How Black Lives Truly Matter | Magatte Wade | EP 271

Your whole thing about the climate change—oh gee, climate change! I'm not even gonna go and argue the scientific argument. I'm not. Your solution right now is to tell me we stop all carbon emission, we stop all fossil fuels right now. Right now. But, Jordan, what does that mean? If we did that, what does that mean? If we did that, it means— it means poor people will freeze in the dark and bake in the sun while they starve! Thank you! You just signed a death warrant for 1.3 billion people, of them 1 billion black people. And you just told me that black lives matter! So even when you come to climate, you're full of it.

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Hello everyone! I'm pleased today to be talking to Ms. Magat Wade, who's known for advocating for a prosperous, innovative Africa through entrepreneurship and economic freedom. She is the founder of Skinisskin.com, a skincare company that manufactures in Africa and sells products in the US. As a practicing and successful African entrepreneur, she can bring her experience to the table when discussing obstacles to doing business in Africa as compared to the US. Magat has concluded that those who purport to care about black Africans should support free markets and affordable and reliable energy, including fossil fuels. Her forthcoming book, The Heart of a Cheetah, available soon through MagatWade.com, will provide detailed suggestions for how to accelerate progress for Africans. She is a blunt straight talker who has little patience for the anti-capitalist pieties favored by many so-called allies of black people. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. It's a pleasure being here. So, let's start with a bit of your history. Let's talk about your company, where it's founded, how you managed to establish it, and the sort of obstacles you faced.

Sure! Whenever someone asks me, “My God, tell me about your story,” I take you back to where I was born—in Senegal, the West Coast of Africa. My story started when my parents, right around age two, decided that it was time for them to seek better pastures, to afford us a better life back home. That's when they made the journey that so many Africans make—to provide for a better life for their families. It was at the time when they decided to migrate from Senegal to Europe. Unfortunately, many people have made the same journey before them and after them; many, unfortunately, did not make it under as good circumstances as they did, because they could do it in a legal way. This means you can take legal pathways and routes that are not as dangerous as others.

So, my parents became economic migrants like many other Africans before them and after them. They went to Europe and, of course, managed to build a very good life for themselves. They left me behind to be with my grandmother, and right around age seven, it was time for me to be reunited with the family unit that my father and mother had constituted. It was decided that I was going to see Germany.

Jordan, I will never forget when I first set foot on that continent in that country. It was my first time ever leaving my village, and I just remember being like, “Wait a second! How come they have that and we don’t?” I was looking around at all of these paved streets. Compare that to unpaved streets back home. Walking around, my feet are always dusty, ashy. I always have to wash them back when I go home. How come they have that?

Back home, to take a shower, my grandma would have to heat a pot of hot water, put it on the stove. And when I say stove, it’s not that you go into your kitchen and you turn the stove and the burner comes on. No, no. It's like she establishes a little stove off the ground, just like when you go camping—you know, where you put the charcoal? She puts charcoal in, has to get it going, and then puts the pot of water on it, then it boils. We bring a bigger bucket, put that hot water into it, mix some cold water to it, and then one of my cousins, the stronger one, would drag it to the shower area.

There, with the smaller pot, I would then go on to have my shower. Compare that to Germany! My mom says, “My God, time to shower!” I'm like, “So, you mean I jump in there and I turn the knobs on, you know, this one, this one, and then the water comes down at the temperature I need it?” And all of that took a blink of an eye to happen? Are you kidding me?

When you walk into the stores, everything is accessible! In the summer heat, in the winter, it's just this ease of life. I think that's what, as a little girl, I was seeing—the ease of life! What are you talking about? Eventually, that question of a little girl, “How come they have this and we don’t?” became, with time, “How come some countries like mine—Senegal and other many African nations—are poor while nations like the United States, France, are rich? How come? How come some nations are poor while others are rich?”

It’s a question that never left me, and it defined my life. That question defined my life.

Well, so let's walk through that because that is a crucial question. I read a book a while back by a Harvard professor emeritus called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and it addresses that very question. One of the surprising conclusions he comes to is that a huge part of what makes some countries rich and others poor is the presence of an almost universal trust in matters of trading. For him, I think his name was Landes, the most valuable natural resource is actually trust. I would say also a bit of lack of envy. With envy, it makes it impossible for anyone to have anything, because everyone else is jealous and angry about it.

And that's one of the pathways, let's say, to wealth. What have you concluded? I mean, you've been thinking about this your whole life ever since you went to Germany when you were seven, right?

Right! So, I've been thinking about it my whole life, looking for answers. As I was growing up and moving around, I heard it from some people who with a straight face will invoke the IQ theory or “Darling, it's not your fault.” You see? Because in a world where being black, there is a theory out there that you're just not as smart as white people. I've gone to conferences where I've heard there were panels and people talking, making that case.

I heard people say, “Oh darling, it's just because, you know, malnutrition, you know, you guys are just not well-nourished.” Others said, “Oh, if only you had access to greater education.” I’m like, “Go say that to the countless young Africans in my country, Senegal.” The joke is: the first job of a graduate is to be a street seller!

How many of these people on the street—you see them hustling in between cars in a very dangerous way under the hot sun—and you ask them, “What did you study?” And they try to tell you, “I have an MBA in finance and math,” and they're right there doing what they're doing. I was just talking to a person in eSwatini, it used to be called Swaziland. I mean, beautiful math background! I said, “What are you doing now?” Because I'm considering hiring her remotely. And she said, “Well, I'm raising chickens.” All she can do right now is raise chickens!

So if you're going to make it about education, go talk to those people first and then come back and talk to me about it! Others say, “Oh, maybe if I give you some free shoes, if I give you some shoes, you'll be better off.” Tom's Shoes, buy some shoes so that others will have a better life! All of this nonsense, Jordan! I've been hearing it throughout time. But guess what? None of them made any sense to me, because if you’re gonna make it about, let's say, even use the IQ, which I should not even give a minute to, how come the same person, same background, same education—let's take even my parents—all of a sudden they make it to Europe and voila, they can manifest their greatest potential?

So I’m starting to think maybe it’s not about this person. Maybe there’s something else that’s not about this person per se in this situation. And then I’m like, “Maybe it has to do with the place they get to be in or not.”

So that was starting to brew in my head. While all of this is happening, I’m living my little life. From Germany, a couple years later, my family decided, “We’re going to move to France.” If we’re going to stay in Europe for many reasons because, you know, France used to be the colonizer. Senegal is an ex-colony of France. After my business school in France, I decided that France was going to be too small for my ambitions. I’ve got to get out of here! I don’t want to be in a country where you have to be, if you make it to the right school, your kids are right behind, for the right amount of time, and then you can hope maybe for some type of promotion!

No, that was not for me. I’m not saying that everybody does that, but it was just not a good option for me. So, I looked around, and I could go anywhere literally as I wanted. I thought about the United States—this one country where anyone can become anything they want as long as they put in the work and if that's what they desire to do.

