Transcripts For CSPAN2 Progress 20161105

Then at 10 00 p. M. Eastern time, on book tvs after words program, capital Founding Partner discusses income inequality with the former chair of the council of economic advisers during the bush administration. We wrap up in prime time at 11 00 p. M. Chuck collins will be the author hes the greatgrandson of meatpacker oscar meyer and he talks about wealth inequality and his decision to give away much of his inheritance. Of morning welcome to the Cato Institute. I am a senior policy analyst and also editor of Human Progress which is an educational website that tries to put together as many statistics as human wellbeing as possible in order to present to our users and our more real picture of the world than the headlines would suggest thinking about the headlines, it is perhaps an understatement to say that we live in an era of great pessimism. This pessimism is not distributed evenly across the world. It is felt very acutely in many western democracies including ours here in the United States. Some three quarters of americans believe that the United States is going in the wrong direction. The choices that the electorate will be presented with come november exaggerate, rather than suit the National Feeling of impending doom. Americans feel poor even though our gdp. Capita has never been higher. We feel less safe even though International Conflict have almost disappeared and threats from terrorism are extremely rare. Overall Life Expectancy is at an alltime high. Progress is being made in curing cancer, alzheimers and hivaids globally, the the speed of improvements in human wellbeing is staggering. Fuel embrace capitalism. Chinese income has grown by 900 in my lifetime. During that time, indian Life Expectancy rose by a third from 52 years 68 years. If for all the good news, it is pervasive doom and pessimism is widespread, the gap between the perception is not new. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached its best days. On what principle is it that we see nothing but improvement behind us yet we expect nothing but deterioration i had of us. Luckily, a small but merry group of optimists have been trying to cheer us up. They include the late julian simon, the Cato Institute, Charles Kenny and others and our two speakers today. Johan is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and focuses on globalization, entrepreneurship and double liberty. Is the author and editor of several books, books exploring libertarian ideas and how americas infatuation with Home Ownership and easy money create the economy crisis. His book, global capitalism which was published in 2001 was then published in 20 different countries. He was previously at the swedish think tank in 2003 and 2005. [inaudible] he received his masters degree from chacon university and today he is here to present his new book and talk about it. Its called progress, ten reasons to look forward to the future. Please help me welcome him. [applause] thank you and thank you for keeping Human Progress at work and my daily dose. [inaudible] im happen to happy to have him joining me here on stage. He explains to me once, and i think he writes about this in his latest book that when he wrote a book on Human Progress, his agent said look, this book will make us some money, but if you had written a book outlining why the world will end very shortly, then we would both be richmond. So why do you write a book on progress . With all the trouble in the world, why do i write a book about reasons to look forward to the future. Three reasons. One, because it happens. Its one of the most important things that ever happened to mankind. Two, no one believes me when i tell them thats the case, and three, its dangerous that they dont. Pessimism is a powerful political force. Let me start with what happened and how it happens. This is the gdp. Capita around the world over the last 2000 years. We can see that not much happened. Until the early 19th century when suddenly we saw an explosion of growth. In 1820, then ounce that there wasnt much wealth around in the world. Even the richest countries suffered from desperate poverty. If we had shared all the wealth that existed, the average person around the world would have a gdp. Capita lower than the. Capita of mozambique. It made this possible. The eradication of poverty around the world over the last 200 years. 200 years ago, 19 of, 19 of the World Population lived in extreme poverty, around less than 2. Day of consumption adjusted for inflation, and budgeting. Today, its less than 10 . Since 1990, this has accelerated. In 1990, 7 of the World Population lived in extreme poverty. Today its around 9 . That means for for the first time in world history, the absolute number of poor people has been reduced as well. For the First Time Since the 1800s, we have seen fewer people him a we have fewer People Living in extreme poverty today than in 1800 spread that might not sound like much progress, but if you consider the broken World Population, it is tremendous progress. In 1800 theyre only 60 Million People around the world who did not live in extreme poverty. Today, ask. 5 billion people do. This is, as i pointed out accelerated since 1990. Over that time the population grew by around 2 billion people and yet the absolute number of extremely poor was reduced by 1. 25 billion people which means every minute that we talk about the subject, another 100 people rise out of extreme poverty. Mankind has never ever seen that kind of progress. Here is another graph that summarizes the changes that have taken place over the last few hundred years. Life expectancy. That continues to climb. It means we have done something right when it comes to health, nutrition and lifestyle. In 1900s, the average Life Expectancy around the world was 31 years. Today, amazingly, it is 71 years in the year 1800, no country, nowhere had a Life Expectancy higher than 40 years. Today, there is not a single country anywhere with a Life Expectancy shorter than 40. This continues every day around the world, not for for every group. There are always outliers but Life Expectancy continues nonetheless. The country with best practice, has increased Life Expectancy by three months every year for the past 140 years. That continues. We can celebrate every birthday by just approaching death by nine months rather than one year this because of the reduction in size mythology in many subsaharan african countries. This has resulted in the largest increase of Life Expectancy. Some places have increased it by ten years over the past ten years. That means collectively you can say that every person got ten years older but none of them approached death by a single day those new years are also good years. As they reviewed the literature thats pointed out, present evidence suggests that people