Либерманы: о русском бизнесе в США и работе на Первом канале | Эрнст, Китай, бизнес и Украина
We've started getting more frequent calls right before airing, telling us "To cut out this or that", or they wouldn't air the episode. Let's say from the start that we're free to do whatever ugly things happening in our country now. It's like... No one's making anyone do anything.
The bullies from your block can scare you. You don't need to be smart to do it. They have all the power and all the money, they won't let it go. Up until they die. They are ready to carry the whole planet.
Brothers Daniil and David Liberman are serial entrepreneurs and investors. They've co-founded the company KANOBU, worked at Snapchat and created the program "Mult Lichosty" on First Russia Channel. - My first question is about "Mult Lichnosty".
"- One, two, three, we changed the numbers on the Lada, on the Lada Kalina, without changing any words!" - I'll take it with me to those lands. - Time is up! Who's going to answer? - The team's Captain, Alexander Lukashenko! - It was a provocative satiric show about celebrities, you were doing animation for them. Why was it closed in 2011? - It wasn't closed in 2011, it was closed... later, I'd say, it was the end of 2012. There was a period of time, that we all know, when Dmitry Medvedev was the president of Russia.
- Vladimir Vladimirovich, don't forget the noise detector. - Achoo! - Doesn't matter where we put the quotation marks, whether it's "Medvedev", "was", or "the president". - Back then, of course, they aimed to be more... to be more liberal. Not only "Mult Lichonsti" were on TV. There were also...
- Simultaneously with us, Valeria Gai Germanika also visited Ostankino. Most of the time with huge scandals. No one really believed she could be let ino the building. Sometimes we would be nearby and say, "Yes, let her in, she's probably here, too". - Yeah, they'd let us do different things. They were trying to feel the ground, to check how liberal they could allow themselves to be.
- Interacting with them, we also were trying to see what else could we do on the First Russia Channel. - Later, when they clearly decided that no, nothing was allowed, they completely changed the image of what was going on. That was the moment when "Mult Lichnosty" was closed. - I think there still was some period of time when We've started getting more frequent calls right before airing, telling us "To cut out this or that", or they wouldn't air the episode. - It turned out at the end... - It turned out that we needed to cut everything out, to change everything, so there was no point in showing the episode at all.
- Who was the person who called? - Sometimes it was Konstantin Ernst himself, but very rarely. More often it was someone from the crew someone following the producers' instructions. - Tell me, as people who received calls from Konstantin Ernst, as he's never called me, nowadays you can hear sometimes that Konstantin Ersnt doesn't like what's going on on the television, he doesn't like the propaganda and is trying to resist it, and he's a nice decent person, things like that. How much do you think he, himself, can resist what's happening. How free he is in his decisions?
Is he really as nice as some people say he is? Let's say from the start that we're free to do whatever ugly things happening in our country now. It's like... No one's making anyone do anything. Everyone chooses it. That's the main problem. - I'd say... it's always hard to say what's really going on, we're not in the room where they discuss things and make decisions, so... At that time, it seemed that they tried to show something else, to tell something else, but in the end it became clear that all those possibilities had their limits, they were limited.
There's always been this tension, that if we don't show something then "Rossiya" channel will show it, and then some part of political power and commitment will get lost. So, I think, there's a high level of dependence, but it's hard to measure it as we've never been there during further discussions. - It's clear that Ersnt has met the president in person. - But it's hard to say what they were discussing then. - So you are telling me that the president told Ersnt to remove the Libermans' art so there wasn't a trace of it left on the channel? - I doubt that the president knew anything about Libermans, and whose art it was, but I think that... that it could be like that, in a way, but maybe it was like, "This person can't be shown anymore".
Something like that. They like to feel their power. - The name you can't say, the person you can't show... - The person whose name can't be said. - It's some kind of shamanism, not a rational act. They have their symbols, in a sense.
And they're trying to control them all. - Now, when we say "the president", we mean Medvedev or Putin? - Was there any difference, really? - When were getting closed, it was Putin already. - When we were just starting making the show, Medvedev was the president. A collective Medvedev. When we were getting closed, it was a collective Putin. - Can you imagine such a program to be broadcast on Russian TV? Or American? - On American TV, without a problem. On Russian TV.... If the revolution suddenly happens today and the government's removed, then, by the end of the evening, they may air something like that.
