Oh, look at mister Rockefell are here with his diamond tipped walking stick.
Not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your
count. If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.
If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor. To
read my lips. They want to replace history with line who like snakes,
who lay in the grass. They emerge to cast their sniper bairn. It's
the Ricohe Podcast with Rom Long. I'm James Lylynx and Stephen Eward sitting in
for Peter Robinson. And today we talked to Mari and to be about superabundance.
We've got lots to bring you, so lot sappers. I was a
podcast Americans a nation that can be defined in a single word, ours the
foot of I agree you'll never get bored with when we never get bored.
Welcome everybody. It's the Rickoeche Podcast, number six hundred and fifty two.
I'm James Lynx, Minneapolis. It is hot. Rob Long is in Gotham,
which of course steams unendurably in the summertime. Stephen Hayward sitting in for
Peter Robinson. And we don't know if Stephen is calling us from a pub
in England or somewhere in California, or wherever his peripatetic journeys may take him.
Stephen, welcome, Where are you right now? Not that it matters.
I'm out here in California, although to say, I'm very suspicious that
what's really going on here is that Peter, the whole reboot process of the
Peter Robinson AI robot is not going well, and that this prolonged absence has
to be No, it's not, it's not. It's questions are too short,
frankly, and so it's too efficient. We have to work on those
also, gentlemen. Of course, the heat is on everybody's mind, since
this is we are now told, I think, the hottest summer in two
hundred and sixty five thousand years. They have found, i believe, extremely
accurate records from Caveman era where they scrawled down in Celsius interestingly enough, on
the cave walls. Records from the Roman civilization indicate that they exceeds the temperature
in Pompeii at the height of the rain of pummice and fire. So we're
in bad shape here. And obviously, as we're told, the Gulf Stream
is going to do something very bad in three years, and disaster and dire
things await us. All. I've been hearing this for a while now and
I'm a bit inured to it. So perhaps we should find something that's even
more pressing that people will be talking about in the eons to come, And
that is the welter of indictments. I joke. Of course, if you
go and look at old papers, they're always full of indictments of this,
that or together, which I never thought about it six months or a year
later. But this one seems to be important because it does sort of suggest
with the dismaying feeling that a lot of us have, that there's something of
a two tier justice system working now. When we were talking before the show
about matters etymological and weather and slavery and all sorts of interesting things that would
have made for a cracking good podcast, Rob said that there was another indictment
besides the one that Hunter Biden is facing that he finds as fascinating, if
not more so. Yeah, I mean, I think the Trump A diamonds
are kind of interesting, don't you think. Indeed? So go on,
well, I mean, the you know, I am not a lawyer.
I will start by saying I'm not, I did not. I'm not.
I'll say instead, I have not passed the bar in the state of New
York. But you had an old fashioned at every day exactly. It's an
old joke. This this Whether it's fair or not fair, or whether I
don't whether the this is how they always get you right. They get you
on trying to squash evidence. They get you on you know, when they
when there's a discovery process or there's a process and you're racing voice mails or
text mails, or trying to go into a security camera and a race the
tape. This is like, I mean, if you just took out the
proper names and you inserted, you know, Gambino Gambino and Tony two Cheeses
Luches or something like that, that's exactly how. This is how it's done.
This is how it always ends up being this, whether that's right or
wrong. I just think it's interesting that if you'd had to put money down
on whether you're going to find evidence that you know, there was a Donald
Trump as a stage of Bill and twirling his mustache and saying I'm going to
take these secret documents and I'm going to take them down to my laird mar
Lago and I'm going to keep them and sell them or whatever. Right,
the likelihood of finding that it is probably like two percent. Right likelihood of
finding a person, any person saying I'm under investigation. Wait a minute,
that looks incriminating that piece of evidence, so destroy it. That is like
ninety nine percent likely. That's how That's what these things all are. So
the weird thing to me is that somebody who's as lawyered up as Trump,
what he needed was he need a lawyer who was going to tell him the
probably and he needed to follow that advice. So that's that's my quick fast
take on it, without really coming down on whether it's fair or not fair,
or whether it just doesn't seem surprising that the reason that he's indicted is
because of trying to destroy evidence. Well, I think Trump's problem is he
didn't have Rosemary Wood still around to do an eighteen minute gas. Yeah,
but there is something odd about this, which is a week ago we had
the news came out very dramatically that Trump had received his target letter from the
Special Counsel Jack Smith, and there were some charges talked about connected to January
sixth, and they looked a bit strange but unprecedented and so forth. But
everyone expected that what we were going to get this week were the indictments for
his actions around January sixth, and we didn't get that. Instead, we
got supplemental charges about the Marlago document business. I don't know what to make
of all that, unless they're still holding that back for a more dramatic moment,
I don't know. But but that was kind of the twist of this,
was that it's not January sixth being in direct I don't know. That
seems odd to me. Well to me, it seems like, I mean,
the January six stuff, six sixth stuff is complicated and nuanced. And
was he really I mean, were even the Georgia post election stuff? Was
he threatening the secondary of state of Georgia? What was he saying really that
that that those are questions. This seemed to be like we told you not
to destroy the thing, and you destroyed the thing, right Like you told
your employee to get rid of that tape. Um that's like I don't know,
I mean low hanging fruit maybe or whatever that is. It just seems
to be like like, yeah, we only get that no matter what.
That's just that's just what happens now. Um. The other stuff, unfortunately
for us. I think the other stuff is more interesting and probably is more
meaningful and has more sort of historical value and more um just more lat I
mean for me, just just just more legally consequential. Um. And I
suspect that, like a lot of things, we're never going to get there,
that the people who are after him just want to get him for something.
