 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. I welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Today is going to be my last show of Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. The reason is I am going to have my own YouTube channel. Do I know what that means? No. I'm going to have my own blog. Do I know what that means? No. But I know that that's where I'm going with it, because our audience has been so good here at Think Tech. And thanks to Jay Fidel and the staff here, I've found that I'm really enjoying reaching an audience that I don't even know, people that send me notes and emails and messages from all over the world. So I wanted to invite the man that put this all together for me, Jay. Thank you for coming. Seymour. What a pleasure it has been. Thank you for having me. It's been four years, Jay, that we put this together. You invited me to come here as a guest, and of course that fishing line that you put out of the hook was there, and you got me to come in, and I have become a host. And you know, we've done over 150 shows. We've done over 100 commentaries. And it really has been a pleasure. And for me, eye-opening to see what you have done for Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you, Seymour. You've done a terrific job. You are able to reach an audience that is really, you're unbiased. You tell people exactly what people need to hear rather than what the media wants them to hear. And I like that about Think Tech Hawaii. You allow people like me, who have no biases, basically, I'm a registered independent. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. I believe in what I think is right for the people. And I think that what I've seen at Think Tech Hawaii is the ability for people to judge for themselves based on merit rather than on spin. And that's thanks to you. Thank you, Seymour. So you've done a super job. Thank you. So you're my guest today, but you're welcome to grill me on anything. I call this show The Good, The Bad, and The Future. All right. So let's talk a little bit. What would you like to discuss? Let's talk about The Good. In this current news cycle, if you will, especially with the elections a couple of days away, a lot of people are, they're blue. And I don't mean blue, liberal or blue Democrat. They're blue. They're depressed over how this country is doing. Find me some good in all of that, will you? There is, Jay. The first thing we have to realize is that if we watch too much press, listen to too much press, look at our phones and our iPads and try to absorb everything that's there, it's going to be negative from both sides. Because we have become a society, obviously, that believes in attack. If you attack the other side, you're going to win. And that's really not true. You know what really is good today? We have a beautiful life in America, especially. We are able to choose. We're able to, we may not like neo-Nazis. I don't like neo-Nazis by any way, shape or form, but yet they have the right to speak. And that is so important because in my travels around the world, I go to many societies that don't. So the good right now for me is that we live in the best society in the world. No matter what Mr. Trump says, no matter what the liberal press says or Fox News says, it doesn't matter. We have the greatest, greatest, greatest country in the world. From your lips to God's ears, Seymour. But you talked to me before the show about business. You talked about visiting China. You talked about the fact that business globally seems to be doing pretty well. Can you talk about that now? Sure. Because in Italy, working with a client in Italy, we're moving their factory over to China. So I've been going back and forth a lot, and I don't know if you know, but I've been going to China since the Nixon days in 1980. And I was there when we first brought toilet paper with us. That was the only way that you really could live in China. And of course, today it's much different. China has become the economic powerhouse in the world. We are not. We have become a consumer society in the U.S. and therefore we have to rely on countries to make goods for us less expensive than we can make. And China in itself is the place where that is happening. I have to tell you, though, the innovation that China is starting to bring forth is amazing. Every time I go to China, I see something new. An example, normally I go from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, which is an industrialized area in China. And that would take a three and a half hour trip. I went on a high-speed train in 37 minutes. How long did it take to build that train? Three years. Not much. We've been working on the rail here for 20 miles for a long time, and we're stuck. And we're going to still be stuck for another four or five years. But in the U.S., we have not learned the lesson or don't want to take the hard road that is necessary to get things done quickly. We're mired in regulation. Can't help it. That's just the way it is. So we can't go forward. We're mired by the union's wishes to help their people as much as possible, which has led to, unfortunately, the unwillingness to work hard. This is the opposite in China. So an example. I had a product that had to be made in China. This is 10, 15 years ago. I went to U.S. manufacturers. This was for the military. When it was a model airplane, then it had to be done out of a plastic extrusion. And I went to three plastic extrusion makers