So I came to the US, and when I came to the US, I was first a headhunter in finance in Silicon Valley in the heydays of dot-com. I used to go to Netflix when Netflix was this tiny office in San Jose—Google, when most people didn't even know how to pronounce Google, was one little building in Silicon Valley. There I got to see all of this entrepreneurship happening.

And so, Jordan, this is where at some point, something happened. I’m taking a little detour here, but this detour is so important, because it will get you to my answer. It’s right there. While I was in Silicon Valley, I was pretty much steeped into what they call the ecosystem of the entrepreneur, and just this idea of two people getting together—they have an idea, writing it on the back of a napkin.

This was it! It sounds cliche, but I lived it, I’ve seen it. They go to a lawyer to start their business, to start the company legally, find some investors, and this whole ecosystem that comes around them. I started to be like, “Wow, this is rather amazing!” I think it’s in Silicon Valley, but I discovered the magic of entrepreneurship is to create something out of nothing. To me, that was so powerful—so powerful! I was living it in my bones. And from there—

But as you pointed out, there are a lot of moving parts in that system, aren’t there?

Absolutely! You need people who have an entrepreneurial vision and who think of themselves that way. You need a group of people around you, like that, to talk to. Then you need early-stage financers, who are often friends and family, who are willing to contribute time, effort, money. Then you need later-stage financing. There is a whole—and the ability to work with customers, the willingness to market and sell. All of these pieces have to fall into place before anything like prosperity can come about.

Okay, so you encountered this in Silicon Valley. What did that do to you?

Yeah, so I encountered it. But just before you go, when you were talking about the early investment in your family and your friends, we like to call that the three F’s: family, friends, and fools! So the fools are very useful there.

In any case, here I am in Silicon Valley, and I was doing extremely well for myself. At age 25, I was making six figures, my home with a pool in one of the most expensive zip codes in America. I say it more for what can happen in this country! I could never have dreamed of such a life at such a young age, being who I am back home in France.

So right there, you know, the American dream does exist! It was real for me, an immigrant from Africa. But you know, Jordan, with all of that success…

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One day I lost it. One day I was driving down Big Sur, one of the most beautiful roads we have, if you ask me, in the world—with Highway One. Highway One, man, it’s something, eh? It’s so beautiful, you cannot not believe in God when you’re on that path. Okay? That’s how beautiful it is, especially if you’re taking hairpin corners in a convertible.

Yes, yes, absolutely! And you know, Jordan, it was one of those days when the sun was shining, the ocean was beautiful. I was listening to some Houston Dozier in my car, great musician, and just feeling so much gratitude and also so much pride in myself for what I was able to accomplish and so much gratitude for everyone and everything that helped me get there.

As many times, just like it happens every time, I got to that moment of bliss. Right away, my mood turned; everything became dark as it usually does. Because why? Because right at that moment, I started thinking about the people I left back home.

It happened many times throughout my life. Because how else do you feel when you’re growing up and you hear your parents or you read the news, you hear the news, and it’s saying that a body dropped from a plane somewhere above England because someone decided to migrate, right? To Europe for a better life, just like my parents did. But they did it again under better conditions.

They thought it would be a good idea to hide into the landing gear, but somewhere above London, above England, the body falls! Or they opened the plane, and they find the cargo section of a plane—a frozen body. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to hide in the cargo section of a plane, but no one told them it gets so cold up there!

Or, you know, this boat just tipped—this little fisherman’s boat just tipped up somewhere along between the coast of Senegal and Spain, which is the first entry into Europe for these people. But the boat tipped over; it’s not equipped to make this journey. And in the boat, you have babies, you have young people, primarily young people, and these are some of our most entrepreneurial people—the people that we need to build the prosperity back home.

Where are we? Now lying at the bottom of the ocean, serving as fish food! How else would you feel if for years growing up these are the stories that you hear?

And yet, why do you—why do you think your conscience bothered you at that point? I mean you had been—you had been—you come to the States, you become successful, you had this beautiful day. And so why all of a sudden do you suppose your thoughts turned to the people that had been left behind, so to speak?

I mean, it wasn’t your fault that they were in that state, you know.

Yeah, I know it wasn’t my fault for sure! It took me a long time to accept that it wasn’t my fault. So what happened that day is I no longer was able to play the schizophrenia game that I played my whole life. I was no longer able to—the coping mechanism that I had developed up until then was, as soon as I started thinking about it, I’d tell myself, “This is not your fault! You have a life to live! It is not fair.”

I would tell myself all of these stories, and then I would just shrug it under the rug, act as if it. But that day, for some bizarre reason, it just no longer worked, and I lost it. I lost it! The feeling was so violent that my body jerked, literally! And it’s a miracle that I’m talking to you because my body jerked so much with the steering wheel, and I was gonna end up down below in that ocean! But for some reason, it didn’t.

As soon as I found a spot to stop, I stopped and I got out of the car. Something major had happened. I still don’t explain what it was, but at that time, Jordan, I surrendered. I surrendered! I said, “God, from here on I’m showing up, and I promise you, I want you to help me make sure that every breath I take from here on is gonna go toward the bettering of my continent!”

I just made that deal with God. I said, “This is what I’m showing up for. I present and I offer myself. This is why.”

Did you think—why did you think this was between you and God, so to speak?

Because it was so big! It was so big! And it was so big! He’s the only one that I trusted to help me with that—the only one. Most importantly, I had no idea what to do about it! But I knew that faith would be my best ally in this until I could figure it out.

Well, faith sometimes is the courage to do difficult things, you know?

What? It's a very good way to look at it and maybe that's what happened that day, because that day I was definitely not—let me say I was not capable, at least, of being a coward about it anymore! Because my whole life, I was pretty cowardish about it.

If you think about it, why? Why cowardly? Why would you say that about yourself?

I don’t know. It’s just because the idea that in order to no longer feel the pain, I would have to push it under the rug—I don’t find that very courageous! But I didn’t know what else to do because otherwise, the pain was just gonna drag me into places that were not safe or healthy for me until I knew how to get into those dark spaces.

Right? Which, by the way, I learned afterwards because afterwards, I used knowledge to my rescue. Understanding really helped settle everything.

Yeah, well, it is a terrible thing! It is a terrible thing to look on the poverty and the corruption, let's say, of an entire continent and in some sense the entire world, and to contrast that with your own prosperity. To realize, at least in principle, that you have a moral duty to do something about it.

That's exactly! That’s no trivial undertaking!

That's exactly! Okay, so you’re on the side of the road, and you've pulled over, and you've had this realization. So continue.

Yeah, so I pulled on the side of a road. I had this realization and eventually, I said, “From here on, this is the path I’m taking, and I want you to help me. So show me the way. I will be a good disciple.”

These things started to change with. It started with a few months later, my husband, who was French, and I talked about him in the past tense, because poor soul, he passed away shortly after all of this. We barely had maybe a year together, I didn't know that then.

