Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Bourgeois Equality

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Bourgeois Equality 20160522

Look, protecting the middleclass society used to be the democrats holy mission. Once upon a time they wouldve looked at the situation we are in today, rolled up their sleeves and tackle the situation with a certain amount of relish. Shared prosperity was once the parties highest aim area defending the middleclass world that we live in was a sacred path for them as they never tired of reminded us back in the days of truman and albie jay. To this day, democrats are the ones that pledged to raise the minimum wage in the taxes of the rich. When it comes to tackling the defining challenge of our time many of our modern Democratic Leaders faltered. They acknowledge that inequality is rampant and it is an awful thing but they can never seem to find the conviction or the imagination to do whats necessary to reverse it. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] i get everyones attention. I am keith, im the director of the program here at george university. Today we are thrilled we have Deirdre Mccloskey and and conversation with my good colleague tom, deirdre has come out with a third volume of her trilogy the bourgeois inequality, well talk about that in the introduction but i want to personally congratulate deirdre on this collection. I think it is the most ambitious work and economics done done during my career at least in economics and an amazing achievements for what you have done and generating the conversation in economics. Hopefully hopefully well have a great conversation today. Will turn it over. Thank you. When Claire Morgan asked me if i would lead, conduct a conversation with deidre immediately jumped at the opportunity, not only is it an honor, but there are a few books that one reads in a scholarly life that is as fundamentally changed or deeply change the way that you look at the world. These books have done that for me. So, i am honored to be here with deidra. Deirdre mccloskey has taught at the university of illinois, chicago from 2000 chicago from 20002015, she is now emeritus. I would list all of the departments in which she talked with our take us the entire hour. One of them was economics. Before that deidra taught at the university of iowa and also at the university of chicago. She is a longtime is been a longtime friend of the Economics Department at george mason and of the mcinnis center. I believe you have a scholarly articles of number about 400, i dont dare put a number on the number of other popular posts and magazine articles that you have written. I i also believe this is your 17th authored book, as pete noticed, the final book in a remarkable trilogy which will consume the bulk of our time today, but before we get to the actual conversation let me quote from deirdres website which i encourage you to visit. Its a great website and has access to most of deirdres work, on her website she protests that she is not a conservative economist. So here is what she is, if you do not mind me putting your words in your mouth. In deirdres words she words she is quote, a literary, quantitative a postmodern, ms. From boston who is once a man, not conservative. Im. Im christian, by a christian libertarian. Indeed she is. Were i i to list all of deirdres achievements, i would again, this would be a monologue and and not a conversation with deidra. So lets get to it. Congratulations on the publication of the third volume. I remember being in the market is sponsored transcript seminar and that is when i read it. That i have not yet gotten through the entire will i remember the transcript. Telus, what are and where did this trilogy come from. Well the germ was the notion of the virtues by social class. Aristocracy, the peasantry, that, that i thought g, the bourgeois virtues, but all they are our virtues as understood in the west and the east, the south and the north, of Human Society in a commercial context. So courage it will would be entrepreneurship, love would be solidarity or personal reiteration in a business for example. There is not anything specifically bourgeois about the virtues. I simply taking the virtue which was the longtime way in which people talked about being good and saying well, you can be good and be an economy too, that comes as news to a lot of intellectuals. That is why i wrote the books is to bring the good news to our wonderful friends on the left and some on the right who, regarding Market Society as as an abomination, as corrupted. Let me be presumptuous in summaries wrote quickly what i think to be the main thing of these three volumes. He knows what i do better than what i do so im looking forward to this. This is a very short summary of complex ideas. Economists, so this is with adam smith they have asked what causes material progress, it is really no question that there has been a major increase in the rate of material progress since the time of adam smith. A factor of 30s me you called the great enrichment, you rightly called that one of the greatest events in human history, probably right after the invention of agriculture. Yes. You found, or find every other explanation that economists have offered for the great enrichment to be wanting. Your explanation of the great enrichment is that ideas change, particularly and specifically ideas change in such way that practitioners of a bourgeois virtues, people people who would act as a bourgeois, merchants, innovators, they, they for the first time in history started about 200250 years ago in the northern part of europe became dignified in the eyes of most people, not everyone, that unleashed this creative energy. So thats the key. It is not so much that psychology changed, thats what was claimed to hundred years ago. I do not not think that its very plausible. It is not that people got better, its that the surrounding society changed its evaluation of what they did. So, the word innovation for example or that scare word, and till the 19th century, to innovate was to change religious beliefs or to disturb the social hierarchy, what we did not want any of that innovation. So. So thats the main thing that change. In fact in the last