Peter Zeihan appears on Joe Rogan
I mostly consume the Joe Rogan podcast in bite-sized pieces via Youtube, if at all. Walking is a form of unplugging for me and I haven’t listened to podcasts regularly since the pandemic started and my commuting dropped to zero. But if you spent any time on fintwit last week it was hard to miss the appearance of geopolitical strategist and best-selling author Peter Zeihan.
- The uranium bulls weren’t happy
- The China experts weren’t happy
- The Bitcoin bulls definitely weren’t happy
Nobody should be taking anything they hear on a Joe Rogan podcast too seriously. That said, Zeihan seems to have gotten the important stuff right.
Nuclear permitting takes forever in North America. Plutonium disposal and enrichment doesn’t matter. Think about your reaction and the reaction of your neighbours if they announced the construction of a nuclear plant in your neighbourhood.
I suspect Zeihan’s analysis about China is dead on. The whole point of the one-child policy was to curtail population growth and there’s no reason to believe China can manufacture or develop high-end micro chips. If they could, the US wouldn’t have bothered with an export ban. From pharmaceuticals to fifth-generation fighter jets, I can’t think of a single instance where a sane person would bet their life on Chinese technology versus the US equivalent.
I don’t think Bitcoin is worthless – if you live in Venezuela you’d rather own Bitcoins than Bolivars. However the use case of store of value in a hyper-inflationary economy is limited. Whether you think Zeihan is half-right or completely wrong probably depends on whether you think Bitcoin is replacing the US dollar eventually. If you think Bitcoin is taking over, I would suggest watching this Zeihan video on the dollar. If nothing else it explains the 2022 performance of gold in various currencies.
