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Pop!Tech Juan Enriquez
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31 minutes and 29 seconds
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United States
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English
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Documentary
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Posted by:
peder on Jun 22, 2007
The stars and stripes forever? Futurist and author Juan Enriquez isn’t sure of that. He cites a long history of borders, countries and flags that have changed, and warns the United States isn’t immune.
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- POP!TECH
- [♪ POP!TECH Theme Music ♪]
- BRINGS TOGETHER
- THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS
- TO SHARE INSPIRATION AND IDEAS
- IGNITING CHANGE
- AND UNLOCKING
- HUMAN POTENTIAL
- THIS IS PART
- OF THEIR ONGOING
- CONVERSATION
- POP! TECH
- POP! CAST
- Presented by Lexus Hybrid Drive
- GIVES MORE TO THE DRIVER. TAKES LESS FROM THE WORLD.
- JUAN ENRIQUEZ POP! TECH 2006
- So the last time I was here I talked about genomes and life sciences,
- and the obvious transition is to talk about countries.
- [Chuckling from audience] Right.
- And this book, The Untied States of America, could be subtitled,
- Dyslexics of the World Unite. [audience laughter]
- The really interesting question about countries is what they are,
- and assume that you started with a blank slate.
- So here's your country. And now you're in charge.
- And you get to do anything you want, because you're the dictator.
- So let's assume that you control all the media.
- All the jobs. All the universities.
- All the kindergartens.
- Everything that goes in and everything that comes out,
- all the inputs, all the outputs, you control them.
- And you do that for 40 years.
- Well, you'd assume that you'd have a pretty good control
- over that country, particularly if you were as efficient, say, as the Germans.
- [Die DDR mein Staat]
- But the odd thing about this country,
- the strange thing that is going on in this particular worker's paradise,
- [zukunfts sicher]
- is that after 40 years of absolute control over this country,
- after having control over everything that comes in, everything that comes out,
- you've got a little chink in the wall.
- And that little chink nine days later led to that country disappearing.
- Which is kind of amazing.
- I mean, if you think about building countries and how you would want to control them,
- Sometimes tea parties have unintended consequences.
- Right? Somebody throws a little bit of tea in there,
- and you don't know where you're going to end up.
- And if you read the McCullough book of 1776,
- it wasn't the intention of the founding fathers to separate.
- It wasn't their intention that they could gain independence.
- It wasn't their intention to secede.
- As Washington was running around the country,
- he was still trying to figure out how to keep it all together.
- So here's part of what the world looks like today.
- So Europe used to have one third less flags, borders, and anthems
- a couple of decades ago—a few decades ago.
- And you've tripled the number of borders on this continent.
- And that's pretty astonishing.
- That's not just the Yugoslavias of the world that are breaking up;
- it's whole continents that are breaking up, and it's happening pretty often.
- And, of course, this is an old story.
- There's a really neat movie you can get from the Internet.
- From Maps of War.
- So here is the Imperial History.
- Let's cover 5000 years in about 90 seconds.
- This is the history of the Middle East.
- 3000 B.C. to 2006.
- Kingdom of Egypt
- Hittite Empire
- Kingdom of Israel
- Assyrian Empire
- Babylonian Empire
- Persian Empire
- Macedonian Empire
- Roman Empire
- Byzantine Empire
- Sassanid Empire
- The Caliphate
- Seljuk Empire
- The Crusader Kingdoms
- Saladin's Empire
- Mongol Empire [audience chuckles]
- Ottoman Empire
- European Colonialism
- Nation-States and Borders are Established
- State of Israel is Founded
- Israel Expands under Armistice
- Era of Independence [Years pop up in each nation, 1922-1971]
- Now why do you suppose it's so hard to govern these places?
- [Laughter]
- Yeah, good luck.
- The interesting thing about this stuff,
- as you go forward and you look at countries appearing and disappearing,
- is how often it happens, how common it is,
- and how often people take their country for granted.
- Because they say that happens everywhere else;
- it doesn't happen here. Right?