It's al capone time for them. And Hey, if I can get
him for you know, trying to unplug a you know, a camera,
I'll get him for that. If I can get him for trying to,
you know, trying to strong arm the Secretary of State in Georgia to lie
about the election results, that seems a little harder, you know. It's
like so it's it's it's the essence of our time. It's the essence of
our times. Yeah, we'll never really know, yeh know what I lab
or from a bat in a cave. You know, we'll never really know,
Uh didn't do this, did he not? Yeah, we'll never really
know. We'll just have sort of a vague outcome at the end that there's
an anti climax, and then we all move along. If I were Trump,
I would plead guilty immediately. But with a Hunter Biden cotacil that gave
me. That gave me blanket immunity from anything that I should do in the
future, anything that I might be prosecuted for in the future, which I
think is fat I mean, if you can imagine that Donald Trump, who
would go in back into the presidency with in his pocket legal immunity from anything
that he did. Wow, that would be a rather untrammeled, zesty set
of four years. But of course that's not going to happen. Briefly touching
then on the Hunter Biden thing, unless you still want to have something more
to say about Trump. Um, what did you make of this picure?
What did you make of this? And were we one judge away from from
Hunter Biden indeed getting you know, absolute immunity from the future from any of
the foreign Registered Foreign Agent Registration Act stuff. Um, if the judge hadn't
noticed what was in there, we we might have seen the fellow state and
and and suffer no kind Well, of course, what CNN was reporting,
what everybody else was saying that look, Fox News has mentioned hundred Biden one
hundred and four times and it's not even known today, As if who's a
private citizen, what does this have to do with? As if this isn't
really particularly consequential to the issue of his treatment. And the big guy,
the big guy, the ten percenter guy there mean, but that's what bugs
me about it, right, what bugs me about it is that this is
like, again, none of this is spectacularly unusual and nobody should be shocked
by this. This is influenced pedaling. It's been illegal. They talked about
it in the Constitutional Convention. I mean, the idea that there was going
to be influenced pedaling was something that the founders worried about, something that the
people worry about. It something It was kind of legal for a while and
then illegal. Now we are, I think, you know, since the
seventies. The influenced pedaling is a big deal. This is what this is.
But that's what we would have called it if we didn't live in this
bizarre hyper part as an age where the every every single journalist works for the
Democratic Party. It's influence. But the only reason you gives an influenced peddler
immunity is to get the person he was selling the influence of or buy or
however that works. Right, the only reason you give somebody immunity is because
you've got a bigger fish. Or right, that's one. That's one interpretation.
So who's the bigger fish? Right, there's only one, and he's
behind the resolute desk. I don't know if he knows he's behind that desk,
but he's probably behind that desk right now. Or you do it so
that it's all over, so you plead guilty to some weird thing and then
it's all over and there's no influence peddling investigation because there's no influence peddling that
you can charge as you can bring. Now I am now channeling Andy McCarthy
with this, but there really only other two reasons why you give some the
only two reasons you give somebody immunity, right, is there another one I'm
missing? Well, I think that they thought they could sleep one by the
judge, and it's pretty clear that that they try to see and what you're
here, by the way from Democrats and the media. But I repeat myself
as well, this is a Trump appointed district judge. Well, it turns
out the judge was approved in the Senate by a voice vote, which meant
that to get to the arcana of these things, both Democratic senators and Delaware
signed off the blue slip process, as it's called. And I think it's
possible she might be a Democrat. That's what my writing partner, John Hinderocker
thinks. And I'll bet they thought, you know, she's part of the
Delaware legal community, she's you know, a good old gal, and she'll
probably sign off on this. And I think they knew it was risky and
she decided not to have any part of it, So good for her.
No. I think further that what do you think of your Hillary Clinton?
Right now? I only got one hundred thousand dollars from my cattle futures him
and I could have gotten fifteen million dollars from Ukraine I adjusted for inflation,
and of course there's the question of where the money comes from. You know.
The interesting thing, of course, is the Chinese connections and the rest
of it, because you don't remember a little while ago we were all concern
and absolutely panicked about JOHNA taking over the world and the rest of it.
And while there's still a threat, you have to admit that their own Loomi
demographic problems are something of a difficulty for them. And speaking of demographics,
he said grinding the gears to his segue to a shift, not to amcial
but to a guest. We would like to welcome to the podcast Marian Tupi,
the editor of human Progress dot org, senior fellow of the Center for
Global Liberty and Prosperity, and the co author of Superabundance, The Story of
population growth, innovation, and human Flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet. Welcome,
it's a delight to be with you. Well, here's the thing.
There was a great tweet the other day where somebody was talking about the various
paradigms and science fictional literature in the nineteen fifties, if there was an assumption
that there would be a nuclear war and there would be mutants roaming a radioactive
world. In the sixties, there was always scary technology was going to do
it, but we're going to get out their highline style and we were going
to call lies. In the seventies, the reigning paradigm and science fiction was
the collapse in constriction of the human prospect of famine, of overpopulation, of
books like Make Room, Make Room, which was soilent, green, and
the rest of him. They were facing this world in which people would be
clawing over each other in a hot, sweaty mass, scrambling for the last
little bit of resources. Didn't happen. But I grew up in that.
That was what I was marinated in because all of these maenthusian ideas were coming
back to us. Now. Martha's and the acolytes predicted one of these catastrophes,
and a lot of them have lived to see it not happen. Tell
us about Martha's and Erlik and the rest of them, and why they didn't
see what exactly a free, prosperous future would look like. Well, thanks
for having me. Martha's, obviously, is an eighteenth century figure. He
was a English Anglican cleric who became fascinated with mathematics, and especially two rates
of growth, one linear right of growth one two, three, four,
five, six seven, and the other exponential growth one two, four,
sixteen, thirty two, etc. And he believed that whereas resources only grew
at a linear rate one two, three, four five, population would grow
at an exponential rate, and consequently the gap between the two rates would result
in famine. Now, as we have documented in our book, actually during
Malthus's own lifetime, whilst the population of Britain increased by something like fifty percent,
the press of flower, on which most people back then depended on their
sustenance, has fallen by about thirty six percent. So even whilst Malthus was
writing, food was already becoming cheaper, even though the population was expanding.
