Transcripts For CSPAN2 Progress 20161106

Over the years. Can you see the western middle class so to speak increased their income from zero percent to 10 percent reedit but theres another graph as well, the red line. In the redline, compensates for Something Else. That population growth was bigger in poor countries and rich countries which means a lot of people took a larger part of every percent and it means that they, especially incomes of the population growth in asia, pushed the western middle class from the lower percentile into the higher so what used to be the 80th and 90th percentile of western middleclass people were replaced by the richest people in china. And they are still poor, some 60 percent as rich as the western middle classes which means it looks like its Income Growth is coming down in those areas as well but thats more an illusion that comes from population growth. If you keep population growth, if you pretend the population is stable over these years, the elephant wrath shifts to the redline instead and then its not the zero percent Income Growth, its not a 10 percent Income Growth, its 25 percent Income Growth to the 80th and 90th percentile. But then Something Else interesting happens when you look at the raw data. There are countries that really stagnated or even saw a reduction in incomes for those 20 years. Japan and excommunist countries like bulgaria and they made more progress over 2008 but thats not relevant to this graph because it only goes until 2008. So thats true that it happens but that is not what the western middle classes with. They dont live in eastern europe, they dont live in japan. If you adjust for that as well and you look at a new version of the elephant graph, you can see that a constant population with constant countries and you accept japan and communist countries, we have the redline where the percentage that we talk about is the western middleclass increase their incomes by some 40 percent over these 20 years. We dont need to bother about the yellow as well. So there has to be an increased in incomes in western countries for western middleclass as well but i also have to say the most important thing, the most important thing isnot what you have in your wallet but what you can buy. Its the kind of purchasing power, the kind of technology at your disposal is much more than income and weve seen progress from many other areas. Cleaner air , since the 1970s weve seen more than half the leading pollutants that affect your lungs, your forests, your rivers. You have to crime rates, homicide rates have been cut in half since 1980 including Better Technology and another 10 years of life expectancy. If thats the losers of globalization, then we need to reconsider what we mean by a loser. What is progress . What does it mean . To me, it means we can do more things today that we could before. We know more things and are able to create more things and thats the great thing that as robert highline put it. Progress is not made by early risers, its made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. We do more things with the resources that are at our disposal. We can solve more problems, we can deal with more of our problems. We cansatisfy more of our ambitions. And we do that by exploring, thereby finding new, better knowledge about how the world works and not just exploring but also experimenting with those ideas. Producing new innovation technology, artificial fertilizers, better crops, container shipping that makes it possible to exchange all those but its not just that we explore and experiment but its also that we exchange the results of this. Trade, communication, movement over borders which means we can use knowledge that we do not have ourselves. Exploration, experimentation and exchange which means that we need freedom. Freedom to think, freedom to be innovative, freedom to implement your ideas and experiment and freedom to trade across borders. We need liberty so its no coincidence this began to happen in Northern Europe and western europe and north america and began to happen in china, asia, vietnam after aid began to open up their economy. More people than ever can now contribute to this progress because they have access to more knowledge than ever and they are freer than ever to experiment with those ideas and exchange them with other people. The grand old man of development put it , the human being, the human brain is the ultimate vehicle. And thats also something thats reproducible. The human brain is pleasantly reproducible. Its a beautiful thing when it happens between consenting adults. But the problem is that almost no one believes this. Lets go back to this graph about Human Progress since 1990 in all those areas and dimensions. I posted this on twitter to tell world outlook, this is the world in one graph. Why are we complaining . This is what happens to the world. And one of the firstresponses i got was this. Someone retweeted this and said my god, this is a started starling graph confirming my hell in a hand basket feeling. She read the graph upside down. She thought that Child Mortality had doubled, that pollution, that illiteracy had doubled around the world and i asked her, how did you get that impression . She responded , i do pay close attention to the news. Consider the media. I followwhat happens in the world, i read about the floods, the war, the famine and so on and thats true. That is something thathappens but it also means that she misses out on the great press around the world. So as miriam put it, all the gallops show that people are almost by nature pessimistic. 60 percent of americans think that the world is becoming a better place. More people believe in ghosts and ufos than progress. Mobile poverty had almost half that remain the same the past 20 years. Only five percent of americans said it hit half and its actually had more than half. Most polls said it was stable or had doubled. My guessing random, you would pick the answer out of three choices far more often which means that you cannot call it ignorance if you cant beat a random choice. We must have inaccurate assumptions of the world based on some misleading or outdatedinformation. And as this british woman said, most people get it from the media. From the headlines, from the breaking news. I think this illustration is from the biggest newspaper, i love that headline because it says total payouts everywhere. And we had some bad weather and some traffic after thousands of people were stuck at airports and it was total chaos everywhere. Because they are plane accident news, 40 million flights