Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20140705

Cspan all right. You say also in the acknowledgments that, i have spent countless hours discussing this book with my beloved partner in life and work with whom i spent countless hours. who is your husband . Guest my husband is steven postrel. Hes a phd economist who teaches Business Strategy at ucirvine down in orange county. We live in los angeles. We met when we were 18 years old, freshmen at princeton. And weve been, you know, were just kind of soul mates, andintellectual and otherwise. Cspan so is thisis this a wonk marriage . Guest werewere not just wonks. Were interested in big ideas, but you know, wewe enjoywe have a lot of fun, too. Its not just policy wonkery cspan were did you get the idea for the book . Guest well, it goes back to a 1990 piece i did for the Washington Post. Ii didnt start working on the book till 95, butback in 1990 i was very interested, as a lot of people were, in the environmental movement. It was the 20th anniversary of earth day. And i took a sort of less wonky approach. Ii went back and read a lot of green theorists, peoplenot people saying, you know, what should we do about air pollution, but people saying, you know, what is the right way for societies to be. and i was very struck by the idea of stasis, in that ideain that writing, people like e. F. Scumacker, author of small is beautiful probably would be the best known person. But this idealization of society as a steady state, as the way that human beings ought to live being in a World Without change. And the idea of nature is also static of having sort of a balance, or climax phase. And i started to notice this idea of stasis cropping up in other areasattitudes towards trade, for example. And started seeing lilittle beginnings of leftright crossovers. Andand got interested in that, and then got interested in the idea of, well, what is the opposite vision of that . And came up with this idea of dynamism, and i was seeing some leftright crossovers there as well, particularly on open economy issues. I wrote this piece saying that, you know, the Political Landscape is changing, this bold thing. And ii predictedin addition to talking about environmental stuff, ii predicted that International Trade and immigration, which at that time were kind of issues that only Interest Groups and a few specialists worried about, i predicted that they would become hot button issues and issues that would divide and create new coalitions along this stasis vs. Dynamism division. And, in fact, that happened. And i continued to think andand speak about these ideas. And then in 1995 i decided, you know, i should really develop them andand talk about what it means to have a Political Landscape divided, not between left and right, but between an openended vision of the future vs. Some notion that it should be controlled or managed or perhaps kept stable in a past form. Cspan all right. Thethis probably isnt correct englishthe funnest fact for me in this book was that 80 percent of all the doughnut shops in california are owned by cambodians. Guest thats right. Now i have. Cspan where did you get that . Guest i got it from an article in the wall street journal, a very good piece, that was on the growth of the doughnut industry inin california. And iit is something you notice there, i mean, if you live there and you occasionally go into a doughnut shop, particularly. If its not the chain stores, they are mostly owned by cambodian families. And what happened, apparently, was there was a cambodian refugee, sometime after the war, who came to Southern California, as many southeast asians did, and he got a job in a doughnut factshop. And he started to think that this would be a really Good Business for him because you didnt need to know a lot of english. You basically needed to work hard, andand it wasnt that much capital to get into the business. So he got into the business, and he thenother people started working for him and it spread through the ethnic community. The knowledge about how to make doughnuts and they developed specialized suppliers. And they kind of built this market. Itssoits not just that they sort of took over existing doughnut shops. They did that some, they bought them out, but they expanded the market for doughnuts. And this is an example of how, you know, the economy grows in a very unexpected way. You know what i mean . Because doughnuts are not a cambodian food. This wasthis was a sort of chance occurrence. But. Cspan so how do you apply all kinds of economic theory to that . Guest well, this can, ifif you want to use a highfalutin term, this is an example of what economists call past dependence, which is that some seemingly random occurrence sort of sets history of an industry off on ain a particular direction. So thatand then skilled begunbegand networks begin to be created. And it becomes more likely that a cambodian will get into the doughnut shop theninto doughnut business than, say, into the acrylic nailinto the nail salon business, which is dominated by vietnamese people in los angeles. Cspan the nailwhatd you say again . Guest the nail salons manicurists, which i dont write about in the book, but ive written about elsewhere. And then its also more likely thatits less likely that somebody whos not a cambodian will get into it. Its not impossible. I mean, there are people who are not cambodians who open doughnut shops. But it is an example of the sort of unpredictability of the way the economy works. Cspan and why does you use thatwhatswhat reason do you use the cambodian doughnut owners in this book . Guest well, iioneone reason is to explain about how history matters, that we dont start off from scratch. Wewe dont make progress fromfrom starting over from scratch, that thats a false idea that weve had about history and about progress in the past. Another isanother point that i makewhere its interesting that theyre cambodians, is that they were escaping from a static utopia. Thethe khmer rouge sought to start over at year zero, and toto sort of create the kind of society that very civilized, humane greens write about as though it were an ideal. I mean, people who would never consider genocide. But i argue that if you want to know what that would take, look at cambodia to empty the cities and turn everyone into peasants again. Even in aa less developed country, let alone in someplace like the United States, that thesethese sort of static utopian fantasies are just that. Cspan how long have you been associated with this . Guest reason magazine . I came