Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Deirdre McCloskey 20240713

The rhetoric of economics, and why liberalism works host Deirdre Mccloskey gun in your moscome in your most re, why liberalism works, you write that the west side of chicago should be a heigh high first commercial at diggity. Guest because then people would have jobs other than dope sellers and can because once it was before the highly segregated history of chicago extended to the west side there were lots of factories and jobs, and now because of regulations of various, its not. Its just a free zone. There are some by the sheer act of will kept th take to the strn good condition. Host use a regulations. Give an example. Guest business in chicago in most places in the united hates its worse than brazil or egypt. It takes months. Its hard to do. Youve got to get permits and a business license to braid hair, a famous case. To earn a living breathing hair you need a state license. Why should people have to jump rough these hoops to start a business . In the 50s and africanamerican and urban communities, southside of chicago there were lots of successful businesses and then increasing regulation, some of it very wellmeaning, people wanting to help poor people think got in chicago we dont have rent control and that is one thing that really hurts poor people, but we had enough the west side of chicago is kind of sad and could be easily fixed a. If you made it an enterprise zone where you dont have to be heavily taxed or regulated, ladnt the Trump Administration create enterprise zones with legislation . Guest i dont think so, but maybe they did. I try not to look to clos too ct the Trump Administration. Because i dont approve mr. Trump at all and i think on the one hand hes got some people deregulating which is done then the federal government has 1 million separate regulations. 1 million. Thats kind of crazy and then there is this madness about threign trade named peter. Im ashamed i have a phd in economics and im going to organize a group of us to turn in protest. Host in 2016 in your book bourgeois equality that they do good even by doing while. Guest when he does well. Its plausiblyd calculated and f you take the 400 million he got in one way or another fromr his father and invested it and could randomly chosen stock portfolio, his networks would be higher because he did Trump University and casino and they all failed. This is something bloomberg pointed out in the campaign in 2016. Bloomberg was poor when he started it became rich by doing well and doing good. Thats the way it is if you are in business and anything else you are choosing well you may profit. The only way to profit a prophef people like yourself they dont like trump steaks or they find that a University Degree is fraudulent. Host isnt it about taking risk . Guest if you make a mistake then you get hit with it. Trump makes mistakes all the time in business. By the miracle of the college as a tv performer though he is good. Like you, he should have stayed. Host how do you define your economic philosophy . Philosophy . Guest i am a liberal in the root sense of the word. It comes from the latin word that means a threeperson, and this is very much in the words of contrasted with the slaves. Everyone has the right to say no, thats all, the right to say no to. If you are a woman you dont have to agree to be raped, so to speak and if you are an employ employee, whereas im reading a wonderful book by which is a novel about the soviet union people couldnt say no. They were being tossed around by someone, not voluntarily. We did what our bosses say we do that we could always walk and that is fundamental to a free the only way to talk of true liberalism is that it is the theory of an addle adult societn economy. Even the other social democracy. It doesnt mean we shouldnt help people. I call myself a christian liberal. Host back to why liberalism works. I understand the progressive point of view and its attraction as one peruses the pages of the nation or Noam Chomskys latest it feels like one is doing good. Guest and it wasnt that great. I debated last summer i was at a festival in england. I think people who feel they want to do something for the poor should do something for the poor instead of just feeling good about reading the New York Times and thinking yes i am a good person. I care about p the poor. For example, they should help the homeless i have in a small way by having them. I had some of me for four and a half years in my house. But the thing is to let the poor people free to travel. You told me before you started that you have 2 acres. That is because in your town you cant build a house. People that are reading the nation magazine. Host i am out of the country, no rules. We all reject every day in our lives. Its not pushing people around. Look, there are some people that are much, much better at the administration then i am and in a free labor market of course a person can leave if they dont like your management techniques or management style but in any case there was a bus driver this morning at the shuttle into ohare and i said to him your life would be better if you treated your customers with respect. Ive been on buses in chicago where the bus driver ise wonderful and he welcomes people onto his bus and hes proud to get there on time. We ought to live the way our mom told us to behave. Host are useful teaching at the university of chicago where the university of illinois chicago . Guest ive been in the state of retirement i highly recommend it to you all. I retired in order toe. Work moe and finished my trilogy on the economic and social history of the last few centuries and finished this book that came out in the fall on why liberalism works and i have a new book coming out from chicago which is kind of a pop version called leave me alone and i will make you rich. Host what is the definition of bruzual debate co bourgeois . Guest it is a french word that means the leaders of the town and manufacturers. It was a common term for that before the middleclass became common before the basic idea was there were priests, the ability and then everyone else. And its only in the last couple of centuries we started to make variousions among the people. My point is to argue against my friends on both the left and the right who are contemptuous of people like my grandfather, he wasnt contemptuous, he was an Electrical Contractor and that is an honorable thingng to do. With the wiring of airports and being paid for it, what is odd about it theres a sort of march in this tale of the soviet union because anyone that makes money [inaudible] what exactly is the problem he here. Host to go to the virtues however, the christian gospel attack while surprisingly harshly. It isnt surprising therefore and invented the idea of socialists. Guest in fact, socialism is a secularized version of christianity in many ways. Its very similar. The fervor of ideology among the soviet communists in china when they were sent to the prison camp they thought it was okay because i feel the party knows if the priest told the time bad and its a sort of protestant element to that as well, and it is a the most