landing safely every year. The fact that we have seen since the 1970s and increase in the number of passengers tenfold and yet the number of accidents and fatalities has half. Thats not news, thats statistics. Thats something we dont care about and in a way thats a good thing. If there were news like planes landing safely that would mean it was a strange occurrence, it wouldnt be news. The problem is when we hear about those accidents and disasters, then we think this is the only thing that goes on in the world. Its made the news recently that tens of thousands of people in Northern Nigeria are written by chronic malnourishment and thats correct. That happens. We need to know about that. But i have never read a story about the fact that 8 billion nigerians were liberated from chronic undernourishment over the last 25 years because thats not the kind of choking, instantaneous, horrific thing that makes the news. Its not really about the media. Its not the journalists fault that news is bad because when the news is not there, we invent stories, rumors that are even worse. It seems like we are to blame , the readers and thats what all the journalists tell me as well when i asked them. It doesnt sell, good news. We need something dramatic and shocking to give to sell the news. And i think this is because we are genetically predisposed to pay more attention to bad. Bad is stronger than good because bad it could be a threat to our survival. Our hunters and gatherers who were a bit more worried who didnt look anxiously towards the horizon, where there might be predators, they probably survived more often than others. They passed on their genes to us but also their threat knowledge and their attention to all the bad things that could go wrong in the world. Now, add to this another factor. The fact that we are by nature nostalgic. We tend to think that the good old days were in another era, a previous era. In ourchildhood or even before this. These are some themes from a brilliant french movie in 1959, love bill knew we about a man who goes back in time to the good old days where everything was wonderful. But then hes there and he thinks its pretty good but then he meets an old man who tells him all, you should have been there when i was young, life was much better and he travels back in time to that era and its okay, but an old man tells him no, you should have been there in that era when i grew up. And he travels back to that time as well and he goes through andnostalgia is always there. Virtually every culture past and present has believed men and women are not up tothe standards of their parents and forebears. And if you havent seen this film you might recognize 1920s paris where we use the same kind of story to show us that we always think and everybody has always thought that the good old old days were in days past. Interestingly, when i ask people about those good old days, when were they . If this is not the golden era, whenwas society at its most harmonious . They most often happen to mention the era when they grew up. People from my generation say its the 1980s. The baby boom generation often say its the 1950s. And the most common one i got is that this nostalgia is a result of the baby boomer generation retiring and looking back to good old days in the 1950. Where might be that great after all where in old age that you were poor. Where we had racial segregation in the United States, where we had the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation. But we know that we solve those problems. We know we got through those bad old days. So now we can back to them, this era when we grew up when things were exciting because we were young and the future was full of promise and at the same time, we feel secure because our parents were good and they paid the bills and they were worried about all the bad things that could happen to their kids. As we grow up, as we become parents, we begin to think that this is much more difficult nowadays to be much more simple and this is what herman thought as well, that often we confuse a certain shift, a change in ourselves, taking on new responsibilities, perhaps some physical decay and we confuse that with the world and think that this goes on everywhere. So if we have that aesthetic programming where we pay more attention than to everything bad that happens and could happen in the future and we think the good old days are behind usand you add another factor. A new factor. Global media. Global media, 24 hours a day media that looks at everything around the world. Then we have more bad things to take into consideration because even though homicide rates have declined, theres always a serial murderer on the loose somewhere. Even though we have international wars, theres always a war going on somewhere and those bad things will always dominate the news even though the risk of being killed in a Natural Disaster has declined by almost 99 percent over the last 100 years, there are always people dying in a Natural Disaster and thats the news cycle everywhere and we get the impression that this is an everyday occurrence for most people around the world. And that social media, twitter, facebook, instagram and all those places where anyone could add their particular perspective on the world. What do you share with people your self on the platforms . It happens that we share some good news. Most often something horrific, something dramatic, something shocking. Human suffering is not news but Television Cameras are and that means we can see anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world instantaneously which is why it happens before we know whether people will survive or not and that triggers our fear, it triggers our fight or flight hormones and it makes us care about the world. What do i share on social media . Often its some weirdo that ive never heard of in a city with a name i cant even pronounce but its something stupid. Then i think i have to tell people about this thing and everybody does the same thing. We wake up in the morning and hear about all those weirdos, all those people doing bad things everywhere and we think most people are like that. Theyre not and thats why we are sharing, because its strange, a bizarre occurrence. So unfortunately, i think this is has accelerated with the rise of social media. At an accelerating pace, we Pay Attention to all those bad things and get the impression that the world is falling apart. Even though all the objective data proves otherwise. Thats dangerous. Its dangerous politically. As donald trump put it when he first made his ambition to run for president of the United States, this country is a hellhole and we are going down fast. Morning in america it aint anymore. And that changes perspective on the world. If you look at trumps vote, compared to 50 years ago, life in the us is worse. 