here in the U.S. And the quote was as follows, we need three months to give you full quotation, to give you what's called a die-cast mold, to do everything necessary to go forward. I said, that's impossible. It's not going to be ready on the timeline that I need. I flew over to China. I went to Hong Kong city toy, Melvin Shui, a very good friend of mine. And I said, Mel, is it possible to make this thing? He said, where are you staying? And I said, I'm at the Hyatt Hotel. He said, we'll bring you a model tomorrow morning. They worked all night, all their engineers, everybody. And the next morning, they came to me with a complete quote sheet with MOQs, minimum order quantities, delivery dates, everything, all the specs required, all done overnight in 24 hours. Does that tell you? That's not an isolated circumstance, too. That's really all over China. I was in Tianjin in the tech park there. And somebody wanted to order a circuit board for some device in the U.S. And he gave the specs to the guys who were putting these things together, designing them and building them. And it was the following day they were ready with a pro forma circuit board, an example circuit board that did exactly what was requested. So I think it's a cultural thing in a funny way. It's a patriotic thing for China to meet these goals, to meet these expectations, to be a world leader. Don't you feel that? A hundred percent, Che. What we see in China and what we see in India, what we see in other countries as we go further east, Vietnam has become a new source also for us. I'm building a complete product line for some NBA basketball players. So they need clothes and shoes and wristbands and et cetera. And I mentioned we're bringing this product from Italy called Acope, which is a special infrared weave in the clothing for muscle strain. So it'll be inside leggings and inside shirts and things like that, cuffs, armed cuffs. And the NBA guys in the foot, the NFL guys are all waiting for this to come out. If I tried to make this in Italy, it would be a two-and-a-half year project, two-and-a-half years. And bringing the machinery from Italy to China, we're delivering in January in three months. That's the way it is. Not even three months. That's amazing the way that works. But good for you for understanding it, good for you for picking up on it and making the comparison and taking the business arbitrage aspect, you bring the machinery from Italy, you have them do it in China, everything works well. Not everybody would have thought of that, Seymour. But we do it for many products. If you look at your cell phones, for instance, you have to realize that there are towers all over the world. Those towers receive the signals, right? You know where those came from? They came from a place called Mannheim in Germany. We moved the production facility in the 80s to China. And China is making all of those for the world. You look at solar panels today, they originally did not come from China, by the way. Solar panels came from Europe, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, etc. We moved the production facilities to China because it's my place. China is the leader. And they do 89% of all of the solar panels in the world. Whether we like it or not, that's the way business works. Those are the good things. Now let's talk about the bad things. I just want to do balance on this. It's called a journalistic balance here today. It's hard for me, Jane. I know it is. I want to stress you out, yeah. Well the bad things in China, unfortunately, is the inability for the people to really speak out. And we've seen that happen, of course, from Tiananmen Square all the way through to Hong Kong, where they had the umbrella movement, you probably remember. So that's one of the worst things that I see, the reticence of the people to be able to express their opinions, really. Only my good friends, and they have to be very, very good friends in China that I've known for 20 or 30 years, will even express a negative opinion on what's happening in China. And that is not good. I don't think that's healthy. I love that in a democracy, we can express our opinion. And some of the stuff we hear and we read about is nuts. But it's an opinion. It's somebody's opinion. Do you think an attack in a series of murders, as we saw in Pittsburgh last weekend, would happen in China given the way the government works and the way it controls the conduct of the people? It does happen. It does happen in China. Rarely. It usually happens when people get mentally deranged or there's something really, really bad. As a matter of fact, two weeks ago when I was in Hong Kong, there was an attack by a retired school teacher. He went after a family and some people. It does happen. But nowhere near as often as it has here. And there's no guns in China. So we don't see any of the issues of the violent deaths that we have here in the U.S. As a matter of fact, if you ask me about a negative in the U.S., I would say that's probably one of our biggest negatives. Homelessness here in Hawaii. We know obviously how bad that is. Guns, I think, are a negative here in the U.S. I wish we had much tougher rules on that. Look what happened in Pittsburgh. I mean, whether you believe or not that people should be armed or have armed guards at the door, that's a whole different situation. But this guy was able to get an AR-15, that's an assault rifle. The word assault. What do you need that for? Assault. It's an assault