to reason magazine in 1986, and ive been the editor since 1989mid 1989. Cspan whos the audience . Guest ohits anybody the the magazine motto is free minds and free markets, and it isso it has that sort of political orientation. Its a monthly magazine ofabout politics, culture and ideas. The audience is a very dispersed one. We have aa strong audience is washington, but we also have aa very strong audience among what we would call grass roots opinion leaders, you know, the kind of people who watch cspan, take an interest in current affairs. We have a particular strong segment of our audienceits not by any means all of it, of people who are in various kinds of technology, jobs and ventures. What the exact association is between that and the ideas of the magazine is something that we always puzzle over. I mean, at this point its sort of like the cambodian doughnut shops. Because of that interest on our audience, we tend to write a little bit more about those issues which are increasingly important in the political debates. And so, therefore, we get more readers of that nature. But we cover a full range ofof topics. Cspan whatswhere did you get the name reason . Guest welli mean, reason was found in 19868 when i was in the third grade, so i didnt get the name reason. But it cameit was originally founded as a student publication at Boston University by aa student who was a great devotee of ayn rands work. And so she liked the ideshe supported the idea of reason, so he took the name from that. And i think having that name has encouraged the magazine to have a certain tone. I mean, wewe try not to have the same tone throughout. We try to have, you know, variety and humor andand different voices. But i think we address issueswe try to address issues in a sort of rational way, in ain a way that appeals to peoples intellects asas well as to their passions. Cspan wherewhere did you grow up . Guest i grew up in greenville, south carolina. Cspan what did your parents do . Guest my father was an engineer and worked for a Polyester Film manufacturing company. My mother when i wasmost of my childhood when i was growing up, my mother was a fulltime mother with aa vast range of volunteer activities. When i was in high school, she went back to graduate school and got her masters in english, and taught english at the College Level for a number of years. And now shes primarily aa poet and fiction writer. Cspan when did you get interested infirst in things intellectual . Do you remember . Guest i dont know. I mean, i guess it would depend on what you meant by things intellectual. I mean. Cspan were you a student in high school . Guest oh, yes. I was always. Cspan were you a good student . Guest i was always a very good student, very serious about myi always loved to read. And i was always interested in politics, i mean, always. Iii remember the kennedy assassination, even though i was almost four. I mean, obviously my knowledge of john kennedy was more that he had kids my age than, you know, what his policy was visavis cuba. Butbut i was always interested in ideas andand history andand politics and literature. Cspan did you start off being ofof a party . Guest iwell, i waswhen i was in high school, i was a democrat. I workedthe only campaign ive ever worked inin my life was charles revenells campaign against Strom Thurmond in 1978, which was thethe yearmy senior year in high school. When i was in collegebyby that time my views had actually evolved quite a bit. I was not as liberal as i had been earlier, andparticularly on economic issues. I always had this libertarian streak. I was always a big civil libertarian. When i was in college, i was more or less a republican, although i was never active in the Republican Party cam politics. Cspan where . Guest princeton. And now im an independent. So i havei have been, you know, across the political spectrum. But theres beenthere has been a consistency in my thinking, in the sense that i was always very concerned with issues of individual liberty. And it was a matter of understanding how those play out in the world. Cspan so youre an independent. What does that mean . Guest well, that just meansi mean, it is a party. You asked me about party. Cspan so you dont belong to a party . Guest imim not registered with a party. Cspan if you had to put a label on you today, what would it be . Would it fit anyi mean, you said free markets and all that. Guest well, i would say classical liberal, or libertarian. Or, as i say in the book, dynamist, which is a term thats a little broader than. Cspan did you invent that term . Guest i did invent that term. Cspan dynamist . Guest dynamist. Trying to get at the idea of people who support this openended idea of progress through decentralized trial and error, as opposed to through some type of planning or through saying that progress is a myth. And so i would say that most libertarians are dynamists, but not all dynamists are libertarians. Cspan and you have a set of rules on page 116 on what a dynamist is. Isis that right . You say, an overview dynamist, rule one allow individuals including groups of individuals to act on their own knowledge. what does that mean . Guest well, theres actually a whole chapter. Thisthis is chapter five, which follows chapter four, which is on knowledge. There are very different visions of knowledge in these static and dynamic visions. Thethe static notioni use the analogy of a tree. The static notion is like thisthese palm trees we have out in los angeles. And knowledge is this big trunk that everybody kind of knows, and then theres a little bit of specificity at the top ofof a few little fronds. And that, therefore, its very easy to plan the future for society to sort of tell people what they should do, whether thats whole society or even thisyou could apply this to, say, a companyhow you thought about knowledge in the organization. You could have, you know, strategic planners sitting in some Corporate Office deciding exactly what should be done in all its specific. The dynamist notion is that knowledge is like a spreading elm tree, that there is a shared amount of knowledge, but that most knowledge in society and most knowledge in the world is dispersed. That we know many things we cant articulate. Ii ththat are very hard for me to explain. Its very hard for me to explain what is a good reason magazine article. I can, sort of, get part way there but itits hard to do. Andand we also specialize and we rereap the benefits of other peoples knowledge through complex webs of social and economic ininteraction. Well, what