Well red black girl festival. Held last month in brooklyn. It features all the discussions on james baldwins writings about black women. The full schedule is available at booktv. Org. And on Christmas Eve and christmas, mr. You are coverage of the recent miami book fair. Its four days of nonfiction office authors and books on booktv cspan2. Television for serious readers. , scheduling information, check your cable guides. Our website booktv. Org and our social media pages at booktv. Over the past 20 years, booktv discovered thousands of author event in book festival. His a portion of a recent program. If you give everybody vote, but i small percentage shares, everybody else will be angry and want to punish you with the political power they have. Populism is always alerting something is wrong. Pouring trump selection is a warning. To the rest of us, if this is going in the wrong direction. The population could not get the intention, they elected jump to break the case, in case of an average two. What you elect this one guy, maybe that will get your attention. You can watch this and the entirety, booktv. Org. The authors name in the search bar at the top of the page. Good morning. Im david, senior fellow at the heritage foundation. Our subject today is the socialist. Highly prevalence it is. Todays event is the fifth and the speakers serious we call free market, economical choice. It provides moral and a socialism and make the case for the majority of a free economy. I want to bring to your attention the next to event in the series, november 15, george of the recovery institute. Tech realism, information and mike will give a talk. Poverty is the real problem, capitalism is the only solution. Id like to bring to your attention, an event not part of the series but maybe of interest of you, november 16, gregory will be here to talk about his new book. Jeffersons treasure. I think he is seriously under estimated. He cut taxes, reduced national that by half, reformed finances. A sort of oneman omb. He was both jeffersons and medicines secretary of treasury and alexander hamilton. Its his statute that stands at the front of the treasury building. Onto todays event. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker today. Among the most defenders of the free economy in the United States today. Since the year 2000, economic teacher, and munication. Trade at harvard was as an economist, hes written 16 books and edited seven more, publish 300 and some articles. Economic theory, history, philosophy, feminism, ethics and law. He had the challenging task of teaching this. Professor of economics at the university of chicago. That was my good fortune she was also professor of economic history at the university of iowa. Her books are unusually written. When it comes to economics, isnt always a discipline that has the very finest running. Spending time with these books is always deeply edifying and a genuine pleasure. Our to bring a few to your attention. The era trilogy, three books, written over a period of about ten years. The most recent how ideas, in which the world. Why economics cant explain the modern world. The first, the purchase in the commerce, written in 2006. These books argue that new ideas for the Creighton Richmond from 1800s to the present, liberty and dignity for ordinary people. But to what she calls, trade tested betterment. She argues that materials such as capitalism, they are mistaken. It was explored by adam smith. She makes the case of virtue ethics. The middle class virtues and sound essential to our society success. You might find a value, significant written with stephen. The rhetoric of economics, knowledge and persuasion of economics. If you are so smart, the narrative of economic expertise second thought, miss and morals of u. S. Economic history. Last but not least, the applied theory of price. We use this in chicago. Its now Available Online for free at ww. Mccluskey. Com. If you havent had, if youve read a book, you should. In my judgment, is price. After her presentation, well have time for audience q a and a copy of her remarks were at least a better term, everyone who wanted after the event. Please join me in welcoming her. [applause] thank you very much. A speech defect which you will have to grow accustomed to. Still a free country even after yesterdays election. [laughter] we had to make a joke about the election. I intended to the third addition. I get the time from the other things i want to do. Among other things i want to do is, one of the core ideas in the trilogy that david mentioned, is to undermine the attractions of socialism. Socialism is a practice that tells my talk is socialism is ethical at age 16. Not at 26 for my own age. Seventysix. When i was 16, a child of the harvard professor, therefore upper middleclass, by birth, i was a socialist so to speak. It was the age of music so i w was, i called myself a dont biased socialist. I drink, so hell. The old joke is a someone who is not a socialist by age 16, has no heart. Someone who is still a socialist at age 26, has no brain. At age 16, what is the background i had, socialism looked you could say, was ethically defensible. If you grow up in a family and i think everyone did, you grow up in a socialist enterprise. The mom and the old traditional