Robert Tracinski - Why We Never Learn About Economics

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us. I'm Scott Schiff hosting the Atlas society's senior fellow Rob trinky on why we never learn about economics. Uh, we encourage questions, so feel free to raise your hand and we'll bring you up also. Um, you know, I I'd ask, if you don't mind, please share the room ESP with the time change. Uh, we really appreciate it, Rob. Good, timely subject. Uh, why do we never learn about economics? Speaker 1 00:00:30 Right. So, so the, uh, dilemma I'm trying to work on here is the fact that we have, like, for example, we have inflation right now, uh, a big spy inflation for the first time in 40 years and for a total mystery. And of course, for those of us who, who lived through this the first time around, back in the 1970s, it's not a total mystery at all. It was predictable. It was actually predicted. And yet people never learn, seemed to learn these lessons of economics that, that we go through. They, you keep coming up with, you know, excuses and explanations for why. Well, it's not really gonna happen this time. So a couple of, uh, a couple of about six months ago or so there was a guy who writes about economics for the New York times, uh, Benjamin apple bomb, I think is his name who had this whole thing about how well, you know, really, you know, we don't need to worry about inflation and inflation in the seventies was totally exaggerated. Speaker 1 00:01:25 I had to look him up because, um, I thought this guy, if he's anywhere near my age, how could he possibly say that? Well, he is 10 years younger than me. I find out. Uh, and so it's like, of course you don't think it was real the first time you didn't live through it. Uh, and this sort of this economic gas lighting, but I came across this great, uh, passage that finally, I think encapsulated completely, uh, the, the exact reason why we never learned these lessons. And why, why is it that, you know, you can have armies of free market economists out there explaining these things and people are gonna be so resistant to it. So this is from an interview. You, uh, Esther Klein was interviewing Larry Summers. This is the New York times. Speaker 1 00:02:09 And this isn't from Larry Summers's replied. This is one of Esther Klein's questions, but it's the most revealing question you could possibly come across. So lemme just gonna read this about three paragraphs long. I'm gonna read what he says here, and I think the gist of it. So as your clients speaking, he says, so I know you're a hard nose economist who looks at the numbers here, but I went to locate, I think the emotional and to some degree, even political frustration of this conversation, because a lot of the dynamics you're talking about that get framed as excess demand. There are things that feel just that many of us have wanted for a long time, more hiring wage increases, particularly at the bottom end stimulus checks for people who have had a lot of bad years and didn't have a lot of cushion behind them, child tax credit for families that could really use that. Speaker 1 00:02:57 So there are a lot of policies that came together. I mean, there was a reason the Biden administration wanted to run the economy hot. There was a long period, which it didn't just feel the economic data showed that expansions were not reaching people on the margins. And it felt finally like we were like, we were reaching people on the margins. We were putting a lot of firepower to do that. But even in this terrible time, this horrifying pandemic, we were giving people who needed it quite a bit of help. And then for that to turn into this horrifying inflation problem, which is now eating back, those wage increases potentially going to require much sharper action from the fed. I recognize the world. Doesn't have to please me, but it is maddening. And I think one of the hard questions before we even get into Ukraine and China, I think one of the hard questions is, does it have to be this way? Speaker 1 00:03:45 Did it have to be this way? Is there some way for this to end without the people we were finally helping suffering. Now, if I were to sum up the economics of the last hundred years or so, uh, in the Western world, it would be that less sentence. Is there some way for this to end, without the people we were finally helping suffering isn't that the pattern that's happened over and over and over again, that the government goes out there, it starts a program, and we're finally helping these people and they end up suffering. And the thing is, this is what, this is what people never learn. That these programs that they put into place, the welfare for estate programs, the stimulus checks, et cetera, don't actually help anybody in the long run. That's the lesson they have to learn. But in this question, I think is contained the reasons why people don't learn those lessons because it's things that, as he puts things that many of us have wanted to do for a long time. Speaker 1 00:04:48 And he says, uh, we, and we were giving people who needed it quite a bit of help. It's the altruist morality underneath it, all the belief that the fundamental, you know, the most important thing of life is to go out and take action, to help other people and to provide things to people who need it is this idea of need as the basic standard of life. That the most important thing in the world is somebody needs something. Somebody is in need out there, and we have to then, you know, sacrifice your income and your wages and, and tax people in order to provide for those needs. And then if you're as client type, you're one of the, you know, sort of elites running this system or advocating for it. You get to feel good about yourself for finally having these policies that come together so you can help people who are in need. Speaker 1 00:05:39 So this is the sort of a microcosm of how it is that altruism as a morality, a as a basis of a social system, and as the basis of the self-esteem for the people within that system who are running that system, how that basically makes it impossible for people to learn about economics. Cause this message, you know, we, I it's within my memory, uh, uh, I was young at the time. It's within my memory, the time in which you have the government trying to provide all sorts of welfare for people to help them out and then having it become double digit inflation. And the average person basically, you know, falls farther and farther behind cuz all the, all the benefits you gave to that person, all the stimulus to the economy gets eaten up by an inflation that has happened within the lifetime of a person who is not exactly young, but not that old. Speaker 1 00:06:30 And it's something that we, it should be out there as this, as this cultural memory, but it's the commitment to that Altru to that idea that other people's need is the main thing. And our self esteem comes from the fact that we're willing to vote for policies or implement policies that will provide for other people's needs, uh, by, you know, by, by, by big government action. That is what makes it basically impossible for people to learn, come if they were to learn that from the lessons of this economics, they would have to question that basic moral commitment and that basic view of the world as I'm a good person, because I support advocate and vote for these welfare estate programs to help people. And so you can't learn if you were to learn that by doing that, I'm actually hurting