You are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Media to stay uptodate with our events as they come up. Today were going to talk about economics. Dont worry, i wont give you a lecture. I will leave you in the hands of our guest author. In his new book americana, he takes us through a 400 year long journey through American History of capitalism highlighting some of our industrys most important inventions. From the arrival of the mayflower, the inner workings of the mafia and silicon valley, he presents an exhilarating and eyeopening perspective of an American History of capitalism that im sure hes very excited to share with you all today. He is a media entrepreneur in digital media, popculture, and more. He arrived in the u. S. At the age of eight. He has lived in the south, the rust belt Southern California and the pacific northwest. His book is availableforsale in the bookstore and he will be appear after words for a book signing. Please welcome him. [applause] thank you everyone for having me. This is only my second ever book event. Im very glad that you took a big chance on coming out and hopefully, based on how this goes i will get to do other events or never again. I hope you are a good audience. As rachel pointed out, i came to this country at the age of eight. Mother had a phd in physics and she had gotten a roll at the Memorial Institute in buffalo new york. She was going to make this sum of 14000 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 came back and when i was eight years old i was sent off to live with my aunt when i arrived in america and i attended school in Richmond Virginia and then buffalo new york and then on to california in the northwest , and my own journey in america, in many ways mirrored that of the american journey. I didnt quite understand how much it means it until i was fortunate enough to take a freshman history class from the acclaimed historian at the university of washington. It was no stanford. In his class, the final essay was to weave and connect your familys history into the context of the american narrative and since i was taking this class in 1995 and i had been here for a total of ten years from 84 to 95, i didnt quite have a device through which i could weave a narrative because we had such a short amount of time here. Major event in American History that i couldnt connect her familys history so i had to ask what can we do to allow me too fully express or count myself and we had stumbled upon this device of economic themes. So the rust belt buffalo new york, my familys westward migration, my mother ended up with a position in seattle, seattle itself was booming with technology, microsoft was a very large company, still is now certainly at that time it had a varies gorging gross rate. Reconnecting that into this essay gave me a perspective on American History that i didnt have before and i got this directly from a very notable historian and it served me well. Going forward, the goldrush of the internet was with hugely alluring thing in seattle and San Francisco and i was left enough to participate in it at least doesnt really employee and then a founder of a venture backed startup in news aggregation so it colored my perspective that these next big things allow you to transform societies very rapidly. Just like to hammer everything looks like a mail to me these economic questions have always driven me too symbol everything i know about American History and put it into this framework. About ten years after that i started thinking about every biography i would read, every history i would read would somewhat of a these actions which i think are so central to the American Experience and in fact, if you think about mexican in immigrants that come to this country, many of them undocumented, are leaving the privileges and rights in mexico to come to this country to live as noncitizens so woulwhy would someone come here to live as noncitizens. Obviously thats not of vote for democracy after leaving privileges in mexico behind. You can look at it and say it might be the allure of some form of american capitalism some allure or perspective that they might have some access to prosperity and prosperity is a relative thing. Some of you might have a new change of clothes, a fresh tshirt and being able to buy whatever clothes you want is prosperity, others might think access to airconditioning or new television, someone else might be denied the ability to buy a car which is honestly a big luxury item as it certainly 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 this prosperity is the primary allure for millions and millions of immigrants who have come here. Tracing back from that, i wanted to look at if the prosperity was the motivation for my own family and for other immigrants that come here and if indeed i can make that case, how did of our that go back. I was late for the irish and the italians and lithuanians, germans, then i try to trace it back all the way to the mayflower and the mayflower gave rise to a question that to some degree really struck me. I wondered how was it in 1620 religious sufferers would be able to afford a giant ship. If i were to tell you that a hundred people in Central America that wanted to come to this country chartered a 737, you would think how could that possibly happen. Thats a strange set of circumstances. So then you start asking questions about how the mayflower was financed and you start going through a great primary document, William Bradford and in it, much of the document, the financing of the mayflower, how they sold shares and how the pilgrims themselves had shares and there was a sevenyear term and how there were provisions in their when the pilgrims would spend four days on the collective venture, two days themselves, one day for god and how those terms changed to a collective venture in one day for god and how that was a Sticking Point when they were about to embark on this voyage. So, you started looking at economic motivations and you start questioning how that financing happened and what happened at the end of that transaction. Its a 25 years for that transaction to unwind itself and from there i started assembling a series of next big thing. When did steele have a very big impact, what happened with oil, what happened with automobiles, with food, with the meatpackers in chicago, and all these desperate different events and biographies and friends and i started putting it into a mosaic and ultimately it came together where i thought the 400 years of american capitalism you can start using this backdrop of next big thing we can have Something Like the internet browser leading ultimately to the smart phone, obviously would have a smart phone if people want used with internet browser because that was a big thing at fault, smart phones allowed you to access the internet browser. The internet browser created great demand for the computer because even in the 1980s the computer wasnt in many of the households. That really took off with the internet. These next big things compound , and that the connective tissue that i try to identify