WEBVTT - The World Is Getting Better w/ Marian Tupy #1067 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.200 Welcome to had to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.000 talking about how the world is getting better with Mary 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:27.600 and Tupy. Okay, so you've heard the phrase this is 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.480 why we can't have nice things. Our modern society has 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.440 produced a slew of nice things, though that would have 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:35.559 been hard to fathom fifty years ago, much less two 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:39.320 hundred and fifty years ago. PCs and smartphones, gore tex 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:43.320 and duct tape, GPS and the barcode. All of these things, 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:45.920 to greater or lesser degrees, have made our lives better. 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:49.479 But how did those innovations and that abundance come about. 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.000 Why do twenty twenty five look so radically different in 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.480 the developed world than eighteen twenty five. Well, Mary and 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.400 Tupey's book Superabundance was a revelation to me a few 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.120 years ago, showing how far we've come in pretty easy 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.440 to understand language. Maryon Twopy is a senior fellow at 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.319 the Cato Institute. He's also the founder and editor of 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.319 human Progress dot org, a site that seeks to evidence 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:15.880 these dramatic improvements. With Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, I couldn't 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:17.800 think of a better time to cover this topic. So 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:19.840 Mary and Twopy. Thank you so much for joining me 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:20.760 today on the podcast. 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:21.880 Thank you for having me. 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.480 Okay, first question we ask everybody who comes on. I 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.000 like to splorage on craft beer, fancy craft beer. Honestly, 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:30.760 with Thanksgiving I might pops off really nice tomorrow. What 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:32.840 is that for you, though? What do you like to 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.280 splurge on while you're still being smart and thoughtful about 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:36.679 your finances in your future. 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.080 I save a lot of money to be able to travel. 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.360 I really enjoy traveling and exploring different parts of the world, 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:46.400 so I would say that is my luxury, although I 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:47.640 do like beer as well. 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.160 Okay, all right, then we can be friends. Then what's 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:52.800 the last great trip you went on? 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.920 I must say I think my last great trip was 0:01:55.920 --> 0:02:02.120 to Argentina. I think that a discovery of Buenos Aires. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:07.160 It is a proper Western, well functioning, beautiful, laid out 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.959 city in Latin America that you wouldn't expect to find, 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.520 and I enjoyed being there very much. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.639 Okay, all right, after I went a long long time ago. 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:17.320 It was probably thirty years ago, so I'll have to 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:18.600 like put it back on my list. I have to 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:21.440 go as an adult. Let's get to the topic. I'm curious, like, 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.240 have we as a society become too accustomed to our 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:30.400 current level of wealth without understanding how it's come to be. 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.440 It seems like there's like a disconnect right now, and 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.400 there's like a burn it down sort of mentality without 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:39.560 really understanding what we're attempting to burn down. 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.440 Yes, I think that is a very good perspective to have. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.000 We have gotten to where we are by being a 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:53.480 much more open society to new innovations. New innovations don't 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.680 just have to be technological, medical, scientific innovations. They can 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:04.320 be also ethical, cultural innovations. And basically, for a variety 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:09.400 of reasons, Europe in the eighteenth century became much more 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:14.200 open to new ideas. New ideas flourished, and they brought 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:19.639 about what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:27.160 A lot of old presumptions, dogma's ideas were simply swept away, 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:32.120 and the society well became much more open to innovation. 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:36.080 And as a consequence of that, we have unleashed for 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.400 the last two hundred years an era of unprecedented innovation 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:43.640 and consequently greater economic growth as well as I would 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.760 say improved morality where people treat each other much better 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:52.320 than they used to. And I think that in certain 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:58.440 ways we have certainly forgotten about that. The society is 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.880 becoming much more close. You can see it in terms 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.680 of how we treat international trade, which is of course 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:10.440 very important to to to innovation and to economic growth, 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:15.120 but also society is becoming much more skeptical about certain 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:19.000 kinds of innovation. Tacker Carlson, for example, was interviewed by 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:23.240 Ben Shapiro about two years ago, and Ben Shapiro asked 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:29.080 him what would he do about autonomous truck trucking autonomous 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.840 you know, trucks, and Tucker said that he would ban 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:35.440 it in a second because it would put a lot 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.680 of truckers out of work. But if you made the 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.239 same argument two hundred years ago, or even one hundred 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.240 years ago about horse buggy drivers, sure, then we would 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:52.240 still be, you know, riding horse buggies rather than driving trucks. 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:54.440 At the bank, right, I mean, there's a million things 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:54.960 you could point to. 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.000 Yeah, So that's that's a very long answer to your 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:58.520 short question, but it was a good one. