that the west side of chicago should be a hive of commercial activity. why should? >> guest: well, should because then people would have jobs other than being goat peddlers. and can because once it was. before the highly segregated history banned it to the west side, there were lots of factories, lots of jobs. and now because of regulations of various kinds, it's not. it's, it's a free -- it's a free fire zone. not all of it. there are some streets where people by sheer act of will kept the street in good condition and they're not going to allow any of -- anyone to deal drugs. but then for the most part it's very sad. >> host: you say regulations. give an example of some of those. >> guest: well, to start a business in chicago and most places in the united states, worse in brazil or egypt, it takes months. it's hard to do. you've got to get permits, you've got to get a business license to braid hair, famous case, notoriouses case. to earn your living braiding hair, very common in the african-american community, you need a state license. why should people have to jump through these hoops in order to start a business? in the '50s in african-american, urban communities -- south side of chicago or harlem -- there were lots of successful small businesses. and then increasing regulation, some of it very well meaning -- people wanting to help poor people -- they ended up hurting the poor people. thank god in chicago we don't have rent control. that's one thing that really hunters poor people. hurts poor people. but we have enough of it the west side of chicago, and it could be so easily fixed if you had a, if you made the west side of chicago an enterprise zone where you didn't have to be heavily taxed or regulated, it would change. >> host: didn't the trump administration create enterprise zones with legislation? >> guest: i'm a little bit -- i don't think so, but maybe it did. i try not to look too closely at the trump administration. >> host: why is that? >> guest: well, because he's or -- i don't approve of mr. trump at all. and i think although on the one hand he's got some people in his administration deregular -- deregulated which if it's done intelligently is a good idea, the federal government has one million separate regulations. one million. now, that's kind of crazy. so that's one thing, getting rid of some of that. but on the other hand, he's doing these amazingly foolish economic interventions such as his madness about foreign trade. his adviser in foreign trade is an economist with the harvard -- [inaudible] named peter navarro. and he's a very foolish man. i'm so ashamed that i have a harvard ph.d. in economics that i'm going to organize a group of us to turn in -- [laughter] our harvard ph.d.s in protest that peter navarro has one. >> host: in 2016 in your book "bourgeois equality" you wrote that even trump the businessman does good by doing well. >> guest: yeah. when he does well. but, you know, trump hasn't done well. it's plausibly calculated that if he had taken the $400 million he got one way or another from his father and had invested it in randomly chosen stock portfolio, his net worth would be higher now than it is. because, you know, he did the trump stakes -- [laughter] and trump university and trumka see know and trump, trump, trump, trump, and they all failed. this is something that bloomberg pointed out during the campaign in 2016. bloomberg was a poor boy when he started, and he became rich and he actually became rich by doing well, by doing good. that's the way innovatism is. if you're in business or anything else and you're choosing well, you make profits. but the only way you make profit is if people like your stuff. they don't like trump steaks. or they find that the trump university degree is fraudulent. that's reduced everyone -- >> host: but isn't capitalism and our economic system about taking risks? >> guest: yeah, it is about taking risks. so you do things that are -- you make a mistake, then you get hit with it. trump makes mistakes all the time in business. he loses all the time. by the miracle of the electoral college, he's now our president. but as a businessman, he's terrible. as a tv performer, he's good. like you, he should have stayed -- [laughter] >> host: how do you define your economic philosophy? >> guest: i'm a liberal in the real sense of the word. the word comes from the latin which means a free person as -- and this was very much in the minds of romans when they used the word -- as contrasted with a slave. and one very simple way of describing true liberalism is to say that everyone has the right to say no. that's all. the right to say no. and that means that you don't have -- if you're a woman, you don't have to agree to be raped, so to speak. if you're in, if you're an employee and you don't like it, you can leave. whereas i'm realize -- reading a wonderful book by -- [inaudible] i think his name is, grossman, which is a novel about the soviet union. and the big thing there is that people couldn't say no. they were being bossed around by someone not voluntarily. you're an employee, i was an employee. we did what our bosses said we do. but we could always walk. and that's really fundamental to a free society. so the other way of talking about true liberalism is it's the, it's the theory of an adult society and economy whereas many of the other options -- modern populism of the left or right, fascist communism, social democracy and the welfare sate -- want people to be children. and i think we shouldn't be children. i think it's a good place to be adult. that doesn't mean we shouldn't help people. i call myself a christian liberal. >> host: and back to why liberalism works. quote: i can understand the progressive point of view. i can remember its attraction as one peruses the pages of the nation or noam chomsky's latest -- [laughter] it feels like one is doing good. >> guest: absolutely. and isn't that great? by just listening to noam, i actually debated him last summer. i was in a festival in england, and they had noam on a big screen like a large tv screen, and three of us argued with him. yeah. i think people who feel they want to do something for the poor should do something for the poor. instead of just feeling good about reading "the new york times" and thinking, oh, yes, i'm a good person. i care about the poor. for example, they should, they should help the homeless as i have actually in a small way by having them come live with them. i had some homeless people with me for four and a half years in my house. that doesn't make me a saint, it just makes me a person who wants to put her money where her mouth is. but the key point is to let the poor people free so that they can work, travel and live. you told me before you started that i you have two acres of lawn. well, that's probably because in your town you can't build a house without a large lot. that's to keep poor people out. that's what it's for. it's true in many, many places in the united states. people with their two-acre lot sitting there reading the nation magazine, i don't know. [laughter] [speaking french] >> host: well, i will say i am out in the country. [laughter] i'm out in the country, no rules -- >> guest: no ricks? >> host: no restrictions, no rules. but i'm going to go back to why liberalism works, and this is a quote from stephen lansbert. you say we all reject moral instincts every day of our lives. >> guest: well, that's right. think about not having to put your money where your mouth is, not pushing people around. i mean, look, i've never been a boss myself, but there are some people who are much, much better at administration than i am. and if in a free labor market, of course, the person, can leave if they don't like your management techniques or style. but in any case, people shouldn't like being nasty. [laughter] there was a bus driver this morning in the shuttle at o'hare. you know, he was real nasty. and i said to him your life would be better if you treated your customers with respect. i've been on buses in chicago where the bus driver is wonderful, where he welcomes people onto his bus, and he goes through the snow and slush of chicago and is proud to get there on time. and that's how we ought to live. we ought to live the way our mom told us to behave. >> host: professor mccloskey, are you still teaching at the university of chicago? or university of illinois-chicago? >> guest: no. i taught there from 2000-2015, but i've been in the blessed state of retirement. i highly recommend it to you all since then. my joke is that i retired in order to work more. and i finished my trilogy on the economic and social history of the last two centuries, and i finished this book that came out in the fall on why liberalism works. and i've got a new book coming up from chicago from the chicago press in the fall which is kind of a pop version of all of these called "lee me alone and -- leave me alone and i'll make you rich." [laughter] >> host: well, you talked about your trilogy, and this is the bourgeois trilogy, the most recent, bourgeois equality. what's the definition of bourgeois? >> guest: well, it's the french word, of course, for towns person. and usually specialized to mean the leaders of the town, the merchants and manufacturers and guildsman and is so forth. it was, in fact, the common term for that class in english before the phrase middle class became common around 1800 the bourgeoisie started calling themselves middle class. before the basic idea was there were priests, the nobility and then everyone else. the third estate. and it's only in the last couple of centuries that we started to make distinctions among the various people. and my point is really to argue against my friends on both the left and the right who are contemptuous of business, of people who like my grandfather. he wasn't contemptuous, he was an electrical contractor. and it was, it was an honorable -- that's an honorable thing to do. you're not cheating and, you know, you're doing your wiring of airports well and being paid for it. that makes for -- see what's odd about it is that it makes for a sweet society. there is this sort of mythology, marxist kind of tale that you see especially in the soviet, the history of the soviet union. because anyone who makes money is evil. on the contrary. i said before, you make money by doing things that people like. what exactly is the problem here? >> host: to go to bourgeois virtues, however, quote: the christian gospels attack well, surprisingly harshly by the standards of the west of the world's religious canon. it is not surprising, therefore, that in the 19th century a bourgeois but christian europe invented the idea of socialism. >> guest: that's right. in fact, socialism is a secularized version of christianity in many, many ways. the apocalypse of the revolution as understood, say, in marxism is very similar to the second coming of christ. the further the ideology among sow e yet communists and maoists in china, that when they were sent to a prison camp, they thought it was okay. because i, it must be that the party knows, and there's a very similar attitude in some versions of christianity. if the priest tell me i'med bad, i'med bad. and there's -- i'm bad. there's a certain protestant element to it as well. and it is quite strange that the west, so-called, which was most successful economically originally, now it's spread to the world, would have this ideology of anti-wealth thinking. i just reread -- a new translation, but a theologian named hart of the new testament, the whole thing. it's not that long, it's a horse book. and it's, there's really a socialist element to it. early christianity was a band of friends. and among friends this kind of equality and consumption and work assignments and so forth is very sensible. but it doesn't make sense in a large society. it never has. when it's tried in a large society, it doesn't work. when it's about friends or family, it works. socialism, i'm talking about. >> host: you identify as a longtime agnostic -- >> guest: i was. >> host: and now you're a christian liberal. >> guest: i am. >> host: liberal, small l. >> guest: right. >> host: okay. what happened? >> guest: well, i changed gender, as your audience might want to know, in 1995. i was once donald, now i'm deirdre. and i, in the years after that i felt there was something more that i needed to look into. so i went to the catholics, i didn't like that. i went to the opposite, the unitarians who pray to whom it may concern, and i didn't want like that. and then i found apingly cannism -- anglicanism, we call it episcopalianism. and it was just, it suited me very well. it's kind -- in fact, right from the beginning of anglicanism, even henry the viii but certainly after him, the anglying cans, the church of england viewed itself as the middle road between roman catholicism and puritanism. and that suits me. >> host: what is it about it that suits you? >> egg -- >> host: is it the customs? the beliefs in. >> guest: well, the belief is very good, let's talk about that. but it's, it's the whole spirit of the anglican church i like. it's -- [laughter] we're called, in the united states we're called the frozen chosen because in virginia especially the upper chat and in new york for that matter, the upper class was episcopalian. but it's not because the frozen chosen that i, that i like it. it's -- in their kind of joking way, it's claimed that in episcopalianism, you don't really need to believe anything. but you do the ceremony gnus. you come to church -- ceremonies. you come to church, you do the mass -- >> host: the smells and the bells. >> guest: no, that's high church. my particular congregation is a low church. i had a congregation in iowa, iowa city, iowa, and once a year we would do smells and bells. which was kind of fun, you know, incense and the host -- it was fun. but it's a very flexible framework for searching. because it's the journey. you don't have to believe in the virgin birth to be a practicing christian. t the practice that matters. indeed, i think that's true of economic performance. you don't, you don't need to be a student of the economy to be an electrical contractor. you just do your job, and you might learn from it after a while that there's mutually, mutual advantage here. and i, as i get older, i think -- i keep trying to unify my thinking to see what cross-fertilization there is. i a have a paper i'm working on right now about theological free will which, as you know, is the very, very deep, puzzling subject and free markets. i think they are connected. they're not opposed as so many modern americans or european theologians think. i think you don't have to be a socialist to be a christian. >> host: well, deirdre mccloskey, let's go back to your bourgeois trilogy, and this is the bowrming boy virtues. i agree with my favorite marxist economy that -- economist that education should be financed from the center. ma alternative care and early whilecare should be expanded and state financed, that inheritance taxes should be steep, that corporate welfare should be eliminated, that military expenditures should be cut to a tiny fraction of their present levels, that a modest minimum income should be given to every american, that tax laws should encourage both men and women combined paid work with family and community work. we followers of adam smith are egalitarians. >> guest: yeah. >> host: is there a but in there somewhere? >> guest: well, nancy is an old friend. she's a professor at the university of massachusetts and should get the nobel prize but won't. she was annoyed that i called her a marxist, because she's not an orthodox marx ifist, but she is of the left and i'm not. i was once. i was a kind of joan baez socialist. i dreamt i saw joe hill last night. but i, as i said, i'm a christian liberal. which means that i acknowledge a responsibility that we have towards the poor. that we can't just take a kind of country club view, oh, a bunch of losers. this, againing would be donald trump. oh, those losers, i don't care about them. i've got my cadillac. all is well in the world. so on a lot of the policy proposals that nancy makes from the left, i agree. i may not quite agree with the scale she wants to, wants to do them on but we agree that we should help poor people and pregnant women and so forth. that there should be not a fist in people's face, but an open hand of help. and that's perfectly kept with what we unfortunately call capitalism. when you think about it, the or their capitalist d i do not like the word, but capitalist transaction, we buy a cup of coffee. for one thing, the sheer act of buying a cup of coffee is mutually advantageous, and both people are happy about it, the seller and the buyer. but furthermore, you'll notice in your own life that if you make a habit of going to that coffee shop, you eventually become friends. commerce creates friendship. it's the same way with church creates friendship, a church does, or a college or high school class or whatever. people get together. they're not hurting each other, they're not forcing each otherred to do things. they're allowed to say no. and out of that comes what the french in the 18th century called -- they called it sweet commerce. that's right. whereas the coercion that's necessary for most activities of the state -- well, actually, all -- that's the nasty stuff. you've got to pay your taxes. if you don't, we're going to put you in jail, that kind of -- the threats from the irs on having a minor, non-legal dispute with the irs right now as so many of us do. i don't like coercion, i never have. >> host: you say that you don't like the word or -- >> guest: capitalism. yeah. the philosophy. >> guest: it's not the philosophy i don't like, it's the word i don't like. the word capitalist was used and was modified by marx to mean not just rich and investor, which is what