successful and how it spreads the world with antiwhile thinking. The theologian is part of the new testament and there is a socialist elements to it. Early christianity was this kind of the quality of consumption and work that is very sensible but it doesnt make sense in the rirger society. It never has. Host do you identify as a longtime agnostic and now you are a christian liberal. Liberal small though. Would have been . Guest i changed gender and your audience might want to know in 1995. I was once donald. In the years after that, i felt there was something more i needed to look into that i went to the catholics and for the opposite, the unitarian. Then i found episcopalians in some because we couldnt go on calling it and go after the American Revolution and it was just it suited me very well. In fact, right from the beginning and even henry the eighth, the church of england viewed itself as a middle road between roman catholicism and puritan. Host what is it about it that suits you, is that the customs . Guest lets talk aboutd, that, but we are called in the United States the chosen because the c episcopalian because it isnt the frozen chosen it is more in episcopalian is an you dont need to believe everythi everything. But you do theem ceremonies. Host my particular congregation i had one in iowa city and once a year. Its a very flexible framework because its the journey you dont have too believe in the virgin birth to the age practicing christian. Its the practice matters. That is true of economic performance. Its not to be an Electrical Contractor, you just do your job and you might learn from it after a while. As i get older, i keep trying to unify my thinking to see what crossfertilization. I have a paper im working on right now about theological free while, which as you know is a deep puzzling concept of the free markets and i think they are connected. They are not opposed as so many modern american might think. You dont have to be a socialist to be a christian. Host Deirdre Mccloskey, lets go back to your bourgeois virtues. I agree with my favorite marxist economist, nancy fulbright, that education should be financed from the center. Maternity care and early child care should be expanded and cestate financed and taxes shoud be steeped and eliminated and military expenditures should be cut to a tiny fraction of the present of old an gold and a mot minimum income should be given to every american that the tax laws should encourage both men and women combined paid work with familyor community work. The followers of adam smith are iegalitarian. Is there a bug in there somewhere . Guest nancy was an old friend, a professor at the university of massachusetts and should get the nobel prize but wont. She was annoyed that i called her a marxist. She is on the left and im not. I was once and was jumped by a socialist. I dreamt i saw joe last night but as i said, im a christian liberal which means i acknowledge. We cant just take a country club view. I agree, i may not quite agree with the scale she wants to do them on but we should help people, pregnant women and so forth without within open hand would help and its consistent with what we call capitalism. We buy a cup of coffee the sheer act of buying a cup of coffee is advantageous but furthermore you notice if you make a habit of going to the coffee shop eventually become friends. Commerce creates friendship. Taken together, they are not hurting each other or forcing each other to do things. They are allowed to say no and out of that comes with the 18th century cold sweet commerce. Its necessary for most activities of the state. Youve got to pay your taxes and if you dont, im going to put you in jail. That kind of threat from the irs and having a long legal dispute as so many of us do. I dont like coercion. I never have. Host you say that you dont like the word capitalist or the philosophy. Host the word capitalist was used and modified to mean not just an investor say around 18 hundreds to this whole group of people and then became ae commercial society. Its a terrible word academically and intellectually scientifically its convinced economists, conservative left or whatever and marxist and everyone else at capital accumulation is the spring of our commercial economy. Its not. Its necessary for the investment you need sunlight and so on, but the motive comes from the spring and in modern life for old wife, too that its been enormously expanded in importance is innovation. Speed. Capital was motivational and did things. If i was speaking brazil a couple days ago to bankers and i said to them, maybe what they dont like, what you do is very good, you choose among the careers but you are not the career. You say okay, this is a good idea, ill make a loan to that, its appropriate, important and necessary, but its not the idea. Thats why people into liberalism first framed poor men then slowly women, immigrants. Catholics,lo gay people, whatev, remarkable transgender people. All that works to encourage bring courage to people to be creative. It had ancr amazing effect, in real terms, the realbi mobilityo buy stuff has increased by 3000 . Not 100 , 200 , 3000 and thats from the release of human creativity and free societies. Doctor, were having a very general sense of debate about capitalism versus socialism in thisen country. We are. This is not the first time wey. Had that. To put it mildly its been going on since the middle of the 19th century. The kid to say letski try socialism and bernie, we love you bernie, i dont hate bernie, who could hate him, hes a very charming person, he was a freshman at the university of chicago i was a freshman at Howard College in 1960, we do not know each other at the time, but the time we had more or less the same opinion about capitalism, i prefer to call in over his him, much more accurate word but anyway, we both wanted to overthrow capitalism. He was more systematic than i was, i read half off the manifesto and i reckon that was enough, not trite under quite true i read a good deal. And lenin who was a hero at the time when i was 16, he is great. We had the same opinion then and i learned stuff and he did not. He had the same opinion he had in 1960, people say hes consistent. Consistently wrong. We have try socialism, as i said socialism, appropriately and efficiently works in a family. It works among small groups of friends and should. I bought a pizza to share with five of my friends and i say i paid for the pizza, i will eat it all. That is not what friends do. But in a big society, you know, 330 million people, its making everything into a family, does not work. That doess not mean you have to go to charity and want to help each other and it does not mean your tooth and claw, and capitalism with blood running fromom its mouth, thats not how capitalist are which i established my first book, and its not what made thehe economy rich which is what i established in the second volume. And its not the future impact of ournd society. Which i argued in the third book. Once a month we like to invite an author onto book tv and talk to him or her about his or her body of work, this month itswe economic scholar and retired professor Deirdre