He's an activist and also author of the classic
book Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
More recently, the author of Touching the
Jaguar, which is available now.
John, great to have you back.
It's wonderful to be with you again, David.
Thank you.
I love your show.
You do great stuff.
So I appreciate being on your show.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, listen, I wanted there's so many things
I want to ask you about.
One is from your perspective.
If Corona virus has served as a sort of way
to test the economic system that we have,
which you know so much about and have have
critiqued in so many interesting ways over
the years, what has Corona virus exposed about
the underlying reality of our economic system?
Well, you know, to answer that, I just a little
story here that a number of years ago, I took
a group of people, you know, I take people
to the shamans of Latin America on trips.
And we were with a lady shaman high in the
Andes of Ecuador.
Catch your speaking shaman with a wonderful
name of marijuana.
Marijuana, a young barela.
And I was translating.
Someone asked, hey, marijuana, how do we save
the earth?
And she laughed and she said, you know, the
earth is in danger, but we are a bunch of
other species we take with us.
Then she pointed up at this huge sacred volcano
that lives near her house, that hovers over
her house.
It was hovers over a house called him by border.
And she said a few years ago, 20 years ago,
that that volcano was covered with a massive
icecap.
It isn't anymore.
Mother Earth is is twitching where like so
many fleas, if we get to be too much of a
nuisance, she'll just shake us all off.
And she's twitching now.
She's showing us the glaciers are melting.
And, you know, I thought I thought, David,
over the years, every time there's been a
major hurricane or fires in Australia, in
California or wherever.
And what these once in 100 year events that
happened every year or so now I remember put
Maria Juana said, but you know that and that
they've been sending us a message that this
death economy doesn't work.
We've got to create a new system.
But we've we've taken that as a local thing.
So if I survive a hurricane, I expect outside
the outside world to come to help me bring
water, food, etc..
The Corona virus has taught us that there
is no outside world.
This is global.
Everybody on the planet is being impacted.
And we're seeing, you know, that people can
see stars over over Shanghai and Los Angeles
these days.
It's having a huge impact with all of our
lives are changing.
We don't like change.
I don't really like change.
But we've all been forced to change radically.
And we've we're coming to understand that
maybe some of those changes are for the better
that actually make life more interesting,
more fun.
So when you worked as a self-described economic
hitman, you were able to essentially I mean,
I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by
saying profiting from some of the underlying
fragility of the system that we have, which
a lot of people may not really see as fragile.
Do you agree that Corona virus has exposed
that even stable seeming economies are actually
far more fragile in a matter of just a couple
of weeks can fall apart very quickly?
It's absolutely exposed that it's also exposed
the tremendous inequalities that that our
system is filled with, you know, the racial
discrimination, the gender discrimination,
all this all these inequalities are really
coming to the surface.
So I think the corona virus is showing us
there's a shadow side.
And in fact, the way many governments have
reacted to it has shown us our shadow side,
too, and shown us that the old system isn't
working.
We don't want to return to normal.
We want to create a new new normal.
That's what we call a life economy.
And so can you talk a little bit about as
specifically as you want, what those changes
would be?
I mean, one of the fundamental realities of
the economy we have is that being proactive
is fundamentally not encouraged, because proactive
just means you're spending money on stuff
you might not actually need to spend money
on, essentially.
Right.
You're spending money now for something that
may happen.
But but it may not.
What are the changes that would need to be
made in order to have what you call a life
economy, what some might call a more sort
of human centered capitalism or some other
term that would be applied to it?
Well, yeah, David, it's a great deal of the
book touching the Jaguar centers around the
idea, the truth, that human reality is molded
by human perceptions.
I learned that when a shaman saved my life
in 1969 deep in the Amazon.
But it's also the basis of modern psychotherapy,
of of of quantum physics, of marketing, of
advertising, of corporate policy.
I perception's control our reality.
This death economy.
What we what many economists are referring
to is the death economy, because it is consuming
in the short term, the resources upon which
it depends on the long term.
It's exhausting and it's destroying the environment
as we know it.
And it's based on one perception and that
is that businesses have the go, must have
the goal of maximizing short term profits
for a few investors, really, regardless of
the social and environmental cost.
