The Economist. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
One of the willfully overlooked horrors of modern Ireland were the so-called Magdalene Laundries, where women were subjected to hard labour for no pay. That dark secret is coming ever more into the light through films, books and podcasts. And an unusual crime wave is sweeping Chile, and the precious commodity being trafficked is not drugs, but fish. Our correspondent investigates a spate of salmon heists.
But first... In Texas this week, the SpaceX 400-foot Starship sped towards the heavens, the largest object ever to leave Earth. Watching were among two of the larger egos on Earth. SpaceX owner Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump
The pair have been orbiting each other of late, enjoying a blossoming bromance. We had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot. Let me tell you, we have a new star. The star is born, Elon. When Trump takes office in January, Musk is set to become the first buddy, and will help lead the new Department of Government Efficiency.
So what will that mean for America and the world? In the last few weeks, it's become clear that the world's richest man is in partnership with the world's most powerful politician. Patrick Fowls is our foreign editor. With Elon Musk featuring in the Trump entourage in big style, he was part of Trump's victory speech and also he's been hanging out in Mar-a-Lago. He's now called Uncle Elon by the Trump family.
And we've had business people in the White House before, it's not unprecedented, it's not necessarily a bad idea. But the musk Trump relationship is something quite unusual, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, historically, the Robert Barron era, 19th century America, so all politicians have some influence and there are 20th century examples to taking Morgan, for example, having sway over the American government in some respects. But Musk is super unusual. The alliance with Trump is a convergence on two things. One is a contempt for government waste and a desire to disrupt the government. And the other thing is
hostility towards woke values in their language. But Musk in many ways is also quite an unusual figure. He's not really that comparable to the robber barons of the 19th century, the Carnegie's and others. He's a rather different and more unusual figure.
So in what way is he so unusual? Well, if you think about a classic Robert Barron crony capitalist, they own monopolies and try and put prices up. Musk's business empire, Tesla, SpaceX and some other smaller units are
completely different. They're operating in highly competitive markets and have dramatically cut prices. So the kind of business background of Musk is rather different. But the other thing that stands out is just his stride in ideology, this visionary belief in technology and capitalism as a power that can solve huge problems from climate change to
how mankind colonizes Mars and that desire to disrupt and explode the status quo also applies to his view of government which he sees a sort of stifling impediment to America's entrepreneurial spirit. And is he actually going to be able to make any difference?
Well, I see his influence into respects or panning out in two ways. I mean, one is he's been given sort of quasi-control of this new government department to improve efficiency. Its legal status and powers are somewhat hazy, but I assume it will go on the war path with proposed cuts to federal spending, and they've suggested cutting $2 trillion from the $7 trillion.
and your federal budget, which is enormous and would be quite something if they managed to achieve that. I think that will be a stretch. The other area is, of course, that he is a confidant, at least for the moment, of Trump whispering in his ear, and I suspect his advice will encompass areas that go far beyond this idea of government efficiency to things like the culture wars and even foreign policy, and it's that which some people find quite alarming.
So as you say, alarm is the big word of the day. What are the actual dangers likely to be?
Well, there's one version of this which just doesn't really make much sense. And that's the idea Elon Musk controls the whole economy and can hold America to ransom. And precisely because of the unusual nature of his business interests, that's not right. I mean, A, his empire is not as big as standard oil, say, or US steel in the 19th century. But B, most of these businesses are in competitive markets. So if Tesla didn't exist tomorrow, it would not mean the end of the EV industry globally or in America.
So it's hard for him to have a kind of chokehold on the economy, although there is an exception to that, which is the business of launching rockets for defence purposes, where arguably he does have a bit of a stranglehold on that kind of niche area. But I see the risks as being a bit different from that idea that he has total control over the economy.
So what are the actual risks then? Well, one is crony capitalism where he is going to be in a position to influence regulation on a number of areas where his own personal interest is enormous AI autonomous vehicles. The list goes on and the stock market reaction to Musk's
ascension to team Trump. It has been to massively ramp up the value of his businesses, suggesting investors think he'll be able to extract a rent effectively from crony capitalism. That's one risk. The other risk for America, I think, is that his remit expands beyond that core interest. And because he is strongly conflicted on China, for example, where Tesla has a large business in China, it's a disturbing prospect to think of him.
giving advice to the government on China policy because he has an enormous vested interest. In other areas too, Elon Musk's views have evolved and we've done an analysis of his Twitter feed over the last few years which shows a growing obsession with culture wars and to some degree conspiratorial subject. So his advice on matters beyond cost cutting may not be entirely savory.
It's hard to think of two personalities, more divisive, charismatic, cultish almost than Musk and Trump. How are they actually going to get on?