And there's a very interesting parallel here with Marx, who dies in eighteen eighty
three, and of course his theory predicts the immiseration of the proletariat, and
in fact, by the time he dies, it's evident to absolutely anyone that
the English working class is becoming richer at any rate. Mothers continued to feature
in the background for a very long time, but then in the second half
of the twentieth century, the population of the Third World specifically started to expand
dramatically, and that was partly because Western medicines and best practices and better agricultural
techniques started to penetrate the developing countries, and so suddenly you saw these massive
increases in population of China and India, etc. And that's what Paul Erlick
enters our picture. He famously in nineteen sixty eight wrote The Population Bomb,
in which he predicted hundreds of millions of people would die that didn't happen.
He predicted that England wouldn't exist by the year two thousand, it would be
swallowed up by waves that didn't happen. And he advocated in favor of the
government put putting drugs in the water system in order to make men infertile,
and things like that, and and and I think that to our current audience,
especially to young people, you may ask, what on earth does it
have to do with us. Well, Early, who is still alive just
in ninety was on CBS sixty minutes in January as an authority on human population
and consumption. He's still around and other Malthusian voices famously AOC asking her followers
is it still okay to her children? Bill Mahra, I'm a huge fan.
He's very funny and a very smart guy, but he's a Malthusian.
He's a hardcore Malthusian. Almost every show he talks about resources and how we
are going to run out of water and golden spoils, and it's all nonsense.
Well, I first of I should just say that you and I spoke
on the phone about a month ago, and you sent me a copy of
your book, which I read. And to warn people, it looks like
a big book. It's like the size of a brick. But about a
third of it our tables and graphs, which you can just gleefully ignore just
to read because I ain't going to read, but to get to the narrative.
And the narrative is we're going to be fine, right, there's a
high presumption. Well, I think that rational optimism is justified because people are
not just consumers. They are also producers. Where early went wrong and generations
of scholars liking is that they are fundamentally most of them are biologists. They
think of human beings in the way that they think about rats or rabbits,
meaning that you have a lot of a lot of rain, you have a
lot of grass. Rabbits have a lot of food, They eat a lot,
they have sex a lot, they produce a lot of babies that they
consume everything, and then there is a catastrophe. What is the big difference
between between rabbits and humans? What is the big difference between biologists and economists?
Is that we understand that humans are special. We are special because we
innovate. Animals don't innovate humans do. When we run against some sort of
a problem, some sort of scarcity, we immediately search for ways to go
to get around it, such as the green revolution in the nineteen seventies,
or for example, looking for a vaccine to cove it. You know,
our ancestress and certainly animals would never dream of solving a problem. We immediately
switch into a solution solutionism kind of mindset, which tells us, let's look
for a solution to this problem. And your evidence for this, just to
be clear to everybody, your evidence for this is the some total of human
history from the beginning of time to today, for human progress and human flourishing
and human problem solving, and their evidence the sort of will calm the rational
pessimists, right, their evidence is yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's
all over now, right. Isn't that essentially what they're saying. They're not
they're not disputing your view of all of human history from the beginning of time
to today. They're just saying, yeah, but you know, that's it's
all different now, right. Is that basically an argument? I think that
you are into something. I mean, aside from you know, you have
to ask a question, I mean, how many times do the predictors of
imminent apocalypse have to be wrong before you sort of begin to discount their viewpoints.
But but, but another thing is that part of chapter one is devoted
to what we call negativity biases. This is a very well trodden area in
in psychology. And one of the negativity biases that we have is so called
end of the point sort of end of history titis. In other words,
that every generation thinks that they are somehow special, they are at the turning
point of history, and that it is in their time. I mean,
it's basically part of it is sort of like narcissism, is that you think
that you are so special that every every every problem, every that everything is
going to get resolved in your own time. But this is how it happens
throughout human history. Everybody thinks that they are standing on the precipice. And
I jump in on that point, Rob because I think this is crucial.
So Mary and Steve Hayward out in California, a longtime fan, first time
caller. What they say, Yeah, so you know, people will have
asked me. So, I've been part of this game for a long time,
talking about environmental progress before I went back into academia to be miserable.
And people often ask me why are environmentalists in particular so gloomy? And I
finally came to the view because it makes them happy. And what I mean
by that is experience I've had where I've presented your data, the data people
like Hans Rosling or Matt Ridley or Max Rose or other people you know very
well, Julian Simon, and I have this strange experience with students. They're
either angry that there's good news or they're depressed. I mean, I've actually
had students in class hanging. I've never seen I've never heard information like this
before. And why are they depressed? Well, because I've just taken away
their cause. I've just taken away this redemptive potential of their lives. And
you mentioned you know, I haven't had a chance to read the book yet,
but I follow your site all the time. I don't I don't know
how to explain that except from psychology. And once you're into that realm,
we're out of the realm of rationality. Yeah, So I believe, I
really believe this, that human beings are seek some sort of trans transcendence,
transcendence. Now, you don't have to be religious to believe in transcendence.
Religious people obviously have a very very strong, constable transcend transcendental life after death.
But even secure people have a sense of the transcendental. You want to
have children to pass down your genes. You know, it's not the end
when you die, your children live on. Maybe if you don't have children,
you devote yourself to writing books because you want something to live after you.
You know, even us libertarians here at the Cato Institute, you know,
we may be individuals, but we do derive some sort of utility,
some sort of a psychological satisfaction of being part of something larger, the cause
of liberty. Right. So I think that people in general aim for transcendent
transcendence um. And this is specifically important for young people, who, on
top of that existential angst, also have a sense of the heroic. In
other words, that when people are very young, um, you know,
in their late teens and twenties, they develop this sense that they are empowered
to by by boundless energy and optimism to transform the world. Into utopia.
