Good afternoon, good evening. Welcome. Happy fat tuesday, thank you all for spending you tuesday with us. Im joe could ross has been an important member of the institute, since our founding, hes been or media fellow and helped coordinate some of our events, some of our more contentious events. Youve may have seen ross was involved in. Were super pleased ross is joining today on i think the day of the release of his latest book. All of you know ross as one of the moe commenter men taters of the american culture, on the New York Times opinion page, written more than a few books and seem to all at least 0 couple of. The have the title of how we became something. Might want to steer clear of that or explain that. Anyway, today the format will be that i will engage ross in a conversation about the book, i actually had the pleasure of reading it and its an interesting book. In my judgment not the sort of typical conservative harangue on the way things are but takes a nice tact to explore what is going on in our culture. Once he and i have exhausted each other, we will then open up the conversation to the rest of you so there will be people here with microphones so if you have a question, meese raise your hand and theyll approach you and dont be alarmed, and then make your question and ross will engage you. Of course, as i always do, i implore you to make phrase a question to people. The more time ross has to respond, the better for everybody, so dont make a speech if you can avoid that if possible. Just a nice pointed question. Okay . Again, thank you all for coming. [applause] so lets begin. The book i called the deck cant society with decadence. What is decadence in the book . So, this is working. First, thank you all so much for coming. Joe, thank you for doing this. Its really a pleasure to be back at cua in a situation where im not moderating between the two embodiments of warring factions of modern american conservatism. As delightful also that was. Promise well have some sort of wrestlemania style faceoff and give people their moneys worth. So, decadence. The book the conceit around decadence is lifted from a definition offered about 20 years ago of the term by the great culture critic other book called from dawn till decadence and he basically made the argument we should think of decadence not in terms of sort of just catastrophic moral corruption, not in terms luxury goods and weekends at las vegas, the perks and the faculty lounge here at cua, that outrageous stuff, but as a kind of clinical term that describes a civilization that has achieved a certain level of wealth, development and proficiency and finds itself in effect stuck, without clear lines of advance is his formal way of putting it, stuck is the oped distillation. I say that decadence properly understood refers to stagnation, drift, and repetition, at a high level of civilizational development, and the argument then is that this term very reasonably applies to america, the west, the developed world encompassing the pacific rim, since the late 1960s, yearn 1970s, and for the sake of convenience but also i think for the sake of what it evoked start if the book with the moon landing as this kind of particular peak of american and western achievement that was expected at the time to be not a peak but a beginning, the opening of in kennedy residents phrase a new forgot attorney and our capacities were more and space bigger and colder and less remunerative once there wasnt a soviet threat and the pace age petered out and that frontier was closed and at that point we really entered into what im describing as decadence. United four indicators almost that support the claim that were in the period of decadence. You just named a few of them. Repetition, stagnation, economic. Economic and technological stagnation. Political sclerosis is one and sterility. Want to identify one of those and exemplify them. The easiest one to start with is political sclerosis. The one that i think everyone in the western world and especially the u. S. Recognizes and agrees upon, that over the last few generations, its become a lot harder to effectively govern western countries and to effective hi reform or transform or build new or unbilled government unbuild government proms in a age it was able to elect a president and have a premier of reform from roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan has given way to an edge when president s are luckive they can pass one major piece of legislation across their presidency, if they succeed as obama did with obama care they may play a political price that lasts the duration of their presidency and overall politics dominated by various stalemates by polarized parties competing with each other without bill little clear majorities, with the United States congressional an did indication and difference between theres a version of this, interest different version in europe where you have the institution of the European Union which advanced to a point writ is in effect too big to fail, hat problems but no one except the wild and crazy english are willing to actually take the step of leaving, even the sort of fearsome populist and nationalists of eastern undont actually plan to leave the eu and meanwhile its inefficient, creates common currency creates economic problems that are obvious to everyone but can neither move forward or back. What was the norm prior to 1970s and you have the growth rates achieved basically through borrowing and in 1950s, 4 and a half growth what were then complained about massive deficits but werent deficits at all. In effect i think those deficits are more sustainable than conservatives think. Sustainable in the fact that its a rich society paying itself to maintain a form of progress that itsin own fundamental dont really justify. Talk aal little bit also then in stagnation about the technological stagnation, you refer in the back to back to the future, forr instance. Give us a walkthrough that. So this is my, this is an argument that im basically stealing