And that's taken us down this very, very dangerous
road.
So what we really need to change is that perception.
We need to touch that Jaguar.
And I'm touching that all the time.
It's the Jaguar that that keeps us locked
in.
The fear that that changes is dangerous.
And, you know.
Don't want to we don't want to change.
But what we need to do is change that goal,
that perception of that the goal needs to
be instead of maximizing short term profits
to maximize long term benefits for humans
and and the Internet and all of nature.
The I part of that.
I mean that this critique.
So, you know, in the business cycle, it's
about what was your quarterly profit?
What did you do for the year?
What was earnings per share?
The political system is also based around
this, right.
In the sense that if members of Congress are
up for reelection every two years, if the
president's up for reelection every four,
you're essentially constantly campaigning.
And this also at a systemic level encourages
what can you justify that you did in the last
six months rather than how did you improve
the country for the next 20 or 30 years?
Right.
And that's that's exactly what needs to change.
So so let's, you know, encourage businesses
to invest, to pay investors to invest in things
that clean up pollution that regenerate destroyed
environments that recycle, that come up with
new technologies.
You know, we've got a long way with wind and
solar, but in a way, those are both in their
infancy.
Let's move beyond that was let's channel the
air into forms of energy.
This there's so much that we can do.
And we've learned how to be creative during
this corona virus.
You know, as an example, over 50 percent of
your tax dollars and mine, if you're a young
American citizen, go to the military in the
discretionary budget.
And our military is doing some crazy things
like building more aircraft carriers and missiles
and things that the Russians and Chinese are
not focusing on at all.
They're focusing on cybernetics and they're
focusing on technologies.
I imagine if if if some of that money that
we're currently paying Raytheon, General Dynamics,
to use to build these systems that are basically
obsolete.
Instead, we put that money into encouraging
these companies and entrepreneurs and other
companies to mine all the plastic that's floating
around in the oceans and all the oil that's
leaked around oil get gas stations all over
the world and at oil drilling sites.
And there's so much more there's so many,
many things I like that we can pay people
to do.
We're talking about a full employment economy
here.
We're talking about a life economy.
What we're talking about, instead of making
those widgets and stuff, as you've mentioned
earlier, that people don't really need.
And in a way, we probably aren't even really
what except we're given the impression, hey,
if you don't wear the shirt.
Nobody is going to want to date you.
You know, this impression, this is perception
that's created our reality.
We need to create another reality that what
we really want to invest in are the things
that will make life better for all of us and
for future generations.
Right.
I mean, my framework, as I you know, I don't
necessarily need to label everything, but
I think an ideology that pretty well describes
my views would be social democracy, which
is that there are areas where I'm fine with
the market directing resources as long as
the market is well regulated and it's a fair
market.
And the government, as you say, is saying
there are some things that are bigger than
profit.
So, for example, cleaning up the oceans may
not be particularly profitable in the way
that we would measure it in the short term,
but the long term value of it to humans is
such that that should be taken outside of
the market forces.
Is that more or less that the ideology or
applying it is?
David.
And I think we have to look at the definition
of what what a successful.
Statistically, the measurement, as you as
you pointed out, GDP is the standard measurement
tool and it's a lousy one.
And I just got that when I was a an economic
hit man, that I thought that because I was
taught in business school that if you invest
a lot of money in infrastructure and in poor
countries that have resources, your corporations,
why you use those resources as collateral,
that helps everyone, because you can show
that when you do that, the GDP grows.
Well, I came to see over time that that's
really only helping the very wealthy people
because GDP is very skewed toward the wealthy.
So if you take, for example, the United States
with three individuals, have as much wealth
as half to half the population of our country.
If those three individuals made 10 percent
return on their investment last year and half
the population lost three percent, we're still
short.
Growth of GDP give something a little under
five percent.
So the measuring rods that we're using do
not tell us anything about true prosperity
in a country.
They tell us about the prosperity of the wealthy,
the big businesses and those people who own
those big businesses.
And so we really need to change that whole
way of how we look at what's successful and
measure success much more in the long term
and how it impacts everybody, not just the
big owners of big businesses.