Mccloskey. Here is just a sample of the 23, 24 books that she has written beginning with the rhetoric of economics in 1998, crossing the transgender memoir in 1999. How to be human, the bourgeois virtues, bourgeois dignity, and bourgeois equality came out 26, 2010, and 2016. The third edition came out last omyear as did her most recent, why liberalism works and we quoted a little bit from that but were going to put the phone lines out on the screens if youd like to participate in the conversation, 202 7488200, those of you on the east and central time zones 202 7488201 and for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can also send a text message if you cannot get through in the ten phone lines, include your first name and city, 202 7488003. That is the number two text into. We will also scroll through the social media site because you can make a comment on facebook or twitter or by email as well. And we will get to those very quickly, first of all what is this people paper im holding appear. Im an engineer at heart, i like to know magnitudes which i think is the appropriate attitude for economics. When the issue is quantitative, i have a a rough idea or get a rough idea of what the magnitude e in you very strangely asked me how many words id written. So i made an estimate and it turned out to be 3 million. You are doing about tenth to the ninth power. I was doing that because i cannot multiply very well. This is a quote from you in 2016 in the chronicle of higher education, i amgh a stutter as o such stutters are often good writers. Gorgeous, mom, stutters avoid words that they think were they know will block on and are good at finding another specialty. A terribly important example of this in our current policy is joe biden. I only learned about a month ago about the olympic which revealed that hes a lot like me a lifetime stutter. And i think people ought to know this because its somewhat a strange way of talking. In many of his early political campaigns he would misstate things, he would say things in a funny way and thats because he is staggering. He is avoiding the expression and doing another. In the advantage im claiming there is that people who stutter get very good at thinking of parallel words, not just elegant variation as its called but it is seen what the differences between words. And seeing if you can use one word. I was speaking towo a friend in brazil a couple of days ago and i was trying to teacher the difference in english between say and tell. And i said go to sleep, i am telling you to go to sleep and we discovered the word tell has an authority to it. She said real lightly, its the mommy word. I am telling you go to bed now, i cannot stand it anymore. You dont say, i say go to bed. Its that kind of thinking that goes on in the mind of a stutter all the time. As i get older, im in a profession warm supposed to talk all the time, as a teacher. In the month after i decided to change gender, for about two months my stutter vanished. I did not even notice it, they did not know what i was going to do this, i told my family and very few others and they said i have not heard you stutter for two months, what is going on. And i said its because i realized 2 00 a. M. November 2, 1995 on a bridge in cedar rapids, what happened . It was not quite in cedar rapids, it was a couple months earlier i had what i call an epiphany. I was driving home from chicago to iowa city where i lived in a hit me. That i could change gender and should. Its kinda strange, most of your decisions in life, at four in the morning you might have a doubt. I had a tenure at the famous economic in 1980 and i walked away from her. And i went to iowa, go hawks by the way. And i have doubts about that. I think in the hole it worked out well for me. What purpose and you choose, you might doubt, i have not had a moment of doubt in the most foldable times of day, when you wake up at four in the morning, i am deirdre, im queer and im here, get used to it. On page 128 of crossing, donald never left his the way some men do, deirdre did not care when it lasted in australia she said goodbye to it she did not care anytime after it. I have a very dear friend, another academic who said, deirdre, i would hide anywhere in the world to avoid the operation, something that you are welcoming. So its a striking difference. I was not penniman child, feminine boy, i was the captain of my football team, american football, not a very good team but anyway i was the captain and i was a macho professor in seminars, i learned that at the university of chicago a little bit earlier how to be tough and seminars. Not to hurt people, i did not want to hurt people but i wanted to get to the truth. Inbu a way i learned it from my mother whos a good arguer. I dont mean mean spirited but she will be persistent, wait a second youve done that right. Later from our viewers, chris, connecticut, you are on with Deirdre Mccloskey. Hi professor, how are you today,. Im kind of exhausted i just came from brazil. Welcome, welcome back. I was wondering, there used to be a lot of confusion of a well stir fate in a social state, can youu elaborate more on what you see a welfare state and a socialist state. Chris what is your definition of each . Thats a good o question, i m not too sure anymore. Ive had a lot of conversations with friends and neighbors about it and we cant seem to come to a conclusion except to say a lot of European Countries would be considered more of a welfare state and when you look at venezuela or the Old Soviet Union as a socialist state. Thank you, sir. I think thats a good distinction. There isis an extreme version of not allowing people to say no which is the socialist state. And just reading a wonderful novel, a soviet novelist named grossman called forever flowing which is a chilling account of the numerous ways in which soviet were being bossed around by other soviet citizens. But look, you can view liberalism as the very best that no one should be a slave, no one should be a slave, not a wife to husband or a slave to a master, or a citizen to the state. And youre still a slave if your 20 slave. Suppose you are a slave and im the real slave not just metaphorical but a real slave, if you did not do it youre going to get beaten on mondays, every monday. You are still a slave. I think theres a role of the government but i think many of the Welfare Program that we have are bad for poor people and i explained earlier, in that case the Welfare Programs for the middle class people who run the Welfare Programs more than direct help to the poor. My idea of a good Welfare Program would be to give people income. Not by coercing private enterprise to pay for, but by taxing you and me to give money to the poor. Give p money. I think that would be satisfactory and the problem with the welfare state is that it keeps verging towards her forcincore horsing people. Although not so much more that we should get terribly excited about it, sweden is not a social estate at all. Most places are determined by supply and demand. Yes as a scale but being a slave on monday is not being free. From recent magazine in 2018, you wrote, slavery was of course appalling, a plane theft of