Petty Lines in the Sand

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re diving into the economics of borders, the lines we pretend are ancient but were mostly scratched into the earth by soldiers, surveyors and empire-builders with rulers. From Ukraine’s shifting frontlines to Dublin’s Herzog Park, to Northern Ireland’s uneasy edges, we trace how geography becomes politics. Then we go back to the original culprit: William Petty, Cromwell’s cartographer, the man who mapped Ireland in 13 months and turned land into an asset class. His Down Survey redrew Ireland and created the blueprint for colonialism, capitalism and the straight-line borders that still ignite conflict from Central Asia to the Middle East. We follow the rulers, the rebellions, the dispossession and the economics behind every “line in the sand.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:06.5	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:13.5	How you doing there? It's time for the podcast.
0:17.3	And today's podcast is all going to be about the economics of cartography, John.
0:22.8	Now, I know it's a strange one, right?
0:25.4	It's about borders, shifting borders, who gets to determine who lives where, who owns what.
0:32.7	Because if you look back at 2025, almost everything we've
0:39.1	been discussing when it comes to critical
0:40.9	points has been, at
0:43.3	least geographically, about shifting
0:45.3	borders. I'm looking here
0:47.2	at a map
0:49.4	of the disputed
0:51.2	part of Ukraine. Zelensky
0:53.3	was in Ireland this week, talking to the Taoiseach,
0:57.4	but maybe, maybe even more importantly, Sharma Krovers played a crowd called Shachtar Donetsk.
1:02.9	Last week, Donetsk is a city in eastern Ukraine, which is now occupied by Russia.
1:09.0	Yeah. It has always been a Russian-speaking city,
1:11.8	but has been a Ukrainian city.
1:13.4	Now that football team has to play its games in Levovov or Leviv,
1:18.1	depending on what kind of says.
1:20.0	Your accent, yeah.
	...

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