Shockwaves in the global economy (Iran) — transcript

Transcript of Jeff Diamanti interviewed on Pretty Heady Stuff: “Jeff Diamanti tracks the shockwaves disrupting the global economy as war rages on in Iran”.

Source: https://youtu.be/NYUFVwThTI8 — 51 minutes. Related: Critical Raw Materials and the Twin Transition - transcript, Supply chain criticism - seam, interval, hold.

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0:04 It’s um an incredibly significant moment and uh you’re seeing a lot of conversations happening around this oil shock, this crisis um because people are trying to understand as we did with the Russian invasion of Ukraine or or you know COVID hitting all of the stuff that makes up the economy and what happens when that gets destabilized basically. Um, and so like a lot of eyes are focused on this one narrow passage. And you’ve actually been to the straight, which is this, you know, uh, relatively narrow strategic choke point that runs between Oman and Iran and, uh, represents the main maritime link between the Persian Gulf and basically the rest of the world. Um, so now, you know, you’ve got this war of aggression that officials said wasn’t going to escalate and that is escalating out of control.

0:57 Um, and yeah, like one of the things that you wrote in 2021 in your book, Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum, is that energy, maritime trade, and the concerns of climate converge in these choke points with the circulation of energy and commodities. And then in a more recent piece of writing, you and a co-author talk about how uh when these infrastructures fail or made to fail, whether it’s through accidents or acts of sabotage, the reverberations are often uh and and the disappearance of value is often swift, enormous, and incalculable. Um so, you know, all of this feels strangely prophetic of this moment. um where like the International Energy Agency is like advising countries to change laws around transportation and all this stuff.

1:41 Does it feel to you like we’re back in the 1970s, which was the subject of that first book, or are we in totally different times when it comes to the shock and the ripple effects? Like what’s going on right now from your perspective? there’s an enormous amount of discourse and attention uh on this particular logistical space at the moment and you know it’s both like really it’s really profound it’s deeply troubling it’s enraging but it’s also like curious to see like the New York Times and like Steven Colbear you know like talk about this particular part of the economy and and to admit so let’s say without very much complication in the in the in the analytic that they marshall to do so.

2:31 Uh admit quite openly, you know, that this is a pet, we live in a procultural world and that these kinds of spaces uh these hidden abodess of circulation as it were are kind of the secret of how power converge in really material ways. And it’s it is like a little bit strange to just like pick up any newspaper or look at any kind of um you know news podcast and see everybody really fixated on this one particular choke point. And I think as a metanym for this larger realization that maybe at the tail end of a long cycle of accumulation which maybe is not part of how they would phrase it but I would really that begins in the 1970s the tail end of a cycle of accumulation.

3:21 uh you know the the terms by which the conclusion to that cycle of accumulation are negotiated and the medium in which some other emergent form of negotiating the movement of matter and value will be written in the medium of these logistical spaces invariably. I stood um just around the corner from the street of Hormuz in a place called Fujira which is in the United Arab United Arab Emirates and I was there 2019 with uh with two friends and colleagues uh both of whom I believe at some point maybe you have had on the show Graham McDonald and Amanda Butkis good friends of mines and mentors and we were we were there for an academic reason but we decided to take a trip to Fujira which um we knew who already sort of from our own research and conversations was uh the second largest bulk diesel terminal in the world.

4:14 And why that is important is because it means that the lion share of oceanborn cargo um tankers and so on at some point on their journey stop at this one particular let’s say nonplace called Fujira you know and um and so as a point of sensitivity as a point as a choke point as a kind of um as a point that as a point on a map of a cgraphy of capital that is otherwise is designed to avoid circumvent these kinds of um risks or or contestations. We sort of you could just see, you know, on the map that this is actually like a very easy place to to contest and that at any point geopolitical conflict in the in this at the scale that we’re now seeing would uh centralize this particular region.

5:06 I can say more about what it’s sort of like physically because I actually think that’s one of the strange things that’s like entirely gone missing from the from the hot takes let’s say of uh the contemporary conflict the imperialist aggression against Iran on the part of Israel and uh the US but you know as an ecology it is also like quite interesting and and tells its own kind of story but also I would say as a space of labor so Fujira is is a space of almost entirely Southeast South Southeast Asian laborers mostly they’re on part-time time temporary contracts with very very few rights. And that is um that is the context of this I would say geography is a lot of you know basically indentured labor um and this entire logistical space is really lubricated on the ex the extraction of labor from these kinds of bodies and that is not part of the contemporary conversation.