are not only living longer than they did previously, but also they are living longer with less disability. All those dates are quite impressive over the past 200 years, years, but whats even more impressive in the last few years, in the last 25 years, this is a summary graph over hunger, property, and the six leading pollutants in britain. I use britain because it was originally published there, but if we had had the United States there, it would have been even more impressive. You can see all those things indexed so that 100 is the level in 1990 has been. [inaudible] when it comes to wealth, we created as much increase in gdp. Capita in the past 30 years as we have in the 30,000 years before. And yet, this does not come across as good news to everybody in the western world, in western europe and in the United States, a lot of people look at these data and think that they have lost out, at least relatively, they are the losers of globalization. Something strange happened in the years since i wrote the book in 2003i kind of wrote the same book about Human Progress and free markets and free trade could benefit others. At that time, the proponents were the and take Globalization Movement who thought that free trade, multinational companies, investments, market capitalism, that might benefit us, the rich in the richest countries but there would be losers, poor people in poor countries who would be exploited would see their life and Living Standards deteriorate. I think its fair to say that these 13 years have proved them wrong. It was a tremendous boom to their Living Standards and a lot of people expect that. Then they say they set oh, we were wrong thinking they would lose out from capitalism. They won big time which must mean that we are the losers in rich countries but they still believe that the economy and the World Economy is a game in which people can only gain if someone else loses. A kind of preadam smith view of the economy where trade does not benefit both parties to the agreement. Thats a very dangerous assumption that leads to a search for a scapegoat. This is a graph that you might scene, a socalled elephant graph of average. Capita and Household Income of each group around the world. Between 1988 and 2008. If they. [inaudible] it looks a bit like an elephant. You can see the poor in the world have increased dramatically over the past 25 years by 40 80 . You also see the trunk as raised because the superrich in the world, the 1 for the 2 have also benefited tremendously. Look at what is the middle class in europe. People who didnt see any kind of Income Growth over the aeros 20 years. That was the graph that was presented around the world, the graph that explains globalization and the losers of globalization. Those who vote for donald trump or Bernie Sanders. It is a powerful graph but its wrong it was presented recently by the foundation and this is a combination that people move through these percentiles, countries shift, population Growth Growth in some places but not others means that the percentile is not the same people. It used to be the case in 1988. For three reasons. First, the countries in this data shifted dramatically. There wasnt data for a lot of these countries but there were in 2008. Countries like vietnam, congo, russia were added. That lowers the Income Growth in every percentile basically because you can add countries. You can see the old elephant graph is the blue one, the yellow dotted line is the one if we keep the countries in the sample constant over these years. Then you can see that the western middle class increased their Income Growth from 0 to 10 . The red line compensates for Something Else that population growth was bigger in poor countries than in rich countries which means that a lot of people that they took a larger percentile in asia pushed the western middle class from the lower percentile into the higher one so what used to be the 80th and 90th percentile of western middle class people were replaced by the richest people in china. They are still poor, some 60 as rich as the western middle class which means it looks like Income Growth is coming down in those areas as well, but thats more an allusion that comes from population growth. If you keep population growth, if you pretend that the population is stable over these years, the elephant graph shifts to the redline instead and then its not 0 Income Growth, its a 25 Income Growth. But then, Something Else interesting happens there are a few countries that stagnated they made more progress after 2008 but thats not relevant for this graph which only goes to 2008. They dont they dont live in Eastern Europe or japan. They just for that as well and look at a new version. You can see a constant population we have the redline instead where the percentile that we talk about increased income by 40 over these 20 years. We dont have to bother about the yellow one. There has been an increase in incomes in western countries for western middle classes as well, but i also have to point out thats not the most important thing. The most important thing is not what you have in your wallet, but the purchasing power and the technology at your disposal. Thats much more important than income. Weve seen progress in other areas. Cleaner air, with seen more than half the leading pollutants that affects your lungs. Crime rate, homicide rate has been cut in half including Better Technology and another ten years of Life Expectancy. Those are the loop losers of globalization, that we need to reconsider what we mean by loser what is progress . What does it mean . To me, it means that we can do more things today than we could before. We know more things, we are able to create more things. As a great thinker, progress is not made by early risers, its made by lazy man looking for easier ways to do things. We can solve more problems, we can deal with more of our problems, we can satisfy more of our ambition and more of our demands. We do that by exploring and thereby finding better knowledge about the way things work in producing new innovations in technology, artificial fertilizers and machines that make us more productive, but its not just that we explore and experiment, but its also that we change the result of this. Trade, communication, movements over borders which means we can use knowledge that we do not have ourselves. That means we need freedom, freedom to think, freaking to be innovative, freedom to implement your ideas and freedom to trade across borders. We need it. Its no coincidence that this began to happen in Northern Europe and China Vietnam after they began to open up their economies. More people than ever and now contribute to this progress because they have access to more knowledge than ever and they are freer to experiment with those ideas and exchange it with other people. Human being, the