And that's part of the reason why I think that environmentalism has such a purchase
on human psyche, but especially amongst the young. The cosmology of this sort
of a depression is all encompassing. There's nothing that really doesn't fit into it
um and you can I mean, there's no structure that you can't find blame
in from corporatism to you know, the way that the country is situation means
it's an all inclusive, explanatory mind view that that has the satisfying aspect of
misanthropy, which also appeals to the young. You know, they're simultaneously idealistic
and simultaneously misanthropy. Well, how do we get out of this? I
mean, aside from letting everybody read your book, telling people, for example,
that we're not I mean, it was all assumed when I was growing
up there we're going to run on of oil just the well the wells were
going to be screeching and pumping and spewing dust within five six years or so.
And as it turns out now that wasn't the case, partially due to
technology and partially I think I'm the nut case who believes in the biogenic origin
of oil. But that's another day. They will believe that a finite planet
simply cannot produce efficient resources to provide prosperity for everybody else. But they're wrong,
aren't they right. So, so, theoretically speaking, our planet has
a finite number of atoms on it until the time when our knowledge progresses to
such a level where we are able to drag atoms from out of space by
let's say, mining on the Moon or alternatively capturing comets, or simply draining
the universe of hydrogen. Whatever we have on the planet we have. Now
that being said, we have only explored a fraction of the planet, and
we have absolutely no idea what's happening on the bottom of the oceans. So,
by the so, we have thousands of years ahead of us in which
we can explore our planet get to resources that we don't know exists. One
of the reasons why we don't know about about many elements is because they are
so cheap that there is no reason why we should go on exploring them.
But if something gets very expensive, then we have an incentive to explore.
The modern twist on this seems to be not that we there's not enough stuff
for us to get, but it is wrong for us to at it.
There is violation somehow of the ethos of the earth of the guia to actually
that it's exploited, exploitative to go down there and get it when it's actually
necessary. But treating the earth as some sort of uh you know, permanent
stasis system that cannot be disturbed by man, that it is unethical to do
so? Am I right? Sure? No, No, that's absolutely right.
I mean I wouldn't be the first to to to draw attention to the
similarities and parallels between Christianity and Judaism, for example, monotheistic religions overall and
and and environmentalism. Now, I don't say there's some as some as a
as a religion hater or something like that. I simply point out that environmentalism,
the structure of environmental movement is very similar to that of these monotheistic religions.
You have the God, which is Gaya. You have Mother Mother Earth,
you have the the Garden of Eden, which is Earth before industrialization.
You have your priesthoods, the IPC. You see. You know, if
you disagree with them, or if you criticize them, then then then you
are a heretic. You have your saints, Greta Thumberg, you even have
you have your you have your you have your devils. Now those are obvious
though. Those are the the CEOs of fossil fuel companies and fosil fuels and
whatever. You're probably in there too, by the way, And so it's
cato. Don't you excuse yourself from the devil pantheon? I'm sure. And
and finally, and most most interestingly, we have we have, of course
indulgencies, just like the Catholic Church before before Reformation. Um. You can
be an utter hypocrite. You can fly around the world on a private jet,
you can live in one of your six twelve bedroom houses. Um.
But so long as you say the right things, so long as you um
um, so long as you go and march with the with the green movement,
all of these are washed away. So um. So so there are
these else. Now finally, to your point about it's sinful. Yet there
is a religious aspect to it, which is sinfulness, a raping of mather
Gaya. But there is also a more shall we say, materialistic concern,
which is what do you do with the byproduct of human activity? In other
words, even if you don't believe that we are going to run out of
let's say, copper or zinc or whatever humans consume so much that at some
point we are going to destroy the air, we are going to destroy the
earth, and so on, so and this is tied to an environmental concept
of natural think that at some point you're going to cross a threshold, at
which point the biological sphere, the biosphere on which you rely on sustenance,
is going to collapse. The only problem is that after forty years of research,
we have no idea how to measure these biological sinks and thresholds and what
it would take in order to overcome or rather prevent those thresholds from being overcome.
Perfect example of that would be something like what happened in Chernobyl. Chernobyl
is now a refuge for wildlife, even though it's obviously a place that was
heavily polluted by the nuclear explosion. The other the other place to look is
the Bikini Atoll. The United States had dropped twenty five nuclear weapons nuclear bombs
on the beginning atolls in the nineteen fifties. The marine life has completely recovered,
and even life on the islands such as palm crabs seem to be doing
just fine. Now, this doesn't mean that we should be going out of
our way in order to destroy the earth. I feel I am an environmentally
conscious person. What I am. What I am saying is that is that
it probably takes a lot in order to destroy and in order to cross these
thresholds, and we need to and and there's nothing wrong in rebalancing the debate
back to anthropocentric kind of approach as opposed to guia based approach, if I
can jump in again. Yet, by the way, Mary and I've looked
at in detail some of those ecological footprint models, and as you know,
they're all heavily dependent on one thing to get their dire outcome. And that's
COO too, emissions. Okay, leave that aside for another day. Rob
mentioned that the premise of your enterprise is the story of human creativity, which
is coevil with civilization itself. Except I think there's an inflection point. And
I always like to say that maybe the two most important charts of all those
that you produce show, starting around roughly eighteen hundred, life expectancy starts to
soar, the number of people living in dire poverty goes from ninety eight percent
and starts falling precipitously. A lot of that's a twentieth century story poverty.
A lot of that's the last forty fifty years on a global scale. What
explains that? What are your theories for that? I mean, I gather
that there's still debate among economists and economic historians about what explains economic growth as
a technology? Is it markets as a rule of law, it's a democracy,
And I mean, I have my own opinions, but I'd like to
hear yours. So, yes, you're drawing attention to a fundamental issue here.
