Yearlong journey through American History of capitalism highlighting some of our industrys most important inventions from the arrival of the mayflower come in the inner of the mafia, and as a child he was in the rustbelt, Southern California. His book is available for sale in the bookstore and he will be up here afterwards for a book signing please welcome bhu srinivasan, everybody. [applause] thanks everyone for having me and this is only my second everbook event. So im glad you guys took a big chance on coming out and hopefully based on how this goes, i will get to do other events or never again. Hope you guys are a good audience. As rachel pointed out, i came to this country at the age of eight. My mother a ba in physics and she had gotten a role at Roswell Park Memorial Institute which is a Cancer Institute in buffalonew york. She had gotten a doctorate position and she was going to make the sum of 14,000 which meant in india that we were going to be very, very rich when we arrived in america. After my mother had done six months in america, having left us in india, she got us. At eight years old i was sent to live with my aunt and not too far from there i attended school in Richmond Virginia and buffalo new york and on to california and northwest and my own journey in america in many ways mirrored that of the american journey. I didnt quite understand how much it mirrored it until i was fortunate enough to take a freshman history class from Richard White at the university of washington who is now at stanford and in his class, the final essay was do we then connect your familys history into the context of the american narrative. Since i was taking this class in 1995 and ive been here for a total of 11 years, i didnt quite have a device through which i could weave a narrative. I think we had such a short amount of time here. So the major event in American History, i couldnt connect our families history i had to ask him what we can do to allow me to express myself in the context of American History and we stumbled upon this device of economic teams. The rustbelt in buffalo new york, the families westward migration, my mother ended up with a position at a biotech startup in seattle. Seattle itself was booming with technology, microsoft at that time was a big company, it is now but at that time it had a proportionate growth rate so we were connecting all that over an 11 year period into this essay. It gave me a perspective on American History that i didnt have before and i got this directly from a notable historian and it served me well. Going forward however, the gold rush of the internet was his hugely alluring thing in seattle and San Francisco at that time and i had been lucky enough to participate in the gold rush at least as an early employee at a couple countries and as a founder of a answer back start up in news aggregation so it colored my perspective that the next big things are basically can transform society rapidly. So just as do i hammer, everything looks like a nail, these economic questions have always driven me to assemble everything i know about American History andput it into this framework. 10 years after that i started thinking about every biography i would read, every history i would read with someone if a these economic questions which i think are so central to the American Experience and if you think about mexican immigrants that come to this country, many of them undocumented and undocumented immigrants obviously are leaving these privileges in mexico to come to this country to live a stateless, non, why would somebody come here to live, obviously thats not a goal for american democracy if youre leaving democratic privileges in mexico behind so what is that motivation . You can say it might be the lord of one form of american capitalism. Its some a war or what that perspective that they might have some access to prosperity and prosperity is a relative thing. Some people might have, might think a new change of clothes and tshirts and being able to buy what close you want is prosperity, other people think access to airconditioning or a new television is prosperity. Someone else might be denied to buy a car which is a big luxury in the third world country as it was in india and still is for hundreds of millions of people. All those things represent prosperity and i still believe that the ease with which you can access prosperity is the primary allure for millions of children that come here. So tracing back from that i wanted to look at the prosperity was the motivation for my own family and other immigrants that come here and indeed if i can make that case, i would get how hard is that go back . Obviously the irish, but the italians, lithuanians, germans. Then i tried to phrase it back all the way to the mayflower and the mayflower, that gave rise to a question that, to some degree i wondered how was it in 1620 that persecuted religious separatists would be able to afford a giant ship, if i were to tell you that the hundred people in Central America that wanted to come to this country charted a 737, you would think how can that possibly happen. Thats a strange set of circumstances. So then you start weaving in and ask questions about how the mayflower was financed and you start going through a great primary documents, William Bradford plymouth plantation. And in it, much of the document the financing of the mayflower, how they sold shares to a group called the merchant adventurers, how the pilgrims had shares, how the sevenyear term, how there were provisions where the pilgrims would spend your days on the collective venture, two days on the for themselves, one day for god and how those terms change to six days of a collective venture and one day for god and how