To the conference this morning. Held under the under the auspice of common good and columbias center on and society. Nearby is philip howard, founder of common good and a senior fellow of the center. So were linked together. Hes a principal organizer of this conference with its theme reempower human Agency Agency as economists come to recognize for work to be meaningful, it has to working people some degree of. Not the mechanical work of in neoclassical economics. Without that the workers suffer, as Richard Sennett argued in his book of some years ago, the culture of the new capitalism. Philip howard has been making another point, one yet not absorbed, i think, by economists. The absence of human agency into bureaucracies prevents them. The bureaucracies from generous getting the services needed by the public. Here it is in the case of sennett, it was the workers that were suffering here. Its the consumers and producers who are suffering because theyre not getting good service. As philip has argued. Well, im looking forward to this discussion and i turn the dice over to philip. What should i do. Just get help getting out of it because somebody is coming over. Well, thank you. And its its an incredible honor to be able to collaborate with ned. I live for reflected glory. And so being around the smartest economists in the world is a good way of getting it. And i encourage you all to read neds new memoir, my journey an economic theory. I found it charming. And even though i was a student of economics. I learned lot about economics from reading it. I also want to thank all the panelists from todays forum. Thank cspan for covering it, and thank you all for coming participate. Format today is for four panels of speakers, each limited to 7 minutes. Back and forth. And then at the end of panel q a with the audience. The one condition for the speakers and the audience is you must use the microphone because. Were on camera, so otherwise it wont. What weve captured now, the title of the forum is the admission is re empowering agency, which has a suitably academic to it. But the hip hypothesis today has revolutionary implications that the legacy bureaucracies and legal structures mainly built since the 1960s, prevent officials and citizens alike from making sensible choices. This hypothesis, not antigovernment but pro good government. Its about empowering officials to do their jobs and to make sensible choices to make tradeoffs. So as you listen the speakers, i hope youll ask whether america has with the best of intentions, nonetheless backed itself into a dead end alley. And if so, the solution probably. The only solution is, a Major Overhaul of the operating machinery of modern government. So with that, ill turn it over to the to the moderator, the first panel wholl introduce us and try to keep us in line. Many barbara, are from the wall street journal editorial. And ned, i mean many after. Well thanks once more to everyone for joining us today to discuss the topic of why nothing in our life seems to and potentially at the end see if we can choose a few solutions to the problems. The first member of this panel of course, is philip howard, who is the of this event. The reason were all here. Philip is the founder and chairman of common good and thats an organization dedicated to exactly questions of how to promote good governance. The author of several books, including recently not accountable, which deals with the problems of Public Sector unions. And i had the pleasure of interviewing philip recently about that book for the. Our next panelist is jennifer brick. Mortazavi lee, whos the director of the center for governance, the university of pittsburgh. Focuses on selfgovernment to, particularly in eurasia and, central asia, and recently published a book called informal order and the state of afghanistan. Our next panelist is yuval levin, who will be joining us virtually. Hes the of the social, cultural Constitutional Center at the American Enterprise institute. His most recent book is called a time to build and deals with how institute can contribute to social flourishing. And finally, we have joining us, paul romer, who is an economist at New York University and of the 2018 nobel prize in economics. He focuses on how technology and also social structure can help promote progress in society and is also the founder of the charter cities initiative. Each one of these panelists will give you a short presentation and then well have a nice dialog and then time for q a after. Would you like to get a started . Philip. Thank you. Thank you. My 7 minutes now starts so. So my focus of this talk is not on public policy, but on public corporations. How things get done or they dont get done. And in our society, year after year, widely recognized problems just arent being fixed. For example, it was disclosed that 37 schools in the city of chicago had not. One student who is proficient in reading or math. Health care in america costs percent to 100 more than in other developed countries. Worse results. It also suffers from severe morale problems, permitting a major infrastructure in this country can take a decade or longer. Ive come to the conclusion that the legal labyrinth to permit an interstate transmission line is actually legally impassable. There are too many jurisdictions and too many departments within those with inconsistent goals. Homelessness in big cities is more or less literally out of anyones control. No one seems to have any vision of what the authority is, what what the facilities needed to deal with it. So every years or so, voters elect new political leaders who promise change. We can believe in, or to drain the swamp, but not changes. The politicians tend to talk about policy, but all the problems i just described are problems, not a policy or even of leadership. Their failures of execution and, the main cause of failure, i believe is the accumulation of legal and bureaucratic controls really over the last 50 years diverts and prevents people from making the sensible choices. So, for example, doctors and nurses spend the day doing guesswork. Teachers are weighed down by bureaucratic mandates and lack the Authority Even to maintain order