But I took him home to Senegal to see the place I came from, and there he was asking me about this hibiscus beverage I’d been telling him about forever! You know how it is when you’re not from the same culture, and the first thing you teach whatever is what you love about your respective cultures? That’s how a better culture is born out of that mixing!

In any case, we were there, and he said, “Where I want to try this bisap you’re talking about?” So everywhere we go at the restaurant or within my friends’ or family homes, they bring you this plate of Coke, Fanta, Pepsi. And I'm like, “Where is the hibiscus? Girl, where have you been?”

So basically, what happens is, what has happened? Anybody who feels like he's a somebody drinks the western soda pop brands—the ones I just talked about. And at the bottom of the pyramid, which is the bulk of the people, they drink knockoff brands. And in between, the traditional indigenous drink that we used to have is squeezed out, and with them, the livelihood of the women who are primarily the ones who used to grow the raw material, which is the hibiscus.

So now these women are leaving the countryside, packing themselves in the cities, begging on streets, maybe prostitution, working in people’s homes where they’re being treated horribly.

So anyway, this cycle of poverty is just keeping going! I thought I was done being depressed about the situation back home. I fell into a literal depression! For three days, my body was not willing to obey me anymore. It was just like I’m done! I was so disappointed with the world! Because now here I am not only do I have my people now dying, but now I also have my culture dying!

Because my hibiscus drink, which is called Bisap—the juice of Taranga. Taranga means hospitality—that is what the people of Senegal are known for, so this is a part of our cultural identity; yet it is not on that plate that they brought me! When I think of a plate, I think of a world stage. I think of the drinks on it; I think of the cultures of the world that matter so much, but they’re not there, and that’s a big problem! Because if you’re not there, it means your culture is disappearing!

And if your culture disappears, the only time people might remember me in the future is in museums!

Why do you use the metaphor of the table?

You know what? I never thought about it! I don’t know; it’s just something that came to my mind when I saw that! I saw that plate, I saw the drinks on it! It was just our world was right there! The plate!

So, it’s a divine symbol, right? That’s an ancient divine symbol. That, in some sense, the collective table—the table of the gods—to have a seat at the table is to be part of the conversation and to be part of the elect, in some real sense! You know, to be welcomed in with hospitality and to share and to distribute and to mutually enjoy.

That’s a very, very old idea. It’s very, very striking to me that that was the metaphor that sprung to mind because we want everyone to come to the table, don’t we? That’s the plan!

We do! And that’s the plan! Absolutely!

That’s a very good point; I never made the connection, but now that you're bringing it up, it makes perfect sense, actually. Interesting!

Okay, yeah! That’s for sure; that’s for sure!

Interesting! Well, you know, you started that part of our conversation with a bit of an introduction to a religious experience that you had while you were driving, and the fact that that table metaphor popped up there makes perfect sense from a symbolic perspective.

You know, you also want the table to be laden with the finest produce, right? You want it to be a place of plenty and generosity as well as hospitality, and an invitation to everyone to enjoy! That’s all part of life more abundant!

That’s right! Bringing everyone to the economic table is a way of moving forward towards that goal!

That’s right! Okay, so the hibiscus tank—that really bothered you!

Yes! So, I got ill for three days! I was just shut down. I could not move anymore; I was pissed off! I was disappointed; I was sad; I was depressed! My husband was like, “My God! This anger of yours—it's energy! But it's negative energy! You've got to find a way to turn it around into positive energy when it becomes inspiration, and then you use it to fuel yourself!”

With that, and this old concept I grew up with of “criticized by creating”—it’s Michelangelo’s, but that’s very much the rules under which I was raised. I don’t need you to have a right answer, you know? My grandma or my father would say, “I need to know that you have thought of alternatives.” They don’t have to be the right ones, but I want to know that you have thought of the right solutions! Because when you’re in solutions mode, you are no longer a victim. It’s a completely different mindset!

I think that’s more what they’re doing.

You know, the other thing that’s interesting about that too, I think, is that first of all, I think that’s a good rule of thumb. But also, people have problems, and they’re often annoyed and oppressed by the fact they have problems. But first of all, you don’t have all the problems in the world! You have your problems!

And the problems that bother you, and you might ask yourself, “Well, why do those problems bother you and not other problems?” And I would say maybe it’s because in those problems you actually find your destiny! And those are often things you don’t want to look at! Like you didn’t want to look at the poverty of your continent! No bloody wonder! Who wants to look at that?

But it was something that bothered you! It turned out that was your problem! And if you faced it, well then you figured out on that road that that was your destiny!

Properly thinking, properly speaking, yes! And it was not always easy for me to recognize that or to see it as clearly as I do today! But yes, if I did not follow that, if I didn’t pursue that question, I would not be sitting here talking to you right now, because there would be no reason for it!

So we’ve criticized by creating! Turn this anger, this energy into positive energy, into inspiration! Then I’m starting to come back to life! I’m like, you know what? Yeah! If I’ve got a problem with this situation, I gotta fix it myself!

I’m gonna start a company! I’m gonna start a brand, and we’re going to sell it first in the U.S. because I’m going to do reverse colonialism on my people! If the only time they can respect something is if the West has said, “Oh, now we welcome it!” then I'm going to trick you the same way, hoping that the second generation, the next generation that comes after you, hopefully for them, won’t need that type of validation because they were born in a world in which they were just fine— in a world in which they were the it people!

Right? So, this is a detour I need to take—let’s take it! So with that, I just became very galvanized. So we started this business, and my whole thing was I’m going to start a brand; I don’t want to start an NGO telling people you should respect Africans or you should respect this ingredient or these poor women!

No! Build a brand! Because brands have such a power to influence culture! I was dealing here with a cultural issue first and foremost! And so build a company! Hire people back home! Make the brand pop in the U.S., and then you have your virtual circle where jobs are created back home and your culture also takes its rightful place at the table!

And that’s exactly what we did! I started this company in my kitchen, and eventually, by the time you look around, you have on my board Roger Enrico, the ex-chairman of Pepsico. You have a German gentleman who started Sobe, that was sold to Pepsi, and then also Adwala, which was sold to Coca-Cola.

So all of these who’s who of the business of the beverage world were sitting at my table helping me run this company! Again, something like this I could never have done this if I was not in this country!

So this is where we are now. But you know what, Jordan, then what happened there? I was starting to get my answers. Because as we built this company, the sister company was based in Senegal, and it was mostly for the supply chain side. Then another sister company was built in the U.S. for more marketing, R&D, sales, and sales channels—that’s what a sister company was doing.

Would you know that as I was building this company, at least back then, it would take you a quick 20 minutes, maybe faster depending on how fast you type, to establish an LLC online? Compare that to almost two years it took me to legally register the sister company in Senegal!

Right? So let’s just focus on that for a minute!

Okay, so you're comparing 20 minutes to two years, right? So then you have to ask yourself—and I'm sure you have—how much time and energy do people have? It's not an easy thing to set up a business! It's a daring thing! And there's a tremendous amount of risk involved. You’ll probably fail!