5:59 I find that very strange. I do think that we’re seeing the conclusion to a cycle of accumulation that we can maybe broadly call um you know uh you know liberalism or perhaps maybe more technically the the the the the death pangs of secular stagnation um the long downturn which really began in the 1970s as well. And you know that is a sort of macroeconomic description adopted by a number of of um theorists most of whom have some kind of Marxist uh framework but not all of them certainly to describe the falling rates of productivity that follow from the 1970s reorganization of the economy which of course is sort of centrally about also um how the production of what formerly was very cheap and accessible oil had then in the 70s become quite expensive, logistically difficult and financially um heavy as a as a endeavor.

6:55 And the financialization of that sector is related to the falling rates of profit, but is not itself the same. But like the ways that they interact in complicated ways, you know, prod produces a sort of long downturn of the 1970s through to really 2008. Um we’ve seen a number of like political phenomena and uh very surprising cultural shifts and certainly economic um conflicts and crises that I think are really about like living in the wake of that cycle of accumulation which has never really been sort of cracked open and redefined for a future. And so instead we have just like a kind of yeah horrifying um slate of nostalgic um populist uh fascist um power grabs which have more or less been successful.

7:41 And I think that’s actually you know at the heart really of what’s going on here at Straight Wars and this sort of like really really unprecedented and absolutely homicidal and dangerous though I would say not entirely unhinged um aggression against Iran. By that I do not mean I defend at all the aggression but maybe we’ll get to this later. I think you know one of the things I’m noticing I’m sure you are too in a lot of these sort of editorial accounts. So what’s happening in the straight of Hormuz es especially by the sort of liberal media will almost almost always seek to explain what is otherwise quite inexplicable behavior. At least if you are a you know if you are trying to explain you know the behavior and the decisions of the department of war and Trump um uh based on under based on an understanding of what motivates these people economically it does seem quite inexplicable the decision to um you know to attack and presumably anticipate the economic fallout from such a thing.

8:50 And yet and but and so you know the liberal media will say well they’re just unhinged. They don’t they never anticipated this. They have no strategy. I want to say that is a that is a uh deeply and and troublingly comforting narrative that I think the liberal press tells itself that these behaviors are inexplicable that they’re the result of unhinged unthoughtful people and that actually there isn’t a kind of very coherent strategy that might not align at all with their worldview and that might also be why it’s so troubling but I don’t think politically it’s quite it’s very it’s viable to to imagine that this is sort of accidental and sort of you know um that uh the consequences of this were not calculated.

9:39 I actually think that’s a I think that’s a disempowering narrative to tell ourselves. I think instead unfortunately we should be trying to understand whose interests are being met here. uh it’s quite clear that you know most working population uh in the west uh voting types will not benefit then in fact they will be it will be at their expense that’s clear from rising gas prices from the rising cost of food and so on um but there are people who are benefiting from this there are interest being met and I you know maybe we’ll get to that but I I think it’s a mistake to say that this is sort of like unplanned and spontaneous and and unhinged.

10:25 That’s super interesting. I was watching um the ones and twos podcast, right? Adam twos, this economist and and writer. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Really smart. You know, he he did make the argument that um it’s it’s uh a bad idea basically to sanewash this inexplicable move. Uh that there is something utterly unstrategic. uh at least from certain worldviews, certain points of view about this intervention, this war of aggression on Iran. Um but I think you’re right to say it’s also facious and simplistic to fall almost for like the pop culture fantasy of, you know, these are just people that want to watch the world burn or something like that they’re just unhinged. Um there are absolutely interests being served and this is part of a continuum right this continuum of uh you know pro states waring with other pro states you know the United States intervening to secure fossil resources there’s there’s a lot of uh uh yeah there’s a pattern here um but yeah you know there there was a lot in what you said I want to kind of talk about um that question of price I guess as a signal because You’re you’re right that this is the maybe the termination of a thing that begins in the 1970s, the cycle accumula of accumulation.