Human beings have always innovated, but innovation was sporadic and it took a
very long time. You know, the Older one stone age technology appears three
million years ago, but then it remains unchanged until Assulian stone age emerges one
and a half million years ago. So people were apparently perfectly willing to use
Older one technology for one half million years without innovating at all. So people
have always innovated, but slowly and sporadically. Two hundred years ago begins the
age of what economic historians referred to as the period of sustained innovation. In
other words, that innovation happens every day, it happens constantly, and in
some ways, certainly the way that we measure it, innovation is actually accelerating.
So what are the reasons for it? The key reason that I zeroed
in, primarily because almost all economic historians give it some credibility, is into
jurisdictional competition between European states. What does that mean. It means that after
the rise of gunpowder, after the invention of gunpowder and the rise of the
gunpowder empires China, Ottoman Empire, Russia, etc. There was only one
place in the world where there was civilization. By that I mean cities and
writing which did not have an imperial structure, and that was Europe. Yes,
European powers did have external empires, but in Europe there was no empire.
Europeans where on each other's throats all the time, and they were threatening
each other's independence all the time. And so you so in China, in
the imperial China you were China was so big that you were not really worried
about being swallowed up by your competitors. What you were worried about was being
destroyed from within by new ideas in Europe, the problem was opposite. You
are constantly worried about somebody swallowing you up, and so what what is European
lads did? They permitted domestic innovation and disruptive ideas to emerge in order to
create more wealth and more growth to protect themselves against being swallowed up by their
geopolitical adversaries. Hey, Marian, have you have you just described capitalism.
I've described How've described how capitalism can survive that it needs. It needs countries
continuously innovating and showing to the rest of the world that things can be done
in a better way. If you do have a global government, if you
do have one tax tax system for the entire world, then of course you
will then you could lose that innovative, innovative spurt because because that is for
innovation to happen and for growth to happen, you have to have different countries
trying different sets of freedoms and responsibilities to move ahead, just like we have
to some extent in the United States. Part of the reason why I'm so
excited about or why I like the federal system so much, is because right
now, look at what's happening in terms of competition when it comes to school
vouchers and education. Look at what's happening in competition on state taxes. You
know, competition is driving it down. And it's basically in a nutshell what
happened in Europe. Okay, So I mean people, I guess what I'm
trying to say is whose fault? You know, there's always that people always
complain about. After the World War Two, the big American foreign policy questions
who lost China? Right like who who blew it? Which American policymaker,
which American policy lost China? Who lost capitalism? Because I think you've just
described capitalism, and I would say, I would make a full throaded argument
that it was capitalism a human that would led to human flourishing, and human
flourishings would led to it's incredibly golden age we live in now, and yet
um, everywhere I you know, if I read the New York Times,
the Interest, there's somebody saying it's late stage capitalism, the capitalism is there
is there is responsible for more misery when in fact, you know, a
third year graphs in that book just show you that no, actually, capitalism
is brought immense, immense good to the world. By a factor. It
isn't even just you know, some good some bad, it's almost entirely good
news. Why is that? Is it just? Do we need another word?
It's just capitalism. It's a bad word. Now, Yes, capitalism
is a bad word. It was meant as a pejorative. My colleague Dedra
McCluskey emphasizes emobism. I've heard people talking about solutionism. Obviously, the mainstream
within our world talks about free markets rather than capitalism. And why is that
important? It is because capitalism is not built by accumulating capital. Sorry,
modernity and economic growth was not built by accumulating capital. If all you needed
was to accumulate capital, then Imperial Spain would have been the most prosperous country
in the world because they had a lot of accumulated capital. In fact,
modernity and economic growth and prosperity emerges in Holland and Britain, which didn't have
that much capital. So capitalism doesn't matter. The capital matters much less than
innovation, and innovation is dependent on human freedom. In other words, the
human freedom to be able to apply disruptive ideas and in order to be able
to benefit from them. Now, who lost it? And now who lost
it? A good question? I think that well, First of all,
capitalism never had a wholesale purchase on the parts of the elites or even common
people. Where has never been a successful political party which was called a capitalist
party. There were countless socialist parties and communist parties which but even parts of
government in Western democratic nations, But there has never been a capitalist country.
We don't even we don't even have a name for that. I mean,
a democrat, somebody who emphasizes democracy, you know, a socialist, somebody
who advances socialism. But capitalist is somebody who manipulates capital r then advances the
capitalist ideas. So we didn't even have a name for it. I can
I offer a possibility for that. One of the reason why we don't have
a name for it, one of the reason why we don't do that is
because capitalism is inherently scary, and that if you're in if you're an elite,
if you're on the top, you don't really like capitalism so much because
you want to keep things the way they are in term terms of power,
in terms of wealth, you don't really want that. Capitalism by definition is
dynamic. Mean you look at the vast amount of wealth that was created in
the nineteenth century in Britain or in this country for that matter, and how
quickly, how how many of those sort of newly minted lords and ladies and
newly minted robber barons and industrialist In the United States, we're about one generation
or half a generation, or maybe zero generations from poverty. There is something
about four people getting rich that just bugs the crap out of rich people.
We have a study out here at Cato showing that the attrition rate for super
wealthy people in the Forbes four hundred is three percent per annum. So within
a generation of let's say, thirty years, you have a brand new group
of people within the Forbes four hundred because people who are there simply simply the
atrophy and the wealth gets divided or lost, and so and so forth.
