Johan Norberg | Author Of 'The Capitalist Manifesto' - Negative Externality & Where Markets Fail

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Johan Norberg is a prolific author and academic, he’s one of the most notable members of the Cato Institute and as well someone who has recently bronzed in the blinding spotlight of both Javier Milei and Elon Musk. 

Johan is a staunch defender of globalisation and author of‘ The Capitalist Manifesto’ which was boosted into the stratosphere earlier this year with an overwhelming endorsement by Elon Musk when he wrote that the book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right. 

00:00 - Johan Norberg
01:35 - Johan's Worldview Influences
09:07 - Johan's Rand-ian Fictional Tale
10:35 - Johan Know Being A Role Model To Others
14:35 - The Elon Musk Effect
19:05 - Serendipity
24:05 - Will AI Destroy The Labour Market?
41:50 - Capitalism Failure To Price In Negative Externality
1:02:45 - Globalisation Homogenising Culture
1:15:40 - Anxious Generation
1:23:55 - Nassim Taleb Influence

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Johan Norbay is a prolific author and academic. He's one of the most notable members of the Cato Institute, and as well, someone who was recently bronzed in the blinding spotlight of both Javier Malay and Elon Musk. Johan is a staunch defender of globalization and the author of the Capitalist Manifesto, which was boosted into the stratosphere early this year with an overwhelming endorsement by Elon Musk when he wrote that the book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right. Johan is an extremely interesting figure and someone well worth your time looking into further, but today we open with Johan reflecting on those very authors who shaped his own worldview, the people who painted a picture of the world that he could map onto, and how now Johan serves as that figure to others. We go into the proximity effect of Elon Musk, and also unintentionally into how Johan draws comparisons of AI to other disruptive technologies throughout history and how the market has adapted each time in response to this problem. We then get into the two main questions I wanted to ask Johan from the start, those being around the negative consequences of globalization and whether it really is the case that a global free market can solve for these problems where isolated countries' legislations don't actually solve the negative externality, but merely push it elsewhere. There is naturally lots in and around that as well, but that's just a taste for what you can expect. Follow the show on your podcast app. Leave it a five-star review, because it is those types of endorsements that the algorithm responds best to. And as well, this one was actually recorded on video. Therefore, check it out on YouTube. It's the top link in this show's description. And with absolutely no further ado, here is the extremely generous and handsome Johan Norberg. Yeah, you've really traveled the world, haven't you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Is that by the Cato Institute or is it other No, it's more local demand for some reason. I do lecture quite a lot all over the world. And uh and often accept when it's an exotic place. So and I for a long time I had the idea that when you when I went out on my morning jog, running across from the other side of the opera, and then you see the Sydney Bridge and the Botanical Garden and the Opera there and the water. That's the most beautiful spot on the planet. It's it always shocked me.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

How many times have you been invited down under?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Uh been to Australia twice and and one more time when I was going to New Zealand, but then Australia wasn't the main target.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So if we just think about your technical employment status, you you're essentially a freelancer for a lot of different institutions. Is that a good way to think about it, or do you have direct employment?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I for fifteen years I've been freelance. So over a year I've got like fifty different employers. Yeah. When it comes to sort of magazines, publishers, um places where I get invited to speak, basically. But nowadays I'm more affiliated with the Cato Institute and work more more directly for them, but from a distance.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And so it's really serendipity that drives whatever the next exciting thing on your calendar might be. Are you actively seeking it out, or it's just you are at this point have a level of notoriety and expertise on X amount of subjects that they come to you?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

It's a combination, but mostly it's driven by demand rather than supply. Okay. It's more driven by someone wants me to speak on a subject that's relevant to them. And then using whatever expertise I might have in in the vicinity, basically. But then again, when I um I also pitch ideas for my agent and publisher, sort of what am I thinking about, what am I curious about, and I'm sort of I'm curious about five things. Can we turn one of them into a book? And then they help me to filter, filter it out.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

You've been really prolific in the amount of books you've published, to say nothing of all the articles on the side as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, I um for a long time I said it's because I I read fast, I write fast, and I never sleep. That's quite a combination. Nowadays I do sleep. So it takes a little bit longer. Uh but it's it's really, I think, it's because it's um it comes from a place of curiosity and personal interest, and that helps to get things done.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

And I read in your Wikipedia page that you were a um um uh uh a something anarchist, uh an industrial anarchist or that sounds much better.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Okay, yeah. It was probably an anti-industrial anarchist. Yes, that sounds anarchist at that time.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

It was a pretty hardcore title, but uh one gets the sense that you know, ever since you were in your late teens, yeah, you were very interested in you know the philosophy of how does this world work and therefore what's the right place to be reading. So have you been a voracious reader and consumer since you were yeah in your teens?

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Oh yeah, uh I was. And uh back then I understood the world much better than I do now. Now much more much, much more confused, obviously. Um but but yeah, I always had that urge to sort of find out what's wrong and to and to try to uh get things to work better. And I didn't find that at school or with friends, so I had to go to books and libraries. So I I read constantly. I'm afraid to say, often back in those days, more trying to find something that I recognized, someone who thought a little bit like me, rather than the other way around, sort of trying to learn something. That took some time to be a good reader rather than just a ferocious reader.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And so when you you shared your anarchism and moved a little bit more towards classical liberalism, who who was the first person where you read them and thought, wow, I really they have now painted a picture of the world, which I really, really am starting to agree with.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

That's a good question because it it really started with me not finding it there. I was an anarchist, I even started sort of in my high school days, say small anarchist party. Uh failed miserably on the national stage. But uh, but when I read the classical anarchists, the Kropotkins and the Bakunins and and so on, I they weren't all that I hoped them to be. More sounded like small suffocating communities and collectives. It wasn't this sort of this sort of libertarian individualist urge that I was searching for. So that got me interested in in classical liberalism. And this sounds weird, but I got started with sort of Adam Smith and Richard Cobden and John Bright, the 18th century and mid-19th century classical liberals, because they were the only ones I found in the library. This was before the internet, so I I didn't find anything that was more sort of relevant to present concerns. And their ideas made sense and I enjoyed it, but my heart wasn't really in it because I still had this sort of romantic, fairly anti-industrial, anti-modernist uh agenda of more ecological, more going back to nature, anarchist urge. So it was a bit of a Ludd Eyed urge. Yes, and I didn't they were so obsessed with economics, and I couldn't really understand why. Why is that so important? It sounds doesn't sound like much much fun because to me it felt like this was where I started a long way from where I ended up, with thinking that we are probably not living the best kind of lives nowadays with the hustle and bustle of uh modernism and urban life and big industry and commuting and stuff. We ought to find something better. Um, and I thought we would find that in the past. Uh that was when I thought that my ancestors lived ecologically rather than died ecologically at a very young age. Um, but so that got me interested in the classical liberals, but my heart wasn't in it until I read Ayn Rand, uh the Russian-American novelist and philosopher, and especially her fiction, because what she did was that she pointed out that there's romance and adventure in achievement and hard work and technology and engineering and building bridges and skyscrapers, and I hadn't hadn't understood that until then. No one had explained that to me, and that really helped me to sort of make peace with with the modern world.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

As um has the idea of writing a fictional story where you could completely romanticize a similar Randian figure, um, just for your own posterity to have produced, in my worldview, this is the life well lived, and he's the protagonist of this fictional story.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