family which is slowly declini declining, was the central planner and indeed had her own homework factory. My grandmother could make all the girls clothing, could cook for 40 hours a week, everything from scratch so there was Economic Production in the home that she did and then her husband went off to be an electrician and contractor. The people in their and certainly in mine, my father would go off to the office and do god knows what. And then come home and, he would come with full like, men are on the whole school. That background makes for socialist. Still more for people like me who havent done, and honest in her entire life, ive been an academic life. If you go to college and live in a dorm as i did, you then go to graduate school and live in a dorm as i did. And get married and you have central planner can take care of you. And then you, and then you and then you. If your field is a history as mine sometimes is, youre going to emerge nation at 27 or something, someone whos always lived in families. Youre going to feel the market is this strange foreign intrusion. According to her need, now of course, if you grow up in a firm, its very americans do now, over 80 of americans were on farms, now its about 1 . As you know, where meat comes from and you know we say the value of money, you know your parents worry about the community, the price of homes or soybeans. If you grow up, as some of you surely did, over the shop, so to speak, with a Small Business from the ground floor and apartment upstairs where the family lived and you work as a child in the family, worth when you are a child, you had a paper route or Something Like that, there is variation in the organization with paper routes. Some of them are more entrepreneurial than others. Its no wonder considering those occupations, those families are declining in the american economy. Was particularly agriculture. Socialism survives. In peoples minds. Some peoples minds. We were speaking earlier about how strange it is. You see these kids being interviewed and i say honestly and they are not bad people, they are just saying honestly. I think we ought to try socialism. Socialism has never been tried. But change the system. People are always saying. Which is my own experience with changing the system, it does not work. One version of the golden rule is, under whichever, whatever system we have. It seems to me i wonder if you agree, that once political convictions can decrease, sometime in the 120s. Most people acquire their politics in their early 20s and dont ever change. He remarked once that as a youthful adolescent tribe kid, he was more than i was, he found it very hard to shift as he gradually did a sort of conservative. Its an ethical question, were dealing with this here, the age of reason in each of us and our lives, we are supposed to use reason. Its decidedly unethical, not to thinking about politics impose on our neighbors. Its striking in my experience being once a socialist, now a free market advocate. I call myself a humane libertarian or a bleeding heart libertarians. For a christian liberal. Its striking that my socialist friend, and i have a great many, with this reason. Resist the reasonable claims that this book that comes out of these speeches. The claims of reason against socialism. The claims of experience that would be historical. The people who advocate socialism now, im trying to say that Bernie Sanders and jeremy, both of them about my age, we share the same views in 1960. But they didnt change since then. Your speeches by Bernie Sanders and they found 1960s speeches and its striking that they havent learned from history at all. Jeremy, my friend the economist, praised chavez in venezuela in the coverage of the venezuelan catastrophe, its notable that the journalist, im sure innocently, theyre not bad, covered his book on a national disaster. Hurricanes. You couldnt get any food or medicine at the store and for some reason, you had to take wheelbarrows and money to buy a bed. If these social friends of mine are in fact most of them in 1890s ive noticed resistance to my three wonderful books which are available on amazon. Com. Cheap. What he waiting for . Have a theory of history. When i read that, i thought, great, now i dont need to read anything more. Not have the formula. We are all in a sense, about 100 years, evolved, weve all been uninterested, unpersuaded by the force of ideas. Whats strange about this fact, especially in the west, the people saying it say, i do something, all that matters i is my former colleague, in chicago, an acquaintance of mine, i called them both americas leading voter. They talk this way all the time. They were making speeches like im making now. Theres nothing strangely inconsistent about this materialist proposition but my friends are they were by the evidence. The evidence of reason. The circle evidence, economic evidence. I think one reason for this is that we progress to cover them all, assume people like most people in this room are evil. Theres an evil person next year. Which means you dont need to Pay Attention to what they say. If i why Pay Attention to hitler . An extreme case of this is the professor nancy mclean of duke university. Was astounding ignorance about a great liberal economist, attaching him for no