YouSaid · the spoken record

Pradyu Prasad

lines on the record: 91
first: 2022-04-27
most recent: 2022-04-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I figure that. But it's like kind of awkward to justify to a part basis. They're like, this is a controlled. I'm like, yeah, I know. Do you have diabetes? Not exactly. What do you want it? Why do they set in time? He takes it. So that's okay. My answer is just run a lot and do weights and eat and eat healthy and whatever.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know. I pretty much paid off all the scriptures. Like, no, I can't play a tabla, I can't play the piano. I publish music. Please, no, no, no. Just being incompetent at everything else is a good one, keeping your time.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also, like, I optimize my life in high school for doing things I like. I was a guy who was in lunch and sitting in a corner with six books and I let six books a week.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The answer is I like, so here, okay, here we go. That says, I like money, and you're my nicest passive part of getting that, but nobody likes that. And so I don't like the selection effect of selecting for people who can lie well. So it's not going to end up well.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I want to go to the UK for the fact that one, you have pretty short times, a lot more sea time. And two, I find it very humiliating to describe my entire life story to get into college. I'm sorry, please, just ask me why do math and let me in.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, yes. At least for the next two years, at least till August 2023, I will keep doing this. And then I've been in college then. It depends on the amount of free time I have. And I'll probably keep it because it's my only way of socializing with people. So yeah, it better stay. Yeah, yeah.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“like the view sometimes you lie about popular things because i don't want to i i don't i don't want it to go viral it is it is a it is a liability than an asset because it's going to be stupid and i'm gonna be known as the guy who did this which is like people say i'm a long part because any attention is good attention or something like that but i'm like no it's you got to be known for the right thing so I don't know how to deal with that. I deal with it with not with forcing myself to not put stupid things that go vile. Your barrel strategy wasn't stupid things that went well, but I know that you know that you can let stupid things that go viral. Don't do it.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know. I shouldn't be worrying too much about distribution. The question is if you like one part of me is like, oh, maybe I could, because every single time I read financial news, I'm like, no, I could improve on this. I could do a 5x better job at explaining this because I know a lot of financial journalists and they're like, yeah, the job requires me to dump things down. I'm like, no, you could have an intelligent one. I'm like, yeah. So every time I see these sort of things, I realize that you have a pretty clear trade-off between writing, I put in a different way. When you grow on the internet, your audience shapes you as much as you shape them. So it is important not to write too many stupid things that go viral because you will be incentivized to write stupid things that go viral. You have to play that meta game of not writing stupid vial things.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Faith and next six months, I'm going to do nothing. Everybody has those things. But the point is giving it some sort of form and structure.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing with reciting about these sort of general things is that nobody knows how to do it unless you have 30 years of experience. So don't worry about it. If they liked it, you can do it. Okay. The second thing is people are not appreciating your object level thing on talent. That's okay. Nobody's going to make you ahead of McKinsey's recruiting thing. There's a very big difference in knowing something, in doing something, and being able to explain it. And your like, it's okay. Your personal talent or like anything you write about the Barbel strategy, the value you provide to people is not the Barble strategy. It is explaining it in ways they can understand. I'm sure I'm sure they knew it, right? Everyone has the idea that like this month money.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I agree, but I also joke to my friends that among our circle I'm the best at evaluating talent because all my tutor mutuals end up getting famous. So on the object level issue, it doesn't matter because you're not, you know, you're not selling your fish hooks to fish. You're selling it to fishermen. But on the meta level.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To you for one hour, we introduce again like, oh, super cool, but the other, like you have to basically somehow build a proof of fork and show it to people. My answer to that is doing econ stuff people like and at some point of time if possible monetize it Which only works if your thing is commercially oriented. So I can't do a history of the gold standard. That sucks.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's a farmer New York fan guy who works at, I don't know, let's go with a Deutsche Bank now, where he knows every single thing about fed plumbing. So how to reserve get transported? How to touch the Bond seals happen, et cetera, et cetera? It was every single thing about that. And if you want to be a good public intellectual, public whatever you do, whatever you're the placement for that word is, it would be very good at one thing and draw on your credibility from there. It's not very hot. If you're coding, it is very easy to demonstrate something. Just, you know, build something cool. And people are like, oh, this is really interesting. But if you are writing or speaking, it is much harder. It is obviously an open problem. A podcast is one way of demonstrating your good day because people whom other people respect say, oh, I like talking.