75 percent of his voters say that but so does Bernie Sanders. Its the same thing among the leftist populace. They also think this country is a hellhole, partly for different reasons. Its inequality, its risingsea levels, Global Warming. Empirical evidence says the same thing only in full sentences. She tells us that yes, you are angry, you should be angry because everything is awful and only i can make things right. And this is the problem. Fear is the health of the state. Political forces can always stifle progress. They can block the technology, they can block trade if they like. You know the old joke, if the opposite is pro is con, then what is the opposite of progress . I yes. That has always happened and in every election season we say the same thing. You threaten people that if the other guy wins, the water taps will run dry, the sun will not set tomorrow but this is news, the sense that everything is already awful in the us. And in other places. The world is dangerous. It is dangerous and if its dangerous, if the world is falling apart, we need a strong man or a strong woman. If a martian from mars tried to understand what goes on in planet earth by listening to donald trump or Bernie Sanders or marine the pen in france, he would think that everything is on fire on planet earth. Because they only talk like violence is spiraling out of control. Inequality, poverty, rising everywhere. Everything is dangerous and if everything is dangerous, we have to protect what little we have and we need that strong person, that Big Government that helps us. People if left to their own devices create a lot of progress. In that case, we can have more freedom and open economies because we will see more progress in the future but if we think that people left to their own devices are free to do things and trade and move, if we think they create chaos, chaos everywhere, then we need those strongmen who will take care of all of us. In social psychology there is a discussion about an authoritarian reef, people like jonathan hite, they pointed out that authoritarianism which is kind of a loaded term but we can say some kind of statism, some sort of interest in blocking peoples freedom, blocking globalization, controlling people rather than setting them free, that kind of authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. It is more like a redisposition that a lot of people have and it, when people get their sense that the threats, when they have the sense that their society, that people like them, that country is being threatened. By internal forces or by chaos, that dynamic sets in. When people read fake stories about things going wrong in society, they become more authoritarian in other spheres. On other questions that are not related at all to the very thing that went wrong. Which means that we all sort of got in this protective mode when we think that things are going wrong. If you only seek order and horrible people, do you wake up and listen to breaking news and find out there are only weirdos out there and theyre out for your way of life, you become more authoritarian, more statist and you oppose or vote for the strongman or the Big Government. I wrote this book to sum up not out of complacency, not as a way of telling people that everything is in order, we dont have to bother with things anymore, lets go home for a quiet night. I wrote this book because im worried about this progress because we cannot take it for granted. It didnt happen automatically by itself. It happened because people were given more freedom to explore, to experiment and to exchange the results of that. If we have Political Forces in power that block those freedoms, those individual liberties, those Economic Freedoms, we willsee less freedom, less progress in the future so we have something to fear. And that is fear itself and the risk that fear will become a selffulfilling prophecy, it will be self generated. If we think there are only problems out there, only stagnation and we vote against reform, new technologies for free trade reform that should take place create more progress and we see more stagnation and we will be more fearful in the future. It will be more difficult to pursue the reforms we need to make progress. It could happen. We can rock progress like that. It happened before, it can definitely happen again, its bad for mankind but more than that, its a boring way to spend your life. To stand in the way of other peoples progress so to conclude, another one of my intellectual heroes, captain james t kirk of the Starship Enterprise from the United Federation of planets. Only a fool stands in the way of Human Progress. [applause] thank you very much johan. I was hoping to have it on sale and for reasons that i shall apologize for, its not on sale. They make wonderful presents, both of them for the upcoming holiday. Ron bailey is an awardwinning science correspondent for reason magazine and reason. Com. He writes the weekly science and technology column. He was one of the original authors of out there and has a tremendous pedigree in terms of promoting ideas that johan was talking about today. Bailey walter of the interview, Environmental Review and also of liberation biology, a moral and scientific look into the biotech revolution. From 1987 to 1990, bailey was a staff writer for Forbes Magazine covering economic, scientific and business topics. Before joining reason in 1977, he produced several Weekly National Public Television series including pink tank and technopolitics as well as several other pbs and nbc documentaries. Hes also an editor of a number of books covering Global Warming and other things. First report of 2000, visiting the true state of the planet and also ego scan the false prophets of ecological apocalypse. Ron is a member of environmental journalistsand the American Society of biotech and humanity. Welcome russell bailey. [applause] progress and its enemies. Im going to be taking an unaccustomed role here today. Basically most people would describe me and ive been described as a cockeyed optimist, a technoutopian. Eight unitarian transhumanist and so forth and i want to stress that whatever nostalgia is, i suffer from the exact opposite of whatever that is. I dont have future shock, i have future glee. Unfortunately, johans excellent book which is followed by mine completely makes