Game Theory #6: The World's Bank

SUMMARY

Professor Jiang lectures Beijing high school students on their odd behaviors—prioritizing English, US dollars, and Western immigration—tracing roots to the British Empire's evolution into a global offshore financial system inherited by America.

STATEMENTS

• Chinese students spend excessive time learning English over Chinese, driven by desires for knowledge, abroad opportunities, communication, and internet access, yet this lacks deeper rationale.
• Many Chinese students obsess over earning US dollars despite higher status and opportunities in China, prioritizing money over respect, prestige, jobs, marriage, and family.
• Chinese students aim to immigrate to the US for college and jobs, but this is illogical as the game is rigged against them there, offering lower status than in China.
• Mastering Chinese would better leverage family wealth and connections for high status in China, enhancing communication and respect domestically.
• The British Empire constructed this global game of prioritizing Western systems, which America inherited as the superpower, influencing worldwide behaviors.
• The Spanish Empire, at its peak, spanned the globe by seeking spice trade routes, bypassing Muslim blockades after reconquering Spain.
• Spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and peppercorn were more valuable than gold, enabling intergenerational wealth from one successful ship.
• Spanish exploration of Africa, North, and South America led to conquering Aztec and Inca empires, extracting silver that made Spain overnight wealthy.
• Sudden wealth made Spaniards lazy, insular, arrogant, and hubristic, leading to subcontracting labor to England, France, and Dutch for textiles and trade.
• English piracy, state-sponsored under Elizabeth I like Francis Drake, stole Spanish silver, enriching Britain.
• Spain's overextension in wars, corruption, and infighting caused rapid bankruptcy despite wealth.
• Britain and Dutch became energetic, open, and cohesive, adopting Protestant Calvinism emphasizing hard work and wealth, contrasting Catholic Spain.
• The Thirty Years' War, deadliest in Europe until WWI, arose from religious and control conflicts, killing millions and creating anxiety over securing wealth.
• The Glorious Revolution of 1688 united British nobility and Dutch leader William of Orange, making Parliament sovereign to protect capital.
• The Bank of England, established 1694, lent to the nation not the king, guaranteeing repayment and attracting Dutch gold for safety on the island protected by the Royal Navy.
• John Locke's philosophy defined government as protecting life, liberty, and property, with contract law ensuring private property rights regardless of origin.
• Britain's offshore financial system, like modern Hong Kong or Switzerland, protected illicit wealth, incentivizing global elites to cooperate.
• The East India Company de-industrialized India, extracting resources and imposing unequal trade, bankrupting local economies.
• British opium trade forced silver from China, while schooling indoctrinated elites with English superiority for mobility and scholarships like Rhodes.
• The Royal Navy enforced dominance, enabling conquests like Opium Wars against China.
• Modern drug trades, like cocaine, rely on British-inherited offshore centers for money laundering, sustaining global corruption.
• Over-financialization corrupts Western societies with inequality, immorality, and chaos, signaling empire collapse.

IDEAS

• Chinese students' focus on English reveals a subconscious alignment with a Western-dominated global game rather than local mastery.
• Obsession with US dollars stems from a financial system that equates currency with universal status, overriding cultural priorities like family and respect.
• Immigration desires to the West ignore rigged dynamics, where Asians face ceilings in power and prestige compared to home advantages.
• The British Empire pioneered subcontracting empire-building, turning rivals into labor providers through wealth-induced laziness.
• Spices' value exceeding gold highlights how niche commodities can fuel entire empires before broader resource extraction.
• Piracy as state policy blurred lines between crime and economics, accelerating Britain's rise via stolen Spanish silver.
• Religious shifts like Calvinism weaponized work ethic against Catholic hierarchy, fostering energetic societies primed for trade dominance.
• Wars like the Thirty Years' create existential merchant anxiety, birthing secure financial institutions as survival mechanisms.
• Marrying nations through revolutions, like Glorious 1688, transferred not just monarchs but entire wealth pools for geopolitical safety.
• Lending to nations via central banks revolutionized debt, making populations collectively liable and stabilizing capital flows.
• Offshore centers democratize corruption by protecting any wealth origin, from piracy to modern laundering, as divine right.
• Elite cooperation in colonies was bought with escape hatches: wealth transfer and elite schooling promising mobility over local stasis.
• Indoctrination via English education subtly erodes local cultures, making colonized elites aspire to imperial norms.
• Global drug networks exemplify enduring imperial systems, where risk is offset by laundering guarantees in former colonies.
• Financial success sows its own demise through moral decay, turning energetic empires into arrogant, unequal shells.
• Short-term game wins force universal adoption of corrupt tactics, like doping in Olympics, dooming long-term societal health.
• Happiness derives from family and purpose, yet games idolize wealth, trapping players in zero-sum pursuits.
• Empires reset when over-financialization breeds inequality, suggesting cycles of rise via energy and fall via excess.