people. Where would your sense of self-esteem be, where would you, where, where would that put you, it put you in this questionable position morally of being one of those bad people on the right who questioned whether the welfare state is good. Speaker 1 00:07:32 It actually, frankly, uh, had a conversation with someone the other day, uh, did a podcast yesterday with, uh, a or on strong is a sort of objective leaning libertarian. And we talked about this thing that even people on the right have kind of given up fighting against the welfare state now. And in fact, some of the more nationalist, uh, conservative types are now advocating for it. Uh, so you know, the, the, the, the, the appeal of altruism, the appeal of that welfare state idea, that my virtue and my, my, my status as a good person comes from being dedicated to this altruist ideal comes from the idea that I'm willing to advocate for policies that will use government to help the little guy. Uh, if you're going to you, you, if you, you, you feel like a bad person, like one of the bad guys, what awful objectives, you know, one of those cruel rotten mean objectives. Speaker 1 00:08:25 If you were to give up on that. And that's why people can't learn these economic lessons, because they have the deeper moral commitment that prevents them from learning that. Now I'm not saying, you know, that there's no point engaging in free market economics or no point in making in some of these practical arguments and pointing out the practical effects of the welfare state. Um, but what I'm saying, I, I think the two cases are integrated that if you could get people to understand, uh, exactly why these things backfire, why they don't work, you could also then connect that to the, the, the fundamental problems with the altruism as a moral system, the idea that it, it focuses on, on need and, um, uh, uh, and on consumption rather on who actually produces the goods. You know, that's one of the, that's both a practical economic problem with the welfare state. Speaker 1 00:09:22 And also one of the fundamental moral problems with altruism as a morality, the fact that it focuses entirely on need rather than production or creation or the things that actually make life possible. Um, so I think those two cases are connected, but you can see this as a line goes all through a lot of discussion and sometimes even more extreme forms. So we're talking about the New York times here, um, a couple of years ago, uh, in 2017 for the hun to celebrate, I, I used the word celebrate on purpose to celebrate the hundred at the anniversary of the, uh, communist revolution in, in Russia, New York times had a whole year long series of articles on the legacy of communism. And what, what jumped out from it is you could have done a whole year long sec psych, uh, series of articles on, you know, here's Ukrainian writing about the hello more, and, and, you know, the terror famine imposed by the Soviets. Speaker 1 00:10:18 You could do a whole year long series and all the horrors and failures of the Soviet system, but that's not what they did. They had a whole bunch of articles, basically trying to whitewash the Soviet union. And while it really wasn't that bad, and they were very idealistic. And what really came out from it, the whole series was this same thing. They, it, no matter how vast the scale of, of, of, of disasters, uh, both moral and economic disasters that came out of the Soviet Soviet experiment, they all, none of that, they can't focus on any of that. They can't really grasp and, and take to heart the reality of that, because they're so committed to the idea, know that while for once there was finally a society in which that was built around altruism was built on sacrificing everybody for the greater common, the greater good of society, it was faced out. Speaker 1 00:11:08 You know, it was, it was, there was no commercialism. Everybody was supposed to sacrifice for the good of the person next to him, that the fact that somebody had finally put that altruist dream practice was so alluring that they couldn't bring themselves to look at the results of what happens when you put that altruist dream into practice. And so even as big an example, as the Soviet union of the failure of these policies, they could not bring themselves to learn from it because they had that deeper commitment to a moral code that they refu to question. So what we really need to chip away at is what is, is the refusal to think about that issue in morality, the refusal to contemplate that there's any other moral code other than the Altru one. And that's what prevents people from learning from the, the lessons of economics, whether it's the Soviet union or the, the stagflation of the seventies. Right. That's my little opening bit. And I wanna open up for questions though, or comments. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:12:06 We wanna encourage people to come up, uh, with questions. Uh, you know, how much of this is related to just a, a side effect of creating so much wealth, that there's a little bit, that's almost natural in, you know, once you've taken care of yourself that you, you want to help others, or at least that's what, you know, society moves towards. Mm-hmm, Speaker 1 00:12:31 <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> well, yeah, that, that's interesting. There's a, a well known phenomenon. Now I'll give you the way this, to me, the way that it's normally cited to me, there's a name for it. There's like it's named after a person who discovered this, and I can't remember the name off the top of my head. Um, but it's the idea that, uh, as a society becomes wealthier, the, uh, likelihood increases that they're going to have a generous welfare state. And you could basically look at the history of Western Europe in the last a hundred years, and basically it's society get wealthier. And then they have a giant welfare state. And this usually cited, uh, by, by sort of center, left neoliberal types as saying, well, see, this shows that a welfare state is just part of a, an essential part of a, of a well functioning, well run pro uh, uh, you know, properly functioning society. Speaker 1 00:13:19 And I look at it and I think that's totally crazy because what it actually shows is that just at the point where people have E where, where the need for a welfare state is decreasing, right? Just at a point where everybody you're in a society where everybody's wealthy and well often can provide for all their basic needs. That's the point at which you suddenly start giving them lots of welfare. Isn't that kind of insane? Um, you know, and, and so there's a, there's a in, in medicine, there's an idea called, uh, McKee's hypothesis, which is basically that by the time you come up with a medical intervention for a new disease, the disease has generally already run its course. And it's typically the example of this is a pandemic. Now this, by the way is the first time this last pandemic is the first time we've sort of, uh, uh, not fallen into that trap. Speaker 1 00:14:07 But typically what happens in a pandemic is like, it's like the 19, 19 flu, uh, flu epidemic, flu pandemic, um, is that by the time, you know, the, the pandemic hits, it goes to the population, it affects lots of people. It finally, you know, reaches her immunity or evolves into something less deadly, and it dies down. And then only after that, you know, like a year or so after that, do you finally get a vaccine, right? And it's the thing that would've