from a group of economists and noneconomists who over the last 10 years have made the case that in spite of the iphone in your pocket and all the resources of the uniter, Technological Progress since the apollo era has been disappointing. This is a argument that peter thiel famously made with line about how we expected flying cars, you know, dolorians winging their way into the future and instead we got 140 characters on twitter which is now 180 characters so, in fact, theres no great stagnation. [laughter] and robert gordon, an economist at g the university of chicago, north western, excuse me, who has written a sweeping thousand page book the rise and falls of American Growth and the point they all make is that its not the Technological Progress has seized, obviously, the internet we are he has demonstrated breakthroughs and communication information outransmission and simulation. Its Technological Progress has become mono dimensional, all tech and nothing else and areas like transportation, energy, agriculture even the as a result environment dont see the progress that we took for oogranted between 1840s and 1970s, lets say. Further when Tech Companies sort of leave the world of tech and try to revolutionize realworld industries, you are those are the companies that often end up being the supposed unicorns that turn out to be frauds or failures, so, you know, to bring big take to bear in worth solving the problem on how to conduct y easy blood tests and doesnt work. You end up with a multibillion Dollar Company evaporating or we were trying to revolutionize office space, a similar story, so that i think thats the core of that. The piece of the stagnation is that, again, progress hasnt seized but progress along a very particular exception that then feeds back into the larger pattern because it leads people to spend more and more time in Virtual Realities and simulations of reality and retreat from, you know, both kinds of Economic Activity but tota bring us to another force, retreat from familyor formation, romance, sex, childbearing. You have a wonderful comparison of Margaret Atwood and pd james books both of which involve the sterile landscape which i thought was really, really brilliant and fun. Lets start to think and youre giving kind of you provide indicators, metrics by which im sorry. Sorry. Thank you, michael. You provide indicators by which to identify as us descend ant society and signs of sure. Lets give examples. One of the key indicators to suggest that we are not in fact, otving through a period of immense technological transformation is the fact that productivity growth, right, economic measurement that tries to get at how technology is affecting the way people work has been stagnant and kind of pathetic for a long period of time in early 21st century. That was not true however in late 1990s, the initial flush of the revolution, surge of productivity growth in world from lets says 1991 to 2001. I was alive then and teenager and it really was the brief window, the argument i make today i would be making a different argument another example. Feature of demography in the western world since 1960s and 1970s. People having too few children to replenish the population and this is true everywhere. For a long time america was something as an exception and so down to early 2000 american conservatives likee to say because america has b retained a more dynamic economy than western europe isha not, you kn, socialalist and it has retaineda certain amount of optimism about the future and intense religious practice, thats why birthrate still above replacement and oriented towards the future in a way that france, sweden or increasingly japan are not. So in that sense the United States was not decadent but over the last 10 or 15 years our birthrate seems to be distinguishable. So those those are two examples of how its not attempts to create and things that have happened and if they happened again it would count as at least a shift, a change, but the other point i would make is im not trying to examine each of the forces as sort of forces that are just existing on their own. Every society has some decadence, slow Economic Growth feedsco political unhappiness ad distrust in government which makes it harder to pass, you know, effective policy programs which in turn slows Economic Growth further and then drives down birthrates because people dont have any dont feel like they have the economic capacity to have kids which in turn makes society older and risk averse which makes it harder to make police call changes. Anyway, you follow me. Meres a sort of convergence of the forces that makes our moment more decadent, not fully decadent, whatever that would mean, more than periods in the past that had one or more forces at work. Great, talk about the we, how we became the victims of success in this. Who is the we here . It is something i wandered as i proceeded through book. At times it could be the United States. At times it seems like its the west or Something Like that and times seems global in terms of your description, but i wondered whether aside from expanding it out to include more and more, you know, people who might be this we who are the victims of success that now is leading to decadents might be exclusive the finer grains you go and certain communities that say we are age of prosperity. Think of African Americans in cathe United States, an africanamerican president recently elected. More representation and so on. How inclusive is the we here i guess is the point and what extent might thinking about that refine your analysis at all . I guess i will work backwards. Take the case study of African Americans and i think and this is a highly debatable proposition but i think that there was more progress more African Americans in american lifeca in the period running frm 1940 to the moon landing or 1940 to 1980, a period like that. Then there has been in the period since. In that since African Americans have participated as im describing it. You know, this has