That’s the risk! Fast! Now, you might succeed beyond your wildest dreams! But if you exhaust all your hard-working and entrepreneurial people by forcing them to jump through idiot hoops non-stop, all that you do is keep people absolutely impoverished!

So we've got a key issue with regard to poverty right here, which is the presence of a stunning amount of unnecessary red tape! So how is it, do you think, that the U.S. has managed to make it so that you can register a company in 20 minutes, whereas in Senegal it takes two years?

You know, I read a great book called The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto!

I was gonna bring him up!

Yeah, yeah, De Soto is great, man! That’s a great book! He points out that in some of the so-called developing countries, especially the more corrupt ones, not only does it take multiple years to do anything at all legally, but by the time you jump through all the hoops to do it legally, the laws have been changed so that what you do is no longer valid!

That is absolutely the case! So you’re asking me a very good question! And the way I will go about that is there, I’m gonna try to take this opportunity to debunk a myth! Because this whole conversation with you, I take it as my opportunity to debunk so many myths about African poverty, hence what would it take for Africans to build African prosperity!

Because I'm not interested in alleviating poverty! I’m not interested in just like, “Oh, can I be a little bit less poor?” No, I want to be prosperous! I think my people, like anybody else, should be prosperous!

Yes! And we should also point out, let’s point out very clearly, since we're debunking myths, that that’s actually a high ethical aim! We want life more abundant for everyone! We don’t want to limp along, lowering our carbon footprint, barely scraping the surface. We want people to be prosperous! And free!

And life to be abundant! And everyone to have enough educational resources and to thrive! That’s the ethical aim!

That’s right! Human flourishing, to me, starts and it ends with it! Human flourishing!

Now, what it means for somebody to flourish is going to be up to them to decide! But should everybody have access to human flourishing? You betcha!

So here I am going back to the question of why the U.S. and Africa are not. And then Hernando de Soto, making the case that oftentimes corrupt countries make it so hard—so there I, the myth that I debunk is so often I talk to people and they’re like, “Oh, Africa, these countries, this region is so corrupt,” and I’m like, “Yes! My country might be corrupt almost as bad as Chicago!” You know what I mean by that?

So corruption is everywhere! But the way it manifests itself is different from place to place! I would like to argue on the order and the relationship between corruption and these laws that Hernando de Soto was talking about. The more corrupt and the more you have to jump through hoops and everything, I like to argue that corruption is a cause of senseless laws, is a cause of too many laws.

And also senseless laws! When you have those together, then you breed corruption!

Give you an example! This is another example that we had to go through. My current company is a skincare company, Skinny Skin. So for that, we have to import some ingredients, because if you don’t have them, you need your inputs at the standard of quality that you need them in order to remain competitive!

My marketplace is the United States! That’s where people have the money to spend on our products. They understand our products. This is one of the best markets for us for many different reasons!

We sell at companies; we sell at places like Whole Foods Market. I don’t have to tell you it's one of the most beautiful chains of grocery stores in the U.S. You can imagine that the buyers are super sophisticated and they don’t just bring any product in that chain! But they brought us in, which tells you the level of standard we’re playing at—world-class! World-class!

So it means that everything behind the scenes has to be world-class. The whole chain up and down has to be world-class, and so ingredients—no different! So we have to bring in some ingredients! Well, guess what, Jordan?

For some of my ingredients, the tariff is 45% to enter the country! 45%! Others, almost 70%! How do you expect me to be competitive if you're slapping such tariffs on some of my inputs? How?

Because for every 50 cents, you add on tariffs, I have to sell my products two dollars more than I would have in order for me to actually make it! I become very uncompetitive very quickly, quality-for-quality, product-for-product!

So, there we had to—if instead of making it a 45%, how about maybe it’s a 0%? Like it is in the U.S.! When if I had to bring the same product here in the U.S.—0% tariff on it? Or make it 5% or 2%, 3%? Something that makes sense!

So when do you really think that I'm going to try to jump through the hoops of avoiding about 45% or 70%? Raise? No need! Pay, pay it and move on! Because you've got better things to do!

See, see how bad laws and senseless laws breed corruption? Because people will then, it is cheaper and faster for people to pay the bribe and move on than to adhere to the law!

You see? So that’s what we have inherited in most African nations! As I noticed the discrepancy and the difference between doing business back home and doing business in the United States, at first I was like, “Well, of course! It's like this, it's just because we're poor nations! We're messed up! That’s why everything else is messed up!”

And then eventually, I started to really think about it, to think it through. It’s around the same time that God again brought some interesting people in my life, because at that time, my company—my first company—at least was, you know, now I had moved into the non-profit.

We had started a non-profit because my goal was how can I help replicate whatever success I was able to have? How can I help many of my guts or my male counterparts from Africa do exactly what I did with whatever product they deem to do it with? How could I help with that?

And it is during that journey that I eventually even learned about the work of Hernando de Soto! When I heard about his work, he was right there telling me, “My God, what you went through, what you’re going through, experientially speaking, is not an anecdote! There is something very systemic about this, and it is called economic freedom! How easy or hard it is to do a business!”

You have indexes that measure this, the most known of them being the Doing Business Index ranking of a World Bank, and then you have a Fraser Institute economic freedom index as well. What do they all have in common? They all show you one after the other that it is harder to do business anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa than it is anywhere in Scandinavia.

I stick Scandinavia purposely because people who are anti-business need to know that Scandinavia is more business-friendly, more pro-capitalist—I’ll use a dirty word—than almost any sub-Saharan African nation!

Right? And so the Scandinavian choice is a very interesting one because the rabid and idiot anti-capitalists of the West often point to Scandinavia as socialist countries, but as you can point out, they’re well they’re socialist on the edges and capitalists at the core.

In a very, very effective and efficient manner, they are business-friendly in precisely the manner that you described, and those principles you elucidated—minimum necessary laws! That’s part of the English common law tradition.

Minimum necessary force of enforcement—that’s another good one, right? And, well, and what is it? Clear and maintained transferable property rights!

And you also have the concept of a rule of law as well, right?

Right, right, right! So those are some of the metaphysical and legislative substrates that make a free enterprise system possible! Because people often also think about only the market working, but you need a set of regulations and also customs that the free market can run on top of, like an operating system!

Exactly! And I love that you’re using the word “operating system” because this is going to take us to something else.

So then, but before we go any further there, I want to point out that as I was learning from the work of people like Hernando de Soto, as I was learning from people like the man who became my husband, I like to joke and say he brought me the answer to my little girl's question. I rewarded him with love, so I married him!

As I was looking at the work of people like Michael Strong, you know, people like John Mackey of Whole Foods Market—they’re friends! So that’s how I got to know John! But they made me really get into a whole other world of people who truly care!

What was different about these people is that they cared not on their own terms; they cared but on the terms of the truth! And we might go into that at some point, but let me just keep it there!