prevented all these people from dying if you gotten it right away, which we finally did, like for, for the first time ever, uh, uh, in, in, in, uh, in this current, uh, pandemic. But, uh, typically what happens is, uh, but is, is that you get this a couple years later and you finally, you know, are able to have a, a, it prevents the reemergence of the disease, but it doesn't actually, it's too late to cure it. Speaker 1 00:14:57 And I sort of feel like that's a metaphor for the Western welfare state that just, you know, we finally got these, these, um, countries that are so amazingly wealthy, that nobody basically who's capable of working, uh, needs to be in a, in a state of need. And nobody needs to be hungry. Nobody needs to not have a place to live. And then what we did is we immediately created a, the welfare state. We would've, that would've helped people a hundred years earlier, but we couldn't afford it them. Um, so I would say that, you know, and this goes to the wish I've been talking about a lot, which is how would we think about things differently? We recognize the reality of, of, of material and moral progress in the world. And if we recognize the reality of progress, one of the things I think is it would, if we realize how wealthy we really are, it would totally devastate the case for the welfare state, because, you know, why is it that we're and, you know, social security is a great example. Speaker 1 00:15:49 Most of the social security payments go to, to people who are the same middle class people, <laugh> the same prosperous middle class people who wouldn't, who, who were paying taxes to fund the system in the first place. So most of the welfare, most of our, our, we have a middle class welfare seat in this country. Most of our welfare payments go to the prosperous American middle class who are pre the wealthiest people who have ever existed in all of human history, but they're getting the most, the most, the most generous welfare, a state in all of human history. So I would say that a, a, an abundance mindset, a really grasping that we are a wealthy people who have lots of money would cost us to say, well, what do we need a welfare estate for, or least, you know, once we need a giant welfare estate for maybe there's, you have a little bit here and there for the people who are, you know, who are unable to work or unable to support themselves for some tragic circumstances. But I would think that, you know, that the prosperity mindset would actually work against the welfare state. Speaker 0 00:16:49 Okay. Good stuff. Uh, JP welcome. Do you have a question for Rob? Speaker 2 00:16:59 I do. Uh, thank you, Rob. Uh, how, how, how much of this, this whole issue of, uh, being so oblivious to sound economics can be attributed also to the academy, because, um, coming from it's, uh, from, from speaking with peers and speaking, knowing what, uh, their, the, the worldview, the economic worldview of the vast majority of the professionals that I know from many universities around the world in west, uh, mostly, um, I find that we are, I mean, the, the hegemony of the, the, the school of, of, of the clinician school of economics and, and, and the general theory is what dominates and, uh, it's, uh, what, what can you, uh, can you shed some light into how the battle of the, of the, of the schools went and, uh, the Chicago school and the Austria economics went, uh, underground and, uh, the CA the can's, uh, general theory became the mainstream and the pretty much the only thing that that is taught. Speaker 1 00:18:16 Yeah. Yeah. So I went to the university of Chicago, so I, and this is in the eighties, so that the university of Chicago, the Chicago school was still somewhat alive. Um, well, one of the things I would, I, couple things let's say about that is, uh, I think that this is an example of the same phenomenon though, is that, why is it that the pro-free market economics never really came caught hold well, it's because it was going against the whole dominant attitude within academia. And the whole dominant attitude was based on this, you know, the, this left leaning for philosophy, uh, altruism had become the, the UN is in schools of ethics. Altruism is the unchallenged viewpoint, whether it's in some of origin, like the theories of Johns, uh, the know these, these elaborate sort of moral justifications, that base are supposed to lead you inexorably to the welfare state. Speaker 1 00:19:10 And, you know, most people who go into academia are coming from that educated college educated environment where everybody around them has certain beliefs. And so the sort of last horah of the Chicago school, it's momentum kind of got lost in the overall commitment to the fact. And in fact, the school schools, uh, in terms of their economic and political views, the academia was going, going even much farther to the left in the eighties and nineties, uh, and, and ended up, you know, basically in the, sort of the woke, uh, environment that it is now. So the economic schools were very much, you know, to the extent they taught free market ideas. They were very much swimming against the, the rest of the flow of the culture. Um, but what I would add to that is that the problem with the academy is the academy. And I mean, that specifically in Plato's academy, the original academy, and I think part of what's going on is that in the, the deeper epistemological problem in the universities is the influence of the sort of platonic approach. Speaker 1 00:20:14 The, the approach brought to ideas by one of the first philosophers, uh, the Greek philosopher Plato who had this idea that, well, this world, the world that we see perceive around us, it's this shadowy shifting imperfect realm. It's this it's shadows cast on the cave wall. It's not the real reality. The real reality we understand by looking inward and looking at the, at this to the, to the realm of pure ideas. And so the platonic approach to ideas is that abstractions are superior to observation that your ideas are more important than reality. That idealism, in that sense, ideal, I, we think of idealism as being wanting to do the right thing, having a, having a moral ideal you're striving for, but idealism in the platonic sense, the deeper platonic sense means only ideas are really real, and that's what you should focus on. And I think that even among people who, who would reject Plato's theory, his mindset, his methodology, his, this sort of inward looking, my ideas are important, and reality is less important. Speaker 1 00:21:20 That became the standard style of thinking in a, in, in, in academia, in general. And this has nothing to do with politics. The politics comes later, but I think that's what makes it possible for, you know, people to write long series of essays about the Soviet union a hundred years later, and talk about how well really it was kind of, it was good. They did all these great things and not, not grapple with the reality of, of, of what the Soviet union really was. And what actually happened is because they've have this training to say the ideas are more important. Um, there's a joke going around about how it's, it's, it's usually a French intellectual, a French intellectual who says, well, I understand you're, I, I understand that it works in practice, but doesn't work in theory <laugh>. And that you, the joke here is that, you know, something working in practice, doesn't impressive very much, but if it works in theory, that will really impress him. And that, you