the word meant in french say around 1800, to mean this whole group of people who are the bosses, right? and then after marx, in german capitalism became the characterization of our commercial side. it's a terrible word. academically, intellectually, scientificically, terrible word. because it's convinced economists when conservative or left or whatever -- whether conservative or left or whatever and marxist and everyone else that capital accumulation is the spring of our commercial economy. it's not. think of it mechanically. the gears are necessary. you need sunlight and so on. but the mode of force comes from the spring. and the spring in our life or, indeed, in old life too but it's been enormously expanded in importance, is innovation. it's creative. it's human creativity. and this is a view of economics that i'm coming to take, the kind of economics that i've done for many, many years in my ph.d. is misleading because it look at the capital. we kind of call it -- we want the word, want the letter c for other things. but capital is -- i thought that capital was motivational, that it did things. . >> then slaves, then slowly, women. immigrants. catholics. gay people. whatever. right down to this remarkable framing of transgender people. all of that works to encourage. bring courage to people to be creative. it had this amazing affect since 1900. real ability to buy stuff. and to go to university and so on has increased by a factor of 13. 3000 percent. not 100 percent. 200 percent. 3000 percent. and that's from the release of human creativity and free societies. >> doctor mccloskey, we are having general sense and debate about capitalism versus socialism in this country. this is not the first time we've had this. >> to put it mildly. it's been going on since the middle of the century. the kids that say let's try socialism.we love you bernie. i don't hate bernie. who can hate bernie? he's a very charming person. he was a freshman at the university of chicago in 1960. i was a freshman at harvard and we didn't know each other at the time. at the time, we had more or less the same opinion about this capitalism. i prefer to call it in a visit - - which is a much more accurate word.anyway, we wanted to overthrow capitalism. it was i think probably more systematic than i was. i read half of the communist manifesto in iraq and that was enough. not quite true. " you was a hero of mine when i was 16. we have the same opinion then. and i learned stuff and he didn't. because he has the same opinion that he had in 1960. people say he's consistent. consistently wrong. we've tried socialism. as i said, socialism, appropriately and - - works among a small group of friends. and it showed.i buy a pizza, share with five of my friends and i say, i paid for this pizza, i'm going to eat it all. that's not what friends do. in a big society, 330 million people, it's kind of making everything into a family, doesn't work. that don't leave mike doesn't mean you don't have charity or want to help each other. capitalism, terrible capitalists with blood running from its mouth. that's not how capitalists are which i established in my first book of the street. it's not what made the economy rich which i established in the second volume. and it's not the future and past of our society. which i've argued in the third book. >> once a month we like to invite an author on to booktv and talk to him or her about his or her body of work. this month, each economic scholar and retired professor, deirdre mccloskey. here's just a sampling of the 23-24 books that she has written. beginning with "the bourgeois era" in 1998. "the rhetoric of economics". how to be human. the bourgeois virtues, dignity and equality came out in 2006, 2010 and 2016. economical writing, the 30 edition came out last year. as did her most recent, "why liberalism works". and we've quoted a little bit from that. we will put the phone lines on the screen if you like to participate. for those of you who live in the east and central time zones, 202-748-8201 for the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also send a text message. just include your first name in your city. 202-748-8003 is the number two text into. we will also scroll through our social media sites because you can make a comment on facebook or twitter or by email. as well. we will get to those quickly. first of all, what is this piece of paper i'm holding up here? >> i'm a kind of engineer at heart. i like to note magnitudes. what is it magnitude? which i think is the appropriate scientific attitude. the issue is quantitative, i have a rough idea. get a rough idea of what the magnitude is. and you strangely asked me how many words i had written that i made an estimate. 3 million. >> you were doing something like 10th to the ninth power. >> because i can't multiply very well. i have touse exponents . >> this is our quote from you in 2016 in the chronicle of higher education. i am a stutterer and i've noticed thatstarters are often good writers . - - stutterer's avoid words that they think or know they will block on and therefore are good at finding another expression. >> a terribly important example of this in our current policy is joe biden. i only learned about a month ago, there's an article in the atlantic.which revealed, he hasn't hit it or anything that he's a lifetime stutterer. and i think people ought to know this. because his somewhat strange way of talking, in many of his early political campaigns. he would misstate things. state things in a funny way. that's because he's avoiding this expression and doing another. the advantage i am claiming there is that people who stutter get very good at thinking of parallel words. not just elegant variations. called in the composition trade. but, it is seeing what the differences between words. and seeing if you can use - - when i was speaking to a friend in brazil a couple days ago. i was trying to teach her the difference in english between say and tell. i said, go to sleep. i'm telling you going to sleep. we discovered the word tell has an authority to it. she said very wisely, it's the mommy word. i'm telling you, go to bed now! i can't stand it anymore. whereas you don't say, i say go to bed. that kind of thinking goes on in the mind of a stutterer all the time. as i get older, i get, i start or less. i'm in a profession where i'm supposed to talk all the time. as a teacher. in fact, the month after i decided to change gender, for about two months. my stutter vanished. i didn't even notice it. other people said, - - they didn't know i was going to do this. i told my family and few others. they said ivan heard you stutter for two months. what's going on? i said, oh yeah. i guess it's because i've realized who i am. >> november 2 1995 on a bridge in cedar rapids. what happened? >> it wasn't quite in cedar rapids. it was a couple months earlier. if you're talking about the same thing. i called to work - - i had what i called bill advisedly, and epiphany. that i could change gender and should. it's kind of strange. in most of your decisions in life, at 4:00 in the morning, you might have a doubt. i had tenure at the department of economics at the university of chicago and i walked away from it. and i went to iowa. go hawks, by the way. i had doubts about that. i think on the whole, it worked out well for me. but i had doubts. we marry. what profession you choose. you might doubt. i have not had a moment of doubt in the most vulnerable times of day. when you wake up at 4:00 in the morning. not me. i am deirdre. i am queer and i am here, get used to it. >> on page 188 of crossing. donald never loved his penis the way some men do. she said goodbye to and she didn't care anytime after it. >> i didn't. i have a dear friend. the vanessa deirdre, i would hide anywhere in the world to avoid the operation. something that you are welcoming. so it's a striking difference. i was not a feminine child. a feminine boy. i was the captain of my football team. american football. i was kind of a macho professor in seminars. i learned at the university of chicago and earlier, how to be tough in seminar but not just to hurt people, i don't want to hurt people but i want to get to the truth. in a way, i learned this from my mother. was a good arguer. i don't mean mean-spirited. but she'll be persistent. wait a second, you've done that right. >> let's hear from our viewers. chris. connecticut. you are on with deirdre mccloskey. >> hi chris. >> hi professor, how are you today? >> i am fine. i'm kind of exhausted. i just came from brazil. >> welcome back. i was wondering, there seems to be a lot of confusion between what a welfare state and socialist state is. can you elaborate more i what you see a welfare state and a socialist state is and i will take my answer off the air. >> chris, what is your definition of each? >> you know, that's a good question. i'm not too sure anymore. i've had a lot of conversations with friends