Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…There are others that are well run, but Aramco is a very well run company. As you described before, they rather smoothly did their transition and retained their people who are highly trained. If you go to Aramco, you meet people who have PhDs from MIT or Stanford or University of Texas. They have a very well trained global workforce and a very high standard. They drew initially upon the cultures of the companies that were eventually nationalized out of the business, but the people were trained. I'm curious if there are any stories you can share. I imagine since you wrote The Prize, world leaders are inviting you to meet them and give advice. I don't know how many stories you can tell from these conversations. Is there someone who's really struck you as having their head on straight on these issues? You've been all around the world. I'm just curious if you have some crazy stories. One is in The New Map and you and I have talked about it. It’s the meeting with Prime Minister Modi in India. India was really at a crucial point whether to get out of the Permit Raj, where government really tightly controlled the economy. I discussed this in a book you probably don’t know I did called The Commanding Heights. I describe a scene in the book where he brought his senior advisors together to argue about whether you allow market forces to work or not. It was a very heated discussion and then I just remember his remarks: "We need new thinking." Those simple words have pointed to how India has become so much of a bigger force in the world economy today, as opposed to being a sort of enclosed and closed economy.…

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