that was a Sticking Point when they were about to and part on this voyage. So you start looking at economic motivations and you start questioning how that financing happened, what happened at the end of that transaction. It took 25 years or that transaction to unwind itself and from there i started assembling a series of victims, when did steele have a big impact on society, what happened with well, automobiles. With food, with the meatpackers in chicago and all these disparate events and biographies and friends, that started putting it into a mosaic. And ultimately it came together where i thought the 400 years of american capitalism, you can start to have a backdrop of the next big thing where youre going to have Something Like the internet browser leading ultimately to the smart phone. Obviously what you would now the smart phone if people were used to an internet browser. The smartphone allowed you to Access Internet browser. So theinternet browser , that created a great demand for the computer. Even in 80s, they were in the majority of households, computer growth in the household really took off with the internet. So the next big things compound and the connective tissue that i tried to identify in this book. And many times, these connective tissues are separate threads altogether but they are obviously interwoven with politics. And i wanted to have a couple examples today of deeper threats where several next big things were so connected where you might not necessarily them as connected. One is the gold rush. The gold rush starts with to some degree during the tail end of the mexicanamerican war, 1848 when the final days of the mexico actually owning a territory, days before its official surrender. Someone discovers a worker in a river in california discovers that their gold flakes in the ground. This is obviously a serendipitous discovery. Someone of great skill or culture, it doesnt take great skill to find old but they did. Its a lucky find that the tail end at the end of manifest destiny where the United States comes into possession, almost at that time , all providential they find gold. Almost instantaneously the californians, obviously the rush happens and the californians want our clamoring for statehood. And theres calls for california in possession of vast wealth and accelerates the process so by 1850 the californians want to present themselves and become the 31st state of the union. At this time there are 15 slave states and free states and its the one marker of legislative balance that the southerners are still able to hold on to because in terms of representatives, the free states have representatives in the house but in the senate they have 30 senators and the free state of 30 senators so they introduced the 31st state would change that balance and that equation very dramatically. You have a compromise of 1850 which is triggered by california wanting to get admission and one of those is a slave act which is the enforcement of the slave lost from the constitution. That sets off the idea behind the fugitive slave act is that has to be enforced by constitutional provisions that if a slave ventures into a state in the north, thats taken from local magistrates in the north to return back to itself. And that is a link that the feature still finds so odious she starts writing uncle toms cavern and that is serialized and captured the imagination of a lot of abolitionist sentiment and is able to use a fictional story to read human eyes the slave experience. And throughout the 1850s, that starts to become a major dividing point and you start seeing that decision 1857, you see slave prices actually went up but there was quite a bubble in slave prices where options you would have the what they would call a prime field camp, some slaves in their 20,strong has no history of running away. If a slave had ever run away. So you see these average price of slaves throughout between 700 in 1800 on the whole, so you have the imputed value of 3 million before 4 billion for all the slaves in america, 4 million. X and so to some degree, in my book i know that this is an irrational valuation because it was a lot of credit was there to be honest. You could, you had to collateralize the slaves to a certain value so much of the sentiment was based on evaluation of slaves that was recalled from the price which many historians, Walter Johnson and becker go into. So connect the goldrush with slavery and some of the sentiments that precipitated this overconfidence on the part of the south. Triggering a humanizing novel from Harriet Beecher stone, those are the type of connections i tried to leave throughout the book where its not just a celebration of capitalism or great biography, but emphasizes the Democratic Forces that clash with markets many times throughout American History. And so that you will find later on as well, thats a strong theme as the rise of William Jennings bryan candidacy in 1896 and its against the backdrop again of business interests in this country being very proterrorist, if you didnt have income tax and because you didnt have income tax, the government was financed by either the terrace or licorice and tobacco tax. Wit was fermented and distilled there. So because of that reliance on the parents, business interests often had a friend in the government where they could protect industry and when they protect industry you would institute an income terrace, the higher the terrace, the more money the federal government is able to collect. At the same time, the industry in the United States that would find overseas competitors to take market share in america is detected. So thats one of the men that gave voice, this was Andrew Carnegie in his autobiography talked about the field