- It's just that now there's such a thing that... At least, there's hope that there are no people with self-respect creating content for Russian television anymore, and to have something of high quality, they need talented people to do it. - And they all left. - Yeah, it seems like that. Or at least they're on their way there. - And they don't let the young, growing talents do anything yet. - On the other hand, it's clear that...
now they're just... they're distorting the truth and telling things that are far from real. But it can be told in the form of a cartoon. They just don't have enough strength... - And competence.
- They're not competent enough for it. But, of course, you can tell whatever you want. - Our government is highly incompetent, and we can see it in everything that they do. Crazy incompetent. They're telling everyone what good executives they are.
But in the end it's obvious that they're the least competent ones in the country. - We see Russian propaganda's unbelievable success. We see Vladimir Soloviev, all those crazy talk shows that managed to brainwash people, convince them that we need to start a war, and there are people supporting it now. From the perspective of propaganda, isn't it a talent? - Why is it a talent? The bullies from your block can scare you. You don't need to be smart to do it. Nor talented.
- What's more, when you exist in a competitive environment, then you can see quickly if you're talented or not. Because there are other talented people that can win you and present a product of a higher quality, the one that more people are going to watch. - And when the competition ends in bashed-in heads in the staircases, then it becomes evident that in the kingdom of the blind...
even a brainless one is talented. - Of course if you control everything, if you control the content, you can keep thinking you have enough talented people, but, as it turned out with the Russian army, that everyone, even the Western analysts, believed to be so strong and powerful, and it turned to be a big exaggeration, as soon as there's a little competition, it's obvious how much talent there is, or isn't. It's the same with content. When they removed everything else, then people were highly likely to watch whatever was left.
But it doesn't mean it was made by talented people. - And whatever's left there can have been created 10 years ago when there were still talented people. Inertia is such a thing... Cameras were created, take it and start shooting. - In business, there's a term that says that it takes a company as much time to die as it took it to reach its peak. There's a certain inertia, and there are things that were built by competent, skillful people, and it's hard to say how much those things will be fading away for.
- How free can you be in the USA if, for example, you start something like this, or want to speak out, or launch a show. What limits will you have? You say that in Russia there were people with surnames that put the limits to what you can say, as some journalists say, what limits there are in the USA and how free the country is in this sense? - We need to look at the limits within the cultural context, cultural and social contexts. - For example, Apple. Apple is against explicit content on their platforms. That's why all the app creators cut this content out. Everyone, including large apps like Instagram, Facebook etc. They obey them and cut it out.
It's hard to say how much is it about freedom of speech, there are people trying to be activists and speak out against it, that you can't cut such photos out of Instagram. But it's hard to say how much it relates to freedom of speech. There's an observation that now some of your statement can get you cut off from your means of existence. You get cancelled, as it's called, etc. But our observation is that, more often, people with a consistent position just keep saying what they were saying.
- For example, they say, "How could it happen?" Trump or not Trump, the difficult thing with him was, and is, that he is consistently a very bad person. When you're a consistently bad person, it's hard to cancel you for being a bad person. - When you pretend to be someone and then say an opposite thing, then it's easy to attack you, from the media's point of view. But there are examples of people saying the same phrases, doing the same things, but, being consistent, they just keep on doing or saying them. - Up until the violate federal or state law.
- Okay. Let's talk about business building in Russia and America. Why do you think the success came to you in Silicon Valley? - You know, there are several moments. In general, we were successful in Russia a few times, it's just that the destruction came quicker.
The unstable environment, undoubtedly, gives you a feeling that you can be successful quickly, but, on the other hand, the possibility of your business being ruined in four years is really high. Crises happen all the time, and there's a big threat for you business to be taken away or being ruined while people are trying to take it away etc. As soon as you consider this factor, you see that there can be a long-term success, there are examples, there are people, but... - When you barter away your freedom and make deals with incompetent people who led the country to the state it's now in. - Even some examples from those times when we were building our business and were like, "Look at this young man, he built a big business", like Maksim Nogotkov...