human brain is the ultimate resource. That is also something that is reproducible. The human brain is a beautiful thing that happens between consenting adults. The problem is, almost no one believes it. Lets go back to this graph about Human Progress since 1990 and all all of those areas and all of those dimensions. I posted this on twitter a few weeks ago to tell the world, look, this is the world in one graph. Wire we complaining . This is what happens to the world did one of the first responses i got was this from a british woman who retweeted this and said oh my god, this reflects my hell anna hancock position. She read it upside down. She thought Child Mortality had doubled them pollution and illiteracy had doubled around the world. I asked her, how did you get that impression and she responded i do pay close attention to the news and to the media. I follow what happened in the world and i read about the floods in the war and the famine and thats true. That is something that happens, but it also means she misses out on the great trend around the world. And so, all the gallup show that people are pessimists. X of americans think the world is becoming a better place. More people believe in ghosts than ufo and progress. Global poverty had doubled or remain the same. Only 5 of americans. [inaudible] post said that it was stable or had doubled. You cannot call this ignorance if you cant see a random choice we must have inaccurate assumptions about the world based on some misleading or outdated information about the world. As this british woman, most people get it from the media, from the headlines, from from the breaking news. I picked this illustration from a newspaper, i love that headline because it says total chaos everywhere. Thousands of people were stuck because of this total chaos everywhere. An airplane accident is not is news. Airplanes taking off is not. Weve seen flights increase tenfold and yet accidents have not. Thats not news, that statistics if there were news about flights landing safely it would mean it was a strange occurrence to be news. The problem is, when we only hear about those accidents and those disasters, that we think this is the only thing that goes on in the world. Tens of thousands of people in Northern Nigeria are now threatened by chronic undernourishment and famine. Thats correct. That happens and we need to know about that, but i have never read a story about the fact that 8 million nigerians were liberated for chronic undernourishment over the past 25 years because thats not the kind of shocking instantaneous thing that makes the news. Its not really about the media or the journalists that bad news sells. When the media is not there, we actually invent stories and rumors that are so it sounds like we are to blame. It doesnt sell good news. We need something dramatic and shocking to sell the news. I think this is because we are genetically predisposed to Pay Attention to bad things. Bad is stronger than good because the bad things could be a threat to our survival. Our forefathers who were a bit worried and didnt relax and looked anxiously toward the horizons, they probably survived more often than others so they passed on their genes to us but also their stress hormones in 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 our childhood or even before that. These are some scenes from a brilliant french movie in 1959 about a man who long for the good old days where everything was wonderful. But then he is there and he thinks its pretty good but then he needs an old man that tells him he should of been there. Life was much better. Then he travels back in time to that era and its okay and the man tells a no no, you should have been in in that era when i grew up. That was the good old days so he travels back to that time as well. [inaudible] everybody has always thought that the good old days were days pass. Interestingly when i asked people about that, if this this is not the golden era, when will society at its most harmonious time and they happen to mention the era when they grew up. My thought about this is because of the baby boom retiring. [inaudible] we had the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation, but we know that we solve those problems. We know that we got through those bad old days so now we can think back when things were exciting because we were young and the future was full of promise and our parents were burdened with all the difficult decisions. They paid the bills and were worried about all the things could happen to their kids. Now as we grow up, we begin to think this is not that bad. We shift and we take on new responsibilities. We think it goes on everywhere. Its not us, its the world. If we have that genetic programming where we have attention on everything bad that could happen or will happen, and you think that this culture, the best days are behind us and you think about the third thing, the global media, 24 hours a day that looks at everything around the world, then we have more bad things to take into considerations. Even though homicide rates decline, theres always always a serial murderer on the loose somewhere. There is always a war going on somewhere. Those bad things will always stop the news cycle even though the risk has declined by almost 99 over the last 100 years years. There are always people dying a Natural Disaster and that will top the new cycle everywhere and then we get the impression that this is the every day appearance for most people around the world add to that, social media, twitter, facebook, instagram and all those places where anyone can add their particular perspective on the world. What you share with people yourself . Most often, its something horrific, something dramatic, something shocking. Human suffering is not new, but cell phone cameras are. Then it means that we can see anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world instantaneously. We can see it when it happens and know whether people will survive or not. That doesnt just trigger our fear, it triggers our fight or flight reaction. Often it some weirdo in a city whose name i cant even pronounce or did something stupid and i think i have to tell people about the stupid thing. Everybody does the same thing. We wake up in the morning and hear about all those weirdos, all those people doing bad things and we think people are like that but theyre not. Thats why were sharing it. [inaudible] with the rise of social media, this is accelerating. We Pay Attention to all those bad things we 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 serious ambitions to run for president of the United States, this country is a hellhole and were going down fast, and of quote. That changes perspective on the world. If you look at his voters, compared to 50 years ago life in the u. S. Is worst. But so does Bernie