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.000 Do you think that the twenty four hour news cycle 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.000 is part of the problem that it impacts our ability 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:05.560 to see the good things that are happening in the world. 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:07.360 I know that these websites for a minute, that we're 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.359 dedicated to only publishing good news, but it does feel 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.599 like the twenty four hour news cycle before it existed, 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.120 we were just less aware of maybe some of the 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:20.480 negative things happening in our society, and maybe ignorance was bliss, 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:21.520 at least to a certain extent. 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:26.039 I'm not sure if ignorance is ever bliss, but maybe. 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.120 All right, I will tell you I agree with you 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.919 broadly speaking, but I think that there is something else 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:39.320 going on, which is a negativity contagion. So it's not 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.159 so much that we have twenty four hour cycle, though 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.159 that's part of it. It's that there's just so many 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:50.559 more outlets and they're all doing the same things, which 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:55.520 is presenting negative news. So it's not just that Fox 0:05:55.640 --> 0:06:00.240 has to compete against NBC and CBS and ABC. You 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.599 now have websites where most people get their news, in 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:10.440 addition to radio and newspapers and so forth, and we 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.960 have evolved to prioritize bad news. And so because you 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:18.640 have now this hyper competitive environment, the only way that 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.560 you can get people to come back to you. In 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:25.000 the phase of all of that competition is to present 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:30.040 the worst news first and repeatedly and in the worst 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.880 possible terms, and there is very little time and space 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:39.400 for positive news. The hundreds of little innovations that are 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:43.000 happening every day that are improving people's lives simply do 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.960 not make it on those websites or on those newscasts 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:51.560 because in order to get those eyeballs, they have to 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.200 focus on the negatives. So the perception that is created 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:59.480 in the human mind is that everything in the world 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:04.920 is getting worse, and that is certainly incorrect, it's unrealistic, 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.880 and it is highly damaging. So it's the negative emotional 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:13.640 contagent which we have to deal with, and there is 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:15.800 not an easy solution to it, because it's not like 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.600 it's a market failure in a sense of hyper competition 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.480 of of of media only there there is there is 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:25.440 a there is a human nature at play. We desire 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.640 bad news that because we have evolved to look out 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:30.080 for bad news in order to survive. 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.680 You you run a site that focuses on a lot 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.000 of good news that highlights the progress that we've made, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.679 so which is kind of the opposite of what drives 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.720 in the media ecosystem right now, can you share maybe 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.480 a few things, a few recent things from your site 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.040 that you guys have been working on. 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.600 Sure, so, Human progress dot org is specifically intended to 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:58.280 combat this negativity, emotional bias, or contagion, and people can 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.640 sign up for a week summary of all the good 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:04.320 things that have taken place. You know, it's just one 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:06.440 email a week saying hey, you know, this is what 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:10.280 has happened in the last few weeks. We have seen 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:15.760 children who were genetically unable to hear regain their hearing. 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.440 We have seen new advances. We have seen new statistics 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:27.400 showing how certain threatened species of whale are actually expanding 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:30.240 all over the world. We have seen the discovery of 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:35.240 a new antibiotic which will which will enable us to 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:37.679 get around the problem of superbugs, and so on and 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.200 so forth. So again, the good news is out there 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.680 if you just look for it. But I'm afraid that 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.000 you know, our reach is you know, hundreds of thousands 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:52.040 of people. It is not millions that the doom and 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:54.240 gloom newscasts get every day. 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.160 Yeah, okay, let's just talk about progress. Is all progress 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.199 good because it does seem like most of the time, 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.000 much of the time, specially over the past couple hundreds, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.559 a lot of the progress that we've experienced has been 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.880 to our benefit personally economically. Automation though it can bring 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.320 down prices, but it can also reduce jobs, as we 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.720 were kind of referring to. So how do you square 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.559 that circle on progress, good, bad? Somewhere in the middle. 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.880 I would say that my definition of progress obviously has 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.080 the human in front of it, so you know, it 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:31.160 is a very humanistic or human centric or entropercentric project, 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.280 if you will. And if there are aspects to progress 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:39.160 which are damaging to humanity, that then we need to 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:44.160 we need to we need to talk about it. For example, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.719 it is an open question whether the fact that we 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:53.360 have much more free time than people in the past. 