that case and very strongly and powerfully does so. So what im going to do is go through the challenges which johan also discussed that go into greater detail of what some of the enemies we might have as the 21stcentury unfolds. What do i push . All right. This one. I realize this. All right. Technical difficulties. Progress is being made. One second, give us a moment. Okay. I can do that too. There we go. Should be working. The right quest i find it discriminatory, johans work. There we are. Again, i wasdelighted to hear that johan was quoting robert highline, one of mys favorite Science Fiction authors but as you can see, hes making a good point. The threat of poverty is the normal condition of humanity. As i showing the charts, advances are being exceeded here and there are the work of us small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, opposed by all right thinking people. Whatever the minority is kept from creating or as sometimes has happened out of society, the people slip into abject poverty. This is known as bad luck. Venezuela is suffering from bad luck at the moment. But they highlight more of what this is, is how this progress might be stymied i want to refer to a wonderful book by University Economist joe look here called the historical origins of knowledge and he pointed out that history, Technological Progress in a society is by and large temporary and a vulnerable process which making powerful enemies with a vested interest from the status quo or an aversion to change continuously threatening it. The net result is that changes in technology, the mainspring of economic progress and most progress. I would argue have been relative to that what we now know human creativity is capable of. In other words, people in the roman empire worked as hard as we were but they were stymied and willget into reasons why they could not use their creativity in the world we live in. They change it slow rates and they are the rule rather than the exception. It is our own aid and especially the rapid need, it is our own aid and especially the rapid change in the western world that has been the historical aberration. What happened . Most here points out that what occurs is that Technological Progress inevitably involves losers and losers tend to be concentrated and find it easy to organize. Sooner or later in any society the progress will grind to a halt as theforces that used to support innovation become vested interests. In a purely dialectical fashion, Technological Progress creates the forces that eventually destroy. I hope thats not true but its something we should concerned about that in fact that what you find is a vested interestover time and we discussed a bit more of that, take control of the government and study stymied competition. Another trend , that johan describes brilliantly in his book is the trend in education around the world and how that is affecting men and women across the world. There are societies where this trend is being blocked and in some cases reversed and that is a terrible, terrible problem. There are two problems. One is that it has an effect on the choices that women make on the number of children we desire to have and the second is it dramatically reduces the amount of growth and economic wellbeing that people deserve. The study shows that if women are into at least secondary level of education, their fertility is reduced by a 3rd to 50 percent. Its going down from basically five or six children in countries where women are not educated to two or three children and part of the trend we see and i think its beneficial and i talk about it in my book is that World Population is likely to talk about at around 9 billion people or so and began falling during this century, largely because women have learned, i hope will be able to become educated andmake choices that they want about their fertility. In addition, it indicated women participate more in the wage economy and this has its benefits as well. The economic consultants did a study where they calculated that two women had achieved just the average level of education in the world today, that the World Economy would be an additional 12 billion richer than it is now, it would be an increase of over 11 percent. If men and women have the same level of education, there would be 28 billion more on gdp. An increase of 28 percent. In other words, we are forgoing by keeping women uneducated in those countries that do so i huge benefit for themselves and for us all. Another problem that johan was discussing his art parties, the notion that every country should be selfsufficient. A newmercantilism that unfortunately are two president ial candidates , competing president ial candidates, i will not be voting for either of them for the record are in favor of restricting free trade and exchange of ideas and immigration and so forth and this is a terrible problem. If we can only produce what we have here in this country, we will be denying ourselves the benefits of what other people in other countries can produce and also the benefits of innovation and change. This is an example and what happens is in the 1930s, senators smoot and holly managed to get the tariff of the United States raised substantially and the result was that over a twoyear period between 1930 and 1932, ustrade with europe, those exports and imports fell by two thirds. This led to huge job losses. Four years after that, 24 other countries had also reduced their carriers and world trade had fallen by two thirds at that point. It was a bigger than my neighbor activity and this is the sum of our leading politicians whose names start with tea and deceit are recommending to us. This is been a terrible problem and already we see that Foreign Investment in the United States is down from 40 percent from the peak just before the financial crisis and International Trade is growing at the slowest rate ever. We achieve or fall into the nadir of globalization, i hope not. Then theres the problem of cronyism. This arch rte is a problem with International Trade largely. This internal problem basically and just a quote from lifeline who is the ceo of Goldman Sachs in 2015 said regulatory and technology in requirements are higher than any time in modern history. He wasnt complaining about that. He was explaining that this is great for his company and other countries because it made it possible that their competitors wouldnot be able to challenge his company. And he was pointing that out as an advantage for himself. The problem is that we see this all the time with the accumulating burden of regulation. The