the book, and many times these connective tissues arent separate threats altogether but theyre deeply interwoven with politics. I just wanted to have a couple of examples today of deeper threads will several next big things are so connected that you might not not think of them as connected. One of them is the goldrush. The goldrush starts, to some degree its happening during the tail end of the mexicanamerican war in 1848 in the final days of mexico owning that territory, days before its official surrender, someone discovers a sawmill worker in a river in california and discovers that they are our gold flakes on the grounds so this is obviously a serendipitous discovery. Its the great lucky find that at the tail end, the end of destiny where the United States comes into possession of california almost at that exact time as if its providential, he finds gold. Almost instantaneously, the californians, the rush happened and then the californians immediately are clamoring for statehood. Because california is in possession of vast wealth, it accelerates that process. By 1850 they want to present themselves and become the 31st into the union. At this time there are 15 slave states and 15 free states. Its the one marker of legislative balance that the southerners are still able to hold onto in terms of representatives, the free states have vastly more representatives in the house. To introduce the 31st date would change that balance and change that equation very dramatically. You have the compromise of 1850 which is triggered by california wanting admission and the slave act which is the enforcement of the slave was from the constitution, and that sets off the idea between the fugitive slave act that it has to enforce this constitutional provision that if a slave ventures into a state in the north that they can summon local magistrates to return that slave back to the south. That is something that Harriet Beecher finds so odious that she starts writing Uncle Toms Cabin and it captures the imagination of a lot of sentiment and is able to use a fictional story to humanize the slave experience. And throughout the 1850s, that starts to become a major dividing point when you start seeing that slave prices actually went up. Theres quite a bubble and slave prices were at auctions you would have what they call a prime field hand, someone in their 20s, have no history of running away because thats the representation you have to make if slaves whatever runaway so you see the average price of slaves throughout, between 700. 800 on the whole. You have the imputed value of 3 billion to 4 billion for all of the slaves in america. And so, to some degree in my book i know that this is an irrational valuation because a lot of credit was there. You could collateralize the slave because it was based on evaluation of slaves that was decoupled from the price of cotton which many historians go into. Some of the events that precipitated on the part of the south, those are the type of connections that i try to weed and throughout the book where its not just a celebration of capitalism were great biographies, but it sympathizes the Democratic Forces that clash with markets many times throughout American History. And so that you will find later on, a strong rise of the candidacy and against the backdrop of business interest in this country being very pro terrorist. At that time he didnt have the income tax. Because he didnt have the income tax, the federal government was financed by either the tariff or liquor and tobacco taxes. Thats both fermented and distilled spirits. Because of that reliance on the tariff, business interest often had a friend in the federal government where they could protect industries and when they protect an industry you instituted tariff. The higher the tariff, the more money the federal government is able to collect. At the same time, the industry in the u. S. That would find overseas competitors in the u. S. To take market share is perfected. This was Andrew Carnegie in his autobiography who talks about how the steel tariffs were instrumental for developing the Steel Industry in the u. S. Until the income tax was made constitutional by the 15th amendment, you have this reliance on tariffs where businesses, even if the federal government didnt need it, were very pro terrorist. Once the income tax was instituted, thats when you could have prohibition because the federal government was no longer relying upon income taxes or reliant upon taxes on alcohol in both distilled in fermented spirits, and it wasnt reliance on the tariff as well. You start seeing these connections and thats how the story came together throughout. The next big thing from that point starts tracing to the automobiles and goes through suburbia and roads and how they gave way to fast food and an anecdotal example and biographies, but the main theme of the story is how democracy clashes with the market and how american capitalism is the synthesis of social, cultural, economic and Democratic Forces. I wanted to open it up to questions. I hope you have some good ones. How does the mafia tie in . Thats during prohibition. This is something, 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 unintended consequences with policymakers but some of those were that you had, right after prohibition, you had a brandnew business because alcohol, especially with beer, it was the fifth largest business in the United States. So you have these great big portions in alcohol and right when it became legal you had a brandnew opportunity for all kinds of lawless men to be able to take advantage of a big market. It had other unintended consequences as well. You had something called the grape grower in Northern California where you have people wine had an exception to it and you could buy syrup and allow it to turn into wine in the home. You have lots of different Economic Opportunities and i gave rise to organized crime. So after that, how do you rate capitalism . Do you go into the types of capitalism that the americans experimented with . In terms of reading capitalism, its like reading democracy. How would you rate Something Like democracy. Thats one of the things that i discussed on npr earlier today which is that it doesnt have a moral quality or in moral quality. Its a neutral construct. If you want to sell your kidney, you would be able too. Theres nothing in capitalism that intrinsically says no or says yes or encourages it or discourages it. Its up to the society to apply those values and thats always been the case throughout so just like when youre asking me how you rate capitalism, how would you rate democracy. For 80 years slavery was tolerated and another hundred years segregation was tolerated. I think that the neutral philosophy that you can have whatever value you want and its up to your society to shape it. [inaudible] i do. Its a constant evolution predicates constant evolution, one of the examples i use is the rise of schools, the rise of public schools. If you go in to a staunch Republican Community in texas or a deep red state and you were to ask them what is the great