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.760 It's just the reality is that as people earn more 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.760 money than number of hours of work is lower or 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.560 goes down, believe it or not. Even though Americans, for example, 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:07.440 work much more than people in Western Europe, we still 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.080 work about a third less than what we did two 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.040 hundred years ago. Right, So we have all this time 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.600 on our hands, and you know that provides much more 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.600 time for introspection and especially if you are amongst the 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.880 least fortunate people in the United States, say somebody who 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.520 doesn't have a family, maybe you have just lost your job, 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:31.199 et cetera. Having a lot of time for rumination may 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.520 not be a bad idea, especially if you have access 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:38.679 to all the bad news. So there's another aspect of it, 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.320 which is social media. I am not putting down social 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:47.960 media because I think the jury is still out, you know, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.280 social media, and it enables us to do a lot 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.320 of marvelous things, keeping up with cousins across the you know, 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:58.040 across the world, speaking to our parents who may not 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.120 live in the United States but in your or elsewhere. 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.920 It allows us to get alerts for tsunamis and things 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.000 like that. So there's a lot of positive to it. 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.280 But maybe, as Jonathan Hyde argues, taking them out of 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.360 high schools is not a bad idea. So we have 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.840 just hired a human progress a young psychologist from Harvard 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:25.000 who will be researching these issues and hopefully make us 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:29.640 understand better about the negative aspects of progress. 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:34.640 Can you talk about what has propelled human economic activity 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.080 to accelerate in such an epic way, especially over the 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.000 past one hundred and fifty years and maybe why it's 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:44.319 been experienced more in a more heightened way in countries 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.840 like ours then maybe and even a stark difference of 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.880 like North Korea and South Korea, right, like one thriving 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.480 economic hub and one closed off from the world. Is 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:56.640 it kind of pointing back to what you mentioned earlier, 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.560 being closed off from trade and therefore being closed off 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:01.080 from innovation. 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.600 Yeah, I think that you're basically a right when you 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:10.000 have two states made up of essentially the same people, 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.679 like East Germany and West Germany and North and South Korea, 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:20.439 and they are producing fundamentally different economic results, that suggests 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:26.360 being more open to international trade, have enforceable private property 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.040 rights to give just two examples, maybe a stable currency 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.280 are very important. So Economic Freedom of the World Report, 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:36.880 which is co published by the Cato Institute and Fraser 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:42.719 Frasier Institute in Canada, they look at regulatory structure, they 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.680 look at trade openers, they look at they look at 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:54.080 sound currency trade and basically what they find is that 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.120 the more open you are, the less regulated you are, 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:01.640 the less overtaxed you are, the better you And what 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:06.920 has happened was that for a variety of contingent historical reasons. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.320 Many of these things came together in Northwestern Europe, especially 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:16.120 in Holland or Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:21.559 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they were able to grow 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.640 rapidly and show the path to the rest of the world. 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.520 And since the United States is simply a daughter country 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:34.040 of Great Britain, many of those institutions and very importantly 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.040 cultural values that Britain had had been translated into the 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:43.480 American context, and America could build upon the British the 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.360 British origin story to become the wealthiest country in the 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:51.880 world by the year nineteen hundred. So fundamentally it's about institutions, 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.959 but I think that cultural reasons play also a part. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:14:00.400 And it is a highly contentious territory, I would say, 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.720 but I think those two are very important. Yeah. 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:05.480 I heard you say at one point that the good 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:08.400 old days were buying large very bad, and I loved 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.439 I love that because so many people like look back 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.400 with nostalgia to a bygone era and they're like, I 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.800 was so great back then. But I don't think if 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.440 most of us were offered a time machine, we'd go back, 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.520 probably even fifteen or twenty years when you ask a youngster, hey, 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.280 would you give up your smartphone for a million dollars? Like, 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.280 they wouldn't do it, you know, they just wouldn't. They 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.720 wouldn't want to be parted from that progress. So how 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:33.960 do you How bad was life back in the day? 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:36.760 How great is it? How great do we have it now? 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.200 First of all, I wish we did have time travel, 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.160 because I think that I would love to send every 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:47.840 college kid or school kid to Pompeii, where I was 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.160 what three or four weeks ago. This is the city 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:56.440 that was destroyed by volcanic corruptions in seventy nine AD 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:01.240 and can be visited in a close on Naples today. 