So there, so what happened in that time of my life, as I was trying to see how can I multiply my whatever success, I found out the answer! I started to connect the dots! I learned that eventually, wow, yeah, wow! So you’re poor because you have no money! No money because you have no source of income!

A source of income for most of us is a job! Where do jobs come from? The private sector, businesses, especially smaller medium-sized enterprises! Then don’t we think about the environment of those businesses in which they get to thrive or not?

I think we do! But then where? When I look there and I look at these indexes, they’re all telling me one thing and one thing only—your region is the poorest in the world because it happens to be the most over-regulated in the world!

Meaning that as many people fight for freedom and supposedly fight for Africa's rights, no one fought about one of the most important of rights and freedoms after you have managed human rights in its global way: economic freedom!

Well, you list here in one of your articles where you make reference to these rating systems—the bottom 10 countries for doing business in the world—Chad, Haiti, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela. There’s a lovely example—Eritrea and Somalia.

And so there are three exceptions in the African ecosystem: Mauritius, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia. You pointed out in your prospectus, right, the prospectus article of Right Institute, that Mauritius is a rising star. Rwanda is in some ways comparable to Georgia.

So some of these countries have started to get this right! Yes! And so what’s the consequence of that? And what does “right” mean?

What they have understood, what these countries have understood, is that economic freedom is at the center for prosperity building! Rwanda, for example, Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, is explicit about it. He said he wants to be the Lee Kuan Yew of Africa; he wants to be the Singapore of Africa!

And Lee Kuan Yew is his model! Now the dirty mouse is gonna start shouting, “Oh yeah, see! Authoritarian, blah blah blah, whatever!” Me, I want to talk only about the economic side! If you take Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore as your example, then it means that you’re gonna have to be serious about economic freedom!

And that’s exactly what he did! That’s what Singapore did! When Singapore figured that out, they went on to put in the right reforms to make their environment one of the most, some of the most business-friendly environments in the world! One of the most free markets environments in the world!

And you saw the magic of Singapore today! Singapore is richer than its ex-colonizer, Great Britain! So when I hear people telling me today, “Oh, Africa is poor because of colonization,” I’m like, “Please, let’s move on from that!”

Does it have maybe a tiny percentage in where we are today? Maybe! Maybe! And I don’t know! But I know it’s not the cause! Because if it were, many countless countries have been colonized before! And, by the way, colonizing one another is humanity’s history!

It just happened that maybe Africa has been one of the last colonized regions in the world! So enough psyche; it is there and it acts like nothing happened before to others! But flash news—the history of the world! We’ve been capturing each other back and forth! All of that!

So anyway, the truth is Singapore is richer than Great Britain today, and then Hong Kong happened!

And then, because Hong Kong happened, China even today happened! Because China is like, “Wait a minute! What went on over there?” And then China went on to do the exact same thing with its SECs—the Special Economic Zones—some of the most free market zones in the world! And then, look at it happen in commerce!

China, who when it comes to economics, decided that we’re gonna do the free market! We’re gonna be capitalists! Because that’s the only way! We tried everything else; we killed hundreds of millions of people and we have nothing to show for it!

But now that we’re tired of being disrespected members of society, because guess what? That’s the other thing too—if you want to be respected in this world, you’re gonna have to be among the most prosperous ones!

For other reasons, would it be nice? G, that we respect people just because? Absolutely! But that’s really not the world we live in!

So when China got tired of being disrespected, they're like, “Maybe we’ve got to build also some prosperity here! Because then they’re gonna hear us!” And today, China being one of, you know, being where it is at, even Hollywood—Hollywood, who tries to tell the world how to think, is being told by China what movies to make and how to tweak stories and history in order to be palatable for them!

You see the power that comes with being prosperous!

What would you recommend concretely to countries like Senegal to get the hell out of the way, let's say, of the people? Who would like to try to do everything they could to make it better?

I mean, one of the things that happened with India is India established the Indian Institute of Technology, which is a deadly engineering school, and a huge number of its graduates went to Silicon Valley, as you well know. Many of the successful Indian graduates of IIT started to dump money back into India and helped build a capitalist infrastructure there!

So this sort of thing can really take hold! If you were making recommendations to governments who wanted to get on board and stop being like Chad, Haiti, Central African Republic, Congo, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, etc., what concrete steps should they take from the bottom up to get the hell out of the way?

Exactly! So two things we’ve been doing—because I’m a practitioner, as that’s my entrepreneurial journey. I’m an entrepreneur, so I practice what I preach. But I also preach! I preach for free markets!

And so when it comes to that, I’m one of the hats that I wear as the director for the African Center for Prosperity of the Atlas Network—the largest organization in the world of free-market think tanks around the world.

So what we do there is we work on reforms around the world to take down barriers of entry for local entrepreneurs! So that’s one thing! But as we all know, that’s a great initiative to take, and we’ve been making some really good advances in many countries!

Especially in Ghana, we’ve been making a lot of progress with our partners—very many! But piecemeal—it’s hard as heck! By the time you’ve made a gain here, you’ve made 20 losses over there! It’s a continuous problem!

But until we get better, we’ve got to continue at it! So that’s one thing we’ve been doing. And so that's a hat I wear, working with free-market think tanks to try to make it easier for local entrepreneurs to join in the party!

Additionally, I’m going bold! I’m going radical! For the past few years, we’ve been advocating an idea for Africa that found some of its roots in Latin America. And again, I'm related to the people who are involved in this—a movement called the charter cities!

Paul Romer calls it like that; he’s a Nobel laureate in economics. Obvious calls it the free cities; I like to call it the startup cities!

The best way to think about it, Jordan, and it goes back to what you were talking about earlier—when you said when you use the word operating software, most of the poor developing, most of the low-income nations—so meaning back in the days, the way we used to call them—are they have regulations for poverty!

They’re basically regulated for poverty! Meaning that as many people fight for freedom and supposedly fight for Africa’s rights, no one fought about one of the most important of rights and freedom after you have managed human rights in its global way—economic freedom!

Well, you see? It’s just ridiculous!

So some of these folks have thought about looking at the Dubai example. Dubai just recently entered the top ten of international financial centers in the world, and what Dubai did at some point is think about it and be like, “On this bare, you know, sand plot—that's technically worth nothing right now, as is this 110 acres of land, sand everywhere!

They’re like, “Well, maybe sharia law is not the best for business! We’ve got to think about a better set of laws for business!” We’re talking about only about business—not family law, not anything else—but business!

And they decided there’s got to be something better! And so they looked around, and that’s actually when, to take one of the terms you used earlier, they started to realize common law is actually a better way for business! Specifically, British common law!

So at that point—and I’m always simplifying here, because otherwise we can totally geek out on it! Remember, this is like one of my latest things I’ve been involved in! But lately, it’s been the past 10 years, and I’m gonna share with you a win!

So Dubai is like, “We need to adopt British common law! Primarily British common law! We’re gonna hire retired British common law judges to come and educate the law here, train our own people!”

And that, along with many other reforms, made them now a top center in the free market when it comes to finances.

