. That's what Wallerstein World Systems Analysis is trying to do. When are we going to start playing? We've already been playing, man. We've been playing our whole lives. Why? And Wallerstein doesn't want us to just better understand the game. Because it's fun.

He wants us to better understand the game so that we can change it for the better. He wrote, quote, the emergence of this mode of analysis is a reflection of an expression of the real protest about the deep inequalities of the world system that is so politically central to our current times. Oh, wait, I don't get it. Okay.

When did the game begin? Wallerstein writes, quote, the world in which we are now living the modern world system had its origins in the 16th century, unquote. So Columbus had just bumped into the Americas and European colonization. It's becoming a pretty big deal. It's also towards the end of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. For centuries, Europe had been filled with knights and barons and lords and peasants, and all of that's breaking down and starting to become filled with businessmen and investors.

The market and the state have been around for a long time. But it's during this period that they enter a new relationship. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have a question. What is France? France. Yeah. You know France. Berets. Baguettes. Cigarets? Yes, we know France. It's a country, right? It's a nation state. When did France start?

Oh, I got this. You're just googling on your phone. 1958. Wait, what? Oh, that's probably when its current government was formed. They call it the Fifth Republic. The Fourth Republic started in 1946, but didn't last very long. The Third Republic started in 1870. Blah blah blah blah blah. But France began a long before then, according to Britannica. Dot com.

The Kingdom of France was descended directly from the Western Frankish realm, ceded to Charles the Bald in 843. Charles the Bald? Sounds like the Western Frankish weren't the only ones ceding land. Get it? Like his hair was ceding land to his head because he was bald. Yeah. No, I get it. And where does France begin and end?

When does it stop becoming France? Sometimes France crossed the English Channel. Other times, France covered half of Europe. In other times, the land that's now France wasn't called France at all. Wallerstein makes the point that so-called nation states are much more fluid than their current borders, make them seem to be what their borders are, what their government is, the language.

The ideologies change throughout history, and rarely can one nation state exist without another. French history doesn't exist without British history. Therefore, Wallerstein doesn't think the nation state is the most meaningful unit of measurement when talking about history, especially if we're talking about something like the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It's not like these massive economic trends affected France, but not Britain.

France and Britain are intrinsically interlinked. And so are all the nation states, cultures and peoples they interact with, especially as the process of globalization continued and continues. So this game we're playing isn't about specific countries. It's about a whole world system. And a world system is the official Wallerstein definition of world system is, quote, a spatial slash temporal zone which cuts across many political and cultural units, one that represents an integrated zone of activity and institutions which obey certain systemic rules, unquote.

Our modern world system consists of 195 different countries with thousands of different languages spoken, all engaged in an integrated economic system with a widely shared understanding around money, property and laws. So it's everybody. It's not just the West. Right. Well, almost everybody besides. Like uncontacted tribes on remote islands. Yeah, exactly. They're not playing the same game. We're basically talking about any country that engages in the capitalist system.

Like, if you could give someone money to buy something, then. Sorry. You're part of a now. Diabolical. But just because our world system now includes most of the world, a world system doesn't have to. What do you mean? Well, Wallerstein says there have been other world systems throughout history. They haven't covered the whole world, but they were mostly self-contained worlds.

Like who? Like China, India, Persia and the Arab world up until the 19th century. He sees them as distinct historical world systems. Quote. All these zones had certain common characteristics writing a dominant language which was used in the writing. And a single dominant world religion, unquote. And Wallerstein tells us that a world system is either a world economy or a world empire.

A world empire has, quote, a single political authority for the whole world system, unquote. The Roman Empire and ancient China are historical examples. Wallerstein gives of world empires who both controlled many different cultures, interconnected through one imperial system. And what are we, a world empire or world economy? I'm guessing we're a world economy. There's not just one empire.

Yeah, exactly. Our modern world system is a world economy, and world economies are nothing new. Throughout history, there's been trade between nations. But up until now. Wallerstein explains that quote, since world economies lacked the unifying cement of an overall political structure or homogenous culture, unquote, they've either collapsed or turned into empires. That's because world economies rarely survive for long.

Usually, the most powerful country transforms the world economy into a world empire. Well, hasn't our world system had empires? Like, what about the British Empire? That's true. Our modern world system has certainly seen its fair share of empires. At the height of their empire, the tiny little British Isles colonized 24% of land on planet Earth, one quarter of the land in the entire world had been claimed by the British.