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:05.440 And the fascinating thing that you see in Pompeii is 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:11.600 that the tile roads have large stones running through them. 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.760 Instead of pedestrian walks, they have these large stepping stones. 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.960 Why do they have them, Well, they have them because 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:27.040 streets would basically be running with sewer. All the human excrement, urine, awfal, 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.160 blood from slaughtered animals would be simply dumped into the street, 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.640 and then you would have water running down those streets 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.480 in order to flush it into the sea, which is 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.920 partly why Pompeii is on a hill, you know, going 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:48.160 down to the Mediterranean Sea, and people used to cross 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:53.480 streets on stilts and things like that because basically, basically 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.320 it was incredibly filthy. That's the first thing that you 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.720 would that you would discover if you went acting time, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:05.400 the fils and the stench everywhere. The other thing that 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:10.720 you would quickly realize is that people lived to about 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:15.000 thirty Today, life expectancy around the world is about seventy three. 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.320 It's about seventy nine in the United States, so everybody 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:21.880 has been granted an extra life. Fifty percent of children 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:30.080 before the age of fifteen died. Okay, murderate in Renaissance 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:34.080 Italy was about forty per hundred thousand. Today in Italy 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:38.320 it's zero point three per one hundred thousand. So when 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:42.560 it comes to violence, life expectancy, child maternal mortality, roughly 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:48.560 one thousand women per one hundred thousand childbirths would die. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:50.800 In the old days to day, it's a fraction of that. 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:58.280 People were ignorant and illiterate. Our best evidence suggests that 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.320 even the most sophisticated society is roughly ten percent of 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:05.440 people could read and write. Today it's obviously almost universal, 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:10.160 so along so many dimensions, life was just so much 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.800 more difficult. And don't forget that we were incredibly poor. 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.399 So GDP per capita per person per day was about 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:21.639 two to three dollars. Right today globally it's about forty 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.240 dollars adjusted for inflation. So that gives you a sense 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:26.800 of where we were and where we are today. The 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:29.800 last two hundred years are really unprecedented in human history 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:35.639 in terms of the extraordinary flourishing of humanity. And I 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:40.800 think that it is deeply connected to the increased liberalization, 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.320 not using it in political terms, you know, as in 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:50.520 liberal in the United States, liberalization of economy and politics. 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:55.760 Governments became much more responsive, They started enforcing they stopped 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.640 behaving in arbitrary fashion, they started enforcing equality before the law. 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.640 And of course in the economy, we just became much freer. 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.520 In fifteen or sixteenth century England, for example, whether you 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.679 wanted to import something or export something, you need the 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:12.680 permission of the king, who would give you a monopoly 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.240 on the export of salt or the import of wool 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:18.399 and whatever else. Today you can pretty much start a 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:22.200 business anytime you like. You just have to deal with regulations. 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:26.879 Yeah, is progress something you think of as unavoidable or 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.360 do you think it's something that needs to be safeguarded? 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:32.919 Like I think about not being able to recreate the 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.719 pyramids right, like almost like that ability has been lost 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.200 and we don't know how right the pyramids were made, 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.080 or rockets. I've heard Elon Must say something along the 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.960 lines of like, if we hadn't started to make rockets again, 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.600 some of that knowledge would would have been lost. What 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.040 would have gone away? Is that how progress is? Can 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:52.600 it be lost? 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:55.080 Well? I don't know about the pyramids. I'm pretty sure 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:57.239 that we could make them with heavy machinery today. I 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.240 think that the question about the pyramids is how did 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.240 the ancients create them without heavy machinery? But we could 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:07.560 probably do that. No, progress is definitely not guaranteed. When 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.600 people started realizing that the world was improving at a 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.000 very fast click in the nineteenth century, there was an 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:17.959 emergence of a number of schools of thought. Hegel marks, 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.560 can't people like that who started talking about progress as 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:26.840 being unavoidable. But that is clearly not true. Progress can regress. 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.240 After the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, Europe 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:34.200 forgot a lot of the knowledge that the Romans possessed. 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:36.840 To this day, we don't know how to make Roman concrete, 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.439 for example, even though it has withstood for two thousand 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:47.720 years and so and people in the dark ages in Europe, 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.439 you know, used to walk amongst the monuments built by 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.920 the Romans, wondering who were these people who created all 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.679 of this? Because they forgot right. So so knowledge can 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.520 be lost, Progress can regress. There is nothing unavoid about it. 