The rhetoric of economics, and why liberalism works host Deirdre Mccloskey gun in your moscome in your most re, why liberalism works, you write that the west side of chicago should be a heigh high first commercial at diggity. Guest because then people would have jobs other than dope sellers and can because once it was before the highly segregated history of chicago extended to the west side there were lots of factories and jobs, and now because of regulations of various, its not. Its just a free zone. There are some by the sheer act of will kept th take to the strn good condition. Host use a regulations. Give an example. Guest business in chicago in most places in the united hates its worse than brazil or egypt. It takes months. Its hard to do. Youve got to get permits and a business license to braid hair, a famous case. To earn a living breathing hair you need a state license. Why should people have to jump rough these hoops to start a business . In the 50s and africanamerican and urban communities, southside of chicago there were lots of successful businesses and then increasing regulation, some of it very wellmeaning, people wanting to help poor people think got in chicago we dont have rent control and that is one thing that really hurts poor people, but we had enough the west side of chicago is kind of sad and could be easily fixed a. If you made it an enterprise zone where you dont have to be heavily taxed or regulated, ladnt the Trump Administration create enterprise zones with legislation . Guest i dont think so, but maybe they did. I try not to look to clos too ct the Trump Administration. Because i dont approve mr. Trump at all and i think on the one hand hes got some people deregulating which is done then the federal government has 1 million separate regulations. 1 million. Thats kind of crazy and then there is this madness about threign trade named peter. Im ashamed i have a phd in economics and im going to organize a group of us to turn in protest. Host in 2016 in your book bourgeois equality that they do good even by doing while. Guest when he does well. Its plausiblyd calculated and f you take the 400 million he got in one way or another fromr his father and invested it and could randomly chosen stock portfolio, his networks would be higher because he did Trump University and casino and they all failed. This is something bloomberg pointed out in the campaign in 2016. Bloomberg was poor when he started it became rich by doing well and doing good. Thats the way it is if you are in business and anything else you are choosing well you may profit. The only way to profit a prophef people like yourself they dont like trump steaks or they find that a University Degree is fraudulent. Host isnt it about taking risk . Guest if you make a mistake then you get hit with it. Trump makes mistakes all the time in business. By the miracle of the college as a tv performer though he is good. Like you, he should have stayed. Host how do you define your economic philosophy . Philosophy . Guest i am a liberal in the root sense of the word. It comes from the latin word that means a threeperson, and this is very much in the words of contrasted with the slaves. Everyone has the right to say no, thats all, the right to say no to. If you are a woman you dont have to agree to be raped, so to speak and if you are an employ employee, whereas im reading a wonderful book by which is a novel about the soviet union people couldnt say no. They were being tossed around by someone, not voluntarily. We did what our bosses say we do that we could always walk and that is fundamental to a free the only way to talk of true liberalism is that it is the theory of an addle adult societn economy. Even the other social democracy. It doesnt mean we shouldnt help people. I call myself a christian liberal. Host back to why liberalism works. I understand the progressive point of view and its attraction as one peruses the pages of the nation or Noam Chomskys latest it feels like one is doing good. Guest and it wasnt that great. I debated last summer i was at a festival in england. I think people who feel they want to do something for the poor should do something for the poor instead of just feeling good about reading the New York Times and thinking yes i am a good person. I care about p the poor. For example, they should help the homeless i have in a small way by having them. I had some of me for four and a half years in my house. But the thing is to let the poor people free to travel. You told me before you started that you have 2 acres. That is because in your town you cant build a house. People that are reading the nation magazine. Host i am out of the country, no rules. We all reject every day in our lives. Its not pushing people around. Look, there are some people that are much, much better at the administration then i am and in a free labor market of course a person can leave if they dont like your management techniques or management style but in any case there was a bus driver this morning at the shuttle into ohare and i said to him your life would be better if you treated your customers with respect. Ive been on buses in chicago where the bus driver ise wonderful and he welcomes people onto his bus and hes proud to get there on time. We ought to live the way our mom told us to behave. Host are useful teaching at the university of chicago where the university of illinois chicago . Guest ive been in the state of retirement i highly recommend it to you all. I retired in order toe. Work moe and finished my trilogy on the economic and social history of the last few centuries and finished this book that came out in the fall on why liberalism works and i have a new book coming out from chicago which is kind of a pop version called leave me alone and i will make you rich. Host what is the definition of bruzual debate co bourgeois . Guest it is a french word that means the leaders of the town and manufacturers. It was a common term for that before the middleclass became common before the basic idea was there were priests, the ability and then everyone else. And its only in the last couple of centuries we started to make variousions among the people. My point is to argue against my friends on both the left and the right who are contemptuous of people like my grandfather, he wasnt contemptuous, he was an