Sanders voters because its the same thing. The leftist is populist. They also think its a hellhole. Its the inequality, its rising sea sea levels, global warming, disasters and so on. Hillary clinton 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. This is the problem, fear is the health of the state. They can stifle progress and block the technology and block trade if they like. The old joke, if the opposite of pro is con, what is the opposite of progress . [laughter] elections have always been like this. You always threaten if the other guy wins the well will run dry and the sun will not rise tomorrow. The world is dangerous. It is dangerous and if its dangerous, if the world is falling apart, you need a strongman or a strong woman to set things right. If a martian tried to understand what goes on on planet earth by listening to a speech by donald trump or Bernie Sanders or anyone else, he would think that everything is on fire on planet earth because they only talk like violence is spiraling out of control, inequality, poverty is rising where 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. If people are left to their own devices and create a lot of progress, in that case we can have a lot of freedom. 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 a reflex, they have pointed out. [inaudible] its a loaded term but some sort of fate, some sort of interest in blocking peoples freedom, blocking globalization, controlling people people rather than setting them free, that kind of authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. Its more like a predisposition that a lot of people have and it can be triggered and it should be triggered when people think that their way of life is threatened and people like them is being threatened by external forces or by chaos. Thats what the authoritarian dynamic sets in. When people read stories about things going wrong in society, they become more authoritarian in other spheres in responding to other questions that are not related at all to the very thing that went wrong and that fake story which means we all sort of end up in this protective mode when we think things are going wrong. If you only see horror and horrible people, if you wake up and listen to the breaking news, what watch your twitter feed and you find out that theres only weirdos out there set on destroying your way of life you begin to vote for the strongman or the big government. I wrote this book not out of complacency, not as a way of telling people that if everything is in order we dont have to bother about these things, lets go home and have 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 happens because people were given more freedom to explore, to experiment experiment and to exchange the results of that. If we have Political Forces of power that blocks those freedoms, those individual liberties and Economic Freedoms, then we will see less progress in the future so we have something to fear and that is fear itself. The risk that fear will become a selffulfilling prophecy and it will be self generating because if we think there are only problems out there, only stagnation that we will block the reforms. The new technologies, the freetrade performs to create more progress and then we will see more stagnation and will would be more fearful in the future and will be more difficult to push through the reforms that we need to make progress. It could happen. We can block progress like that. It has happened before and it can definitely happen again. More than that, its a boring way to spend your life, to to stand in the way of other peoples progress. To conclude, in the words of another one of my intellectual heroes, that great thinker, captain james kirk of the enterprise, only a fool stands in the way of Human Progress. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much johann. For reasons that i will have to apologize for the rest of my life, both of them for the upcoming holidays ron bailey is an Award Winning science correspondent where he writes a weekly column. He was one of the original optimists out there and has a tremendous pedigree in terms of promoting ideas that johan is talking about. Bailey is the author of the end of doom, environmental renewal for the 21st century and also liberation biology. From 1987 until 1990, bailey was a staff writer for a magazine covering economic, scientific and business topics. Prior to joining reason in 1997, he produced several Weekly National Public Television series including think tank and techno politics as well as several other documentaries. Hes also an editor of a number of books including global warming, earth report 2000 also eco scan, the false office of ecological a apocalypse. Ron is a member of the American Society of journalists. With that, help me welcome ron bailey. [applause] progress and its enemies. Im going to be taking a very unaccustomed role here, basically most people would describe me and i have been described as an optimist, a utopian, a trans humanist and so forth. I just want to stress that whatever nostalgia is, i struggle struggle from the exact opposite of whatever that is. I dont have future shock, i have future glee. This is what im looking forward to and this is an excellent book, you should all buy it just as soon as you bought mine, it completely makes that case. What im going to do is go through some of the challenges and go into a greater detail of some of the enemies we might have to face as the 21st century unfolds. Which way do i push west mark what am i doing wrong . Okay, this one technical difficulties. Progress is being made. Dont worry, one second, give us a moment. If you want, i can do that too. I find this is discriminatory of johans work. [laughter] again, i was delighted to hear he was quoting one of my favorite scientific authors and a great intellect and hes making a very great point and he said that chart. [inaudible] its the work of extremely small minority, frequently condemned and despised. Whenever this minority is kept from creating, the people then slip into poverty. This is known as bad luck. Finis whaley is suffering from bad luck at the moment, as an example. They highlight a more about what this is and how this progress might be stymied, i like to refer to a wonderful book by Northwest University economist called the gifts of athena, the historical origins of knowledge. He pointed out that history shows that the progress in society is by and large temporary and vulnerable process with many powerful enemies with a vested interest in the status quo or an aversion to change that is continuously threatening it. The net result is the changes in technology, have been relative to that to what we now know human creativity is capable of. In other words, people were as smart as we were but they were stymied and we will get into some of the