month or so ive decided that this last volume should have been entitled, i should add one more word it has long title anyway. Its called bourgeois equality. How i shouldve said it and this will shock you. How liberal ideas, not capital institutions, enrich the world. Because it is is the basic literal bowl idea in the older sense that people are equal before the law and equal in social standing. It is that a quality that inspired people. They get more and more evidence of this every day, im reading an extremely good biography of the great Norwegian National hero frenchman after who im name. All throughout your scene these poor swedes in the regions inventing stuff in the 19th century. You know the stove for example which made arctic exploration so much easier, because theyre being allowed to. Really has a nice review. A wonderful review. Last sunday in the london times. But he pushes back a little bit. He wonders, and i wonder how you would respond to this question, yes, how do you know the causal direction, it is true you documents the change in rhetoric occurred in 250 years ago, bourgeois came to be more respected and spoken with greater dignity, they wonder it was that the cause or was it was an effective some other changes. Is clear that there is a backwash, that is the idea of equality. , not what i what i call french equality which was the idea that equality of income which is what we usually think of, but scottish equality, namely equality of human dignity. Socially before the law those of course were raising prestige prestige by the success of this formula. You see it in scotland itself or example in england, and holland to begin with. It all begins in holland than the United States, australia and so forth. And then scandinavian and elsewhere. Then you see the great success. Of course then that increases the proceeds of market tested betterment as they call it. But i would say to ridley, you you have to look at the timing. And the comparisons. But lets lets look at the timing. The increase in status of economic behavior and bourgeois activity and innovation happens before any substantial economic success. Well before. So in 1700, well actually it starts in holland, so holland, so 100 years before in 1600 you have the showering of dutch commercial society. Then about 100 years later the english adopted dutch king, a dutch central bank, a dutch exchange, unfortunately Dutch National debt. Im surprised they did not adopt the dutch language they became so very dutch by 1700. That was way was way before there is any substantial payout. So the real payoff comes not so much in the classic Industrial Revolution of the 18th century but as you said the great enrichment of the 19th and 20th century when innovation and betterment just goes completely wacko. As ridley himself says, instead of having sex and maybe the eye grandbabies idea is you get all of this amazing innovation of mechanical inventions what we can see all around us but also certain organizational ones. Do you have any idea why the ideas change. Yes, that is what i devote much of this third volume two. As you have said, i shown my satisfaction in the second volume that the standard economic arguments, cole is a big favorite,. Which met really favors. He does and hes wrong. Hes very nice and smart, but even very smart people are sometimes wrong. And Foreign Trade or the slave trade, or exploitation of the poor, or Something Like that. All of those dont work, they dont have enough room from an economic point of view. If you think it carefully of economics involved theres just not big enough to explain a factor of 30 which is what were trying to explain. Then thirdly speaking they dont make any sense because often well, the chinese were exploiting coal for 3000 years without an Industrial Revolution. But, in the third volume i say okay, why did this liberal idea become so powerful . All of of a sudden and it was all of a sudden. And im sorry i dont have a snappy answer. Heres a simple answer it is it was accidents. It was accidents of the politics and sociology of europe starting in 1517, that famous year up to 1789, that created hierarchy began to break down. Now hierarchy is what agricultural civilization, not hunter gatherers, but agriculturists, they had these horrible hierarchies. You know too bad for you, you have to give me ransom in taxes. That started to break down. And ordinary people, a clear example of this date in the process were english quakers. In which even women were allowed to speak at the meeting. In which there is no hierarchy at all. There is no priest. There is no person even appointed by the congregation. And i say it was not for much of the doctrine of salvation again, but Church Governance that made people bold. And i get some evidence for this. Heres why say, was the point of calling it accidental. I do not want people to believe that there is something deeply european about all of this. It couldve happened in china, with sufficient time it couldve happened in my in guatemala. It couldve happened and in lots of places, maybe a little later, wyatt did not happen in china earlier is a puzzle that it is a great enrichment. But its not so european, its obvious for the successes of liver policies, in china and india right now, i think without those two recent examples it would have been much harder to make this argument. We have been before we started filming about a book that you and i a most good economists love, adam smith, the wealth of nations. If course famously at least among people who know his work to not say very many favorable things about Business People. No he didnt. At least on the surface that was the intention. But for one thing he did not say much about entrepreneurship. Spoken of smith and the stupidity as the free forces that we need to be concerned with. Smith is about efficiency and hes about innovation in the real cause of my Economic Growth and stupidity thats about the government small so, smith lets say this way, smith didnt know what his radically deleterious ideas about equality before the law and socially quality was going to do. He did not quite realize that he was creating a document that would sustain this move of egalitarianism. So smith is a great economist, but