and neighbors about it. we can come to a conclusion except a a lot of european countries would be considered more of a welfare state. when you look at venezuela or the old soviet union, as more of a socialist state. >> i think that's a perfectly sensible distinction. there is an extreme version of not allowing people to say no. which is the thoroughgoing socialized state. i'm just reading a wonderful novel by a soviet novelist named - - and grossman. called forever flowing. which is a chilling account of the - - and the numerous ways in which soviets citizens were being forced around by others. other soviet citizens. but look, you can view liberalism as the theory that no one should be a slave. but that no one should be asleep you're not a wife to a husband or a slave to a master. or a citizen to the state. and you're still a slave if you are 20 percent slave. suppose you were a slave. i mean a real slave. you didn't do it, you were going to get beaten. every monday. you are still a slave. i think - - many of the welfare programs we have are bad for four people. i claimed earlier why that was sometimes. my idea of a good welfare program would be to give people income. but that taxing you and me to give money to the poor. give money, period. i think that would be satisfactory. - - most prices are determined by supply and demand and so forth. yes, there's a - - but being a slave on monday is not being free. >> from recent magazine in 2018, you wrote, slavery was of course appalling. a plane theft of labor. the war to end it was righteous altogether. that prosperity did not depend on slavery. the u.s. and the uk and the rest would have become just as rich without the 250 years of unrequited toil. >> i was quoting the words of lincoln's second inaugural which was a couple months before the war actually answered. there's this passionate belief in the 1619 movement. to carry out the words or to affirm the words of the second inaugural. where lincoln said, the wealth of the united states depended on slaves. and that's economic nonsense. it's just not true. it's not good history, not good economics. you can see this all kinds of ways. for example, a country iknow well and have taught . namely south africa. if apartheid were such a grand thing for white south africans, why do white south africans have indeed a slightly lower income than white new zealanders? are white australians? i thought hurting people was a good idea according to apartheid. for the whites. not so. i know it's going to make people head explode. but it's not true that slavery was the basis of american wealth. >> - - in yorba linda, california.>> hi doug. >> i have several of deirdre's books. >> good for you! buy more.[laughter] >> okay. i was wondering if she has any thoughts on any modern trends inrhetoric . or if she doesn't, the value of academic debate to education. >> well i think it's central. you know, you and i know doug, the word rhetoric doesn't mean just baloney. it means the art, the study and the art of argument. or persuasion. of sweet talk, as i call it. and many academic fields don't realize that they are engaged in persuading each other. a nuclear physicist persuades the readers to believe a new theory. i am quite surprised that in law school, they don't understand their participating in the ancient rhetorical tradition of the west. now there are parallel editions in east asia and west asia or indeed in all human society. we are speaking species.and persuasion, argument, is what we do. what can get very radical about it ãi wrote a book. three books on rhetoric in the 1980s. and early 1990s. everything was there is no such thing as a settled method of science. mechanical method of science. it's always a matter of persuading people. honestly. not cheating. honestly. >> john is calling in from new york city. go ahead john. >> hi john. >> thank you for taking my call. seems we have an election that could be divided between the socialist sanders and the capitalist tromp. what do you think is happening in china? can you have a liberal economy with an authoritative government? >> essentially not. the china model that you are mentioning, doesn't make any sense. the parts of the chinese economy that have made chinese better off. now instead of being 1-2 dollars a day, there are about $30 a day which is a tremendous improvement. still it's way below $130 a day that every ãon average, that americans are in. and make. - - earn. but the parts that did this, or the liberal parts. where the chinese government finally in 1978 started acting moderately sensibly in the economy.and stopped central planning the five-year plans. stopped interfering in the economy all the time. the parts that still don't work in china or the state owned enterprises. and one of the numerous mistakes that president xi is making is he's having the enterprises by a private companies. because he wants to move back to mao. this is a terrible mistake and it will hurt the chinese. so there's no chinese model. that's a ridiculous idea. think of the indian model, rather. they started to liberalize away from its attempt at socialism under the gandhi's for example. and started growing at 6-7 percent per year per capita by essentially leaving people alone. on the prospect of bernie sanders against donald trump, i quote the former republican consultant who you see on msnbc a lot. who says, don't put up bernie sanders because in the united states, a sociopath beats a socialist six times a week and twice on sunday. and it's true. if the democratic party wants tromp to have a second term, they will nominate bernie. a very charming man. world war - - or warren. >> do you view medicaid and medicare as socialist programs? do you support them? >> yes they are socialist programs. they are one of these 10-15 20 percent socialism type programs. whenever i speak to an old person or young audiences, i always thank them for my medicare. i've had hip replacements and so on. an example that people often forget is the va hospital. that's really socialism. because it's not only the state is taxing us to pay for the veterans to go to hospitals. is providing the hospitals. the same way education is socialized. elementary education, high schools and colleges. and i think that extending those is a poor idea. look, why is medical care in the united states so fouled up? you've heard this over and over again. we pay twice as much as a share of national income of any country in the world. in healthcare. why? well, it's because we have piles of monopolies on top of each other. one example, we are not allowed as americans to buy our drugs in canada. why is that? because the state, the government, prevents us from doing it. why do they do that? because the drug companies have purchased the state. the government. and they want to be able to charge 3-10 times more to us in the united states as our friends in canada pay. this is crazy. this is loco. with a stroke of a pen, congress could cut, radically cut, the cost of drugs in the united states. but doesn't do it. this is true of many of the monopolies. in order to get a new hospital to your community. your community wants to start a new hospital, you get together. you have the money, you want to do it. you have to get permission of the existing hospital. - - has written. you have to get a certificate of need. this is stupid. so my view, my real liberal view is that instead of piling subsidies to old people like me on each other or than extending them to everyone so that were able to pay the fancy monopoly prices. cut the monopolies. and there's no part of the medical system that's not a monopoly. my eyes are failing. i need very strong glasses in order to read. i can't go to an optometrist and say to him, i tried to. give me glasses that on a scale is a five. the highest you could get at the drugstore end the virus is 3.5. i want a five. they say have you got a prescription, you've got to get your ophthalmologist to prescribe it. and she takes a cut. this is ridiculous. >> john from santa rosa, california. you are on with professor deirdre mccloskey. >> thank you for taking the call. this is my firstexposure to professor . thank you for being here and being real. >> thank you sir. >> i've heard you describe yourself as a christian liberal. how is that different from liberal - - libertarianism? you've distinctive yourself differently the accuser, a little nervous. from bernie sanders point how would you compare yourself to a ron paul style of libertarianism? ... >> i would say joe biden, even in chicago where it is kind of pointless, i would vote for him symbolically. but, but there is no space between us, ron paul had so much strange opinions about race which i wish he had not had, but, he wants anything he is and was somewhat obsessed with the central bank but, we agree that there should be not 1 million regulations such as the federal government now has, 1 million separate regulations but a fewer butter