Well, both are notorious for being volatile. They're also notorious for firing people all the time. So just as in the Trump administration, the first time around, there was this incredible turnover of the key cabinet advisory appointees. So in Muskworld, there's an incredible turnover of executives who kind of join and then crash and burn. So by far and away, I think the most likely outcome is that they fall out really quite quickly and this partnership doesn't last.
But the interesting thing is, I think even if Musk does turn out to be a sort of transitory political phenomena, the idea of tycoons playing a more active role in American politics I think might be here to stay. And that's because this popular revolt against institutions makes it easier for outsiders to participate at the highest levels of government and because
Protectionism increasing state intervention in the economy means the incentives for both politicians and business people to collaborate have got sky high. So if we've got a greater role for tycoons in general and a greater role apparently for personality in general, where does that leave America's institutions?
Well, some of the comparisons about America being made seem to be ridiculous. So, for example, America is becoming a fascist state or even that America now resembles its 19th century version of populism and robber baron capitalism. And in fact, the closest comparison is emerging markets around the world where you have weaker institutions and more powerful business people
and sometimes this problem of oligarchy and tycoon participation and anyone who knows Russia, India and possibly you could argue China will be familiar with the phenomena we've just been discussing. Patrick, thank you so much. Great to talk to you. Great to be here.
A young woman desperately resists as her mother forces her through the doors of the convent. Inside, the young women's faces are pictures of misery as they scrub floors or operate laundry machines.
The film's small things like these, released in America and Britain this month, is adapted from Claire Keegan's prize-winning novella of the same name.
set in New Ross Ireland in 1985. It's a fictional tale with the unsettling tension of a horror film that stars Oscar winner, Killian Murphy. Don't you have a question? The film, though, is based on reality. These Magdalene Laundries in which fallen women were forced to work without pay operated until the 1990s. Small things like these is part of a wave of stories reckoning with this grim history. Magdalene Laundries date back to the 18th century.
Rachel Lloyd is our deputy culture editor. They were set up originally by both Protestant and Catholic patrons. And originally the idea was that they would be rehabilitative. They would take in so-called fallen women and help them rebuild their lives by teaching them a skill. But later they became more punitive, especially with the formation of the Irish Free State.
unmarried women were seen as a moral problem and the state outsourced that problem to the Catholic Church to manage. Women that were sent there could be sent there for a variety of reasons. Typically it was because they had had sex outside of marriage or commitism sort of moral offense, but it could be also because they were poor. It could be because they'd committed a petty crime and most tragically it could be because they'd come forward with allegations of abuse, incest or rape.
And it seems clear that life in these boundaries was not nice. Life inside was difficult. Women would have to work for six or seven days a week. They would work very long hours, and the work itself would be back-breaking operating industrial machines. Nuns would punish anyone severely who didn't work hard enough or who resisted. And the stains I could be long, a study of an institution called Donnie Brook found that the average day was over 20 years.
Many women as well were affected by this. There were at least 10,000 women who were confined among these institutions between 1922 and 1996. The numbers were even higher for the mother and baby homes, which were a similar but different institution. Tell me about those.
So they were specifically for unwed pregnant women. Women would go there to live for their children. The children would be taken off them typically and privately adopted. And then the women would again work either in the home or be transferred to a laundry. A government commission in 2021 found that at least 56,000 women were contained in one of 18 mother and baby homes and a suspected 25,000 further women were in other homes that didn't come under the commission's purview.
There were Magdalene Laundries in Britain, in Europe, America and Australia. But what's specific to Ireland is both the extent and the longevity of these institutions. So the last one closed in 1996, which was decades after they'd closed in many other countries. And the suggestion here is that this is kind of coming out of the shadows. Now, I suppose I wonder why it was in the shadows in the first place. Why was this not more widely known about?
There was a kind of willful ignorance surrounding the subject. The practice of Magdalene Laundries was something of an open secret, but the Catholic Church was a powerful force in society and it wasn't in lots of people's interests to talk about it. But yes, now there is a wave of popular culture that is examining the Magdalene Laundries. So, for instance, this year's small things like these, but we've also had Woman in the Wall, a TV drama which aired in Britain last year and in America at the beginning of this year.
You said should be better off without me.
The drama is a gothic thriller, which focuses on Lorna, played by Ruth Wilson, as she tries to track down the child that was taken from her 30 years earlier. There's also been a podcast called The Magdalen's and I, which looks at the experiences of survivors. There was also the film Filomena in 2013, starring Judy Dench, which introduced the topic to a wider audience. And Catherine O'Donnell, who I spoke to, who's a professor at University College Dublin, says that films such as more things like these may help shift the needle in terms of public awareness of this.
Next year there will be students I know who will have heard of a Magdalene laundry because they know the movie in five six years time unless things change they won't know again. So now that things are more out in the open what's going on in terms of reckoning with that past.