terrace were instrumental for developing the Steel Industry in the United States. So until the income tax was made constitutional by the 16th amendment, you had this reliance on terrace where businesses often times even if the federal government didntquite need were very proterrorist. And when one time the income tax became instituted you would have prohibition because the government was no longer reliance upon income taxes or reliance upon the taxes from alcohol and books distilled information. And it wasnt reliance on the terrace. You start seeing these connections and about how the story cametogether. Throughout. So be next big thing from that point was tracing to the automobile, suburbia, through roads and how roads gave way to food and there are lots of anecdotal examples obviously and biographies but the main theme of the story is how democracy clashes with the markets and how american capitalism is indicative of social, cultural, economic and Democratic Forces. So i wanted to open it up to questions. Out of the mafia tie in . That during prohibition. This is something that, its not a major theme in the book. I think its a smaller theme but the mafia is one of those things where you have this unintended consequence and you see lots of this consequence and policymakers so one of those consequences was that right after prohibition , you had a brandnew business, it was alcohol and beer, that was the fifthlargest business in the United States. It was a Great Fortune for adolphs blush. You have these great big fortunes in alcohol and all of a sudden right when it became legal you had a brandnew opportunity for all kinds of lawless men to be into take advantage of a whole big market and very Large Consumer market but it had other unintended consequences, great prices from california boomed so you had something called the great thrower in Northern California where you had people are able to sell wine had a sacramental exception to it. And you can also buy some and then allow it to turn into wine in the home so you had lots of different Economic Opportunities and that opportunity gave rise to organized crime. [inaudible] you go into the fate of capitalism in the american extremists, the experience of the various states . In terms of rating capitalism, like rating democracy, how would you rate the doctor cr capitalism, thats the things i get stuck on early on npr yesterday which is it doesnt have a moral quality or an immoral quality. Its a neutral construct. If you wanted to sell your kidney, you would be able to. Theres nothing in capitalism that says yes, sir encourages it or discourages it. Its up to the society to ultimately imbue it with value. Thats always going to be the case throughout. Just like when you are asking how you would rate democracy, how would you rate capitalism . Segregation was tolerated, would that meanyou would then impugn democracy . I think its a mutual philosophy. You have whatever value you want to and its up to your society to shape it for us. I brought up. Market capitalism [inaudible] i do. I do and its a constant evolution and its, one of the examples i use is the rise of school. The rise of public schools. You go into, even a staunch Republican Community in lets say 80 red state and you would ask them what is the great thing about your community or your society . Many times you will hear, the thing they will brag the most about is their great public schools. Here it is, a social institution that they would take great pride in and its one of the first things that makes your community a great community. They wont say we have great fences and our neighbors cant get in. Thats one of those things people dont necessarily identify as capitalism and democracy colliding but it is. A person argued for Public Education and universal education all the way back in 1848 with karl marx and in the communist manifesto he talks about how if you produce a 10 point plan for developed economies or developing economies, industrial economies at that time who have come more fair and one of the things he argued for is the abolition of child labor and the institution ofuniversal education. He also argued for progressive income taxes. So even american capitalism certainly is a hybrid. Its not an extreme, its not an extreme ideology and what i tried to do is i separate the ideological argument from altogether and about it as an operating system rather than a ideology. Out of curiosity, what was the final format for the mayflower. They lost money. So it took 25 years, took 25 years for the debt to finally be repaid and it wasnt an equity for the shareholders. After a few years they realized that they wanted to convert the, at the end of the sevenyear term they wanted to get equity but at that time you have to have a pro rata distribution of all the assets they didnt want to do that so the equity got converted into that transaction and you see very often in private equity and other areas like that, and for a long time that couldnt be serviced by perpetrating revenues and ultimately what had happened was these group of men in plymouth and they call themselves the undertakers and these undertakers assumed the debt from Plymouth Colony in exchange for all of the for trading area. So these group of nine men absolved the colony of the debt and finally these nine men negotiated with their investors that still held on and managed to hold on to the state, took 25 years and by the time england also was indeed procivil war so 1620 to 1645 was not an easy time in england either a lot of them needed their money back and they didnt make it. And they had still held on to the original debt. Given the Current Situation in china with the administration, what you think capitalism has evil where it