What makes you think that I haven't already done that? Oh, apologies. I haven't published it. Okay. It's just in the drawer somewhere. No, I it doesn't get interesting when I try to do that. It's a little bit too um programmatic. It's a little bit too you know, when I read fiction, I um I love nuanced characters and complex uh relationships. And when I sit down to try to write something fictional, um trying to portray my worldview, it's it's not that nuanced. So um I'd I'd better think that through.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

But is that just your own sort of humility and insecurity talking, or has our editor said to you, no, no, we we need the supporting characters as well?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Oh, it's my insecurity because I haven't really even showed it to the editor.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Well, if you're comfortable sharing, could you give us the cliff notes of this protagonist? I really I'm not. Okay, okay. Sorry. Just one detail then. Is he a Swede?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Okay, okay, cool, cool. Well then, I suppose we can uh we can uh bookmark it there. Um how does it feel that for people 20, 30 years younger than you, coming into their own intellectual maturity, might pick up the Capitalist Manifesto or any one of your many books and fundamentally have their worldview changed.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

It's a strange and very humbling experience. And of course it's something that um that's a reason why I write. I am a bit of a missionary. I want to I mean, I I know this doesn't sound very uh humble, but I'm trying to save civilization. I'm trying I'm I'm trying to make the world a better place. You know, I'm so full of gratitude to all those who came before me, from the philosophers to the engineers who created the world we're we're now living in. And uh and with for all its troubles, it's it's the best civilization so far, with the least uh share of world population in extreme poverty, illiteracy, longest life expectancy ever, and so on. And I want to try to at least repay some of that debt by doing my bit to speak up for the institutions that I think protects this civilization. So obviously that's something that I'm trying to achieve. When I'm writing my books, when I'm giving my lectures and doing my documentaries, I'm trying to affect people. And often people who might be thinking what I thought when when I was in my uh late teens or something like that. Uh so I I want to change worldviews. But then obviously it's always a strange uh thing when you actually learn that you've had an impact.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah. How do you how do you manage your inbox, or rather, even how does it feel when you know you roll out of bed in the morning, reload your email, and there's two or three guys, someone in Pakistan, someone in Mexico, and two Australians who have written to you and said something overwhelming that's you know hard to tackle.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

To me, it's a tremendous boost of energy. Yeah. That's really you can probably relate. When you're sitting there on the you don't see your audience and you're writing or you're talking, you don't know if you're really having an impact, just sending it into the big sort of vacuum out there. And it's wonderful to get that feedback. Uh if whether it's short or long, or they want something, or just want to say hello and thank you. It's it's wonderful. That keeps me going, and I'm trying to always um respond.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, no, I I completely agree. Uh it's happening at a significantly less scale on my end of it. A couple times a week, I'll get a message and I'll think, holy hell, this is such an interesting person. I'm so, so grateful that they took the time to just say, I'm listening, I liked it. Because you have no idea how how rewarding that is to feel. Because absolutely, I mean, you're in a Stockholm apartment, pumping out a book, yeah, and there's you know eight billion people in the world that could potentially read that thing. And obviously, this is well documented, but we can't comprehend these numbers at scale. We we can't actually imagine what those eight billion people look like. It's probably 100x bigger than your biggest imagination you could think of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Quite right. And to me, it's also I know that I rarely, uh far too seldom, get in touch with people who've done good things, written stuff or done podcasts or whatever that I truly enjoyed. Mostly you uh let people know when they've done a mistake. So it really means something when they've actually taken the time to get in touch and say, you know, I I enjoyed that. And it probably then you understand that this is multiplied out there.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

We're gonna bookmark a question I just wrote down because I think actually this is a perfect transition to a question that I had later. But I mean, talking about a random person popping into your inbox, you get the endorsement of one Elon Musk not too long ago. Uh, how has his association with you affected your life?

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Well, it's affected my book sales for one. Uh I could see that in real time. The moment that he tweeted to his 170 million followers over this. Okay, God. Um yeah, the a substantial share of them bought the book suddenly. And of course, that that's the kind of um it's funny because the just two days before something like that, I was at an institution in Washington, DC, and talked to another author who said that, you know what, it's not the reviews anymore. It's about someone who's also an influencer suddenly coming across the book and talking about it. That makes a difference. Um, and then two days later, Elon Musk did that. So, yeah, that had an impact.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Well, not to get too airy, fairy, but thank goodness that author put that out into the world somehow to for Elon Musk to pick up on it. Had you any indication that he was consuming your work before that was posted?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

I had learned that in some tech circles and some people in Silicon Valley were reading the book and enjoying it and reading my work generally. And uh it feels like his circles are sort of there's a crossover somewhere there. So yeah, I I knew that I was probably on his radar.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

I mean, he's um famously very tight with Daniel Eck. This is a fellow Swede, a fellow Stockhomer. Do you ever speak to Spotify, speak to institutions Daniel's involved in?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

No, I don't. We don't all know one another. Okay. Because we're Swedes. I know it seems like we're all second cousins. But uh no, surprisingly little.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Okay, okay. Um so book sales clearly massive spike. What about some of the serendipity that maybe has come in from the increase in your notoriety and your public profile because of that boost?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Well, I'm I'm yet to find out, I I guess. It's still too early to say. Yeah. I that that you know the the second thing I noticed after sort of the the book sales is that suddenly I get invitations to do lectures in in strange exotic places and and because people pay attention to Elon Musk and and his circles. So so that happens.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Give us a sense for strange and exotic. You know, or what's at the top of this list here?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Well, you know, the kind of people who are um working on uh biotechnically engineering our our drinks to make us smarter and that kind of stuff. People are working more like in in science fiction at least that's what it sounds like to me than than being just science.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

You I think you uh had a nice turn of phrase when you recently uh interviewed Elon saying that he's taking the fiction out of science fiction, right, yeah, and potentially as well, you know, some of these people that you're meeting and some of the extremely out-of-the-box innovative things people are working on. Our next 30, 40 years on this planet could well be the most transformational in, you know, our species history. Yeah. It's tremendously exciting to think about.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah. I I hope so. You know, I'm I'm interested in the um in the bizarre and the weird because I've learned from history that every innovation is an act of rebellion against the way we used to do things. So anything from the crops and artificial fertilizer to the digital communications that we're using were s seemed like science fiction once upon a time. And now we're there again. I think in in biotechnology, uh mRNA technology, CRISPR, AI generally, it's it's weird, and we don't really get it, and that's what keeps civilization going. That's how we stay young and dynamic, I think, by being constantly surprised. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Um one final thing the serendipity, right? It's a moment of serendipity that Elon's boosting your signal, but just throughout your life, even when you're younger, are there marked moments of serendipity that have fundamentally changed the future for you? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Um you know, it's interesting how we're constantly writing our own autobiography, I think, in our head, because you know, people are asking me, so how did you start doing this? And I I've told the story so many times that I don't know if I remember my memories of it or whether I remember what actually happened. But what's actually the truth? Yeah, that's exactly and you and I think you're constructing a um sort of a path, a very logical sequence of events, and this got me there, and so on. But when I'm really going back, and when I'm reading reading my far too few diary notes and stuff like that, it's that weird phone call I got from that person who asked me to do this. Can I really do that? And uh met that guy over there who was into this, and we suddenly became friends and started cooperating and and things like that. So I think it's I mean, it's not all serendipity because it's also sort of the the the surface area of possibility and serendipity that makes it happen, so you've got to be prepared for it. But to me, uh more than half is were complete surprises to me uh once I did it.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Uh Soren Kierkegaard said that life can be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. You know, so you can easily trace the path going back, wow, obviously, obviously it was gonna be this way, or you know, I can see why it changed this way. But that's also an extremely exciting thing because as you sit here right now and face the infinite possibilities of the future, there is no cap on what could happen. As there is also, you know, no depth.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah. No, that's right. And um, and that's something that sometimes feels a little bit scary, obviously. The world is changing, your work is changing, people around you are changing, the demand for what you're doing is changing, and that's uh often scary. How do you navigate in this world? I think that's something as individuals or organizations, we're always facing that. Um, and to me, therefore, I think it's often important to um, I learned this from um Jason Pfeiffer of the Entrepreneur magazine to often tell yourself when was the last time you started to love something that you truly feared or hated? Because to me, that has happened so many times in my life. New technologies that I had to learn, or new um places, new people. You know, lecturing, that's one of the most important things that I'm doing. I hated that. I used to hate giving lectures. I was terrified and I was awful. I was really bad at it. But I felt like I had to do it because I had a message that I wanted to promote. So as a you know, late teenage sort of anarchist slash libertarian, I went to all the lectures because I had to tell people stuff, and it was awful, and it was terrible. But I got better specifically because of all my mistakes and all my failures, and I learned how to how to do it, how to navigate. I got better and I didn't know what happened, but suddenly I started enjoying it. And um and suddenly there wasn't a a demand for me to do it in and on all different kinds of subjects. And I think that's important to look at all the stuff that we used to hate, that we now love. That's the way of not being afraid of the future and the surprises that comes next.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