rifle. You don't need that. And unfortunately, we have a society that allows it because of some type of political gain that's there. The other negative in my mind, and this contradicts my business world, by the way, is the size of our military. We spend much, much too much money on our military. And that, of course, is business, right? And I represent Army Air Force Exchange System. If we had to cut half of the stores down that I sell to around the world with AFIS, I would lose half my business. But you still maintain it's too big. Yes. And I would be happy, happy to lose half of my business if I knew that the money we spend on the military is going towards social, social type program, education, helping the poor people. That to me is an issue that we are going to be facing more and more because the homelessness situation is right on our doorstep. But wait. On the way in and out, you met Julian Gorbac, a professor at the School of Journalism in the Communications Department, UH Manoa. And his feeling, as he has expressed to me a number of times, is that the most important issue in our world for our species is climate change. And I think you'll find it very interesting, the Chinese, you know, who have had to wrestle with climate change and their own industrial revolution, they're actually more conscious of it, doing more about it. Correct me if I'm wrong than we are these days. You're absolutely right today. I'll give you an example. Two years ago in 2016, they said by 2018, there will be none, zero gas-powered motorbikes. And you know how many motorbikes there were in China? Guess what? On this last trip, and I was out there for eight days, there was not one gas-powered motorbike. I had a schedule. Way ahead of schedule. Guess what? By 2020, a year and a half now from now, there will be no gas-powered vehicles. No cars on the road will be allowed to have gas. They will use hydrogen and they will use lithium-ion. And they're already replacing lithium-ion. They're two car companies that are working on it right now to get longer distances. So they are actually one of the leaders, although the smog was horrible, Jay. I mean, I had to wipe off my soup. It was so bad in Guangzhou and in Dongguan. On this recent trip. Yeah, just on this recent trip. But the smog was really bad because the industries are still pumping a lot of stuff. But they're trying to do a lot more for it. They're doing something called carbon diversification. I don't know if you've heard what that is, but that's taking the stuff out of the air. It's almost like a filter on top of technology. Yeah. Yeah. And it really is working well, Jay. That is really good. Now, that doesn't say we don't have good things here in the U.S., obviously. My feeling is besides living in a democracy, allowing us to have free travel wherever we want to go, we have a wonderful society that wants to help others. No matter what you're reading about Trump and this caravan and all that sort of stuff, I see people helping other people all over the place. And to me, that is, that's something that you can't buy. You can't buy the feeling of being able to help others. I hope we can get back to that and avoid the kind of hostility we've seen in the newspapers lately. Because that hostility deteriorates the society and it distracts us from good constructive relationships and for that matter, business. Jay, we do not have—we don't have good leaders. If the leaders were people that everybody would look up to, we would get rid of the far right, we would get rid of the far left, and we would have a good society. Unfortunately, we have a lot of issues with medical care. We have a lot of issues that are—you know, there are polarizing people. And it's a lack of good leadership. That's the biggest issue that we have, and we need good leaders on both sides of the aisle. Well, we'll see what happens on Tuesday, coming soon. Oh, yes. Do you have anything you want to say about the election? I will, but we have to do it right after the break. So we will be back in one minute. I'm here with Jay Fiedel on Seymour's World. That's our last show on Think Tech, Hawaii. And we will also talk about all the wonderful shows we've had in the past and what it's all about. Be back in a minute. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech, Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics, and ideas, and music, and Hawaii Ana, all across the sea, from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hi. I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss, and the guests that we have are very, very well-informed. Just think, we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Hi. Welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm here with Jay Fiedel, who is my guest and co-host for our last show on Seymour's World. Jay, we ended up the last session talking about the good. The bad, both in China, overseas, and here in the U.S. Let's talk about the future before we talk about the end of Seymour's World. So where do you see the future? Where do you see, forget politics for a second. What about our own personal lives? Do you see it as a good thing, where we're going with our lives? I do, but you first. Well, I think our lives are affected by the community we live in, by the country we live in, by the world we live in. Climate change is a very negative thing. It's happening, and nobody in this country seems to do much about it. We're pulling the wings out of EPA, we're no longer a world