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Speaker 1: Welcome to had to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm

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Speaker 1: talking about how the world is getting better with Mary

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Speaker 1: and Tupy. Okay, so you've heard the phrase this is

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Speaker 1: why we can't have nice things. Our modern society has

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Speaker 1: produced a slew of nice things, though that would have

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Speaker 1: been hard to fathom fifty years ago, much less two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago. PCs and smartphones, gore tex

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Speaker 1: and duct tape, GPS and the barcode. All of these things,

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Speaker 1: to greater or lesser degrees, have made our lives better.

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Speaker 1: But how did those innovations and that abundance come about.

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Speaker 1: Why do twenty twenty five look so radically different in

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Speaker 1: the developed world than eighteen twenty five. Well, Mary and

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Speaker 1: Tupey's book Superabundance was a revelation to me a few

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Speaker 1: years ago, showing how far we've come in pretty easy

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Speaker 1: to understand language. Maryon Twopy is a senior fellow at

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Speaker 1: the Cato Institute. He's also the founder and editor of

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Speaker 1: human Progress dot org, a site that seeks to evidence

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Speaker 1: these dramatic improvements. With Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, I couldn't

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Speaker 1: think of a better time to cover this topic. So

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Speaker 1: Mary and Twopy. Thank you so much for joining me

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Speaker 1: today on the podcast.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: Okay, first question we ask everybody who comes on. I

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Speaker 1: like to splorage on craft beer, fancy craft beer. Honestly,

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Speaker 1: with Thanksgiving I might pops off really nice tomorrow. What

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Speaker 1: is that for you, though? What do you like to

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Speaker 1: splurge on while you're still being smart and thoughtful about

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Speaker 1: your finances in your future.

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Speaker 2: I save a lot of money to be able to travel.

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Speaker 2: I really enjoy traveling and exploring different parts of the world,

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Speaker 2: so I would say that is my luxury, although I

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Speaker 2: do like beer as well.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, then we can be friends. Then what's

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Speaker 1: the last great trip you went on?

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Speaker 2: I must say I think my last great trip was

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Speaker 2: to Argentina. I think that a discovery of Buenos Aires.

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Speaker 2: It is a proper Western, well functioning, beautiful, laid out

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Speaker 2: city in Latin America that you wouldn't expect to find,

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Speaker 2: and I enjoyed being there very much.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, after I went a long long time ago.

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Speaker 1: It was probably thirty years ago, so I'll have to

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Speaker 1: like put it back on my list. I have to

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Speaker 1: go as an adult. Let's get to the topic. I'm curious, like,

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Speaker 1: have we as a society become too accustomed to our

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Speaker 1: current level of wealth without understanding how it's come to be.

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Speaker 1: It seems like there's like a disconnect right now, and

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Speaker 1: there's like a burn it down sort of mentality without

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Speaker 1: really understanding what we're attempting to burn down.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is a very good perspective to have.

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Speaker 2: We have gotten to where we are by being a

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Speaker 2: much more open society to new innovations. New innovations don't

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Speaker 2: just have to be technological, medical, scientific innovations. They can

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Speaker 2: be also ethical, cultural innovations. And basically, for a variety

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Speaker 2: of reasons, Europe in the eighteenth century became much more

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Speaker 2: open to new ideas. New ideas flourished, and they brought

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Speaker 2: about what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction.

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Speaker 2: A lot of old presumptions, dogma's ideas were simply swept away,

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Speaker 2: and the society well became much more open to innovation.

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Speaker 2: And as a consequence of that, we have unleashed for

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Speaker 2: the last two hundred years an era of unprecedented innovation

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Speaker 2: and consequently greater economic growth as well as I would

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Speaker 2: say improved morality where people treat each other much better

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Speaker 2: than they used to. And I think that in certain

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Speaker 2: ways we have certainly forgotten about that. The society is

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Speaker 2: becoming much more close. You can see it in terms

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Speaker 2: of how we treat international trade, which is of course

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Speaker 2: very important to to to innovation and to economic growth,

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Speaker 2: but also society is becoming much more skeptical about certain

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Speaker 2: kinds of innovation. Tacker Carlson, for example, was interviewed by

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Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro about two years ago, and Ben Shapiro asked

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Speaker 2: him what would he do about autonomous truck trucking autonomous

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Speaker 2: you know, trucks, and Tucker said that he would ban

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Speaker 2: it in a second because it would put a lot

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Speaker 2: of truckers out of work. But if you made the

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Speaker 2: same argument two hundred years ago, or even one hundred

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Speaker 2: years ago about horse buggy drivers, sure, then we would

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Speaker 2: still be, you know, riding horse buggies rather than driving trucks.

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Speaker 1: At the bank, right, I mean, there's a million things

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Speaker 1: you could point to.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's that's a very long answer to your

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Speaker 2: short question, but it was a good one.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that the twenty four hour news cycle

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Speaker 1: is part of the problem that it impacts our ability

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Speaker 1: to see the good things that are happening in the world.

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Speaker 1: I know that these websites for a minute, that we're

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Speaker 1: dedicated to only publishing good news, but it does feel

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Speaker 1: like the twenty four hour news cycle before it existed,

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Speaker 1: we were just less aware of maybe some of the

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Speaker 1: negative things happening in our society, and maybe ignorance was bliss,

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Speaker 1: at least to a certain extent.

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure if ignorance is ever bliss, but maybe.

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Speaker 2: All right, I will tell you I agree with you

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Speaker 2: broadly speaking, but I think that there is something else

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Speaker 2: going on, which is a negativity contagion. So it's not

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Speaker 2: so much that we have twenty four hour cycle, though

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Speaker 2: that's part of it. It's that there's just so many

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Speaker 2: more outlets and they're all doing the same things, which

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Speaker 2: is presenting negative news. So it's not just that Fox

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Speaker 2: has to compete against NBC and CBS and ABC. You

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Speaker 2: now have websites where most people get their news, in

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Speaker 2: addition to radio and newspapers and so forth, and we

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Speaker 2: have evolved to prioritize bad news. And so because you

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Speaker 2: have now this hyper competitive environment, the only way that

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Speaker 2: you can get people to come back to you. In

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Speaker 2: the phase of all of that competition is to present

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Speaker 2: the worst news first and repeatedly and in the worst

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Speaker 2: possible terms, and there is very little time and space

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Speaker 2: for positive news. The hundreds of little innovations that are

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Speaker 2: happening every day that are improving people's lives simply do

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Speaker 2: not make it on those websites or on those newscasts

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Speaker 2: because in order to get those eyeballs, they have to

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Speaker 2: focus on the negatives. So the perception that is created

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Speaker 2: in the human mind is that everything in the world

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Speaker 2: is getting worse, and that is certainly incorrect, it's unrealistic,

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Speaker 2: and it is highly damaging. So it's the negative emotional

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Speaker 2: contagent which we have to deal with, and there is

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Speaker 2: not an easy solution to it, because it's not like

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Speaker 2: it's a market failure in a sense of hyper competition

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Speaker 2: of of of media only there there is there is

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Speaker 2: a there is a human nature at play. We desire

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Speaker 2: bad news that because we have evolved to look out

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Speaker 2: for bad news in order to survive.