labor, the war to end it was to solve together but prosperity did not depend on slavery. The u. S. And the uk and the rest wouldve become just as rich without the 250 years of on toil. I was quoting the lincolns words of second inaugural which is a couple of months before the war actually ended the civil war. I know there is a passion in the 1619 movement to carry out the words or to affirm the words of the second inaugural were lincoln said the wealth of the United States depended on slaves. And thats economic nonsense. It is just not true, it is not good history, its not good economics. And you can see this in all kinds of ways, for example, a country and a wellis and totten, mainly south africa, if a tarp ride was such a great thing for south africans, why do White South Africans have indeed a slightlyly lower income than whe new zealanders or white australians, i thought it was hurting people was a good idea according to them for the whites. Not so, i know its going to make peoples head explode but its not true that slavery was the basis of american. Dog in yorba linda, california. Hi, i have several of deidres books. By more, buy more. Okay. [laughter] i was wondering if she has any thoughts on modern trends or if she does not, the value of academic debate to education. I think it is central. You know, you and i know that the word rhetoric does not mean just baloney, it means the art in the study of argument of persuasion of sweet talk as i call it. In many academic fields do not realize they are engaged in persuading each other, the Nuclear Physicist persuades the readers to believe a new theory. Im quite surprised and lost school they dont quite understand that their participating in the ancient rhetorical tradition of thenc west. They are parallel additions in east asia and west asia or indeed all Human Society and for speaking species. In persuasion, argument is what we do. One can get very radical about it and to some degree i have, i wrote a book, i wrote three books on the rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s. And their theme was, theres no such thing as a settled method of science, mechanical method of science, its always a matter os persuading people. Honestly. Not cheating. Honestly. John calling in from new york city, go ahead john. Hi john. Hi, thank you for taking my hacall. It seems we have an election that can be divided between the socialistsa sanders in the capitalist trump, what do you think is happening in china. Can you have a liberal economy with an authoritative government . Well, essentially not. The china model that you are mentioning does not make any sense. The parts of the chinese economy that have made chinese better off instead of earning one or 2 a day is about 30 a day which is a tremendous improvement which is still below 130 a day that on average that americans earn. And make. The perks that worked in did this were the liberal perks. The perks were the Chinese Government finally in 1978 started acting moderately and sensibly in the economy and stopped the central planning, stop the fiveyear plan and stop interfering in the economy all the time. But parts of it so that work in china are the state owned enterprises. One of the mistakes that president xi jinping is making which views incarcerate in large number of leaders, hes having the state owneds enterprises by up private companies because he wants to move back and this is a terrible mistake and will hurt the chinese. There is no chinese model, when you think of those ideas. Think of the indian model rather, india in 1991 on. It started to move away from socialism and started going as 6 to 7 per capita per year by essentially leaving peopleal alone. Im the prospect of Bernie Sanders against donald trump. I quote the former republican consultant who you see on msnbc a lot who says dont put up Bernie Sanders because then the states, a sociopath meets a socialist, six times a week implies on sunday. Now that is the Democratic Party wants trump to have a second term, they will nominate bernie is a very charming man or elizabeth warren. A text message from alex in new jersey. Do except that social security, medicare and medicaid are viewed as socialist programs, do you support them . If yes, do you support medicare for all and why . Yes they are socialist programs. There one of the ten, 15, 20 socialism type programs. Whenever i speak to an old person in Young Audiences and the United States to always think them for medicare. Thats a lot of hip replacements. Example that people often forget is the va hospitals. That is really socialism. Because its not only the state is taxing to pay for the veterans to go to hospitals, it is providing the hospital. The same way education is socialized. Elementary education,ca high schools and some colleges. I think extending those is a poor idea. Look, why is medical care in the United States so fouled up. We pay, youve heard this over and over again, twice as much of the share of National Income of any country in the world in healthcare. Why . Because we have piles of monopolies on top of eachie oth. One example, we are not allowed as americans to buy our drugs in canada. Why is that . Because the state the government prevents us from doing it, why do they do that . Because the Drug Companies have purchasedd the state have purchased the government. And they want to be able to charge 3 10 times more to us in the United States as our friend in canada. This is crazy. This is crazy. With the stroke of the pen congress could cut, radically cut the cost of drugs in the United States, but does not do it. This is true with many of the monopolies, in order to get a new hospital in your community, wants to start a new hospital, youu get together, you have to get permission of the existing hospital. George will has written eloquently on this, you have to get a certificate. This is stupid. So my view, my real liberal vi view, instead of piling subsidies to old people like me, each other, and extending them to everyone were able to pay the monopoly pot enterprises, cut the monopoly. There is no part of the medical system that is not a monopoly. , my eyes are feeling, i need very strong glasses in order to read,is i cannot go to an optometrist and say to him, give me glasses but the skill i need is a five, the highest you can get at the drugstore magnifiers is 3. 