leader when dealing with climate change. And it's coming for us, even in the city and county of Honolulu, which requires the beach for its industry. We're not doing anything about it. So I think people get distracted. For some reason it's not interesting to government, but government is not aware of it. This is a big problem, and I think it's going to affect our economy, it's going to affect our lives. What affects our economy, what affects our community ultimately affects our lives. Likewise, the Mishigosh, that's Yiddish for craziness, that is going on in Washington is going to affect our lives. Even if, you know, Tuesday's election turns out to be on the left side of the equation, even if Democrats take the house, and a lot of people hope they will, we have a problem in government. We have, we're in a bad time with government. It's a football game, everybody's so hostile and angry at the other side, and not really aware of the common good, not dealing in the future, not doing good government. And I think our government is ineffective now in dealing with the future, and the result is we will have a tougher time dealing with it, and I'm very concerned about that. So I'm happy, I love doing think tech, I love having conversations like this, but I worry about the future and I worry about how that will affect me. From my point of view, I think the future is bright. I know there's always going to be the ups and downs, you can't help it, because if you don't have ups and downs, you really have a stalemate, and it doesn't happen. Every time we have an up in the stock market, every time we have an up in our, when we see the joblessness going down, that's an up, obviously. Whatever that happens, we all smile a little bit. The country is doing better. The reality is, climate change is not on people's minds. You are correct. And it will be on people's minds when, I don't think it will be ever too late, people have ways to be able to work on climate change. I don't think 99% of the people care, Jay. They care about how much money they have to spend. They care about their kids going to a good school, for instance. They care about how much is the car going to cost them, what the price of gas is. So to expect them to look at something ethereal in their minds like climate change, not going to happen. It's just not going to happen until it becomes something that's going to affect them directly. Here in Hawaii, my God, climate change could ruin our economy entirely. Without beaches, where do we go? And you know, it doesn't take much than a few inches of sea rise. And all of a sudden, it's, and if you go out to areas, or temperature, or the chemical composition of the ocean. And we see it, by the way. My wife and I are going to Norway, to the Fjords. And we now know that there's a certain time there's no use going because the ice is gone. So you're not going to see polar bears up there in the Arctic? We went to Iceland a few months ago. Same thing. Same. You know, the great glaciers are shrunk, there's no more ice in Iceland in many places. It's really strange. And so, you know, they're very philosophical about it, but the reality is this is very threatening to everyone. Now, again, that's the negative aspect of what we have to deal with. And we have to deal with politics the way it is. But I believe that if everybody starts giving back a little bit more to society, doing something for others, stop being such a consumer society, that'll help us in many, many different ways. If we learn, as a matter of fact, I'm doing a commentary with this show, right after the show, about counting your blessings, about being thankful for what you have, being mindful of all of the wonderful things that God has given us, or that we're able to help other people with, that is really what life is all about. Because in my mind, you know I have cancer, and I don't know how long I'm going to be around to be able to keep this treatment going that I have now. But I'm very mindful that in one or two years, I might not be here. Therefore, I want to do as much as I can with the programs that I have to really make this world a better place. It's a bucket list. That is on my bucket list. Let's show some of the pictures of the Seymour's world stuff that has happened around. So let's talk about the first one. This one was great. This was a group of 12 children that we brought from Israel and from Palestine. So there are 12 Jewish kids, 12 Arab kids. And this was one of the highlights of Seymour's world, because we had these kids together showing the world that the Palestinians and the Jewish kids can play together. It's called Ukuleles for Peace. We had thousands of people that looked at them all over. We had them here for two weeks, and they appeared here on this show, and they appeared in many other different places. The next one is, oh my god, this is Make Him Smile. This is the program I have on my foundation for helping kids in the hospital. As you can see, the patient is there. Her mom is there, and some of our musicians are there. And I think Make Him Smile is probably my legacy, Jay. I think that's what's going to make people remember what I've done, because we play for 4,000 kids a year. We're up to, I think it was 22,000 was the last count that have enjoyed getting a button, Make Him Smile button, a wristband, and a stuffed animal. And we're expanding it. We're in eight hospitals now. We have 48 musicians that volunteer their time just to play for the