INSIGHTS

• Global behaviors like language learning and migration are artifacts of imperial financial engineering, prioritizing portable wealth over rooted status.
• Sudden riches erode societal virtues, transforming conquerors into complacent subcontractors who outsource their vitality.
• State-sponsored predation, from piracy to laundering, sustains empires by externalizing risks while internalizing gains.
• Religious ideologies can be strategic tools, aligning ethics with economic aggression to outpace rivals.
• Secure capital protection via institutions like central banks shifts power from monarchs to merchant classes, enabling offshore havens.
• Property rights, divorced from moral origins, create amoral financial ecosystems that incentivize elite betrayal of their societies.
• Education as soft power indoctrinates ambition toward imperial centers, offering illusory mobility in rigid hierarchies.
• Military projection, like naval supremacy, enforces economic extraction, but covert finance perpetuates influence post-colonially.
• Modern illicit trades thrive on imperial legacies, where laundering normalizes corruption as legitimate investment.
• Over-accumulation of wealth corrupts from within, generating inequality and moral erosion that precipitate imperial collapses.
• Games structured for short-term dominance compel moral compromises, universalizing unhappiness despite long-term self-destruction.

QUOTES

• "You spend a lot of your time learning English. In fact, you probably spend more time learning English than you do learning Chinese. That's weird."
• "What you really want is status, right? What you really want is to be well respected. You want a prestigious job. You want to marry a beautiful woman. You want to have lots and lots of children."
• "Spices are the most valuable commodity. They're actually worth more than gold."
• "The Bank of England, it's really important because now you are lending money not to the king but to the nation."
• "Government is provides the alienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of property."
• "This is a global money laundering system that encourages the local elites to be corrupt. It protects them in the corruption and incentivizes them in the corruption."
• "The people there are disgusting. They're depraved. They're unethical. They're disgusting. There's actually no culture to the place. There's no morality to the place."
• "This system is not only evil but it facilitates evil. It is the work of Satan."
• "In the short term, it's what makes your people the most energetic, open, cohesive, and the most likely to win against other nation states."

HABITS

• Prioritizing English language acquisition over native tongue for perceived global access and opportunities.
• Accumulating foreign currencies like US dollars as a hedge against local instability, despite domestic advantages.
• Aspiring to emigrate and study abroad, seeking Western credentials for enhanced personal mobility.
• Engaging in subcontracted labor and trade, as historical Europeans did to exploit imperial wealth without direct conquest.
• Forming alliances through intermarriage and secret societies like Freemasons to secure transnational capital flows.
• Indoctrinating elites via elite schooling to foster loyalty to imperial cultural norms.
• Laundering illicit gains through offshore investments to legitimize and protect wealth across borders.

FACTS

• The Spanish Empire at its height controlled vast global territories, extracting silver from the Americas that flooded Europe.
• One ship of spices from the East Indies could generate intergenerational wealth, surpassing gold in value during the Age of Exploration.
• The Thirty Years' War killed millions, making it Europe's deadliest conflict until World War I.
• The Bank of England was founded in 1694 to safeguard Dutch wealth transferred during the Glorious Revolution.
• Britain's East India Company de-industrialized India by bankrupting its textile sector, redirecting production to England.
• Rhodes Scholarships select top students from the British Empire for Oxford, creating a network of global influencers.
• Offshore financial centers, many in former British colonies, handle trillions in laundered funds from global drug trades like cocaine.

REFERENCES

• Map of the Spanish Empire at its height, showing global coverage.
• Muslim blockade and levies on East Indies spice trade routes.
• Aztec and Inca empires as sources of conquered silver wealth.
• Francis Drake's state-sponsored piracy under Elizabeth I.
• Thirty Years' War as a series of European conflicts.
• Glorious Revolution of 1688 involving William of Orange.
• Bank of England established in 1694 for national debt lending.
• John Locke's philosophy on government protecting life, liberty, and property.
• East India Company for trade with India and East Indies.
• Opium Wars against China for silver extraction.
• Rhodes Scholarships as a secret society for elite indoctrination.
• Freemasons facilitating trade among Calvinists.
• Modern global cocaine trade networks and offshore centers like Hong Kong, Singapore, Panama.