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Speaker 1: You you run a site that focuses on a lot

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Speaker 1: of good news that highlights the progress that we've made,

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Speaker 1: so which is kind of the opposite of what drives

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Speaker 1: in the media ecosystem right now, can you share maybe

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Speaker 1: a few things, a few recent things from your site

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Speaker 1: that you guys have been working on.

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Speaker 2: Sure, so, Human progress dot org is specifically intended to

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Speaker 2: combat this negativity, emotional bias, or contagion, and people can

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Speaker 2: sign up for a week summary of all the good

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Speaker 2: things that have taken place. You know, it's just one

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Speaker 2: email a week saying hey, you know, this is what

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Speaker 2: has happened in the last few weeks. We have seen

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Speaker 2: children who were genetically unable to hear regain their hearing.

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Speaker 2: We have seen new advances. We have seen new statistics

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Speaker 2: showing how certain threatened species of whale are actually expanding

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Speaker 2: all over the world. We have seen the discovery of

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Speaker 2: a new antibiotic which will which will enable us to

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Speaker 2: get around the problem of superbugs, and so on and

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Speaker 2: so forth. So again, the good news is out there

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Speaker 2: if you just look for it. But I'm afraid that

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Speaker 2: you know, our reach is you know, hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 2: of people. It is not millions that the doom and

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Speaker 2: gloom newscasts get every day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's just talk about progress. Is all progress

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Speaker 1: good because it does seem like most of the time,

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Speaker 1: much of the time, specially over the past couple hundreds,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the progress that we've experienced has been

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Speaker 1: to our benefit personally economically. Automation though it can bring

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Speaker 1: down prices, but it can also reduce jobs, as we

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Speaker 1: were kind of referring to. So how do you square

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Speaker 1: that circle on progress, good, bad? Somewhere in the middle.

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Speaker 2: I would say that my definition of progress obviously has

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Speaker 2: the human in front of it, so you know, it

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Speaker 2: is a very humanistic or human centric or entropercentric project,

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Speaker 2: if you will. And if there are aspects to progress

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Speaker 2: which are damaging to humanity, that then we need to

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Speaker 2: we need to we need to talk about it. For example,

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Speaker 2: it is an open question whether the fact that we

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Speaker 2: have much more free time than people in the past.

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Speaker 2: It's just the reality is that as people earn more

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Speaker 2: money than number of hours of work is lower or

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Speaker 2: goes down, believe it or not. Even though Americans, for example,

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Speaker 2: work much more than people in Western Europe, we still

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Speaker 2: work about a third less than what we did two

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Speaker 2: hundred years ago. Right, So we have all this time

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Speaker 2: on our hands, and you know that provides much more

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Speaker 2: time for introspection and especially if you are amongst the

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Speaker 2: least fortunate people in the United States, say somebody who

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Speaker 2: doesn't have a family, maybe you have just lost your job,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. Having a lot of time for rumination may

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Speaker 2: not be a bad idea, especially if you have access

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Speaker 2: to all the bad news. So there's another aspect of it,

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Speaker 2: which is social media. I am not putting down social

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Speaker 2: media because I think the jury is still out, you know,

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Speaker 2: social media, and it enables us to do a lot

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Speaker 2: of marvelous things, keeping up with cousins across the you know,

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Speaker 2: across the world, speaking to our parents who may not

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Speaker 2: live in the United States but in your or elsewhere.

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Speaker 2: It allows us to get alerts for tsunamis and things

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Speaker 2: like that. So there's a lot of positive to it.

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Speaker 2: But maybe, as Jonathan Hyde argues, taking them out of

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Speaker 2: high schools is not a bad idea. So we have

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Speaker 2: just hired a human progress a young psychologist from Harvard

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Speaker 2: who will be researching these issues and hopefully make us

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Speaker 2: understand better about the negative aspects of progress.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk about what has propelled human economic activity

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Speaker 1: to accelerate in such an epic way, especially over the

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Speaker 1: past one hundred and fifty years and maybe why it's

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Speaker 1: been experienced more in a more heightened way in countries

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Speaker 1: like ours then maybe and even a stark difference of

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Speaker 1: like North Korea and South Korea, right, like one thriving

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Speaker 1: economic hub and one closed off from the world. Is

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Speaker 1: it kind of pointing back to what you mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: being closed off from trade and therefore being closed off

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Speaker 1: from innovation.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you're basically a right when you

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Speaker 2: have two states made up of essentially the same people,

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Speaker 2: like East Germany and West Germany and North and South Korea,

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Speaker 2: and they are producing fundamentally different economic results, that suggests

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Speaker 2: being more open to international trade, have enforceable private property

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Speaker 2: rights to give just two examples, maybe a stable currency

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Speaker 2: are very important. So Economic Freedom of the World Report,

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Speaker 2: which is co published by the Cato Institute and Fraser

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Speaker 2: Frasier Institute in Canada, they look at regulatory structure, they

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Speaker 2: look at trade openers, they look at they look at

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Speaker 2: sound currency trade and basically what they find is that

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Speaker 2: the more open you are, the less regulated you are,

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Speaker 2: the less overtaxed you are, the better you And what

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Speaker 2: has happened was that for a variety of contingent historical reasons.

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Speaker 2: Many of these things came together in Northwestern Europe, especially

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Speaker 2: in Holland or Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the

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Speaker 2: seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they were able to grow

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Speaker 2: rapidly and show the path to the rest of the world.

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Speaker 2: And since the United States is simply a daughter country

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Speaker 2: of Great Britain, many of those institutions and very importantly

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Speaker 2: cultural values that Britain had had been translated into the

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Speaker 2: American context, and America could build upon the British the

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Speaker 2: British origin story to become the wealthiest country in the

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Speaker 2: world by the year nineteen hundred. So fundamentally it's about institutions,

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Speaker 2: but I think that cultural reasons play also a part.