And the tremendous upside of taking that that risk, the fear, or speaking in front of a crowd. Yeah. You know, how many great lecturers never stood stood uh stood foot on the stage to know that they were a great lecturer.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Exactly. You know, I wouldn't have done this. I would never have done it if it wasn't for the fact that I just felt that I had to get my weird message across. Now and I I guess that's partly serendipity. Uh I I forced myself into circumstances uh to do that. I had no idea that this would be a sort of paid gigs in the in the future. Um and um lots of people if you don't have that drive, what why would you go through the first 100 lectures that you hate until you start enjoying it, until you start loving it? So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

So uh something you both love and fear. Uh is anything very tangible top of mind right now that that would that would fit into that box?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, lots of stuff all the time. You know, um AI, for one. You know, I'm theoretically excited. It's it's like as an old Star Trek fan. This is the supercomputer on board the Enterprise. You can just, it's got the accumulated knowledge of mankind and other species and Vulcans and Klingons, and you just pose your questions, and it's it's it's got the greatest potential, but it ruins my work. You know, I you know, I I like to think that I'm good at doing research. I'm I I read lots of stuff, I'm good at I think extracting what's valuable from large amounts of text and to uh analyze and to use it for my purposes and to write. Now someone invents a machine that gets people to sort of give me the ten most important things from this book straight away. That's cheating. Isn't that awful? It sort of ruins my unique um selling point. Yeah. Um so part of me says that I don't want to use that. And sort of originally I told some people that with pride, sort of, yeah, I haven't used Chat GTP one bit in sort of in writing this book, because I I want to show that I can do it the old-fashioned way. Um and that's obviously the way that you begin to deteriorate, uh say um writer and a and a speaker, because you're not using the tools that are accessible to you just because you have this fancy schmancy idea of the way it used to be done. Obviously, that's how the scribes got unemployed once the printing press got going. So I'm trying to tell myself, look, I probably said the same thing about the um the about email once upon a time. This'll ruin it all. I I used to do it over the phone or letters and nice stuff. Um and now I love it and couldn't live without it. So I I think ChatGPT is one other thing that I fear that I will come to love once I go through the um the effort, uh the investment in time to start learning how I can use this in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

So the printing press creates mass unemployment for scribes before. Um the internet creates mass unemployment because so many jobs before just now are not necessary, or one person can do the work of five before because they have the tools of the internet. AI, again, extraordinarily disruptive. Could you give the case for why it might not actually lead to mass employment and the destruction of civilization at the other end of that?

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah. Um well, the most uh the the easiest way to make the case is to look at these previous waves of technological innovation that we've had. Uh, you know, we we all used to work in agriculture and we could barely sustain ourselves and produce enough food. Um and suddenly we go from 80% in agricul working in agriculture to less than 2%. Um does that mean that 78% of the population is unemployed? Well, obviously not, because what happened was that that also drives down the price of food. Suddenly we can uh feed ourselves at a lower uh cost. We um we get all that work done better, easier with better crops and artificial fertilizer and irrigation systems and diesel tractors and and stuff. And in that case, we still have all that purchasing power. Actually, we we've got more purchasing power now because we don't have to spend as much of it on food as we did before. And and that is now liberated to um buy all that labor back, but somewhere else. And then we started doing it in manufacturing and lots of manufactured goods, so suddenly we could get furniture and clothes. And instead of doing, you know, recently met an Indian man who from Delhi who said that you know, when he was growing up, he he had a total number of one shirts that he shared with three, his three brothers. So uh when someone was going for dinner or a job interview, he got to wear the shirt that day. Um, you know, that's the way we all used to live. One shirt was luxury, and now we can uh we can afford that. And and then we start to get the same technological innovation in manufacturing, and we automate it, and um, so suddenly um people can uh leave uh manufacturing. Does that mean we get unemployed there? Yes, for a while, temporarily, until we retrain and new generations start to do something else. Because now we can afford those things: shirts and shoes and furniture at a cheaper price, so we have all that purchasing power liberated so that we can buy something else. And suddenly we can afford healthcare and education and podcasts and and more books and documentaries, and people can be employed there. And I'm sure the same thing will happen unless we run out of needs and ambitions and uh interests in doing something. We will always want people to do something for us, and uh and and if we run out of that, we well, then we don't have to work anymore. Um but then the real questions begin. Exactly. That that will be the difficult one. But so so there's always a transition, and that can be difficult, and that's one reason why I think we need sort of open, dynamic labor markets and economies so that we quick quickly transfer capital and labor to new new areas. But often it happens within our work as well, within a single person's um work. You know, I talked about how AI is disrupting me. You know, so did the internet. I used to think that my edge was to find the right books and magazine articles and papers. And because I had this great method, I was quick. I was going to the Royal Library in Stockholm and going through all the old catalogues and finding the microfilm of old articles. Oh wow. And I sort of that was a treasure troll because nobody else was doing that work. No, they probably didn't go to the effort, and they they used with whatever material they had at hand. So that was great. I thought that made me a tremendous research as a researcher and writer. You know, now Google does that for me in seconds. So suddenly at least 50% of my job was automated. It means that a new innovation that made me 50% unemployed. And that happens again and again in many areas. But obviously, what that meant was that I could stop doing that old the the hassle, the routine work that wasn't really sophisticated, and instead spend that 50% of my time in reading more, doing the analysis and sharpening my my own theories on the subject. And I think that's often what happens in a technological transition, and I'm I'm sure that's what'll happen with AI as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Could you provide a more pessimistic outcome for it? Or is it the case that it's if we are to just somehow project the future based off how these technological disruptions have happened in the past that not even prepared to in uh excite it?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Yeah. Well, first of all, I uh sped through these transitions. So there were some difficulties and some bumps uh on the road there as well. You know, the waves of urbanization that we got when agriculture was um becoming increasingly productive was obviously traumatic as well. Whole areas of our countries abandoned by people looking for employment ones that attract us uh tremendous cultural change. Yeah, and and we've had the same with some of the deindustrialization as well. You know, by accident and uh sometimes by sort of historical path dependence. Some areas just happen to be centers of uh manufacturing. And and suddenly, once we can do that um easier, cheaper, um with not just international competition or something uh but just the fact that we automated it meant that lots and lots of people lost their jobs and had to do something else. And obviously that was a shock and traumatic for those involved. So so even though we're moving in the right direction, we're always doing things better and smarter so that we can liberate more time and labor to uh to sort of level up to the next stage of human uh the human experience. It is difficult when that happens to you. And you know, when even though we can make that happen with five percent unemployment, when it happens to you, it's not five percent, it's one hundred percent. So so there are some risks, obviously, when we get AI going, if it happens to many sectors uh big time at the same time. Um on the other hand, if we don't do it, we know for a fact what'll happen. You know, the Laddites that succeeded. There were areas of England where the Laddites managed to scare uh the factory owners not to uh use this machinery, and they were soon desolated and had no uh employment whatsoever, because other parts of the country, other parts of the world would would use those technologies.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