free press in court law can protect us from the danger of being poisoned in a restaurant much better than regulation can. but, i want to turn my many libertarian friends towards what i should actually called and abraham make liberalism because it is true of jews and muslims to that we are instructed to help the poor. it is one of the five duties of a muslim is to give charity. one of the very few five things you should do as a muslim. it is certainly true in judaism. and, but it's always true of hinduism and buddhism and any sensible way of looking at the world whether or not it has anything to do with gun. so, i want i want to change the image of libertarianism. i would like to drop the word and have us claim back that word because what we call liberals in the united states are social democrats, have many friends and i was once one of these people, so i understand them, but they seize the word and for about a hundred years in the united states being a liberal meant being a social democrat. oddly enough i mentioned i just came back from brazil. brazil and latin america being a liberal means being a conservative. conservative about gay rights and conservative about how the church and state should be related in all kinds of traditional conservative things in mexico and brazil are called liberal. so, there is something with the western hemisphere. there something in the water that is making people take this perfectly good word and turn it on its head. sue mike scott is in -- he is gone and disappeared. >> come back, scott. >> i have no idea if he was there or not. i apologize, scott if you were there. brandon toledo, ohio, hi, fran. >> i read your wonderful book, crossing the in early in childhood i always wanted to be a woman, i sound like a woman, i am a man. i do not believe i was born this way. i believe i can see a clear connection between how i was raised in the fact that i always wanted to be a girl, do you believe that is by child biological psychological, what is causing this? >> have you transitioned at all. no. i have not i am catholic practicing then i'm terrified of any surgery but i can see a clear connection when all he knew when i was a child is that i hated being a male. and i hated it. and i wanted to be a girl and i would feel a strong desire to imitate the girls. >> i understand. i understand, but when i was a boy i was a boy. i transitioned when i was 53 so i urge you to try it out. because, there has been an amazing change in the attitude of people in the last 15 years or so, oprah did programs every year and half or so on transgendered issues. i was on her show once and transamerica, that wonderful film was about this and people had gotten much more relaxed about it and said well, that's okay. but, but you ask is it biological, you and i are both in the middle of an experiment and i don't know. i don't know. i'm not sure. i was kind of a gentle boy but i didn't consciously want to be a girl and indeed since i am much older than you this was 1953 when i first had these ideas and there was nothing to be done so i became a guy. i was married for 30 years to the absolute love of my life. i still love my wife and former wife and when i was a guy i was a guy and i thought like a guy and then this epiphany in august of 1995 i realize that i could and should do and who news biological and environmental, the stars astrology, i don't know. you tell me. but, whatever it is whatever it is it's a matter of freedom. if were going to have a free society can't just be freedom to the bosses. it has got to be freedom for the people to do what they harmlessly want to do. if they want to have a dog and there is no problem with having a dog they should have a dog. if they want to open a grocery store they should open a grocery store. people should be allowed to do without interference and without the need for deep regulation the psychiatrist are completely ignorant about transgendered matters for the most part. and yet, they are signed often by the state to be the gatekeepers and that's just silly. >> when did you tell your ex-wife? and you have children. >> immediately after that. >> in august of 95 i was driving home from chicago and i know the place on the road where i came to the conclusion. i was saying to myself well, should i do this and a month before and i am not making this up i am an economist. i had done a cost-benefit study of changing genders will this is silly beyond belief, that's not how you decide when you love or what job you're going to do. it's not all that at least. >> but, this time i just got it as the english say i twigged to it. yes, i told her immediately and she was -- she had known before i did that it was eight months up to august she saw that it was more profound than what i saw. i said no, i'm just a heterosexual cross , lumberjack and i'm okay, don't worry about it and, as she knew. she had much more insight into it. and at first she was sympathetic and tried to help me but as the fall one on she became less and less empathetic and in the end she and the two other people i love very month much, my son is now 50, my daughter is 44, they turned against me and have not spoken to me for 24 years. i have three grandchildren i have never met which is a little bit like being stabbed and having the knife turned in the womb. but, the most, the thing that bothers me the most is their loss, not that i am such a grand person, but so far as my three grandchildren are concerned, it is always good to have more people to love you and strange as it sounds, i love these three people i have never met. so what to make of that, in any case, that is the sadness really commits their loss not so much my. i have a very full life, i am happy i have lots of friends church my academic life, i get to talk to wonderful people and tv so. >> it was in november of 95 that you got arrested. >> i did. this is a rather sensitive issue in our family because it was my beloved younger sister with whom i am a very good terms now she was having her own problems with it, this change of my and, she got courts to agree in this was i think she feels now and certainly i did at the time was a mistake. i was seized twice and put in locked wards to check out to see if i was crazy. now, the good news is that i was certified same four times. as far as i know you are a complete loony. i don't know, maybe you are secretly completely crazy, i'm not. i have the paper to show that i am completely same. >> the enjoyed that, it's about me. and crossing you right, people sometimes say i don't understand cross-dressers who dresses women but don't want to be women. why don't you understand, dear, it's the game. it's the game. months before this epiphany this cross-dressing club in chicago that i was involved in had what was supposed to be an ice creamd sufficiently feminine and, i noticed that the actual girls, a couple of wives, psychologist and hairdresser, they were preparing the food in these men in drag, some of them very persuasive thought don't they know what a job is, i was the only cross-dresser who went up and help them and then came time to clean up and remember it's in chicago and so i was going around taking empty cans of coke out of the hands of men in full drag discussing auto repair the chicago bears together these guys just occasionally cross-dressed, didn't really mean much commitment that's a silly way to talk. it was just something they did and it was no big deal. they often had wives who were sympathetic and of like minds and hands, we had worked out that donald was my name would occasionally cross-dressed in private and not too often no big deal, we had a perfectly normal relationship, my wife and i. so it was not as if i was secretly dreaming of being a woman all of the time that's not the case. i think the actual truth is, people are more complicated than that, people can hold the contradictory thoughts in their mind quite easily and can have deep commitments to things that sound like they don't go, so for these decades it first with shame and then not so much i had thought of myself as a heterosexual cross-dresser, i was always attracted to women and yet, one of the stupid psychiatrist quizzed me once when i had been seized in the fall of 1995 and said are you gay? and i said no and you want to be gay? i don't know what that means not particularly. i have gay friends come i don't care, then why are you doing this? which showed that he thought that i wanted to become a woman in order to have sex with men. if all i had discovered at age 53 was that i was gay that would've been much easier but of course i did it the hard way. >> michael is in portland, oregon. somatic how are you? >> i am just really sad. i'm in my 70s now that i haven't encountered -- i just really respect your mental -- i think most of the principles and things like seemingly opposites. i have that and i agree, one of the curses of the whole contradictory one dozen. >> of philosophy is the