in the classroom. Principals are shackled to Union Collective bargaining agreements and lack the basic of management, such as deciding who whos a good teacher and whos not. Infrastructure permitting, basically a perpetual process machine, clear lines of authority to make. There is this tendency of systems, and this was true all forms of government through history to take a life of their own. They need to be periodically cleaned, cleaned out and, cleaned up. That hasnt happened in our society in memory. But i argue that theres also a terminal flaw in americas public operating philosophy. We changed how we governed after the 1960s. We did it for the best of intentions because we woke up to the abuses of racism and gender discrimination, unsafe cars, etc. We needed to change our values, and we did. But the legal experts at the time wanted to avoid any abuses of authority in the future. So they rebuilt the operating machinery of with the explicit of avoiding human authority. So thick rule books would prescribe one correct way to do things properly. For example, 4000 rules on worker safety where the rules were not possible, officials would have to demonstrate correctness of their decisions and procedures. So the teacher had to be prepared to demonstrate in a hearing whether johnny, through the pencil first, for example, public supervisors must, by objective evidence any negative comment that they put in a personnel file of an employee. As a result, 99 of federal employees get a fully successful because no supervisor to go through that hassle. And last just to make sure nothing unfair ever happens. Any aggrieved person can claim their rights were violated and have a separate proceeding. Where the magnifying glass not on the common good or or the necessary tradeoff but whether it might have anything have been done differently or better for the aggrieved person. Public paralysis is the natural and inevitable effect of all of these legal controls, and thats reason enough to remake the system. But the philosophical error underlying this also has to change. Freedom is not, in fact enhanced by shackling authority. Authority provides the framework which actually defines things and protects our freedom. So, for example, the teacher lacks authority to order no in the classroom is free to learn if the universe city president lacks the authority to enforce boundaries of civil discourse. Then the students and professors no longer feel free to speak what they feel is the truth. If an official lacks the authority to give a permit for transmission, then citizens dont get the benefit of renewable energy. If the judge lacks authority to draw the boundaries of reasonable lawsuits, then everyone goes through the day tiptoeing and looking over their shoulder fear that anything they do might someone. Ive written a draft paper for this forum, which weve handed out. Its called the architecture daily freedom four, which im soliciting comments, and so i hope you will read it and and tell me what you think in this. I argue that america must rebuild the public operating system in a way that reempower officials and citizens alike to take. The goal, again, is deregulation, but restoring human. And i argue that whats needed is a principles based framework. More like the constitution version in which law and regulation are activated by people on the spot taking responsibility instead of a thousand page rulebooks and nearly endless proceedings, our protection in the system is accountability and, checks and balances. Judgment exercised by other people with response ability. So i believe and this the hypothesis for the forum that the current operating framework of america is designed to fail the wreckage. Us not public failure, but cynicism alienates an and almost a law of physics of growing extremism. As you listen to the speakers, i hope youll ask yourself whether you think this system can be tweaked. I think it can be. I think it would take 10,000 lifetimes to make sense of it. I think it must be replaced because its premise is to avoid the one essential element for an effective and moral society, which is human responses ability. Again, thank you all for coming. Here. Well, thank you very much. Its just a real honor be here. And i want to thank philip and his team for organizing such a beautiful event on such an important topic. And i think, you know, very introduction. I think many of you are wondering what the scholar on central asia is doing here. So let me be very brief. Ive worked in the federal government and i worked on issues of, foreign aid, foreign policy, and ive witnessed over the past 20 years how efforts to build good from the top down havent. Now, regardless of, your feelings on foreign policy, i think weve all been quite inspired by what weve seen in ukraine the past year. And theres a story there i want tell that youre not hearing when all of us know, these famous towns and cities in ukraine from ear pin to kharkiv to odessa. These are places now burned in our like buka. But one of the things that we havent heard, we hear the story of the ukraine is why why have the ukrainians been so resilient in their efforts to fight the russians . Well, in 2014, the government of ukraine after the maidan revolution made an important decision to radically decentralize governance down to the local level. This transformed governance dynamics that country. So when expected so many people ukraine ethnic to side with him. He was surprised to find many city councilmans mayors communities rallying their communities in support their cities. This is centralization of power giving people the right to retain 60 of their tax revenues radically, transform the way people viewed their communities at radically transformed identities. It made fight for their cities in their towns. We hear about zelensky, but in ukraine whats so important are communities. I saw for 20 years firsthand how United States failed in afghanistan. But what you may not hear in the headlines when we talk about corruption and malfeasance is the fact that over 20 years, not a single Afghan Community had the right to elect a mayor, a city councilman or woman, a governor a district governor, provincial governor. You it. At the local level, all authority came from the top. The United States made a massive mistake. 