During the peak of the Empire, 23% of the people on this planet were subjects. And that was just the British Empire. Very few places on the planet were not conquered and colonized by the British, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese or French. But Wallerstein wouldn't consider the British Empire a world empire. In fact, Wallerstein explains that there have only been several serious attempts to create such a world empire in the last 500 years, unquote.

The examples he gives are Charles the Fifth, Napoleon and Hitler. And that's it. They're the only ones who tried to turn the world economy into a world empire. Yeah, that's how Wallerstein understands it anyway, because the British and the Dutch and the Spanish, etc. weren't transforming the world economy into something else. They were just dominating it. And unlike all other world systems that have come before us, our world system has stayed a world economy.

And this, whilst he believes, is historically unique, usually the state overpowers the market. But not this time. In the last few hundred years, the market, with all its private companies and very wealthy owners, has become too powerful for the state to fully control. This was a new kind of economic system the world hadn't quite seen before. In 1776, economist Adam Smith called it capitalism.

And the name is stuck ever since. Oh, right. Cap ism. You see, after a few centuries of complete and utter domination, those European colonizers began to withdraw from the states. They occupied, sometimes voluntarily. Sometimes they were forced out, just like Project Runway. Choo. Well, the United States was the first to declare independence from the British, but that would eventually be a global trend.

Since then, 65 countries around the world have declared independence from the British Empire. Over half of them in just the 1960s and 70s alone. Over 1 billion people live in a country that celebrates Independence Day from Britain. Oh yeah, I saw this meme that said, every six days, a different country celebrates its independence from the British. Whoa. So, like Independence Day from the British is like one of the most popular holidays on Earth.

Yeah. But Wallace explains that in reality, colonization didn't really end. It just transformed. Sure, in many cases, people rose to fight off their colonizer and there was some internal pressure to end colonization as well. But Wallerstein argues that the main factor that led to the end of colonization was because, economically speaking, it just wasn't the most efficient way to exploit people.

Diabolical. Wallerstein writes, quote, plunder is self liquidating. It is the case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, unquote, from the capitalist perspective. Colonization isn't the most cost effective strategy. For example, at the height of the French Empire, they had about 80 colonies around the world, from Africa to North America to Asia. And sure, the French made a lot of money, but damn did they have to spend a lot of money too.

France had to pay for those colonies infrastructure, their defenses. Yeah, yeah. If you're a powerful country, it's so much cheaper to have the people you're exploiting run their own country and instead engage in trade with you. The beautiful, absolutely flawless and wonderful economic system we call capitalism is crucial to our world system. Capitalism is the glue that holds our world system together.

It's our bread and butter and those tiny little ketchup packets that don't make any sense because they're way too small. And even though everybody always needs like 3 or 4, they don't make the ketchup packets any bigger because capitalism. Wallerstein explains that capitalism isn't just dudes selling things or people working for wages. That ain't nothing new. That's been happening for thousands of years.

But unlike all the economies that came before, capitalism, quote, prioritizes the endless accumulation of capital, unquote, over anything else. This was new, and it's been going great. Yeah. So great. In a true capitalist system, building capital aka making more money is the only thing that matters. In this sense, capitalism is anti-authoritarian. A dictator would make decisions for a whole number of reasons, like celebrating themselves or enforcing their own power.

But capitalism doesn't care about the king's fancy statues. Whatever, man. Just make more money. And capitalism doesn't want there to be just one empire. Capitalism requires multiple independent states to function, and for capitalism to thrive, those independent states have to compete. The system doesn't care who wins or who loses, because at the end of the day, capitalism is always the real winner.

So basically, the house always wins. And in this case, the house is capitalism. Wait, so why would I play this game if capitalism is just going to win every time? Oh don't worry. That doesn't mean you can't still absolutely dominate while playing the game. What about communist countries? Like where did the Soviet Union fit into this? Well, Wallerstein actually saw communist countries as part of the world system.

Sure, the Soviet Union was hypothetically trying to get out and do their own thing. It never really did. That's how powerful market forces became. All right. Quick. Just off the top of your head. What are two things that go well together, though? Peanut butter and jelly. Salt and pepper. Nice. How about the first world? And the third world?