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Speaker 2: And it is a highly contentious territory, I would say,

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Speaker 2: but I think those two are very important. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I heard you say at one point that the good

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Speaker 1: old days were buying large very bad, and I loved

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Speaker 1: I love that because so many people like look back

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Speaker 1: with nostalgia to a bygone era and they're like, I

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Speaker 1: was so great back then. But I don't think if

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Speaker 1: most of us were offered a time machine, we'd go back,

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Speaker 1: probably even fifteen or twenty years when you ask a youngster, hey,

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Speaker 1: would you give up your smartphone for a million dollars? Like,

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't do it, you know, they just wouldn't. They

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be parted from that progress. So how

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Speaker 1: do you How bad was life back in the day?

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Speaker 1: How great is it? How great do we have it now?

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Speaker 2: First of all, I wish we did have time travel,

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Speaker 2: because I think that I would love to send every

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Speaker 2: college kid or school kid to Pompeii, where I was

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Speaker 2: what three or four weeks ago. This is the city

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Speaker 2: that was destroyed by volcanic corruptions in seventy nine AD

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Speaker 2: and can be visited in a close on Naples today.

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Speaker 2: And the fascinating thing that you see in Pompeii is

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Speaker 2: that the tile roads have large stones running through them.

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Speaker 2: Instead of pedestrian walks, they have these large stepping stones.

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Speaker 2: Why do they have them, Well, they have them because

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Speaker 2: streets would basically be running with sewer. All the human excrement, urine, awfal,

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Speaker 2: blood from slaughtered animals would be simply dumped into the street,

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Speaker 2: and then you would have water running down those streets

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Speaker 2: in order to flush it into the sea, which is

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Speaker 2: partly why Pompeii is on a hill, you know, going

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Speaker 2: down to the Mediterranean Sea, and people used to cross

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Speaker 2: streets on stilts and things like that because basically, basically

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Speaker 2: it was incredibly filthy. That's the first thing that you

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Speaker 2: would that you would discover if you went acting time,

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Speaker 2: the fils and the stench everywhere. The other thing that

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Speaker 2: you would quickly realize is that people lived to about

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Speaker 2: thirty Today, life expectancy around the world is about seventy three.

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Speaker 2: It's about seventy nine in the United States, so everybody

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Speaker 2: has been granted an extra life. Fifty percent of children

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Speaker 2: before the age of fifteen died. Okay, murderate in Renaissance

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Speaker 2: Italy was about forty per hundred thousand. Today in Italy

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Speaker 2: it's zero point three per one hundred thousand. So when

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Speaker 2: it comes to violence, life expectancy, child maternal mortality, roughly

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Speaker 2: one thousand women per one hundred thousand childbirths would die.

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Speaker 2: In the old days to day, it's a fraction of that.

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Speaker 2: People were ignorant and illiterate. Our best evidence suggests that

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Speaker 2: even the most sophisticated society is roughly ten percent of

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Speaker 2: people could read and write. Today it's obviously almost universal,

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Speaker 2: so along so many dimensions, life was just so much

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Speaker 2: more difficult. And don't forget that we were incredibly poor.

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Speaker 2: So GDP per capita per person per day was about

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Speaker 2: two to three dollars. Right today globally it's about forty

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Speaker 2: dollars adjusted for inflation. So that gives you a sense

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Speaker 2: of where we were and where we are today. The

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Speaker 2: last two hundred years are really unprecedented in human history

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Speaker 2: in terms of the extraordinary flourishing of humanity. And I

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Speaker 2: think that it is deeply connected to the increased liberalization,

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Speaker 2: not using it in political terms, you know, as in

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Speaker 2: liberal in the United States, liberalization of economy and politics.

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Speaker 2: Governments became much more responsive, They started enforcing they stopped

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Speaker 2: behaving in arbitrary fashion, they started enforcing equality before the law.

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Speaker 2: And of course in the economy, we just became much freer.

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Speaker 2: In fifteen or sixteenth century England, for example, whether you

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Speaker 2: wanted to import something or export something, you need the

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Speaker 2: permission of the king, who would give you a monopoly

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Speaker 2: on the export of salt or the import of wool

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Speaker 2: and whatever else. Today you can pretty much start a

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Speaker 2: business anytime you like. You just have to deal with regulations.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, is progress something you think of as unavoidable or

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Speaker 1: do you think it's something that needs to be safeguarded?

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Speaker 1: Like I think about not being able to recreate the

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Speaker 1: pyramids right, like almost like that ability has been lost

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Speaker 1: and we don't know how right the pyramids were made,

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Speaker 1: or rockets. I've heard Elon Must say something along the

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Speaker 1: lines of like, if we hadn't started to make rockets again,

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Speaker 1: some of that knowledge would would have been lost. What

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Speaker 1: would have gone away? Is that how progress is? Can

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Speaker 1: it be lost?

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Speaker 2: Well? I don't know about the pyramids. I'm pretty sure

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Speaker 2: that we could make them with heavy machinery today. I

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Speaker 2: think that the question about the pyramids is how did

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Speaker 2: the ancients create them without heavy machinery? But we could

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Speaker 2: probably do that. No, progress is definitely not guaranteed. When

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Speaker 2: people started realizing that the world was improving at a

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Speaker 2: very fast click in the nineteenth century, there was an

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Speaker 2: emergence of a number of schools of thought. Hegel marks,

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Speaker 2: can't people like that who started talking about progress as

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Speaker 2: being unavoidable. But that is clearly not true. Progress can regress.

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Speaker 2: After the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, Europe

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Speaker 2: forgot a lot of the knowledge that the Romans possessed.

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Speaker 2: To this day, we don't know how to make Roman concrete,

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Speaker 2: for example, even though it has withstood for two thousand

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Speaker 2: years and so and people in the dark ages in Europe,

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Speaker 2: you know, used to walk amongst the monuments built by

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Speaker 2: the Romans, wondering who were these people who created all

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Speaker 2: of this? Because they forgot right. So so knowledge can

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Speaker 2: be lost, Progress can regress. There is nothing unavoid about it.

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Speaker 2: And that's what concerns me is that, as you noted

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Speaker 2: at the beginning of the interview, so many people have

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Speaker 2: forgotten the reasons why progress has happened. It happens because

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Speaker 2: of an open economy tolerant of new ideas. And when

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Speaker 2: that goes, or when our institutions change, and you know,

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Speaker 2: when we embrace socialism, for example, like the North Koreans

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Speaker 2: or the Cubans or the Venezuelans, then I'm afraid progress

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Speaker 2: will stall and eventually go into reverse.