kids. That's great, Seymour. Yeah, it's a good program. Let's see the next one. Oh my god, this is very special to me. This is a young girl who unfortunately is no longer with us. She's passed, and she's in her bed, and she cannot move. And she's wearing a shirt that has, I can't remember the name of the group that's there, but it's a shirt. And our musician, her name is Taylor Krantz, played the music from the shirt, which means whatever the music was. And this girl could not smile, couldn't move her hands or her feet, but a tear came down her face. And that was the most expressive moment I will ever remember, because I knew that she was just so happy enjoying hearing the music of her favorite band, which was on her shirt. Let's see the next one. Oh, this is at Rehab Hospital of the Pacific. You can see the patients are there for lunch, and our musicians are at the far end. It's hard to tell what they are. But you know what the doctors do, Jay? They have the patients come and eat their lunch while we're playing, because they've suffered from strokes and heart attacks, and they're there basically to eat. But at the same time, they're getting treatment, because music is a healing tool. And what they do is they make the patients take their forks or their knives and beat to the music so they get to feel what's going on. Let's see the next one. Well, this is another one of my projects. You know, I speak on the Holocaust. And here I'm speaking to a group of soldiers at, this is at Schofield Barracks on the Holocaust. I speak about 22 times a year. And I teach on it at UH in the psychology classes. I teach also in the political science classes. And I find it very rewarding to be able to bring the awareness of the Holocaust in today's world, rather than speak of it as what happened during the Holocaust. So we bring bullying into the conversation. We bring the thought process of making sure that you do good to others, rather than try to just take care of yourself all the time. Yeah, we made a movie of you giving a speech on the Holocaust at a church, just near Pearl Harbor. Yeah, that was very good. And we put that on a cable. Yeah, that was amazing. That was terrific. Let's see, do we have any more? Is that the last one? I guess that's our last one. But oh, oh, OK. Well, here's another one of my foundations. This is called You Are In Charge. This is a foundation for foster youth. You can see the picture at the bottom. And we take foster youth after they're aged out, which means after 18, the state considers a foster youth unable to get the benefits of the state's foster program. So that's ridiculous. At 18, my children were not even aware what life was all about, never mind regular foster kids. Me, I was not aware at 18. I'm still not aware of what the world is all about. And I take these kids through an eight-week program called You Are In Charge. And we help them take the baggage that they have that they carry in front of them, abuse all of those things. And we teach them how to take the bag, throw it over their shoulder. They'll never lose it, obviously. But then they're open in the front, and they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that's what the You Are In Charge program. That's very nice of you. So Seymour, 150 shows, 100 commentaries. They're all on the basic takeaway that life is good. And over four years, let's see if this is 2018, would have been 2014, who was back when? You were first started, sure. Think Tank was much smaller then. I wonder if you can tell us the dynamic of how things have changed for you, for your shows, for your charitable works. I think for me, Jay, Think Tech Hawaii has been a medium. It's been a platform. It has taught me that I can do more than just my business and my foundations, which we just saw in those pictures. Think Tech Hawaii has allowed me to reach out to so many people around the world that come back to me and say, hey, I watched your show, and this was terrific. And thank you for helping me understand how to make better choices. And Jay, I wanted to present this check to you as a donation because I feel very, very thankful. And I wanted to help Think Tech Hawaii in just going forward because I don't want you to stop. Even though I'm going to have my own YouTube channel and my blog, whatever all that means, I just wanted to say thank you, Jay. It has been such a pleasure to work with you. And I want to thank you for what you've done for me. It's been very, very rewarding. Well, thank you, Seymour. It's lovely for you to give us this check and to have supported us through these years. And let me say that you've been a bright light to us in terms of giving to the community. Not everybody feels this way. And one person doing this is a leader, a moral leader, and that's exactly what you are. Increasingly so over the years. So you've made great contribution, not only to our operation at Think Tech, but to the community. You are a bright light in the community. Seymour, thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you to all of you out there for all the comments that I get on emails, texts, and phones. It is such a pleasure to have been a part of Think Tech Hawaii on Seymour's world. I guess my producer is going to find a way to reach you on my YouTube channel and from my blog. And I hope you'll continue to watch Think Tech because Think Tech is really a very, very open system for you to understand what's going on in the world. Aloha from Seymour's world.