- So in Europe today, this little division isn't over.
- So in Northern Italy, you still have the country that wants to become Pandania,
- because they're a little bit tired of being governed by Rome
- and sending all the money to Sicily,
- and they've got about 30% of the vote.
- And if you look at Spain, well, there's a series of very strong regional identities in Spain.
- Now think about that for one second.
- This is a pretty defined geography.
- This is one peninsula; it's been speaking Spanish for, oh, at least 500 years.
- It's been a united kingdom for at least 500 years;
- it's had one religion for about 500 years,
- and even within that very defined kingdom, very defined geography,
- you're still getting Basques and Catalans and Galicians
- coming out and saying, we want our own autonomy, we want our own country.
- If that can happen to Spain after 500 years, could it happen anywhere else?
- Well, that's an interesting question.
- Are there any examples of regional identity that we could possibly find inside—
- oh, let's pick a random country—say the U.S.
- [audience chuckles]
- Well, there are 50 stars, but we're alone! [Texas - The Lone Star State]
- Is this identity reinforced in any way?
- Well, how about when you drink a beer?
- And what is the marketing motto for Lone Star Beer?
- It's the national beer of Texas!
- [chuckling from audience]
- And when you go to the money, the money tells you it's the Lone Star State.
- And then when you go out to the Texas Department of Tourism,
- what is the motto of theTexas Department of Tourism?
- [Texas It's like a whole other country.] [Laughter]
- Indeed.
- They like this so much, they put it on their license plates. [It's like a whole other country.]
- And by the way, you really have to trust what people put on their license plates.
- It often tells you a lot about a place.
- If you go to the state of Connecticut,
- richest state in the union, remember what the license plates used to say?
- It was done by the kids.
- Preserve the trust.
- [Audience laughter]
- Thank you, Grandpa.
- This is now getting to the point where you can issue your own currency
- for your own presidents. [The Republic of Texas - President Samuel Houston]
- Oh, and by the way, as of two years ago,
- you have to pledge allegiance to the flag of Texas every morning [Keeping an Eye on Texas - Honor the Flags]
- as well as to the flag of the United States.
- By law.
- Curious.
- So what do you suppose these flags have in common?
- It turns out Six Flags over Texas ain't just an amusement park.
- And it may be that there will never, ever, ever be a different flag from that one
- that will ever fly over the Texas territory,
- but so far that has not been the history.
- So it's really dangerous to take countries or flags or borders or anthems for granted
- and say, as long as we have an amendment that says you can't burn this,
- then it'll last forever.
- Well, that's an interesting way of doing it.
- Until you get a disabled special forces veteran who stands before Congress and says,
- And when you give the flags the rights and take them away from the people,
- then you've made a mistake and you're going to lose that flag.
- So these are the countries in the world that now have autonomy
- or secession movements within them.
- It is actually a very common phenomenon these days.
- And, in fact, we've gone out there and generated a whole series of borders
- and, by the way, borders are creations of human beings.
- Borders are not creations that you see from space, even on islands,
- because you can split islands.
- Dominican Republic and Haiti.
- Or even the British Isles.
- We'll talk about that later.
- So if it turns out that there are no natural borders on this thing,
- then the logical consequence of this is these things that we hold so dear,
- [Flags, Borders, Anthems]
- Turn out to be myths.
- And they are myths generated by human beings,
- and they last only as long as your kids are willing to believe the same myths.
- Because the day your kids say, Hey, that was great for you;
- that was great for Grandpa, but I don't believe in this stuff anymore,
- then that flag goes into an archeology museum,
- and a new symbol, a new myth, a new belief system
- comes into the fore.
- And that happens to country after country after country.
- You can take
- oh, strong, patriotic phrases like this one,
- [Long Live the... Red, White, Blue]
- and it's amazing how many people actually, really, truly believe this even today.
- And not just in the United States.
- In fact, the Russians agree.
- [Laughter]
- And, by the way, so do the citizens of Luxembourg.
- Even the French.
- And, of course, the Dutch.