is now . Thats a very interesting question. Obviously the fact that these rust belt states like michigan, wisconsin, ohio , and being the swing states where you would not have predicted they were going to go with trunk or even become red, especially michigan. That obviously tells you theres something in there. As i especially think that its hard, the better argument for protectionism is something you wouldnt have expected to see in republican dogma but free trade is very much a big question. After what the republican platform needed to do with free trade because the swing states for them now are on board with unlimited free trade. So i think thats going to have substantial implications for 2020 as well. Any more questions . No, okay. Thank you so much. [applause] tdks hundreds of other programs through the country all year long. Theres a look at some of the events were covering this week. On monday we are at the New York Historical society to hear michael korda, author and editor in chief of simon and schuster chronicle his life in the runup to world war ii. Later that night we are out west at chevalier book where university of Southern California history professor steven roth will recall the infiltration of nazi groups and assortment of American Veterans from los angeles before world war ii. On tuesday the smithsonians Wrigley Center in washington dc, Lindsay Harris surgery in the 19th century and the medical advances of doctor joseph lister. Wednesday we are at the Redwood Library in newport where Pulitzer Prize historian gordon woods recount of the two most with friendship between john adams and thomas jefferson. Also that night we are at politics and prose bookstore in the Nations Capital to hear and nelson tell the story of how a member of the French Resistance gave her life to save hundreds of jewish children from being sent to auschwitz. Then on thursday, at the hoover institution, lee edwards recalls his career in the conservative movement. On saturday and sunday, watch our live coverage of the texas book festival in austin. Also on sunday bestselling author Michael Lewis will discuss his manybooks and take your calls live on indepth. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air in the near future on tv on cspan2. Go down to the Jefferson Memorial here, its a great book and theres hostility in any form of material. Would agree with that but it would also say even the greater politics model. What is the moral equivalency . He explained it like this. Imagine a wheelchairbound person. And hes across the street and assisted and he appears and he pushes the wheelchair away into an oncoming bus. But imagine the person is halfway across the street, the light changes and a bus is approaching. And a Good Samaritan appears. Out of the way of the oncoming bus. Well, both stories, theres a wheelchair, theres a Good Samaritan or a bad samaritan. That doesnt make their motives better. And what bothered him, he thought his how as it was teaching, this is the era after world war ii, where first of all, the economics department, he was born in 1945. And thank you very much, he didnt think he had to impose himself every five minutes on the American People like other president s i can think about. He was known for notsaying very much at all. Government did much less. America fought it had learned from its place in europe and was trying not to abuse it. The world was at peace and countries Economic Situation was booming. As bill was getting older, hes witnessing by the time of 15 years the administration coming to power and when he returns from the army in 1945, we suddenly are talking about mixed economies, not free markets. Went what she thought was very symbolism by another name. We had the oppressive times that we saw with the parade of the gis coming home after world war ii. Eastern europe, they were. We had that form of tyranny but we had the benign kind. The kind that gets elected in a free democracy but then suddenly feels it has to have more of the economy and they were teaching this year. Very few reebok economists were around. All the textbooks talked about how Successful Society have a successful welfare state. He had issue with that. Notthat they should teach it. More importantly though, in relation, he did not feel they should teach one form of religion, but he didnt feel that christianity or judeochristian tradition was superior to the other forms. Why . Because it was an informed sounding nation, and informed document of how we created our judeochristian Christian Society and tradition teaches that we are all made in gods image. And therefore the source of all freedom. All freedom, we are all born equal in the eyes of each other, in the eyes of the state. In the eyes of god. And thats what he believed. He said its great to have other religions, its great to learn about other religions but dont tell us that some of the traditions of the Samoa Islands that Margaret Mead were writing about, other traditions that talk about untouchables and god knows what is the same as ours. We should teach that there is a difference. That there is not a moral equivalent. Obviously not in into a great deal of troublethats the name of the book , because theres a fighting song now, the yale anthem and the last line is for god, man and yale. Meaning that secular humanism is pushing man, this is in the Center Teaching god at yale, that was a little bit of a play on words. Good afternoon, im barbie chadwick, your host for the southern festival of books with Patricia Scott and emily wilson. Before i introduce them i have a few housekeeping items. The first, please silence your cell phones if you havent hdone so already. Since this session is being taped, could you please use the microphone i h