20 years ago when it recreated an old Constitutional Order that resurrected old soviet legacy institutions, Central Planning all financial at the local level was transferred to the center afghans lost hope because they couldnt fight for the communities in the way that they wanted to. They believed in democracy, but that hope in democracy was dashed by a centralized system that didnt take into account their agency. Now, what the lessons here for the United States, theyre huge ones. We look at Community Issues in our country that are struggling. Look at my center, center for governance and markets at the university of pittsburgh. We do research around the world in the United States, included on bottom up social political processes to understand how people Work Together to solve, how they Work Together to cocreate things. And often were doing work on an indian reservations and. So much of their agency that tribal sovereignty entails has been taken away, not just over decades, but over centuries. Proper rights, fundamental rights to criminal issues are no longer in communities. We look at Civil Society in the United States. We talk so much about whether government should be big or small. Were not talking about the operating system. So we may agree that government can work to help solve social problems, but government lacks the tools to do this. The Civil Society that we have all too often out indigenous forms of local authority, creative problem solving through top down social services. We agree that there is a need to have these social services. In fact, i would argue america is actually far more united these issues right now than it is at any time in recent history. But we have huge debates over how and enough debates over how to change this. Not enough Solutions Everyone wants to criticize, but communities Work Together to cocreate solutions. This is one way to help overcome this deeply felt alienation. You know, economies summit. I dont want to get too much into the world of economists today because im in such esteemed but behavioral economists talk about something called the ikea effect. And this is the idea that you something more that you build yourself. Economists call this a cognitive bias that we value something more, that we build ourselves. And this idea that we coax that people in communities have capabilities to solve is so overlooked in our desire to build. And in the Public Sector. Politicians talk about the most efficient solution. But whats often overlooked in, i think, the most pressing crisis that we have in front of us right now is, a legitimacy crisis. We can look for efficiency, but we may not find it. And all of the Efficient Solutions in the world that from the top may not matter if none of us believe in the system that were working in. And so legitimacy issue may come at an efficiency tradeoff. But whats more important is us together allowing people the platform and, the opportunity to Work Together to creatively solve problems. So a lot of my work inspired by another nobel prize economist who passed away not long ago, Elinor Ostrom and ostrom deeply in this desire. She in her empirical studies around the world looked the way that people not only rules and enforce rules and often this third way, neither states nor markets is so this Community Approach is never taken seriously by policymakers who are looking for this efficient. The silver this efficient outcome that is so elusive. So if we think about legitimacy first, if we think about putting people first and empowering to solve problems, i think do so much to help so many of the legitimacy issues that were facing together as a society. Thank you. Is is yuval online. Should i go next . Yep. Well, thank you very much, philip thank you for the opportunity to participate. Thank you for bringing together this extraordinary gathering. Id very much hope to be there in person and plan to and couldnt in the end. And philip gave me the chance to do this and im grateful for that. The subject were taking up is really enormously important. And i think the way that its been up, these two opening remarks is powerfully and valuable in brief comments of my own, i to propose just one more factor for thinking about why human Agency Responsibility have become such a challenge and how that relates to dysfunction of some of our governing institutes, prisons and other key institutions in society. And that factor is trust and a central facilitator. Every social interaction, every of formal and informal power, a free society. Our kind of requires enormous amounts of trust. And i wouldnt want to suggest that weve lost it all. We have a lot of trust in our fellow americans. We exhibited day in everything we do, but we have seen our supply of it diminish in recent decades in some dangerous ways. And want to offer just a few thoughts about why i think has happened, how it affects capacity for agency and ultimately for living together as a free people trust. In one sense, simply put, is a sense that another person or group of people or institution wont let us down, that it will meet our expectations that it live up to its commitments. That seems on the one hand simple we take it for granted. But its not simple because expectations are and commitments are no simple matter in a free Society Expectations and commitments are often unstated, informal. We talk a lot about freedoms and choices and rights and even agency, but those all assume very high level of confidence in other people. A free society is one where people dont have to be forced to do the right things because they tend to choose to do the right. And that means that its a society where we have a huge amount of faith in other peoples choices, our capacity for agency depends on that confidence in other peoples choices and in other peoples commitments. We need to that they will do what they say if were going to take risks and start projects and make commitments of our own and our ability to have that confidence, our capacity for plainly has been degraded over the last few decades. Americans trust one another less than we used to. We