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public intellectual exchange, but a thought leader is worse. The first thing is if you do a bad job, you'll come to know pretty obviously. Like every time my mind's bad, it gets like low engagement. People are like, yeah, it's ma'am. I'm like, oh, that sucks. But you come to know that obviously the second thing is to have a circle of competence and be graded. You can be, I have an IFN who's fan, the guy who's do you?”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have an econ user, I'm focusing on normie things like where will interest rates go next month and what does that mean for stocks and have a better user doing things I like to do so very I know how to put it the other thing like more people my emergency is an application the thing that I found most strongly about more people should do company level analyses so I am because what it pays and two because it's underrated by e-cons and overrated by stock people and I consider you're very much involved econ that stock person so uh yeah i think is very very useful to sort of like commercialize it dumb it down class subsidize your intellectual pursuits by the commercial part”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I agree. I think an easier way of this is I'm going to plug in my Krish Kupchung here who has this very cool thing called it's called a learning public offering where you tell people I'm going to learn about this and six months later I will teach you everything you need to know about this and I'll have Zoom call with you. I'll give you an NFT or whatever your preferred model is and you basically say you pay me enough money to cover some part of my expenses now and six months later I'll teach you everything you need to know and if you're popular enough you probably do that it's it's like open source should work like I said it doesn't but it's not like a model of how these things should work and another easier way is to have it's much easier if you do on the econ like I do where I can just”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that sucks because the only appealing stuff is almost always dumbed down. Like nobody can do bodily appealing. So, yeah”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fun, yeah. I average not including this like one Zoom call a week with like things and weeks for the make it like five or sevens. It's very, very fun. More people should do it. It's my cheat code to life.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to change as and when I find interesting things to write about. Now, I have a question for you. What is one good thing I should be doing but I'm not doing?”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Angelic crises. And next comes the question Well, why can't the remnibi or the normally called the UA and replace this? Can say, is nobody use it portrayed? Nobody use it for trade because you can't use it outside China. The capital controls. So like, wait, till China takes out its capital controls, we can't do it. Yeah, pretty much. Next question comes, why can't we use Bitcoin? The answer is you would be very crazy to structure international trade with Bitcoin. You know, it's too volatile. Sorry, next month your price doubles and your income doubles, the debt cost doubles. So it's never going to happen. And most importantly, Bitcoin is a risk asset. You can't use it as insurance. When your Nasdaq falls 10%, Bitcoin falls 25%. The US dollar falls like 1.5% or even goes up. So you can't really do that. That's like my current writing, but as of 2020, March.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm doing a bunch of, I mean, I'm not a video about this. I knew my before, but when I'm writing about the US dollar reserve system like a primer, I tweeted about it yesterday. It's like, why do countries hold US dollar reserves? And the answer is they hold US dollar reserves because central banks like US dollar reserve for insurance reasons. Like, wait, why do central banks need US dollars for insurance? The answer is US dollar is the main currency used in plate. So it is really, really important to have it in case you can't see depreciates too much or appreciates too much and you can sell it and get USD. The other reason is that the number one source of financial crises for developing countries in last few years in last few decades has been we need dollars to pay our dollar debts. We don't have enough dollars. So we're broke. And central banks keep it for that very specific insurance reason of financial.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I was more into it, I would do macro econ and make my newsletter pay. It's kind of obvious. Like even like 500 bucks a month makes my life super easy. Yeah. But that would be like if and when I finish my current, how do I put it? Self-imposed military time.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“College in the UK cost like 200,000 Singapore dollars. I regrettably my wallet's in my pocket. I don't have 200,000 Singapore dollars then. For American listeners, that's like 180,000 USB or something on that range.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“1620, I guess. And the big problem is no course there. I'm looking for LSE, Matt and Econ, if I can get in and I find a part of money somewhere.