reasons why they couldnt use their creativity to create the world we move in. It is our only and especially the rapid technological change in the western world that has been the historical operation. What happens . They point out that what occurs is the Technological Progress is evidently. [inaudible] losers find it easy to organize. Sooner or later it will grind to a halt because the forces that use to support innovation become vested interest. Technological progress creates the very forces that eventually destroy it. I hope thats not true but it is something we should be concerned about and that is in fact what you find is a vested interest over time. Another trend that johan describes brilliantly in his book is the trend in education around the world and how that is liberating both boys and girls, men and women across the world. Unfortunately there are some societies where this trend is being blocked and in some cases reversed and that is a terrible problem. There are two problems with that one is that a has an effect on the choices women make in regard to the number of children they desire to have in the second is that dramatically reduces the amount of growth and economic wellbeing that people can earn. Study after study show that if women are educated to at least a secondary level of education, the fertility is reduced to a third by 50 . Its going down from five or six children in countries where women are not educated to two or three children. Part of the trend we see is that World Population is about to top out at 9 billion or so and start falling largely because women will become educated and make choices that they want about their fertility. In addition, educated women participate more in the wage economy. This has huge benefits as well. Economic consultants just did a study where they calculated that if women could achieve just the average level of education around the world they see see in the world today, the World Economy would be an additional 12 billion richer in 2025 than it is now. It would be an increase of over 11 . If men and women have the same level, there would be 28 billion more of gdp by 2025. In other words, we are forgoing by keeping women uneducated in those countries a huge benefit for themselves and for us all. Another problem that was discussed that johan is discussing is the problem that is the notion that every country should be selfsufficient and a new mercantilism that unfortunately are two leading president ial candidates, i will not be voting for either of them, just for the record, are in favor of restricting free trade in exchange of the eye the is and this is a terrible problem. If we could only produce what we have here in this country, we will be denying ourselves the benefit of what other people in other countries can produce more cheaply for us and the benefits of integration and change. This is an example of what happened in the 1930s as the the Great Depression was coming on and they managed to get the tariffs in the United States raised quite substantially and the result was an over a twoyear time. U. S. Trade with europe, both exports and imports fell by two thirds. Of course, this led to huge job losses at time. Within four years after that, 24 other countries had raised theirs and world trade had fallen. Basically it was a neighbor to neighbor policy and this is what some of our leading politicians, whose name start with t and c are recommending to us. This is a terrible problem and already we see that its down 40 from the peak and International Trade is growing at the slowest rate ever. Have we achieved or fallen to globalization . Let us hope not. Then there is the problem with cronyism. Our this is an internal problem. Just a quote from lloyd blank is the ceo of Goldman Sachs and he said more intense requirements have raised it higher than any other time in modern history. Sadly, he wasnt complaining about that. He was explaining that this was great for his company and others like it because it made it possible so that the competitors would not be able to challenge him and his company. Extra profits could be earned from that. He was pointing that out as an advantage for himself. The problem is, we see this all the time with accumulated burden of regulations and so forth. They just issued a study in june where they were calculating what the regulatory drag on the United States would be and i highly recommend it, but basically our economy is 4 trillion poorer than it otherwise would be because of regulations. Most of those regulations do serve as barriers. If you could imagine. [inaudible] it seems that is a problem we need to be worried about and again, something that johan was highlighting. This is, this is president putin and president of china and this is one of the best books that ive read in the past ten years. Its by a nobel prizewinning economist douglas north and some colleagues of his called violence and social orders. What they were trying to get at is the notion of how do we handle violence in society. Humanity, as the agricultural revolution took off hit upon one solution which is basically what they call natural states, their organized and they have top men as you will and they arrange to have clients to whom they distribute Economic Resources and basically hand out monopolies over time. The point here is this was the basic organization of human societies when open access orders began that rise that we saw in economic growth. The problem is, johan documents this very well in his book, we have been moving in the direction of greater democracy, greater freedom, Greater Movement over time but that has stalled lately. The question is well at stall and will we have a reverse overtime. The thing about natural states is, if you think about this, i would highly recommend that you do read this book, every state up until the beginning of the 19th century was the roman empire, the incan empire all the way up to Vladimir Putins russia and these were patient Client Networks and in every case essentially those the society stopped and stagnated. The question is, can this be stopped over time . Can we continue the momentum forward to more of an open society over time. Another problem is the growth and surveillance society. This is a map published on the wonderful website cato unbound which basically suggests that. [inaudible] as we know now through Edward Snowdens revelations, this is a tremendous a tremendous problem that we have in this country. If you dont have privacy or the space to talk amongst ourselves then innovation can be stymied. introduced a bill they crawled the appliance with court orders act. Why not comply with court order inside the problem is that it basically says that what service providers, technologists period, and telecommunications people must provide back doors to their technology so the government