HOW TO APPLY

• Identify local elite conflicts and offer alliances with external powers to extract resources, promising wealth protection abroad.
• Establish central banks that lend to nations rather than rulers, ensuring collective repayment and attracting foreign capital.
• Develop contract law to safeguard private property origins, creating havens for illicit gains regardless of source.
• Use education systems to teach imperial languages and histories, subtly convincing locals of foreign cultural superiority.
• Deploy naval or military force to enforce trade imbalances, like unequal exchanges where minimal inputs yield maximum outputs.
• Set up offshore financial centers to launder corrupt funds, disguising them as legitimate investments in real estate or businesses.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Imperial financial games corrupt societies short-term for dominance but ensure long-term moral and structural collapse.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Reject Western-centric pursuits like English obsession if they undermine local status and family priorities.
• Focus on mastering native languages and networks for genuine respect and opportunities within one's culture.
• Beware offshore allure; build ethical wealth systems emphasizing community over portable corruption.
• Study imperial histories to recognize manipulative games and foster energetic, open societies resistant to them.
• Prioritize family, purpose, and generosity for true happiness, avoiding zero-sum wealth traps.
• Advocate for financial reforms curbing over-financialization to prevent inequality and moral decay.
• Form alliances based on shared values, not just capital transfer, to sustain long-term cohesion.
• Indoctrinate positively through education that values local heritage over imperial aspirations.

MEMO

In a Beijing classroom on January 22, 2026, Professor Jiang posed a provocative question to his high school students: Why do you pour hours into English while neglecting Chinese, chase American dollars over local prestige, and dream of U.S. immigration despite rigged odds? These behaviors, he argued, aren't quirks but symptoms of a grand historical game engineered by the British Empire and now dominated by America. What seems like personal ambition is, in fact, a scripted play in a global financial system that lures elites with promises of security and mobility, all while extracting wealth from empires like China.

The roots trace to Spain's 16th-century zenith, when a small Iberian nation blanketed the world in pursuit of spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper—worth more than gold. Blocked by Muslim traders, Spaniards and Portuguese charted perilous routes around Africa, stumbling upon silver-rich Aztec and Inca realms in the Americas. Overnight riches flooded Spain, but as Jiang explained, prosperity bred complacency: "You become lazy, insular, arrogant." Spaniards outsourced toil to upstarts like England, France, and the Dutch, who spun textiles and braved deadly spice voyages. English pirates, sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth I and led by Francis Drake, plundered the silver galleons, catapulting Britain from periphery to predator.

Religion amplified the divide. Catholic Spain clung to hierarchy and Vatican control, while Protestant Calvinists in Britain and the Netherlands preached industrious wealth-building. The Thirty Years' War, a cataclysmic clash killing millions, exposed Europe's fragility: How to shield trade fortunes from marauding armies? Enter the Glorious Revolution of 1688, where British nobles invited Dutch stadtholder William of Orange to dethrone their Catholic king, merging realms and fortunes. In 1694, the Bank of England emerged—not as royal piggy bank, but a national guarantor of debt, inviting Dutch gold to an island fortress ringed by the Royal Navy. Philosopher John Locke's ideals codified this: Governments exist to protect life, liberty, and property, no questions on its provenance.

This birthed the offshore financial center, a sanctuary for capital from piracy or plunder. Britain weaponized it against Napoleon, funding coalitions that crushed him after six defeats, cementing a financial empire. The East India Company epitomized the model, gutting India's textiles to feed British mills, then selling back shoddy goods at extortionate prices. Opium flooded China, siphoning silver westward. Local elites, Jiang noted, collaborated eagerly: In return for aiding extraction, Britain offered escape—laundered fortunes in London or colonies, scholarships to Oxford, Rhodes networks binding the "best" minds to imperial loyalty. The Royal Navy ensured compliance, sinking resistors in the Opium Wars.

Today, the game endures covertly. Cocaine cartels in Colombia route billions through Caribbean havens—former British outposts like Panama and the Caymans—where lawyers cleanse narco-dollars into Vancouver real estate or Sydney banks. Hong Kong's glittering towers mask a "demonic" core, Jiang warned, devoid of culture or ethics, corrupting souls with easy vice. This over-financialization poisons the West too: Inequality festers, politics serve the elite, communities erode as money worships replace purpose. Empires, victims of their triumphs, teeter toward reset.

Yet Jiang's query lingers: If success invites corruption and fall, what's its point? Short-term, the game sparks energy to conquer rivals, forcing global adoption—like Olympic dopers chasing gold despite health ruin. Long-term, it dooms: Happiness blooms in family, faith, and kindness, not hoarded dollars. As America's dollar hegemony tweaks the board, a new game looms, urging players to reclaim moral footing before the board flips entirely.