this means in terms of rules is that the kind of rules you have underlying society should not be ones that try to dictate, in detail, what sort of decisions people should make. Rather they should be ones that allow people to look at the facts around them, and make what they see as the best choice under the circumstances. Cspan so what would you think of the vchip . Guest well, ii havethe proi talk about the vchip inin the book as an example of the difficulty of articulating knowledge. Theres thisthis notion that you can have one set of ratings. And thatfirst of all they should be required byby congress. But also that one set of ratings can capture whatever a parent might be interested in. I mean, youyou know, i think one thinginteresting contrast is the internet filters and services that have evolved without a mandate. And those filters offer many different kinds of choices to parents. And what happened withi tell a story in the book about this notion of ratings. When they were debating tv violence inin congress andand everybody, whether in congress oror commenting on it, always used the same example. They always said, well, the problem is youyou wouldnt want to ban schindlers list, of course. Thats a serious show. We wouldbut, of course, it has violence, it even has some nudity. You wouldnt want to ban thatkeep that away from children because thats an important subject matter. And were concerned with, you know, terminator 2, or whatever. Well, the very first show to ever appear on Network Television with an m rating, which was the rating that if vchips were in placethe technology hadnt been developed yetit wouwould be kept away from children, which includes teenagers, was schindlers list. And so, in fact, thisthis Rating System couldnt capture that sense that people had of the difference between schindlers list and some other show. And yet, there was one congressman, congressmen coburn from oklahoma, who denounced nbci think it was nbcor no, it couldnt be nbc, they dont do ratings. But whoever showed schindlers list for putting it on Network Television, and saying it should not have been on television because it has all thisthis nudity and violence in it, and it wasnt appropriate for airing. Soyou know, people disagree. Cspan ill go back to another one of your rules in a moment. At princeton you studied what . Guest i was an english major. I specialized and studin renaissance drama. And i talk about the renaissance some in the book. And i also took a lot of economics. Cspan when did you go to Southern California, and why guest i went to Southern California in 1986, and i went because my husband had a job at ucla. Cspan whered you meet him . Guest i met him at princeton when we were freshmen. We livewe lived in the same dorm and he actually lived across from another student that i knew from south carolina. Cspan now you lived in greenville, south carolina, you lived in princeton, new jersey, and in Southern California. Guest right. Right. In between princeton and Southern California, i lived in philadelphia, where i was a reporter for the wall street journal. And then i lived in boston where i worked for inc. Magazine. Cspan how long were you at the wall street journal . Guest two years. Cspan does the world look different to you out there living in los angeles than it did in the east Coast Community . Guest well, itits hard to compare because ive lived in los angeles so long. So in many ways the world looks different because the world just is different. It would look different even if you were on the east coast. But i thinkyes, there isthere is a difference sense of openness. Now when i was at inc. , living in boston, it was the pc revolution and we were covering it. And then it was the shakeout in the pc revolution. And, you know, and i thinkso we were very tied in to that whole community. But in Southern California, or in california in general, there is a sense of thethe future being present. I dont know how to describe that. I mean, youre in very cosmopolitan places with people from all over the world who have come there believing in the possibility of a Better Future for themselves and their children. So thats part of it. Part of it is that you are looking toward the pacific rather than across the atlantic, which has a sense ofi mean, youre not looking back toward the old country. Iits aits a strange kind of effect that that has. And, of course, then theres all thethe industries that we associate with the future evolution of the economy, which obviously youve got the hightech Silicon Valley aarea, and then biotechnology which is also strong in both northern and Southern California. But i would also argue things like entertainment and design andand some of these types of industries that are oriented towardtoward beauty and ascetics, asas well as sort of entertainment are part of the future evolution of the economy. Cspan who owns the magazine . Guest reason is published by an Organization Called the Reason Foundation, which is 501 c 3 Tax Exempt Organization that actually came after the magazine. The magazine was 10 years as an amateur effort, and then thein 1978, some of the people who were involved with it decparticularly bob poole, whos the president of Reason Foundation, decided to start this foundation which would publish the magazine, and would also research theat that time the very radical notion of privatization, which he had done some work in as aa conconsultant in a consulting firm. Cspan does it make money . Guest no, it does not. Cspan how big is its circulation . Guest aboutbetween 50,000 and 55,000. Cspan and the people that are behind it, are they names that we know, are they political names . Like whos Charles Paul Freund . Guest Charles Paul Freund is ahehes a writer here in washwashington writer and editor. He worked forhe actually edited at the Washington Post, my first article on stasis vs. Dynamism. He worked for the post outlook section for a number of years. He used to writepeople who read the new republic may remember him from writing the zeitgeist checklist. He used to do that, but. Cspan how about Nick Gillespie . Guest Nick Gillespie is aan english phd who lives in oxford, ohio, where his wife iswhos also an english phd, is a professor at miami university. And he is, you know, a bright Young Journalist whos ai mean hehe has his phd, but hes pursued a journalistic career. And he has been at reason for about four years, five years. Cspan your other Senior Editor is jacob sullum . Guest jacob sullum lives in new york. Were a very virtual organization. He is esphe is a