Another great thing about the United States is that most of the people who are
super wealthy in America today are actually self made. They are not descendants of
kings and queens and nobility and whatever. In you know, in Europe,
of course, you're right that elites always have a preference in the status quo,
and it's only when they are fundamental is threatened that they take their foot
off the neck of the ordinary people. Perfect example of it is what happened,
what's happening in China right now. You know, she thought that he
was losing control over China, so he doubled down on communist control of the
country at the cost of massive economic losses and declining economic growth. And already
there's a lot of talk about him making a U turn and embracing market again,
because the Chinese Communist Party can remain in charge of the state only as
long as it can say and show that it produces superior economic results, which
is impossible if you have so much economics, if you have so much control,
and if you if your interest is in the status qroke. So,
I mean the current the current environmental movement. I mean, part of it
we have to say is I will stipulate is in good faith people who are
in good faith and want to protect the earth. I understand that. But
there's also this part of it that just feels like, you know, poor
people should just stay poor, that like maybe everyone should just stop inventing stuff
and coming up with new stuff. And I mean you in order to really
be I mean, I want to talk a little bit about your phrase infinitely
bountiful, which I need, I wanted. But in order to believe the
sort of the current environmental movement, you have to believe that it's over.
And I think there are some people who believe it's over as you describe the
psychology, but I think there's also a bunch of people who just want it
to be over, because if it's not over, I means they have stuff
to work? Can I add on to your question a little bit, Rob?
Sorry? Right, No, Well, Mary, we started with Maltha's
and you know, an awful lot of environment lost. The smarter ones have
been trying to get away from Althusianism for a while. That lacks I say,
yeah, Malthus was wrong. But then they're like I was like to
say, they're like people just out of a twelve step alcoholics anonymous meeting and
they go buy a well at tavern and they stumble in and go on a
bender. And now we have, as you know, a D growth movement.
They openly call themselves a D growth movement. So they're back to malthes
under a different label. And so yeah, I mean Rob was asking a
question, Um, what do we make of how do we how do we
think about these people who are determined to not be people keep poor? We're
against progress itself. I mean that was the Uni Bomber's manifesto. Right,
progress itself is bad? What do we do about that? Well? Look,
in a way, yes, Rob asked the right question, but I
don't think it's necessary to go into details trying to figure out their motivations because
their agenda has been clear from uh, their agenda has been clear since Russo.
But Russo is the first, is the first Enlightenment intellectual who objects to
modernity. He agrees with um, you know, condo saying others that that
that that modernity, this freedom, which has led to more economic growth,
has made us richer. But he thinks that as people become richer, they
become less moral, that they begin to obsess about material goods, about about
fulfillment of their material needs at the at the expense of, let's say,
thinking deeply about universal questions, um and and things like that. So,
Russo is the first one. And Russo birthed a a bi political movement called
Romanticism. And what is the romantic objection to capitalism? It's exactly what Russo
said And what Rob just pointed out is that is that the desires of the
common people, of the ordinary people are somehow less valuable of what the elites
want. The elites want um, the elites want, you know, to
spend their time thinking about deep questions. What Hoi poloi wants is a bigger
house with a swimming pool and two cars in a garage. And that is
and that is that is cross. It is materialistic. But that's what the
Romantic movement was about, the Romantic movement. So Russo gives birth to the
Romantic movement, and the Romantic movement then gives birth to whom, to the
socialists and also to national socialists. What to national socialists and socialists have in
common is rejection of capitalism and the expressed desires of the masses. They shouldn't
be in They shouldn't be indulged in the cross in their crass materialistic obsessions.
Rather, the state and society should function at the behest of the of the
of the ruling elite. So so there's nothing new under the sun. It's
just that we have moved on from a socialist criticism or sorry, romantic criticism
of western of Western world to socialist to nationals socialists, and to post modernists
and to environmentalist critique of Western life. But ultimately they are all tied together
by what I've just described. When you mentioned the romanticist I'm thinking that the
people who subscribed to that philosophy in the day, I always thought that they
would be the Casper David Friederich person standing at the top of the mountain looking
down at that beautiful thing. But if the mists in those paintings had lifted
and they'd seen the dark satanic mills, they would have opposed capitalism and progress
and the rest of it simply on esthetic grounds, which goes back to what
you're saying about the Hoi poloi having their having their crafts pursuits. Anyway,
that wasn't so much a question. It's just something that popped into my head
for no particular reason. I give it to Rob before we leave. Rob.
Yeah, so I'm so. I guess what I'd say is that I'm
just sort of channeling the critics You talk about the world could be infinitely bountiful,
that we're actually entering a phase of superabundance. It's incredibly positive this book.
One of the reasons I like it is because I've an optimist and it
seems to like, you know, you got a bunch of graphs and charts
that like seem to suggest that my optimism is is well placed and that essentially
is a full throated endorsement of uh, disruptive, active free market innovation and
progress. Um. So, what should we be worried about aside from the
grim Greta Thurnbergs and eco warriors? What what? What? What's gonna stop
this? That will come under the guise of friend you know what I mean?
Like, like, where where are we going to make mistakes? Those
of us who are full throated free marketeers, they're dangerous on the horizon that
have always been dangerous to modernity, um and to and to economic growth.
One of the dangers moving forward will be what will happen to the human population.
I very much believe that people should have as many babies as they want.
But if they are brainwashed into not having children, and if they are
brainwashed into believing that bringing a child into the world is an act of selfishness
and that humans are cancer on the planet, that we could basically see a
population collapse if we do that. That it's going to have its own negative
consequences, such as potentially much less economic growth. Because where do new ideas
of sorry, we'll do innovations come from. They come from ideas which are
produced in the human brain. And until we get this much promised AI and
supercomputing, we still rely on human beings to come up with new ideas that
can move humanity forward, such as, for example, how to make fusion
reactors economical so that we can produce plentiful energy for everyone. The other thing
that worries me is, of course, the values of the Enlightenment, which
seem to be attacked everywhere. It is incredibly important to understand that modernity,
growth, capitalism can only function within a within more or less irrational world where
we understand then that math matters, That math is not racist, but math
is very important, for example figuring out how a bridge works, or how
airplanes take into the skies and land safely. Freedom of speech is incredibly important.