snoops can get in whenever they want. To the problem is that among many other things we cant be sure what the government will do once they snoop with that information and secondly, bad guys can also find those same book doors and disrupt the economy and innovation as well. I do suspect that if they even thought about its little bit, that the folks at the Democratic National committee wish they used endtoend encryption. Think possibly the worth Public Policy idea in history this includes communism is the which basically the proponents say better safe than sorry. We shouldnt let any new technology out until we have proven theyre completely safe. This is one way to do it. Summarize is at never to anything for the first time. One perfect example is the case of golden rice. Golden rice is a bio tech rice that it helps vitamin a deficiency in countries that are thats theyre basic food, and researchers have been trying to get this to poor people in asia for a very long time, and its been stymied by opposition by groups, none more than green peace. A they have sent thugs to International Rice rear Search Institute to dig up the crops and kill them off. The good news is that in june, 100 nobel prize winners, wrote an open letter to green peace, excoriating them for this campaign, pointing out that buy stymying this technology, that World Health Organization estimates when a quarter million and 500,000 kid goes blind this year because of vitamin a deficiency and poor countries and half of the kid dies win a year or two because vitamin a deficiency means your immune system is not strong. And the great news is that in this letter, the nobelists start said the Green Peace Campaign bored bored on a crime against humanity. This must be stopped. Bus this is just one example our the principle deployed across the globe and there are lots of people in favor of this. One of my favorites of this is that wrote other book called a dangerous master, how to Keep Technology from slipsing mond your control. The our their worried, quote, that our incessant outpouring of groundbreaking discoveries and tools are raising a tech storm that will soon be dangerously beyond our control. The question of the harvest book is whether, quote, we as a automaticity as a whole have the intelligence to navigate the promise and perils of technological innovation. How does he want to navigate this . How does he want to do this . His solution is to create this is his title governans coordinating committees. That will guide policymakers and the public. The committees for comprehensively coordinate the development of different scientific fields and oversee the industries each field createes. Bioteching knock, artificial intelligence, nano technology, robotics, what have you. In other words these governance coordinating committees would function at gatekeepers, giving permission, or most likely not, to develop and use technologies without apparent irony he writes, and i quote, moderating the adoption of technology moderating the adoption of technology should not be done for ideological reasons, as though the idea of moderating progress is not itself not ideological. In any case, those are just some cautions i do have, and worries about it. Actually think that the future that that at the ten reasons offered in yohans book are morning likely to come true or and not id like to restore your san diego the faith of the rest of the public in progress, and johans book goes a great deal in that direction and i heartily recommend it. You buy too many copies. Thank you very much. [applause] we now have time for q a. Id like you to please raise your hand if you have a question. Then wait for the mic to get to you, and please tell us who you are, make the question short, in the form of a question, and address it to a speaker. Yes, right there. Hello. Hi. Im cato intern. A quick question because i really like your book on financial fiasco and protection of capitalism, and this is a question im asking every person i see that is for free market and free trade, is that the market is something invisible, that people can see, its difficult for a normal person to trust it. Its an issue of trust. However, its easy to trust a government because its visible because they can hear the policies and incentives. What is a method we could have to make people trust something that is invisible . Thank you. Thats a very good question. Of course thats the eternal problem. In an 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 give all of you more freedom to experiment with various ideas, im sure some of you will come up with some amazing technologies and Business Models that will be wonderful, and i have no idea which ones they are. They seem more interested in the kinds of slogans that ill make this happen. Ill do this. Trust me. Im the big tough guy here. Ill make people do that. So, its a problem of in a way, how we communicate this trust in markets and in individuals rather than specific Political Forces. On the other handed i dont see that problem of trusting 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 poisoned. People i can go here when have to travel to another city and just get a car from a rental firm just by showing my piece of plastic from sweden, and its all fine. Its all perfect. It works out in 99. 9 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, the kind of economic system, that they like, that they for some reason forget their personal experiences exped the fact they dislike and do not trust the politics theyre voting for again and again and end up in this kind of constant search for an authority figure. So, thats an eternal Communications Problem and one of the most important things is to making people understand their own personal trust in the market and that is something they should generalize when theyre voting as well. Actually dont have a solution to that problem. I wish i did. Why dont you work on that and figure it out. One of the Major Concerns is the this is a problem with the visible and the the seen and unseen example, where the policies are the things we see, whereas all the other stuff that is working for us is exactly what you say, invisible. Unseen. And i would have everybody read this every day that their wakeup prayer. Lets start here in front. Yes. Herb rose, my question is direct please speak up. My question is directed to mr. Norberg. I subscribe to the glass half full, glass half empty. You made some very cogent arguments how thinks have improved worldwide, but i would turn the question back on you in this country we still have poverty and we still have hunger, and i ask you whether scandanavia has the same degree of poverty and hunger and why shouldnt our glass be fuller . Thank you. Well, im pro full glass as full as they can get, and the question is really about my own country, sweden, and our