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably. So, my next thing is computer science is a compromise because it's the why do I want to do like e-commerce econ plus like things. The best end of that in Singapore is computer science plus econ because the government puts a lot of money into computer science and as well add econ because it's my interest. So yeah, CF plus econ at NUS what I'm aiming for, they already got accepted for CS there. I'll be applying to the UK with my because, okay, let me go let me tell you one thing. For all that I like to criticize America the British are infinitely worse so British college courses haven't changed since like 1970 something. In America you can pick and choose your major in Singapore you can get to a lesser extent but in Britain you have the same courses since”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, a lot of my stuff comes from just going through the bibliographies of books I like to read. So that is where a good, so luckily don't pirate books. Pirating books is bad. But yeah, it's the cheapest way for most people. So basically that. What else? I think being in your interest thing gives me a better sense of ideas where they talk to other people. My biggest source of like things I should work on is talking to people like you or other people or other things. I also have a lot of times staring at a wall doing nothing because the nature of my work that gives me a lot of time to contemplate. Finally, I'm applying to college. So I have to figure out how to legibly, how to make my achievements legible to a college admissions person. A lot of my time goes around doing that.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use the very difficult matplotlab and you know this and that a lot of my reading is ad hoc. I have this set of PDFs I read which is a lot of time I just spend staring at my phone so I just it's it's second nature a lot of my writing is a lot more difficult to structure because first because it requires a level of calm that I usually don't get apart from weekends so that is much harder And as for your question of how do I get my reading all the usual sources, the listeners of this podcast will know marginal revolution, econ law, I did a lot of Bohit Krishna and Matt Clifford. I did a lot of I don't know less EA Fullerman”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, man. Okay, so mornings in when I travel, I get a lot of my Twitter time done, right? Because today is like my biggest source of things that go on. It's not a good source, but it's my good source. So yeah, Harris After my reading right now, I think a lot of my reading is I go for deep dives in books. I was doing Japan. So I did hirohito. I read Ambassador Defeat. I read Japan prepares to total war. I did Mark Harrison's The Economics of World War II. Not a very detailed book, but a very good book in terms of the statistics it gives you, right? So I'm going to do that. And I'd like to have my stuff to combine the learning data visualization in Python. I'm going to do that with a bunch of World War II economic numbers. So I both learn how to.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time, but basically they got export driven growth because of this, because of they had loss of social capital between the planners and the company, executives, and it's really easy for them to say, okay, I'll give you a few billion yen. You're going to use this to sell cars in US. But in three years, if your cars don't sell well enough, you're going to shut down and merge with your libel who will be more successful. So that was one of the drivers of Japanese growth. The reason why the Kreetsus and the industrial policy systems existed. So there's one of the parts of growth after the war. And also having played with America just makes you better off of the obvious reason that Americans are rich and they buy a lot of your stuff.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, probably, but I mean, yes, but also no, because special interest groups in Japan didn't really disappear. I mean, yes, in a sense that the bad ones went and slightly better ones came up, which is true. But that should not be your main explanation because a lot of Japanese growth in the 50s, which was just catch up, the rebuilding, the broken buildings and the bombed cities and burned houses. partly through is my smoke fact checking nope and the other thing is like japanese industrial policy was very much a feature of the war without the war you wouldn't have had this level of government control of the economy which led to a higher level of how to put it a higher level of planning i don't think planning is the right word it's too many connotations of”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's true. No, I mean, obviously it is suboptimal, it is obviously worse than not damaging them. But once you damage them, like it's not like Bastiat's broken windows thing, right? If you break the windows, it increases consumption. And Bastiat, but it increases consumption here, but they're going to spend the money on something else and those guys are hurt. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Same thing over here. Obviously.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More or less correct. All the intergroups were described, and so they could, I mean, actually all the intergroups were discovered. They just replaced with better ones. Index groups are bad, but they're good index groups and bad index groups. And they're sort of like the Japanese, the new interest groups in Japan were the other classes put in the trade.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah To make it clear though, it would be like they're prepared to make the initial sacrifices. First book, it was convenient for them to make it. And the second thing was it was sort of like a, how do I put it? Not signaling, but like quasi-signaling. I'm willing to fight for the amplitude. But when the fighting got bad, like, oh, wait, the emperor is not worth that much. It's okay.