- Pavel Durov created VKontakte. And where are those businesses, where are those people now? Either they are not there, and the companies don't belong to their creators, and their creators don't have anything left, either they left Russia and created something way more successful abroad. - So, that's why this part of this, let's say, ecosystem, if it can be called like that, has impact in Russia, and in these terms, if you have talent, then it's really easier to fulfill yourself outside Russia. It's easier to realize yourself there, because the ecosystem here, if you're talented and able to handle the competition, it works completely in favor of you and it's easier to reach success.
And longevity makes people estimate you more, as they expect you to exist for 40 years more, not to disappear after 4 years, then they can give you a 30x higher recognition, as success is being compared to... - It's an easy comparison. We have friends who had business in Russia, it was before the war. They had a proposition to sell their business
for a price of its profit in a year and a half. It's hard to imagine it happening here, if you have a profitable business, here you can sell it for 10 or 20 years' profit worth. It's the same as, what they call, a capital being way cheaper, and if it's way cheaper, then a talent is way more expensive.
Because in the end your talent receives a bigger part of what's... - Of the marginality, relatively speaking, of the additional cost of the product you create. - What do you think about Yandex's main page being hijacked after this wonder of a deal with VKontakte? If you were following the news. - For us, though in a lesser degree, it was an expected thing since 12 years ago. - We've talked about it about 5 minutes ago, it's almost the same thing, it's a deal with the devil. If there are people who created something, skillfully, and then the devil comes and makes a deal that they agree on, then the same result will be inevitable.
- For us, no matter how Yandex was the pride was for people who stayed in Russia, as it was created by the best engineers and and was making cool products of really high quality, as we see it, they made a deal with the evil long ago, back then, when the government's control helped them to prevent Google from taking the service Begun, to not let a Western company claim a market share. For us, it was when it all started to lead to the inevitable point where Yandex is now. - Does Yandex have a future? - It's an interesting thing. To have future, you have to be ready to compete,
and at some point, 15 or 20 years ago, they were willing to compete. They had an opinion that they created such a unique and powerful product that they could compete on the worldwide level, not only in the national market, where there are different kinds of political control, but on a global level. I think that now, when it didn't work out for them to compete, they kind of left this idea. They focused more on the national market. When you do it like that, your muscle... It becomes, like... It loses its function, an ability to compete.
So, maybe they don't have a future. The brand will be kept in some form. - Does Yahoo have a future? - Yes. - I know that for... - It's revenue is still $8 billion, in reality. It may seem a total failure, but the revenue is still $8 billion, even though it seems like nobody's using it anymore. We still get emails from @yahoo.com,
from people of a higher age, generally. - That's an interesting topic you mentioned. You said that it'd be good for Yandex to compete with someone. But if we look at the world globally, we'll see that, for example, when Tiktok came to American market, the market took it away really fast, as fast as it happened to Yandex. They told them, "You'll either be blocked or start playing by our rules". The Americans saw a threat from China when they started to gain a big audience.
Now we see quite an independent American market of large social media and IT companies that... Yes, there may be several, but they are on their own, playing by the same rules. There's a completely separate Chinese market where American companies aren't allowed and Chinese companies are on their own, and then there's the third market, the Russian one, where they, too, have their own deals, and for me those three markets seem completely separate. And no one's competing. - Let's go part by part. Firstly, there are more markets. There's India, there are many other markets, The African market is growing really fast.
Secondly... I... Secondly, we need to look at the history a bit differently. Actually, Tiktok is not a Chinese company, it's an American company bought by Chinese conglomerates.
It's Musical.ly that had around 200 million users when they bought it. - They describe such a rapid growth for Tiktok in the States. - But no, there were people who were already using Musical.ly for a long time. After that, the Chinese couldn't do it, they couldn't create a product that would compete in the market.
So they bought a local product, Musical.ly. And they were developing very well, up until they, themselves, started to act quite badly. It was the Chinese market, the one that doesn't let any competition in, where they block whatever they want, and so on. - It's got to be said that the hijacking and selling didn't happen in the end. Which was surprising. - They couldn't make them.
They waited for it, but couldn't do it. - Couldn't make them, couldn't take it, Tiktok is still available in the American market. Not that we're defending the nation-state. Currently, there's more and more, unfortunately, you have to accept that, all around the world, the national factor is getting more and more evident, unfortunately. We're steering away from the idea of a united world and globalisation, and there are more national conflicts happening now.