trust leaders less, we trust elites less. We trust less than we did in the second half of the 20th century. Why is that happen . Obviously, its been vastly over determined. In one sense, a real survey. The reasons would have to be a kind of comprehensive history of the last half century of American Life. But part of the reason is, frankly, that we had a huge amount of trust one another. And in our leaders and institutions in the postWorld War Two years, and we often take that as a norm when we probably shouldnt we have to think more than we do about what it takes to produce trust, to create trust. But i think at the heart of our loss of trust are two elements that bear very directly on the subject that youre taking up today. I would describe those as competence and responsibility. Trust, in a sense, is a function of evident competence and, evident restraint. Theyre closely related, but theyre not the same. Competence is simply ability to do your core work. Well, whatever that work and certainly part of our loss trust is rooted in some sense that the people who make claims to competence American Life cant back. Those up that are elites particular are not actually very competent. In a sense, American Life in the 21st century has been one illustrate of that. After from iraq to the financial crisis to the incompetence of a certain kind of welfare state, to Public Health, we feel like weve been let over and over. And i think phillips work has done a huge amount to help us understand why that is and what might be done about it. But i dont. Incompetence is actually the most crucial that is driving our loss of trust theres a sense that that that the people power in our society are not restrained, are not responsible. There in some ways a more profound and fundamental responsibility, a wonderful and wonderfully american word, the Oxford English dictionary finds some of the earliest uses of that word in the english language, in the writings of the framers of the constitution, both madison and hamilton response ability refers to taking ownership an action as well as to being held accountable for it. So it has everything to do with trust and the way in which we take responsibility for action. A free society very often is mediated by our institutional roles. I want to say a quick word about that. Been really at the center of my own scholarly work in recent years. Institution is are crucial to the problem. Were talking today and are crucial to the question of institution. You might say theyre the theyre the forms common action theyre the structures of what we do together the institution a group of people organized around a common goal in a way that gives them each a role in relation to that and in relation to one another so that in a sense every institution in our society performs some particular task. Maybe its there to educate children, to provide medical services or to enforce law, or to make law or to some good or service in our economy. And as it performs work, it also shapes the people within it to do that work in particular way to do it response believe we might say to do it ethically to do it with some idea of integrity thats defined by the character purpose of the institution and ethical function of institutions is how trust is ultimately created a free society. We trust an institution when its people seem to do work in accordance with that institution idea of integrity. We trust people, when they seem to be constrained by institutional strictures and rules. So we trust a scientist when it seems like what he or she is saying to us is a function of the process that defines scientific integrity rather than just a personal opinion thrown out there. We trust a journalist for a very similar reason, because we believe that persons work is the result of some process of verification that is ultimately work of an institution we trust an accountant, not just because they know the tax laws better than we do. We can hope thats true but also because that is a person who would not sign their name to a fraudulent statement. That sense that this person is constrained is key to how institutions create trust for us to a significant part is a function of everton restraint. I trust a person only because i think that he or she can do what they safe for me. But also because i know there are things they would never to me. Thats why bank that cheats its customers or a member of the clergy who abuse as a child undermines. Not only our trust in that particular person or institution, but our ability to trust in general. To believe that people with authority and power are sometimes that of trust. Destroying behavior is just a function of corruption, which is a familiar of problem in any society. But i think in our time we also see behavior like that that is driven by a different sort of motive. It happens when people whose behavior be formed and constrained by institutions, theyre part of instead end up using those institutions as platforms for selfpromote or for political or cultural or for we say, now building their own brand. People who do that are not stealing anybody. Theyre not abusing anybody, but theyre nonetheless systematically undermining our societys capacity to build trust. That kind of building of a personal brand is how a lot of in the professions i just mentioned, professional journalists, professional scientists have made it impossible for us to them using professional to enable activism is how lot of Public Health experts made it very hard to trust them more generally using the institutions that empower them for political expression or cultural expression is. How a lot of people all over our society and all sides of our politics are trusts impossible now in universities in corporate america, churches everywhere, rather than doing their discreet defined jobs, meeting their particular responsibilities, a lot of american elites now chosen to use their Institution Positions as platforms, a kind of performative culture war, outrage. Thats a very widespread failure of responsibility. Its been very bad for trust and therefore also for Effective Agency in our society. I think its important to see that for the most part has not been done maliciously. On the