journalist by background. He worked for newspapers before coming to reason. And has been, actually, with us since i became editor in 1989, with a brief detour to National Review and to write a book called for your own good, which is about the antitobacco movement. And hishes also a syndicated columnist. Cspan and whos bob poole . Guest bob poole is the president of Reason Foundation. He is an mittrained engineer who is known in the privatization world as one of the sort of godfathers of that notion. He actually coined the termadapting the term from peter drucker. And he does a lot of research in transportation and infrastructure issues these days, working on ideas of privatizing roads and airports, all that sort of thing. Cspan ill ask you some more about people ininvolved in reason, but we have to go back to rule number twp for a dynamist. By the way, whos your favorite stasist . Guest my favorite stasistfavorite in. Cspan just give us an example of somebody that is a wellknown stasist. Guest well, what i like the best is when you see these crosspeople who are stasists who are agreeing with each other that they wouldnt expect. And the story that i tell in the book is about pat buchanan and Jeremy Rifkin on crossfire. And pat buchanan was being the host on the right that day, and Jeremy Rifkin, whos this antitechnology activist, iswas the guest on the left, and yet they spent the whole time agreeing with each other that this dynamic economy that we have is very dangerous, and that we need to do something about it. So ii enjoy finding those kinds of political alliances ininsoiidont know that i have a favorite stasist. There are some people who are good at articulating certain kinds of ideas, intellectual writers. Cspan whats bill clinton . Guest bill clinton is aais an interesting mix. He is primarily what i call in the book a technocrat, which is aaa form of stasist that is very prevalent in american politics, has been for at least 100 years. Which is somebody who says no, no. Im for the future. its very different from a Jeremy Rifkin or a pat buchanan. im for the future. Ii like technology. I like, you know, economic progress, whatever. But i have this plan, and the future must conform to my plan. its sort of a script. And that is actually assumption that we operate under in a lot of our political discussions, that the future is something to be planned in advance as opposed to evolving. And i think bill to evolving. And i think bill clintons bridge to the 21st century is a good metaphor for that because it was a very effective political slogan, particularly since bob dole pledged to build a bridge to the past. And so it made a nice contrast to these young, forwardlooking candidates vs. The backwardlooking older candidate. But when you think about it, a bridge is a very static structure. It assumes that were all at point a, and were all gonna go to point b. And we know exactly where point b is, and were going to build this bridge by blueprints and sort of centrally plan it. And these kinds of Civil Engineering metaphorsthese very static metaphors, go back to the turn of the century andand to that notion of progress. So i wouldi put him in the static camp, but with this caveat. He has a little bit of the dynamic vision in some of his rhetoric, and certainly there have been people who have worked in the administration who have taken those ideas andand worked them out. Cspan what about Newt Gingrich . Guest gingrich is even more mixed. INewt Gingrich isi think he a lot of dynamist instincts in his personality, but they are overwhelmed by his political desires. Hishishis goals to shape civilization asas a politician. So thatandand actually, hishis phd dissertation was on technocracy, which is kind of interesting inin the belgian congo, butbut hebut he hashe understands more about dynamism than a lot of political figures. And the story i tell in the book about him atwhere hes taken the dynamist sidei tell some others where hes being more technocraticis about Beach Volleyball. Cspan diddidand now when that happened i remember a lot of derision in the press about that. Did people miss that story . What was really going on there . Guest i think people missed that story, and i think he didnt try to explain it, and he didnt have any allies who tried to explain what he did. Cspan when did this happen . Guest ok. At the 1996 Republican National convention, which was in san diego, and was shortly after the olympic games, which were in atlanta, which is were gingrich is from. Its important to get these geographic context. Before he gave his formal remarks, Newt Gingrich brought onto stage this Olympic Beach volleyball player named kent steffes, who ishes a republican, hes a big gingrich fan. Hed gone to ucla, and been in the economics major, which is kind of known as a sort of market oriented economics department. Hes also a cspan fan. And i describe him in the book as the onlythe only cspan devotee ever described by People Magazine as brash, bronzed and built like a greekgreek statue. So gingrich pulls him on the stage, and hehe makes this sort of not terribly articulate encomium to Beach Volleyball and he says, you know, 30 years ago nobody wouldve envisioned nobody played Beach Volleyball, and now people all around the world play and its in the olympic games. Andand no bureaucrat would have planned it, and thats what freedom is all about. and everybody went kind of, huh . You know, i mean, the crowd cheered because, of course, it was an applause line and they cheered, but they didnt really know why. And thethe sort of more liberal pundits, to use this to show how wacky newt was, and they called him weird, was the word that they kept using. And then the conservative pundits were even more horrified. And the Weekly Standard had this headline in its Convention Edition that said no more Beach Volleyball, please. And what i argue is that, actually, this was a dynamist moment that hewhat he said was correct. That this was an example of how things riseand this is a reasonably good sized industryBeach Volleyball, actuallythey rise from unexpected places. Andand no bureaucrat would plan them because who would think of it. No one would design a Beach Volleyball inindustry. Andand that he was right, butbut it didnt fit in with the political rhetoric. And then i also point out that this vision of play, as a positive good, and in some kind ofsomehow tied to the progress of the market economy, and tied to creativity, is something that isis not accepted in intellectual circles, and particularly in conservative circles. And that he