good reas reason, interview anyone to do this once to do it with calhouns theories of racism. Im the enemy. She has a role in which she articulated this year which is that she will not speak to anyone whos accepted cook money. She wont speak to anyone for any university to accept his money. The problem with this is the university has accepted it. [laughter] the money from charles cook, so nancy cant speak to herself. [laughter] which perhaps expands why her book is so shockingly bad. We libertarians and conservatives by contrast, speak at least for me, libertarians, george mason, palmer, or for that matter, charles cook, assume that progressives who say socialism, or just misinformed. We teach them tariffs idiotic or that they are stopping for people come starting businesses is a bad idea, havent thought of that, you are right. Surely, but they dont. The evidence against socialism. People at the age of reason should be listening but dont. After theyve put away their natural and childish emotional toys, socialism by the way, the argument i made, about the family raised in a highly testable proposition. Sociality that i wish they would find out about. Ive argued in the trilogy that david mentioned, that the rise of income. Head, and the country today, we can probably call liberalism, free market and free minds, has since the 1800s, increased by 3000 . If you know theres a lot of anxiety these days about inequality, become part of the comp, the cancer on tv but in fact, it was for who benefited the most from the strategic increase income. If you ask, the people well informed, even employees or banks sometimes, of the great wrestling, he would ask people, how much do you think . Japan or finland, United States and even wellinformed people would say, one 100 , maybe. Maybe two 100 . You know, its all gone to the rich. For people having benefited. Even though poor people went in 1800 from people having not a, nothing to having large apartments, airconditioning, refrigerators. Most americans didnt have those. Certainly 100 years ago, they were well. Excellent healthcare by comparison to the 1900 when going to the doctor was dangerous. Then they think, one 100 or two 100 . No, its not. Its a factor of 30. I had the embarrassing task about two weeks ago, to an audience of old people, anthropologist. Explaining to them very in imminent, and apologists, i wont give his name, its embarrassing. He said afterward, i agreed with your claim that its a factor of 30 the olden days. You know, there is three the 3000 is wrong. I didnt say, or,. [laughter] thirtynine multiplied by 1 1002900 which is roughly 3000. I couldnt do it. He said quote all yeah, i see what you mean. [laughter] that fact is extremely important to acquire on your pulps. You should really get this into your head and heart and grasp that free markets have increas increased. Head by 3000 . Its fair to do it for the entire world. Theres no racial cultural reason why in africa they cant be as rich as the United States. If the cases of china and india show plainly, when i was young and a student of economic, i was told by my teachers, things are hopeless in china because they are all confusions. The other problem is they are all hindus are muslim which is maybe worse. Its hopeless, theyre just not going to grow. 1978, the economy from the Chinese Government started to introduce liberalism. In india, 1991, the Worlds Largest democracy, they started students. A growth five to 10 . They were 0 . Capita. Under what the indians call the life sharad, 1 . In a good year, 2 . A lot of social problem. It is since 1981 in india. The argument from our, i use that phrase because i do have progressive friends. I do love them. They say, it was caused by the government. It worries me but then i go through why it was not by the government. For example, i have a colleague who would say, the man of the left, a labor. I said the eight hour day was caused by laws. It wasnt caused by struggles on the picket line. It was caused and he was startled by this and didnt believe it, intentions. Of course it says so in the law. More than eight hours in the day. You conservatives, he called me. Of course, its untrue. We have an eight hour day law, people dont want to work more than eight hours a day. Indeed, for a long time, this standard workweek first. It went down from 12 to ten to eight. It seems to have frozen but it actually continued going down because people live longer, retirement, they go to school, the amount of time people spend not working, i and myself, i am retired. I retired in order to work. [laughter] its not because of laws but immensely increased conductivity of the economy. The effective sweater states which takes quite a while to emerge is partly because of a right to vote but it is also legal source. It is also because as our economy gets more rich . We feel we can use economic word, afford. More generally, wages by bargaining. Theres a theory on the left, speeches by politicians, that the boss has piles of gold in the back room. The job of a progressive is to extract the goals and give it to the workers. They believe this specially, there one labor law after another is imposed on french, the front economy. The idea that the only way workers are going to get better off is by going after the