thing about your community or your society, many times you will hear that the things they love most that they will break the most about is there great public schools. Here it is a social institution that they would take great pride in, its one of the first things that makes your community a community. They wouldnt say we have great fences and our neighbors cant get in. Thats one of those things that people dont necessarily identify as capitalism and democracy colliding, but it certainly is. The person that argued for Public Education and universal education all the way back in 1848 was karl marx in the manifesto and he talked about how he produces a tenpoint plan for developed economies or developing economies at that time to become more fair, and one of the things he argues for is the abolition of child labor and the institution of universal education and certainly we have that. He also argued for progressive income taxes. Even american capitalism is a hybrid. Its not an extreme ideology, and what i try to do is i try to separate the ideological argument from it all together and really think about it as an operating system rather than an ideology. Just out of curiosity, what was the final return on investment for mayflower investors. They lost money. Took 25 years for the debt to finally be repaid. It was equity first because our shareholders. After a few years they realized that they wanted to convert, at the end of the sevenyear term they need to do something with equity because at that time you had have a distribution of all the assets, they dont want to do that so the equity got converted into a Debt Transaction that you see very often and other areas like that. For a long time, that that can be repaid and ultimately, what had happened was this group of men in plymouth, they call themselves the undertakers, and the undertakers assume the debt from Plymouth Colony in exchange for all of the for trading rights. So this group of nine men absorbs and finally these nine men negotiated with their investors that still manage to hold on. It took 25 years. By this time, england also was in the throes of civil war and from 1620 1645 was not an easy time in england. A lot of these men needed their money back into the make it and view descendents had held on to the original investment. Given the current Political Climate and the administration, where do you think capitalism will evolve from where it is now. Thats an interesting question productively the fact that these rust belt states like michigan, wisconsin, ohio ended up being the swing states where you would not have predicted that they were going to go to trump or even become red, especially michigan, i can honestly tell you theres something in the air, and i especially think that the argument for protectionism, that something you wouldnt have expected to see in republican dogma, but freetrade is very much a big question as to what the republican platform has to do with freetrade because its not clearcut at all but the swing states now are on board with unlimited free trade. I think thats going to have substantial implications for 2020 as well. Any more questions. Okay. Thank you so much. [applause] book tv is on twitter and facebook. We want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com book tv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook. Com book tv. So just stop for a moment. Today we are 16 or 17 years on from 911 in 2001 and you can imagine how much 911 still infuses our daily behavior politically, socially, creatively so that is whats happening and 66, 67 when these young guys are enlisting. Theyre really being influenced by world war ii. Of course, the war in vietnam was fought very differently. Its asymmetric. The enemy is everywhere, the pressure is constant. It is tough. Well talk about that a little bit more the program, but here is one of those moments of tough duty. Stan is walking in a great drizzle and its wrapped mummy style in shower curtains. Theyve torn them down from the shower stalls at the nearby schoolhouse. The curtains are their only protection from the cold rain. Their weapons poked through a part of the curtains and they make a strange sight. Stan sees a little girl standing in the middle of the road up ahead, watching the groups advance. She looked scared, filthy, and very alone. As he gets closer, he sees she is very young and streaked with tears. He takes off his shower curtain and offers it to her. She doesnt move so he will wraps it around her but its too long in bunches round her bare feet. He takes his knife and hacked away at the extra length to shorten it. She doesnt say anything. She does not ask for anything nor does she stand back and shy away. She stands there looking at him mute, impassive, courageous. He feels the need to do something for her but he simply stares at her and is confused and sleep father and he looks at her and he has one can only describe as an epiphany, and awakening as if his eyes snap open after a long nap. He can see the whole lousy war through her eyes, the shooting, the killing, images go back and forth over her face and he watches them pass before them, a movie of who he is, who he was and who hes becoming, and animal, an and a killer. A young man filled with hatred as president next and predicted all young men would become in war. He has a desire to make the girl safe. He doesnt know how. He wants to give her something, clean clothes, food, a future but he has nothing to give her except his attention and then he remembers he has a can of peaches. He pulls out the fruit and offers it to her. The can is large. Its okay he told her, go away now. He makes a shoeing gesture with his hand. He would like someone to come and take care of her. He would like to come back to vietnam is another kind of person and be able to offer her peace and attention and safety is a slight between the two of them is punctuated by the russell of the shower curtain wrapped around her shoulders. He stares at the pictures and back at him as if asking what she should do with the spread than he realizes he has been left behind by the rest of the troll. He knows they are in a no mans land where they could run into any number of enemy and he feels exposed. Theyre calling out to him, come on man, we gotta get out of here. We gotta go. He turns to the girl, touches her gently on the head and says goodbye and runs to catch up. He rounds the corner and sees the other guys up ahead. A few seconds after that he hears the gunshot behind him. He thanks not the girl. He wields around and runs and turns the corner and there she is. A tiny clump no bigger than a a pile of raids in the street. He sees four soldiers fleeing among the building. He fires at them but misses and curses himself. How could he mess when he had killed so many men before. Moreh back in time. Shes dead because she accepted. The irony is if he had no compassion, if he ignored her, she would still be alive and would pull the trigger himself. Stand looks up at the sky more animal than human. Welcome, everybody. If you could make your way to the seat they are ready to begin