mercators center just issued a study back in june where they were calculating what the regulatory drag on the United States should be, i recommend looking at it, its basically that our economy is 4 trillion poorer than it would otherwise be because of regulations and most of these regulations do serve as barriers to innovation and contribution. More startling study in 2013 by john dawson at Appalachian State university, where they calculated the following, that if you could imagine keeping the Regulatory Burden at the level of 1949, what size with this economy be now . It would be a few times larger than it is right now. I dont know. Its a particular problem we need to be worried about and again, johan was highlighting. This is, well, this is changing pain china and im calling this the return of the National State area one of the best books ive read in the last 10 years is by Nobel Prize Winning economist doug forrest and some colleagues of his called violence is social warriors and what they were trying to get at is the notion of how we handle violence in society. Humanity as the agricultural revolution took off, upon a solution. Which is basically what they call a natural state. The natural state is successfully organizing Client Networks. You have top men if you will or elites and they arranged to have clients to whom they distribute economicresources, basically hand out monopolies over time. The point is that this was basic organization of human societies up until two centuries ago with open access borders and the price that we now saw in the chart early in economic growth. The problem is that as johan documents well as that things have been moving in the direction ofgreater democracy, greater freedom, greater openness over time. But that has stalled lately. The question is, will it stall where we have a reversed look at it over time . Think about National States is that as the Client Networks and ifyou think about this, i would highly recommend that you do read this book. Every state up until the beginning of the 19 centuries essentially was organized this way with the roman empire, incorporated and empire, all the way up to putins russia. These patient Client Networks in every case essentially, those societies ultimately stop innovation and stagnating. The question is, can this be stopped over time . Can we continue the momentum forward to more open access to societies over time . Another problem is the growth of the surveillance society. This is a map if you will provided by private international and published on the wonderful website which basically suggests that for example the United States is one of the poorest societies with regard to surveillance. We now know through Edward Snowdens revelations that this is in fact a tremendous problem we have in the country. The problem is that if you dont have privacy, you dont have the space to talk amongst yourselves, then innovation both in the social level can be stymied. Also we started with innovation that basically what you will find is that states or innovators can talk among themselves out of the limelight who will be reduced over time and will slow down progress again. It would be very hard to operate in that type of environment and its not just my opinion. The privacy andcivil liberties Oversight Board which reported to president obama , confirming the government to routinely collect the records of the entire nation, fundamentally assist the balance of power between state and citizens. While the danger of abuse may seem remote, given historical views, government during the 20th century, the risk is more than moot and theoretically. It is more than theoretical, we still see people in congress trying to expand area expand the rate of the United States. Earlier this year, senator Dianne Feinstein and richard were introduced the bill they call the compliance of Court Orders Act of 2016, why shouldnt we comply with court orders . The problem is that basically it says that Web Service Providers and technology deteriorates, telecommunications people must provide their technologies so that the government can get in where ever they want to. The problem is that among many other things, we cant be sure what the government will do with that information. Secondly, bad guys can also find those same back borders and disrupt the economy and innovation as well. I do suspect that if they even thought about it a little bit that they will wish they had used encryption. In any case, now to what i think is possibly the worst of ideas in all history and this includes communism. The precautionary principle. With which basically the proponents say its better safe than sorry. We shouldnt let any technologies improve until they are completely safe. This is one way to do it. I summarize it as never do anything for the first time. One perfect example of this and there are lots of examples unfortunately is the case of goldman rice. Golden rice is a Biotech Company and 15 years ago, that is enhanced by adding if you will their system that helps vitamin a deficiencies in companies that that is their basic food. And these people have been trying to get this to poor people in asia for a very long time. Its been stymied by opposition, by a lot of environmentalist groups but theyve been fighting this all the time. They have sent students to National Rice Research Institute to give up props and kill them off and that kind of thing. The good news is that in june 100 nobel Prize Winners sent an open letter to greenpeace excoriating this campaign, urging them to stop this and pointing out that by signing this technology, the World Health Organization estimates within a quarter of 1 million and 500,000 kids go blind every year because of vitamin a deficiency in poor countries and half the kids die within a year or two after that because vitamin a deficiency also interferes with your immune system to resist infections. The greatnews is that in this letter , the Greenpeace Campaign bordered on, i said bordering on a crime against humanity. This must stop but this is one example of how principle is deployed across the globe. And there are lots of people were in favor of this. One of my favorite is the university who wrote a book called a dangerous master how to Keep Technology from slipping beyond our control. Brenda wallach, the author of this book said that she is worried that quote, our incessant outpouring for groundbreaking discoveries and tools are raising eight storm that will soon be dangerously beyond our control. The question of the harvest book is where quote, humanity as a whole has the intelligence