Everyone wants to make their own things. - However, when we talk about competition, even when we imagine that American companies are have local protection, that no one lets anyone in, even though it's not like that, not like that, but there are laws that prevent an easy access to the market, those companies still have experience of competing in other markets. They have experience of their products becoming popular outside the United States, in Europe, Asia etc.
It creates an experience of being able to compete. You can't just freeze. Tiktok's example, local companies' examples showed that they couldn't just...
they couldn't just enjoy what they had, they needed to work hard to make something bigger. - Something new. Still, local companies proved, many times, that they are able to compete in external markets, and they did it successfully. - Not only local companies, but European ones, too. - Spotify, Ikea, what else? - Well, yeah. Zenly. - Zenly. - It's clear that you need to be experienced like this, keep being aware whether it's your talent and your product being cool, or it was some official that let your product become the only one in the market.
- As we've started talking about regulation of state and officials, why didn't the American government, the Ministry of Finance let Facebook, let Zuckerberg launch their own cryptocurrency, and why didn't they let Pavel Durov do the same? How fair and right was that? - In general, it seemed that they didn't let them do it because otherwise they'd have to let others do the same. It was around the same time when Pavel Durov was launching his cryptocurrency. - It was like that. There were two legitimate big players that could really do it and succeed in it, they'd do it clean, without scamming etc.
But because there a lot of projects around that are a bit controversial, and many of them are not legitimate and bend the law's limits however they want, if they let those two launch, they'd have to let the others, too. And they couldn't let everyone do it, so everything had to be closed right away. So they could slowly prove their right to exist.
- But there's difficulties with cryptocurrency, in general, in a sense that it questions legislation and how suitable it is. There was the existing legislation that determined securities and determined what currency and commodities were. In a pre-cryptocurrency world this system worked pretty well and helped to protect ordinary depositors. The legislation, in general, exists to protect the so-called retail depositors. The common depositors. - Those are people who are not professional investors, not the ones own big funds etc.
The professional investors, who have signed tons of papers, explored everything and have lots of money, are not as protected as retail investors. - There were a lot of examples, in cryptocurrency, of "tokens" that, in reality, looked absolutely like securities while pretending that they weren't. - It's a second wave of The Wolf of Wall Street. - So regulators took a position of banning everything. And they banned everything, really. Not only Facebook and TON
but almost every cryptocurrency represented in the United States, they got sued by regulators. That's in general about cryptocurrency. And here you can make theories if it happens... - About how nation-states try not to allow currency globalization etc.
- What also has got point. - We can't admit that it's not in their interests. - In the interview to New Yorker, you said the main reason for financial imbalance is how we measure wealth. What's wrong with it and how to do it right? - Probably no one knows how to do it right. Only time will tell. We suggest an option how it could be done. - The main problem we point out is that in the last 30 years such a situation developed that includes regulations, practice and... - Market conditions. - That led to wealth migrating from the younger to the older generation very evidently.
- It doesn't mean from young people to seniors, but from people born in this decade, to people born in previous decade, the decade before that etc. - This had quite difficult consequences, if young people's capitals are extremely limited, then they... - They risk less and so on. The economy gets slowed down. If the mechanism existed that pulled their wealth back from them, and it's still there, it still exists, they create less, the economy is contracting, and the pull-back is even bigger.
This causes an even larger disruption. - It had a lot of consequences, like, student loans got bigger in America. Russian audience can not know what this is, but here it's a big problem. Young people have a debt of over $2 trillion.
In Europe it's... - Wait. Let's do it in comparison. The debt is over $2 trillion, and until 2008 or something this number was under 200 billion. - It grew significantly over the last 20 years. - In Europe it's a very high level of unemployment among young people. In several European countries like France, Italy, Spain it goes up to 25-30% among young people. - People with higher education. - Yes, among young people with higher education. And so on.
Real estate is less and less accessible, it's evident in the fact that way less 30-year-old people can allow to buy real estate than it was for previous generations. - As it was with the same 30-year-old people 20, 30 years ago. - And so on. In this sense, we see that
it will either lead to... to hard conflicts. - To conflicts. - ...Inside societies, when young people start to protest more and more about the state they're in. Either some kind of a market tool needs to be created that would allow to restore the balance the system in a more natural... - More natural direction.