Electrical Contractor and that is an honorable thingng to do. With the wiring of airports and being paid for it, what is odd about it theres a sort of march in this tale of the soviet union because anyone that makes money [inaudible] what exactly is the problem he here. Host to go to the virtues however, the christian gospel attack while surprisingly harshly. It isnt surprising therefore and invented the idea of socialists. Guest in fact, socialism is a secularized version of christianity in many ways. Its very similar. The fervor of ideology among the soviet communists in china when they were sent to the prison camp they thought it was okay because i feel the party knows if the priest told the time bad and its a sort of protestant element to that as well, and it is a the most successful and how it spreads the world with antiwhile thinking. The theologian is part of the new testament and there is a socialist elements to it. Early christianity was this kind of the quality of consumption and work that is very sensible but it doesnt make sense in the rirger society. It never has. Host do you identify as a longtime agnostic and now you are a christian liberal. Liberal small though. Would have been . Guest i changed gender and your audience might want to know in 1995. I was once donald. In the years after that, i felt there was something more i needed to look into that i went to the catholics and for the opposite, the unitarian. Then i found episcopalians in some because we couldnt go on calling it and go after the American Revolution and it was just it suited me very well. In fact, right from the beginning and even henry the eighth, the church of england viewed itself as a middle road between roman catholicism and puritan. Host what is it about it that suits you, is that the customs . Guest lets talk aboutd, that, but we are called in the United States the chosen because the c episcopalian because it isnt the frozen chosen it is more in episcopalian is an you dont need to believe everythi everything. But you do theem ceremonies. Host my particular congregation i had one in iowa city and once a year. Its a very flexible framework because its the journey you dont have too believe in the virgin birth to the age practicing christian. Its the practice matters. That is true of economic performance. Its not to be an Electrical Contractor, you just do your job and you might learn from it after a while. As i get older, i keep trying to unify my thinking to see what crossfertilization. I have a paper im working on right now about theological free while, which as you know is a deep puzzling concept of the free markets and i think they are connected. They are not opposed as so many modern american might think. You dont have to be a socialist to be a christian. Host Deirdre Mccloskey, lets go back to your bourgeois virtues. I agree with my favorite marxist economist, nancy fulbright, that education should be financed from the center. Maternity care and early child care should be expanded and cestate financed and taxes shoud be steeped and eliminated and military expenditures should be cut to a tiny fraction of the present of old an gold and a mot minimum income should be given to every american that the tax laws should encourage both men and women combined paid work with familyor community work. The followers of adam smith are iegalitarian. Is there a bug in there somewhere . Guest nancy was an old friend, a professor at the university of massachusetts and should get the nobel prize but wont. She was annoyed that i called her a marxist. She is on the left and im not. I was once and was jumped by a socialist. I dreamt i saw joe last night but as i said, im a christian liberal which means i acknowledge. We cant just take a country club view. I agree, i may not quite agree with the scale she wants to do them on but we should help people, pregnant women and so forth without within open hand would help and its consistent with what we call capitalism. We buy a cup of coffee the sheer act of buying a cup of coffee is advantageous but furthermore you notice if you make a habit of going to the coffee shop eventually become friends. Commerce creates friendship. Taken together, they are not hurting each other or forcing each other to do things. They are allowed to say no and out of that comes with the 18th century cold sweet commerce. Its necessary for most activities of the state. Youve got to pay your taxes and if you dont, im going to put you in jail. That kind of threat from the irs and having a long legal dispute as so many of us do. I dont like coercion. I never have. Host you say that you dont like the word capitalist or the philosophy. Host the word capitalist was used and modified to mean not just an investor say around 18 hundreds to this whole group of people and then became ae commercial society. Its a terrible word academically and intellectually scientifically its convinced economists, conservative left or whatever and marxist and everyone else at capital accumulation is the spring of our commercial economy. Its not. Its necessary for the investment you need sunlight and so on, but the motive comes from the spring and in modern life for old wife, too that its been enormously expanded in importance is innovation. Speed. Capital was motivational and did things. If i was speaking brazil a couple days ago to bankers and i said to them, maybe what they dont like, what you do is very good, you choose among the careers but you are not the career. You say okay, this is a good idea, ill make a loan to that, its appropriate, important and necessary, but its not the idea. Thats why people into liberalism first framed poor men then slowly women, immigrants. Catholics,lo gay people, whatev, remarkable transgender people. All that works to encourage bring courage to people to be creative. It had ancr amazing effect, in real terms, the realbi mobilityo buy stuff has increased by 3000 . Not 100 , 200 , 3000 and thats from the release of human creativity and free societies. Doctor, were having a very general sense of debate about capitalism versus socialism in thisen country. We are. This is not the first time wey. Had that. To put it mildly its been going on since the middle of the 19th century. The kid to say letski try socialism and bernie, we love you bernie, i dont hate bernie, who could hate him, hes