So so in the in the face of the negative consequences of this change, one still has to adopt their own agency because change is constant. And if you don't change with it, yeah, and insist on what it was before, it's a very risky maneuver because it could left leave you totally behind. You as an author, for instance, if you decide, you know what, all these new AI tools, yeah, fuck it. I don't need that. You know, you could very well succeed from it, but it's an extremely risky play. Rather, change with it, try adopt, try constantly be ahead of where everyone else is. Um, but again, that sort of falls very neatly into a Randian worldview.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yeah, sure it does, and uh but I think this is an incredibly important point because my reading of history and my next book project is on golden ages throughout history, and um you know what we what at least subsequent generations would term um would term golden ages, eras of cultural flourishing, scientific discovery, technological innovation, economic growth from ancient Athens to China under the Song dynasty to um the early Dutch Republic. Tremendous moments in time when people were subtly exploring in strange new ways and coming up with everything from great art to new financial institutions that we are we're all in their debt uh nowadays. But one of the most depressing things about it is that those periods are short. Uh and and they're called golden ages because what came next wasn't golden. Uh you return to the same place. Travelers go back into those areas and say, what happened here? It's the same people, the same tradition, same language, same religion, but that spark is suddenly gone. And now there's not excitement, it's um it's unemployment, and we're back to hunger and drudgery. What happened? So to me, the reading of history there is that we our greatest fear shouldn't be change and constant change and development. It should be the greatest risk throughout history has always been stagnation and that we revert to the mean, which is awful. So that's what we have to avoid.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

And you're saying that on a on a societal level, or you that's more of a message to the individual operating within the society?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

I think it's both. Um certainly for the individual. Yeah. It's easy to say, yeah, I don't want to use these technologies. They are uh it's undignified to use the printing press or AI. Then that's the beginning of the end, right? But the same goes for societies as well, for organizations and for economies and and for whole societies, because they often I mean I think there's a great status quo filter in a way. Um because change is uncomfortable and it disrupts everything that we're doing. And it's uncomfortable to elites in societies because they've built their power on a certain structures. It's uncomfortable to you as an individual, it's uncomfortable for the incumbents in business, in in labor unions.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

I imagine the uncertainty for an incumbent.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yeah, absolutely. If you can freeze this moment in time, that's great, right? But that's the beginning of the end, and that's when you revert to this long stagnation that we had for thousands of years in in most places. And uh it's only now for since really the Industrial Revolution, the first revolution that never ended, that we've got this continuously emergent novelty. And I that's partly because we started to create more open societies, more open economies, so that even if I, as an individual or a society, didn't want this new technology, somebody else would do that and give us this sputnik moment when they show that okay, if you don't do it, we'll do it. That forces us to step up and continue to explore these new um technologies and business models and and what have you. And that feels like a lot of stress, and we need that stress because otherwise we'll relax and then we will die.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

And not to say something too eye-rolly or too cliche, um, but as well, the in the face of that stress and that uncertainty is really sort of the adventure of your life, potentially, the giant risks you will take, and therefore, hopefully, some of the meaning you'll be able to find in our fleeting years on this planet.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah, you know, I spoke to a uh psychologist recently who told me that they have found a group of people who who never feel stress in their lives. They're trying to explore is this genetic, or is it because they've developed a lifestyle where they they never uh sense this stress? Uh felt great until they realized something else about this group. They're all basically always bored with life. And that tells you all you've got to know about this. And I I think to me, when I look back upon my life, sort of what have I done that felt sort of really meaningful and exciting? It's rarely the moments when I didn't feel stress. It's rarely the moments when I relaxed. And I mean, we need that too, to sort of recharge, and uh we need that on a uh regular basis as well. But the moments when I felt that I've done something important and meaningful and exciting from bringing up children into this world or writing a book or standing on a stage and talking to important people, that was always terrifying. And it was always something new. And I think there's there's a lesson there for for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

I uh I felt I felt exactly that, not to be too personal here, or but I felt exactly that actually this morning, you know, because uh I've been anticipating this interview for a long time. It's been months uh since you know we connected and we were going to record it. And typically I'm recording soon after I've read the book and very soon after I've reached out to them. And so there isn't enough time for anticipation and anxiety to hit. And so yeah, I felt that this morning um more so than I really would ever for an interview. But then I just it's like fuck it, just do it because I know you're gonna feel better and very stoked you had done it, you know, once it's done. Um, and obviously that's just a microcosm, but then it works well so far, yes. Um so the economies of scale of agriculture, what is the capitalist solution to the problem of the competitive fight to the most marginal efficiency, where for instance now most of our uh meat, especially, is pumped full of antibiotics raised in the antithesis of nature? It seems like in this hyper, hyper efficient market, there is a lot of negative externality that's not accurately priced into the final product. So is this one a fault of this capitalist urge? And if so, is there a solution within the capitalist worldview? Or could it be government regulation?

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Yeah, well, this is generally obvious. Well, if we speak on the most abstract level first, because I haven't seen the documentary. Um this is one place where there's a role for governments to deal with externalities. You know, the the whole idea of a free market is you make your own decisions, but you also have a responsibility for your decisions. Um, if you succeed, great, you'll get to keep the fruits of your labor. If you fail, yeah, it's your investment and you you have to fail. It's a profit and loss system, and that's how we continue to emerge and develop new and better ideas because failure is uh is not failure, it's data. It's uh it's a lesson on how to improve and do better things. But it also means that you have to internalize the costs, you should pay for it for the damage you're doing, for the losses you're making. And this is obviously a place where we constantly fail in our modern political system where we bail out all the failures from financial companies to uh um industrial companies that doesn't that do not keep up with um with others, so they they should be allowed to fail. But one externality. Is that you're imposing costs on others in your everyday behavior? And if you pollute, if you destroy the forests, the groundwater, or the lungs of somebody else, then you should pay for that. That's the real sort of free market capitalist solution to problems. If you uh impose a cost on people through global warming with your um the engines or your uh uh livestock, you should pay for it with a um greenhouse gas tax. That would, in the best of possible worlds, uh you should pay directly to all those who are damaged rather than just to be a cash cow for governments. Um now that's and and when it comes to antibiotics, if that slips into the groundwater in in places, yeah, you should pay for that damage for two reasons. First of all, to uh compensate for those who are uh who lose out, but also to stop you from doing that, to get you stores to start thinking about how we can do this in a better way and without imposing these costs on on others. And it's difficult to do that through a sort of a going to courts. Uh the transaction costs is pretty dramatic, especially when it comes to global warming, with sort of a couple of billion people in a class action suit against those who uh pollute. So there I see a role for governments to basically just impose a financial penalty on those who impose costs on others. That's also complex, how you do that in every single instance. And so that's complex, and I don't have the uh the precise uh answers, but it's it's better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong, I think. So trying to impose systems like that, polluter pay principles basically is a good incentive in a market economy.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