Come on. That one's not as fun. No. It's not. The assumption around economic development has long been that over time. The, quote unquote, third world countries, the poorer countries will gain with the so-called first world countries have. And we'll all be rich. I have a feeling there's a bug coming. A big one, Wallerstein asks. But is that inevitable?

Will poorer countries get rich if they develop the same way rich countries did? If we just keep trading enough, will we all one day be wealthy? Wallerstein didn't think so. He credits Argentinian economist Raul for pointing out that, quote, international trade was not a trade between equals. Some countries were stronger economically than others, and were therefore able to trade on terms that allowed surplus value to flow from the weaker countries to the core, unquote.

Rubbishes critique went that these developed countries are developed at the expense of the poorer countries. He argued that they're only rich because others are poor. Oh, dang. I, gotta find a new word. Other scholars from the so-called Third World agreed and believed more accurate terms would be core and periphery. Core and periphery. Yeah. When Wildstein wrote about world systems analysis, he said the United States, Japan, Germany, the UK, France were all examples of core countries.

Most of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and countries in Africa could be considered periphery. Is that just a nicer way of saying rich and poor? Well, Wallerstein thought the key difference was that, quote, core periphery is a relational concept, not a pair of terms that have separate essential meanings, unquote. Core and periphery only exist in relation to the other periphery.

Countries provide cheap labor and raw materials. Core countries receive the benefits of that cheap labor and raw materials, and conveniently turned that into wealth for the core country. Don't worry, it's not totally unequal. Core countries give back all sorts of nice things to periphery countries, like loans with high interest rates and an occasional military presence. I call dibs on core.

This just sounds like a fancy way to say some countries are cheating. It's not cheating if you're the one winning, you get to make the rules. Sounds fair to me. Okay, let's roll these dice. Finally, we're actually playing well. First, we're figuring out who is core and who is periphery. Come on, lucky dies. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

Core. Booyah! I'm core. We love that for me. Okay. Your turn. Let's see what I get. Oh no. What do you roll. Periphery. Oh what's that. I rolled periphery. Well don't worry Wess I'm sure that'll be fun to. Yeah. All right guys. And now it's time to spin the wheel of industry. Oh, should we roll? Just spin it.

Okay.

Cellular communication. Like phones. Oh, nice. That's a good one. Okay, I'll place these pieces on the board. And what are those? These are multinational corporations. Pat's a core country, so he gets half less his periphery, so she gets half. The corporations go to both countries. That's why they're called multi national. Oh, right. Yes, but they operate very differently in each country.

The corporations are going to take cheap labor and raw materials from us. Great. And then Patrick can turn them into high profit consumption goods. Oh right. Okay. Like smartphones. Okay, Pat, you're the core country. So you're going to be with the phones are designed. You're in charge of the software, the circuit boards, all that fancy stuff. So it and West you're a periphery country.

So you're going to be with a copper and cobalt mines are set up. Yay. I'm going to be honest with you guys, I don't actually know what cobalt is. And you don't need to just keep working on that sleek design for the new phones, big guy. Oh, sorry, West. Looks like some of the copper sulfide has gotten into your aquifer.

That's going to poison your drinking water. Jesus. Oh, sorry. Was that so? Huck's still going to need that copper, though. Thank you. When do I get to be core? It might not be for a while. Once this core periphery pattern is established, it can be pretty hard to break. This game sucks. If you're already winning, you keep winning more.

I thought capitalism was the winner. Well, yes and yes. But while it can be very difficult to change your country's core periphery status, it's not impossible. Wallerstein classified some countries like China, India and Brazil as semi periphery over time. They may even become core. How do you do it? How do you become core? Well, as Wallerstein says, quote, semi peripheral states protect their production processes from the competition of stronger firms outside while trying to improve the efficiency of the firms inside so as to compete better in the world market, unquote.

So you can subsidize local industry, limit imports from foreign competitors, make your economy more efficient, but you're going to have to compete with all the other semi periphery states trying to become core to good. Likewise. And it's also possible for core countries to get relegated to the periphery. Back in the day, Portugal was a core country, a major global power going around colonizing all over the place.

But today it's a periphery country. Wait, what? No. But I don't want to be peripheral. I like being core. I want to be core forever. I'm sorry, Pat, but that's not how the game works. Everybody's got to take turns eventually. Those are the rules. Screw that. I don't care what the rules are. I'm gonna make my own rules.