varied a little and unemployment rates are low and obviously the election of first black american was dramatic breakthrough. If you look at gaps and racial wealth, household wealth, you know, theoo blackwhite income gap, test score gaps, all of the things that reformers who are interested in racial equality are interested in changing, you get a lot more change in a lot the cases in the Civil Rights Era and really the whole zone of the great migration through the king assassination into the 1970s, so in that sense i think at least in some socioeconomic way theres a kind of participation and decadence there. Theres always obviously been increase in africanamerican representation in pop culture and in cinema and i also think that too is overstated and theres a little bit of forgetting of the very recent past. If you go back to 1980s, the biggest stars in america at the moment were African Americans. Now one of them was bill cosby which is notre something that st of caused for celebration at the moment but bill cosby, eddy murphy, and, you know, the rise of the africanamerican pop culture figure really dates to 60s, 70s and 80s and we are getting a further cycle now but its not a complete novelty, so thats the last point. In the larger sense. I think one of the questions the book raises and doesnt answer is this a western developed world phenomena or global phenomena and i think im i feel confident in arguing that there is some kind of deceleration and stagnation that japan, south korea, the United States and western europe share in common. The harder question is what is happening with the countries that we still call developing, what is happening with the rising powers of the world, china, india and so on and you could make a case that the decadence of the west will enable to nondecadent world. When we talk about a Pacific Century or asian century, thats sort of implicit. At the same time there are ways in which if you look at, for instance, if you look at demographics. If you look at demographics of china, its in the same low fertility trap that the world is an and you can say that china is converging with the west. As our government decays a bit, theres a convergence and oligarchy, right, as our billionaires compete to be president and its not the same thing obviously as beijing but convergence in low fertility oligarchy at higher rates than in the past that isnt the case of china leapfrogging past us and obviously whats happening with the coronavirus raises a further host of questions that we can talk about in the apocalyptic portion of the evening. [laughter] great, i did have a question about that but we can save that. Another thing that i enjoyed about your book was that it wasnt an end of book, its a book that doesnt say we are in this decadent society and its only a matter of time before its o over, describe a sustainable decadence. Thats the bumper sticker. Shirts made with sustainable decadence made on it. Describe what would make a sustainable decadence and what wouldnt make it a sustainable decadence . One of the claim that books make and i people hear the word decadent and think that youre doomed and, you know, the absolute cliche version of this is, you know, the writing on the wall, the babilonian palace. Jesus in rome while the barbarians were sweeping in. In fact, i make the argument and i think its true that decadence is normal condition for empires and civilizations to fall into ied once they do, it can lead to collapse if they have off r a rival that can exploit the decadence and it was however you want to chart roman decadence, 4020 years of the moment to actual fall of rome, however you want to chart decadence of chinese empire, these are long historical periods where prosperous and powerful societies in hindsight look decadent without being tipped over into crisis and collapse. Theres a sense at some level people want history to follow a kind of morality play art even if they dont want to actually be caught up in the sacking of rome themselves. I quote wh at the start of the book saying Something Like im going mangle i dont have to mangle the quote, the book is right here. That is so convenient. It not that it finally went to smash but managed to last for 4 centuries without creativity, warmth or hope, so thats the dark version. Lets qualify it by saying four centuries that rome lasted under decadence especially from the point of view from the face that founded the university, dynamic change, development of very much nondecadent religious faith that do not in the end save the roman empireof from ruin but did preserve and Carry Forward roman elements into the future, down to the present day and was sort of there when the empire finally went smash as a powerful force in its own right and i think you can imagine versions of that and renewal decadence that reinvigorate and when our civilization falls creates something new to carry on the best off our own legacy and thats the optimistic case, right, that in fact, decadence has its virtues, alternatives that are a lot worse than the lives that we have now and we should regard life under decadence not necessarily as a horrible burden but as something thats not ideal but potentially a gift because it still leaves room for creativity, renewal and pass back to dynamism and flourishing. I even less encountered exceptionalism. [laughter] if you havent read it, i apologize for spoiling. No spoilers. Possible ways of envisions, i guess, or imagining replenishment. So my basic view is that if youre thinking about the vulnerability of a decadent civilization. The vulnerabilities of europe are in sort of day starker than ours and in part is because europe is more advanced on some of my sort of statistical decadenc indicators, lower birthrates for longer periods of time. They had relatively stagnant growth compared to us for a longer period of time, but they are more vulnerable in the sense that europe sort of sits in the middle of the world where as, you know, the United States has always had its splendid isol