no one saw it coming. Let me try this on. When smith does talk about business its almost always in the Business People live in the state abusing privileges. Yes, thats what he said. People thinks its napoleon to coin the phrase. But its adam smith who spoke of it as a nation of shopkeepers. He said this commercial system as he called it and what we still have, namely capitalism and protection alyssum and licensing of occupations and all the horrible features that have hung over from the middle ages. He said, this is a system not appropriate to a nation of shopkeepers but appropriate to a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. That is exactly right and it is still true. One of the remarkable things about, you do it in the last two volumes you give this example of how much better, materially. Its astonishing. Why is it that most people do not recognize or most people somehow think it is not a big deal as you believe it to be . Or that its doomed . Most people like a phenomenon. Were talking about it at lunch. Why do why do people like to say the sky is falling . They always do. Bob gordon a friend of mine has just written a book, book, the sky is falling, this guys family. Well, bob may be, i dont think so it hasnt fallen yet, i dont see pieces of it. So people feel their are sophisticated if they are pessimists. Its very easy to forget to or romanticize ones youth. My mother is 93 and is very intelligent and sharp person in every way. Im icing to her, while well mom, she saying things are terrible and i say but they were worst when you were a kid. She was born in 1922. She said oh no, were happy then. Well, her mother would in the Great Depression would put pieces of cardboard in her shoes so the holes wouldnt leak. I mean you yourself has done Excellent Service and showing how much cheaper so many things are, a refrigerator, a color tv, psychotropic drugs, all kinds of things. And will not those kind of drugs but like lithium and so forth which the richest people in the world didnt have to fight their Mental Illness in 1950. But i do not know how to get people out of this dismal mood. In addition, nor nor do i. Im pessimistic about that. [laughter] in addition to the internal pessimism today, not today but in the past several years we have seen a return of inequality , were taken about a book in 2014, which he reviewed brilliantly and then her favorable review of the Financial Times from your book, diane coyle. She talked about a two. She wonders if you are a youre a bit too complacent about the future because of the current concern about inequality. Well without for a while that we had taken socialism out to the crossroads by the light to the full moon and pounded a wooden stake through its heart and it was dead. But, socialism said to be virtue of 19thcentury, one of the great intellectual inventions of the 19th century along with nationalism and if you like those to try national socialism. But it is a popular. I think it the size of government has just kept going out. We keep thinking that we will help the poor instead of letting the poor help themselves. So i think people like equality and socialism and so on because they can grow up in families and families are socialists enterprises. Mansas social planner and so forth. In fact, think of it from an ethical point of view, equality is not the problem. There is a line in one of shakespeares sonnets that i cannot quote it im afraid, where he points this out he says that, i would like to have this mans handsome smithson this mans intelligence in this mans strength. It is a hopeless project for us to be equal but it is not a hopeless project for us to be rich, to enrich the poor should be our purpose. That, i think is an honorable and liberal, and sensible and achievable purpose. Its a purpose for Public Policy if you want to talk about it that way, not equality. This change in rhetoric and the way that people view those that pursue this, if i was sufficient to to bring about this enormous, wonderful great enrichment, i presume it is the case that the rhetoric moves back in the other direction that we can be doing. Yes. I think you see this in the sluggishness of the economy of europe. The treaty of the world was wonderful documented broke down trade barriers among european nations, all to the good. That of russells they thought, well you know and here again is this kind of deal whats the phrase, we have to make the playing field. Level the playing field. Yes level the playing field, look cadburys milk chocolate is not really chocolate said the bureaucrats in brussels, it doesnt have enough cocoa in it. So we are going to declare cadburys chocolate not chocolate. You can imagine how this played in britain. Or when you have to take nonpastures i tell you and she is and outlaw because after all the other stuff is pasteurized, are good daesh cheese is pasteurized, whats wrong with the italians. It just means, it is the quality idea that the purpose of a modern society is to make everyone equal and it is a crazy program. And a pointless one if we achieve what john argued was the raising of the bottom. That is what we should be doing. The improvements of the worst off. Thats not to be done by whining about how many yachts william, the air to the loreal fortune has. All they just hate and i agree that shes a jerk. With the inequality and social standing so we respect each other. That is what makes for the entrepreneurial society. Id want to show that pessimism that i fight against but but the rhetoric of the last couple years. That has been terrible the political rhetoric may want is as bad or worse my lifetime is a possible we see the beginning of a return of the age of the hierarchy . Are you still optimistic . You cannot change gender without being an optimist. [laughter] but of us a demonstration effect is very powerful because with the liberalization growing at 1 per year going to 5 or 7 from 1991 because they saw the chinese doing it will use to call the red chinese saw hongkong doing it. Me so roughly i think the world will become more liberal in my sense over the next 50 years and i expect that to result in a gigantic worldwide in richmond for example, subse

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