gold. Just not sure. Theyre determined by tripling it. The workers in amount of evidence for that is using the word overwhelming doesnt express strongly enough. It is gigantic. Why does this happen . If you are going to convince the friends socialism is not it, weve got to convince them that capitalism is. One of the troubles is, the word capitalism. Its a very, very front word. Economics, not since march, was never abused exactly. Capitalism was but since the late 19th century. Suggest very strongly to both the left and the liberals and conservatives that the modern history is about the accumulation of capital. I have many other friends who still believe this. Capitalism is necessary. As is the wall and private property. For this 3000 . Its not the spring of the wat watch. The metaphor here. The spring, i like to say make it grammatical. Our ideas. Ideas. The capital and rule of law and peace and whatever, are the gives or even the clock face that shows the result of the gears. Its not in any sense caused. I think we need to conquer this metaphor. I think its apt and i thinks focusing on what is important. What is important is a society in which ideas can force. As the austrian economist, ive been a socialist, Chicago School economist, social engineer, ive been everything. These are the discoveries that you look, they notice. They are as they said, the massive free lunches that made up 3000 . The idea of electric lights, the idea of cameras, the camera would have to be much larger than it is. The idea of projectors, nice would, all of that. That depends on the cheapening, and expecting expensive carpeting in the room, but still the mixup the chairs. Those are ideas. The idea of this is itself an idea. My answer would be, malcolm mccain, no relation i take it to nancy. In 1956, computerization. You have standardized steel boxes. Youve seen hundreds of them. 20 feet long, 40 feet long, on top of each other, put on strips, remember now 10040foot containers. Ship. At the highest level. 10040foot containers. Thats a lot of hundred car trains. Radically reduced the cost of transport for nonbook goods. At the same time, but curious, got larger and larger and larger. Now science was involved. The modern university in berlin. Combining the search and teaching. The ideas are not necessarily mechanical or electronic or whatever. They get tested. The keep altering what he mentioned, trade tests. Commercially tested. Thats the test. The test is, does the container make money . The left used socialist used the money to profit. Its a tax. Its a passage and its wonderful elementary book on economics. Suppose profit is a tax. The tax necessary, he says, even my socialist friends would agree. To call out the enterprise. Its about what . 50 of National Income . Maybe 20. Okay, its about that. Whereas, socialism, the tax on socialism, compared to east and west germany. South and north korea. 50 or more, which system do you want . The one with 15 or 20 tax or one with 50 or 90 tax . This commercially tested betterment made us rich and reasonably good. It didnt corrupt it. But the claim that has been coming in all cultures since the beginning. Since the beginning of specialization, there have been times there has been middlemen. They are always bad. Bankers. Bad, bad, bad. It says everyone else while buying from them. While taking loans from them. In the first book in the trilogy, i argued at lengths. Against this idea that commercially tested betterment is just essentially corrupting because as a ordination for me, what does it matter . I really believe that. If i thought that, if it actually calls for our souls, i would be a socialist. I would say you are wrong. Socialism is great, lets go for it. If i actually sought socialism would do a better job for the soul, and i think the evidence there that it doesnt. The 70 years of communism, but the ethics of ordinary russian. Its not just a high level stuff but containerization when the claim, and a 10000. Containers on a ship. He started small. Its also the ordinary people having a go. The one who decides to open a hairdressing salon and puts their heart and soul into it. The ordinary guy goes to the oil fields, boost to the oil fields. North dakota. We did this confidence come from . Its very striking how much they become countries like england or france or the United States or japan after 1800. How did this happen . It came from adam smith calls the obvious and simple plan, the liberal plan. Equality, liberty and justice. In which he meant equality of social standing, the kind of respect that all americans accord to each other or should. Liberty to open hairdressing salon or events, internet and equal justice before the law is in a proposition. Here i want to quarrel with some of you in the audience, might be traditional conservatives. We dont believe in equality. I dont believe in what i call frank cell inequality. After the event, cutting down. I do believe in equality in these incidents that adam smith spoke up, equal rights. At 26, you are supposed to know this kind of thing. Even though it works in most societies. Youre dividing up a piece of the obnoxious. If your friend said, i paid for the pizza, i should get most of the slices. Thats friendship destroying, you wouldnt want to do that. Among