to navigate the perils of technological innovation. How we navigate this and a precaution, how do they do this . His solution is to create a Governance Coordinating Committee that will guide policymakers and the public. Committees would be for comprehensively coordinated development in this scientific field and industries that create, so this would be biotechnology, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, what have you. In other words, they would function as gatekeepers, giving permission were most likely not to develop and use technologies. The irony, wallach writes and i quote, moderated the adoption of technology. Moderate the adoption of technology. Not be done for ideological reasons. The idea of moderating progress is not itself ideological. In any case, those are just some cautions that i do have. I am worried about. I do think that the 10 reasons that are offered in johans book are more likely to come true than not and i would like to once again restore good taste in the face of the rest of the public in progress and johans book does a great deal in that direction and i heartily recommend it. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much. We now have some time, i would like to ask you to please raise your hand for a question and then wait for the microphone to get to you and if you could please tell us you are and make the question short and address it to a speaker. Hello. Hi, i am jake on a intern. I like your book financial fiasco. And one of the things, this is a question im asking every person here that is for free market, free trade is that the market is something visible that people can see but its difficult for others to trust them. However, its easy to trust the government because its visible, they can hear what the policies are and what their incentives are. So what is a method that we could have to make people trust government, . Thank you, thats a very good question. And of course thats the internal problem. In any election campaign, it seems like fewer people are interested in the slogan, i dont know how america is going to be great again. But if i could give you more freedom to experiment with various ideas, im sure some of you would come up with something thomas some amazing technologies and Business Models that would be wonderful and i have no idea which ones they are. They seem more interested in the kind of slogans that i will make this happen, trust me, im the big talk im here. I will make people do that. So its a problem of in a way, how we communicate this trust in markets and individuals rather than specific Political Forces. On the other hand, i dont see the problem of trust in peoples everyday activities. On the contrary, people do not have a problem going into a store and buying things from people theyve never seen and eating it, even though it might be poison. I can go here and i have to travel to another state and city and just get a car from arental for. Like showing my piece of plastic from sweden and its offline, its all perfect and it works out 99. 9 percent of all the cases and people trust the market in that regard and trust the rule of law. Its only when they make the shift into the kind of political system, a kind of Economic System they would like that they for some reason forget their principal experiences and the fact that they dislike and do not trust politicians they are voting for again and again and end up in this kind of constant search for an authority figure. Thats an internal Communications Problem and i think one of the most important things is to make people understand their own personal trust in the market and thats something they should generalize into when they are voting as well. I dont have a solution to that problem, i wish i did. Let me work on that and figure that out. What are the Major Concerns are is that this is a problem that bostitch came up with with the invisible hand. The scene and the unseen, an example where the policies are the thing that we see whereas all the other stuff that is working for us is exactly what you say, its invisible, it isnt seen. And i would have everybody read bastien every day. Yes. Ill try to get it right. Please speak up a little. My question is directed to mister johan norberg. I subscribed to a half glass half empty. You make a very cogent argument as to how things have improved worldwide but i would turn the question back on you. In this countrywe still have poverty and we still have hunger. And i ask you whether scandinavia has the same degree of poverty and hunger and why shouldnt our glaspie fuller . Im pro towards what they can get and the question is really about both. My own country swedenand our neighboring countries. And we have generally a high degree of equality, material equality than the United States. Even though on a lower material level than most other places. And i think all other things, if its the same thing we prefer people not to be in poverty and not to end up in difficult circumstances. But there is a difficult tradeoff as well and that one is, weve done that by increasing wages. De facto minimum wages because the state unions are very much in control of the labor markets and its a fairly generous welfare system. That means that it would be difficult to find an example of people in desperate poverty in sweden. People who cant make ends meet so they cannot be. On the other hand it also means that many of them are shut off from the labor market entirely. It means that they are socially excluded from the rest of society because they dont go up to a job in the morning and thats something we realize right now because we have a large recent refugee population in sweden. And weve created a society thats very good if you have the right level of education, if you are very productive and you know the language and everything. Then its easy to get a job and get a wage thats higher than the welfare requirements and things like that but if you dont, you are priced out of the market. If you have a productivity level thats around 80 percent of average, then your are priced out of the market so if your rise in unemployment, the rising social exclusion, it does not seem desperate poverty. But it means a terrible blow to selfesteem, to status in society in relation to your neighbors and even your children and that results in a kind of material desperation but a social desperation. Thats really quite problematic in sweden right now. So ill just leave those facts on the table and we can all sort of decide back and forth the cost and benefits of the various systems. One thing, i was puzzled because we