5, but i want to five. He says have you got a prescription, you have to get your optimal adjust to prescribe it and she takes a cut, this is ridiculous. Santa rosa california, you are on with Deirdre Mccloskey. Thank you for having me on, this is my first exposure to doctor mccloskey. Thank you for being real. Thank you. I have heard you describe yourself as a christian liberal, how is that different from libertarianism, you distinguish herself differently excuse me im a little nervous, but how would you compare yourself from ron paul style of libertariani libertarianism. I call myself libertarian in the passed, i voted for one every chance i got, now i vote straight libertarian ticket although i think this time if the dems put up say joe biden, even in chicago where is pointless i will vote for him symbolically. But there is most between us. Ron paul has some strange opinions about race which i wish he would not have had but he was somewhat obsessed with the central bank but we agree that there should be not 1 million regulations such as the federal government now has, a lot fewer. And a free press and they could protect us from the danger of being poisoned in a restaurant much better than regulation can. But i want to turn my many libertarian friends toward what i should call abraham liberalism because its true of jews and muslims, to that were instructed to help the poor. It is one of the five duties of a muslim to give to charity. Very few five things you should do as a muslim. And its certainly true in judaism. But a matter fact its also true in and do his him, buddhism in any sensible way of looking at the world whether or not it has anything to do with god. I want to change the image of libertarianism. I like to drop the word and have us claim back u the word because what we call liberals in the United States are social democrats and i was once one of these people. They seize the word in about a hundred years in the United States being a liberalni meant being asocial to democrats, oddly enough i mentioned, i came back from brazil and being a liberal means being a aer conservative. Conservative about how the church and state should be related in all kinds of conservative things in mexico and brazil are called liberal. So there is something wrong with the western hemisphere, there is something in the water that is making people think this perfectly good word and turn it on its head. Scott scott is gone he disappeared as i was talking. I have noisy if hes there or not, something happen with the phone. I apologize scott if you were there. Fran in toledo ohio. Hi fran. Hello, i read your wonderful book crossing. In your childhood i always wanted to be a woman, i sound like a woman, i am a man and i do not believe i was born this way, i see a clear connection between how i was raised in the fact that i always wanted to be a girl. Do you believe its biological, psychological, both or neither, what is causing the. Fran, have you transitioned at all . I have not transitioned. I am terrified of any kind of surgery. I see a clear connection all he knew as a child, i hated being a male. And i hated it. I wanted to be a girl and i would feel a strong desire to imitate the girls. I understand fran, that when i was a boy i was a boy. I transitioned when i was 53. So i urge you to try it, try it out. Because it has been amazing change in the attitude of people in the last 15 years or so. Oprah did programs every year on transgender issues. I was on her show once. And transamerica, the wonderful film was about this. Have got much more relaxed about it and say well, its okay. But you ask a visit biologica iu and i are both in an experiment. I dont know, im not sure, i was a gentle boy but i did not consciously want to be a girl and indeed since a much older than you, this was 1953 when i first had these ideas when there is nothing to be done. So i became a guy, i was married for 30wa years to the absolute love of my life. I still love my wife and former wife. When i was a guy i was a guy and i felt like a guy. And then i had this epiphany in august 1995, i realized. Who knows, biological, environmental, the stars, astrology, i dont know. You tell me. But whatever it is it is a matter of freedom, if we are going to have a free society it cannot just be freedom to the bosses. It has to be freedom to the people to do what they harmlessly want to do, if they want to have a doug, there is no problem with having a doug and they should have a doug. If they want to open it Grocery Store they should open a Grocery Store. People should be allowed to do thwithout interference and witht the need for deep f regulation. The psychiatrist are completely ignorant about transgender matters for the most part and yet their assigned often by the state to be the gatekeepers and its silly. Deirdre mccloskey, when did you tell your exwife. And you have children . Immediately after that. In august of 95 . Yes, i was driving home from chicago to iowa city, i know the place on the road and it came to the conclusion, i said to myself, should i do this in a month before, i am not making this up. Im an economist. I did a costbenefit study of changing gender. This is silly beyond belief, thats not how you decide who you love or what job youre going to do. It is not allll that. But this time i just got it, as english say i tweak to it. I told her immediately, she had known before i did. Eight months up to august she saw i was more profound than i thought. I said no im just a heterosexual cross crossdress crossdresser, lumberjack its okay to worry about it. And she knew, she had much more insight into it. And at first she was sympathetic and tried to help me, but as a fall one she became less and less sympathetic and in the end she in the two other people i love very much, my son is now 50 and my daughter is 44, they turned against me and have not spoken to be for 24 years. I have three grandchildren i have never met which is a little bit like being stabbed and having the knife turned in the wound. The most that bothers me the most, as far as my three green children concerned, its always good to have more people to love you. And strange as it sounds, i love these three people i have never met. So what to make of that. In any case, that is the sadness really, their loss not so much mind. I have a happy life, i have friends, church,ds academic lif, i get to talk to wonderful people on tv. It was in november of 95 that you got arrested. I did. This is a rather sensitive issue in our family because it was my beloved younger sister, with whom im on very good terms now. She was having her own problemse with this change of mind mine. And she got courts to agree, which he feels now and certainly i did at the time which was a mistake. I wasas teased twic seized twicn locked wards to check out to see if i was crazy. The good news is, i was certified saying four times. Maybe youre secretly completely crazy. I got the paper to show that im completely insane saying. And crossing people sometimes say i do not under stand crossdressers who dresses women but dont want to be women, what you dont understand . Its a game. Its a game. Months before this epiphany this dressing club in chicago i was involved in was supposed to be an ice cream social because it sounded sufficiently feminine. I noticed that the actual girls, the xx people got a couple of wives, psychologist and a hairdresser, they were preparing the food and the men in drag, some persuasive were sitting around and said dont they know what the job is. I was only crossdresser who went upp and helped and then cae time to clean up and remember in chicago, i was going around with a bag, taking empty cans of coke out of the hands of men in full drag discussing auto repair in the Chicago Bears together. These guys just occasionally crossdressed, it did not mean very much. It was just something that they did. It was no big deal. They often had wives who are very super pathetic and like mind. Donald was my name and would occasionally crossdressed in private and we