principle of someone called. >> mike, you are coming through to clearly. it's kind of fuzzy. >> is this better? my phone closer? >> just asked the question that will be good. >> okay, question first. he would be very interesting to have you at my dinner table talking because i love your mental style. my question would be, who would you have if you are the host? would you have it your dinner table to talk to? >> well that's an interesting question. i might have you, michael. but, i just love intellectual conversation. in iowa where i taught for 19 years we have been expression, a lot of hogs come i'm happy as a pig in mud when i am having a discussion like this with you. so, i would have people who like to talk seriously, i can think of a lot of names, michael -- for example is the canadian philosopher and was the head of the -- party in canada briefly. i can think of -- if i could bring dead people back, i got a real long list. adam smith above all, jon stewart, indeed, those are the two patron saints of liberalism come along with phil and a few others. >> scott in connecticut, you are own, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> thank you. i would add jeremy benson to your list as well, but profess professor, actually i have two very quick questions, i hope. they are quick. the first is, what are year feelings about state owned bank similar to what they have in south dakota? where the capital for lack of better term stays in the states and then gets redistributed to different projects, infrastructure and projects for mike and what is your second question? >> the other one in terms of socialism my understanding and i am a biologist not an economist socialism is government control the production and come i just can't see how supply and demand can work in our medical system. so, socializing the insurance which pays for medicare for all as an example seems to me a decent idea because. >> i understand. there's the needed overdrive to pay their save their lives so pay anything for. >> before we get an answer from doctor, cemex that got hung up, i was can ask them who is jeremy bentham is. >> he is the founder of utilitarianism. the idea that became a very big and important idea in economics that is maximizing utility as he called it that drives people. i think it is wrong and his young friend also thought it was strong. jeremy died around 1830. as to a state owned to bank income think it's a terrible idea. it's to bring politics into the functioning of the economy and the problem with that is that everyone has an opinion about how you should run your business or your occupation and, why should they have a say in that. as to it keeping money in north dakota, up north, that is bad economics. dances the notion that medical care should be run by these monopolies and then the government should keep paying more and more for it. i think as a biologist, you know how evolution works. and, i think that is how the economy works in fact, charles darwin was inspired by economics. as he claims in his autobiography. we have to try things out from the bottom and scum imposing rules from the top is not the way to go. the old joke is a camel is a horse designed by -- and scum in fact camels evolved, camels evolved from other horse like animals so, i think the free evolutionary we as a way to go in the economy as it is and be ideology. that means we will make mistakes. but there will be small mistakes. whereas if we do it from the top, we make big mistakes like soviet communism or, george bush's invasion of iraq and things like that. somatic text message to you, virtues -- and loved it. is it possible for a monopoly to survive long-term without government support? it seems most monopolies are created and maintained by government. >> that's exactly right. hands, there is a great fear of so-called natural monopolies. this has been a concept in economics for about 100 years. and, we now see it in the great worry about amazon.com. or google, or facebook. they have a big share, their monopoly, no they're not. they are a large share let's take amazon at what they do and what amazon does because it does a very well. it is under constant pressure from people imitating it's rather simple model which is the reinvention of the mail-order stores, like montgomery ward and sears roebuck. it's not a monopoly. of course elbows on would like to be a monopoly in which case it will go to the government and try to get those other people stopped. and that is one of the common sources of actual monopoly. you're perfectly right. long term, and it isn't that longer-term, amazon has been around only a very small amount of time historically speaking. it doesn't take long before competitors spring up. that is why as the nobel prize economists pointed out, inventors get only 2% of the social gain of their invention, 90% goes to us as consumers. host: joe in pennsylvania, good afternoon, you are on speed three hi, professor. i'm looking at the downside of deregulation as regards to predatory banking or in a plane caused by corporate believers in an age where we live now, a war truth, were on the environment i know what you said earlier, well, it's good for small business innocuous businesses where they are being killed by regulation, but, i'm thinking what are your thoughts on the downside as involved as this tremendous problem we have now where the thoughts were children's futures -- in the main thing on peoples minds is huge profits for already wealthy. >> hi joe we got the. >> i understand your concern and i actually do worry about global warming, i certainly do not as you widely observed go for this fact list of these alternative facts that there's no such thing as global warming, it's all a big hoax, donald trumps favorite word which she is extremely skilled at but, i think there are ways of dealing with things like global warming or pacific gas & electric pollution words tendency to start forest fires, mainly publicity, you've gotta have a free press it's crucial in tort, loss like i said before that is -- and scum indeed understand as i argued in the first book of my trilogy, it is unreasonable to argue that people in business want to hurt their customers or anyone else. they are not saints, but they are not devils, either. and, the danger of giving the power to use you to order billiards separate regulations or to introduce the interstate commerce commission which was instantly taken over by the industry it was supposed to be regulating, to do it in this pits of government is dangerous. it's a slippery slope to society in which we are all children and in which the wise people in washington are running our lives and 100 different ways. will rogers, the great cowboy comedian of the 1920s and 30s, by the way when you see people in the house of representatives especially being interviewed in the capital it's in front of a statue of will rogers, he used to say just be glad you don't get the government you pay for. and he also said, i don't make jokes, just watch the government and report the facts. and i think his while he was a liberal in every way and that attitude is american, it is our heritage as americans hands the status top down i'm from the government and i'm going to help you attitude of our beloved friends in europe is the alternative. i'm pretty free society and i think so are you, joe. >> lloyd is in los angeles, please go ahead, lloyd sue mckay, professor. first thanks for your story. i'm immediately going to run out and get your book, crossing i think i could learn a lot from you and i certainly would have questions about courage to ask you but, i want to return to your earlier.that you may come i think you're going to have to persuade me a little better that the triangular slave trade was not responsible for the wealth this country has generated and, i don't think you can compare south africa to what was going on with that whole system in the designing of institutions that perpetuated the privilege and oppression. host: lloyd, before we let you go, what was said about her book, crossing that attracted you? >> well, honestly i am really impressed with the encourage that professor has throughout her life and i am really impressed with it and i think i can gain a lot to my own life. >> bear in mind, lloyd, when i always say this that, we all need courage in our lives. think of the mother rising every morning to take care of her severely handicapped son. that is courage. and, i think you will agree, lloyd that the person who doesn't think that courage is the center of human life hasn't lived very long, as for the slave trade and so forth, it's very hard to persuade people of this because we have been taught in high school and movies and so forth about slavery, slavery was terrible. by the way, we only started thinking it was terrible when -- started to come to power in northwestern europe, nobody thought that slavery were -- was bad as a system though unfortunate for the individual