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Speaker 1: One retort that you might hear from people who think

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Speaker 1: of progress as not like an evident, self evidently good thing, is,

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Speaker 1: in particular, like some of the environmental ramifications that progress

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Speaker 1: the negative harms to our environment, that progress can create

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Speaker 1: what would you say to that.

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Speaker 2: I would say yes and no. So what tends to

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Speaker 2: happen when countries start industrializing, So you go through this

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Speaker 2: process of moving from agriculture to industry to services, and

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Speaker 2: when countries undertake industrialization, there is a lot of ecological

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Speaker 2: harm that takes place. That being said, it's not like

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Speaker 2: life in the agricultural society was without its risks. For example,

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Speaker 2: food would be contaminated at all times, people were suffering

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Speaker 2: from tremendous gustro intestinal problems, riven with parasites and so forth.

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Speaker 2: But never mind, let's put that aside. The point is

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Speaker 2: that once you move from agriculture to industry, you do

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Speaker 2: tend to create a lot of environmental damage. But then

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Speaker 2: what happens is that what is called an environmental Kuznetz

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Speaker 2: curve kicks in. And this is just a fancy way

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Speaker 2: of saying, is that when people become rich enough, they

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Speaker 2: start caring about the environment, and they have enough wealth

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Speaker 2: to start protecting their environment. So there are a number

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Speaker 2: of things that go on. One of them is that

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Speaker 2: you simply have more money and more resources human and

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Speaker 2: otherwise to clean up your reverse, which is why today

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Speaker 2: people are swimming in the Seine, and there are dolphins

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Speaker 2: in Thames in London that didn't used to be the

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Speaker 2: case during industrialization, so nature naturally rebounds. Another thing that

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Speaker 2: happens is urbanization. Basically the most disruptive element on land

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Speaker 2: is the human being. And when you take humans of

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Speaker 2: the land, in other words, as you move from agriculture

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Speaker 2: to industry and re later to services, more and more

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Speaker 2: people end up in the cities. By twenty one hundred,

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Speaker 2: something like eighty percent of humanity will be in the cities,

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Speaker 2: which means that we will depopulate areas in which we

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Speaker 2: currently live and where we disrupt the natural flow of

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Speaker 2: flora and fauna, and that will bounce back. So the

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Speaker 2: best thing that you can do for the environment is

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Speaker 2: really to urbanize and to become as agricultural efficient as possible.

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Speaker 2: So the Greens, I'm afraid, are riven with contradictions. On

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Speaker 2: the one hand, they don't want to build nuclear power

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Speaker 2: stations even though they don't emit CO two, and they

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Speaker 2: are the best solution that we have currently to reducing

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Speaker 2: CO two in the atmosphere. It's more expensive than gas.

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Speaker 2: Gas still produces some CO two in the atmosphere, but

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Speaker 2: much less so than coal. But you know, if we

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Speaker 2: could switch all of humanity to gas and then eventually

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Speaker 2: to nuclear, then we would be able to reduce COO

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Speaker 2: two dramatically. Another thing which the Greens are against is GMOs.

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Speaker 2: But suppose that you can genetically modify some of our

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Speaker 2: most important crops such as sweet and corn and soy

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Speaker 2: and so forth, so that you can produce much more

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Speaker 2: per acre. That means that you can feed growing global

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Speaker 2: population on fewer and fewer acres of land, which means

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Speaker 2: that you can return more and more acres of land

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Speaker 2: back to flora and fauna. So there are solutions for

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Speaker 2: environmental comeback that modern society offers, and I if you're

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Speaker 2: open minded about it, and the Greens very often aren't.

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Speaker 2: And I'm not even talking about like the extinction movement,

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Speaker 2: which also holds promise for the future where we'll be

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Speaker 2: able to basically use the DNA of dead or extinct

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Speaker 2: animals in order to bring them back.

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Speaker 1: We got more to get to. Specifically, it takes so

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Speaker 1: much less time to buy almost all of the goods

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Speaker 1: and services that we enjoy. We'll talk about why that

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Speaker 1: is with Mary and Tupe right after this. I'm still

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Speaker 1: talking with Mary and twopee and I want Mary and

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about specifically your book Superabundance. And

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Speaker 1: this was released in twenty twenty two and to me,

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Speaker 1: like as I was reading it, it was striking because

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Speaker 1: you put things in terms there were so much easier

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Speaker 1: to understand. And part of what made it easy to

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Speaker 1: comprehend was when you talk about time prices, how long

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Speaker 1: specifically people must work to be able to afford every

400
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Speaker 1: day items. Talk about that concept like how does that,

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Speaker 1: how can that help maybe us appreciate the progress that

402
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Speaker 1: we've made and what sort of progress have we made

403
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Speaker 1: when we look at the concept of time prices.

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Speaker 2: Well, time prices have been implemented in the book by

405
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Speaker 2: necessity because we wanted to see how much cheaper resources

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Speaker 2: are today than they used to be before. I mean,

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Speaker 2: the idea that most people subscribe to is a zero

408
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Speaker 2: sum idea, which is that the more people you have,

409
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Speaker 2: the more resources they use. Therefore resources are becoming more

410
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Speaker 2: expensive and scarcer. The opposite is true, resources are becoming

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Speaker 2: cheaper as you have more people in the world because

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Speaker 2: people bring new ideas and they basically grow the resource

413
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Speaker 2: by But since we were going back to eighteen fifty.