had a perfectly normal relationship it was not as if i was secretly dreaming of being a woman all the time, that is not the case. I think the actual truth is people are more complicated than that. People can hold contradictory thoughts in their mind quite easily andas can have deep commitments to things that some that dont go together. So for these decades with great shame in not so much thought of myself as a heterosexual crossdresser. I was always attracted to women, i was not gay. And you have the stupid psychiatrist quizzed me once when i was seized in the fall 1995 and said are you gay and i said no. Do you want to be gay, i dont know what that quite needs but no i dont particular. Be friends, i dont care. Then why are you doing this, which showed that he thought that i wanted to become a woman in order to have with men. , on. If ollie discovered 853 that i was gay, that wouldve been much easier. Michael in portland, oregon i am on with Deirdre Mccloskey. Hi professor mccloskey. I am really sad, i have not encountered your mind sooner. I really respect you and i love your desire. You have fine principles and seeming opposites. I have my kind of style two. The propositions costly, one does, he is both of them the philosophy has something called mike, you are not coming clear to throug to clearly juste question itll bet good. It would be a very interestig to have you on my dinner table talking because i love your mental style. My one question would be, who were the have if you host, who would you have at your dinner table to talk to. Thank you. An interesting question, i might have you michael. But i just love intellectual conversation. Im in iowa where i talked for 19 years, we have an i expressi, im happy as a pig in mud when im having a discussion with this with you. So i would have people who like to talk seriously. I can think of a lot of names, michael. Nadia for example is a philosopher and was ahead of the liberal party in canada briefly. I can think of others if i can bringld people back, i have a rl long list. Adam smith above all. Jon stewart especially. Those are the two patrons of liberalism along with a few others. Scott in connecticut, you are on. Please go ahead with your h or comment. Thank you very much. I would add Jeremy Benton to your list as well. Professor mccloskey, i have two questions i hope. I hope they are quick. What are your feelings about state owned banks and what they have in south dakota where the capital for lack of better term stays in the stat state and gets redistributed to different projects, infrastructure projects. What is your second question, scott . In terms of socialism, socialism is government control production. I just cant see how supply p ad demand can work and our medical system. So socializing the insurance which pays for it, medicarece fr all as an example, seems to me a decentnt idea. In need of a drug to save the lives they will pay anything for it. Before we get an answer from doctor mccloskey. Scott hung up i was going to ask him who jeremy was. I can tell you who he is, hes a founder of authoritarianism, the idea that became an import idea and economics that is maximizing utility as he called it that drives people. I think it was wrong in the young friend also thought it was wrong. Jeremy died around 1930 as to a state owned bank, i think its a terrible idea because its to bring politics into the functioning of the economy. The problem with that, everyone has an opinion about how you should run your business or your occupation. And why should they have a say in that. As to t keeping money in north dakota, north or south i think he said north. Thats economics, thats bad economics. As is the notion that medical care should be run by these monopolies and then the government should keep yo pain e and more for it. As a biologist, you know how evolutionw works. And i think thats how the economy works. Fact, he was inspired by economics. As he claims in his autobiography. To try things out from the bottom and imposing rules from the top is not the way to go. The old joke, a camel is a horse designed by a committee. And in fact, camels evolved from other horse like animals. So i think the free evolutionary way is a way to go in the economy as it is in biology. It means we will make mistakes but they will be small mistakes whereas if we do it from w the p you make big mistakes like soviet communism or george bush invasion of iraq and things like that. Text message to you, is it possible for monopoly to survive longterm withoutt government support, is seems most eemonopolies are created and maintained by government. That is exactly right. There is a great fear of natural monopoly, this is been a concept in economics for about 100 years. And we now see it in the great worry about amazon. Com. Or google or facebook. They have a big share, their monopoly their monopoly. No they are not. There are large share, lets take amazon, at what they do, and what amazon does, because it doesnt very well and its under constant pressure from people imitating its rather simple model which is the reinvention of the mail order stores like Montgomery Ward and sears. And about 100 years on. Its not a monopoly. Of course, amazon would like to be an amount awfully in which case it would go to the government and get the other people stopped not the Common Source of rational monopoly. Longterm, isnt that a long term, amazon has only been around a short amount of time historically speaking. It does not take long before competitors to bring out. Thats why as the nobel prize economist pointed out, inventors get only 2 of the social gain of their invention. 98 he goes to us, the consumer. Joe and pennsylvania, good afternoon to you, you are on with professor mccloskey. Hi joe. Hi professor. I am looking at the downside of deregulation as regards to credit tree banking or enabling toxic by corporate polluters inn age where we live now of war on truth, war on science, war on the environment. Because i know what you said earlier, it is good for small business, innocuous businesses where theyre being killed by regulation but im thinking, what are your thoughts onla the downside as this horrendous problem weve have now that the thoughts for our children and future is lasting and the main thing on peoples mind, huge profits for already wealthy all right joe, we got the point. I understand your concern. I actually do worry about Global Warming. I certainly do not as you wisely observed go for the alternative facts that there is no such thing as Global Warming and its arel hoax. Donald trumps favorite word which he is extremely skilledwo at. But i think theres ways of dealing with things like Global Warming like pollution or the tendency to start for spires. Mainly, publicity you got have a free press, that is crucial. And indeed, understand, as i argued in the first book of my trilogy, its kind of unreasonable to argue that people in business want to hurt their customers or anyone else. They are not saints but theyre not devils either. In the danger of giving the power to institute 1 million separate regulations or to introduce the interstate commerce which is initially taken over by the industry it was