was getting in trouble from that, too, and i have a chapter on play. Cspan rule number two apply to simple generic units and allow them to combine in many different ways. Guest yeah. Combinations are a real theme in where progress comes from. You know, when you combine things, you can get an enormous number of outcomes. And wthe way i derived these rules was i looked at all different kinds of dynamic learning systems, and those could be market economies, they could be the scientific process, but they were also things likethere are certain kinds of Computer Programming techniques that people use where they essentially have the little programs that simulate evolution andand they get good outcomes and, you know, what did those have in common . What do adaptable buildings have in common . People writing about all different kinds of evolutionary learning systemswhat do they have in common . And i was struck over and over again byone of the things is that when you make rules, theyre very generic and they dont restrict the kinds of combinations that people can make, whereas when we make different kinds of laws and regulations, we often make very static categories. So you can say, you know, there are homes and there are offices, and home and office never meet, and this is written into many zoning and building codes andand permitting codes. So what im arguing is that you need to have theseyou need to allow many different combinations because people will combine things in ununfamiliar and surprising ways. Cspan rule number three permit credible, understandable, enduring and enforceable commitments. Guest commitments. Well, rule number two actually gives you the law of contractsi mean, the idea that you should be able to make different kinds of agreements. And when i talk about rule number two, i emphasize the ability to find likeminded people orrule number three is the other side of contract, which is commitment. Its not just about combinations. Its about keeping your commitments. And that one of the things you see, for example, in the former soviet union and in other places, sort of lessdeveloped economies, is a difficulty in making durable, enforceable commitments. You dont know whether you can trust people, and this limits thethe number of commitments people are likely to make. So in order to have a good market economy, you need to be able to make deals with strangers. And what you find in places where people cant trust each other, because the legal system doesnt work, is that they will only make deals with family members or people that theyve known for a long time, and that works to a point, but it doesnt work to give you wan extended order, a really advanced economy. Cspan by the way, who do you want to read this . Guest everybody. No. Ii think people who have an interes in, as it says in the subtitle, creativity, enterprise and progress. If you have any sort of interestthose words mean something important to you, you ought to take a look at it. And if you have an interest in thesome of the peculiarities and changing shapes of our political oforder, youyou miyou might want to pick it up. And i think also that there are many people who are interested in business and entrepreneurship and technological innovation who would find it very interesting and useful. Cspan how did you get tom peters to say, its the best damn nonfiction ive read in years . Guest well, ii sent him a copy ofof thethe manuscript, and ii had done an interview with him for a reason, and i actually quote someii quote some parts of it in the book, some of the things he said about various things. And so i had met him, and i knew that his thinkingthat he would like the ideas in this book, so i sent it to him, and actually, the full quote was even longer and it said things like, my hands literally shook as i read every page and, you know, it wasit was a liberating experience. butbut the publisher wanted to keep it, you know, short and to the point, so they used the sort of movie blurb. Cspan rule four of five of the dynamist rules that youvethis is all your syour stuff. You invented all of this. Guest well, ii didnt invent it from whole cloth. I read a lot of other things, but i synthesized it. Cspan no, but, i mean. Guest yes. Yes. Cspan . This are allthese words are your words. Guest right. Thats right. Cspan how long did it take, by the way, to think all this through . Guest well, writing the book took about two and a half years, and the rules chapter probably took the longest. Its the longest chapter and it was, in many ways, the most difficult to write. Cspan two and a half years of how much work . Guest how much work . Thats hard to say. During part of that, my husband was visitinghe was a visiting professor at the Kellogg School at northwestern university, so he was in evanston, illinois, and i was in Southern California, and what i would do is i would go for a week a month to see him and work on the book. And thatsso that would be, you know, roughly a quarter of my time, but that wasnt for the full two and a half years. It was less at the beginning because theres a lot of wheelspinning when you especially when youve never written a book before. You dont know how to do it. And so it wai was working on it somewhat less at the beginning and then more aas time went on. I would say probably it was about a fourth of my time. Cspan and how much would you detalk about yourlike thesethese five rules that youve got here, who did you bounce all those off of . A lot of people . Guest well, the actual rules, when i was writing them, i wait was mainly talking to my husband, although wafter i would write a chapter, then i would send it toi had a few people, includingwe talked about Nick Gillespie, my colleaguei had a few friends that i would send the chapters toeach chapter and say, you know, please give me comment. lynn scarlett, whos the head of the reason Public Policy institute, which is the other half of the Reason Foundation, read a lot of it along the way, andand so i got this kind of immediate feedback and then i would revise the chapters later on, and then eventually my editor at the free press, paul gollub, Read Everything and gave me some good advice. Cspan is there a place we can go in Southern California, it says reason on the door . Guest yes, there is. We have an office on sepulveda boulevard in los angeles andright by the freeway. If you want a traffic report, you can give me a call. And there is abut we are veryas i mentioned, we do have people all over the country andand do a lot. Weve used the new technologiesheres an interesting