Well, okay, there is a way to do that. There is? Yeah. Tell me, tell me how. How? Okay, okay. Sheesh. There's a way one player can dominate the world economy without becoming an empire. And that's by becoming a head. Germany. Head of Germany. I never now pronounce it. It's hegemony, I think. Yeah. Germany sounds like a Pokémon. So, what's a hegemony?

Hegemony allows you to exert your dominance over everyone else without needing a united political authority. In the 1600s, the Netherlands had a hegemony. The British had a hegemony from the 1700s all the way till World War one. And then the United States has had one since. And what does it do exactly? Asking for a friend. A hegemony is essentially capitalism's version of empire.

It's subtler than a classic empire. By keeping the game interesting just enough that everyone participates without you constantly forcing them to, but also by bending the rules just enough so that you can ensure you keep your core dominance. Wallerstein tells us a new hegemony usually emerges after a prolonged major war that involves all countries in the world system.

Like how the 30 Years War in the 1600s led to the Dutch becoming a hegemonic superpower for a while, or how the world wars helped set the stage for US dominance. And how do you start a major war? You know, also asking for a friend. Oh, there's plenty of ways. That's part of the fun. Oh my God. Usually a core country leads an alliance of other core countries against a country attempting to build a world empire and emerges from the global rubble, having crafted many of the new global rules.

The game will be played by. And I'll finally have my head. Germany. Oh, wonderful. But oh, no. There's a but there's a but. There's something that's key to all of Wallace Stein's observations around world systems analysis. Nothing lasts forever. Everything has a life span. Even a major Germany. No. Not mine. I'll never let my head Germany go. What do I gotta do?

Spend more money on my military? Fine, I'll do it. Half my GDP. Right to defense. Well, exactly. That's why had Germany's are inherently self-destructive. To become a hegemony, you have to be economically efficient. But to maintain a hegemony, you have to spend money on politics in the military. Keeping your hegemony is expensive. Eventually, another state will become more economically efficient than you, and you'll lose your hegemony.

Now, that is diabolical. Is it though? You can kind of see this in modern Japan. The rules made after World War two don't allow Japan to have its own army. Basically, the U.S. was like, listen, Japan. We can't trust you to have an army because last time you had one. Oh, boy, did you cause trouble. We'll take care of your defense.

And so Japan just put all of its resources into technology and its economy. So in a sense, this is a pretty sweet situation for Japan. They don't have to spend money on their military, and instead they get to spend all their money investing in their own wealth. But the downside is they don't set the rules of the game.

That's why we're seeing a growing call on Japan to have their own military again, even though that would set them back economically. It's still a temptation. French President Immanuel Macron has been arguing for this, too. He doesn't want to trust the United States with Europe's defenses anymore, even if it means that Europeans will have to divert a lot of their wealth to their own militaries.

So you can see what Wallerstein saying about the life cycle of hegemony at play. There's a point where all your wealth tempts you into spending it on your military. So you can set the rules, but that also makes you economically less efficient. And you slowly lose both your wealth and your influence. So even if you create a hegemony to hold onto being a core country a little longer, your hegemony by the very nature of being a hegemony will slowly atrophy and weaken the market.

We'll move on. I guess in this market, no one can be the Andrew new forever. There will always be some hot new country vying for top billing. Well, then screw the market. Well, I'm not so sure you want to do that. And our modern world system states need the market. We talked earlier how, at the dawn of our modern world system, the market and the state entered a new relationship.

For thousands of years, the government had the real power. It was the nobles, the aristocracy, at times the church. Those are the ones who ruled. The traders who made a fortune in the market. Sure, they were wealthy, maybe even influential in society. But they did not hold actual power. But as capitalism evolved, this changed, and the market as a civilizational force became much more powerful.

Aristocracies and nobles lost their undisputed grip on power, and were forced to share with a wealthy new class of businessmen. Many revolutions around the world were fought over exactly this. The American Revolution, for example. Sure. On one hand, it was about freedom and the liberty for all. But it could also be viewed as a new class of wealthy businessman who had wanted political power, even though they weren't born to royalty.

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were like, hey, I know I'm not royalty, but I got a lot of money from slavery and I feel like I should have some real power. So the growing capitalist market changed the very nature of the countries it operated in. Fine. I don't even want to be a country. Countries are so lame. I want to be a corporation.