That British common law system! So it’s very, very interesting theologically and metaphysically!

So it's predicated on the idea that every individual has all the rights that there are, except for those that are specifically regulated and limited by legal necessity!

And then, generally, that realm of necessity has emerged only as a consequence of disputes between people! So you’re free to do whatever you want unless you have a dispute with someone else! Then the dispute is adjudicated according essentially to constitutional and theological principles, and then a precedent is established and the whole body of law built up—that body of precedence!

Yes! Yeah! And it’s bottom-up, not top-down! English common law is a gift from God, man! It’s something else!

Absolutely! And that’s the key word there when you said bottom-up! So common law is so much better for bottom-up approaches!

And we all know that markets work better in a bottom-up approach! And also, when they have to educate the law and resolve a dispute, they’re going to be much more respectful to the contract that was passed between the two parties than say, civil law would be!

Right? And so anyway, so from this standpoint, here you have Dubai, who is now trying to put all of this together. Eventually, they put a set of laws together that would now be conducive to being a top international financial center in the world. And voila! In less than a generation—in less than 25 years—Dubai was completely unrecognizable!

Completely! But they did not invest in that short period of time! That’s what I know!

And you know the Chinese, the purchasing power of the average Chinese citizen is doubling every seven years!

Yes! Everything is? Right? It’s insane! It’s insane!

So we know it can be done, and at the root of that is the same thing! It’s economic freedom! It’s allowing people the freedom to enterprise! And Dubai did so!

Dubai was one of the most recent ones to do it! Now the UAE in general—Abu Dhabi is going the same way, and they’re even trying to outbid each other in terms of who is going to be even more free market!

So that’s something beautiful going on there!

So some folks have looked at that model, and they’re like, “Wow! So maybe let’s think about a plot of land—Ideally a rather unoccupied plot of land, so you’re not being accused of misplacing people or conscious confiscation, any of that!”

So English is only my fourth language, Jordan, so sometimes if I stumble upon words, please be patient with me!

So anyway, so they thought about it and I said, “Okay! So this plot of land, think about it as your computer, and think about the laws that rule that plot of land as your operating software!”

So start to think about governance as a new frontier! And so now what you have is these governance entrepreneurs—and that’s definitely where I have gone into! I’m like, forget piecemeal legislation! We’re gonna keep doing that until we have better!

But in the meantime, I’m working on this radical idea! So for the past decade, I’ve been working on convincing African governments to do this.

And finally, I can't disclose the name today here, but we’ve signed an MOU a month ago with one of the western African nations who said, “Yeah!”

And it’s funny because when we approach them, Jordan—

Congratulations!

Thank you! It’s a major achievement! Thank you!

Like a world-shaking achievement!

Thank you! We have a top team to work on this!

But it’s so funny, because when we first met them, the gentleman said, “My God! What do you mean by common law?” Because, you know, they belong to a civil law—like many French ex-colonies, by the way! You see, that’s another difference!

When France supposedly, you know, at the end of colonization, most African nations—British colonizers said, “You can do whatever you want, keep coming, do whatever you want!” It turns out most of those countries kept the common law, and it's actually easier when you are—it's actually easier for an African nation or any other nation or culture to actually build on top of common law than it is to build on top of civil law!

So see, English—we should shout that from the rooftops!

Exactly! I agree with that one hundred percent!

So, so yeah! I said that’s okay! That’s okay!

So basically what happened is, all of these francophone countries are still operating on civil law, for most of them. For most of them! And that world doesn’t know about that either!

Just like when we started talking to this country, they said, “What do you mean common law? Isn’t there only civil law that exists?” I was like, “I almost fell over!”

And then even that—you see, because you live in your world, you take so many of these understandings for granted! Because remember, I’ve been spending my life asking about these questions and drilling and drilling and really, you know, learning!

And then even the work of someone like George Ayittey— Ghanaian economist, who just passed away; but he’s my intellectual father on all of this, and I will bring him up in a minute!

So anyway, so here they’re like, “Whoa!” When they discovered about, “Oh, there’s common law, there’s civil law…” Civil law happens to be so good for business! Blah-blah! And all of us, and so now—that’s what we’re working on, and I’m telling you, Jordan!

I don’t know where this project is going to go, but even if we only make five steps with it, the floodgates have been opened! I believe that with all my heart!

Because all you need is for a door in here to open up!

Yeah! And then, yeah! That’s all you need! That’s a major door! The one in there! All you need!

So, so these countries who are at the bottom of the economic freedom index, what sort of ideas do you think possess them to constantly run interference in relationship to people who are trying to be entrepreneurial?

So I know one of the things that’s happened, you know, since the Berlin Wall fell and the collapse of capitalism, is that because the people who were pushing communist ideas are not quite as noisy and horrible as they once were—although they’re certainly making a comeback—that many countries around the world have been freed up to try to have not the worst economic policies they could possibly design.

But there’s still this lingering resentment and hostility towards entrepreneurial free market capitalism at the local level that you’re describing—that’s unbelievably toxic! So what is it that’s possessing these countries that are at the bottom of the economic freedom index?

Venezuela is a good example!

You’re giving me goosebumps by asking me this question because, by asking it, you’re gonna allow me to share something that once again is also part of a myth-busting, and something that is totally unknown to people!

And I'm gonna talk only for the case of Africa because I’m sure for Latin America, the situation might be similar! But let me just talk about the case of Africa, because it is a big continent enough that it should matter!

And this is where the work of George Ayittey takes all of its power and importance! George’s a Ghanaian economist, like I said, passed away recently! But George gave me the last piece to the queue of my answer because once I discovered that we’re poor because of our lack of economic freedom—that’s the reason why we’re poor—then my next question was like, “But why? Why?”

Why is it that Americans get to enjoy this economic freedom, and we don’t? What happened? Where did it happen? Have we always been? This is the mystery!

Well, you know the thing? It really is a mystery too because it doesn’t require much of an explanation to explain poverty and corruption, right? Because we’re born poor! We don’t come naturally! And corruption is corrupt! That’s right!

That’s the natural state of man! And so the real mystery—and this is a bloody mystery, that’s for sure—is how any country ever managed to escape that! And the common law tradition is definitely a piece of that!

And of course, America was fortunate enough to be founded on those principles! And so, okay, so continue if you want!

Yes! Yes! So, yes! So my question was just like yours! Once I discovered, I’m like—and still, why is it? Because these people have it, and we don’t! What happened to us? What’s going on?

And most importantly—so, so, but now I understand also this battle between socialism and capitalism, the ideologies, and how they’re fighting each other. And for some bizarre, strange reason, the world—including Africans—developed this idea, this understanding that we are more socialists and we’re capitalists. Naturally, culturally!

I’m like, “I called B.S. on that!” Because you say, “Again, the same Africans! You bring them to a country where it’s economic freedom, and voila! Let them manifest!”

I mean, did you know that most black doctors in the U.S. are from Nigeria? Did you know that?