friends, all things are held in common. In his great book of the text that was it. That friend, strangers in great society. I brought a couple of accordion. Im trying for, slowly learning it. Because i wont practice. [laughter] how do you get to these skills . Practicing. They ought to know that in this society, you cant have this ability, paul said he who does not work, should not eat. He was complaining by correspondence that his former friend, messiah was about to come again. Why work if he comes tomorrow . The model of the month, fourth century on was to work is to pray. Is it ethical to go on with this . This apprehension, note, of course not. Is the ethical responsibility of the adults to know whats going on. We should know it when we vote or in business or in our marriages or whatever. What are the ethics i approve of . I think the best way to approach this is true virtual ethics. Its the oldest impulse about ethical thoughts. Its common east and west and south, you can try. Hinduism or buddhism, islam. It is, theres an old joke, advice about how to write well, how to write well. The good, then write naturally. Be good and right naturally. Im suggesting that the main virtues proving justice, coura courage, faithful but love the greatest of these is love. Libraries of cultural products in each of them. Should be models for behavior. They should be our guides, not the expect rules that became unsurprisingly popular in the 18th century. Abstract rules like contract. Justice elevated to one ethical principle. Or jeremy, elevated to one. Adam smith said, when i do this in russia i do it the other way. [laughter] as adam smith said in his book, which you must read, in the edition. The behavior should be the virtues arranged together. If all you have in your heart is justice, you lack love. Its all you have in your heart in your love, you lack justice. With a summary of how these rules turnout, a combination of heritage and liberal, abraham, promise. In all of avalon. Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you. This negative form is like the libertarian. Its masculine. Leave me alone. Dont cry me. I have economy. Autonomy. Another jewish person for this, do unto others what you would have them do unto you. This positive way of saying it, i dont want to make sanctions start here, be a good samaritan. Dont cross violators sides. Be nice. I think we need both. I think in socialist society, we will not have this. You need to live in a free society does with everybody or advocates. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much. We have time for some questions. We have folks that are going to go around the room with microphones. Please give your name and your institutional affiliation before you ask your question and try to keep your question brief. Yes maam. Simone from newtown dynasty television. I have three questions. First, one by one, right. Thank you so much. My first question, what do you think is the deepest flaw of socialism and what is the cause of that flaw . Well the deepest flaw is the notion that an economy can be run from the top down. This is the point that hyatt made and lots of other people and when what was her name, martha retired from the head of the federal Drug Administration a reporter was delighted that hamburg had been in charge of 20 of the american economy. I think 20 , one person, food and drugs and its a persistent error that the economy is easy. Thats another of the socialist actions. Its easy to do. We dont need discovery. We dont need to learn if the neighborhood needs another hairdressing salon. What is the second question . This is the followup from the first question. Why is the top down economy top down from the top. Why is this wrong . Theres a world in an alternate universe which top down economy is fine and indeed as i said in a family thats how its managed, top down. The confusion of the mandate of the heaven being the father of the nation which occurs everywhere is the source of the problem. People believe that they can take the model of the family and apply it to a whole society and as i said from the point of a view of a 16yearold who doesnt know anything but its pretty sure she does, im you sure she knows everything it sounds fine but indeed anyone with any experience in life and those of family cant recover very well. Think of your offspring come your children. Think of mine who havent spoken to me for 22 years. So you were saying it was proven wrong . Yeah, it was proven wrong because there is no logical proof. This is an empirical fact. Thats why comes with maturity in the case of Bernie Sanders it didnt but thats okay. It comes with maturity or reading. You open your mind. It didnt work out very well in the soviet union. Even ultimately its empirical. And indeed that is how the socialists in the social calculation debate of the 1920s and 30s took it. They took it as a challenge to get more computers to get smarter and smarter people at the center and then everything would be fine. I have a friend a colleague in iowa who was asked to go one of the soviet republics to advise them and transported agricultural goods. He said look we have trucks and Grain Elevators and barges and so forth and someone in the audience said but who is the commissar . Who is in charge . And gary