neighboring countries. Well, we have a generally higher 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 not to end up in difficult circumstances, but there is a difficult tradeoff as well, and that one is we have done that by increasing wages, de facto minimum wages because the trade unions are very much in control of the labor market, and fairly generous welfare systems. That means that i would it would be difficult to find an example of people in desperate poverty in sweden, people who cannot make ends meet so they cannot eat. On the other hand, it also means that many, 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 morning and thats something we realize right now because we have a very large recent refugee population in sweden, and we have created a society that is very good if you have the right level of education, if you are very productive, you know the language and everything. Then its easy to get a job and get a wage that is higher than the welfare, but if you dont youre priced out of the market. If you have a productivity level that is around 80 of average, well, then youre priced out of the market. So if you rise in unemployment, rise in social excursion, does not mean desperate poverty, dot not mean hunger but means a terrible blow to selfesteem to static society, in real estate to your neighbors in relation to your neighbors and your children but its not a material desperation but a social desperation that is problematic in sweden right now. So, ill just leave those facts on the table and then we can all sort of decide back and forth, the costs and benefits of the various systems. Just one thing. I was very puzzled because as we know lots of people on the left side, scandanavia is a good example of social mobility and equality and so forth. Two other facts on the table when it start looking into it. One its of you look at the degree of inequality from the low toast the highest, if you look at for example in germany and france, before taxes, theyre actually much higher than the United States, before taxes. Theyre quite comparable in denmark and scandanavia, just a little bit lower in those cases. So the equality is achieved by taxing the rich essentially. The other side is everybodying goes well, social mobility is greater. Well if you look at the population dish havent looked at these for denmark the fact of the matter is from getting to the lowes to the highest in denmark, you move from 20,000 a year to about 65,000 a year. In the United States, thats a journey of 20,000 a year 106 oh thousand a year. Hard to get to 160,000 a year but more americans do that. So the top is if you want social mobility to go between quinn tiles, go to denmark but you wont get a lot of money out of that. Can add something to complicate the picture about swedessen and other standard scandinavian countries. Meet Bernie Sanders that say that United States should be more like sweden. Lets pick sweden because thats where i come from. Then i tell them, well, in that case you have to hear mow free trade than the United States. You have to move more deregulated market and more open product markets. You need to introduce School Vouchers so that people are entitled to goh 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 and you have to abolish death taxes and a couple of 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 than the United States. So it is a very open economy. Then you try to redistribute more of the results of that. Again, i just leave that at the table for everybody, including sanders supporters. A brief anecdote about that. He ran this proscandinavian campaign and at the same time was the worst protectionist since well, since donald trump. I tell Bernie Sanders supporter an anecdote about when president obama visited sweden because then he was approached by the three big labor unions in sweden and they are socialists, especially big blue collar one. Associated with the democrats and they basically fun them. Their message to president obama was, we want to talk to you about an important subject and thats free trade. And why we need more free trade especially between europe and the United States, because that is the only way in which we can constantly upgrade and restructure our economy and give People Better jobs and higher wages in the future witch think youre too much of a protectionist, president obama, from the swedish socialists. Lastly i want to also commend to your research by justin wide from Duke University in recent paper he found that inherited ability of wealth is actually higher in europe than in the United States. Roughly 12 of wealthy individuals in the United States have inherited their wealth in denmark, that figure is 25 . So roughly double the rate of the United States. So i recommend that research to you. Lets take question on this side. Gentleman over there. Pat finn. I was listening to the presentation, and the followon from his ending quote from the from star trek, do you see the Current System of the nation state as some sort of impediment to the future progress or you sound like youre sort of oneworld globalist . You see the concept of the nation state, i. E. The United States, as detrimental thing. Yeah in relation to the United Federation of planets, right. Were not there yet if dont think we should have a world government. Think thats a bad idea itself dont 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 create more progress and more human freedom. So, im not in favor of abolishing nation states in that sense, but i am opposed to the kind of tariffs, the kind of walls being built between countries so that people, citizens are banned or heavily regulate when they want to engage in peaceful capitallest acts between consenting adults. Basically trade, exchange, movement. All those things. Which is something that you can do even though you have nation states, if theyre open to individual freedom and Economic Freedom. In front. Peter who founds the ex surprise Singularity University that a book called abundance. This question concerns the audience force this information. We have an audience of achievers, tech folks, transhumannists, biohackers, of all of these sorts of folks who love their work, who are leading the progress, who want to at least enough Political Freedom and Economic Freedom to do what they love doing; yet they tend to be soft leftist if they look at the g. O. P. They see donald trump and so on. Would this be a community to ant the question how to get around the pessimism and all, that you can mobilize because one of the thing thursday people are committed about is technology, even though you have the pessimist that ron pointed out quite well. I think thats a very good point. One thing that you do see when it comes to optimists voter pessimists is that people who do things are normally optimists, whereas those