a very charming person, he was a freshman at the university of chicago i was a freshman at Howard College in 1960, we do not know each other at the time, but the time we had more or less the same opinion about capitalism, i prefer to call in over his him, much more accurate word but anyway, we both wanted to overthrow capitalism. He was more systematic than i was, i read half off the manifesto and i reckon that was enough, not trite under quite true i read a good deal. And lenin who was a hero at the time when i was 16, he is great. We had the same opinion then and i learned stuff and he did not. He had the same opinion he had in 1960, people say hes consistent. Consistently wrong. We have try socialism, as i said socialism, appropriately and efficiently works in a family. It works among small groups of friends and should. I bought a pizza to share with five of my friends and i say i paid for the pizza, i will eat it all. That is not what friends do. But in a big society, you know, 330 million people, its making everything into a family, does not work. That doess not mean you have to go to charity and want to help each other and it does not mean your tooth and claw, and capitalism with blood running fromom its mouth, thats not how capitalist are which i established my first book, and its not what made thehe economy rich which is what i established in the second volume. And its not the future impact of ournd society. Which i argued in the third book. Once a month we like to invite an author onto book tv and talk to him or her about his or her body of work, this month itswe economic scholar and retired professor Deirdre Mccloskey. Here is just a sample of the 23, 24 books that she has written beginning with the rhetoric of economics in 1998, crossing the transgender memoir in 1999. How to be human, the bourgeois virtues, bourgeois dignity, and bourgeois equality came out 26, 2010, and 2016. The third edition came out last omyear as did her most recent, why liberalism works and we quoted a little bit from that but were going to put the phone lines out on the screens if youd like to participate in the conversation, 202 7488200, those of you on the east and central time zones 202 7488201 and for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can also send a text message if you cannot get through in the ten phone lines, include your first name and city, 202 7488003. That is the number two text into. We will also scroll through the social media site because you can make a comment on facebook or twitter or by email as well. And we will get to those very quickly, first of all what is this people paper im holding appear. Im an engineer at heart, i like to know magnitudes which i think is the appropriate attitude for economics. When the issue is quantitative, i have a a rough idea or get a rough idea of what the magnitude e in you very strangely asked me how many words id written. So i made an estimate and it turned out to be 3 million. You are doing about tenth to the ninth power. I was doing that because i cannot multiply very well. This is a quote from you in 2016 in the chronicle of higher education, i amgh a stutter as o such stutters are often good writers. Gorgeous, mom, stutters avoid words that they think were they know will block on and are good at finding another specialty. A terribly important example of this in our current policy is joe biden. I only learned about a month ago about the olympic which revealed that hes a lot like me a lifetime stutter. And i think people ought to know this because its somewhat a strange way of talking. In many of his early political campaigns he would misstate things, he would say things in a funny way and thats because he is staggering. He is avoiding the expression and doing another. In the advantage im claiming there is that people who stutter get very good at thinking of parallel words, not just elegant variation as its called but it is seen what the differences between words. And seeing if you can use one word. I was speaking towo a friend in brazil a couple of days ago and i was trying to teacher the difference in english between say and tell. And i said go to sleep, i am telling you to go to sleep and we discovered the word tell has an authority to it. She said real lightly, its the mommy word. I am telling you go to bed now, i cannot stand it anymore. You dont say, i say go to bed. Its that kind of thinking that goes on in the mind of a stutter all the time. As i get older, im in a profession warm supposed to talk all the time, as a teacher. In the month after i decided to change gender, for about two months my stutter vanished. I did not even notice it, they did not know what i was going to do this, i told my family and very few others and they said i have not heard you stutter for two months, what is going on. And i said its because i realized 2 00 a. M. November 2, 1995 on a bridge in cedar rapids, what happened . It was not quite in cedar rapids, it was a couple months earlier i had what i call an epiphany. I was driving home from chicago to iowa city where i lived in a hit me. That i could change gender and should. Its kinda strange, most of your decisions in life, at four in the morning you might have a doubt. I had a tenure at the famous economic in 1980 and i walked away from her. And i went to iowa, go hawks by the way. And i have doubts about that. I think in the hole it worked out well for me. What purpose and you choose, you might doubt, i have not had a moment of doubt in the most foldable times of day, when you wake up at four in the morning, i am deirdre, im queer and im here, get used to it. On page 128 of crossing, donald never left his the way some men do, deirdre did not care when it lasted in australia she said goodbye to it she did not care anytime after it. I have a very dear friend, another academic who said, deirdre, i would hide anywhere in the world to avoid the operation, something that you are welcoming. So its a striking difference. I was not penniman child, feminine boy, i was the captain of my football team, american football, not a very good team but anyway i was the captain and i was a macho professor in seminars, i learned that at the university of chicago a little bit earlier how to be tough and seminars. Not to hurt people, i did not want to hurt people but i wanted to get to the truth