- So let's get a little more specific.
- [What I really mean is... Stars and Stripes, Forever!]
- How about this one?
- Well, again, there's an extraordinary amount of agreement on this particular stuff.
- The Brits agree.
- The Cubans agree.
- The Danes agree.
- You know what? Even the North Koreans agree.
- [chuckling from audience]
- Here's what happens to countries:
- You get this political system, or you get this economic system,
- or you get the system of beliefs, religious or whatever,
- that goes out there and promises you that you are going to have X, Y, or Z
- because you are a citizen of this worker's paradise,
- or of this particular country, or because you are a member of this particular tribe,
- you will have the following benefits.
- The problem is that occasionally, those benefits are not quite the reality
- of what people live.
- And the broader that gap gets between what people are being promised and told
- this country stands for, and what that country is actually delivering,
- then you start getting this gap in legitimacy, and that legitimacy gap
- if it gets too broad, allows countries to disappear in nine days.
- Even if you control all the media.
- Even if you control all the jobs.
- Even if you control all the schools.
- Once that legitimacy gap gets too large,
- once there are groups or tribes or autonomous regions inside a country
- that decide, I don't want to believe the same myth,
- then countries can fall apart very quickly.
- Of course, this isn't the first time it's happened.
- Countries are a new creation.
- The flags of old used to be your heraldic shields.
- You used to give everything for your honor, for your family, for your shield.
- And, of course, the greatest of emperors has also disappeared time and again, and again,
- even though these folks, of course, never thought it would happen to them.
- The interesting thing is, even the most powerful of gods can disappear.
- It's not just countries and empires, it's gods themselves.
- When the gap between what a god promises and what a god delivers gets to be too large,
- that god goes into an archeology museum.
- So if you don't sacrifice ten virgins tomorrow, the sun will not come up.
- And the sun comes up, a series of times,
- well, that god and that god's promises become less relevant.
- And even though there are a whole pile of people running around the world today
- that think they have the only answer in a Bible that was originally written in English,
- [chuckling from audience]
- or whatever other version of a book you want, this is delicate stuff.
- And it's delicate stuff because when you manipulate stuff,
- and you separate the reality from the promise, and it gets too far,
- then those gods, and even gods can disappear.
- Which takes me back to a wonderful piece of graffiti that was photographed on a Baghdad wall.
- Dear God, Please save us from those who believe in you.
- [chuckling from audience]
- Here's the trend line in nation-state creation, 1950-2006.
- It is not just the era of decolonization that's generating flags, borders, and anthems.
- It is a constant system.
- We are generating about 3.12 new sovereignties per year during the 1990s,
- and it's happening to rich, it's happening to poor, it's happening in Asia,
- Africa, Europe, Christian, Buddhist, black, white, you choose.
- It's happening all over the place.
- Here's a conclusion.
- [It is not a God given right For any country... To exist forever. ( Even if in God it trusts.)
- The one exception to this, the one really odd place,
- is the Americas.
- The only place where you haven't tripled the number of flags, borders, and anthems
- in the last 50 years, is the Americas.
- In fact, the last truly new border in the Americas, where you just brought a border out of nothing,
- was Panama in 1903.
- Anytime you see a system in science or in any other structure,
- where the whole system's moving this way, and then there's a great big outlier that's acting different,
- that outlier's an interesting place to study.
- So, one option is, the Americas is immune.
- [It will never... Ever... Happen here. ]
- Is that true?
- Is there something different in the Americas that means that
- the whole rest of the world can triple its countries and borders and flags
- and anthems, but it will never happen here?
- Or, are you beginning to get secessionist movements today in Bolivia,
- with some people wanting to generate the Republic of Santa Cruz?
- Is the same thing true in Ecuador?
- Is the same thing true in parts of Chile? Parts of Columbia?
- And as you go through that, could it even happen in Mexico?
- If you ask the president and the first lady of Mexico how things are going—
- Well... [audience laughter]
- It depends when you ask.
- But it turns out that Mexico is four entirely different countries.