11:56 Um, and that termination, the end of easy oil as it’s sometimes been called, is being uh felt largely through uh market pressures that you know in the affluent global north the assumption is will not affect demand. that with you know the the ra rising prices you’re not necessarily going to see a decline in demand of the type that we perhaps saw a little bit in the context of co people are still going to pay whatever is the assumption for this energy this fossil energy and one of the crisis measures being taken and this was like this started after 1973 is the use of these strategic petroleum reserves right so the US creates it in 73 Three, it contains something like 700 million barrels of oil.

12:47 The IEA has its own emergency reserves spread out across 32 member states that amount to 1.2 billion barrels of oil. China has its own apparently 1.2 billion barrels of reserve oil. That to me is just staggering to think about, right? that amount of oil sitting in reserve um waiting to be dispersed in the context of these crises that happen as you say in easy to contest conflict zones, right? Um you know, I wanted to ask about this maybe in relationship to the the things that you write about in the supply chain essay because it does offer this sort of language for getting getting to the bottom of what’s important about those reserves. You say the flux of movement and interruption, of absence and presence, of release and supply, of expansion and contraction, of stoppage and flow really does kind of underwrite or undergur this whole fossil economy that it is like largely about, you know, circulation.

13:45 That’s how money is made. And when it stops, when you have these choke points that actually, you know, slam shut, um, you know, there’s there’s this panic that sets in and then these instruments start to move, start to operate. Can do you think this release of, you know, an unprecedented amount of oil in the context of this particular crisis, 400 million barrels, uh, the IEA has released, can that keep energy prices down? And what does it reveal this move about sort of the flux of movement inter interruption stoppage and flow? So the first thing I think that’s worth maybe thinking about together with regards to the quantity of these reserves and the historical moment that they became a necessary uh political strategy is is that really of course and you’re sort of suggesting this there they have been since the 70s uh a mechanism to temper volatility to temper price volatility right and I think that’s because you know as we as most of us sort of know in a colloquial way now like most oil has been uh traded on futures markets since the late 70s early 80s really the late or the early 80s becomes the sort of dominant mode by which the contract to deliver x amount of oil is negotiated and and um and assured and those futures markets um are themselves kind of you know they’re in ways to to modulate volatility around around supply and and also the just sort of enormous amount of friction that exists within us that that this particular supply chain like labor friction, ecological friction, you know, just the unpredictability of sort of seaborn trade and and uh and all of the different kinds of national regulations that are still not really standardized in the late 70s, early 80s.

15:47 That that means sort of the movement of a barrel as an object, right? As a kind of metaphor. Brian Yakobson has this amazing essay about the use of the metaphor of the the oil barrel that sort of rises in the 80s um as a as a metric of this of this price. But if you imagine a barrel actually moving through the supply chain, right? It’s just it has to circumvent and move through so many sort of sites of friction that the futures market is a way to sort of temper some of that so that uh you know you can essentially have more standardized national accounts. you can have more predict predictable uh rates of growth and especially when in the 70s and 80s virtually every economy is is like entirely wedded to the affordances of the you know the energic affordances of oil or the financial affordances of oil.

16:35 I think that’s the second part, right? It’s like it so I I think most economists would say, you know, the sweet spot for the price of internationally traded oil is is around 70 to90 a barrel. 90 is already getting a little bit high, but you’re but it’s still relatively affordable. Um once we get closer to 100 or 150, then there’s still a lot of money being made, but it starts to act as a as a negative. uh yeah its elasticity over the other kinds of metrics of the economy begin to snap back and becomes a constraint a constraint on the capacity of other parts of the economy to produce what they do either financially or energetically through the affordances of oil and so I think you know we have by most estimates although the Chinese reserve that’s mostly speculative but I am also hearing over a billion I’m hearing actually much much more than the IEA um but uh you Based on most estimates at the moment, it seems as though the plan basically is to create this this uh this buffer between 100 and 150 for the next 6 months because that’s what the current contracts are being negotiated at.

17:48 That that’s the timeline of the current contracts, right? And so you won’t hopefully I mean except for like obviously you know airlines are going to jack their prices the second they get a chance to but I think in general the sort of the macroeconomic consequences of this surge are probably not going to be felt immediately in the next 6 months. Um and I think that you know because we have so much oil to let to let in the economy to temper that um that surge. If we get to a point in six months when this is largely unresolved, if uh Iran is still exclusively uh permitting access to its own trading partners, then we’ll see a a strate I think we’ll see a geopolitical uh strategy emerge that is clearly about delaying that sort of that crisis point, right?