caught in it. but if the slave trader slavery itself were so productive of enrichment then, the middle east would have been very rich. because the slave trade from eastern africa up into the slave markets are indeed the slave trade from russia south into the slave markets into constantinople or in stamm pool, that's why we call them slaves. that's where the word slaves come from. the empire, constantinople, the caliphate and so forth, they would've had that the explosion of well that northwestern europe had in the 18th and especially the 19th century. there's something very strange about putting one's finger on slavery i think the cause of the enrichment was the opposite of slavery, it was the gradual emancipation of slaves included that gay people the spirit to try out innovation, this spirit in their permission maybe that's the best word, permission. >> deirdre, every month when we have an author on we ask him or her whether what they are reading and what some of their favorite books are. your response was a little unique and i'm going to read it out loud, the e-mail that you sent to the producer, what's your favorite books? well, i use hundreds of books a year, though i am giving away my library of 8000 to a chinese university next month. i like alberto echoes response when somebody asked him if he had read all of his 30000 books in his library, no, but it might be the next book i pick up that has the greatest impact to make that's right. and indeed, the one i just started to read last week when i got my new kindle reader, my eyes are feeling so it's great that you can make it the print larger is, forever flowing that i mention by a think -- but i can't remember his first name. anyway it's grossman. he was a soviet communist who fraud against then became a liberal for which she was sent to siberia. but, it's a good book. >> forever flowing. >> working is shown on the screen. we have a great big thick book which is the next i'm going to read. a novel that big, inch and a half thick like my book, after the invention of word processing i can't write short books anymore. host: to write every day? >> pretty much, but i'm not ernest hemingway sharpening 50 pencils in writing for two hours. no, that is how monopolists work and i understand it is good for them, but in my case i'm going to come away from this conversation with some ideas because conversation is productive of ideas and we feuded our cash and i am applying, i will be typing away, actually very incompetently. usually it is two fingers and am trying to learn touch typing. >> i want to go on over your life you write to us, 1959 stein backs the grapes of wrath were very important to you, it made you a socialist before studying economics to make us commit to. it's a wonderful book which every american should read, but by the way, the okies who went to california a few years later were fully employed in aircraft factories during the war and did pretty well. >> 1961, but that was important to was roberts, the worldly philosophers. which got me studying economics, which in the end cured me of the socialism that steinbeck had created. >> that's right. and bob himself advocated, he was a prince of a man, he had his career at the new school for social research in new york and he was not convinced socialist. but, towards the end of his career he admitted that capitalism as he insisted on calling it come i wish he hadn't come in that that had one. though he was not only a prince of a guy, but he was honest. >> 1995, jay and morse's book, conundrum which assured me that a professional person could change gender without catastrophe. >> she was the person in the base camp when sir headwinds hillary first climbed mount everest. so she was a correspondent, a hilarious story when she was young second lieutenant in the british army just after the second world war, she was stationed in venice and -- for a few months. she came back as jan having change gender and said to the owner, now very old, after the war i spent some months and -- in the site italian owner was this wonderful phony charm that the italians had said yes, signora, i remember you well. >> will is calling in from florida, hi, well. >> hi. and thanks so much to c-span and especially in depth, it allows us to get into the weeds with great minds such as professor caskey. >> thank you. i did my undergraduates in economics and political science in 1961. more recently in 2008 i did a doctor of ministry at the fiscal of divinity school. will welcome to the frozen chosen that's what we call it. >> i love it. >> i have two points of economics i would love to discuss further. i grew up in chicago so it shouldn't be hard for me to catch you at your office to continue it but to be brief in respect to the other listeners, first of all, the idea of capital and capitalism i agree is an unfortunate misnomer in many cases because economics has made up of capital and labor and that's all it is. the only discussion is who controls the capital in the labor. >> will, working to leave it there because you already got her shaking her head. soon a capital and labor. >> i agreed for decades with what you are saying and indeed, is the basis of the socialist movement since 1848 to say, labor is naked so why don't they get the income and, there are very good reasons why that should not be so. that land, labor, capital should have their pay according to what we call in economics as you know from your undergraduate studies marginal product. but, the more fundamental.which i have come to recently in the last couple years is that the real source of enrichment is new ideas, not capital, not labor, not climate, not this or that, those nicer desirable or necessary as they may be, what is really going on is that since 1800 freedom, freeing people to have a go and try out in this crazy way that we have in many countries since 1800, is the new ideas, spectacular idea, malcolm maclean in 1956 in north carolina had a bright idea, let's make standardized boxes, send them to china bring stuff back and so forth. containerization has revolutionized the transport supply chain. and, having the idea of course you need a capital and you needed labor, too. of course you need both. but, those already existed and they were at the spring and the mechanical watch. i think this is an important idea that i have had and i've been working on it for a couple of years and stumbling all over trying to figure out why i disagree with my earlier self that thought like you. we got capital and labor land, those are causal. no, it's ideas that are causal. french cuisine is not caused by its ingredient, it's because by brilliant thinking about bullet will be a bayes or something. never talked about your book economical writing. the third edition came out this year. we will show it on the screen, you should as a writer work on keeping the reader awake to make yes. >> are economists not known for keeping readers away? >> you're telling me to make yes. should be made into a statement. there is the jargon problem, of course that's true of any specialized field. there is there's the pose, mills is the great american social just called the academic pose, we are committed get rid of academic prose until we get rid of the academic pose. namely the pose of i'm so smart and i want to impress you with how smart i am and that's my only purpose in life and that's not such a good way to go. indeed, as a woman i have learned to be more openhanded in my style, it changed my writing style. i think it's true of women academics scholars, that the more they make their scholarship or their science more personally connected. >> why is that? because they are women and they are not playing hockey, they're playing their passion. there is a wonderful book, i forget the author about barbara mcclintock, i believe that was her name who was a nobel prize-winning biologist in the book is called, a sense for the organism. she worked on corn and in this kind of womanly ways she would watch little corn play outs grow weary and watch them carefully and made great biology out of that when i could give you example of a female historian who see into human lives and what can we say, mechanical or theoretical way that men do. there is a very good play about roselyn franklin, the discovery of dna died of cancer before she could get to the prize and indeed, there is a debate between her and james watson on the role of theory versus observation and its notorious in many fields that women want to look at things and men want to talk about them. >> before we go further we want to make sure to show the cover of the book that you referenced a little while ago, forever flowing and that's the one that you're currently reading. >> it's a very good novel. read it. and then, come back and tell me that you think socialism is a good idea. >> virginia, chicago. >> hello. i'm your neighbor. i was mistaken for your mother at a party. and i have a question. >> hi. >> i'm