- And for that, we saw how it was an interesting solution to redefine what wealth is. Because if... Let's take an example, a rich person, like Jeff Bezos, creator of Amazon. He's one of the world's richest people. His wealth is $150 billion. - Isn't it more than 150... - Yeah, a large sum.
$150 billion. What does it mean? He doesn't have all that money in cash. On his account.
It's his wealth in stocks, mostly stocks in Amazon. - If we look at Amazon... - And what Amazon has. - Now it's cost is $1.5 trillion.
There aren't $1.5 trillion in its accounts, too. It doesn't have this amount of... - Of profit. - They don't have this amount of assets. This price is the estimated future. It includes estimated positive scenarios, negative scenarios and something in the middle.
But when your wealth is estimated, when our wealth was being estimated, then only the money you accumulated are counted. How much do you have in your account, whether you have a flat, how much are your savings. Though for young people, unlike seniors, their wealth lies in their future work. Like with Amazon, it's not about assets the company has now, but about what future Amazon potentially has.
Thus we saw that if we reinvented it, add it to the definition of wealth and let people have access to this wealth, their future, then the system's balance can be restored in a direction where young people's capital would be more accessible for them. Two years ago, we held an experiment on ourselves. - Year and a half. - A year and a half ago, we held an experiment. We suggested investors put money not into our next company but invest it into everything that we are going to create in the next 30 years.
No matter whether it will be one company or ten. And we got our wealth estimated at $200 million, at first, then $400 million. Which is way more than our accumulated capital.
But from the point of view of projecting, various scenarios, this is the estimated value that investors came up with. What we want to show is that when your potential lies in the future, if you have an opportunity to make a transaction with your future, make an exchange with with it, so it gives you a capital now, for you being able to multiply the future's wealth, then there's an enormous potential to restore the balance, solve the problem of financing of education, solve the problem of it being hard to start your own business, and so on. - Did I get it right that you suggest that investors, banks, whoever, estimated the potential of an individual as they do with the potential of a company now? - It doesn't need to be individual, it can be, for example, it can be all Year 2022 students of Stanford University. Statistically, it can be imagined that some of them will have bigger wealth, others' wealth will be smaller, someone won't be so successful, but now you can quite confidently... - Relying on historical data. - Yeah, you can predict how this future will look.
After estimating this value, you can invest in all those young people and give them an opportunity to have a more successful future for them. We're not the first to hold such experiments. There are really interesting ones, when a fund invested in 70 student-athletes. It was in the USA.
Fund estimated each of them in $10 million, the potential of their future growth. - Flat rate, or what is it called. - And they suggested buying 5-10% of their future financial income. Thus, for $500k-$1 million. 70 students agreed to that and... - 3-4 years later, there was, there is a curve where the most successful one of them has already been proposed a $350 million contract in the Top League of a sports team in the USA. And this curve descends to those who didn't make a career in sports, getting an ordinary job after graduating from college.
But for hedge fund itself this investment justified itself totally. - And for students... There's an interview with a student who got a $350 million contract, - For him, 10%, $35 million, of this contract, was the best decision of life, as he says. "This $1 million that I received helped my graduate, avoid having problems and support my family. - Have a job etc. - Oh! I thought he wouldn't want to give away $35 million, but he's happy. - It's interesting that some student got greedy, not the most successful ones.
So the hedge fund representatives went to court. And the court said, "Look, there're a lot of those who agreed on the same contract. They're doing okay, even better than you, they're happy it's happening this way. The text of the contract is clear, it's not clear why you want to dispute it, claiming to be scammed". - In reality, it works like... In general,
the majority of financial markets show exponential growth. Outliers usually have an income that can be compared to everyone who's participating in the market. Because those outliers exist, the average expected evaluation is higher than people could even expect.
Because if we divide this amount into parts for every person, at this stage, the resulting sum is quite high. So the students that haven't really earned anything yet are athletes, but when you're a student-athlete, you don't have any income. But they were all estimated at $10 million because the possibility of landing on an outlier gives a great potential of a financial profit. - The next question is that if we spread the capital among bigger number of people, giving more opportunities and bigger potential to more young people, then the market is highly likely to grow. The country's total wealth will grow, the planet's total wealth will, too. - It's evident with the growth of venture investments.