If we're just talking theoretically, you still think that the pricing mechanism is the ultimate regulator and provider of incentives, but it's in the failure of the pricing mechanism to be assigned, whether it's through local corruption or the courts getting involved, or just an inability to accurately calculate what these externalities are. This is where all the inefficiencies start to breed.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah. And often you don't want to impose a carbon tax, for example, because it a tax sounds bad. And it's much nice feels more nice for American politicians to say, let's just subsidize all the green technologies that we like, uh, rather than imposing a penalty on those who who pollute. Uh and that's uh a failure in um in in every single way, because that also puts governments in a much worse position of trying to pick winners when it comes to green technologies. And you know, they can't even pick winners when it comes to traditional manufacturing, but trying to predict the next step of technological innovation. I mean, not even the people involved, the researchers and the entrepreneurs have any idea of what's going to succeed next. So why would politicians and bureaucrats who don't even risk their own money and uh who always have other incentives and they want to put all those jobs for some reason in their own constituency and and so on and so on? It's just this this is what breeds crony capitalism and um and lots of um not just bad financial outcomes, but also bad in terms of what it buys. It buys this dependence on certain technologies that politicians just happen to prefer to something else. It's much better with a broad general overall incentive to everybody. Try to come up with better ways to reduce pollution, but we don't know, you don't know. Start experimenting. And that's I mean, that's my worldview generally. To me, classical liberalism, uh, free market capitalism is based on Socratic wisdom. I have no idea, but I know I'm smarter than others because I know what I don't know. Whereas the problem with other ideologies is that they think they know. And that's the we can only learn more by having more experiments, more trial and error, and then answers will emerge that will be a little bit better than what we know today.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Um tell me if this tracks with your worldview, but imposing these accurate costs for the negative externalities, you know, stick to the agricultural example, is more achievable with smaller scale, smaller community, less people involved, um, easier to actually calculate what those externalities are. Um, and even if that's blown up to a country as big as 350 million people, the United States, potentially still manageable. But the the scale of people makes all of these problems significantly harder to calculate. And we now operate in a globalized world, globalized economy. So how on earth are we to actually properly calculate in the pricing mechanism a negative externality for, say, having my genes produced in Bangladesh versus Sweden? You know, isn't it the case that we are just simply offshoring our negative externality elsewhere? Because we share the same planet. So the the negative externality there is still felt here. Yeah. Although now it's it's been evacuated from the actual final price we get. First of all, does any of that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Some of it. Okay, it does. First of all, I I absolutely agree that it is easier to implement um rational uh institutions on a small scale. Um where, you know, the the great economist Eleanor Ostrom has pointed out that uh a way of dealing traditionally with these kinds of problems with negative externalities in the commons or among neighbors, it's just that people get together and start to discuss and negotiate, and surprisingly often coming up with great ways of sort of, yeah, if you if your livestock is sort of entering this territory and I use it for this reason, let's do it this way and you compensate me that way and so on. People often, when they're able to negotiate and experiment, come up with better solutions than you could ever expect them them to. Now, how do we do that on a global scale? Well, we don't, because suddenly it's not exactly the persons involved doing the um negotiations. They're they're not even in negotiations, it's government structures and and stuff like that, and it will be fairly suboptimal in in lots of ways. Um and I guess we have to realize that the world isn't perfect, and uh we have to come up with something approaching at least better solutions if we live on the same planet and we affect the same uh commons, like for example, the atmosphere and stuff like that. Um then I think we have to accept that people will come up with different solutions, won't be perfect, they won't go to the same efforts in in Bangladesh uh that we are doing in an economy that's uh 20 times richer, um, because they still face the problems that we we did in early industrialization, where it's not a matter of it's more a matter of sort of will you afford to put your kids to school or do you take care of these externalities? Well, you might have to make the transition and actually do some damage that you wouldn't expect later on when you've solved the most urgent existential problems of putting food on the table, um until you do um get the better perfect solutions when it comes to uh broader externalities. And I think we should have some give them some some slack, because we made different choices uh back then as well. What we can do is help them getting there by um uh opening our markets for their goods so that they um which sounds in the first instance like it's that's a bad choice because they're they're making choices that we wouldn't do when it comes to the environment. Well, yeah, but it's by doing that uh that they will get the resources that they can get other things done. And and most of all get the technology and the management that will help them to get to the next level faster than we did once upon a time. Um you know, I often think about the fact that um 150 years ago Sweden was as poor as as Bangladesh. And if France and England and the rich countries of the world would have said that, look, we don't want your genes, or in back then your timber, paper, iron, ore, because you're still so poor and you're making bad decisions and you're ruining the environment. Why don't you stay back there? We stop you from exporting and go away and become rich somehow in some other way, and then get back in a better shape, and then we'll buy your timber and your iron ore. Well, in that case, we would still have child labor in our factories and we would still ruin our nature because it was only by getting rich and dealing with the problems of feeding our kids and giving them an education that we could start caring about the environment in a serious way.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

So then on the other end of that, it is still the right course of action that whether it's Sweden or Australia or France might impose these heavy environmental uh regulations, even though it means that work will just be done elsewhere without those environmental regulations, because we're in the position to actually afford that downside, in the optimistic hope that eventually it'll all sort itself out anyway. There's just going to be quite a lot of efficiency along the way.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

Yeah. I think that that's the way to go about things. Um it doesn't mean that we're just pushing all the kind of uh manufacturing jobs out there. I mean, we we're producing more manufacturing goods in Sweden and the US than we did in 1980. It's just that we do it in a more efficient and and uh and more automated way. You know, it's the old story about the factory of the future just has two workers. It's a man and a dog. And the man is there to guard the dog, and the dog is there to stop the guy from interfering with the machinery because it it takes care of all of that. And uh so I mean we've gone through a green transition when it comes to um manufacturing and uh uh in in our parts of the world as well, and yet been able to produce more than than ever before. But there's still this kind of low capital and lesser uh educational, uh knowledge-intensive production when it comes to everything from from agriculture, textiles and and shoes that uh can be done in in Bangladesh and so on. And it's a it's a great thing that that happens. This is one of the reasons why we've seen the fastest poverty reduction that the world has ever seen in the in the past 30 years. It's it's been an amazing ride. More than 100,000 people have been lifted out of extreme poverty every day. Is that a fact every day? Over the past 20 years, 140,000 people were lifted out of extreme poverty every day. And where did that happen? It happened in the countries that started to integrate into the global economy. So it happened in Bangladesh, it happened in Indonesia, it happened in Vietnam, it happened in India and China and so on. And this is, I think we will look back at this period and say that was a golden age, because never before in human history have so many people been lifted out of poverty that quickly. And that obviously also gives them the resources and the interest to start to think about other issues and environmental issues and global issues as well.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