18:38 because I think at that point the reserves will run too low for futures markets to responsibly you know agree to sub 150 a barrel knowing that the that that it’s largely running out and I don’t you know but then I think it’s really this is where it gets really complicated and fascinating right it’s like the price of the barrel of oil is not just the price of a barrel of oil it’s the price of everything else too um our pension funds um the amount you know the cost to transfer literally any commodity using prochemical fuels um fertilizers uh the cost of food the price of food price of labor I mean the as as a as a force over the other metrics we use to kind of account for this this this rel relative health or or character of the economy the price of oil is is uniquely um impactful over all others that relationship between the price of oil in American dollars and then the larger metrics we point to to have you know to sort of get a picture of the shape of the economy is largely indexed to the fact that oil is traded was traded universally in American dollars and that is an outcome of the 1970s as well right I I think as of the you know we’re recording this on March 22nd you know so things are changing literally every hour.

20:09 But last I checked yesterday, um the eight trading partners who have access to Iranian oil are doing are trading not in American dollars for the first time since the 1970s. They’re trading in the one. And I think that is partial in my, you know, I’m really trying not to offer hot takes, but my hot take, why Trump last night in a, you know, whatever the [ __ ] he calls it, not a tweet, whatever his idiotic, uh, fascist platform is called, truth troll. um his like on his his tweet in the middle of the night, you know, that this basically, you know, they you know, in all caps that Iran has has got to end this embargo on uh international trade through the trade of Cormuz or else all hell will break loose.

20:54 It feels as though that’s like the result of this announcement that actually there’s nothing there’s no problem with the trading of Iranian oil and it will not be traded in American dollars. And that ends basically a what 50-year uh monopoly that the Americans have on the on the monetary um constraints over the trade the trading of oil. And I think that I think that’s a big change. That’s why that’s why I say I think we might be seeing the emergence of like a new of course multipolar oil world in addition to a political world. Yeah. And you know that’s also so hard to wrap your head around just the the nature of money. It’s like you need to you need to have a degree in Marxism to like get down to the bottom of if only if only we could offer those.

21:43 You know what I mean? Like the virtuality of money and how it you know regulate social relations. I know that like you’ve written in interesting ways about like how this um approach to talking about these things that is all about like expose about just like making visible the invisible is somewhat like superficial. And I I think I agree that like just leaving it there is not uh as worthwhile in some ways as sort of trying to get to what you were just trying to get to, which is the sort of um you know exploitative and asymmetrical relations of power that capitalism largely like seeks to reinforce. Um, and so, you know, that challenge is a real one and one that I like to take on in some ways by still like trying to historicize it, I guess.

22:37 And like you know the the article you’ve written talks about like the emergence at a certain point of these new professions that are designed to help expand maritime infrastructures and these labor markets. The so-called revolution in logistics, you know, that has totally ramped up and transformed global trade in like orders of huge orders of magnitude, right? Um leading to just more and more and more commodities being shipped across the globe. Um but also you say laws have had to be developed to facilitate this scale of just ports and throughput. Um and like one of the frameworks that I’m seeing emerge like alongside this kind of shift in monetary policy I guess is um just the like incredible importance of insurance in this market in in in the market.

23:31 Uh so uh Helima Croft, the global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets told NPR that quote insurers and shipping companies have decided that it’s unsafe to traverse the straight of hormones and so this is really an insurance-driven shutdown. This seems to have caught the White House, she says, offguard. Um, can you explain sort of the rise of these professions that facilitate global trade and how things like, you know, cuz the apparently the first Trump administration created its own development finance corporation, the DFC, which was designed to provide political risk insurance in situations like this. analogous it feels like to me in in terms like like in terms of climate to the state of California offering its own insurance to make sure homes can still be developed when they can’t be insured in wildfire zones like what’s happening to just kind of keep the lifeboat afloat in terms of creating these new organizations that you know are about still I feel like managing volatility.

24:37 That’s a really good question. I’m not an expert in this field by any means, but it’s it’s super interesting to think about how this is like such become such an important um factor in in altering the kind of like the strategy of the White House as well, right? As you say, once the insurance backing was dropped, you know, for good reason. Iran said, “We will bomb those we’ll bomb those boats.” Um, suddenly the White House became much more active and take and sort of took this crisis as as a serious crisis. And I think it’s because again it it feels to me it seems to me like there’s a number of examples within the American context where you have a kind of dual power structure a dual power um maybe crisis and I think you know you have traditionally the sort of Wall Street type insurance brokerage firms who are there on site to negotiate and secure the trade of various kinds of commodities through supply chain.