example of combinationweve used these new technologies of the internet, primarily, but to allow people to make accommodations to their personal lives and keep people on staff if their spouse has a job or needs to go to school in a faraway city, and then. Cspan how many people do you find there at the reason offices . And is the Public Policy institute right there . Guest the Public Policy institute is also there, although they also have some dispersal. They have one person here in washington, dc, for example, but most of their dispersed people are in the Southern California area, just living far out and coming in maybe once or twice a week. Butwell, therehow many people are actually in our offices, i guess, would be maybe 20, but there are about 35 people workingnow thatsthere must be about 25 people. Cspan rule number four protect criticism, competition and feedback. Guest yes. When i walk about progress coming through trial and error, experimentation and feedback, the feedback is a big part of that. And one thing that people sometimes dont get about my book is they think, oh, virginias for change. Shes just for change. Every change is good. and thats not at all what im saying. I am saying let people try things. Thats the competition part. Let them enter, let them try their new ideas, but let other people criticize them. And ii talk about two different forms of criticism. One is criticism by expression, which is criticism, its, you know, well, this movie is lousy, or, thisthis is a terrible product. You know, Consumer Reports tested it and found that it falls apart. the other is criticism by example, which is competition, which is saying, i can do better than those those th whoever is existing, and im gonna try. so you need to protect both of those in order to have the learning process that makes progress possible. Cspan anybody associated with this organization politically involved with the republicans or the democrats . Guest directly, it it i guess it depends on what you mean by associated with. no one on the reason magazine staff is. Werewere very much journalists andand not involved at thatin that way. There are people who have been at Reason Foundation. For example, the director of the Public Policy institutes Privatization Center for many years, bill eggers, recently left and ran for the state assembly in california as a republican. And unfortunately, cause i think ofhighly of him, he lost and hes now gone to work for governor bush in texas andand in the the texas, working on some of those privatization issues. So we have had people like that, but it is notit is a nonpartisan organization. And so if people are involved in politics, theyre involved either if theyre gonna run for office, they have to leave their jobs, or theyre involved as individuals and. Cspan where do you get your money . Guest we get thwe get our magmoney primarily from our individuals, and now some of those individuals give us, you know, 25 a year and some of them give us 25,000 a year, but itsreason magazine is very fortunate that we have a very diverse funding base. And the advantage of that is it gives you a great ina lota lot of independence. The disadvantage is if you hear that joe smith, whos this fantastic writer, is looking for a job, you dont have mr. Money bags that you can go to and say, oh, you know, please give me some money to hire joe smith. andand the Reason Foundation, as a whole, also gets money from some foundations and some corporations. Cspan theres a footnote in the back on page 252 i want to ask you about. It happens to be footnote 52. Actually, i dont know how this is worlet me make sureis that 52 on one chapter . Guest its one chapter. Yeah. Cspan yeah. Itsits the last chapter in the book. Let me just make sure so that if somebody wanted to find this, chapter 8, on the verge. Guest right. Cspan did you get the verge from Daniel Boorstin . Guest Daniel Boorstin, yeah. Cspan oh. But heres theheres the footnote. Hillary Rodham clintons speech at the annual meeting of the World Economic forum in davosor davos, im not sure how you pronounce it switzerland, february the 2nd, 1998so its not too long ago, about a year agoaside from the flaws in bells argumentwhos bell . Guest bell is daniel bell, and basically what Hillary Clinton is doing in that speech is repeating the argument that daniel bell made in the cultural contradictions of capitalism. Bell is a very prominent sociologist. And he was arguing there inin that book that over time, capitalism will destroy itself by undermining the puritan ethic that he argues is at the basis of that. And inin the chapter on play, which is the preceding chapter, i sort of take issue with that. Cspan well, you say here thatandand aaside from the flaws in bells own argument discussed in chapter 7 and the utter lack of empirical evidence that capitalism is languishing, there is something unseemly about a wealthy and powerful woman and former walmart director lecturing a selection of the worlds wealthiest people on the evils of consumer aspirations. Intellectuals easily accept such ideas because they tend not to count their own pleasures, such as travel, books, art, gourmet food or taxdeductible conferences in switzerland as consumerist indulgences, and for those motivated primarily by power oor fame, of course, Consumer Products are trivial pleasures. guest right. Cspan did you have fun writing that footnote . Guest i guess. Oh, yeah, this is sort of the style i use in a lot of reason editorials, which is thei kept under wraps a little bit in the book. But, yes, there is thisii get very angry sometimes when people who are like mei mean, thesethese people have similar desiimim noti mean, i like to have nice clothes, id like to have a nice house, like anybody else, but its not my primary motivation. Im not working to maximize my income. I could be doing things that would make me much richer. But when people who are intellectuals go and they rail about consumerism and its so terrible, and what they mean isi mean, what theyre really attacking is peoples desire to have aan easier material life. And they tend to be attackingoften, its tied up with notions of taste and theyre often attacking kind of thethe middleclass notions of taste, and walmart being a big example. Thats why i thought it was particularly ironic that Hillary Clinton, of course, had been on the board of walmart. Andand there is this argument that the desire for better consumer goods undermines over time the virtues on which capitalism depends. And what i argue in chapter 8 is that, first of all, this is an