I I think the reason why the environmental externality is so much more acute than any other externality is just because the downside is uncapped. Yeah. You know, a more local externality, worst case scenario, it might ruin a few people, ruin a village, but globally our species remains intact. But you can't run an iterative experiment so many times on a global environment. Yeah. So I think that maybe, I mean, whether it's explicitly understood or not, drives so much of the attention towards environmental protection.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Sure. And I mean, um I love failure. I I love trial and error and failures, that's what we learn the most from. But obviously, we don't want to fail when it comes to the global commons and things like uh the global climate, because we might only have one chance. Um, so that's an area where we've got to get things right. Uh so how do we do that? Well, we can we've been talking about how we can internalize the externalities and create those incentives. Um, but that's just the path to better technologies, green technologies, better non-fossil fuels and uh energy sources. And we're getting there. We know, or at least we know the potential that's out there. We know even how we can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it back here or make use of it back here. Uh, it's just too costly to do this now at a global scale. What do we do when things are too costly? Well, we don't engage in degrowth because that will just focus people's minds on, oh gosh, how can I save my job or how can I feed my kids? We do it by uh more technological innovation that gets these things, reduce the price of it all, and more growth so that we can afford it. And this is not just a pipe dream, it's not just sort of a theoretical possibility. It is happening right now. You know, there are 40 countries around the world that have managed to reduce their carbon dioxide in absolute terms in the past few decades, and they just so happen to be the uh the richest and the most democratic free market economies on the planet because they're the richest. They can afford the incentives, they can afford the technologies. And slowly and steadily that's trickling down to economies that are becoming richer right now. You can see that in the carbon uh intensity of economies. How much carbon does it take for them to produce one unit of GDP? Well, when you compare where we were when we were industrializing the the fastest, the next pack of sort of East Asian economies, when they did the same thing, they only had about half of the carbon intensity that we had back then, because they can now do it with technologies that had been developed in richer countries but are now spreading around the world. The next group that's industrializing right now in Africa, in North Africa, in the Middle East, and uh Southern Asia and so on, they do it at a level of common intensity. That's just a third of what it was when we did the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

That's an incredible statistic.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

So that's wonderful. It should bring cheers around the however that's not enough because they're still we're still, even though I mean soon we'll see some uh reduction in the world population, but it takes some time. For a while longer, we'll there will be more of us and more countries becoming richer, so they're producing more. So the fact that they're uh every single unit of GDP is done with less carbon intensity doesn't help us. We're still increasing um carbon dioxide uh into the atmosphere, but it shows you that we are on the same track and that we should really sort of step on the accelerator rather than step on the brake.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

Yeah. Is it the case, just from all the research you're doing, that we are stepping on the brake, or are you still optimistic that the accelerator is firmly to the floor?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Um You know, there are some worrying trends, there are some smart people engaging in the the most stupid ideas that I've ever heard of, that we should really do degrowth and sort of start to relax and have less set limits on population. Yeah, and that's uh that would really be a nightmare for um for um I mean for for people, for poverty, for hunger around the world, but also I think for the environment. Uh you know, we've seen that we've had some countries that are actually uh engaged in degrowth um uh not by by choice but by accident. Portugal and Greece during the uh Euro crisis, they actually increased the carbon intensity in their economies because they couldn't invest in new technologies and new new machinery. So there are some worrying trends in the debate. Uh I hope it's not happening. I still see that people are interested in in growth, but you know, the fear of of disruption in the economy of new business models and technologies might lead us into the wrong making the wrong choices. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Okay, we're going an hour. Haven't really touched on many of the things. I we can leave that for another time. Obviously, I mean I'm I think largely having consume your work, we definitely share a worldview, but nonetheless, there are a few uh and so globalization is a net good, but there are still things worth pointing out that could potentially be consequential, um, if not direly consequential. One of them being is the sort of cultural uniformity that is the outcome of globalization. Because if we're now operating in one marketplace and everyone is operating at wherever their best competitive advantage is, then most of the textiles might be made in one place, most of the machinery in one place, and even most of the media sort of kind of in one place. And therefore, we lose whatever is this magic about going into a place that feels completely different. And so that could be a pretty disastrous, just cultural downside of this globalization. Would you agree with that? And is there an alternative um take?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

I would agree that there is that downside. I would also argue that um this is a great thing. Um not to us as tourists, we want to explore the um exciting and strange and exotic in in other places, but the world is not our museum, and I think we uh we have to tell ourselves that, especially as globetrotters or sort of uh trying to find something exciting. We have to understand that the world is not just a playground. I learned that when I think I I will never forget this. I was about to say that just before I forgot where it was. But I think it was I think this was Prague after the fall of communism. And um they got in the old s town a uh McDonald's, and I remember this American who just talked to the locals and said, Oh, that's terrible. This is such a shame. It's this used to be so different and and and amazing and and awful in in some ways, of course, but also it used to be so strange. Now you're just like us Americans. And what I will never forget is the reaction by one of the locals who told him that that's the most sort of derogatory uh um awful thing that he she had ever heard from from someone to to assume that they would freeze their country in time as a museum for them to explore to see something different. No, they live in a real society, and they want new choices and uh uh alternatives as well. So, yes, there is that downside. I don't much enjoy sort of seeing the sort of the Starbucks and the McDonald's uh everywhere where I go on on trips, but uh that's not for me to make those choices, I don't think. It's for as people get more. Freedoms, I they will make choices that I don't like. But I like the fact that they get to make those choices because they uh it's it's their society. Now, what changes is not necessarily that societies become more homogenous, but that they become more heterogeneous within their own societies because suddenly, next to that McDonald's, you will have that local Czech shop and suddenly a sushi bar. And what's interesting is that in Stockholm you will also find that Czech uh restaurant as well. So we'll get more of those alternatives and choices and exoticism within our societies. And if you compare most of the cities that I've experienced now and um when I grew up, it's I mean, most of the towns in Sweden we had Swedish restaurants and a pizzeria. That was it. And and and that was um now it's full of cultural creativity and alternatives. So the world has suddenly come to us as well. And I think that there's something wonderful about that. There's a downside as well. When we go abroad, we will see, oh, it's just the same cultural creativity that we find back home.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

The same Chinese crap in every store.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:30

Right. And uh and and that's a downside, um perhaps that will lead us to um travel less and explore our own societies more.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

I I don't have any opinion on this, but I just wonder whether it's something um you've spoken other people about or thought about yourself. But taking it one step further from the the the physical product homogeneity, the you know Chinese t trinket, which is available probably ubiquitously in every city across the planet. But one step further to the cultural homogenization. Obviously countries still and geographically have very distinct cultures, but is it the case that even that might be moving towards more homogeneity and we're losing some of maybe the old ways of thinking, old traditions and behavior? Like I said, I don't know if I have an opinion on this, but it's just whether it's something you've thought about or spoken with other people about.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