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Speaker 2: We simply didn't have the currencies, and we didn't have

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Speaker 2: the exchange rates, and we didn't have the inflation rates,

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Speaker 2: so we couldn't use normal currencies. So we simply what

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Speaker 2: we asked ourselves is basically, how long did people have

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Speaker 2: to work in order to buy a bag of potatoes

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Speaker 2: or a bag of oranges, or a bunch of bananas,

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Speaker 2: or a pound of beef or a pound of pork

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Speaker 2: and whatever else. And so that was done by necessity,

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Speaker 2: but it's also a smart way. I think that everybody

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Speaker 2: should do it to measure human well being or rather

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Speaker 2: abundance or prosperity, simply because it is a Everybody has

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Speaker 2: only twenty four hours in a day. So if you

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Speaker 2: are an Indian peasant, for example, and you are spending

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Speaker 2: six hours a day to earn enough money to buy

428
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Speaker 2: your food, but an American can do it in ten minutes,

429
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Speaker 2: that makes a difference. So what we really want is

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Speaker 2: for people to spend less and less time during their

431
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Speaker 2: work day to spend on necessities clothing, food, housing, that

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Speaker 2: sort of thing, and have more time to work to

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Speaker 2: earn money for leisure or education or alternatively, just not

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00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 2: working at all. And you know, have time off and

435
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:16,159
Speaker 2: enjoy it with your family. So it makes it so

436
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 2: it made accounting sense for the book, but it also

437
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:24,160
Speaker 2: makes sense from a moral or ethical standpoint, because what

438
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 2: you really want to do is a measure how much

439
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 2: more time we have today? Too? Well, let me put

440
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 2: it this way, because we work so little time to

441
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 2: earn the food that we eat, for example, we have

442
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 2: much more time to earn the money to travel to

443
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 2: Argentina for example, or you know, or buy a car,

444
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 2: which which an Indian cannot because most of the time

445
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 2: he spends working, he's working to provide food for his family.

446
00:27:59,359 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 2: So what is it?

447
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: So? Is that what it means then, to be able

448
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: to spend so much less time to buy let's say

449
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: a pound of sugar or an hour of light like

450
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: the light bulbs and the energy that it costs to

451
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: light our homes. It doesn't mean it means more leisure,

452
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: more ability to consume new products that are made Like,

453
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: what else does it really mean that we have such

454
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: an abundance of extra time because it cost us less

455
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: of our working hours, less time of working to get

456
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: the money to buy that stuff.

457
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,399
Speaker 2: Well, essentially, it means abundance. It means prosperity. The reason

458
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 2: why an American house looks very different from a Brazilian

459
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 2: favela or an African hut is because because we don't

460
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 2: have to spend all this time working to buy our food,

461
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 2: for example, right, you know, we have much more time

462
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 2: left after we earn enough money to buy our food,

463
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 2: to buy refrigerator and a tea and two cars in

464
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 2: a garage, and books and tables and chairs and everything else.

465
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 2: So if you look at a middle class American house today,

466
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 2: it looks very different from an African hut or Brazilian

467
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 2: favela precisely because we can buy so much more with

468
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 2: our time than Africans or Brazilians can.

469
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: I think about like limited resources like oil, even that

470
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: has gotten cheaper over time, and that seems kind of

471
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:32,239
Speaker 1: counterintuitive that a scarce resource could get less expensive. And

472
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: when you think about twenty thirty years ago, some of

473
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 1: the predictions about peak oil, those haven't really come to pass.

474
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 1: And gas prices are not six dollars a gallon where

475
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: I live.

476
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 2: So what do you explain that, Well, it's just that

477
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 2: it's not as scarce as people thought it was. So

478
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 2: for example, using the old drilling methods. Many American oil

479
00:29:55,560 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 2: fields where quote unquote exhausted in the nineteen eight tea,

480
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, but then somebody again we are

481
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 2: going to going back to population and ideas. Then somebody

482
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 2: came up with the idea of fracking. And so what

483
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 2: you do. You return back to those oil fields which

484
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: are exhausted with the old technology, and you apply this

485
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 2: new technology, which is fracking, and you are able to

486
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 2: get so much oil and gas out of those out

487
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:28,959
Speaker 2: of those same oil fields that America today is the

488
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 2: world's greatest export of oil and gas. Right, So that

489
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 2: is one example of how you can how something that

490
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 2: is supposedly scarce becomes less scarce. And even if at

491
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 2: some point in the future we run out of oil

492
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 2: in the ground, you can of course turn coal into oil.

493
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 2: The Germans during the Second World War and South Africans

494
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 2: under apartheid were able to do that. We have the

495
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 2: technology to do that. So you may go through an

496
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 2: extra step to get to oil, but you can still

497
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 2: do so. And we have coal deposits lasting us for

498
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of years, and of course by that

499
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 2: time will be already switched over to a different kind

500
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 2: of energy.

501
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 1: Source and so forth as a human ingenuity.

502
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 2: Because of human ingenuity, Yes, I mean, eventually we want

503
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,959
Speaker 2: to get to a place where all of our energy

504
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 2: comes from the sun for example, right, yeah, which you

505
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 2: know there are there are a lot of sci fi

506
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 2: sort of ways of doing that. The technology is currently

507
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 2: not that. And fusion. You know, if we have fusion

508
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 2: and we have solar and maybe thermal thermal energy, you know,

509
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 2: we'll be able to get away from from fossil fuels altogether.

510
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 1: I don't want to make light of income inequality, and

511
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: I don't want to make light of people who don't

512
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: have nearly the same resources, whether it's because of their

513
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: familial ancestry. I had a more difficult life than I

514
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: have or and you have. I don't know, But what

515
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 1: would you say to a US citizen listening to this

516
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,400
Speaker 1: podcast who thinks they're poor? Well, and especially when you

517
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 1: think about the global context, like, how would you I

518
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm curious how you would speak to someone

519
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: like that.

520
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 2: Well, at a metal level, I don't consider inequality to

521
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 2: be a proper measure of human well being. I consider

522
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 2: poverty to be or reduction in poverty to be a

523
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 2: proper measure of human well being. So I don't really

524
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 2: care that Jeff Bezos is worth three hundred billion dollars

525
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 2: and Elon Musk is worth five hundred billion dollars. It's

526
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 2: not a zero sum game. They've grown the economic pie,

527
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 2: and consequently the fact that they are super rich has

528
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 2: no negative impact on my life or the lives of

529
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 2: the fellow Americans. In other words, they didn't take anything

530
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 2: from fellow Americans. So that is not a proper measure

531
00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 2: of human well being. What is happening at the bottom

532
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 2: of the income letter is of concern. That is a

533
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 2: proper measure of well being. What we want to see

534
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 2: is wages for the bottom ten percent or bottom twenty

535
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 2: percent to continue to increase, and you can really only

536
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 2: do that in a growing economy where there's competition for labor.

537
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 2: And when it comes to Americans specifically, we are of

538
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 2: course the richest large country in the world. There are

539
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 2: some countries which are richer per capita. They tend to

540
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 2: be much smaller, and they tend to be they tend

541
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 2: to have a specific set of characteristics, like for example,

542
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 2: Norway has very few people, but it has so much

543
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 2: oil that basically that basically they have trillions of dollars

544
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 2: in their sovereign fund. And even then, you know, going

545
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 2: for dinner in Norway is a nightmare because it's so expensive,

546
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 2: and you.