Catherine has told me that to keep the momentum going, really the thing that needs to happen is that it needs to be taught in schools. Education needs to bring it consistently to younger generations. The issue with that is that it seems pretty unlikely the Catholic Church still controls more than 90% of
primary schools in Ireland and more than 50% of secondary schools. But the Irish government is doing more. On November 5th, new legislation was passed, which made it an offence to destroy any records pertaining to the homes or laundries. And so that's really any records held by the church. And there are plans for an official remembrance centre in Dublin on the site of the last laundry to close, which closed in 1996.
that all house and archive a museum and remembrance site. So there is a sense that this dark history is finally being brought into the light. Rachel, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
A third of the world's salmon comes from Chile.
The industry generated nearly 6 trillion pesos last year, which is around 6 billion dollars. But the industry has been battered by a crime wave. Chile's salmon has become a victim of its own success. In recent years, people have actually been stealing the fish. Just two robberies were reported in 2018, but from 2019 to 2023, they run 158.
Gangs usually target lorries transporting fish across the country. Drivers making long journeys on isolated highways, often traveling solo, can be easy targets for gangs. But gangs have also targeted cold storage facilities.
Earlier this year, as part of Operation Holy Salmon, police arrested 11 men in connection with an armed robbery at a warehouse in San Antonio, a port city. More than $650,000 worth of salmon were stolen after a gang of men stormed the warehouse. Lots of other incidents slip through the net and go unreported.
So Fraser, what's going on here? Why has there been this sudden surge in salmon heists? Partly, it's because stealing a lorry load of salmon can be really, really lucrative. Lories carry about $200,000 worth of fish. So it's a valuable commodity, which you can easily transport if you're able to hijack a truck.
But there are also other factors which have meant that the rise in crime has happened more recently. So domestic demand has risen pretty sharply over the past 10 years. Between 2013 and 2020, there was almost 20% increase in domestic consumption of salmon and chile. So gangs were able to make more money than before by selling salmon in local markets.
At the same time, gangs have been adapting. A big problem in some of the southern regions in Chile for many years has been wood theft. Very well organized gangs, often quite heavily armed, have hijacked Laurie's delivering timber. Something that's happened in recent years is the governments tried to crack down on them much more heavily. The timber mafias, as they're known in Chile, have probably been switching to salmon instead.
Chile isn't somewhere I traditionally associate with salmon.
Yeah, so salmon farming is an unusual thing to become a big industry in Chile. So the fish that are farmed are the kinds of salmon that are popular around the world. So it's Atlantic salmon. It's not indigenous to Chile. But something that the Pinochet government did during the 1980s was they implemented a fairly top-down policy of diversifying the country's economy. They wanted to diversify away from copper, which was effectively the country's only big export.
That made the country's economy very vulnerable to swings in the copper price. They developed a salmon farming industry from the ground up and in the space of about 15 or 20 years, they became one of the world's biggest salmon exporters. Okay, so salmon are disappearing from lorries. What are the other effects of this crime wave on Chile?
Firms are feeling quite considerable strain from this. I spoke to the boss of a salmon farming firm, and he said that he and other companies who've combed through their accounts think that it's weighing on gross operating profits by about 1%, which is quite a lot for a crime wave. Lots and lots of things are increasing costs. Firms are having to spend a lot more money on tracking equipment
for security for drivers, some of whom are wearing bulletproof vests and helmets because they're worried about their lorries getting hijacked. Drivers are avoiding the shortest routes, organizing themselves so they can travel in convoys, insurance costs have risen, so there's quite a big economic.
cost that the industry is having to shoulder. It's also a problem just for Chileans who are going to fish markets and don't know what they're getting themselves in for when they buy salmon. A lot of the time, the salmon gangs will steal a consignment of salmon and process it themselves. They'll be storing it in run satisfactory conditions. There's a genuine risk to public health.
So what you're saying is the wood mafia may not know how to make sure that salmon is kept properly. You mentioned Operation Holy Salmon as being quite successful. What else can be done to stop these salmon heists?
some of the measures of things like extra tracking devices, extra security, that started to make a difference. And so while there were 24 heists recorded in 2023, there have only been 12 recorded so far this year. So there's gradually been some progress.
There are also legislative measures which some members of the government are working on. There's been a bill proposed in Chile's Lower House of Congress, which would make salmon robbery a specific crime, which would have harsh penalties and more resources devoted to tackling it. That's based on a piece of legislation which was used to target timber mafias a few years ago.
So, given the success of the government in cracking down on those gangs, there's quite a lot of optimism that this will have a similar effect on salmon mafias. There is a lesson here which is about just how adaptable criminal gangs can be. If you crack down on crime in one area, you're very likely to see it crop up in another. And gangs who are good at stealing one thing might well prove very good at stealing another. Fraser, fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. Thank you. Can't wait for our next salmon story.
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