supposed to be regulating railways. To do it to the fist of government is dangerous. Its a slippery slope to a society in which were all children in which the wise people in washington are running our lives in a hundred different ways. Will rogers, the great cowboy comedian of the 1920s and by the way when you see people in the house of representatives thats in front of the statue of will rogers he said just be glad you dont have the government to pay for. He says i dont make jokes, i just watch the government and report the facts. And i think he was a liberal in every way, that attitude is american. It is our heritage as americans. And to say i am from the government and im going to help you attitude of our beloved friends in europe is alternati alternative. I am for a free society. And so are you joe. Lloyd in los angeles. Please go ahead. Hey professor, thank you for your story, i am immediately going to run out andut get your book crossing, i think ive learned a lot from you. Innocently would have questions about courage toon ask you but i really want to return to yourur earlier point that you made, i think you have to persuade me a little better that the triangular slave trade was not responsible for the wealth this country is generated. And you cannot you cannot compare south africa to what was going on at the whole system in the designing of institutions that perpetuated privilege and oppression. Lloyd, before we let you go, what was it about her book crossing that attracted you . Honestly, i am really impressed with the courage that professor has throughout her life. And i think i can gain a lot to my own life. Bear in mind, lloyd, when i always say this that, we all need courage in our lives. Think of the mother rising every morning to take care of her severely handicapped son. That is courage. And, i think you will agree, lloyd that the person who doesnt think that courage is the center of human life hasnt lived very long, as for the slave trade and so forth, it is hard to persuade people of this because we have beenth taught in high school and in the movies and so forth about slavery and by the way we only started thinking it was i terrie when it started to come to power in northwestern europe. Nobody thought that slavery or serfdom was as bad a system, so unfortunate for the individual but if the slave trade were so productive us in richmond, then the middle east would have been veryul rich for the slave markes of cairo or russia south to the slave markets thats why we call them. They would have had they explosion that northwestern europe had. There was something very strange about putting ones finger onon the slavery. It was the emancipation that gave people the spirit to try out innovation. Maybe that is the best word, permission. Host Deirdre Mccloskey come every month when we have an author on, we ask him or her what they are reading and some of their Favorite Books are. Your response was a little unique in that going t and im t out out loud. What is your Favorite Book . I use hundreds of books a year ago im giving away a thousand 0f them to a Chinese University next month. I like the response when someone asked if he had read all of his 30,000 for the library, nobody might be the next book i pick up the. Last week when i got my news reader might die as our failings of its great that you can make the prints larger. I cant remember the first name but he was a soviet convinced communist who follows him against the germans and then became a liberal for which a but it is a gripping book. He has a great big novel im going to read that they. After the invention of wordprocessing i cant write short books anymore. Im not Ernest Hemingway sharpening 50 pencils. I understand its good for them, but in my case im going to come away from this conversation with some ideas because the conversation is productive of ideas. Host is 1959, the grapes of wrath were imported and made a socialist before studying economics. Guest is a wonderful book every american must read but by the way, those that went to california were fully employed factories during the war and did pretty well. Host 1961 a book that was important to you was the worldly philosophers which got me studying economics which in the end cured me of the socialism steinbeck had created. A. He was an convinced socialist bt towards the end of his career, he admitted, he admitted the book conundrum which should be a professional person could change jim or without catastrophe. She was a base when sir edwin hillary first climbed to number the first. There is a hilarious story when she was a young lieutenant in the british army just after the Second World War stationed in venice. I spent some months with a wonderful charm i remember you well. [laughter] n host whale is coming in from florida. Caller thanks so much to cspan especially in depth that allows us to get into the weeds with great minds as professor Deirdre Mccloskey. I did my undergraduate in 1961 and more recently a ministry so welcome. We have two points of economics to be brief first of all the idea of capital and capitalism i agree is an unfortunate misnomer in many cases because economics is made up of capital and labor and that is all it really is. The discussion is who controls theit capital. Host we are going to leave it there because youve already got her shaking herot head. Guest co. I agreed for decads with what you are saying. Its the basis of the socialist Movement Since 48. There are very good reasons why that shouldnt be so. The land, labor and capital should have their pay according to what we call in economics as you do from your graduate study a marginal product. But the more fundamental point that ive come to recently the last coupletl of years is the source ofal enrichment is new ideas, not capital, not labor, not climate, this or that as nice or desirable or necessary as they may be. Whats really going on is as 1800, freedom to have a go is the new idea of the spectacular examples of 1956 to North Carolina had a bright idea was to bring stuff back. Its revolutionized the transport supply chain but having the idea to capital of course you need both but they already existed. This is ann important idea that ive had and ive been working on it for a couple of years to figure out why i disagreed with my earlier self dot path capital and land. Itench cuisine is not caused by its ingredients. Its by brilliant thinking about a. Host we havent talked about the book economical writing. Well show it on the screen. As a writer, you should work on keeping the reader awake. Have economists been known for keeping readers awake . Guest there is a pose, the academic pose. We are not going to get rid of academic prose until we get rid of the academic pose frankly that of ein so smart and want to impress you with how smart i am and thats why i like purpose in life, and indeed ive learned to be more open handed in my style. They make their science more personally connected. They are not playing hockey, theres a wonderful book i forget the author for the nobel prizewinning biologist and the book is called a sense for the organism. She worked on corn and in this way she would watch the little corn plants growing and