argument that we have to destroy dynamism in order to save it. Thewell, its gonna destroy itself anyway, so we might as well destroy it now and somehow rein it in. But its alsoits a misunderstanding of where the problems come from. The problems that where the system gets blocked up rarely come from people wanting, you know, ninintendo games oror something. They come from people trywho work very hardmost of them have a big work ethicbut work to stop competition oror to inget some advantage for their industry oror for their interest group, that its more of a political problem. Cspan rule number five, for dynamists, something you invented establish a framework within which people can create nested, competing frameworks of more specific rules. Guest yes. This is the really hardtoexplain one, but it is, in some ways, realits something i kept coming up against again and again. Cspan let me read it again. Guest yes. Cspan ok . Establish a framework within which people can create nested, competing frameworks of more specific rules. Guest right. Let me start with an example. You can have a dynamic dynamist society with all this kind of competition and feedback and variety and innovation. But within that society, lets say you want to run a company that is very consistent. You want to runyou have a mcdonaldyou want to have mcdonalds french fries be the same everywhere. You dont want to encourage people toyour franchisees to have trial and error with the french fries. And so you have iwithin the broader dynamic system, where people are trying new things, you have these more specific rigid rules that are designed to meet some more specific goals and that incorporate your local knowledge, getting back to the rule number one, of what those goals should be. So again and again, i came to this conclusion that nesting of rules is very important, and that within theyou have simple rules at the sort of social level, at thethethe systemwide level, but that within those rules, people can have other institutions that have more specific rules and that maymay be very sort of like these rules. They may be oriented toward dynamic learning or they may be oriented towards something else, and then those rules can compete with each other, and then we can see, you know, which ones work best orandand it may be that they can coexist, too, thatthat, you know, mcdonalds french fries areare good to have consistency, but you also want to have a restaurant with a gourmet chef who makes a different dish every night. Andand theres no reason that the Restaurant Industry cant accommodate both of thosethose kinds of models. Cspan ok. Heres the list of Reason Foundation trustees. Guest ok. Cspan and ill read it quickly and then, obviously, go back and ask you about a couple. Guest right. Right. Cspan harry tharry teasley jr. , the chairman. Well, letslet me just stop there. Who is he . Guest he is a retired cocacola executive. He was aheathe was ceo of a number of their different divisions over aover his career, and he lives in tampa, florida. He has a great sort of dynamist understanding of the world, particularly inas it relates to resource use andand the relationship between Business Innovation and environmental issues. Cspan well, there are three names that pop right out, are wellknown in this town. One of them is james glassman. Guest yes. Yes. Cspan . Who is . Guest jim glassman is a columnist for the Washington Post. He was the founder ofof roll call. And heihe was fat one time, the publisher of the new republic. And its actuallyjim is the most related to the book of the people you might list because he became a trustee because of this book, essentially. When i wrotea few years after i wrote the 1990 Washington Post article, we hadwe opened a Washington Office here, and we had a party to celebrate the opening, and jim came to the party and he was praising this article, oh, you got that right, you know, dynamism vs. Stasis. This is really how the world works. so then when i started writing the book and i was doing research in 1995, i said, well, gee, id better go find some of these dynamists, you know. Iits like i know some technology people, but i need to find some people who are moreatleast involved in politics. so i said, well, ill interview jim glassman, whom iyou know, i knew slightly, but we were by no means friends. So i called him up and i said, you know, werei want to do this interview, and wewe did the interview, and hehe, at some pointit mightve actually been earlier than that he had called me looking for the post piece and wanting to write a column about the idea. Anyway, we got to be friends on the basis ideas, and he has a very good background in magazine publishing. So eeventually, i proposed that he would be a good board member, andand thethe board agreed, and he joined our board. Cspan c. Boyden gray. Guest boyden gray is a relatively recent addition to reasons board. He was, as you obviously know, a counsel to president bush. His brother, burton gray, was one of theit might have been one of the founding Board Members of reason, was aa boa board member for many years and died very young very tragicallyhad a heart attack. And so the fthe gray family has been involved with the Reason Foundation over many years and we actually have ourreason magazines summer internship is endowed in memory ofof burton gray, and so boyden has taken an interest in us. unintelligible . Cspan walter e. Williams. Guest Walter Williams is a professor at George Mason University and a syndicated columnist, very articulate spokesman for libertarian ideas and has, again, been involved with reason for many, many years. Cspan now thomas beach and william dunn and neal goldman steinahansis that. Guest steinahans. Cspan got that one wrong. Manuelor manuel. Guest oh, he actually goes by manny klausner, yeah. Cspan . Klausner, david koch or koch . Guest koch. Cspan david koch. Guest david koch. Cspan missed that one, too. James lintott, robert poole, al st. Clair, joel stern. Any of those folks that you can explain to us and how they get there . I mean, whwhatwhats the central reason why somebody comes to the Reason Foundation . Guest well, i think they are excited about the ideas that we believe in and they are sometimes theyve been involved with us on some particular policy issue. Ooften, theymany of the people whose names you read are people who are essentially Magazine Readers and are enthusiastic about the magazine, and then came to know about the paPublic Policy institute through that andand, you know, they believe in what we believe in. And at some