know, that's supposed to be a joke on French intellectuals, but it's a wider problem in the intelligence in general. And, and in the way that, that, uh, academic philosophers and academic thinkers in a lot of fields tend to approach problems. So I think that's the deeper explanation is that idea that, you know, it works in theory. So therefore that's the important thing, and it doesn't matter if it works in practice. Speaker 2 00:22:40 Thank you. That, that, that was crystal clear. I, I, I'm going down a rabbit hole right now. <laugh> Speaker 0 00:22:48 Good. Uh, thank you, Lawrence. Thanks for joining. Speaker 3 00:22:53 Hello. So, uh, Rob, my question is sort of, uh, thinking out loud here, when we look at sort of the economic history of how the United States has been operating, it, it, at least in my opinion, I'm not fully studied on it, but it seems like most of the 20th century was leaning more and more into the more socialist welfare stage mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, with institution of the central banks and everything else that happened over the hundred years. And I know some people argue the closest we ever got to capitalism in its raws form was sort of that Lai Faire style and the late 18 hundreds. And I guess, so I'm curious is the reason we can't learn from economics in the sense of we're so entrenched in a specific way, and that more idealized form is just so far in the past and nebulous that there's no way for us to turn things around. Speaker 1 00:23:49 Well, I think that's a good point that, uh, you know, I think the recently the 1920 was, was the last time we had anything close to a, a small what we call small government, basically the cool administration St. Calvin cool. One of my, one of my, my, one of my favorite presidents, by the way. Um, and, uh, I like one of the things that I liked him was he didn't, he didn't like to talk <laugh> he was known as silent cow so that, you know, that's something I value in a president. Um, the, uh, uh, so, you know, it's so far in the past, and you have to basically penetrate through a lot of arcane economic history to, to see it. But I would also say on the other end, I think the reason why people don't question the way things are right now is because we have been able to a certain extent to muddle through with the system that we have. Speaker 1 00:24:39 And now, you know, there's the occasional financial crisis, which of course is always blamed on too much capitalism, despite the fact that we have so little of it. Um, but you know, the fact is that we have an extremely wealthy society, an extremely powerful economy, and we through periods of growth, sort of like the, the, the 1990s, the, uh, the Clinton years where periods of, of strong helicopter growth than everybody was so much more prosperous at the end than they were at the beginning. <affirmative>. And so you have this sense that, oh, we can do the third way, or we can do the sort of moderate welfare state and it works and we're fine. And, you know, we, we can get away with it essentially. Um, so, and I think that combines with the factor you're talking about that on the one hand, we have the system that we know, and we, we we've lived through the whole, our whole lives, that seems to kind of work. Speaker 1 00:25:28 Okay. And at the same time, the idea that there's something, something that might be better, something that would work better and be stronger and produce more economic growth and, and fewer negative side effects that somewhere back in the distant past. And we've had all, you know, and if you have people who will tell you that inflation in the seventies didn't really exist, you'll definitely have of people who will tell you, you know, that the, the prosperity of the late 19th century, uh, or of the 1920s was all an illusion. So I think it's a combination of those two factors. Speaker 0 00:26:00 Okay, good. Uh, CT. Good to see you. Speaker 4 00:26:06 Uh, yeah. Good to see you, Scott. Um, and everybody else, um, I don't know what I can contribute to the conversation. Um, I mean, I think, uh, Robert has got a, uh, monopoly on the, the knowledge. So, uh, um, So yeah, like I said, I, I don't know what I can, uh, Put in. Um, Speaker 0 00:26:35 Well, just, uh, you know, somewhat along those lines, I, I was just thinking big picture. Is it at all fair Rob to say that economics like even psychology is, is more like an emerging science of baby science. And so maybe it's fair to say we're all still learning about economics Speaker 1 00:26:54 <laugh> well, yes and no. I mean, we know a lot about economics, you know, uh, that you have all us 200 years of the classical, you know, well, I mean, you go back to Adam Smith, two more like 250, uh, of the classical economist and the great Austrian economist from, uh, uh, uh, from, you know, the, from the early 19th century into the mid 20th century, there's this huge amount of work that's been done. Like, you know, the understanding what the role, the price of prices is in economy and how the price system works, huge amount of work done in that by people like Luva, Mees and Friedrich Hayek, um, you know, tremendous amount of knowledge that's been gained. So it's, it's less about, I think, less about the infancy of the science of economics and more about, um, the fact that we're not willing to pay attention to the knowledge that we do have, right. Speaker 1 00:27:49 <laugh> this is more in my mind, this is more like, um, you know, the science of astronomy was in its infancy when Galileo was, was working on his first astronomical telescopes. Uh, so the science of astronomy was in its infancy, but that doesn't, you know, excuse the guys from the church recently refusing to believe, uh, the observations that, that, uh, Galileo was trying to show them. Yeah, I think he actually had an incident where he, he brought some guys from the, you know, these, these bishops and Cardinals. He brought them over and showed them the images that he was looking at through his telescope. And they basically refused to believe it refused to believe any of the implications of it because they were so committed, you know, to an existing cosmology and an existing dogma, uh, from the church. So I think it's a similar situation that people just have such a, a huge commitment to this idea that, well, we have this morality that tells us, we have to, if we, if we sacrifice ourselves and, and tax people and create government programs to help people, then that's gonna be the good thing. Speaker 1 00:28:49 And they, they end up like, as clients saying, but we, we, how is it that, that we try, we're trying to help these people and they end up suffering and, and that they just are impenetrable to the knowledge of it, because they're not willing to open their, you know, it's not that they need to know more about economics is that they need to open, they can learn more about economics, it'd be helpful, but they first need to open their minds to the idea that it's okay to think thoughts outside of the existing, the existing dogma, just as, you know, the guys in the church had to open their minds and, and realize it was okay to think thoughts outside the existing doctrine to the church. Speaker 4 00:29:25 Um, can, can I ask a question, Rob? Sure. Um, does on clubhouse has been a lot of talk about NFTs. Speaker 1 00:29:33 Yeah. Speaker 4 00:29:34 Um, I'm still confused as to what an NFT is for a start during the club. Um, <laugh> and I would like to ask you the question, what, what do