know lots of people on the left right, scandinavia as an example of social mobility and equality and so forth. The facts are on the table that when i started looking into it, one is you look at the coefficient which is the amount of degree of inequality for the lowest bias. If you look at that for example with germany and france before taxes, they are much higher than the United States for taxes. They are quite comparable in denmark and scandinavia, just a little bit lower in those cases the quality by taxing the rich, essentially. The other side is that everybodys going social mobility is greater. You look at the 2000 population, i havent looked at these for art, the fact of the matter is that from getting to the lowest 10,002 highest percentile in denmark, you move from 20,000 a year to 65,000 per year. In the United States, its a journey of 25,000 figure two 160,000 a year, is harder to get 160,000 a year more americans do that so the top, if you want social mobility to go between percentiles, look at denmark but youre not going to get a lot of money out of that. Had something to complicate the picture even further about other scandinavian countries. I sometimes meet Bernie Sanders supporters who say the us should be more like sweden. Lets pick sweden because thats where i come from. I tell them in that case, you have to have more free trade than the United States. You have to have a more deregulated market, more open product market. Need to introduce School Vouchers so people are entitled to go to any kind of private school and keep the money and do that. You have to partially privatize the Social Security system. You have to abolish property taxes. You have to abolish taxes and a couple other things. When it comes to almost any area except this thing with taxation and specific labor market regulation, sweden and denmark are more economically free and the United States so its an open economy. Then you try to redistribute more of the results of that and again, i just leave that at the table for everybody including sanders supporters. Just a brief anecdote about that. This proscan Canadian Campaign at the same time, the protection has been worse. For donald trump. I tell Bernie Sanders supporters and anecdote of when president obama visited sweden. Because then he was approached by the three labor unions and they are socialists, they debate, one is pretty much thesocial democrat. And their message to president obama was, we want to talk about an important free trade and why we need more free trade, especially between europe and the United States. Roughly 12 of wealthy individuals in the United States have inherited their wealth. And denmark that figure is 25 , to roughly double the rate of the United States. So i recommended that research to you. Lets take a question undecided. On the side. I was listening to the presentation and the followon from his ending quote from star trek, do you see the Current System of the nationstate is some sort of impediment to the future progress . You sound like youre sort of one world globalist. You see the concept of the nationstate, i. E. The United States, as a detriment, a detrimental thing. Yeah, in relation to the United Federation of planets, right. We are not there yet. I dont think that we should have a world government. I think thats a bad idea. I dont really care where the lines are drawn but i think its incredibly important with some institutional competition so that we have many different political areas that have different rules and institutions so that we can see what works and what doesnt. And hopefully people will imitate the ones that great more progress and more human freedom. So im not in favor of abolishing nationstates in that sense, but i am opposed to the kind of tariffs, the kind of walls that are being built between countries so that people, citizens are banned or heavily regulated when they want to engage in peaceful capitalist acts between consenting adults. Basically trade, exchange, movement, all those things, which is something you can do even though youve nationstate. If they are open to individual freedom and Economic Freedom. Peter who founded the express as well as the university has a book some in the spirit of your book called abundance. This points to, my question concerns the audience for this kind of information. We have an audience of achievers, tech folks, bio hackers, all of these sorts of folks who love their work who are leading the progress, what at least in of Political Freedom and Economic Freedom to do what they love doing. Yet they tend to be kind of soft leftists because if you look at the gop they see donald trump and so when. Would this be a community to answer the question how do we get around the pessimism at all, that you could mobilize its one of the things people are excited about i this technology, even though you have the pessimists that ron pointed out quite well. I think thats a very good point. One thing you do see when it comes to optimists versus pessimists is that people do things are normally optimists, whereas those who do not, if they do not engage with innovation, with a technology, new markets and so on the only tendency the problems, as ron pointed out, the problems are often concentrated whereas the benefits often go to the whole of society. But if you feel like youre a driver behind these events and those things, then you more of a natural optimist in should be more in favor of more freedom to do things like that. I definitely think thats a group that should be mobilize more, and they dont know why that hasnt happened yet. Ron probably knows more these people than i do, so perhaps he has a better response. Actually im not sure i do have a better response. Its been a puzzle to me as well. Ive been covering biotechnology for over 30 years, and a lot of biotechnologists are really inherently precautionary. Part of its dim sum the fact that they did not want to commit the same quote crime of the physicist did with the development of the atomic bomb so they set up a system of precaution at the conference and the 1970s and it has followed from there. The truth is when you talk to people who are the real innovators as opposed to academic biotechnologists, they are quite frustrated about the system. Like it is set up that way. Now, i see unraveling now, one of the great things is that the National Academy of sciences recently had a meeting to discuss the amazing new crisper gene editing technology. Crisper, if you havent heard, will completely change the world in 10 years, the way you what i could recognize. Its going to be