547
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: Know it isn't once it was very very expensive.

548
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,239
Speaker 2: I can attest, yeah, because of taxes, and you have

549
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 2: similar situation in some of the Middle East and cheekdoms

550
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 2: like United Arab Emerits and so forth. But in terms

551
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 2: of Americans as such, we are of course living miraculously

552
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 2: better than our ancestors, and we are living extraordinarily well

553
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 2: compared to the rest of the world. The Chinese income

554
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 2: per capita is something like median income per capita is

555
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 2: something like thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars, so they at

556
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:33,799
Speaker 2: the same level as Mexico, whereas whereas the United States

557
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 2: is fifty or sixty thousand dollars per person, so we

558
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 2: are simply much richer than even our competitors.

559
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: This might not be a question. I don't know if

560
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: you ever gotten asked this question before, but when how

561
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 1: can understanding human progress change the way that we as

562
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 1: individuals think about personal finance or long term investing. Because

563
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: with you talking about progress, and especially in an economy

564
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 1: like ours, man, I want to invest in that progress,

565
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 1: so I can rea some of the benefit. Yeah, how

566
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: would you talk to somebody who was wondering about their

567
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:06,920
Speaker 1: personal finances or their investing life.

568
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 2: Gosh, you know, I'm not an investor, God knows, I've

569
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 2: made a lot of mistakes in the stock market myself.

570
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:19,799
Speaker 2: But basically, if anybody is approaching investment thinking, okay, let

571
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 2: me invest in raw materials. You know, because the population

572
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 2: is increasing and we are consuming more stuff and consequently

573
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,240
Speaker 2: things must become more expensive. That's not really how it works.

574
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 2: So it's really a negative investment strategy. I would say

575
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 2: to invest in raw materials. Now you can chance upon

576
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 2: a time when raw materials do become more expensive, like,

577
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 2: for example, the first decade of the twenty first century,

578
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:47,719
Speaker 2: when China really took off and started growing at a

579
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,240
Speaker 2: very fast click. They were consuming so many raw materials

580
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 2: that raw materials actually increased in price. But you know,

581
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 2: at twenty or thirty or forty year strategy, investing in

582
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 2: raw materials is probably not a good idea. But what

583
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 2: drives economy forward is technology, really, and so being exposed

584
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 2: to tech stocks is probably a better idea. Again, this

585
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 2: is just how I read how I read the lessons

586
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:21,800
Speaker 2: from our book is that what drives human progress forward

587
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 2: is really new technology.

588
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: So a recent Pew study found that fifty seven percent

589
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 1: of people said that their children are going to grow

590
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: up to be worse off financially than their parents. And

591
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: this is a reversal of the American optimism that I

592
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: think has kind of been at the heart of who

593
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 1: we are as a country. It's gotten down to significantly

594
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: over the years. So how is that possible? Does this

595
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: go back to kind of the beginning of our conversation,

596
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: how is it possible? Given the progress that's been made,

597
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: and specifically in this country that's been keenly felt, why

598
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: are we so pestimistic about the future and the ability

599
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: of our children to do better than we have?

600
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:02,280
Speaker 2: There is a very strange thing going on whereby people

601
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 2: in the United States, but other places in the world

602
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 2: as well, are much more optimistic about the personal lives

603
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 2: than about the society as a whole. So there is

604
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 2: about thirty point difference on average if you ask people

605
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 2: how are you doing financially? Oh, I'm doing okay, you know,

606
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 2: things are fine. How is America doing? Oh, it's going

607
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 2: to help. And this is this is a consistent finding

608
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 2: in in opinion polls, and that I think has to

609
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 2: do with the fact that you know, when when you

610
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 2: are looking at your life, you can you can speak

611
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 2: much more objectively about where you are today as opposed

612
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 2: to last year, whether your income has grown and so forth,

613
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 2: Whereas if you are looking at society there is probably

614
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:55,959
Speaker 2: that negative emotion contagion going on where where you only

615
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 2: hear bad things about the United States, and so you

616
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 2: you know, you you internalize that for the country, even

617
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 2: though you personally are doing well. Now, I don't want

618
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 2: to be too blase about it. Of course, there are possibilities.

619
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:12,840
Speaker 2: Of course, there are scenarios under which the future generations

620
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 2: could be poorer. If, for example, we shut ourselves off

621
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 2: from global trade, we will be poorer. If we elect

622
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 2: a socialist to the presidency, we will be poorer. There

623
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,280
Speaker 2: are scenarios as such. Yes, I we shouldn't be too blase.

624
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: In some ways you're pointing to not to I try

625
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: to avoid politics on the show, but you're pointing to

626
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: both parties that could lead, of course to places that

627
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 1: are not great, and so I just I just want

628
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: to point that out there.

629
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 2: I don't, of course, but I mean that. That is

630
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,800
Speaker 2: why I've chosen examples from both parties is because both

631
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:55,919
Speaker 2: parties are have become parties of victimhood, where the politicians,

632
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 2: both Republican and Democrats, are basically telling their electorates the

633
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 2: world is set against you. Everybody is exploiting you in

634
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 2: spite of the fact that you are the most lucky

635
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 2: generation in global history, in the luckiest one of the

636
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 2: luckiest places in the world. You know, everything sucks because

637
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 2: that's how you keep people, That's how you keep your

638
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 2: troops constantly anxious and constantly voting for you and supporting

639
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 2: you financially. And it's the wrong way to go about it.

640
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 2: But both parties are guilty.

641
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: What's one data point about global progress that still blows

642
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: your mind? Maybe something that you found when writing the

643
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 1: book Super Abundance, or something that you featured recently on

644
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: the website Human Progress. Like, what is something that maybe

645
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: or when people are asking for like a factoid that

646
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: just is like ridiculous of human flourishing.

647
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 2: What would you point to, Well, look, the obvious things

648
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 2: would be life expectancy. I enjoy life. I recommend that

649
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,839
Speaker 2: people you know, stop worrying too much and enjoy life.

650
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 2: To and the fact is that life expectancy, you know,

651
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 2: two hundred years ago was about thirty years and today

652
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 2: it's in the United States approaching eighty. So we are

653
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 2: given an opportunity to enjoy twice almost three times as

654
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 2: much life as we as we would have had in

655
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 2: the past. But if you're asking me about the specific statistic,

656
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 2: given that Thanksgiving is coming up, we wrote an article

657
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 2: last year and will probably write an article this year

658
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 2: as well, about the price of Thanksgiving, a time price

659
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 2: of Thanksgiving, and on our calculation, basically, an American worker

660
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 2: today can buy one point seven Thanksgiving dinners for the

661
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 2: same amount of time that he or she would have

662
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 2: to pay for it in nineteen eighty six. Eighty six

663
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:54,440
Speaker 2: is Reagan was president.