who do not, if they do not engage with innovation, with technology, new markets and so on think only tend to see the problems, as ron pointed out, that the problems are often concentrated, whereas the benefits often go to the whole of society. Of you feel like youre a driver behind these events and those things, then youre more of a natural optimist and should be more in favor of more freedom to do things like that and i definitely think thats a group that should be mobilized more, and i dont know why that hasnt happened yet. Ron probably knows more of these people than i do, so perhaps he has a better response. Actually im not sure die have a better response. Its been a puzzle to me as well. I have been covering biotechnology for over 30 years, and a lot of biotechnologists are rearedly inherently precautionary and part of it stems fro tibet fay dont want to commit the same, quote, crime, at the sisth physicists diswe the development of the atomic bomb so they set up and the truth is that when you talk to people who are the real innovators as opposed to academic biotechnologists theyre frustrated about the system, but it is set up that way. Now, i see it unraveling now, one of the great things is that National Academy of sciences recently had a meeting to discuss the amazing new crisper Gene Editing Technology and crisper is going to completely change the world. Its going to be amazing. With can get the precautionary people out. But the great newsies the National Academy of sciences was asked to essentially ban using their technology for use in human beings and they said, well, actually, no, we need to go slow but were 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 the technologists and the precautionary activism, and i dont know who is going to win that. Im hoping that there will be ten more good reasons to look forward to the future. Thats a great sequel. Thomas from belgium. Have a question for mr. Norberg case, you speak if up. With regard to the refugee situation, some call it refugee crisis in europe. Angela merkel from germany has said, we can make it, but lets suppose that she would consult you and zale followish i launched the sentence but forgot to develop the argument and now have to address a crowd of worried people, very critical people, angry people, and she needs you to develop the arguments, a set of arguments to calm them down, to put things in perspective. How would you respond to that . Hmm. 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 i 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. An incredibly big extent and at the same time we have almost a machined economy in europe when it comes to any kind of reception in accept egg new refugees. Theyre not allowed to work, not allowed to start working. Its a long asylum process. It too take two years until you know whether you can stay or not. Until then youre in a government place where you sit there all day and everything is heavily regulated. Paid people take care of everything from cleaning to preparing food, which is a strange thing, which gives people the impression that apparently if youre a refugee you should stop preparing your own food as well. You cant even clean your own house. So basically theyre pacified in so many ways and do not get the kind of connection with society they need the order to be integrated. What do ill tell Angela Merkel . First of all, i have to say that the only thing that could make this work is that people are they get a basic solidarity with the new societies they have come to and only get that if theyre integrated by the labor market, start working, learn the language on the job, get new friends and neighbors whom they interact with constantly and go to school so that their kids start learning the language and get a taste for the kind of culture they enter. And if that happens, i think theres a chance that they could be not just, well, integrated but oliver useful, productive members of society. We have got a demographic situation in europe that is disastrous. We have no way of knowing how i will get any kind of retirement ore Social Security in the future because there are too few workersful. We have huge problems in healthcare sector, many lowskilled jobs where we department 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, and because its all done for very hoe generallic society where people have the same education and a lot of experience and then you can enter the labor market, but that means that its very ease to use to get your second but you never get your first job and this difficult for domestically born young people as well. We have very high youth inemployment as well, not just immigrants and refugees. So, i would start telling merkel that we have to deal with that. We have to radically liberalize the labor markets and radically change the system of taxation so that i dont understand why we tax individual income at all. We should find reduce taxes but find other tax bases as well if were to deal with this thing. So, basically she opened the external border for a while, but she forgot that theres another border around the labor market and around society. So, people end up in between. And that is a disaster. Thats a nightmare. Thats the thing that creates social exclusion and thats also what creates separation from society, and also some hatred against this society that puts you in this situation, and attracts some people, a few people, not even close to a majority, to radical islamist ideas and thats incredibly dangerous. So if we open that external border we have to open the internal border as well. Unfortunate 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] friday, november 18th, its the National Press clubs annual book fair and authors night in washington, dc. And later this month, well be live from in the miami book fair, on november 19th and 20th. Our coverage includes author discussions discussions discussions and kole callin plans featuring senator Bernie Sanders, fox news host, dab na perino, and national become Award Finalist colson widehead. Former information, and click the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv. Org. Turns out exchanged over 3,000 letters and most over them they give to the fdr library in hyde park when she died in 1968. And low rena, who was hick to everybody, stipulated that the letters could be opened ten years after her death. By chance, doris saber was the one who first saw the letters. She had written a lot of childrens books about president s and president s wifes and she was horrified. She even tried to get the lie free lock the letters up again. But when they wouldnt she decides to write a book about the relationship, playing down the passionate part of the story. So when the book came out, a lesbian publication called big mama rag lamented that turning those letters over to doris