25:34 that are, you know, mostly in their minds virtual, but of course actually are are riddled with supply risks. And those insurance companies have had a pretty stable relationship to the uh transfer of of value in various in various supply chains that are much more like you know dependent on the material flow of goods across the globe um since the 70s. And I think that you know in the the financial sector itself is among other things already in the 70s the growth of a series of professions that sort of through actuarial science are are also allowing for a you know um a a viable space of trade to to unfold at greater greater complexity both cardographically and financially.

26:21 uh but you know Trump one introducing his own financial structures to secure the trade of risky goods is in a way it’s sort of you know it’s it’s in a way analogous to the to the like you know the emergence of crypto that which also like took off under Trump one and and uh you know the white house is now virtually nothing more than uh you know a bunch of sort of like extremely despotic um fine completely [ __ ] idiotic but also powerful and in their own way rational cryptocrony uh fascists. And so the fact that now the American military can be used as as uh you know a way of securing the trade of risky goods and backing an insurance pledge um I think has to be treated in that context.

27:13 um you know the the the actual financial you know the actual like insurance sector is like they recognize the severe risk of this and I think they’re freaking out and then every day they hear Trump saying no no no it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay and this is one of the things that you’re really hearing in sort of financial editorials is is this is this very paradoxical uh phenomenon in which you know traders and insurance brokerages are saying we need to like it these commodities are now extremely risky It’s very unlikely that they will be delivered at the price negotiated and we don’t have the capacity to like because we no longer have a kind of diplomatic relationship to Iran.

27:55 uh you know we cannot we cannot guarantee the the the uh the delivery of these goods and then the same day you know and so then the price starts to go up because risks are accelerating and there’s a lot of anxiety on Wall Street and then the same day of course Trump is will say recognizing this phenomena oh it’s going to be fine we’re going to amp up pressure uh by the end of the week the war will be over etc and then literally the same day those prices will start to come back down again and like and so actually you that’s what I mean by this sort of context of dual full power is like at, you know, in really kind of comedic and also surrealist ways.

28:32 Like the the the reality of this situation told through the story of the price of oil is the reality is literally changing by the hour based on who which of these kind of two traditional sectors of the American power structure, you know, Wall Street now the White House, which are now more or less distinct. um you know who’s saying what when on what platform and uh and I think that’s that’s a sign of deep rot actually at the heart of capitalism. Yeah. Um the the voice in which the price and risk is being negotiated per hour you know is changing the actual capacity of the economy to accommodate these realities. Uh then I think there’s also another point here which is like strategically from a socialist perspective you know I don’t think it’s ever the right answer to say that these logistical spaces are are nothing more um than the worst version of capital writing the world in its own picture.

29:40 I think it’s actually the worst version of capital writing the world in its own image through the medium of labor. And so there’s always these like the you know labor relations are are are everywhere you look in logistical spaces sometimes often in the most dominated and exploitative forms no doubt but also therefore also you know most risky I’d say the real risk in the global economy told through the story of logistical spaces especially in the energy sector and oceanborn energy trade are the forms of labor that do and do not comply you know and so the other story that we’re not really hearing a lot about right now are like are just the hundreds of if not thousands of of workers on these tankers and cargo ships who are stuck with no rights um you know very similar to what we saw during COVID and you know that is also risky for insurance brokerages cryptofascists and Wall Street alike um the the non-compliant forms of labor and I think that’s a part of the story that we’re not seeing told in the liberal media right That’s interesting and I wonder if we can talk about it more here by thinking about like different kinds of commodities and the infrastructure a lot now.

30:56 We hear LG infrastructure is crucial in these ways. We hear about farmers and how they can’t access fertilizers. Um and we hear about helium if we’re looking deeply um and how the helium shortage will be a problem for Silicon Valley which requires uh requires them for semiconductors. Uh 10 to 20% of the helium market is party balloons. So there will be knock-on effects at that in that very sort of form of niche labor as it were. um you know like this is a logistical web that as you say has people in it and it’s important to remember the fact that there are people compliant or non-compliant that are stuck in these choke points as well and the fact of um you know food not being produced will mean people starve in a lot of places that people can’t get food can’t grow food that there will be shortfalls that cause people hunger and I was hoping we could chat about the fact that the flow of fertilizer is also like notably being halted uh by this war on Iran.

