Dwarkesh Patel

We'll work on it.

So there's a very interesting book about North Korea, I forget the title, where the author is pointing out that North Korea could not do... You couldn't even start doing reforms today because as soon as there was some sort of information...

from the outside world that North Koreans could see, which would be part of any reform, they would immediately realize that everything the government has told them is false, that South Korea is enormously wealthier, they have this terrible standard of living.

And obviously, this is the same experience that Eastern Europeans had, were literally, in many cases, a country that is, you know, this is the exact same country, it was just bisected in half, and the other half is living so much richer.

And in those situations, I guess this goes back to the question of, well,

today in North Korea, how would it even kick off if Kim Jong-un just had a change of heart or if somebody else came into power?

They're just probably trapped in this to the extent that they want to keep power.

There's nothing they can do.

Zero, yeah, okay.

During this period between 73 and 85, when they have these huge oil revenues, presumably there was some amount of exuberance.

But did the government recognize and realize that, you know, they're super fragile people?

to the price of oil.

And if that collapses, they need some sort of contingency plan, some rainy day fund.

Or you must notice that like, oh, this is half my budget and all of my foreign currency is coming from oil.

And this is a very volatile commodity.

Nobody noticed that?

A final question.

This is not so much a question as an observation.

I don't know if you have a reaction to this.

If you just look at Russia's history through the 20th century, Tsarism to communism to collectivization to more than 10% of your population dying from World War II.