fine. after i have taken so many notes from this that i am dying to come and have a conversation with you at some.when you have some time to make any time. thank you. what i want to know is, will you go with the greatest goods for the greatest number and can you categorize it? to make i miss the verb in that sentence. >> the greatest good for the greatest number will you go with? >> i will go with it, but i know who you are. hi. she is amazing person. i could go on about virginia for a while but, mathematically speaking it's absurd. unfortunately. because this is where you're going to the greatest good for the greatest number but you can't have two great things together. that is, you can't maximize two things at once but that is just a mathematical. no. i deeply agree that the purpose of government or the economy should be the welfare, the deep welfare, not just goods and services, although that is important of ordinary people of the masses. i could care less if bill gates makes more money, but where you and i probably disagree is on the role of the state and all of this. jeremy benson who we mentioned before, this is his formula, the greatest cap is for the greatest number and, he wanted to engineer everyone's life is a famous proposal he made for prisons called the panoptic on which then became the design of manager modern prisons in the 19th century whether central guard place where they watch all the prisoners all of the time, and that is his vision for society and i am very disturbed by it as many people like jon stewart no, i think it is much better. here i think you're actually agreed that it is bottom up. as lived in france a lot as i've explained to my host and i think you would agree that french cuisine comes from thousands of housewives and a lot of men -- not some plan to make french cuisine good. if that works, the germans would have the best cuisine in the world to make christopher, host on her facebook page, it should not be a dichotomy between capitalism and socialism. some things are better left to the free markets, something should not be, health insurance for instance should be a public good, we already have socialized medicine for those 65 and older. it should be extended to everyone. >> know. i don't think so. it does sound nice. as i said, here's my analysis in one sentence. we have monopolies that make american medicine very expensive. before you throw more money at it after the monopoly has been formed, stop the monopolies. and the monopolies. a simple example i gave was drugs when the recording of drugs. here's the more general., among friends and family according to his need and ability is exactly what we should have and what we should want in a loving family that's how it should work. but, that formula doesn't work for a big society. even as big as i don't know, the state of new jersey it doesn't work. it is so, we have to have two kinds, the socialism we have should be in the small and families and indeed, that is why young people especially these days if they have not worked, not grown up on a farm or small business in which they participate with their parents, they think that socialism is good because they wanted a very generous, openhearted way want to help poor people by bringing them into the family, but that is not how markets are going to work. markets at the big level markets work, donald trump is crazy to do these trade wars, that is insane. in the big markets in the small socialism when you try to do it the other way around you wreck everything as you can see in the case of -- socialism. host: how to be human is another book. i am often depressed at how few books economists have in their houses. he and economist to think that economics like physics requires one merely to read the latest articles is not going to be much of an economist. >> i wrote that a long time ago, but this time i agree with my earlier self instead of quarreling with him or her as the case may be. but, i am now advocated what we are called leme -- economics with the humans left it. i had a conversation a few months ago with the very promenade economist. i won't tell who he is, and, he said i read novels but i read novels for pleasure and i don't see what they have to do with economics. well that's a guy who's not having a full intellectual life. because, if you are not influenced by novels and movies, personal relations, what you see as you walk around the town in your economics and the social may be in chemistry open a matter but in economics then you're not seeing the whole economy and human makes tries to do that. i have a friend at chapman university in california, bart wilson coined the word about ten years ago and he gives the course with a colleague in the english department to freshman at chapman university called human makes. and they study now hear this, they study the economy by reading faust, a long pound by the german poet what? how can you do that well, because if economics is a social science about real human beings then, great literature not so great literature ought to have something to do with it. one of my favorite movies is groundhog day which shows there are some economics and up and not too much, the main thing it shows your subtle life of of virtue is the good life for human being. that's what he discovered a yard, that's a kind of thing you could learn from the bible or from a novel here's a very good example that i just came up with the other day. why did the soviet union try to stop 1930s jazz from coming into the soviet union? and what later, why did they try to stop rock music from coming into the soviet union and i got an answer, they realize correctly that these two musical forms were expressions of liberty. louis armstrong improvising is an expression of music of freedom. in the same with rock music. if you are an authoritarian country you don't want that. so, we can learn about politics and economics in all kinds of ways we need to learn to be free to make wills in lincoln, delaware, please go ahead. >> thank you, peter. and professor, i have been fascinated by everything you are talking about and everything you say leads to another subject. i'm interested they have come back from brazil i think you mentioned south africa, i lived in japan for six years during the mid- 1970s in milton freedom came out with free to choose and it was turned into a tv series, readers digest popular rises. >> i am wondering, what books are you finding when you travel internationally have impacted you just mentioned him in dominic's. it sounds like human action. host: thank you for that. we're almost out of time. have you discovered anything? >> yes, for example there is the great economist de soto, talks about empowering very poor people by giving them property in their heads in the land under their illegal settlements and, i learned more broad by talking to people than from reading. because, after all the intellectual life of the world is over dominated by 19th century european thought so, there is a certain monotony to socialism, nationalism and if you like those national socialism because they keep coming up the same arguments the same stories, i find it much more interesting to talk to bankers in brazil and to see what they say about -- for example than to read theoretical works. so i must say, i try to become an educated person and is pretty much hopeless. you have to keep at it and shows like this are an important part of helping americans become more broadly educated. >> deirdre in our one minute remaining, super bowl sunday, doesn't make economic sense for a city or state to build a sports stadium? >> absolutely not and, it's a con game. they can build the stadium like the super bowl stadium,. >> it's in miami. >> i do not know if that's a state-supported one even though there are some. >> there are lots of them. this is a constant claim. we are all going to create jobs. when you hear someone talk about creating jobs you can assume that she does not know economics very well. because you don't create jobs when you build the stadium. you move people from other parts of the economy to the stadium work. and, you give the orders of the sports for your chart is enormous -- and it's just a silly thing to do. i am sort of a simpleminded sports fan, any chicago team that does while i am in favor of. but, i think you have to watch out for crony capitalism, you have to watch out for corporate welfare, that is state socialism is state capitalism, neither of which. >> deirdre mccall skis recent book, white liberalism work, how to true liberal values create a freer, more equal prosperous world for all. we spent the last two hours with you, we thank you for your time. if you have missed any of this program it re- airs right now. . . . and why liberalism works. >> host: deirdre mccloskey, in your most recent book, "why liberalism works," you wri the westte side of chicago shoud be a hive of commercial activity, why should? >> well, shouldec