32:03 Um the street of Hormuz has been called the world’s busiest fertilizer corridor. Half of the global supply of ura, a nitrogen-based fertilizer and almost a third of the ammonia supply run through the straight. Um, and you know, the the heart of this problem is that like four billion people worldwide rely on food that is grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers or fertilizers that are made by breaking down natural or fossil gas and taking the hydrogen out of it, combining that with nitrogen to make ammonia and mixing it with CO2 to get ura. there’s no reserve apparently for this complex cocktail that gives us most of our food. What do you feel like it means? Because beyond the visibility problem, right?

32:56 Like if we want to deep drill a little bit deeper as it were and think about the labor and the the table, right, the farm-to-table problem. Like what does it mean that we’ve reached this point where there’s so many people worldwide, half of the people that are desperately relying on fossil fuels to create the kind of fertilizer that’s necessary to feed us? The the the quick literacy with which many commentators, but also sort of just in common conversation, just thinking with people about what, you know, what this is going to mean um for the price of your basket of goods um in 6 months. the amount of literacy we’re getting around supply chains in the past three weeks is kind of amazing.

33:40 um the fact that we’re just sort of having conversations casually about like how our food is grown and where the materials and you know required for that kind of biogeeochemistry come from and how they get to where we get get here where I am in the Netherlands and Western Europe which is one of the most highly mechanized automated agricultural sectors in the world uh which is largely dependent on nitrogen and phosphate based fertilizers which all of that stuff you know it comes from somewhere in the earth it is then made refined and and assembled somewhere else. And it’s true that I think um you know I’ve been paying close attention to one supply chain in the agricultural fertilizer uh trajectory that comes from the western Sahara on the one hand and Israel on the other both into the port of Amsterdam.

34:22 And I do think that’s actually part of this story is like there’s in in the Gulf region there are a number of big players in the fertilizer market and I think that’s you know the other kinds of players producing at scale industrial fertilizers for uh the African nations for India um and indeed all the way up to China. I think that’s a part of the supply chain that I know a little bit less of, but I know there’s people doing really good work on that. And I know that Israel is quite threatened economically by the dominance of the golf producers in the fertilizer market because they themselves one of the largest state-owned Israeli companies um which has one of its headquarters in the port of Amsterdam is also trying you know is a producer of of u of agricultural fertilizer and if I’m not mistaken the port out of which it is largely being shipped was bombed last week.

35:20 So I think that’s another part of the story as well indeed that you know we’re learning a lot a lot of us really quickly about how the food we eat is actually a commodity and as a commodity it is it is the result of various supply chains and value chains. Value chains that are sensitive and inextricably linked to the negotiation of international geopolitical power. power that is right now very uh aggressive and seeking to recreate the conditions of its own reproduction in ways that I don’t think we’ve seen so blatantly in the past 30 40 years and it’s doing so I think precisely because the amount of value that then is produced on the other end of these supply chains is not what it might have been in the 1970s or60s and so there’s a kind of constraint generally on the amount of surplus value available in the market and so all of a sudden the grounds by which these supply chains secure the production of those values have to be renegotiated through [ __ ] bombs and genocide.

36:12 And so I do think the question of food and fertilizer is it’s linked to it’s linked in ways that are you know really bizarre but also perfectly perfectly normal within a world shaped by capital which is unfortunately ours which it’s which is to say it’s linked in bizarre ways to the genocide in Palestine to Israel’s deep discomfort with its own relationship to its settler colonial power in the region a region that is framed by uh the rise of the Gulf States which you more or less are are politically compliant with the with the terms of Israel, but also economically are at odds, deeply at odds with Israel’s power in the region. Um, and so, you know, there’s a question about where these fertilizers are going to come from in 6 months if if those stock feeds uh deplete.

37:00 Um, there’s also questions about what happens to polities. Historically when the price of food becomes unaffordable there’s really you know real real you know any go to any political science department at any university you’ll know that um that the one of the deepest fears of power is is a is a hungry population um and and so you know those are all important questions sort of to be thinking about or risks I think we should be sort of attentive to in the coming months or you know outputs or or uh results of this of this imperial aggression that um in 6 months we might be looking at and I think then we should be saying okay we know that some of the causation is actually built already into this moment and the rationale that makes bombing Iran reasonable from a certain perspective.