Right! And that, yeah! Well, I know that immigrants—I know that black immigrants to the U.S. do much better proportionally speaking than black people who are born in the U.S., right?

So where is that? But then I, when I asked that question, it’s when George and his work brought me my find, my answer! And that was the last piece of a puzzle, and then everything made sense!

Okay! We’re our region is the poorest in the world because it’s the most over-regulated region in the world! How did we get there?

George takes me back! George takes me back to a time that most people don’t think about, including myself at first! Because when most people think about the story of Africa, Africans, and black people in Africa in general, we go no further down than slavery!

It seems like our collective history starts with slavery, and George is reminding us, “No, no, no! They were, they were before the white men ever set foot on the continent! Black people were there—they had different types of cultures, many different society groups, name it!”

Yet George made the case with his research that actually pre-colonial Africans were actually practicing the free markets! They were practicing free enterprise! And it makes sense!

So what were we doing back then? In Africa, you could find some of the most sophisticated trade routes in the world! You would go to places like Great Zimbabwe, where basically you would see these homes—these buildings built in a round shape with stone! Whoever built that in those times was at the top of their craftsmanship!

At the top of engineering skill sets! Something quite unbelievable! So unbelievable and advanced that when the white people came, they said, “There’s no way a black person—black people could have built this!”

You see? So this is who we were! And the chief could never say, “Oh my God, you made your bread now you come to my market here—you cannot sell it for one dollar more profit than when I allow you to!”

No such rubbish didn’t exist with us! You had basically also this idea that we have to wait every four years or five years to vote! No! We voted with our power of exit!

And you could exit every second that you wanted! If you don’t like this chief and what he or she is practicing, you vote with your feet! Get out! You go join another group or you go start another group, you name it!

But you’re not going to sit and fight with other people there just so that things can go your way! You go make it happen a new way, or you go join others who are doing it your way!

And so for the longest time, what we had was tribes maintaining the peace! Did we have battles among us? You betcha! That again, human nature!

But what was happening? We were tribes working with each other and keeping the peace, even knowing sometimes when to try to intermarry so that we keep the peace more!

And then they came, and they said, “Oh gee, aren’t you guys savages? We’re gonna civilize you! And to civilize you is we’re going to bring this top-down governance approach to all of us!”

See, we were practicing decentralized governance before! And they showed up and said, “To be educated is to have centralized governance!”

What did you do when you did that? Now the tribes are fighting among each other to take control of that centralized government!

There’s a real tension there because it’s very difficult. It’s very advantageous, obviously, for people to be enmeshed together in large-scale groups like the United States—320 million people!

But then the question is, how do you put in all the subsidiary levels of organization so that it doesn’t become a monolithic state, right?

And then the question too is, well, how do you introduce that large-scale integrated governance without absolutely demolishing the micro-societies that make up part of it?

And bring people together without undue bloodshed, right? It’s a real catastrophic problem from a historical perspective!

It really is! It really is!

So, so then, when we went to go back to the story we go from—we go from having tribes to now tribalism because of this introduction!

So anyway, when they started, when they came, they said to us—so, okay, so all of that was going on! And then eventually, we were living our lives, minding our own business, doing fine!

And I would argue that if we had been left alone, we probably would be the richest continent in the world today if we had continued! But we didn’t continue!

Slavery happened! After slavery, colonialism happened! At the end of colonialism, this is where I would like to bring the attention of people because that’s what George is so well, so beautiful, and pointing just around the time when most African nations were getting their independence, starting with Ghana—we were talking about the late 50s, early 60s—remember also what was happening back then?

We were at the height of a battle between these two ideologies! Right on one end represented by the freedom and the economic practice of capitalism! And on the other facing off with various forms of statism, socialism, communism!

And primarily, their practice was, you know, they were socially more communists! And they were at like this with each other! Around that time we’re getting our independence. You know what they said at that point?

Remember, try to put yourself back in those times because it’s so important! You have these great liberators of Africa who have fought for liberation!

We’re talking about Rollins of Ghana, we’re talking about Julius Nyerere, we’re talking about people like Thomas Sankara later down the road. We’re talking about these people, right?

And they’ve fought! They have fought for the liberation of this continent! They have given it everything they had! And when—but what we don’t remember—so what happened with these people is like, “Oh, so now these two ideologies are fighting!”

And it looks like we have to take a side because the two idols are fighting! We’re looking for influence, and we’re looking for instruments south, right?

So everybody’s talking about Africa in their attempt to free itself from domination by—we were at least normally the capitalist West! And that’s always the idea: the enemy of my enemy is my friend!

Right? That didn’t work out so well with the communists!

No! And this is where we made the fatal mistake! Because at that point, as we were looking for influence—us Africans, freshly liberated—and I put quotation marks because I’m not sure we have been liberated!

Freshly liberated is saying, “Look, you West is who enslaved me first, then colonized me! I am certainly not gonna party up with you! So we’re gonna go in kahoot with the eastern, you know, with the not-so-free side!”

And this is when they have been spending all of their times with the Marxist socialists of their times! And this is also the times around which W.E.B. Dubois did the dirty work!

He didn’t think it was dirty work, but he is the one who helped all of these soon-to-be leaders of liberated African nations to really bite into these ideas! Because by then, they had conflated slavery with capitalism, with imperialism, with colonial common law, with everything! For them, the whole darn thing was one big evil to throw out of the water!

And so they threw the baby out with the bathwater, and when they did that, they had totally forgotten their own indigenous roots! Because pre-colonial Africans practiced free markets! Pre-colonial Africans would have looked at these Marxist socialists and said, “This is heresy!”

You see? You guys are crazy! This is not even part of our roots! We are rejecting this with everything we’ve got! But it did not happen that way!

No! So this is how liberated nations of Africa got started on the wrong foot! Went to bed with the wrong people! And six years later, we have nothing to show for it!

Because we all know what happens to people who follow the socialist route! This does fit in nicely with our earlier comments about Venezuela because Venezuela has taken exactly the same route—and gone from a rich and post-colonial country to an absolute bloody nightmare in about 30 years!

And it’s also a consequence of that entire country falling under the toxic dominion of these ideas! But you can certainly understand why that would have been attractive to the emergent African countries of the 1960s, right?

I mean, yeah, it is a hard thing to think through the idea that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend! And a lot of these Marxist ideas, which purport to have the poor in mind but which truly don’t, are extremely attractive—even if you are heartfelt in your consideration for the poor!

The problem is is that the only systems that seem to lift people out of absolute poverty are free market capitalist systems! And their equivalent, the kind of equivalent you describe characterizing pre-colonial Africa!

That’s right! And that’s why it’s so important for me whenever I bring up this part of the story to always—that’s why I was saying, “Please try to put yourself back in their shoes back in those days!” Because I believe that if I had lived in those times, hey, I would have been part of the people who fight for African liberation, and I probably would have made the same decision to side with a socialist!

I would have! I think I would! Well, half the western world made that decision, and the Chinese made that decision, and the North Koreans made that decision!