you think about NFTs in general and how you think it might? How, what would the relationship be to the gold standard <laugh> as in, as in, uh, like the essay in, um, capitalism, the unknown or ideal? Speaker 1 00:30:04 Okay. So if you're asking in relation to the gold standard, I think it'd be less about NFTs and more about Bitcoin. And I know there's some great Bitcoin enthusiasts out there. I am not among them. Um, partly cuz I, I know there are people be lots of money on Bitcoin and lots of money on cryptocurrency. And that's actually the reason why I think cryptocurrency isn't doesn't really work. It's not real money because real money, you shouldn't be able to make a lot of money off of it should be stable. Right. And if I, I find that that cryptocurrencies and, um, Bitcoin and things like that are still, they're totally speculative because there's not an established basis for what the value of this thing is. I, I, my, my take on Bitcoin is that it's a, it's a computer simulation of the gold standard. And that is that it CA it takes one characteristic of the gold standard, which is that, uh, it's, it's a product that it's, it's a cur the currency has to be something that is not available. Speaker 1 00:31:03 Unlimited quantity has to something that's available in a limited quantity that you can only produce more of it by going through a lot of work and effort and CR and, and using a lot of energy to create more of it. Like the way you have to go mine gold, if you want more gold, you have to go mine gold and it's expensive and difficult to mine. Gold. Therefore, uh, only a little incremental, little bit of an extra comes into the every year. And so similarly, Bitcoin sort of simulates that as a computer simulation, but what it's not simulating is the fact that gold itself is something that is a tangible thing that is of value. Whereas Bitcoin is, you know, what, it's numbers on a ledger somewhere. So I'm, that's why I've skeptical cryptocurrency. And like I said, I don't wanna start that whole discussion. Cause I don't know, there are lots of crypto people out here who are very so, very passionately about it. <laugh> but I think if I'm scheduled Scott, Speaker 0 00:31:53 Yeah, Chris, I do wanna at least let, uh, bill and John get in here. Speaker 1 00:31:57 Well, let me just say one more thing on, on, cause I didn't get the NFTs yet. I I've, I've strong thoughts about this. So just, just two more minutes that'll with the other people. Sure. Um, uh, if I'm skeptical about, about Bitcoin, I'm like super triple, double skeptical of NFTs because I like, like you, I have, I have never had anybody explain to me why this thing should be of any value whatsoever. Right. And NFT is a claim to say that you have digital ownership of a thing, but it's not the same thing. As, as owning the copyright on it, you don't get the physical thing itself. You get what you get the ability to make a claim about it. That's all that you get. I, so I, I have no. And I think that NFTs have turned out to be something of a bubble I saw. Speaker 1 00:32:44 They peaked a lot and then a bunch of people then the prices went and crashed down. And I think people are figuring out that when you buy NFT, you get really nothing except except air, just, you know, just the ability to make a claim about something you don't, anything that has any actual value. Um, you know, and that's always been something of the case for modern art and collectibles and things like that, that the value of it is often way above the actual, tangible value of the thing. But at least, you know, you buy a, a junkie piece of modern art that can become very valuable cuz it's in, in fashion, at least you actually have the, the painting with the canvas stretched over the frame. You actually have a physical thing with entities. You got nothing. So I I'm super double typical skeptical that I think is basically NFTs are a legalized form of, of, of con game. But I'm probably getting myself in trouble and people gonna be very angry. So I'll, I'll stop there. Speaker 4 00:33:36 Prices go ahead. Kind of what I was thinking, Rob, Rob, so thank you. Speaker 1 00:33:43 Yeah. Speaker 0 00:33:43 Thanks Chris bill. Thanks for joining us. Speaker 5 00:33:48 Okay. Um, so your, uh, Rob your answer to why we never learn about economics. If I understand you correctly, is that, um, well the, we have our preconceptions, our, our morality really that says, well, we can't, if, if we understand this then, well we're bad people when you really come right down to it. <laugh> is that a correct understanding? Speaker 1 00:34:14 I think that's pretty much it. Yeah. Speaker 5 00:34:16 Well, okay. That's kind of along the line I have, except it has, uh, a much wider implication than just economics. It seems to be that if we talk about our, our entire society and why we keep doing things, not just economically, but in other ways that fail, like giving government powers that, uh, they should not have, it comes down to the same thing. If we truly examine it, we look at it and we say, oh, I'm a bad person because I believe that. And this is why people do not look at, at, at the, uh, actual facts. So I think your observation goes a lot further than just economics. Speaker 1 00:34:58 Good, good. Yeah. Um, you know, it's, it's, uh, interesting, uh, per parallel to this is, uh, you know, when you think about, we take it outside of economics, you also take it to things like, um, Jonathan Roche had a pretty good book that he wrote recently and which he makes to the point that if you've gone back 300 years, you ask people answers to three different questions. The one question is who decides what's true, <affirmative> who rules and who decides what we, what we make and sell. And if you told people that the, the, the one answer that would've at least made the least sense to anyone at the time was no one in particular, but that's exactly the system that we ended up creating where no one in particular decides all those things. Those things are all decided by free people, you know, debating and arguing and trading together in the economy. Speaker 1 00:35:48 We decide what's true. We decide who rules and we decide, um, uh, uh, what, you know, what we make and by, and, and, but the it's the, the fact that that is such a, from a certain perspective, that's such a counterintuitive idea that no one in particular beside these things. So for example, I mean, you know, if you go back to a, a religious era where people were deeply held religious ideas, the idea that no one in particular would decide what's true about morality or religion would seem, you know, it would seem evil, bla any people could believe anything. And so I think we underestimate the extent to which a free society is such a rare and unusual achievement. That it's a totally different mindset and that mindset has not yet full been sort of absorbed and accepted and the implications and the, the foundations of that mindset have been fully grasped. And I think that's part of what's going on here. Speaker 5 00:36:48 So even, uh, unfortunately we seem to be retro regressing in that understanding. Speaker 1 00:36:54 Oh yeah. Anybody wanna talk about the Roe V Wade thing? I gotta drop that Bob too. I took ONTs now I'm gonna do RO Wade. I'm just Speaker 0 00:37:05 Really widening the scope of the room here. Uh, I appreciate that. I will. That's something to talk about this summer. Um, John, thank you for joining us today. Speaker 6 00:37:17 Yes. Thank you. Uh, um, I just wanted, I wanted