I think we're always changing our culture. That's what culture is. You're constantly uh developing it and combining it with new aspects that you you learn in in other places. Uh obviously, if you get more choices and you see more alternatives around the world, obviously you will change your own culture in in uh in more uh ways. But that's uh that's something that we've always done. Again, when I look throughout history and all the things that we think of as sort of oh the pure original uh traditional cultures, we're always combinations. And uh as Selmar Rashdi put it, uh it's hodgepodge, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And that's always how something new comes into the world, and once it's been there for a while, we start to think of this as the original culture, and then that's challenged in a new way, and we think that that's sad because that old classical thing that was a combination of Mesopotamian and uh Egyptian and Phoenician culture, which was pure Greek culture, that that was oh, it's a shame that that's now changing again. Um that's what differs, uh that's the difference between culture and uh and a museum. And uh you know, once you reach a certain age, you begin to find that tragic because every change puts you one step closer to being irrelevant and uh and dead. And I I mean I can feel that obviously when my old traditional cafes where I which I cherished when I grew up, or um they disappear or they redecorate or something like that. That's that's awful. Um but I think that's also how you create something new that the next generation will think of as that's the original, that's the the amazing, that's the the the great thing. Um was a study recently, um Washington Post wrote about this. Uh how people wrote when they're interviewed about when was the best moment in time when it comes to um music. Well, it's uh the best age for music is obviously between 13 and 20 years old, right? That's always the the best, the classical, and nothing will ever be like this, and whatever the kids listen to nowadays, that's not real music. Exactly. What you were listening to in your formative days. That's the original. And I know that that hits hard because I think that the pech mode and the system mercy and the cure, that's the original, that's the best. Nothing that was peak of human experience, and nothing like that will ever be produced again. And the disturbing thing about the Washington Post article, uh, the study that they wrote about was that that goes for um literature, that goes for um cinema, it goes for moral behavior. If you try to imagine when were people the most decent and honest and hardworking and the best family structures and so on, it was always when people were in their teens to their 20s, mid-20s or something like that. And that goes for every generation. So for the boomers, it was the 50s, and they want to go back to the 50s. Uh, for me, growing up in the 70s, it's like the 80s. That was the perfect moment in time. But people growing up right now, they will look back on this time as their golden age. And and that's because it's it's not it's you, it's not the world. Um, it's your formative experience. That's when you um go to your first concert, you fall in love for the first time, you experience all these things, and that's it's more important to you than than anything else. But then what's interesting is that everything that's comes after you're 25 is sort of that's not real culture. It's not something strange has happened to the world, I don't recognize it anymore. And interestingly, everything that happened before you were born was also not as good. Uh and that goes for every generation. And I think I have to remind myself of that when my kids listen to whatever they listen to these days, uh the the language, the the the TikTok, and I don't get it. But obviously they will say the same thing to their kids uh eventually and think that, oh, that the first generation on TikTok, that was the the golden era. I have to remind myself of that if I want to go with a flow. And instead of just taking pride in not using AI and thinking that it's I take pride in not having even heard a single song of Taylor Swift. I don't care for that. That's my mistake. That I I only hurt myself because I don't I don't know about Taylor Swift, but I know that there are so many exciting things happening in the world. More people than ever, who have a longer education than ever in stranger places than I've ever heard of, who have more access to the world's literature and music and creativity and cuisine than ever before. And they add their own creativity to that. That's it's an amazing world and an amazing experiments going on there constantly. And if I don't tap into that because I think, oh, it was the old cafes that I used to visit when I was 15, that's the best. I only damage myself in that process.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:18

No, well well said, and that uh that builds upon the same thing in the face of constant change and the uncertainty of the future. It's really just are you are you do you want to take the risk? Do you want to potentially take on whatever that responsibility might be to try and pursue that life well lived?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

Yeah. You know, we we just had an Olympics in Paris and centered uh around the the most romantic symbol of Parisian culture ever, the Eiffel Tower. Well, I just read it was the Pessimists' Archive on X, who who uh had discovered this um combination of artists and writers and uh citizens of Paris, who in 1897 wrote an article complaining how you know French culture used to be something amazing and wonderful and beautiful, and now in the middle of cities you the city you're erecting this monstrosity that will always forever go down in history as the most un-French uh industrial ugliness ever, the so-called Eiffel Tower. This has got to be dismantled. So, again, when was the last thing you started to love something that you first hated?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Yeah, that's a marvelous point. You mentioned as well, um, in those formative years 13 to 20, um, not only the cultural experiences you have are gonna forever live as the most sentimental, but as well potentially moral behavior. And so I uh listened to uh Jonathan Haidt's book, Anxious Generation, which was super eye-opening. I thought gave me so much empathy for people born after 2000, which I dare say maybe some of your kids are. Um to bring it back to the philosophy of capitalism, is there a way that capitalism can regulate against the consequences of smartphones and the apps that they're using and all the developmental consequences that is quite well documented in this book from it?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:24

Yeah. So I really take it seriously when he when he says something. I've I've learned I read him before he was sort of Jonathan Haidt with the world and his research in well-being and and stuff like that. So so I take that seriously. With that said, um I do recognize something in this um this book from what previous generations said about um rock and roll music and the car culture, the um comic book uh era, the what we in Sweden call the uh uh uh dancing horror of the uh 40s and 50s when kids met and on and went dancing, and that would obviously ruin morals. Yeah, exactly. It would ruin morals, and people would feel rejected and judged, and it would damage the mental health of people. Now this time might be different, it might really be something else going on there, and especially when it comes to social media for uh young girls. Um it might be um that case, and and therefore it's about kids. We have we're gonna have to take that seriously. And uh, but first of all, we need more research uh going into this. It seems so far that this is apparently only happening in certain cultures. It seems to be a very American and Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Might there be something else going on that this is the generation after the global financial crisis? I I don't know. We we'll see. And and again, we it's so important, so we're gonna have to take that that seriously. But but yes, obviously I can find several problems with uh especially a social media where you're constantly being being judged, and uh it's all about fitting in and standing in in a perfect balance which no one will ever find.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:36

Um and the impossible anxiety on the other end of that. Yeah, and then as Jonathan goes on to say, how they are then performing in the workplace and maybe attitudes towards work and yeah, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:48

But is it correlation or is it um um causation? We also know that apparently use not using smartphones at all uh has been, or very little, has been um correlated with uh mental uh unhealth in in certain degrees. We've seen that sort of a moderate use seems to be uh the best. Might it be that you turn to your cell phone and to social media more if you feel anxiety uh about the world, if you don't have sort of your relationships uh in in order in in the um in the physical world? I don't know. But what I do know is that we need to learn and we need to adapt to this. And therefore, I don't think, at least for now, we'll see if there's stronger evidence coming out. I don't think a sort of a one-size-fits-all kind of regulation is the answer. But learning and adapting and trying different methods in different schools, for example, I I think it's a great thing trying not uh banning uh cell phones in in schools and see what happens compared to schools that that don't do that. Um I've noticed that apparently um there are changes going on uh spontaneously, voluntarily. People are adapting and using cell phones and social media less in in certain areas if they don't feel like that's a good thing. That I think is the most important lesson with uh open societies. We might not need one size fits all regulations, but learning and trying and to see if there's something better that we can do.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:32

So maybe the sort of harsh truth is that in that process of iteration, there could well be one or two generations that have to carry the burden for everyone else as we get better at using these systems going forward. To bring it back to the philosophy of capitalism, like that would be the self-regulating mechanism.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:52

Yeah, the problem is if we um have the um and I mean age limits and stuff like that, we might uh perhaps we should uh take that seriously. But if we're trying to ban it, do we know what happens with these generations in that case? I mean, we there's an alternative opportunity cost that we we don't see out there. This is to uh, I mean, what I'm seeing with my kids. It's been an amazing way of also connecting and staying in touch and building new relationships with others. Do we know what we sacrifice and what we're doing to our kids if we stop them from using this? And um I I don't think that's the way to go about it. But I do think that John Knight's got a very important point that what we've done as parents and societies to a very damaging degree is that we've stopped kids from exploring the alternatives to digital the digital social life. We've been helicopter parenting kids to a damaging degree. I uh when I compare what I went through uh as a kid, the the what we got to do, uh what we got to explore, and being out in in an unparented, uncontrolled manner, just going about our own business and finding meeting strangers and doing things uh which was obviously dangerous and risky, uh, but it probably also built some resilience and uh and gave us opportunities to engage in an unsupervised social life that was uh overall there it came with some uh damage as well, but overall, probably good for our um our development. And uh, I think Hait has has got a point that we should have more free-range kids. Um and if we don't do that, obviously social media is what they've got. Uh and and and that's a bad thing. But when I say that, you also hear that what that sounds like to most people is that oh, we're sacrificing a couple of generations by having them being free-range kids with all the risks and the um all the bad meetings and all the traffic uh injury that might might appear from that. So there are no perfect solutions, there are only trade-offs in this world.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:31