664
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:54,440
Speaker 1: But.

665
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,760
Speaker 2: Eighty six is the first year for which we have data. Basically,

666
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 2: the American Farming Bureau started tracking down the price of

667
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 2: turkey and cranberry sauce and you know, buns and whatever else,

668
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 2: and they put it in this basket of commodities. How

669
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 2: you could, you know, feed a bunch of people for

670
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:21,839
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving dinner? And then we track that over time all

671
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,279
Speaker 2: the way to twenty twenty four, and I'm sure we

672
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 2: will do one for twenty twenty five, and basically what

673
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 2: we find is the relative to human labor or relative

674
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 2: to time that you have to spend working to earn

675
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 2: that money to buy Thanksgiving dinner has dropped by has

676
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 2: dropped so much that now you're getting one point seven

677
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 2: dinners for the same amount of time that you would

678
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:45,279
Speaker 2: have gotten one in nineteen eighty six.

679
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: So like deflation in terms of time prices.

680
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: Oh, certainly, And there's deflation going on throughout the economy.

681
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at your iPhone and you

682
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 2: adjust for quality, then deflation is definitely going on, definitely

683
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 2: going on once you are just for quality when it

684
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 2: comes to cars and food, et cetera.

685
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: And deflate for all of the things the other gadgets

686
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 1: you don't have to buy because your iPhone does all

687
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:10,359
Speaker 1: those things now precisely.

688
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 2: So, wherever the market is allowed to function properly, wherever

689
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 2: you have competition, you you know, prices tend to go

690
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:21,880
Speaker 2: down relative to labor. But that is not true for

691
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 2: the entire economy. In healthcare, for example, or in education,

692
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,800
Speaker 2: when when you have a lot of government meddling, subsidies

693
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 2: and restrictions to entry and so forth, you can actually

694
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 2: have a situation where things become more expensive relative to

695
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:43,320
Speaker 2: working time. But places where the American economy is quite open,

696
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 2: you know, where American farmers, for example, can work without

697
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 2: too many regulations, or we can import stuff that we

698
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 2: don't grow in the United States, things tend to go

699
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 2: down in price.

700
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: Man. There's so much good academic knowledge that you've offered. Man,

701
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: I want to get into your personal story a little bit,

702
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: which is fascinating. How and why this is meaningful to

703
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: you because of how you grew up. We'll get to

704
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: that and more right after this. We're still talking with

705
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: Maria to be about how the world is getting better.

706
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,759
Speaker 1: Got a few more questions for you, Marion. I heard

707
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: your co author Gail Pooley of superbund It say the

708
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 1: difference between rich and poor is five years. What do

709
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: you think he meant when he.

710
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 2: Said that difference between rich and poor? Well, I don't know.

711
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 2: By the way, Gail is the one who writes our

712
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 2: articles on Thanksgiving, so please look out on Human Progress

713
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 2: website for his latest take on Thanksgiving. But it could be.

714
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,439
Speaker 2: It could be, for example, life expectancy that rich people

715
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 2: in the United States live longer than poor Americans, partly

716
00:43:55,840 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 2: because of bad diet, but are other reasons as well,

717
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 2: So I don't know specifically what he meant.

718
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:04,719
Speaker 1: I think one of the things he was referring to

719
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 1: is the massive price decrease that happens when something new

720
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 1: comes to the four right, So a new piece of

721
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 1: some sort of new technology or some sort of new yeah,

722
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: new progress that's made, and it's very expensive, Like early

723
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:25,839
Speaker 1: adopters end up paying gazillions of dollars sometimes for really

724
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: expensive new things, and because they're willing to fork over

725
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: a ton of money, the price goes down precipitously as

726
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: producers start to make more of those that good for

727
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 1: the masses. So especially as like a consumer just waiting

728
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: for the price to go down, just waiting five years,

729
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,399
Speaker 1: you can have the same nice thing that the early

730
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: adopter has, but you can pay a fraction of the price.

731
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense. I

732
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 2: haven't heard Gail say that, but obviously it makes a

733
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:57,720
Speaker 2: lot of sense. I would recommend that everybody watches Wall

734
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 2: Street where where the main protagonist walks on the beach

735
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 2: with an early cell phone. This was in the mid

736
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:07,760
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, and it looks like a brick and costs

737
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,719
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars, and basically the battery lasts for a

738
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 2: couple of hours, and the phone calls are incredibly expensive.

739
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,439
Speaker 2: And today we have this miracle of iPhone, and God

740
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 2: knows what we will have in the future. Maybe all

741
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 2: the functionalities of the iPhone will be put into sunglasses

742
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 2: or something like that, or maybe you know, microchip attached

743
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,800
Speaker 2: to our heads. So I'm very bullish on the future.

744
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 2: And as Gail says, you know, the rich get there first,

745
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 2: and they cause a lot of envy and resentment. But

746
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 2: then things go down in price. Again, going back to

747
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 2: the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpetter, it is that the beauty

748
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 2: of capitalism it is that it reduces luxury goods to

749
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,760
Speaker 2: things that an ordinary person. And by my favorite example,

750
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 2: since you are always interested in examples, is of course,

751
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 2: what's happening to the price of diamonds now. Artificial diamonds,

752
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 2: which are not really artificial because they are chemically and

753
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 2: physically indistinguishable from natural diamonds, are so pervasive and their

754
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 2: price is dropping so fast that even natural diamonds are

755
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 2: becoming cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And so when you

756
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 2: think about the very definition of luxury, which is a

757
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:27,719
Speaker 2: diamond necklace for Marie Antoinette or something like that. Even

758
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: those things capitalism can make super abundant for the ordinary

759
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 2: people like you and I.

760
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't just academic to you. Can you tell

761
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: me maybe a little bit about growing up for you

762
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: and the reality of growing up in a communist country specifically,

763
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,799
Speaker 1: it feels like this, this is highly academic to you,

764
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: but it's also super personal.