amazing. That is if we can get the precaution of people out. The greatness is the National Academy of sciences was asked to essentially been using the tech junkie for use in human beings and they said actually no, we need to go slow but we are not going to be in favor of a ban. So i see some cracks in that regard as well. But it is a race between technologists and the precautionary activism, and i dont know whos going to win that. Im hoping that the we can more good reasons to look forward to the future. Thats a great sequel book. Im from belgium and ive a question with regard to the refugee situation, some would call it the refugee crisis in europe. I Angela Merkel from murky jeremy has said we can make it, but lets suppose she would consult just that i foolishly launched the sense that i forgot to develop the arguments and now i have to address a crowd of worried people, very critical people, angry people. And she needs you to develop the arguments, a one pager, a set of arguments to calm them down, to put things in perspective. How would you respond to that . It would have to be a very wellpaid position for me to accept that, i think, because that would take some really hard work from other things. I think that the refugee crisis, and to think we should call it that because a lot of countries were really overwhelmed last year in europe by this influx from syria but also afghanistan and several other countries. And incredibly big extent and at the same time we have almost a planned economy in europe when it comes to any kind of reception in accepting new refugees. They are not allowed to work, not allowed to start working. Its a long asylum process. It could take two years before you know what you can stay or not. Until then youre in a government directed plays where you sit there all day, and everything is heavily regulated. Hate people who take care of everything from cleaning to preparing food, which is a strange thing, which gives people the impression that barely if you are refugee you should stop preparing your own food as well. You cant even clean your own house. So basically they are pacified in so many ways and they didnt get the kind of connection with societies that they need in order to be integrated. What do i tell anja merkle . First of all, i have to say that looked, the only thing that could make this work is people, they get a basic solidarity with the new societies they have come to and they only get that if there integrated by the labor market. If they start working, if you learn the language on the job, if the key difference and neighbors whom to interact with constantly and go to school so that they can start learning the language and get a taste of the kind of culture that they enter. If that happens i think theres a chance that they could be not just, well integrated but also very useful productive members of society. Weve got a demographic situation in europe thats disasters. We have no way of knowing how, i will get any kind of retirement or cell so skewed in the future because there are too few workers. We have huge problems in the health care sector, many of the low skill jobs where we dont have enough people. They should be able to fill this in. But the problem is weve got very high minimum wages, very high taxes. Its incredibly expensive to hire anyone to do anything, because its all done for very homogeneous societies where people of the same education, the same language, a lot of experience and so on. Then you can enter the labor market. But that means that its very easy to get your second job that you never get to first job. This is something thats difficult for domestically born young people as well. We have very high youth unemployment as well. Its not just immigrants and refugees. I would start telling Angela Merkel we have to do with that, we have to radically liberalized that the liberalized the labor market, radically change the system of taxation so that, i dont understand why we tax individual income at all. We should find, we should reduce taxes but we should find other tax bases as well if we are to deal with this thing. So basically she opened the external border for a while, but shes got that theres another border around the labor market and around society. So people end up in between, and thats a disaster, thats a nightmare, the thing that creates social exclusion and thats also what creates separation from society, and also some hatred against the society that put you in this situation and attract some people, a few people, not even close to a majority to radical islamist ideas, and thats incredibly dangerous. So if we opened the external border we have to open the internal border as well. Unfortunately we have run out of time. I know there are many more questions, but both of our speakers are going to stick around to sign books and to answer questions, and also please dont forget that lunch is served upstairs. Thank you very much for your attendance, and help me thank our speakers today. [applause] [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some authors recently featured on booktvs trend for our weekly Author Interview program. Created gradually over time through successful risktaking that bubbled up from a much larger pool of failed risktaking. I think we always have the option of we can tax and distribute more in the short run but we slow down the growth and in the long run look at the difference between the growth rate of the United States and europe, look at the difference between the income levels of the United States and japan. They get bigger and bigger and bigger, and the difference is get bigger and bigger, and the ability for the country to catch up, its unlikely they can catch up and lets we have a major shift in Technology Say to biology or Something Else besides really what we are heading towards consciousness with computers and internet. We have a big advantage that made we cant sustain for ever but we have a big competitive advantage today. You can watch all previous after words programs on our website, booktv. Org. Booktv as on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com booktv, or post a comment on my facebook page, facebook. Co facebook. Com . Good evening, everyone. My name is Christopher Barbuschak come on the library upstairs and up for the welcome yall to the city of fairfax regional library. Thank you for coming. Todays event is part of the 18th annual fall for the book festival. The festival runs through friday september 30, but be sure to pick up a program or visit fall for the book. Org for information about other events throughout the