If we decide that certain areas of inquiry shouldn't be shouldn't be spoken about,
or we keep on canceling people with something important to contribute. Think about
somebody like Jim Watson, the co discovery of DNA. I mean, imagine
if he was canceled because he's a deeply, deeply offensive and politically incorrect person
and we never got DNA structure out of him, humanity would wouldn't be well
served. Also, you cannot think freely if you cannot if you cannot speak
freely. In other words, my freedom to think freely very much depends on
my ability to be able to hear what people have to say, even if
it's offensive or something I disagree with. And of course, any new idea
has to be tested in the marketplace. People have all sorts of ideas.
They have ideas all the time, but some of them are some of them,
most of them are crappy, some of them are incredibly dangerous, and
only a small fraction is very good. How do you differentiate between a good
idea and a bad idea? You have to have a functioning marketplace, which
decides between the betamex and the VHS, which decides between Blockbuster and Netflix,
which decides between green new jobs or alternatively fracking. Can I underline something very
important you just said, which is you said enlightenment values or under attack.
I'm an old now old conventional conservative. I never thought that I'd arrive at
a moment where it's conservatives who would become the principal defenders of light of the
Enlightenment era and its ideas. I'm stunned at this development, and this covers
a lot of territory, and yet here we are, thank you, Mary,
and we're saying that the book is super abundant, the story of population
growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet. Get it
now before it sells out. I'm kidding, it's ever going to sell outs,
be infinitely. It's superabundant. Yeah, it's super aboundant. It'll be
on PDF, and of course that means that no atoms, not too many
apples. We're used too. And you don't have to look at the graphs
or the charts. You can just skip right by them and read the book.
I love graphs and charts, but that's just all right. There's your
blurb for the next edition, Rob Long. Skip all the graphs and charts
that were so mistakingly chosen and incented. But anyway, it's been a fascinating
discussion. And the next time you write something else or just want to come
on the show, give us a give us a hauler and finally some good
news. Absolutely, so we appreciate you being on the show today. Thank
you, gentlemen. It's been a great pleasure all the us. Bye bye.
You find a link to that book at ricochet dot com. And what
is ricochet dot com? You might ask, if you have just stumbled on
this podcast somehow by a search engine optimization, a little tweaked thing we did,
or because you were handed it or link came your way. What is
Ricochet? It's a fantastic website on the Internet. Do I have to say
more? The thing is, unlike all the rest of these sites is that
Ricochet members actually meet in person, in room where they where they do,
where they intake oxygen, and yeah, they consume, they consume infinitely bountiful
quantities of Sorry, and here's Rob Long to tell you where you can meet
up with some Ricoche people. You are absolutely right, James. The summer
meetups are in full swing and there are two more left. There's one happening
right this minute in Milwaukee. The German Fest meetup is happening right now this
weekend. So if you're listening to this today or tomorrow, um, get
on over there. If you're in the Milwaukee area, and then on Labor
Day weekend there's one in Cookeville, Tennessee. And that's what we got for
the summer, and there's more coming after the autumn. If you want to
have an autumn meetup, and the autom meetups that you see listed are not
you know, convenient or location or time, the thing you do is you
join Ricochet and you just announce a meetup of your own. People will show
up. You don't really have any planning. People just want to show up
and have some drinks and some food and talk and get an each other.
And um, they're always a good time. I look forward to them every
year, fantastic. I hate the fact that you mentioned autumn because that means
that that I suppose is something to think about. We are here in the
waiting days with the inauguration of August, which we always think is the big
monolithic block of time that somehow stands between us and and the fall. But
oh, it starts to gallop. Oh times winged chariot starts to be heard,
and it increasingly speed of the beats to the wings. But that's a
while away. In the meantime, it's crazy season right at some point is
like August is the crazy season where there nothing really happens and so weird story
surface. I think that's I don't think that's true anymore. I think in
this twenty four seven, three sixty five Twitter driven news cycle that there's always
something crazy and always something that's that it's not a news desert at all.
Or maybe we just are so used to everything being hyped and amplified outside of
its parameters. You would never have thought, however, many years ago,
that, for example, we would have a national discussion about the educational curriculum
in another state, do you, But yet we do, because apparently it
is important to prove that Florida is an anti intellectual, racist dystopia run over
by a madman, a little Mussolinian healed boots, that people are fleeing in
terror because they are becoming aware that should they want to change the gender of
their child, it's going to be difficult to do so. And what's more,
the textbook are telling everybody that slavery was zippity Duda song of the South,
wonderful thing that benefited everybody. Even the Vice President of the United States
went on to castigate the Florida standards, something which produced Charles C. W.
Cook to do the most detailed evisceration of V. Paris's points one hundred
and ninety one I think points that there were. Would say, so,
Stephen, we were talking about this earlier because you said you had a prophetsorial
connection with one of the people involved in the educational standard today appear that correctly.
Yeah, I mean Bill Allen was one of my professors in graduate school
thirty five years ago or more. Was one of African American grew up in
the segregated South. Told me once that you know, as a kid,
he couldn't go into the public library, but the librarian who bright kid,
obviously the librarian would bring him books out to read on the steps of the
library, right. And he was one of the collaborators on the curriculum.
And what they're picking on is one sentence, it's actually not even part of
it's a little guideline in a footnote that says, I'm paraphrasing slightly, but
slaves acquired skills that in some instances enabled them to be more self sufficient once
slavery ended. Now, the actual APE curriculum that Harris actually recommended that she
used around the rest of the country. Here's their sentence. I'm going to
read it too. It's not very long. In addition to agricultural work,
enslave people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians,
and healers in the North and South. Once free, African Americans use
these skills to provide for themselves and others. The point is Harris would have
said exactly the same thing if the Florida people adopted that same sentence from the
ap curriculum that everyone else uses. This is just ranked demagoguery. One more
addition to all this, I think the real reason for the outbursts. It's
cynical and political. Democrats are panicked they might lose some of the black vote
to Republicans, so you got to keep racism alive. This has been going
on for a long time. Of course, on page eight that that sentence
that the objectives on page six of the Florida curriculum. I bread through the
whole thing. Page eight there's a line that says we must teach the history
of slavery before sixteen nineteen. Aha. This takes aim and if you read
the whole curriculm. And you can see it's a much broader and more rich
curriculum that fully explores the violence against blacks, Jim Crow, segregation, the
brutality of the slave trade, and so forth. There's no whitewashing of the
history here, so to speak. But the point is that this curriculum does
challenge the reigning orthodoxy of the left that's taken over the New York Times that
America was a slave ocracy and in their mind still is a slave ocricy.