37:55 Um my hope is that as in any crisis um as the kind of literacy which was already there frankly but as the literacy around how our food is made and the complexity of a global supply chain and the volatility built into those supply chains increases in the coming months. My hope is of course that people start to take care of one another and the the already existing vernaculars that we have in in places all over the world uh with regards to growing food, sharing food, food, community- based agriculture um and forms of subsistence that do not depend on global industrial supply chains uh become much more reasonable, much more common. And that the social infrastructures that flow from that basic as you say kind of you know um space of sociality the social infrastructures around the the sharing and growing of food um those social infrastructures get get stronger because I don’t know about you but uh living in in sort of western European or North American sort of middle class mostly white capitalist societies for the past 20 30 years Um it’s been sort of dog [ __ ] actually on on the terms of like sociality and hopes for social infrastructures that can be robust enough to sort of you know prevent the rise of fascism.

39:19 um it’s not been very hopeful, but maybe maybe this is exactly the kind of um the kind of trigger that allows for us to look around and say, “Okay, well, those supply chains are are not only based in settler colonial violence and displacement, but they’re also not benefiting anybody on the tail end except for the except for the, you know, the private equity firms that own these that own these infrastructures. What else could we do that maybe doesn’t depend on such violence and uh and exploitation? Yeah. No. Um I I think that’s such an important set of points, you know, this like like opening onto an alternative uh uh you know, model uh is really crucial in this moment where like it would be understandable to slip totally into despair um and and to imagine that there is no future other than capitalist self- emilation.

40:13 Um, you know, it reminded me at the end there, what you were saying reminded me of the show Plurabus, which is sort of still in the zeitgeist, this Apple TV show where there’s like this, you know, virus that effectively makes all of humanity one consciousness and it solves a lot of these ecological catastro catastrophic ecological trajectories. Uh there’s a a moment though where one of the people who are immune to that virus that remain an individual, the kind of central character, walks into a grocery store that has been emptied out and she’s suddenly in this kind of crisis, right? Because she can’t shop for food in this dog [ __ ] way that we’ve just like plasticine kind of way that we’ve become accustomed to and forces the hive mind to like restock the grocery store.

41:08 so she can experience this like familiar ritual of picking out her food. And like that model makes no sense. And this uh nightmarish dystopian alternative that the show presents you with um immediately still is is sensible enough, I guess, to recognize that that does not make any sense. It doesn’t make sense to buy your berries in a small plastic container. Um, but yeah, I mean this kind of leads into I mean I don’t want to take too much more of your time. U we’ve covered a lot of ground. There’s much much more to cover of course, but I think it might make sense to um you know tentatively close by thinking about this as a quote unquote demand destruction event.

41:52 That’s the name that some economists have given for the trigger that you describe. So this is something Paul Sanki said uh recently on this kind of manufactured crisis that it could become a demand destruction event where he says everyone loses. And what he means is that these ripple effects are going to uh especially hit vulnerable countries uh countries that are deeply dependent on uh liqufied natural gas for example and have been historically very opposed to like nuclear energy you know uh this quote from Sanki was really striking to me. He says the market has been seeing the unprecedented closure of the straight as an aberration whereas oil historians oil historians are viewing this as a structural change in the risk of oil.

42:44 You know if this disruption can change how whole countries think uh or people in these countries think about like energy security supply you know it’s still going to do so in ways that are it feels like inherently violent. Um, and the system you write has always fed on these moments of material rupture, delay, breakage, accidental and intentional interruptions that have act that are actively exploited usually to realize and extract value across the length of the supply chain. So, you know, I guess the last question is the hardest one, but it is the sort of most open-ended one. It is like about what futures we can perceive from this moment. Like, can it accelerate the clean energy transition?

43:28 Will it mean a consolidation of power in places like Russia? Should we go nuclear? Right. Um and and where is the place of finance in in either the you know forecasting of these futures or the foreclosing of these futures, you know. Yeah, nice question. And I think, you know, we should all be sitting around our kitchen tables together really thinking about this and coming up with strategies that make sense based on the indicators that we’re seeing to take care of one another and also to, you know, actually be building the kinds of worlds that we want because it is so self-evidently clear to everybody I speak to uh both in universities and adjacent that this is not the world that we want and the world that is given to us is being actively destroyed and the forms of very very soft social legitimacy it had if any at all is now completely gone.

