Transcript of AE 1112 - Interview: Why Royal Families & Corrupt Governments Suck with Kyrin Down

G'day, guys. Pete here, from Aussie English. This is episode number four of my little mini-series with Kyrin Down from the Mere Mortals podcast. Today we chat about what we think of the British royal family and royalty more broadly as an institution. You know, why some Australians love the royal family, the Australian royalists and some Aussies absolutely hate them. Or, you know, at the very least, have no interest at all in the royal family.

We talk about unearned fame, so Paris Hilton types versus, say, celebrities or rich people who've earned it. We talk about corrupt countries and their governments, as well as benevolent leaders who take control of the government and then give it back for the good of the country.

And then lastly, we talk about why governments of countries like the UK, USA and Australia seemingly are so much less corrupt than countries in places like Asia or Central and South America. When, you know, we're all the same people and it's just a different part of the world, why aren't we all exactly the same government with exactly the same system and the exact same amount of corruption? Anyway, guys, let's get into today's episode.

What did you see? Was it the Japanese princess recently ditched her Royal connections in order to marry a commoner?

...I think I heard about that.

And that was such a weird- I think- I don't know. I wasn't that close to it, but it seemed like there was a very big, I think two sides of support, right? Those who are like supporting the royal family and just like, what are you doing dishonouring the family? And then the rest that were just like, yeah, you go, girl. You know?

Yeah, yeah.

It was just- It was such an interesting thing to read about.

I think I'm more on the side of the like, what's the point of these royalty-? Like royalty is such a weird thing. It's- You know, I could- I can somewhat understand it for famous people, you know, so if it's an Arnold Schwarzenegger who's excelled in acting, politics, bodybuilding, you know, his son or daughters being treated differently. Yeah, okay.

I can sort of see that. But you know, the royal family, like, what have they done for the last 300 years?

It's kind of like the Paris Hilton thing, right, where she got famous just because her parents were rich, and she never did anything...

Famously being famous type of thing.

Yeah. Well, she probably came onto the map when she made a porno, and that was like she was one of the first sort of famous people to get famous, even more famous from making a porno and then accidentally leaking it onto the internet.

But yeah, I remember just, why are people interested in the Kardashians as well? You're just like, what? Why are people interested in this? Like these people- These women are incredibly rich now, some of them are billionaires in this family for just literally being famous. And you're like...

Yeah.

...How did you- You got here because your dad was famous, you know, like, what? And it's the same with royalty, I think, that's one of the biggest cultural differences between Great Britain and Australia, and it still perplexes me when I meet Australians who are royalists.

Like, my grandparents are probably- My grandmother is pretty into the royal family. I guess she comes from a time where she would probably have seen herself as more British than Australian, you know, from the 30s onwards, 1930s.

But yeah, it just blows my mind, you know, watching some of the news stories. And just the coverage they get here, you're just like, I don't want to hear about another birth in the family, another wedding. Like, really? Do we have to have this- An entire day's news for, you know, the wedding between two princes and a princess or whatever it is, you know, you'd just be like, fuck me.

Like, surely there's other stuff interesting in the world that we can watch. So, yeah, it does blow my mind today, especially because they seem to have no real use. There's no point to them, really, besides potentially doing charitable work and, you know, supporting the public and maybe social cohesion, you know, to some extent where they're trying to encourage people to get out and do stuff, you know, get vaccinated.

Yeah.

It does seem somewhat superfluous when you have a government that is in charge of the country, right, you've effectively ceded everything, but you get money from the government to just be rich and famous, so.

Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. It feels like just that from such a different time where, you know, what's better, a democracy or a-? Or, you know, a strong leader? And probably like the best governments in history have just been at one dude who knew his people so well, who knew how to control, you know, when to put like down the stamp and being like, we're doing this, and when to like open up free trade and stuff.

Definitely the best government has probably just been under one dude. But then over the long run, now that generally leads to like nepotism and corruption and all that sort of stuff. So, it's sort of like- That was from a different era, I think, when you could sort of get away with having one person just rule something and everything would turn out better for everyone. Whereas...

Was it Argentina where that happened, where they brought back one of the presidents and just said, "oh yeah, we'll change the law, and you can come back to fix the country"?