contrary, a lot of the people doing it feel like they are acting out of a kind of moral responsibility the debates that us are very important. The stakes involved often are high, and that leads us to assign a lot of moral worth to a certain kind partizan identity and the culture wars. And because we now tend to equate expression with action in, our political and civic lives, we put a lot of value on the assertion of the right ideals. We want to know that were among friends wherever we are, and affirmations of cultural identity that we share put us. It is. Its good to know that my doctor not a bigot or that my pastor loves america or that our Cell Phone Company cares about rights. But expressions of, cultural identity that are not our own and are putting us on edge and leaving, unsure if we can really trust that doctor or take part in that Church Community or keep doing business with that company. And the result . There are culture divisions are expressing themselves everywhere and making it very hard to know who we can trust, where we can feel confident. And were also this for a further reason that i think is very closely related to phillips and to the were taking up today. People take on roles in our culture rather than doing the kind of professional they are assigned within institutions, because a lot of their traditional has been taken away from them through the kind of process that philip describes by which professionals in a lot of fields are denied the opportunity to exercise judgment within a bureaucratic systems and that instead them to layers of new rules and theyre left in a sense using the authority they have, the place they have the responsibilities they have to express themselves to show what team theyre. I spent a lot of time with members of congress in my work for where my sins and a lot of them feel. They feel like they dont have practical to do that matters. And instead theyre asked to be performers. And i think you find that in a lot of the professional world now and in a lot of our governing institutions. The solution to that, in part, is the kind of reform that philip about and and the kind of changing of systems and structures. But i think the solution has to involve a of a sense of responsible understood as taking ownership of the particular work that youre committed to doing in our society that doesnt have to mean that you cant also be politically active citizen. It does have to mean that youve got to take professional responsibility and responsibilities as reasons to show restraint and to do your work, to do your job in the times when thats what youre in, in your life. I think that that particular kind of of loss of trust, loss of the sense that people are doing their assigned work and are doing the roles that can trust them to do is a bigger factor in the diminishment individual agency in our society than tend to give it credit for or blame. And so that we each have a role to play in reinforcing the capacity for agency in American Life by taking ownership of the various roles that we have that, we play and essentially our job rather than always playing a part in the latest morality play in the theater of our wars, our freedom depends on our sense of our own agency, which turn depends on our ability to trust one another and to trust that kind of trust, in turn, depends our sense that other people can relied on both for competence and for restraint rather than that theyre using us as props in political performance art, which now often feels like whats happening in our culture. I think we could all do better on this front. We are situated in American Society and its important to see that because it means that the threats to agency and freedom in america are not just other peoples fault in a free society. Has to begin with me and with you and has to begin with asking the kinds of questions that were taking up today. So, again, thank for letting me be a part of this. Good morning. Its its a real honor to be able to participate in this discussion. I will try and show you some facts with some visuals. I hope someone will bring up in a minute the cardinal of science. Is that a beats a theory every time. So i want to focus here on the facts, the answers to three questions. Is there a problem . Is it a change . Maybe a problem weve always had. But is it a problem . Is it a change . Is it u. S. Problem . And the answer is yes yes. Yes. How are we doing on the perfect . So so when i was a graduate student in the late seventies, the ethos of the time was dominated by a perspective that you can see through a book that a stanford professor named paul erlich wrote called the population bomb, where he argued that we were facing just imminently massive waves of death because of the incapacity in the world to support the population that that then existed. I i looked at history and made the Decision Just came to the conclusion that this kind pessimism was deeply wrong. Just profoundly wrong history shows us that there are amazing opportune odds to discover new technologies, new ways to do things to support more and more on earth and, to help each of them live. So i was the most optimistic economist i knew in terms what the technological possibilities held out for us. But now, after 35 years in this business, lets look back and see how we did in the United States. I used the historical progress, Life Expectancy along the total number of people on earth. As one of my basic indicators, the power of a system driven by innovation. How have we done on Life Expectancy . This is a comparison. Canada and ill use canada and a couple of cases because its a nearby relevant example. And what it shows you that at age 32, life expected at see is significantly higher canada and has been increasing in canada but has been basically flat in the United States with a no no decrease later. And there are differences as as always in Life Expectancy for women who the dotted who are higher they tend to live longer than than men. But so the United States has not done well relative to canada, this is not just an issue related to infant mortality or, early early life experience. Even at age 32, you can expect not live as long in the United States and that to