I mean, yeah! And now we’re having a battle about the same damn ideas again!

As I said, they have invaded the West again! That’s the thing! But this is where I, as an African, will not have it!

While I excuse—I think the mistake they made was fatal for us, but hopefully it's a mistake that would have had consequences for only this 60 or 62 plus years since we took those—we made those decisions! But today I take it upon my responsibility as a contemporary African, you know, to know better!

And on top of that, I also know the ways of my pre-colonial fathers, which to me now are the only ones I want to look at!

Are pre-colonial favors of course? Is it that everything they did was right? No! This is why we have progress in life! Right?

There are some things we know now are not so good! But we are, some things have to pass the test of time and place, so maybe first we should keep—

So anyway, as an African living today with everything that I know and is available to know everywhere, the research is very clear, the evidence is rock solid!

I cannot in all consciousness and be a person of high morality, I cannot disregard what I have learned and what I have experienced and what we know today to be true!

So people like me, Marxist socialists need to know! For the longest time, they have used us for black people to make their dirty deeds!

So maybe the Black Lives Matter people—the founders who are self-called Marxists—fine if they want to go! I say fine! I’m not willing to be the useful idiot of a social Marxist any longer! They have used us, black people, for too long; they have used our suffering for too long!

But today, I know better—to dissociate myself! And so they’re gonna have to go look for other peons to mess their heads with! Because people like me know the truth!

And what I love about the truth that I had learned is that my pre-colonial forefathers totally would have stood by my devotion to the free enterprise!

They would have said, “Great, great, great granddaughter! Thank you! Thank you for looking back to our times and seeing what we were doing! We were on the right track, girl! We were!”

So today, I think everybody has to make a decision for themselves! But me, what I have learned, that’s what I’m taking out!

And everything we talked about today, Jordan, is really not part of a mainstream! Because you ask most people—Africans included—“Why are you poor?” They’re gonna say colonization! They’re gonna say racism! They’re gonna say, “Because they’re taking all of our natural resources!” and blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth!

And guess what? Those who claim to care in the West leave us in that misguided opinion of what the problem is! Because it took me so long!

I was with these people who said that they cared about me, they cared about Africa! But as soon—but I found that every time that they hear that the solution might be for free markets and capitalism, the look of disgust—I think that’s the right word, the look of disgust!

They have in their face, if I was not stronger, I would feel disgusted by myself for having those opinions!

So do you really care? Or do you only care when the solution that you’re peddling goes to support your own ideology?

Yeah! And your own moral claims!

You see, to care! Yes! Because that’s the easy way out!

It’s like, “Well, I care, and there are some people who are well off, and those people who are well off have stolen everything they have from the oppressed people!”

And I’m on the side of the oppressed people! And all I have to do is punish the oppressors, and all of a sudden I'm a moral agent!

And I can leverage the suffering of genuine poor people—whom we know have actually been helped out of their absolute poverty by capitalist systems!

We absolutely know that to be the case! I can leverage their suffering to bestow upon me an undeserved moral superiority!

That’s right! And then I can have my cake and eat it too because I can still be a denizen of the wealthy West, but—and I can feel sorry for poor people and be oppressed at the same time!

Absolutely! And I feel like you’re even being too generous for them in terms of the work they put in! Because today that I care, the only way it manifests itself in work into action—I put a sign on my back, on my yard, with “Black Lives Matter!” Period!

Done! If black lives matter so much, if black lives matter so much, then you cannot with a straight face tell me in the same sentence that you also are anti-capitalist!

And also, if black lives matter so much, what do you make of the fate of 1 billion black people? Because Africa is home to 1 billion black people!

With 1.3 billion, but 1 billion of those are black! It is home to ninety percent of a representative of the black race!

Yet to tell me black lives matter? And you, in the same sentence, are going to be anti-capitalist? The only thing we know to build prosperity and with that respect, huh?

You cannot be possibly serious here! And guess what? Flash news! People like me today are here to tell you how full of it you are! Because you’re full of it!

And I’m not going to allow you to no longer have your cake and eat it too! It’s just too easy when the stakes are so high!

And the same thing with your whole thing about climate change! Oh, gee, climate change! I’m not even gonna go and argue the scientific—uh, you know, argument! I’m not!

Let’s say I even agree with you! But the world’s gonna go to hell in 12 years, as they claim, if nothing is done! Earth’s going to blow up in 12 years! Let’s go and freak out all the kids!

Because you know what? It’s justified! Let’s say I even agree with you on that one! And then I say, “And then we do what?”

Because your solution right now is to tell me we stop all carbon emissions! We stop all fossil fuels right now! Right now!

But, Jordan, what does that mean? If we did that, what does that mean? It means poor people will freeze in the dark and bake in the sun while they starve!

Thank you! You just signed a death warrant and I’m going to talk about Africa only for now! You just signed a death warrant for 1.3 billion people, of them 1 billion black people!

And you just told me that black lives matter! So even when you come to climate you’re full of it!

And I’m willing to say that you’re just an idiot because you don’t know what’s going on! But even there, and if you still with a straight face can say, “Yeah, well to sacrifice the rest of the world—I’m sorry, to sacrifice these 1.3 billion Africans so that the left of the earth can stay?”

Oh really? How different are you from somebody who enslaved me a little while ago?

Does my life really worth that? Black babies are going to have to die so your white babies can stay alive! You know, sometimes when I hear the prince—who is that guy’s name?

You know, the princess Diana had two kids, I think the older one—he, with a straight face, had the nerve to tell us that the problem with the world is overpopulation!

Earth cannot sustain overpopulation—from the guy who has four kids! So what are you telling me, exactly?

Because I’m just—you know, marion Tupy from HumanProgress.org is publishing a book in August called Super Abundance, and he’s redone a number of economic calculations, showing, for example, documenting the extremely positive relationship between increased population and general prosperity!

That’s right! And he calculated that every child born today will produce seven times as many resources as he or she will consume!

See? Right? And so all these people who are squawking about there being too many people on the planet—and there are always other people who are too many!

That’s what I was pointing out!

Absolutely!

So here’s Prince whatever his name is telling me that the problem with the world is overpopulation while just having popped his fourth child! So are you telling me that your child can live but the other ones cannot?

Because that’s pretty much what you’re saying! Because you popped these kids! And if that’s what you're saying, then you’re telling me that the other ones cannot!

Then go on, keep going with your thinking!

Wow!

Yeah, right? You can’t say—why can’t they? Why can’t they? Are you a closeted racist?

Maybe not! But we’re gonna see this play out in the fall! This is coming, just as certain as the sun’s going to rise tomorrow!

You know the fact? These environmental policies that have emboldened Putin, made Europe dependent on oil and gas from Russia—that's right!

Now we have a shortage, and we have a huge increase in fertilizer prices. We know perfectly well that about 150 million people, most of them in Africa and in North Africa and in the Middle East and in sub-Saharan Africa, are