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:04.679 And that's what concerns me is that, as you noted 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.720 at the beginning of the interview, so many people have 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:13.240 forgotten the reasons why progress has happened. It happens because 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:18.359 of an open economy tolerant of new ideas. And when 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:22.120 that goes, or when our institutions change, and you know, 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:26.400 when we embrace socialism, for example, like the North Koreans 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:30.240 or the Cubans or the Venezuelans, then I'm afraid progress 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:32.000 will stall and eventually go into reverse. 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:35.760 One retort that you might hear from people who think 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:40.040 of progress as not like an evident, self evidently good thing, is, 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:44.480 in particular, like some of the environmental ramifications that progress 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.520 the negative harms to our environment, that progress can create 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:51.080 what would you say to that. 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:56.119 I would say yes and no. So what tends to 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.439 happen when countries start industrializing, So you go through this 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.800 process of moving from agriculture to industry to services, and 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:07.200 when countries undertake industrialization, there is a lot of ecological 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.760 harm that takes place. That being said, it's not like 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:17.360 life in the agricultural society was without its risks. For example, 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.720 food would be contaminated at all times, people were suffering 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.960 from tremendous gustro intestinal problems, riven with parasites and so forth. 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.119 But never mind, let's put that aside. The point is 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.920 that once you move from agriculture to industry, you do 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:33.080 tend to create a lot of environmental damage. But then 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:37.320 what happens is that what is called an environmental Kuznetz 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.920 curve kicks in. And this is just a fancy way 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:43.439 of saying, is that when people become rich enough, they 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.719 start caring about the environment, and they have enough wealth 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.600 to start protecting their environment. So there are a number 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:53.479 of things that go on. One of them is that 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.359 you simply have more money and more resources human and 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.720 otherwise to clean up your reverse, which is why today 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:04.600 people are swimming in the Seine, and there are dolphins 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.840 in Thames in London that didn't used to be the 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:12.560 case during industrialization, so nature naturally rebounds. Another thing that 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:17.720 happens is urbanization. Basically the most disruptive element on land 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:22.639 is the human being. And when you take humans of 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.520 the land, in other words, as you move from agriculture 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.119 to industry and re later to services, more and more 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:31.359 people end up in the cities. By twenty one hundred, 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:33.679 something like eighty percent of humanity will be in the cities, 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.240 which means that we will depopulate areas in which we 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.719 currently live and where we disrupt the natural flow of 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:44.960 flora and fauna, and that will bounce back. So the 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:46.919 best thing that you can do for the environment is 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.240 really to urbanize and to become as agricultural efficient as possible. 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:56.520 So the Greens, I'm afraid, are riven with contradictions. On 0:22:56.560 --> 0:23:00.399 the one hand, they don't want to build nuclear power 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:03.680 stations even though they don't emit CO two, and they 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:07.640 are the best solution that we have currently to reducing 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:12.240 CO two in the atmosphere. It's more expensive than gas. 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.119 Gas still produces some CO two in the atmosphere, but 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:17.399 much less so than coal. But you know, if we 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.160 could switch all of humanity to gas and then eventually 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:22.680 to nuclear, then we would be able to reduce COO 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:26.480 two dramatically. Another thing which the Greens are against is GMOs. 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:31.119 But suppose that you can genetically modify some of our 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:34.840 most important crops such as sweet and corn and soy 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:37.680 and so forth, so that you can produce much more 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:42.399 per acre. That means that you can feed growing global 0:23:42.400 --> 0:23:45.720 population on fewer and fewer acres of land, which means 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:48.359 that you can return more and more acres of land 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:54.040 back to flora and fauna. So there are solutions for 0:23:54.440 --> 0:24:01.200 environmental comeback that modern society offers, and I if you're 0:24:01.240 --> 0:24:04.439 open minded about it, and the Greens very often aren't. 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:10.960 And I'm not even talking about like the extinction movement, 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:14.439 which also holds promise for the future where we'll be 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:18.680 able to basically use the DNA of dead or extinct 0:24:18.760 --> 0:24:20.200 animals in order to bring them back. 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:24.639 We got more to get to. Specifically, it takes so 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.800 much less time to buy almost all of the goods 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:30.679 and services that we enjoy. We'll talk about why that 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:41.040 is with Mary and Tupe right after this. I'm still 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:43.440 talking with Mary and twopee and I want Mary and 0:24:43.440 --> 0:24:46.400 I want to talk about specifically your book Superabundance. And 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:49.919 this was released in twenty twenty two and to me, 0:24:50.160 --> 0:24:53.520 like as I was reading it, it was striking because 0:24:53.560 --> 0:24:55.840 you put things in terms there were so much easier 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:58.240 to understand. And part of what made it easy to 0:24:58.280 --> 0:25:01.800 comprehend was when you talk about time prices, how long 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:05.680 specifically people must work to be able to afford every 0:25:05.760 --> 0:25:09.000 day items. Talk about that concept like how does that, 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:11.480