not have us, not as much progress. If can have the slide. There we go. This oops. Just go back to the last one, please. This looks at same data. Its even more pronounced. You look at age 12. But the point is is this is not purely an issue. Whats happening to Young Children . If you could go to next slide, please. Is a comparison of the United States to a number other countries around the world. Now, the United States is the black at the bottom. Look at korea. The dotted blue line. Look at, canada, which is. Look at portugal. All of these countries have done a better job of giving people healthy, longer lives over the last the last three decades. So theres something in the United States. And if went back and we looked at the data from before the United States used to do relatively well, we kept up. We were ahead of western in terms of life. Expect and see. And since about the eighties or nineties, things have just come to a halt. Now could i have the next slide, please . Oh, dear. Okay. You may have to just trust me on this. These lines are too small. What i want look at next is employment. The fraction. Of 25 to 54 year olds who have a job in the United States. And again, ill start with with canada. And i should say i was inspired use this metric by ned phelps, who had pushed the importance work not just because of the goods that it produced but the changes that it in us as people as work the skills we acquire but also the values and the social connection that emerges from work. So i think its a very important indicator. Now, ill points just to make sure you can see canada started out lower. And now has higher fraction of 24 to 54 year old males who are employed in both the United States and canada have fairly volatile employment ratios. We have more flexible labor markets than other countries. So when you see a recession, you see big downturn in employment in United States. And of course you see the very sharp downturn produced covid. But what i want you to focus on is not those fluctuations. But the trend canada has been trending upwards. The United States, this kind of stair step fashion has been trending down. Now, this is for men. Can we have the next slide, please. This is the picture for for women. We know that one of the Things Technology has done is freed women from of the household work that they used to do and fertility has been going down. So women are less in in childbearing. So you would and we have seen, in fact, in increase in participation the labor market, the formal labor market by women. If i showed the graph prior to the 1990s, youd see the United States was an early in providing opportunities women to work. We had an employment ratio for women that surged of other countries. But again, since the midnineties we have stagnate that weve fallen behind. But its not as though women dont want to work. Its not as though women cant work. Its not as though there arent jobs that people can do in this kind of economy. And you see that very clearly in the divergence between. The employment shares in canada and the United States. Now, ill do the same thing in the next slide. A broader comparison to other countries just kind of eyeball the general upward trend in this set of countries. Its canada, australia, germany, united kingdom. Now layer in the United States. Next slide, please. You could see much more clearly against this backdrop. How and worrisome the trend is in the United States. We we have this slide is a few months old. We have almost gotten back employment for men which is about where it was before covid hit. But were still not making anything like the kind of progress that other countries have made. And were not even close to getting back to where we were recently as the late 1990s. Next slide, please. This will show same kind of figure. First for employment women around the world. Next slide. This is again the United States. Just stagnation. So well have plenty of time during the day to. Try and diagnose what went wrong, caused this. And these various different dimensions. Well talk about what the solution is. But i hope we can agree and i hope people who are listening and watching will recognize there is something wrong. It wasnt this way before. Its specific to the United States and we need to grapple it. Thank you. So we now have time for believe. A couple of questions among the panel before get into audience questions. And i wanted to begin with a point that you made, philip, that i think was also touched on by a couple of the other panelists, which is that in addition to producing pour outcomes, the bad structures of government or lack of accountable in organizations can also lead to cultural extremism and can also lead to a highly contested politics. And i wonder if youre able to elaborate a little bit on the relationship between, poor governance and extremism and others are able to jump into if have ways to follow up on that. Well, think what where youve all of in saying was very much on this point which is that people are people who have a sense of ownership. Excuse me people who have a sense of ownership of their of their daily choices. Get up in the morning. Think they can make a difference. Know that theyre making a difference textures. I think their judgment perceiving whats needed and the like people who who who wake up in the morning and feel theyre subject to constraints that dont matter think they work for institutions things that dont actually stand for the values that. That youve all of them are talking about restraint and responsibility and and doing the right thing. Those people then will have an incentive to to go over to the what i think of as the dark of of modern structures which whats in it for me and having you know a sort of a performative of significance and and demanding their own, you know, not thinking about the impact everyone else. So so i think, you know, people to express themselves and it if they cant take pride in responsibility in in the value of their institution and what theyre doing they will maybe theres a tendency of people to express themselves in the in ways that are less constructive. And thats i see but i mean the others and especially i think you all would you have