I remember when I was there, there was like this lady who got, yeah, done for corruption and then like her party just started up again and she was in the running, and everyone knew she was corrupt, everyone knew she'd done bad things, but she still had 40% of the vote or something. It's just like...

Yeah.

...What? What is going on here? Yeah.

I can't remember who it is. My dad's always telling me about this president. I think it's Argentina, where I think they had something happen, where there were major issues, you know, politically in the country and there was a lot of corruption.

And I don't know if it was like after the communist sort of period or whatever, but they effectively changed the Constitution to allow this guy to come back in power and fix, you know, set things up again. And he actually stood down afterwards and was like, yeah, tap out, done. It's on to you guys.

And you're like, oh man, where are more of these guys? We need some of these- I think some of the Roman emperors were like that, right, where they would just get in, do their work and then bail and be like, you know, you're welcome. Thank me later...

Yeah, yeah. The one I was thinking of was Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Yeah.

She was the corrupt one. I think you might have been thinking of Peron, maybe? He was...

Maybe, yeah.

...He was very, very popular. And his wife was Eva Peron, and she was sort of like the- She was sort of the- Like you were saying with the royal, she was the side doing all the charity and, you know, championing for the people and things like that. She still has quite a strong, like, cult following there.

Yeah, it is interesting. It always blows my mind, you know, why politics in Central and South America are so fucked up. You know, who kind of like, how did these effectively British migrants go to the United States of America, and when you read the Constitution that they set up, how did they have the kind of foresight and, you know, respect for individual rights, you know? Except for the fact that they had slaves.

And you know, and try and set up a fair government, everything like that in the 1700s or whenever it was, maybe the early 1800s when they actually did that. How did they do that?

How do they manage to do that back then? And yet, you know, Brazil is just rampant with corruption and assassinations of political figures, and your kind of like, there's no real reason that Brazil couldn't be as affluent and rich as America in terms of what it has geographically, right? It could be, you know, it's huge, it's rich, you know, it's got barely any deserts like Australia.

So, there's heaps of arable land where they can farm, they can mine and everything like that. But it's the culture and the political system that's been set up that has just been poisoned with corruption that's now so hard to ever undo.

Because if you try and get in there and change anything, you're effectively stepping on the toes of all these other huge bigwig, rich, corrupt politicians that they will just spend, you know, a few thousand reais paying someone to kill you.

And then- And so, you need to become a cog in the machine. So, it just blows my mind how cultures like Australia has kind of- You know, again, we all have corruption, some level of corruption throughout every single society.

But it always perplexes me that Australia, Great Britain and America in very, very different parts of the world and with, you know, somewhat different cultures have ended up with relatively benign political systems that take care of the individual. And, you know, the corruption is somewhat minimised. You know, we'll have nepotism and people doing each other favours and getting rich, but you won't have like political assassinations...

...Not as blatant. It's not as straight in your face, you know, like that Argentinean leader who gets done, gets kicked out and then comes back again. And then I think she won again and was back in, and it's like- Yeah, just so in your face about it.

Yeah...

And then the other ones are- You know, take Mexico and the United States, they're right next to each other. You know, the difference between going over that border is huge, absolutely huge. And, you know, landscape-wise, when I was travelling through Mexico was the most beautiful place I've been.

Like blows Australia out of the water, just the variety and the different types of, you know, the jungles and then you can go to the beaches, which are, you know, equivalent level of beauty...

Yeah.

...The deserts, the mountains, like they had everything there. And I, you know, I only saw sort of the bottom half sort of going into the east. But the corruption there is insane. It's just- It's so built in. And then, you know, what are the causes for that? You can go into all sorts of things, there's the "guns, germs and steel", which is Jared Diamond's book where he talks about- He argues more historically, it was more of the land.

So, I think he was trying to say it's not the- It's people- People everywhere are roughly the same and it's the- It was more decided on landscape and on, you know, things like germs, and so like the Americans would come and it would just wipe out the native Indians in America. And that's why they never sort of formed, you know, societies and stuff, like they just would get wiped out.

But then there's other ones, other arguments where you could say it's like racial differences, just temperament, you know? And this is where it gets into like dangerous territory because it's like, you know, what are the IQ differences between different races? What are the, you know, like temperament in terms of aggressiveness between different races? That's where it's like you get in trouble for talking about those things.