The market doesn't contract with it. - It doesn't get less bit by bit, it only grows bigger and bigger. For example, if 10 years ago, there was one $1 billion company among 100 companies that venture funds invested in, now it's 2% Their volume... The volume increased rapidly, and amount, too, their volume made the market grow, because... The market is constantly optimized, new products allow people to create other products that were impossible to make etc.
The only question is how to convince, guarantee, build a mechanism of interaction between younger people and investors, fund holders that nowadays are people of 50 years and older, relatively speaking, what contract should be created for them, so both parts knew that it'd be a profitable deal that wouldn't get disputed, or, even if it were to be disputed, everyone could know the outcome, honest for every party of the contract, if no one broke it. - And that it would be safe for both parties, as there's a big question... A few of them, even, there are anti utopian books about it, and so on.
The most important point is that this deal shouldn't affect decision-making processes in your life. That it's only financial interest, and no one could affect what you can and can't do. That the investors don't have the right for that. Their rights apply for when something happened, accidentally or not, it happened, statistically, that made you become successful, and you have to give a share of your financial success to them. - Tell me about your succeedings, how many percent of your future have you sold and what was the final estimated value? - The final one was $400 million.
We have sold about 3%, and during this time, since we created this company that is the next 30 years of our life, in the last year this company has created $180 million worth of assets. The net profit was $14 million. The investors are happy about it, in general.
- The investors are happy that they bought your future. - Yes. The first ones sealed a deal when the estimation was of $200 million, now the company has the worth of assets almost the same as the price they bought it for.
They are all very pleased. But for us the main question now is how to make it accessible for more people. - How to upscale it. - Yeah, what to do so it was accessible not only for us or people like us, but how to make it accessible... - Literally to everyone in the world. - And here the biggest role is played by investors' education and having great examples. It was really important for us that our investors could make money out of it.
By earning money there, they get an experience and will be happier to invest in other people. - On the same terms. - In young people. It's a kind of a big mission for us to make this mechanism a norm. - Make it a norm. - You said that pension funds in America, being the country's richest organizations, with $40 trillion, are harmful for society. In what way?
- They caused this imbalance. Any imbalance is a problem. In reality, they were a tool thanks to which there was a huge growth in the 60s-90s. The capital was big... - A critical growth. People who didn't have wealth before got it.
- At first they were a very parasitic tool. The question is that as soon as they went up to 51% of total equity, all the assets... - Of every company. - Take any company, Coca-Cola, Google, Facebook, the majority of them are owned by pension funds right now. As soon as they got there... - Political power joined the game. - It turned out that they got the power with not only financial capital, which is the market's majority, but with political power. - And why is that so? Because, naturally, median age of people who vote has neared 50 years.
In general, people over 50, more or less, make all the decisions in the country, as they are the majority. - That's why we see that the majority of politicians in many countries are over... - Are over 60 and 70 years old. - And that doesn't represent average population in any way. The average population is 35 years old, and politicians don't represent it.
- Solely because people under 18 don't won't in any country. - So you have an immense financial capital that can dictate the market how it should be, and, at the same time, an enormous political power. When it's in the same hands, it always... - Leads to imbalance. - It causes problems, as it becomes clear that those parties start to promote their own interests. - Often unrealistic ones. - Oftenly not for it to lead to the market's growth, but to just take this part.
- To take it from "minorities", who are just young people. - It's different for every country. In some countries it's trying to restore the Soviet Union, wishing everything to be as it was.
In other countries it manifests itself as a high unemployment rate. In the States it manifested itself in a way... - In a way that young people are in huge debts and can't allow anything. - It's not a natural process. We just look at the laws they implement
and have implemented in the last 30 years, and what they led to. - Being a politician, all you have to do is make promises to you your 50-year-old electorate, promise them something that may not even be economically profitable, nor realistic for the rest of the country, and you'll get elected. - Okay. Now the world is on the verge of some very unclear events. You're discussing the future, fairer financial models, financial equality, and it's all very cool and amazing, but you're in California, where there's stability, when a company can bought for a 30-years perspective estimated value. But we see now how fragile is the world, that there's conflict that seems to have no exit, and there are talks about nuclear weapon being used, which poses a threat to the conversation we've been having for an hour now.
What do we do with this? - You know, for us it's the same problem. But maybe it's easier for us to talk, as we're here, safe. - Far away from there... - Hold on! Do you think you're safe there? - Yes, for an outsider we can seem to be in a safe place, is what I meant. But we see this problem the same way.