The market is where it's at. Down with the state. Well, here's the interesting thing. You really got to look closely at the fine print on the back of the box to see this. In capitalism, the state and the market are inherently intertwined. They are. I can see that. Yeah. The market and the state are often thought of as two opposing entities.

That's essentially what the whole Cold War beef between communism and capitalism was about. The US thought the market should lead. The Soviet Union thought the state should lead. US president and capitalism lover Ronald Reagan loved paraphrasing the old quote. The government that governs best is the one that governs least. That's a terrible impression. But he was essentially saying, come on, government, get out of the way and let the free market do its thing.

The communists, on the other hand, thought the market was something the state needed to exert total control over. So which is a free market or a strong state in reality? While Stein emphasized it's a false dichotomy in our world system, the market in the state work together. Capitalists actually benefit from government interference regardless of what they say. The wealthy 1% don't want a free market.

They don't. They do not. For example, say you own a dog food company called Chimps Chow. As the CEO, CFO, CEO, and CTO of Chimps Chow, you naturally want to make as much money as possible. In fact, it is your fiduciary responsibility to do so. Make lots of money and eliminate the competition. Screw those guys over at pups protein and Dynamic doggo.

Well, turns out the folks down at Pups Protein and Dynamic Doggo want to make as much money as possible too. So you all have an idea you can just merge into one company and have a total monopoly on the dog food market. If any mom and pop pop shop shows up, you can just upsell them out of business.

Everyone's happy, right? Well, not everyone is happy and small businesses are totally screwed. Who cares about them, Well, the problem is, once there's a total monopoly like this, there's no longer any competition. And it ain't a free market. So a monopoly doesn't want the government to get out of the way. They just want the government to be on their side by issuing patents, enforcing copyright infringement laws, restricting imports and exports, and offering subsidies.

In reality, capitalism isn't opposed to the state at all. Capitalism doesn't think the government that governs best governs least. No, capitalism thinks the government that governs best is the one that governs on its behalf. That makes sense. Plus, all the ways companies depend on the state to externalize costs like clean up their toxic waste or build all the roads and bridges they use.

Totally. Capitalism uses the state as its tool. I'm a tool in more ways than one. Very funny. Yes, your tool, but hopefully a strong tool. Let's say Wes, who's now a semi periphery country. Finally. When did that happen? Let's say Wes won't trade resources with a powerful multinational corporation. Well, the corporation sure wouldn't mind if a certain core country invaded Wes and made them trade.

Ideally at a price that they would prefer. I can do that. Oh, happens all the time. Throughout the Cold War, whenever there'd be a country that elected a socialist leader or was about to elect a socialist leader whose goal was to nationalize industries and make them produce for their own people versus exporting stuff to the United States. The CIA would go in and either arm counter-revolutionaries or just simply assassinate the socialist leaders.

Politicians and capitalists. Of course, countries can pretend they're in conflict all they want, but it's not a conflict, it's a dance. And as long as they're making as much money as possible, both dance partners are absolutely boogying. All right. We've been at it for a long time. You guys ready to edit PowerPoints? Ready? Sorry, Wes. It's not even going to be close.

What are PowerPoints? It's a good question. What is power? If you were to visit a foreign country and try and figure out who the most powerful person was, how would you do it? Would you go knocking door to door asking to see everyone's biceps? Is the guy was 700 guns in his underground bunker with enough ammo to swim in like a gun themed Chucky Cheese ball pit.

Is that guy the most powerful? Definitely. Well, one thing would say, no power is actually taxes. Taxes. Wes is right. Wallerstein explains that real power is the ability to collect taxes. Can you successfully tax your population? Oh for sure. I mean, do you guys see the size of my paramilitary? I've got all of my thugs going door to door, making sure punks pay up, and then people don't want to pay.

I'm going to make them. Oh, no. Pat, then I've got bad news. What do you mean? I can collect taxes without even using violence. What? How? Oh, that's good Wes. While sting would say that's real power. I don't get it. The people are just voluntarily paying you taxes. Yep. And there's different ways to do this. In some cases, people can see that their taxes are benefiting them, so they're perfectly willing to contribute to the societal pocketbook.

Oh, no, my people don't want to pay taxes, but they're paying. Even without violence. Whoa! Check out this bureaucracy Wes created. It is elaborate. That's right. I don't need to use violence. I'll just make people's lives a bureaucratic living hell if they don't pay. How is this possible? It's like how you pay your taxes to the US government because, you know, they can screw you over in the future.