have written about. Jennifer, did you have something to add to that . Im sure that youve experienced in afghanistan and elsewhere situations where an inability to govern has led to an escalation of conflict or a crisis among the local. Absolutely. And i think, you know, i dont want spend belabor the afghanistan point, but what we failed to understand about that crisis was that people felt they had nothing left to fight for because they had no local ownership and that local ownership was never taken account. People were promised believed in democracy, but it was never it was they were never given the opportunity to participate. It matters most. But i think that this conversation highlights real question and a crisis that were facing is that if you believe in an institute and you see your leaders performing or theyre not engaging in the of restraint that you might anticipate. And if to you alls point, if the institutions themselves, the people are incentivized, are incentivized to perform because they themselves dont have agency to actually change things, so they their energy in places where they that they can have an impact and that is enhancing their brand. Talking about cultural issues. What does it mean . Those of us who do want to build. Where can we build. Where are the opportunity to engage . And this is really gives me pause right now. For those of us who may believe in legacy institutions, where are we . How can i tell students who are, you know, have their whole careers ahead of them in Public Service . Theyre so optimistic. They to work for these big organizations have an impact and they get deeply, very, very, very. What opportunities, what choices do they have . Is all is it all about creating new things . How can we generate reform from within so that the institutions themselves serve the purpose that they were intended to . So you have all if youre still with us, we can see you. But i have a question for you, which is that you pointed out the. Can i just respond, please . First one to go red. I should signaled to you. I want to suggest a slightly different take on on this particular one. I mean, were academic its our job to disagree. The the causality can go both ways, but i think there is and exaggerates a force here thats driving one of the most visible manifestations of extremism. Let me start by giving you this example from marjorie greene, where she talked about the Gazpacho Police that were going to be unleashed on her. Many people think this was an unintentional mistake. Spell check error, but this was an intentional decision on her part to get in, to get attention and. People have learned on blog posts and tweets that errors actually engagement and more attention. So i want to then allude to, im going to be rude here, tell you a story of a puppy that we had just at about the same time that i first born my first child was born and this dog would come into the living room and then poop on the right in front of me and my we a new child. The dog was not getting enough attention. We talked to the vet. Vet said, oh yes, thats negative. Getting behavior. So that kind of behavior is exactly whats driving somebody like marjorie and shes doing it because theres commercial enterprise that makes money based on engagement. The more time you spend on facebook in particular or either one, the more you spend there, the more ads youre exposed to and therefore, the more revenue the firm makes. And so theyve turned the dial, set up an environment. Their reward a negative attention getting behavior because it increases engagement. Theyre rewarding animosity and anger. So many of the manifestations were seeing polarization. I are driven by our tolerance of a really absurd advertising model in digital industry, which is causing huge damage and. The connection today to is that we dont have the capacity as a society or as as a government to just say stop that. We dont want that. Stop it. One more question among the. Sure, sure. Youve also. Yeah. Yeah. So i actually wanted to pose the final question amongst us to both and paul which is that you both pointed out that the apex of functioning societies seem to be in that midcentury era and a lot of the bad outcomes weve seen have seemed to begin in the 1960s and have proceeded since then. I wonder if you both in yuval first have an answer to exactly why things started fall apart at that time and any sense of how we might recapture some the institutional functionality of postwar period. Youre youre on mute yuval im not im your man. If you like me here, youre good. Okay. Sorry about that. I think its a very important question, and i let me say first word about the Crucial Point that paul just made to, i think part of whats happening on that front has to do with phillips argument about the of room for making judgments in a lot of these institutions, our politicians treat attention as their core function because many of them actually have been denied their actual core function of of legislating of making decisions, of representing when you talk to members of congress engage in this kind of work and they describe the incentives they confront, theyre responding, those incentives in a relatively rational way. And the incentive of what needs to change. And that requires some institutional reform, if were about congress, it requires seeing those incentives, those problems in an explicit way and understanding them as the challenge we face so that a professional or a leader is confronted with a challenge. The question he or she has to ask themselves is, given the role that i have here, given that the job have in this institution, how should i make this decision . I think that question has been denied to a lot of our leaders and instead they ask themselves how, do i get attention . How do i how do i raise our visibility . How do i maximize our presence in our brand . And thats a different challenge and its a challenge that now is taken by a lot of leaders and, a lot of american institutions to be their purpose. And the result is that confront incentives that are profound counterproductive and distortive. Quickly, on midcentury, i think we have to be careful about treating 1950s and early sixties as a