- The cuisine of the Mayans has very little to do with the cuisine of the North.
- And the dress. And the way you talk.
- And the way you do business.
- And the Mayans of Chiapas and Oaxaca are completely different
- from the Mayans of Quintana Roo and Yucatan.
- And as you look at these countries, it's actually very hard to keep and govern places like this,
- to the point where about one-fifth of Mexico's population, or the equivalent,
- has walked across the border.
- And they settle in the U.S.
- The darker this is, the more Hispanics there are.
- Now, remember those old maps?
- Why do you suppose that Hispanics would choose this particular settlement pattern
- concentrated in this region and in Florida?
- There's probably no historical reason for that.
- [Audience chuckles] All right?
- There is no evidence that [uses Spanish pronunciation] Los Angeles
- or Colorado or Florida or San Francisco or any of these other places,
- had anything to do with previous settlement patterns.
- [Chuckling from audience]
- Here's what settlement patterns in L.A. look like.
- So 70% of the kids in the L.A. County School District today are Hispanic.
- And the most popular single name inside California hospitals today is Jose.
- And you're getting a very bizarre hybrid.
- [Welcome to Amexica] And that will shape what this place will look like 50 years, and 100 years out.
- And some people don't like this. [English only!!! or Get the hell out now!]
- In fact, some people are very unhappy about this.
- But as we go forward in these very difficult debates,
- because I'm not arguing that you shouldn't control your border,
- and I'm not arguing that a country doesn't have a right to control the border,
- I'm not saying it shouldn't be done.
- I am saying the words that are used today are going to be remembered for a long, long time.
- And how you treat people today is going to be remembered for a long time.
- These are stories that pass on for generations.
- And if you want some pretty quick evidence of that, look at every single license plate in Quebec.
- Where the motto on the license plate is, Je me souviens (I remember).
- I'm doing all right now; I've got my French; I've got my schools;
- I'm doing just fine economically; but I remember 50 years ago and a hundred years ago
- when I couldn't speak my language, when you beat me for speaking my language in schools,
- when I couldn't get the jobs, when I couldn't have French radio,
- when you tried to shut down my religion,
- and you tried to kick me out.
- And that took a great country like Canada and brought it within 0.5%
- of seceding, separating, becoming two countries, in 1995.
- And how we run this debate today and whether we use it with the stridency of a Lou Dobbs,
- or not, is going to be remembered for a long time.
- And we probably don't want to see license plates in California that say,
- Yo me acuerdo (I remember).
- Bad idea.
- But let's come back to the theme of this general flag.
- Here's a really interesting question for this particular flag.
- How many stars do you think will be on this flag in 50 years?
- And why would one even ask that question?
- I mean, it's always been 50, right?
- [Laughter from audience]
- The placement of the stars wasn't even mandated until 1912, with Taft.
- You can put them anywhere you want.
- For the most part, you win some, but sometimes you lose some.
- It hasn't just gone in one way.
- [Stars in The US Flag] But the interesting thing about this is the trendline.
- This is a trendline that you will see in very few nations on this planet.
- See, most countries get smaller after independence.
- The U.S. and Brazil are two of the only countries on this planet
- that have consistently gotten larger since independence.
- This is a really unusual trendline.
- The trend is for countries to get smaller, to separate, to secede.
- You've got debates going on today in Belgium, Netherlands,
- France, England, Spain, parts of Germany, parts of Austria.
- I mean, it goes on and on.
- But not here.
- That's a really interesting trendline, and what this particular photograph implies,
- and means, is that there has never been a president of this country
- buried under the same flag he was born under.
- Ever.
- And until a president is born after 1959, and dies, and there are no changes
- in stars, there will never be a president buried and born under the same flag.
- People assume continuity where there is none.
- So here's one option.
- If you follow the past tendlines, it's easy to see how the country gets bigger.
- Right? 55, 60, 65 stars, easy.