You have no doubt. You know the IRS is not going to forget about you. Nobody thinks that the IRS is going to be like, oh, we totally forgot about that guy's taxes. We know the IRS has a comprehensive system designed to never forget about you. Now, of course, a powerful state can use violence, but it rarely has to come to that.

There's so many effective steps, like fines or jail time, that deter people from ever getting to that point. Oh, man. So my thugs were a bad idea. Thugs are for broke ass states. That's some real periphery behavior you're exhibiting. It's true. Wallerstein explains that bribery and corruption are signs of a weak state. You generally gain money through corruption only when you can't gain it through a productive economy.

My economy and that kind of weakness usually leads to the decentralization of power. When the state is less powerful, your friendly neighborhood bully tends to show up and take power where the state is unable to. Wallerstein writes, quote, weakness means the relative strength of local notables, barons, warlords who are able to enforce their control over non-state regions by control of some local military forces, unquote.

The same is true of gangs and mafias. Picture Tony Soprano walking out to get the paper in his bathrobe, or spending time with those cute little ducks in his backyard swimming pool. Mafias grow in the cracks of weak state concrete. But the interesting thing is that in a weak state, the mafias greatest danger is themselves. Wallerstein explains why, quote, mafias are basically predators that feed on the production process, unquote.

Mafias see a part of the economy that the state doesn't control, usually because it's some kind of illegal product on the black market. So the Mafia steps in and starts to control it, which, ironically, is very dangerous to the Mafia's existence because now they're playing the game of exerting violence and force, which is what weak states do. Eventually, mafias realize that power comes through legitimating their power through building bureaucracy.

So outright violence doesn't have to be used in a sense. Mafias and gangs are unofficial states trying to become states. So if a gang or mafia is really successful, it'll no longer be a gang or mafia. It'll just become a state. So this gives us an interesting insight into what real power looks like. It's not a fancy king with a plush purple robe.

It's a thousand nerds in a bureaucratic office processing your taxes. Even though King Louis, the 14th of France, claimed to have absolute power over his subjects, in reality the power he wielded would be nothing compared with the power of a modern state. If power means the ability to collect taxes without outright violence and the ability to get decisions actually carried out, unquote, then Wallerstein tells us that Louis the 14th had far less power than, say, the prime minister of Sweden does today.

Every Swedish citizen today has an identity number, a file on them in some government bureaucracy database. But in France 400 years ago, there were people walking around doing stuff where no one in the government even knew their name. People could slip through the cracks in 17th century France. There are far fewer cracks to slip through today. Our information systems have gotten much more sophisticated and effective.

Louis the 14th had a fancy castle and even fancier robe. But how powerful was his state compared to modern ones? A lot less. Sorry, Pat. I'm going to need to take this from you. My cork card. Don't take my cork card. Here you go, Wes. You earned it. Thank you. All right, Pat, your turn. Roll the dice. I rolled a four.

What does that mean? It doesn't matter. You're a periphery country now. You're screwed either way. Get ready to be oppressed for a few centuries. What? This game sucks. I don't want to play it anymore. Oh, now you don't want to play the game? Well, there is a way to try and stop playing the game altogether. How? We got to stop this thing.

Thanks for listening. Immanuel Wallerstein thought we were approaching a climactic moment in the centuries long struggle to try and stop the game. And then the next episode of Human Nature Odyssey. That is the story we're going to tell. How we the People rose up and toppled monarchies around the world to establish a new democratic world order, and how we've been bickering ever since.

Until next time, I hope you'll consider how Wallerstein these ideas map onto the world around you. Where do you see real power being exercised? How does world systems analysis reframe the daily news and headlines? Hey, Alex, how can I help support the podcast? Oh, man. Thank you. Great question. Well, first off, if you enjoy Human Nature Odyssey, please leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts and make sure to share it with a friend.

And of course, you can also join us on the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon, where you'll have access to bonus episodes, additional thoughts and writings, and audiobook readings. Your support makes this podcast possible. Thank you to Brian Nori, Mark, Hanin, Maggie, Nina, and Michael for your input and feedback on this episode and a very special thank you to Wes and Pat for your superb performances.

This episode was written with Wes's help as well. And as always, our theme music is Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch. You can find the link in our show notes. Talk with you soon.