That's uh Thomas Sell, right? Yeah, I think it is. Um look, you've been so generous with your time, and I don't want to uh just go on because I feel like actually in some of these questions they've tangentially also answered some of these other questions. So let's finish it off with three or four sort of faster ones. Um you know, sure. Less you needing to make the case for X, but rather just what do you think about why? Yeah. Um has Nasim Taleb affected your worldview at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:04

Well, you know, I read him quite a lot after the uh global financial crisis because I think that he was on to something um important there. And uh when it comes to um learning lessons about how it's not how we avoid uh mistakes, but how we build anti-fragile systems, I I think that's a lesson uh both for me as an individual and for societies, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:37

So just anti-fragile? Nothing to do with maybe his idea of the Lindy phenomenon, the precautionary principle, the minority rule. Uh have these also been, you know, little nice pithy phrases that he's coined that you've been able to identify and then incorporate into your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:55

You know, I think that uh most of that, and I started reading with um Is it fooled by randomness? Which uh once upon a time, I think they've all been buried deeply into my uh almost unconscious uh parts of my brain, and they keep appearing.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:14

And I do recognize things like that. I mean what a tremendous achievement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:18

And it goes back, you just mentioned Thomas Sowell. He's that kind of author where I sort of I have phrases and quotes of ways of thinking that I suddenly realize that, oh, I got that from Thomas Sowell. Right. Or from Tullib.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:36

Okay, so Thomas Sowell, uh, does he sit on your Mount Rushmore as most influential people in your worldview?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:43

It depends on how many people I get to have on my Mount Rashmore. Only four. I would love to have a bigger Mount Rushmore in that case. But I'd I'd say perhaps. Uh to me we we've talked about Ayn Rand, how she's influenced me in a in an almost philosophical literary um um uh way. One person who definitely belongs in my Mount Rushmore is uh Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian thinker and economist, who really taught me about epistemic humility and Socratic wisdom in all kinds of ways, and how culture and society and how and the economy, how we just don't know. So let's try to build institutions that help us to do more things based on what we don't know and and find more out more things. Um and I was quite resistant to that originally because uh you know, when you're 20, you know everything. And I really disliked his way of telling me that look, we don't even know how our own brains function. So how could we uh predict uh the rest of the world? But that has really informed everything that I do. So those are two people on my Mount Rushmore. You might have Saul there as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:08

Nice. Uh right at the beginning of the conversation, you said something that I wrote down, which you just um jogged back to memory, but you mentioned that there are institutions that protect civilization. So I just wonder what you were talking about when you said that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:25

I'm obsessed with trying to make the world safe for progress. Um and I've learned that progress comes from being open to surprises and weird people coming up with unexpected innovations in when it comes to the intellectual sphere, when it comes to technology, when it comes to business models and and stuff like that. So that takes a specific set of institutions. It takes institutions that don't try to predict the tr the Doesn't try to impose one size fits all, uh, that doesn't try to perfect the technologies and business models that we we're having now, but allows us to constantly challenge them. And um that's it's the open society and the free market. Uh when it comes to the specifics, it's the the rule of law, it's the property rights, it's open and free trade so that we can constantly challenge the incumbents. Those are the institutions that make the world safe for surprises, the things that I wouldn't predict, and possibly from people that I don't like because I find them weird, and and trying to protect, give them a safe room to experiment with things that I hesitate to embrace that that protect civilizations.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:52

Alright, Yowan. Um three I try to ask every guest. The first being um if you could interview any two people of history, rather sit as a fly in the wall for an interview between any two people of history, who do you want to listen to?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:10

I would love to have a conversation between Aristotle and um basically anyone. He could sit there and talk to himself. Um but I'd say uh Hitchens is not a bad choice. And and if you and why Aristotle? Well, because he uh I have to say, the most brilliant mind in in human history, combining being the first empirical scientist with this obsessive curiosity about the natural world, everything from sort of uh snails and fish to uh what makes the uh the the planets and the the the stars uh move uh the way they do to politics and explore all the different Greek city-states and and trying to come up with to understand uh more of it and all the while uh inventing basically logic so that we find a way to accumulate knowledge about this. It's uh it just blows my mind and and human morality is Nick Mac in Ethics, is still one of the best works on friendship, morality, and love that that I've ever read. So that would be exciting to see him talk to to anyone. Hitchens not a bad choice, Leonardo da Vinci would be exciting, another curious guy in in history. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:41

That's a that's a phenomenal answer. Um thank you. Final question. What is a country you're particularly bullish on?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:50

Wow. Um I um can I get it to make mention two? Um Argentina might just after after having been one of the richest countries on the planet, then having experienced sixty years of terrible stagnation and uh economic disaster, might just turn the corner and uh we don't know what's gonna happen. Under under a real crazy guy, President Mile. It takes a crazy guy to challenge those institutions, uh, the Peronist um party and so on. He might just get the macroeconomics in order and get Argentina to function again. It it's it's still with all the mess it's been through, it's one of the most beautiful and warm and interesting countries on the planet. If they get the economy in order, it will be the place to. If I can mention one more, I'm constantly excited by Vietnam. Uh love that. I mean it's a it's a communist dictatorship, but it's a it's a communist dictatorship where I when I enter and there's a the wrong number in my visa, it's not the same as the passport. They've made a mistake at the embassy in Sweden. They call in their superiors, and what they do is that they take a bottle of TIPEX and just erase the numbers and write the the right ones into it. I mean, they can't uphold any kind of despotic authoritarian system with that kind of cultural mentality. They're far too warm and kind and decent. And you see that in the culture, in the economy, the moment that there are cracks in that wall, they create amazing um well, everything from art and architecture to economic progress.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:45

I think high-tech manufacturing now as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:48

Absolutely. They've gone from rice and coffee to sort of being a big exporter in high-tech and taking lots of business from China right now. If they began to dismantle more of that sort of the authoritarian structures, I think they will be uh one of the real tigers in the world economy.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:07

I'm so stoked you said that. I think after almost 200 interviews, that might be the first Vietnamese uh entrant that we have. Um, you spent a bit of time with Malay, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:17

Yeah, I was there at a conference where uh he was the keynote speaker, and uh I didn't get that much time with him, all his fans, they're one piece of him. But but but I got to meet his uh circle of people and advice and and stuff like that. And I'll tell you this: there's a method to the madness, and uh I was more bullish on Argentina and what they're trying to do after I was there than before, because um there's a social media persona um which is uh wild and crazy. And I, as a Swede, I think there's too many swear words and too much aggression out there, but I think there's a real serious and a much more pragmatic, actually, attitude to how to make the reforms stick that impressed me. So it there might be a chance.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:07

Unbelievable. You've been so generous with your time. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me and as well for being so open with your answers.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:15

My pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:16

All right, mate.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:17

It was fun.