- There's a generation that concentrated a lot... - Several generations. But, well... - Let's take Boomers and Silent Generation. There are generations that concentrated a lot of financial and political power, and for them it's not really important what happens to the Earth in 50 years.
- They won't be here in 20, 30 years. - It's more important for us, and especially for younger generations. When you exist in such a paradigm, you start doing things that may seem crazy for us. In a sense, how can you do it, how can you act like that, considering what's going to happen to the planet in 20, 30 years. But, unfortunately, it's happening de facto that political power is in hands of those people who don't care about it. - And those people justify it by telling
that it's always been like that, that we need to stop overreacting. But it hasn't always been like that. - The population wasn't so big. - The disruption wasn't so big. And the disruption goes right along these generational cohorts.
And if we dig deeper, we'll find out where it comes from. It's all about the group's political and economic power. - If we look specifically at the military conflict, we see it reflected even there. - We look at Ukraine with government's average age of 45, between 40 and 45 years old, where the average age is 70+. - It's clear that... - It's where the confict's zone is. We grew up, we are 35-40 years old already, we understand that we could manage it all, even better than the ones before us.
We're more clever, we understand technology, we're more educated, we're all that. But there's still this question of them having all the money and power. And they're not ready to let it all go until they diy, they're ready to carry the whole planet with them. - So, from one hand, it's clear that we'll all have to deal tactically with the problem that's existing right now, I think we all, bit by bit, will contribute to try and solve the current problem. But we think that this problem is a reflection of what could come if the fundamental issue is not resolved, the one of young people not having sufficient resources.
If young people are better resourced, then, from a long-term view of the planet, that it's necessary to care about what's going to happen in 50 years, there will be more political power and will to care about the future if young people have more resources. - And it seems that it's a false fragility, as the world showed that there's none at all. Even though it was with a huge holdback, but, nonetheless, almost the whole world quickly studied the conflict out and supported Ukraine, and we see that it's very probable that Ukraine wins and justice wins in this situation. - We are still losing a lot of lives... - And lots of resources, time and talents, everything. - But we can't say that the world is fragile.
It's, in fact, showing its resilience, its willingness to resist evil. In that sense, we may bee too positive about it, thinking that this problem will be solved, it will be solved in favor of the good and we have to keep thinking of... - But the problem that we're talking about will stay if we don't start solving it. So we're looking from a long-term perspective on what has to be done, apart from winning this war.
- To not be afraid of the red button, young politicians need to hold power. Those who care about what would happen to the planet if this button is pushed. And what would happen to your life if it's pushed.
Now the power seems to be in hands of those who're willing not to care. - Okay. So, according to what you said, they'll push the button? - Well, we have to say, they've already done it. It's not something unbelievable to happen.
- The democratically elected president of the USA has pushed a couple buttons like this and dropped a couple bombs like this on Japanese cities. - Up until now, we don't know what'll happen in the future. Until present moment, nuclear weapon has played a deterrent role. The scientists that made nuclear weapon spread to more than one country, had an idea, maybe they'll be wrong. - It's still alive. - The idea was to create more protection in the world than threat. - If every party knows that it will be completely destroyed if it decides to attack, then there will be less attacks.
- And it needs to be remembered every time when we're talking about nuclear weapons. That up until now it led to deterrence. - On the other hand, we can see that level of craziness, the blindness and the lack of the possibility to think rationally and see situation as it is, the level of propaganda, of lies and everything else happening on the Russian TV and in the country, we need to understand that every step of Russia's current KGB-ridden government is a test of how hard could they push the country up until everyone, everyone is an accomplice to a crazy crime.
- It seems that now they haven't gone so far that those who need to push the button, to turn the key, so they agreed to do it. - So they agreed to die. - But unfortunately we see that, in reality, it's a step more, and one step more, and so on, if it's not stopped earlier, it can lead to that point. - It's not like we're not thinking negatively, that the whole humanity will get to that point, we just think that it'll end badly for Russia, worse than we could imagine.
And humanity will handle it. Collective humanity. But still, it will be bad, much worse than we can imagine it now. - Okay! Thank you so much, it was really interesting. - Thank you!
2022-10-28 07:28