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but a large portion of the Japanese public were just meh, okay, fine, move on now, which there is, okay, so let me put you in like very economics terms. There is a reservation price they have for a guard and they have a there's a reservation prize they have for the god-like figure and for the godlike figure the reservation was pretty low it was two years of starvation which for a god two years I mean look at the look at the like they weren't prepared to fight the americans for very long If you either was a real god figure, they would have been prepared to fight the Americans and British for much longer.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, he didn't believe that there's a god-like figure and there's a god. So his son goddess, her name starts with AI, I forgot it. She's the god, but he's a god-like figure.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Encouraged by the military because they would saw all their conscripts being so undernourished and ill that they're like, oh, we can't solve this on a military level. We have to have a systemic response to this. The second thing is really that why did they die for the Employer? A lot of them believed it. And so they died for it. Why did they believe it for such an unconvincing persona? Because he was not a politician. His persona, his stature derived from the fact that he was the descendant of the gods. So, you know, it's not a charisma thing in authoritarian systems. People don't derive their power from the consent of the government. They derive it from something else. In this case, something else was the descendant of the sun goddess.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he didn't. And these people are just dying. People aren't dying in his name. There's this great, you should read the other book, which is, let me find, Japan prepares for, yeah, the book is titled Japan Prepares for Total War, okay. The thing is nobody thought the empire was God. Thought he was God-like, but it sounded like he was like, it's easier to imagine for Hindus, I guess. He was a god-like figure. He's not God. And they sort of saw him as their model leader, right? The first thing is that they were dying. They went into war because the army paid a lot of money was a lot better than being declining Japanese firms at the time pretty low. So they didn't have much of a thing. They didn't have much of things to do otherwise, you know. Also interesting. The first original health system in Japan was”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Productive to them. No, but it never gets passed, right? Even they don't pass it like, even if there's probably like one senator who believes that you should nationalize the oil companies, but then we introduce it onto it. They never make the arguments for it. There are people who are ideologically left wing, they'll just never stay elected for too long, they'll just, the thing is the competitive nature, I mean, to whatever extent is competitive of American democracy forces you to temper your views. And the only way to get ahead is you were the public, the oddly defined ones. So yeah.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than the average. I mean, yeah, it's all like self selects for that because to get the top, you've got to lie and you got to move around and you got to be within the things of the day. And yeah, so that's pretty much the main point, which is that really it's new that they couldn't remilitarize the game. It's kind of pointless to remilitize the game to bite who. And so you can, they just basically decided not to do it. The last 10 messages is more or less speculation for my part because I have not read into the elite mechanics of Japan before and after World War II to a good level of detail.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The defense of Okinawa was a great example of that. More people died in that than the atom bombings. There's almost half the population of Okinawa.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Newer elite, a good excuse to stop fighting with that. But the problem is where were those people that ideology is fake what helped them to get them into power. So now if fascism helped them get into power, I guarantee you, would have become motherisa. That's not the tool. I don't think many of them really believed in what they did given that they all switched like six months later after 1945. Very hard to make the case. They were ideal laws. They were just opportunists.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many of them were suppressed. The first Japanese prime minister after World War II, I'm lying on his name again, but like he was a left wing leader, he's basically one of those, we shouldn't war, we shouldn't have warred. The Japanese equivalent of the girl offering the flower to the American police guy during the Vietnam War. And those guys were obviously suppressed because it was inconvenient for them. But a lot of the Japanese also very interesting, the Japanese Communist Party welcomed the American occupation. So yeah, so they were seen as the anti-thesis of this, but Article 9 of Japanese Constitution, which to businesses who don't know, there's a Japan counter to the Arm again roughly, right? It says that the Japanese state gives up war as a means of policy. So that basically guarantees guarantees, but gives the”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I forgot that full farm. And their policies were basically rubber stamped by the lower house of the DA. And he's like, there wasn't much difference between those guys and the Soviets up north. So yeah, Japan was a democracy, but it was a democracy. It didn't change much.