to add that, um, let's not forget, forget about something David Kelly's worked on, which is beneficence. And, um, I, I think that that is, uh, the difference between ENCE and altruism is that altruism includes almost a woke aspect. That is, there's a certain amount of preaching and admonition and shaming and social, um, force that is used to, um, create an atmosphere of, oh yes. Altruism is a good thing and oh yes, I'm altruistic too. And, um, where beneficence is something that exalts in the joy of giving and, um, where the altruism welfare state thing takes me as the person writing the check, it deprives me of the joy of, of the gift. And, uh, I, we've all experienced that, you know, when we give a gift, that's the right one, you know, to someone we love and we know that they'll like it, and then we're right. Speaker 6 00:38:34 And we're both profoundly happy about it. And, um, also the, in, in, in the giving to the needy, when you, um, recognize someone in your midst, in your community, who is a worthy person who has worked hard and because of some calamity is in a bad situation, then, um, they're not prideful and they're maybe willing to accept in a humble way, your gift and, and your, your, your gift is truly joyful all around. And that's the, the aspect that's missing from altruism. Altruism is a, a social concept where ENCE or charity is individualistic. And that that's for me that that's a driver. Uh, I'll like, leave it there. Speaker 1 00:39:35 No, I think it's a great observation. And this is something that's come to be discussed actually recently. And it's discussed in this weird roundabout wake, cuz people want to discuss this without questioning altruism, per se. So they say they call it pathological altruism, but with the implication that there's a good altruism and then there's a bad altruism. And this is a pathological form of altruism. Uh, there's somebody wrote a book called pathological altruism, psychologists who, who identified this. And one of the, you know, the, the thing that iron Rand identified is Al it's all pathological. You know, the, the, the pathology is inherent to altruism as a philosophy because of the way. And, and the reason it's inherent to the altruism is a philosophy is that the reason discussed by, uh, that this, she put into the mouth of, of El TUI, one of villains, where he says, you know, the whole in, in the altruist society, nobody really has a right to be happy. Speaker 1 00:40:25 Everybody has to sacrifice for the person next to him who has to sacrifice the person next to him who has to sacrifice the person next to him and so on around the world. And I think, uh, TUI sums it up as all suffer and none and joy. So that's the, as the pathological, as that path, that that's the pathology that's inherent in altruism as a moral philosophy, but the people have identified this as pathological altruism. Sometimes they call it toxic charity. And the key characteristic of that is that the purpose of this Al this form of altruism, it's there not to help the person not to actually help the person. Who's the supposed beneficiary. It's there mostly to, uh, uh, to serve the mental state of the person who's doing the giving. It's there to make the giver feel good about themselves, make them feel virtuous, make them feel superior. Speaker 1 00:41:16 And that's how you often get this sort of, of preaching aspect of it. The, uh, the smug, the smug preaching aspect of, of altruism. And it's also why you have these, you know, forms of altruism. You you'll, you're supposedly helping people and you have this program that will continue for decades, and nobody will stop to pause. And it, it be, it's not even, you're not even allowed to point out, you know, you're a bad guy. If you point out that, wait a minute, this program, isn't actually helping people, right? You, you, you have to, you have to you, how else could, if you were giving money to someone to help a loved one out of the goodness of your heart, or out of your love for that person. <affirmative> if you said, you know what, you know, uh, I'm gonna do something. I, well, I'll leave the kids. Speaker 1 00:41:57 Cause it's a whole separate relationship. That's different. But you know, my cousin, Joe, he's had a hard break. I'm gonna give him, you know, a hundred bucks to help him get out of a jam, whatever you would actually take five minutes to think about, well, will this actually help him? Cause what if your uncle Joe's your cousin Joe's per problem, is that he's an alcoholic or a drug addict. You would say no, how last thing you should give him is a hundred bucks, cuz he'll just spend it on, on, spend it on meth, you know, <laugh>, he he'll, it'll make, he'll just, it'll just make his addiction worse. So, but you know, if you are the Altru type and you're, you're the point is that how I feel about having, given, having been be, and having myself feel like a good person, then you won't think about whether it's actually good for the person who's, who's receiving it. Speaker 1 00:42:40 Um, and I, Rand actually, uh, for those who wanna dig in deeper to her stuff, I Rand wrote a whole play based on this premise. Uh, it was, it's not, it was one of the things. It, it was never published during, uh, until very, I think after she died, it was published. Uh, it was a book came out called the early iron Rand that had a number of these sort of a co a, it was like one, one play, no two plays, a couple of short stories and some sketches she'd done for the other things that, that things that hadn't been published during her lifetime. But this one's very intriguing. It's called think twice. And the premise I trying to not spoil anything, but the premise, uh, it's a murder mystery. And so at the beginning, the, a man, the, the, the, the victim is murdered and, uh, the, the detective comes in to investigate and he says, well, this is gonna be tough, cuz this guy was a great altruist, a great philanthropist, uh, every who would possibly have a motive to kill him, cuz everybody must have loved him. Speaker 1 00:43:33 Cuz he was always giving. He was always away all these things to people. But then it's you get into the play in the first 20 minutes or so you realize that he gave things to people in this Al this pathological altruist way. He gave it out terms and in ways that control the manipulated everybody. So it turns out, you know, the, the detectives suddenly has to throw up his hands and say, now he's got a problem that everybody had a motive to kill this guy. <laugh> cause he cause he, he had given money and, and his, his, his humanitarianism was such a pathological toxic form that he had given everybody a reason to hate him. And that was that whole setup of the play was her comment on, on how altruism, you know, seems benevolent and benefit it from the outside, but on the difference between that and the sort of toxic and a pathological reality of, if you take altruism fully, you know, consistently that it becomes about you as the giver manipulating and making yourself feel good and, and, and basically messing around with the lies of all the people around you. Uh, so I recommend to look up that play as a great example of it, Speaker 6 00:44:42 To follow up on that. I think that there's, or to re kind of restate what I was trying to say is that the, the, the state as the middle man, as collecting taxes and then handing them out, uh, usurps and steals the sense of, of joy and happiness, that one obtains from giving that and a politician steps into the