said no one is in charge. They stopped believing him. They thought he was hiding a state secret. Whats the third one . He had his hand up earlier, this guy did. Im pat mackler and i worked for you used the term anarchism and i wonder those. To what extent is the charm of socialism a feeling by people that somehow they could he protect it from somebody else is going to disrupt them. Thats absolutely true. And its evident, it was evident yesterday and in the appeal this is something that Bernie Sanders and trump of course agree on, protectionism. And i understand that the disturbances of new industries of what was terrifyingly called creative destruction. He borrowed it from someone else it comes from progress, not foam neoliberalism or sneaky chinese are trying to sell us hammers and expensively or Something Like that or mexicans auto parts. Its very irritating when they do that. It doesnt come from those. It comes from progress in speaking of the socialist calculation debate all in lie central planner with order. And always central planner would allow the chinese and now the yeatman mise before the japanese before that the germans to specialize in lowwage industries and export to us. The central plan all wood under ideal socialism so its progress that they are abject into, not neoliberalism. This is very clear in hungary where hungarian agriculture is not a good prospect for the future of hungary. My question is do you think the free market and socialism and when i say socialism, i mean socialist ideas such as universal health care and free education, do you think they are mutually exclusive . No, i dont think so. I think that education, at least elementary education, should be subsidized by taxes on you and me. Of course, paying for it isnt the same thing as providing it. As you know, theres just a deep confusion about this. People say oh, well, weve got to have elementary education. All right. Im willing to be taxed to provide it, because i dont think poor people will do enough if its not free but i want it to be free. I want it to be free. The same thing holds in a more radical way for roads. Whenever you speak to a convinced status which is a more comprehensive term which certainly covers socialism, they say what, dont you want roads . They imagine a world in which suddenly all the roads disappear, and i say yeah, i want roads but i want them to be provided privately, as they were in the United States and britain in the 18th and early 19th century. Then in a way that would make a very interesting dissertation in history, they became defined as public goods. Its a piece of municipal socialism. Now, its trivial for roads to be owned privately. You put a transponder in your vehicle, you can pay for the roads the way you pay for your gas bill. But its very hard to get people to change. In ireland, theres a proposal which sounds very reasonable even in such a wet place to meter water, okay . Meter water. This has become an immense political issue in ireland. The irish say to hell with that, i dont want my water metered, i want to run it 24 hours a day as long as i want, go away. Well, its the idealogical battle on points like this that we need to win. And won. Heres the cheerful news. We did win once. Henry david thoreau, theres a sensationally good biography, i cant remember her name, from the university of chicago press. Read it. Skip the first chapter. But he said i fervently support the proposition that that government is best that governs least. He was not a socialist. Yes, dear. Hi. Im with heritage. I thought it was very interesting what you had to say about the nuclear family. I also wonder, though, do we come is altruism innate, do we come with some altruism that over experience, becomes tempered . We do. Humans among the great apes by actual careful experiment, humans are unusually cooperative. There have been many, many experiments showing this between chimpanzees, chimpanzees are the nicest of the two, and gorillas. We cooperate all the time. I think its inclined with language. But what we need to convince people of is that specialization and ownership of property and its outcome results in massive cooperation. I said, i didnt quite finish my tale about buying my accordion. My little accordion, trying to learn it. I forgot to give you the punch line, which is i bought this accordion from czecho slovakia. Its a beautiful instrument. I just wish i could play it. Well, im supposed to make my own accordion . In fact, the logical reduction of protectionism of any sort is all right, lets protect illinois, erect barriers. All right, chicago. All right, printers row. All right, my own house. Then ill have plenty of jobs. So yes, cooperation. Heres another version of that point. You always hear enterprises called well, nonprofit enterprises are always identified as being nonprofit. As though there was something especially virtuous, a presumption of virtue unless theyre called the heritage foundation, in nonprofit institutions, but come on. This system of markets is the most altruistic ever designed. People do work for each other incessantly. I get very annoyed, whats become the current cant about admiring people for their military service, and they do it on msnbc as much as on fox news. Thank you for your service. What are you