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Elites don't change after revolution. It is not well appreciated fact, but after the, so this is great paper. Let me find it. But it basically shows that the Chinese elite in 1980s when the country reformed was the same as the Chinese elite in 1920s when the country was having economic growth. The same thing with Japan in 1960s and 70s, the same family connections made them powerful again, right? The next thing is that America didn't really change another really big part of Japan. Japan was occupied as in its formal structures were changed, but you would be hierarchically a little crazy to call it a democracy till like 1990 or something. It was just Bern Hobart has this great post about East Asian industrialization. I think it's a medium, it's quite popular. And one part of it was the Ministry of Industry and MIT.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, very interesting, not fun, but interesting. MacArthur spoke to a Japanese. I don't think he addressed the Japanese public ever. That's very bad. If you're an occupying forest, they worked through the mechanisms of the previous Japanese government. So also interesting. A lot of Japanese, so I think I made this joke on Twitter a while ago. I read Japanese political family, a grandfather was a war criminal not executed because Hilohito asked Mikado not to. Father was finance minister in the 80s Kalin Kid is number five in the LDP leadership election. And like the answer is the elite of Japan was not changed after the war. It made it really easy, made very convenient to continue.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Intesting facts when the wall was ending, right, we had large scale looting of a Japanese military supplier because they knew food would be scarce for the next few months or so. And so you had army colonels and majors just stealing food and was completely lawless for a few months till the American military police came in sort of calm things down. The American army in Japan was successful because even the Japanese government was like, yeah, we're going to get done with this. We're going to get back to making Japan great again again. And that was the most important.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ballast. The problem was, I mean, that was the most, in their view, that was the optimal end that people would be angry with them that they were at the end of the war. Thing was there were no protests. A few people were happy because the war ended, a few people were sad that they lost. But the Japanese public in Genzo had a very, very difficult war. Fun fact, Japanese GP per capita in 1937 was only achieved back again in 1952. So you can imagine how bad the Japanese public had it. So in some sense, they were pretty much happier under the Americans.”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I've learned a lot about this. There's a great book on this called Embracing Defeat, which you should read because it's about the exact thing. It's what Japan after World War II and how many Americans did. So why was Japan a lot more successful than Afghanistan? The first thing is stability is sort of like Lindy, you know. Once you have stability under these relatives, stability under the imperial government, they just change the people at the top, okay? You can't really compare it to Afghanistan because there was chaos before chaos after you weren't solving the root terms of chaos. It's like you have ethnic tensions. In Japan, the thing was there are a lot of stability. People were really tired of the war. A concern among imperial household, the imperial household was that there would be protests ahead of the”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm being animated here because it is going to be very animated like that people fundamentally underrate the benefit of like Liberal age democracy, which then you can change very quick and not blow up while doing it. A good historical example that America had a lot of mess-ups early in World War II, right? So during the phony war, the phony war was this kind of like lull in the 1939 40, I can't remember in Yalli. They were started fighting, but they sort of win, it was sort of like a stalemate. This was called the phony war for that reason. American, the Congress didn't want America to get involved in because they were isolationists and they had some good reasons. And FTR wanted to. But once it became clear that American interests in Britain were going to be harmed by it, even the most isolationist Congress members changed their mind because of overwhelming public support. So it is going to happen. And the thing is, people just right to assume that”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once you get into the, once you have Bob dropping across London, it will be very obvious that these things have to go. These sort of things are a luxury belief for vested countries. They can believe in it because, yeah, sucks. These guys couldn't get a house in New York, but it's not materially harming us in a way that it's obvious to us now. I want to start becoming obvious. You know, know elected leader is going to listen to the people who are currently harming American or British or German industrial capacity. They're going to say sucks about the pollution, but we've got to want to win. So it's going to rearm very, very quick. And one of the reasons I'm very optimistic about the future is that we have a lot of spare capacity left like this because it's stupid rules. Once we start removing those stupid rules,”
2022-04-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source