765
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 2: Well, it's highly academic to me because it's important to

766
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 2: have facts in one's hands. But yes, it is personal

767
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 2: to me as well, because I grew up behind the

768
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 2: Iron Curtain. I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, where, you know,

769
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 2: we had constant shortages of basic necessities and not to

770
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 2: mention lack of political freedom. So I grew up in

771
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 2: a society which was very poor relative to the United States,

772
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 2: and coming to the United States was an eye opener,

773
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 2: you know, to be able to basically get access to

774
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 2: so much at a relatively affordable cost was Yeah, it

775
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 2: was a tremendous It was a tremendous improvement in my

776
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:39,160
Speaker 2: standard of living and also reminded me of the difference

777
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:41,439
Speaker 2: of what happens when you live in a society which

778
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 2: doesn't allow the human spirit to flourish and a society

779
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 2: which does allow human spirit to flourish. So, as an

780
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 2: intellectual working at a think tank, I tried to it's

781
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 2: my job to put things in an academic sort of

782
00:47:55,800 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 2: way and lead with the evidence and reason. But there

783
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 2: is a personal story here as well.

784
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Mary, this has been wonderful. I've really enjoyed

785
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 1: talking to you. Do you have any like parting words

786
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: or where would you like to send our audience for

787
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: more information and more encouragement about how great the world

788
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: is and how yeah, how do we partake in this

789
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: abundance and enjoy it?

790
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 2: Well, if I should put my philosophical pants on, what

791
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 2: I would say to your listeners is the following. You

792
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 2: are where you are in your life, and there are

793
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:30,440
Speaker 2: two different perspectives on your life you can take. You

794
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 2: can compare your life to an idealized version of your

795
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 2: life where you know everything is perfect, and if you

796
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:43,800
Speaker 2: do that, then you grow more and more resentful because

797
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:47,520
Speaker 2: no matter how well off you are compared to the

798
00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 2: ideal state of living, you're always going to come short,

799
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 2: and so you grow resentful and envious and unhappy. But

800
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:57,799
Speaker 2: if you compare yourself, so to speak downwards, if you

801
00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 2: compare yourself to thousands of previous generations, and if you

802
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 2: compare yourself to how people live in other parts of

803
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 2: the world, then surely the prevalent emotion that you should

804
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 2: have in your life is one of gratitude that you

805
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:17,399
Speaker 2: were born in the United States today rather than being

806
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 2: born in the United States two hundred years ago or

807
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 2: being born in Nigeria. So I think that having gratitude

808
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 2: in your life and approach it that way can actually

809
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:32,720
Speaker 2: make you a happier person. I genuinely believe that happiness

810
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 2: is a state of mind, and depending on what you

811
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 2: focus on, you're either going to be miserable or you're

812
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 2: going to be relatively happy. And that is basically what

813
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 2: my life's work is devoted to. Please go and check

814
00:49:44,120 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 2: out human progress dot org and sign up to our newsletter.

815
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:51,799
Speaker 2: It's just one email a week that will give you

816
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 2: all the good news that has happened in the past week.

817
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 2: And if you don't subscribe, then you will never know

818
00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 2: about it and you will go around breading doom and

819
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 2: gloom rather than rather than having a much more cheerful disposition.

820
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:07,719
Speaker 1: Agreed. I think that's a great way to end it.

821
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: And I will put a link to the newsletter sign

822
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 1: up as well in the show notes up on our website. So,

823
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: Marian Toopy, thank you so much for taking the time today.

824
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 2: My absolute pleasure.

825
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: Oh Man, what a great conversation. I'm so thankful that

826
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,839
Speaker 1: Marian was able to join me. He's such a busy guy,

827
00:50:24,920 --> 00:50:29,799
Speaker 1: working on such important issues and trying to help us

828
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:32,439
Speaker 1: all understand a little bit better the world that we're

829
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: living in. And it's one of those things, you know,

830
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:38,360
Speaker 1: the proverb of the elephants, where someone's holding the trunk,

831
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: someone's holding the center, someone's holding the foot, and you

832
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're touching the same thing. And I

833
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:49,719
Speaker 1: think sometimes not knowing right our history, not knowing exactly

834
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: how much progress we've made, not being able to put

835
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: it into digestible terms, that can create more pessimism in

836
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: our lives. And so I think of Mary and Twopy

837
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:03,040
Speaker 1: as not even an optimist, but as someone who's trying

838
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:08,359
Speaker 1: to bring real information that does show the good, the

839
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: realistic good that's happening in our country, around the world,

840
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: to he's reporting on it so that we can see

841
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: the reality of the world we're living in more clearly.

842
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 1: And I guess my big takeaway, I mean, what gosh,

843
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 1: what better message than what he was saying at the end.

844
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 1: It makes me think of Charlie Munger when he said

845
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:31,360
Speaker 1: former Warren Buffett partner. He said, the world is not

846
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 1: driven by greed, it's driven by envy. And he said

847
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:36,799
Speaker 1: someone will always be doing better than you. This is

848
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: not a tragedy. And Marian was talking about comparing our

849
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: lives to the ideal and how we're bound to be

850
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:49,720
Speaker 1: even despite all the progress we make individually, we're bound

851
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: to be not terribly happy if we're constantly comparing ourselves

852
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: to the people around us, or to the ideal life

853
00:51:57,760 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 1: we want to have that we don't have right now.

854
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,800
Speaker 1: And he said, stop worrying too much and enjoy life.

855
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good way to end this episode, where,

856
00:52:09,480 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 1: especially this week of Thanksgiving, remember how much we have

857
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:17,799
Speaker 1: to be thankful for individually, just the non monetary aspects

858
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:20,760
Speaker 1: of our lives. I know I'll be giving thanks for

859
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:24,800
Speaker 1: so many things that have nothing to do with money,

860
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 1: but the fact that I have more time in my

861
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:32,359
Speaker 1: life because of the abundance that is available to us

862
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 1: because what he calls superabundance, right, because of all the

863
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:42,400
Speaker 1: progress that's been made over many decades, a couple of centuries. Really.

864
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 1: Then this leads to my Thanksgiving meal costing less so

865
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:49,879
Speaker 1: that I can enjoy work less and enjoy more time

866
00:52:49,920 --> 00:52:52,399
Speaker 1: with my family. So I hope you're able to have

867
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,839
Speaker 1: a wonderful Thanksgiving with people that you love. And I

868
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: hope this episode was helpful to you in terms of

869
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: how you perceive the world around you. Let's go out

870
00:53:03,080 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 1: and be super grateful this week. All right, that's going

871
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:08,839
Speaker 1: to do it for this episode. Until next time, Best

872
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 1: Friend Out.