44:14 Um and uh you know I I I think the fact there’s so much to say there’s so much there’s so many dimensions here that I think are difficult to like bracket to just answer that question. Um but you know I do I do think that first of all anytime you have a rapid increase in literacy around the basic determinations that shape social life under capitalism. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing because it’s a counter to the basic terms of alienation. It also very very provisionally uh though as a necessary step I think we this has always has got to happen it punctures the basic terms of commodity fetishism even if provisionally and something then has to be possible in the wake of those two things happening uh which also are compounded by the fact that most commodities that we depend upon will become unaffordable potentially um in the next six months or so and and then you know the fact that then we have basically like this multi multi-olar world with different kinds of voices that are more or less metadatologies, but those ideologies are also sort of interchangeable.

45:35 That is to say, they’re not particularly promising in the futures that they’re showing could be possible. um you know also and and are backed almost entirely by sort of like despotic tyrants who have virtually no social license on any metric from Trump to Putin. You know, I I think that also has to be conditioning a possibility that the former liberal accord can no longer secure. I think questions of civil society behaving normatively according to certain kinds of principles that are you know um that are self-evident that have due process backing them that are stem from a certain kind of tradition of political philosophy that begins and ends with the rationality of the market and the and the you know the the economic individual.

46:36 That’s all. Nobody believes in that [ __ ] anymore. I mean, some people will fight for it. Ezra Klein will fight for it. Sometimes it sounds hysterical. It sounds ridiculous. And I think that also is a good thing. You know, there’s a puncturing of a certain kind of veneer of, you know, like post-war capitalism that has been dying for a long time. And the only people fighting to keep it alive are [ __ ] pedophiles with an enormous amount of unearned wealth. They’re the only people fighting for it. And then the Peter Thiels of the world who are talking about the end times and you know the divinity of AI. It’s like [ __ ] off.

47:22 Nobody thinks that except for you because you’re the only ones who will benefit from that story. Nobody wants that world except the [ __ ] who benefit from it economically. And I think that’s clearer. And you know what we ought to be doing now to close that story to remove them from power to begin to build the social and political infrastructures that actually actually promise the kinds of universal care the universal inclusion into a world building project that actually I think could be meaningful can get people excited can wake us from this disgusting sort of like brain rot slumber you know that’s the hard work that we have to be building, but it is happening.

48:10 Of course, I think people I don’t think the story being told by these despotic AI cryptocrony [ __ ] is I don’t think anybody’s buying it. Uh unfortunately to to dethrone them to uh you know remove the forms of power that they have built their enterprise on from the executive is going to be difficult and maybe at times illegal. uh but in the meantime you know any moment when we have seen quote unquote robust sec uh successful anti-fascist struggle and we have seen that we actually do have examples of that successful anti-fascist liberation struggles it’s been they have been successful in France in Italy even in Germany they have been success in Spain they have been successful because of the forms of social infrastructures that allowed for a kind of deep care, a deep trust, a form of knowledge exchange, um a form of sharing, you know, the promise of some some kind of liberation, a story of liberation that motivates people.

49:28 And sometimes I look around and I think it’s hard to identify where we might build that social infrastructure now. But at the same time, I mean, I’m I’m just like a white guy, you know? I’m like a white guy professor. Like I just I my vocabulary around social infrastructures is inherently malnourished. I think it’s everywhere around us actually. And I think that it, you know, uh we have no choice but to build on those social infrastructures, resist these [ __ ] build something that we want that actually benefits everybody and get these guys out. Yeah, I really appreciate you articulating with so much just like real anger. I think like you know anger can be a gift in this moment where you know we’re being sold a bill of goods.

50:10 We’re being presented with futures that as you’ve written like few of us want anymore, right? This more and more and more this endless pursuit of more feels incredibly hollow. Um and even yeah like eco-fascistic um there’s no future for that. So yeah I you know really lovely to talk to you and to hear this kind of reverberating rage in this moment honestly. Um I think we need more of it to be honest. So thank you so much for for speaking with me today. My pleasure and thank you as always for creating the space and the amazing work you do and it it really a lot of people appreciate it. Keep it up.