middle and takes credit for my money <laugh> and, and steals the joy that I would otherwise have, and the pleasure that I would otherwise have of helping my fellow man. And I think that's that that's re and then following on today's earlier session on wokeness to, I realize that wokeness is a form of, of an attempt to cajole altruism. Mm-hmm <affirmative> it's wokeness is, is a, a pressure. It, it's saying to one person saying to another, Hey, you should do this. If you're a good person, you will. It's, it's a, of, it's a violation of the non-aggression principle in the sense that it it's an assault. It's, it's, it's a threat. It's saying, I will think less of you if you don't do this, it it's it's, it's, it's, it's almost like the tax man coming the door and saying Speaker 4 00:46:11 Intimidation, I think, yeah, Speaker 1 00:46:13 Your intimidation is see it's, it's sort of the, yeah, it it's very much the, um, you are being put on trial at all times to show that you're to demonstrate, to prove that you're a good person, and this is your ease. This is your way, the only way you have to, uh, to pass the trial or at least save it off for a little while is to, you know, mouth the right words and the right, uh, the, uh, use the right pronouns, use the, uh, mouth, the right slogans, you know, put up that black mat lives matter placard in your window. And for God's sake, don't say all lives matter, cuz then you're a bad person. It it, and it, it, I think it really, the religious threats of this are important because I think they took from religion. This idea that you are on trial, you, the life is a series of tests that you're always on the verge of failing. Speaker 1 00:47:04 <laugh>, you know, this is the idea of, of original sin, right? You, you are, you are a presumed to be a sinner. And so therefore life is a series of moral tests, a constant series of perilous old tests that you are always just on the verge of, of failing. And you have to keep demonstrating that. No, no, no, I'm a good person. Please don't make me burden hell. And I think that that sort of attitude, that mindset gets secularized in all sorts of ways, but it persists, uh, even in a non-religious age like we have, like, we're in now, Speaker 0 00:47:35 It's like, they'd rather call you a monster than actually they care about helping the other person or whatever their stated goal is. Speaker 1 00:47:45 Well, I think the connection to wokeness is the idea that, you know, it's, it's by saying something or declaring your allegiance to a certain program, you gain a certain status in the eyes, in your, in your own eyes and in the eyes of others. And the thing about wokeness, this one of the arguments, or one of the criticisms of wokeness is that oftentimes is just by making a statement by doing something purely symbol, like you don't actually have to do anything in reality. You just have to put out, you have to put out the right tweets. Right. Uh, but if you put out the right tweets, then you're okay. And you've, you've said the right you've mouthed the right slogans, nothing has to change or get better. I mean, you know, the, the, the riots, uh, two years ago, uh, the, the, um, after the George Floyd case, they had these riots in the cities, the black matter protests, perfect example of that, all these slogans that were, that, that were said, and all these placards that say black lives matter, that went up everywhere, hardly any actual reforming of policing was ever actually done. Speaker 1 00:48:44 Uh, in most cases where the riots were held, the people who were living in those neighborhoods are way worse off than they were before, as they always are after, after one of these riots. And so you had this thing where everybody said the right thing and they meld the right slogans and nothing actually was done or changed that would've actually helped anybody. But that comes from the pathology. I think even below the pathology of altruism, the pathology that left over religious mindset of, you know, I am presumed to be a sinner. I have to keep doing things to make it Fe make me feel like I will. I'm okay. I'm one of the good ones. I'm not going to burn. I'm one of the saves I'm not gonna burn in hell. And it's very much like, you know, the, uh, I'm thinking sort of Calvinism, right? Speaker 1 00:49:26 You know, where you're you, uh, uh, you have to constantly be showing that you're one of the elect and, and not, you're not one of the sinners and it's this sense of, of a morality and a social system motivated by a sense of like self reassurance, neurotic self reassurance, rather than looking at the world and saying, Hey, let's go out and create and build things. And, and let's do things that will actually make human life better. Uh, but the altruist philosophy is very tied into that sort of leftover rhythm mindset, which is very much centered around self doubt. And, and this path pathological, uh, uh, need for reassurance rather than, you know, human beings encountering reality directly and deciding to go out and create things. Speaker 0 00:50:11 I, I know you're bit of a history buff. I, I am too, um, you know, I read, uh, something around 300, they had an edict on prices with price controls and, you know, made me think of some of that historical stuff. Uh, I mean, is that, uh, I, I sometimes wonder if that's some sort of clue about where we are on the road to falling Speaker 1 00:50:34 <laugh> well, yeah, I, I'm not a, I'm not a, this is the fall of RO kind of guy for the most part have so much access to such a dynamic there's so much access to so much knowledge and such a dynamic society it's way beyond anything the Romans ever had on their side. Remember the, you know, Roman society was still a very, it was a poor and ignorant society and extremely hierarchical. And, um, you know, they had a whole division between my, my dad's a, a Roman historian. So I've, I've been immersed in this a little bit recently, um, uh, amateur Roman historian, uh, but you know, they had the, uh, the, the populars and the TMAs. You have the, the, the guys who represented the aristocracy versus these sort of populous rabble rousers. They had a much, much worse political environment, uh, for the very beginning. Speaker 1 00:51:24 And, you know, it's partly because the Roman empire, the, from an empire in some ways were the best of what classical society had to offer, but the problem was there were so many problems. They hadn't solved yet. So many things, they had new things. They hadn't discovered the concept of individual rights, the concept of representative government, they were, they were, you know, just the very, they were making their first beginning steps towards those things. If they didn't have any of that, uh, free market economics, they had no clue whatsoever. They were still in that mindset of, you know, if you ask them what should be bought and sold, what should the price of things be? The idea that nobody in particular would decide that was, you know, was, was sort of outside of the, the realm of possibility. So, um, you know, I, I don't think we're in the, the, the fall of Rome territory here, but I do think that, you know, the, the, to bring it back to the original topic of this, it's a demonstration that we have learned so much more since then, about politics, about philosophy and about economics. Speaker 1 00:52:28 And what we're doing is we're so clinging to old, um, notions of about morality and old notions about philosophy, uh, that we have those that, that loyalty to