talking about . Someone who makes toothbrushes is doing you a service. Stop it. Sorry. I get all excited about this. Is there a question over here . We dont want to ignore the left. Competitive enterprises. Thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here. You talk here about innovation and in your writing you say what changed life really in the 19th and early 20th century when innovation was one phenomenon drove it was instead of crackpots, all of a sudden they were visionaries. What was, i have my own thoughts about this, but what do you think was responsible for this and is there hope in that you could still get a progressive admiring steve jobs, they want to redistribute his wealth but they still admire the invention, the technology, the innovator. Well, the sort of characteristic figure of this is Benjamin Franklin, who held only one patent in his life, though he invented a whole bunch of things, and at age 43, having become the most successful printer in the colonies, he sold his business and became a public inve inventor who then wanted to be a gentleman, very much in the 18th century sense. So he was no, you know, he wanted to climb the existing hierarchy. But thats right, its a change in attitude towards Benjamin Franklin that matters. See, people have only read the titles of my books, actually the title of the first of the trilogy think that i mean that there was a change in that Business People became more virtuous in the 18th century, say. Its the same way they feel if they havent read any of my books on economics, they think im advocating more fancy language in economics. Im saying that theres a change in social attitudes. Now, why, you ask. You evidently havent read the third book of the trilogy because thats where i answer it. You must, you must run down and get it. Thank you, dear. It says the causes were acciden accidents, nothing deep about europe. My argument is not as so many of my conservative friends want to make it, a story of the deep superiority of people, i call them melonin challenged people. Its not about the deep innovativeness of europe which wasnt. The most Innovative Society in the world was china. It had the best ships, had the best agriculture, the best science, the best mathematics, the best whatever you want to talk about. The best painting. China. No, it was the accidents of a whole bunch of accidents, not just one, the protestant reformation, the dutch revolt against spain. Both of them reasonably successful. The english civil war, 1640s, and its followon in the 1650s. The great, the glorious revolution, the american revolution, the failed dutch revolution and the french revolution. All of these accidentally made ordinary people bold. Think protestantism. Its not my protestantism which is anglican or lutherans, socalled magisterial reformation which kept the hierarchy in the church. My place is chosen by the bishop. But congregationalism, where as its name implies, the congregation chooses the minister or still more radically coming out of the 1640s in england, the society of friends, the quakers, in which no one is the minister and women are allowed to speak in the meeting. And one after another of the dutch, the northern dutch, so to speak, defeat the military hegemon of the 16th and early 17th century, this gives them the idea they can have a go. And this having a go is crucial. Whos next . Thank you. Im Dave Rabinowitz and im retired. So am i. Good thing, isnt it . Worth waiting for. I would like to get to your definition of socialism. As i under stand it, in capitalism everything is owned by somebody. The theme of capitalism is feudalism where everything is owned by one person. In capitalism, if you own a house, you step off your property, youre on somebody elses property. They can charge you to use it trespass. Right. As soon as you start having public highways, roads and stuff like that, then youre socialist. So basically, the situation we live in now is socialism, where you have a mixture of public and private property. I agree. And when everything becomes public property or community property, thats communism. In theory, communism is the last stage. Communism is when everything is publicly owned. Owned by the commune. In state communism, everything is owned by the state and if the state is controlled by one person, then its not really communism, its feudalism. One person owns everything. So the soviet union was not really communist. It was feudal. I agree. I agree. Try to keep it to a question. My question i dont actually agree with that analysis, although it has moments with which i agree. That was what i was going to ask. I think getting back about the accidents of europe, was basically the end of feudalism where it wasnt all owned by one person. Thats wrong. Okay. Thats what i want to ask you. Heres the key point. Correct me. One of the many reasons i dont like the word capitalism is that people think its a stage of history. You know, were all marxist now. And thats wrong. Ownership, property, markets, are pervasive in Human Society and always have been. One of the earliest archeological sites is the cave in south africa and at the time, the area where these people lived was 100 miles from the seashore and yet they found at 70,000bce they found a necklace made of seashells. Now, they