point they, you know, want to get more involved. Cspan one of the names most mentioned in your book is friedrich von hayek. Guest yes. Cspan who was he . Guest Friedrich Hayek was, i say, the most important philosopher of dynamism. He was aan austrianborn economist and social philosopher who ventured even into issues of cognitive psychology and othother realreally renaissance man of ideas, who was a great defender and articulatewell, not just a defender but an explorer of what it means to have a market economy and aand a free society. And many of the ideas in the book about knowledge come from him because he was one of the first people to articulate the notion that what a market does is act as a Telecommunications System for knodispersed knowledge. He actually used that analogy, and hehe was a nobel laureate. He died in, i believe, 92 or 93. This would be hithe 100th year of his birth. Cspan you have a quote in your book, why i am not a conservative, and i want to read it. As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of newof the new as such, while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, and on a preparedness to let change run its course, even if we cannot predict what it will lead. Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack thethey lack the faith and the spontaneous forces of adjustment, which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necnecessary adadaptations will be brought about. Could he write that today . Guest well, he could write it in the context in which he wrote it. Aas i mentioned, he was austrianborn. He aafter the nazis came to power, he went to england and he was at the London School of economics for many years, and eventually, he came to the United States and was at the university of chicago. But he had very much of a european perspective and theithis use of the word liberal is in the classical sense. It is not in the american sense. And so in that sense, i think it is true, and one of thehe struggled in that essay with what to call himself, and he came up with the notverycatchy identification of old whig, butbut hecause he didnt like libertarian because that was too clunky and too much of a neologism, and liberal had this problem of having been confused with sort of various kinds of planning or redistribution notions. But awhat i would argue is this sense of openendedness is very much what im getting at with the notion of dynamism, thatthat a society and individuals can venture into the unknown future and make adjustments and be much more resilient than theyre often given credit for. Cspan would a da dynamist then have road to serfdom on theira hayek book . Guest they might. I mean, the one that i particularly willuse in this book is the constitution of liberty, and alsowhich isbut road to serfdom iwas his bestselling book. Cspan babased on what you said very early, would they have all of ayn rands books up there on the shelf . Guest not necessarily. Somesii thinkmany people who arewho are very devoted to rands works have been verythey have responded very well to this book because many people like rand, areare drawn to rand because of her celebration of the creative spirit, and particularly in her fiction and her way of showing how restrictions on market enterprise are just as restrictive of the creative spirit as restrictions on artistic enterprise. That said, rands thought is aherherthe other side of her thought whetheherher rationalistic philosophy can take different forms visavis these ideas. Adepending on your personality, you may take it and say, oh, well, i love this openended notion, but it might might also be restrictive. Cspan is there any candidate that you know running for president of the United States as we speak who you would find would be mostthe most interested in a book like this, based on what you know . Guest the most interested, ii dont know. I think that therethere are very few people in elected office who would thoroughly be comfortable with the dynamic vision because our politics is this very technocratic politics. People get elected by saying, you know, i will si will make the future look like this. and i actually quote in the book someone from capitol hill saying a year after the republicans came in office that what had gone wrong was that, theyre good conservatives, so they want to shrink the size of government, but they think of that as getting as close to the abyss as possible without falling off, and thats very contrary to the dynamic vision, which isyou know, that thing you call the abyss, thats called life. Thats called society. Thats called the rest of us outside of washington. So its very hard for somebody to survive in that environment. I think there are elements of dynamist thought inin any number of candidates, and there are people around peoplei mean, ii am very hard on al gore in this book because i think he is a combination, in many respects, of the technocratic planning impulse with his sort of reactionary stasis notion, but there are certainly people who have worked for al gore and who have been around al gore who are very dynamist. Ii quote a guy in there who was a speechwriter for him, dan pink, who writes about the free agent economy now, who is very much thoroughly in keeping with these. And similarly, you know, on the republican side, people have said to me, well, john kasich wouldhe would like these ideas, and sometimes i hear him and i think, yeah, he would. And then other times i hear him and im not so sure. Or george w. Bush would like these ideas or steve forbes would would like these ideas. Cspan a couple quick personal questions. By the way, how long have you and your husband been married . Guest for 12 years. Cspan have you haddo you have children . Guest no. Cspan and are you ever going to get into politics . Guest no. I thinki think we can pretty safely say that. Cspan what did you think of this process of writing your first book . Guest it was the most difficult thing ive done and the most fun thing ive done, actually. Cspan are you gonna do another one . Guest undoubtedly. Im not sure what itll be on. I have several ideas. Cspan here is the book. Its called the future and its enemies, by virginia postrel, who is also the editor of reason magazine. Thank you very much. Guest thank you. Did you expect it to be a team of rivals with competitive agendas . Guest i expected to be vigorous debate as i say in the book from both my understanding of history and look at how president s operate at the end of the day these decisions are for a president to make i want to take my experiences and