norm. That period was not. That was a period of time when the united, in the wake of the second world war, was in completely unprecedented and, abnormal situation. It was also a time when we had an extreme ordinary level of trust in our leaders in our institutions in our elites. In the wake of decades of mobilization in war and depression. We cant expect to live like that all the time. American life is to be more like the 19th century than the middle of the 20th century. For the most. And we should expect that and understand that. The question is how to live well in, this situation. And so i think there are certainly to be learned from what america has been capable of in the past. And including in that extraordinary midcentury moment. But in this time, there may be more lessons us to learn from from how america recovered from the social crisis of, the end of the 19th century, when we did not have all of the global advantages of mid 20th century america, when we had many of the kinds of we face now from intensely polarized to extrude and dynamic but disruptive change in a lot of arenas of our society and how we built social cohesion and social capital in that period. I think has a lot to offer us now. We have to understand that getting back the 1950s and early sixties isnt an option. The question for us is how do we move forward . Even the strengths and weaknesses we have today. I think youve also pointed out the the postWorld War Two experience being unusual is correct, but i think it still may have some suggestions for us about how to respond. I think there are other dimensions along which the United States has failed. Theyre a little harder quantify than the ones i showed you. But one is our failure as a nation to resolve the lingering problems associated with slavery and residual racism. If you look across institute nations in the United States, the most Effective Institution at managing race relations, the us army, and its dramatically better than, for example, universities kind of bastions of, you know free thought and progressive ideals. I think the army as a contribution to make and that having large numbers of people who had served in the army during World War Two may have been an important part of the success in that period. And i think its something we need to think about. How do we instill in more young people, especially the experience of being part of a cohesive instead of being part of a voluntarily segregated university . I its also important to remember that there other things that did go wrong and somewhat out of phase. In the 1960s we had a big increase in the crime rate and then we did actually as a nation crime back down to some extent starting in the 1990s. So i think its almost surely going to be the case that many things to the the the failure weve seen and at least in one case weve partially that that failure. But i think its a its an open question and both what was what the most say the two or three most important causes of this change and then what are the levers that we can now that could address problems and resist those changes. Thank you. So a little bit over time, but we do have time for one audience question. If somebody would like to take you can go ahead and step up to the microphone. Thank you. Id like to ask to what extent you feel, as i do that, a big contributor to lot of the problems that youve identified is what has happened to the Political Parties in the united. I believe that one Political Party ever since the 1980s and saint ronald has demonized government, and especially now is essentially obstructive and. Dr. Roemer alluded to that mr. Levin also, i think alluded to it, but one of the biggest contributors believe is that one Political Party is focused, solving problems, and the other one is has a very different view. They are obstruction, they have too many. Marjorie Taylor Greenes do think, in fact, that politics has a big role here. Thank you. Would anyone like to take that . Well, i ive thought about this in the sentence. I used to believe that our first past the post system was good because it led to strong governments. We didnt. The many different factions that you see in other countries with parliamentary systems. We had two parties and regular exchange of power. Those two parties. But i think what i missed was that theres an instability associated these first past the post system. So as long as you get a slight majority of the vote you can take over all the seats or all of the all the power from the following instability emerges. If one party starts to win an election by mobilizing base. So it takes slightly extreme positions rather thami towards middle as youd usually expect in political competition. If youre is to mobilize the base. And this election to get higher turnout and then win, but mobilize by moving farther away from the median, then party can end up on a trajectory which it cant escape from. It keeps reinforcing extremism to keep driving up turnout, but its increasingly vulnerable because its farther and farther away from the main and think this is actually whats happened in the United States. And it may be a sign that theres really wrong with our the structure of our democratic system and we might be better off with a system that was had more elements of proportional representation. You know, i do like the idea i, i do think theres something wrong with the electoral process that favors extremism. You know, when the parties are in the doom loop. And i also agree with the with classmate bob blank who asked the question that the the the republicans are basically run against the democratic theyre theyre theyre obstructionist. But the columnist joe klein recently had a long essay his substack sanity clause about about how democrats and he said that the democrats for solving problems as you suggest but they they say the solution really is more government and not not better government. And so they dont in fact a have any platform that addresses kinds of things i write about, which is the operational how, you know, how do you run an Effective School theyre for good schools and theyre for more money for schools and all that. But they actually dont theyre not for creating agency