- You bring in Puerto Rico, you bring in the Virgin Islands,
- you bring in Guam, you bring in the Marianos,
- perhaps part of Cuba, maybe a part of Northern Mexico,
- maybe Canada splits, maybe it doesn't.
- I don't think it would surprise any of you if in 50 years, the border with Canada was open,
- and you had a common currency and a common customs unit, and a common labor market.
- In fact, in 1949, Newfoundland separated from Great Britain,
- and had to make a choice.
- And it was trying to figure out, do I want to be an independent country,
- do I want to stay a part of Britain, do I want to become a part of the United States,
- or do I want to become a part of Canada?
- And it was actually a very close vote.
- And there are prime ministers of Canada who still think that parts of Canada will annex to the United States.
- The colonies did happen to go all the way up there,
- and Quebec should have been a U.S. colony, except that they spoke French and were Catholic.
- So they weren't allowed in.
- But then there's another option, which is
- [45 or Less? How Dare You...]
- countries throughout the world also sometimes get smaller.
- And that is much more common than getting bigger.
- What could possibly drive less stars on this flag?
- Well, before you answer that question, think for a minute
- of what it means to sit in the middle seat right there.
- This is 10 Downing Street, and if you're sitting in that middle seat today, your name's Tony Blair.
- And it used to be John Major; it used to be Winston Churchill;
- it used to be, oh, Robert Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, Prime Minister of Great Britain,1902.
- What is the inventory that Prime Minister Cecil and his cabinet were looking at in 1902,
- when they sat at this table?
- Well, here's one of the maps they looked at.
- The entire world was a highway to get to their empire.
- Put up the global projection; it's simply a highway to get to different parts of your empire.
- 11 million square miles.
- The inventory in this place was, we have the best universities,
- we have the smartest people; we have the best manufacturing;
- our navy is second to none; we can project force anywhere in the world;
- we have the most respect anywhere; we can fight two and a half wars;
- and we don't even have to tax that much.
- The question these guys never asked is, what do you suppose that map will look like in 1955?
- And if they had asked that question, it's conceivable they could have gotten it slightly wrong.
- Just a thought, [chuckles from audience]
- because 11 million square miles turned into 89,000 square miles.
- And now even the core of that island is falling apart,
- to the point where Scotland has the first independent parliament since 1246,
- and the fastest-growing foreign language is Welsh.
- And remember those pesky Irish that kept doing all that stuff?
- Well, the pesky Irish have now become richer than the average Brit.
- And have better universities. [chuckling from audience]
- And have better beer. [laughter]
- The other thing you've got to look at before you answer the question how many stars on the flag is,
- why do you suppose these flags are red, white, and blue and have stars and stripes on them?
- Because they all could have been U.S. states.
- In fact, they came very close to being U.S. states.
- And the flag could already have 55 or 60 stars, if these had stayed in.
- And as you look at this stuff, the real danger of the United States is not from the outside.
- The real danger in the United States comes from the inside.
- It's not the Hispanics that are going to determine what happens to the U.S.;
- it's not the filipinos; it's not the Russians.
- What's going to make a difference in the United States is what we do today.
- [Some Generations... Act like trust fund heiresses And squander all their ancestors built.]
- Do we have any evidence that this might be happening?
- [chuckling and murmuring from the audience]
- Hmm.
- If you wander over to 44th Street and 6th today, this is actually now about 89,000. [NATIONAL DEBT - Family Share]
- Present value of what has been promised to families, in terms of Social Security
- and Medicare, and the rest of this? 473,000 bucks per family.
- In debt.
- Here's a trendline: You start with Truman, you go through Carter,
- that's what the national debt looks like.
- Then you get the fiscal conservatives coming in, in the era of small government,
- [audience laughter]
- And here's the bottom line: A tax cut is not a tax cut, unless if you and I pay less,
- and our children owe less.
- Because if you and I pay less and our children owe more,
- it's simply a deferred loan with a high interest rate.
- And we're now spending 22,000 federal dollars per person over 65,
- and $2200 per person under 16.
- That's an 11 to 1 ratio on what was as opposed to what's coming.