What are some of the metrics you would suggest,
including I recently read the Charles Wieland's
book Naked Economics, and there's things I
like it and and things I disagree with.
But one of the things he talks about is we
should at minimum, if we want to evaluate
how an economy is doing, we can include GDP.
We should look at unemployment.
We should look at inequality.
We should look at poverty.
We should look at trade balance.
Although individually, none of these metrics
tells us everything we need to know.
They can start to paint sort of a picture.
What do you think of those?
What would you add?
What what would you be looking at?
Well, there's so many things along those lines,
I mean, we should we should be measuring the
value of somebody doing housework at home.
The woman the man doing doing housework, taking
care of the kids, the value of people making
music.
You know, you're in in Boston, there's a lot
of amazing musicians in all over New England
that are making a living doing it.
They're going to make a living doing something
else.
And then in the evenings, they go off and
play their music.
This is a huge value, the same as writers
are artists.
There's so many things labor should be should
be considered much more valuable than it's
considered.
A labor of all kinds are health care workers
and on and on and on.
There's so many measures.
One of the most important ones is that we
don't include externality.
So when an oil company drills for oil in a
country, let's say Ecuador, where I was a
peace component here and that's been a large
part of Ecuador's environment's been destroyed
by Texaco now Chevron, that they don't have
to pay for that.
That's not included in the price of oil that
they charge.
They just dumped the waste.
They don't have to pay for the cleanups or
all the people that suffer.
But that's true throughout all of businesses.
It's not just the oil companies.
There's all these externalities.
They should be included in the cost.
And when you start including them, you see
that that that other things have have a great
deal more value.
Is that the biggest failing of markets, if
you had to pick what it is that they'd really
don't, even though efficient markets hypothesis
folks tell us that markets do account for
externalities that they really don't, and
that's where you need government to step in
your area.
Any, any any accountant will tell you that
the extra and many of them are not included
at all.
You know, the people that are used in sweatshops
overseas are now a lot of it's by, you know,
the people that answer their telephone calls
and other countries.
Their health is not paid for.
It's not taken into account.
If they get sick, they get fired.
Yes.
And that's ALOUSI.
That's a terrible system.
So.
So, yeah, that certainly is a starting point.
But I think the most important thing that
we all need to understand is that the basis
of the system, the assumption is based on
this perception that you must maximize short
term profits regardless of the social and
environmental cost.
And this means that a CEO is actually given
the mandate to do whatever it takes to maximize
profits.
And that may mean destroying the environment,
destroying the resources upon which his company
depends in the long run in order to make short
run profits at exploiting labor, corrupting
politicians.
And now it means, you know, the companies
have learned how to corrupt politicians legally
because as we all know, nobody gets elected
to a big public office in the United States
without huge amounts of money.
And basically it's generated by corporations
one way or another.
And and these people are offered incredible
high paying jobs as consultants, a lobbyist,
whatever, when they when they leave politics.
So so we've got this system where where CEOs
are basically forced by the investors, by
Wall Street, by their owners to do whatever
it takes to maximize short term profits.
And that's proven to be insanity.
It's taken us down this course.
Caused so many problems.
When you come right down to it, David, the
Corona virus, the racial discrimination, climate
change, income inequality, extinct species
extinction.
Those are all problems.
But they're not the disease.
They're not the problem.
They're symptoms of the disease.
And the disease is an economic.
It's really a governmental, social economic
system that we can call a death economy that
just plain isn't working anymore.
It had worked.
It gave us amazing science and medicine and
art and so many things.
But it's reached its limits.
It's time is over.
It's time to move into a new system, a life
economy.
The book is Touching the Jagwar Now available.
We've been speaking with the book's author,
John Perkins.
John, always great having you on.
I so appreciate your time.
Thank you so much, David.
And I would just like to point out that the
subtitle of the book is Transforming Fear
into Action to Change Your Life in the World.
And yes, there's a whole process that people
can go through on a daily basis or a weekly
basis for about ten minutes that guide each
individual, whether you're a carpenter or
a plumber or a radio show host or a writer
like me, that that'll take you down this earth
to transform your life in the world.