made greagrade biology out of all of that. Give you an example of historians who see into human rights and what can we say, omechanical or theoretical ways there is a verye good play about rosalind franklin, the codiscoverer of dna who died of cancer before she could get the nobel prize and theres kind of a debate between her and james watson on the role of theory versus observation and it is notorious in many fields that women want to look at things and men want to talk about the. Host before we go any further we want to show cover of the book that referenced a little while ago and that is the one you are currently reading. Guest then come back andel tell me that you think socialism is a goodth idea. Host virginia, chicago. Caller hello. I was mistaken for your mother at a party and i have a questi question. After ive taken so many notes ive decided to come and have a conversation with you at some point. What i want to know is will you go with the greatest goods for the greatest number and can yous categorize it . Guest i missed the verb in that sentence. Host the greatest that you will go with. Guest i know who you are. She is an amazing person i could go on about virgin after a whi while. Mathematically speaking, it is absurd because it says we are going to have the greatest good for the greatest number but you cant have two great things together. That is you cant maximize two things at once but that is just a mathematical point. I deeply agree the purpose of government with the economy should be the welfare not just goods and services, although that iss very important. I could care less if bill gates makes more money in. But where we would disagree, Jeremy Benson but he mentioned before, this is his formula and he wanted to engineer everyones life which then became actually the design of modern prisons whether it is a central guard place where they watch all the prisoners over time and that is kind of his vision for society and im very disturbed by it as many people were at the time. I think it is much better and here i think that they will actually agree its bee been an friends a lot as i explained to my host and i think that you would agree h the french cuisine comes from thousands of housewives and a lot of men thinking up not some plan to make the french cuisine good. If that worked, the germans would have the best in the world. Host christopher posted on the Facebook Page of shouldnt be a dichotomy between capitalism and socialism. Some things are left to the free markets. Health insurance for instant should be a public good it should be extended 6 to everyon. Guest because monopolies that make american medicine expensive but before you throw more money at it after the monopoly has been formed, stop the monopolies. The importing of drugs and here is a more general point. Each according to his ability is exactly what we should have and want in a loving family that is how it should work. But the formula doesnt work for a big society and even in new jersey it doesnt work. That is why if theyve not worked or grown up on a farm or small business. They wanted to in a very generous of him hard way both to help people by bringing them into the family but that isnt how the markets are going to work. Athe big level, markets work. Donald trump is crazy to do these trade wars. Give these trade wars. That is insane. In the biand the big markets anl socialism when you try to do it the other way around, you wreck everything as you can see in the case of socialism. Host how to be human is another go. Im often depressed by how few books economists have in their houses and to think Economic Statistics requires one to read the latest articles is not going to be much. I agree instead of quarreling with him or her as the case may be. I am now advocating and i had a conversation a few months ago with a very prominent economist and he said i read novels for pleasure and i dont see what they have to do with economics. If you are not influenced by novels and movies, personal privations, what you see i as yu walk around the town in your economics may be in chemistry it wouldnt matter, but economics than you are not seeing the whole economy. I have a friend at Chapman University california who claimed the word about ten years ago and gives a course of a c colleague at an English Department at chapman universi university. Because if economics is a social science about human beings, then great literature ought to have something to do with t it. There is economics in it and not too much. It is the good life and that is what is discovered. Ya that is the kind of thing you can learn from the bible or novel. Why did the soviet union tried to stop 1930s jazz from coming into the soviet union and later why did they try to stop rock music from coming into the soviet union, and i got an answer they realized these musical forms were expressions of the liberty. Louis armstrong, and improvising is an expression of music, if you are an authoritarian count country. We need to learn to be free. Host bill in link in delaware. Caller everything you say leads to another subject. Im interested because i think you mentioned south africa etc. I loveou to japan for six years and it has turned to a tv series, readers digest. Im wondering what books youre finding when you travel internationally and have mentioned human on x. It sounds like the human action. Host we are almost out of time. Have you discovered anything guest fo guest for example, there is to peruvian economist by giving them property in the land and i learned more abroad than talking to people reading. After all, the intellectual life of the world is over dominated by 19th century european thought of a certain monotony to socialism, nationalism, and if you like those National Socialism because they keep coming up with the same arguments and same stories. I find it much more interesting to bankers in brazil and see what they say tha then to rd the theoretical work so i must say i try to become an educated person. Its pretty much hopeless. Youve got to keep at it. Shows like this are an important part host in our one minute remaining super bowl day. Does it make economic sense for a city or state to build a sports stadium . Guest absolutely not. They can build a stadium, like a super bowl but there are lots of them. This is a constant claim. Whenever you hear someone talking about creating jobs, yoj can assume that she doesnt know economics very well. You give the owners of the sports franchises enormous free lunches and it is just a silly thing to do. Im sort of a simpleminded sports fan. And the chicago team that does well im in favor of that i think you have to look out for crony capitalism and corporate welfare. Thats steve socialism or capitalism. Host he most recent book by liberalism works how the true liberal values produce a free more equal prosperous world for all. Chronicles the trump and kushner rise to prominence interviewed by Washington Post Business Reporter jonathan oconnell. After words is a program of Government Guest host centric and top nonfiction authors about their latest works. All programs are also available as podcasts. Host im happy to be joined here by Andrea Bernstein the