- And the gray vote is about to get a lot bigger.
- So guess what that trendline's going to look like?
- This is the consequence of this stuff.
- [The world's reserve currency belongs to a debtor nation.]
- Oh, by the way, Britain did the same thing.
- Here's what the high-tech export trend looks like.
- [U.S. High Tech Exports]
- because high tech is going to save us, right?
- Here's what it looks like compared to China.
- [U.S. vs. China High Tech Exports]
- that's not a good trendline.
- Here's what divisions between states look like.
- [Givers/Takers]
- If you are red, you get more than you pay in taxes.
- If you are blue, you pay a lot more than you get in taxes.
- The only neutral place in this is Indiana.
- Some of these states are paying out $1.76 per $1 they get back.
- Well, often it's the rich who separate first.
- That's the division with the Catalans and the Basques.
- And by the way, that was the first part of Yugoslavia to leave.
- It wasn't the ethnically conflictive part; it was the part that felt,
- I want to join the E.U., and the rest of these bums won't be allowed in.
- Here's what reading patterns look like in the U.S. today.
- So on Amazon, if you go out and you say, if you bought this, you should buy this.
- Well, this guy Krebs went out and mapped that stuff.
- And what ends up happening is those who are liberal end up exchanging an enormous amount of books,
- those who are conservative end up exchanging an enormous amount of books,
- but they never read what the other people read!
- The only point of contact between liberals and conservatives
- in terms of Amazon books, is Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong?
- [chuckling from audience]
- That may not be good.
- If this was only happening in books, it wouldn't be a problem,
- but the political debate has become so polarized
- that you're listening to cable channels that tell you what you think;
- you're listening to radio stations that tell you what you think;
- you're listening to congressmen who tell you what you think;
- you're listening to a whole series of people
- that are narrow cast into having what you think;
- and everybody around you thinks the same way,
- and then all of a sudden you go — Who's this other 50%?
- Where the hell did they come from?
- Who are those people who think in such moonbat terms?
- All right? And that's how you divide countries.
- You end up not having debates. You end up not respecting tolerance.
- You end up saying, He's from the other side of the aisle, and I'm never going to speak to him.
- Now that's just fundamentally wrong.
- That can divide countries.
- [United States of Canada, Jesusland]
- [chuckling from audience]
- All right?
- [No worries?]
- By the way, this is not just an issue of flags and borders and countries and gods,
- it's an issue of business as well.
- Because just as flags and borders and countries can disappear,
- so too can industries and businesses.
- If you were in the Fortune 500 in 1935, you could expect to be there for 94 years.
- If you make it into the Fortune 500 today, you can expect to be there for 14 years.
- We're seeing an enormous churn in terms of institutions.
- And in this churn, if I had a long-term take away,
- [Juan Long Take Away]
- [audience laughter]
- This being a Chinese restaurant in Geneva, Switzerland, of all places.
- [more laughter]
- [It is not necessary to change... Survival is not mandatory. -W. Edward Deming]
- Don't take your country for granted.
- Don't assume that because you don't burn a flag, that's going to fix things.
- Don't assume that you can spend today, and don't assume that you can owe tomorrow,
- and that there will be no consequences.
- And for God's sake, quit calling each other names.
- Let's take all the politicians who want to untie this place by dividing us,
- and stop it. Because that's just wrong.
- 90% of us are willing to talk to one another,
- even though we don't agree with one another.
- But there's a 5% over here, and there's a 5% over here,
- and it's not Democrat, and it's not Republican.
- They're fundamentally dividing this country, and if you look at the history of what happens in other countries,
- you should not take this country for granted.
- And we've got to stop some of the political debate, some of the financial debate,
- and fix our education system.
- If we don't do that, there will not be 50 stars on the flag.
- Thank you.
- [applause]
- Presented by Lexus Hybrid Drive
- GIVES MORE TO THE DRIVER. TAKES LESS FROM THE WORLD.
- [The preceding video is licensed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike 2.5 License]
- [For details please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]
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