Right, the world began in sixteen nineteen, right, and there was nothing
changed between sixteen nineteen and the summer of twenty twenty, right, right,
right. And and also that it's a unique institution, although there are things
that are unique about American chattel slavery, but it certainly has its roots in
um, I mean in the birthplace of civilization, the birthplace of human kind,
where not a slave come from. It comes from slaw. However,
who are we talking about here, right, right? Right? It was
not, but it was also it was. It was not an institution brought
to the continent of Africa. Um. What I loved was that the College
board said yesterday that it totally disagrees. But the people who do the ape
exam it totally disagrees with the idea that these are the same. They're completely
different, it says, and then and then then it st saying anything.
Because you read them side by side, you realize that they are, in
fact, ai versions of each other. They are almost identical. Um.
But I guess the way I mean, just to go back into the into
the politics of it for a minute. Um, I mean, I think
that this should have been a great watershed moment for Rod de Santis, Right,
gotcha, you guys, I gotcha. But instead, since he's mad
about everything, and he's yelling about everything, and he's setting bonfires on every
major topic in American culture right now, there's no discernment, there's no organization,
there's no coherent message from him except I'm mad as hell. I'm going
to yell and screen. And that is not a great way to reach voters.
It's not a great way to tell them that to to to express your
political personality, which is disciplined. He's supposed to be. He's the disciplined
one. He's the effective one. He's the who's not emotional. He's the
one who's like he's he's the buttoned up one. He's the one who read
all of Jay Badichari's research and then came up with his own plan for how
to Florida should handle COVID and made the president of United States and a lot
of other people, like the governor California, looks foolish. He is both
presidents, by the way, this is a moment for him and he's fumbling
it, which is so too bad. Yeah, I think I think Rob
that, Yeah, he did fumble. I think he was catted by surprise,
so he was unprepared. And I'll add that maybe he didn't read the
right history when he was a Yale student. Robs the poking a little bit.
Look, I mean my last comment on this, and then I'll shut
up about it because I could have gone too long. We should not be
I think there's guilt and projection at work here with the Democrats. We should
not be surprised that the Party of Calhoun, the party that said slavery was
a positive good in the eighteen fifties, is now trying to project that old
legacy of the Democratic Party onto the other party as a deflection and as a
cynical political tactic that that's my last word for today. I think that presumes
more history and savvness that might actually be there. I think it's built into
them, the young folk that they are, is that to be on the
right is to necessarily be defending capitalism and slavery and every other bad thing there
are. Because the right baked into the idea of less government, less control
over your individual lives. Baked into that, of course, is racism.
Somehow. It's all intertwined like a braid that they put together in grade school
camp. And they've never been able or willing to unknot it. It's frustrating,
as we all know, but there it is. What you want.
Though, Rob's right is optimism. I mean, there's a way to fight
back against something like this with a sense of amusement and an incredulity and laugh
and point and the rest of it and jeer and make fun and not be
angry about everything, you know. And that's you know a lot of people
who looked at Tim Scott and thought, well, there's a fellow who projects
a certain amount of cheer. And Tim Scott has been blasting to Santis for
the Florida Black History Standards as well so it's that just wonderful period of the
year where everybody's consuming each Otheroever, reputations are sundered, and Donald Trump rises
above it all, and the nation looks at the prospect of replaying that Trump
versus Biden with this feeling in their stomach that if we if four years didn't
give us something else to come up with, then then the whole notion of
super abundance infinitely bountiful may apply to resources, but certainly not to our political
class, superannuated as it is. That also seems like the problem is that
he's a smart guy. And when you see a smart guy behaving like a
fool, Yeah, we're not getting basic politics, right, I mean,
the die our Trump voters are not going to vote for him. That's not
how we should be going after. He should be going after. The Trump
voters are like, yeah, you know, he makes me nervous. He's
emotionally mentally unstable. He's only got one topic. And this other guy here,
the santist is like a contrast. You don't want to be um,
you don't want to be there. I'm just as bad and crazy as that
guy. Uh, that's that's not how you win. You win by drawing
meaningful and useful in an era of institutional collapse where nobody trust the institutions to
be able to do what they do because they lied to us and they failed.
On the rest of it, somebody who projects a certain amount of competence
and and and competence in using the instruments of government and not being afraid to
use them for reasons that someone they would strike some as you know, ideological
is kind of what we're looking for, but it has to have a certain
Reganesque character of optimistic and optimism and humor and the rest of it. And
Santasism has not been projecting that alas and playing around with you know, footsie
with RFK Junior and the rest I you both well, we will see.
That's why Ricochet is here where we can hash all these things out of the
comments and yell but hug at the end because we're all friends and you should
go there. You should also go to Apple dot com. That's not what
it's called, no Apple music iTunes, I don't know. It's what I
pay for that gives me all this and give us five star review. We
really like that, and of course flatter our patron in our advertisers. With
your patronage, your life will be better and so ours. And I don't
know what more to say except that it's been great fun and we're getting out
in an hour. How about that? Yeah, some of the summer hour.
That's what we need. There, you go, well, see everybody
in the comments in Bricochet four points soon to be five point zero, Rob
Steve next week. Next week Fellas Ricochet joined the conversation