that, that, and that, that unwillingness to that, that, that thought that we'd be a bad person to EV to doubt these ideas. That's, we're unable to take advantage of all this enormous, uh, to fully take advantage of all this enormous new knowledge we have. I mean, all of pro free market economics was basically developed in the last 250 years. It's a huge advance in knowledge. We can't really, you know, absorb and actualize at all as a society because we're cling to these ideas that, you know, block us from accepting it. So I think that's, you know, the, I think we have a lot of advantages over the Roman empire and, and historically on that, because we have so much more knowledge and because we have such, the knowledge is so much more widely diffused, uh, in, in, through society. And because we have so many billions of active minds working, I think that's gonna be our solving, but we have to keep chipping away at, at telling people what, what it is they have to do to really be able to access that knowledge. And that is, they have people into question some of these assumptions, Speaker 0 00:53:45 Uh, I mean, just one example, I took an Austrian economics course for mark SCOs in the, uh, like 25 years ago, that that guy that does freedom Fest mm-hmm <affirmative>, and one of his measures is like gross national output, which is, he thinks is a more accurate read of economic output than GDP. So, I mean, I just, I think that, that's what I was saying about, I think there's still new innovations to be had in the field of economics. Speaker 1 00:54:10 Oh yeah, yeah, no, we're not done by a long shot, but we have a lot that we do know. And so the question I see it is, is why aren't we using what we do know <laugh>, even though there's still a great deal, more to be done. Speaker 6 00:54:22 Yes, Rob, that's a good point that Scott thousands, I think distinction, if I recall correctly, between GMP and G P is that GDP includes government spending where GN P does not or vice versa. So the point is is that they inflate the number, make it look better by adding back in the money that they already tax of the economy. Speaker 1 00:54:47 Yeah. But I do wanna, you know, take, take, we, we have made a huge amount of progress. We are a fabulously wealthy society by, by, uh, and compared to any, any, uh, any point in history. Uh, so, you know, I think that part of the problem we have here is that people are unwilling to recognize that because, and I think that has to do also with altruism. Cause if we're a fabulously wealthy society, if where you live in this wonderful land of opportunity, where so much is available so much is possible to us, well, people don't need help. Where are you going to be? Um, uh, where are you going to be? If, if function in life is to serve others, where are you? If the, those people don't need to be served, if they're not desperate, if they're not, you know, hanging, hanging onto cliff by their fingernails needing to be. So I think, you know, Altru and altruist outlook can't really absorb the idea of a society in which there has been progress and in which everybody's, and in which there's prosperity. Speaker 6 00:55:48 Yes. And you have to add how much better might be be we be off. Yeah. But for altruism. Yeah, it is. If we had invested that much more money in the economy and in, uh, reinvestment in successful business ventures, then how many decades to head would we be now? You know, we might have had the, the standard of living of 1980 in 1950. Yeah. But for altruism Speaker 1 00:56:18 Mm-hmm <affirmative> Speaker 6 00:56:19 Thank you. Speaker 1 00:56:20 And, you know, I think a thousand years from now, you know, with if, uh, when we're all like 50 times wealthier, even than now, uh, when human beings are, you know, the idea of, uh, I'm hoping at some point that this, this, you know, this, the prosperous society, which is very new thing historically of society of mass prosperity, I'm hoping eventually that'll all sort of finally filter in. And when you go to the, what about people who are in need, they're gonna look like, well, who <laugh>, you know, uh, what, you know, people who only have one, uh, one flying car instead of, instead of two flying cars, um, you know, it, the, the idea of, of, of, uh, this, this scarcity mentality of we're all on the edge of we're all on the edge of, of doom at every moment. And we need altruism. I think that's hopefully that at some point that would, that will fade away because it will seem just so implausible. Speaker 0 00:57:09 Yeah. I hope you do that. Post scarcity show one of these days. Go ahead, Chris. Final thoughts. Speaker 4 00:57:15 Uh, I was, uh, uh, several months ago about, maybe about six months ago on, in the ya Brook show, somebody asked a question in the superstar asking if EV EV if everything became Lisa fair, um, how much wealthier would people be in general? Uh, not just, I'm not sure whether it was just in America about everywhere. Okay. And he made some Cal kind of calculation, cuz he is a finance guy as well. And he, he made this estimate that it was, it would be four to five times wealthier on average than what it is now. So if people were four to five times wealthier on average, you don't really need the welfare state because P P P people are not gonna be. So, uh, um, what do you call it? Um, uh, we call it stingy with money, uh, in, in the UK, like, um, like, like SCR <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I Speaker 1 00:58:33 Think you'd have more private generosity, but also you'd have less private need. Right? Cause you were four, four to five times wealthier than being poor would be making $75,000 a year. Right. The poverty line right now is like $15,000 a year. And if you know that that same person we're making $75,000 a year and, and assuming you constant dollars that represents real increase in wealth. Well, you could live <laugh>, uh, at that at the, you know, you would have you, you're not, you know, you're not on the, or anywhere close to it. And frankly, we're still, we're already at that point, cuz right now, you know, um, I'm, there are people probably who don't have enough to eat out there, but the much, much larger problem we have in America is obesity. Right? Yet it shows you how wealthy we are as a society, hardly anybody is actually serving. So, um, I think we're even, we're already there now, but we would be so much farther there. Uh, if, if we had, you know, a higher rates of annual compounding growth and over a year, over a hundred years, that's a whole lot of compounding that happens. It makes a huge difference, Speaker 0 00:59:36 Chris, I hate to cut you off, but uh, just one minute from now, uh, the Atlas society's may book club will be discussing author Steven Kent and his book, uh, how the force can fix the world tomorrow at 2:00 PM, the Atlas society asks free speech champion. YCO Maha Gama then, uh, on clubhouse tomorrow at 6:30 PM. Stephen Hicks is doing an ask me anything on full philosophy and Thursday at 4:00 PM Eastern, uh Clubhouse's uh, Richard Salman will be talking about judge Elle's ruling against mask mandates, uh, which is great topical content. I'm looking forward to it. Uh, you know, we're, uh, Atlas, society's starting to make some waves in the Liberty movement. It's fun to be part of, of, uh, ATLA society.org for more information and, uh, Rob, thanks for doing this good show Speaker 1 01:00:28 And also Scott, your wishes, my command. I'll do what on post scarcity in July. Speaker 0 01:00:32 Excellent.