didnt get it by walking 100 miles, then walking 100 miles back. They must have been trading and its dangerous in such circumstances to walk over to another hunter gatherers area. Youre liable to get in trouble. Thats one of the earliest but there are many, many others. So not true that exchange or property is new. Property is, in fact, characteristic of some species of butterflies who will take up a position in a sunny area of a forest and defend it against other butterflies. Property is commonplace in the animal world and even in the vegetable world. So this whole idea that theres something new about socalled capitalism is wrong. Its deeply mistaken. What is new is innovism. What is new in world making is the incredible amount of innovation. Thats new. Thats what we need to explain, not this matter of the stages of history which is wrong and mistaken. Time for one more question. The young lady in the back. Thank you for your time. Im with the institute for humane studies. I have a question. So the economist Heather Cowan and Jason Brennan have recently written about how extremely capitalistic places like california tend to overestimate a virtue signal even when they benefit a lot from the market so they tend to vote toward more social policies. I was wondering if you could talk a little about that, whan effect that has, very capitalistic economies well, you know, all we can do, we cant take them out and shoot them. We cant send them to Chinese Government reeducation camps as the Chinese Governments doing on a massive scale as we speak with the uighurs. We cant do that. All we can do is preach to them. Actually, probably better than academics like me preaching to them is popular culture. Theres a great movie called joy about joy mangano, inventor of the selfsqueezing mop. Its terrifically basically proinnovism tale. Its really about innovation. About the same time there was a very good movie called the founder about ray crock who had failed in business over and over and over again, then figured out you could take the mcdonalds brothers model of Assembly Line production of hamburgers. I mean, i was watching a hamburger guy this morning, had to get breakfast at the train station and it was wonderful to watch him, but of course, he couldnt do the volume that an Assembly Line can and that was their discovery. Okay, look, more rock music with free market themes, i think Country Music. Im not much of a Country Music fan. I like it but i dont know much about it. I think Country Music is a really good place to look for proinnovit ishgs proinnovism, promarket things. What happens in Country Music, when you run a Country Music tune backwards, the guy gets back his girl, his gun and his pick pickup. But its popular culture. Thats where the rubber meets the road, to use a Country Music expression. Thats where it is. And it always has been. Ideologies are formed in the high and low culture. Theyre not formed, you know, look, hollywood produces endless anti or prosocialist movies. Actually, heres whats so absurd about it. Anticor anticorporatist movies with Corporate Officers hanging from the ceilings. Its ridiculous. Well, thank you all for coming. [ applause ] if you would like a copy of the outline, i will leave it here. One final reminder, the next event in the series is november 15th. George gilder speaking on capitalism. Thanks again. Cspan launched book tv 20 years ago on cspan 2. Since then we have covered more than 300 book festivals spanning more than 1,000 weekends. In 2010, political satirist p. J. Orourke weighed in on the state of american politics. We should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word free in english is not in bondage. The most meaningful thing about freedom is that mankind has a sickening history of slavery. Now, here in america, we have freedom because we have rights, but the same way we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights. There are two kinds of rights. Political scientists call them positive rights and negative rights. Sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. I call them get out of here rights and give me rights. Politicians are always telling us about our gimme rights, especially the politician weve got in the white house right now, as in gimme some health care insurance, you know. You know, our bill of rights doesnt mention any gimme rights. Our bill of rights is all about our freedom to say i have got god, guns and a big damn mouth and if the jury finds me guilty, the judge will go my bail. This is a get out of here right, our right to be left alone, our freedom from interference, usually from government. Watch this and all other book tv programs from the past 20 years at booktv. Org. Type the authors name and the word book in if search bar at the top of the page. Book tv attended the 2018 National Press clubs book fair to speak with nonfiction authors including grace Kennan Warnecke who talked about growing up as the daughter of diplomat and historian george kennan. Grace Kennan Warnecke, author of daughter of the cold war and daughter of george kennan. Can you tell us about your childhood . My childhood was constant motion. We moved all the time. I spoke five languages before i was 12, and i never went to the same school twice until the 11th grade