To give to sell the news. And i think this is because we are genetically predispose today pay more attention to bad things. Bad is stronger than good because bad things could be a threat to survival. Our hunters, forefathers who were more worried, who didnt relax, who looked anxiously toward the horizon whether there might be predators, they probably survived more often than others. They passed on genes to us and stress hormones and attention to all the bad things that could go on in the world. Add to this another factor, the fact that we are by nature nostalgic. We tend to think that the good old days were in another era, previous era in our childhood or even before this or even before that. These are some scenes from a brilliant french movie in 1959 about a man who goes back in time to a better era, the goldold days, where everything was wonderful. But then hes there and he thinks its pretty good but then he meets an old man who tells him, oh, you should have been there when i was young. Life was much better and he travels back in time to that era and its okay, a bit boring, but old man tells him, oh, no, you should have been in that era when i grew up, that was the goodold days and he travels back in that time as well. He goes to prove that nostalgia is always there, virtually every culture has believe that had men and women are not up to the standards of their parents and forebarriers. We always think and everybody has always thought that the gold old were days passed. If this wasnt the gold era when was it at its most harmonios. Baby boom generation says its the 1950s and one hypothesis that the present outburst of nostalgia is as a result of babyboomer generation retiring. Old age meant that you were poor. We had still jim crowe and racial segregation in the United States, threat of immediate nuclear, but we know that we solved those problems. We know that we got through those bad olddays, so now we can think back to them as the nice era when we grew up, when things were exciting because we were young and the future was full of promise and we felt secured because were burden with all the difficult decisions. They paid the bill and were worried about all the things that could happen to their kids. As we become parents, this is much more difficult nowadays, it used to be much simpler, this is what herman thought as well. We often confuse a certain shift, change in ourselves taking on new responsibilities, perhaps some physical decay and we confuse that with the world and think that this goes on everywhere. Its not us, its the world. So if we have that genetic programming where we pay more attention to everything bad that happens or could happen in the future, and we are also nostalgic so we think the goodold days are behind us and you add another factor, a new factor, global media, global 24 hours a day media that looks at everything around the world. Then we have more bad things to take into consideration because even though homicide rates decline theres always a serial murder somewhere. Theres always a war going on somewhere and then those bad things will always top the news cycle even though the risk of being killed in the Natural Disaster has declined by almost 99 over the last one hundred years. Theres always people dying in a Natural Disaster and then that will top the news cycle everywhere and we get the impression that this is the everyday occurrence for most people around the world. Add to that social media, twitter, facebook and instagram and all those places where anyone could, can add particular perspective on the world and what do you share with people yourself on those platforms . Well, most it happens that we share some good news but most often its something horrific, dramatic, something shocking. Human suffer asking not new but cell phone cameras are new and then it means that we can see anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world instantaneously and we know whether people will survive or not and that triggers our fear or fight or flight hormones and makes us scared about the world. What do i share on social media . Well, often its some weirdo that ive never heard of in a city whose name i cannot even pronounce who did something stupid and then i think, i have to tell people about this stupid thing. Everybody does the same thing. We wake up in the morning and hear about all of those weird oas, all those bizarre people doing bad things everywhere and we think that most people are like that. We are not. Unfortunately business accelerating with the rise of social media as well. Accelerating pace, we Pay Attention to all those bad things and we get the impression that the world is falling apart, even though all the objective data proves otherwise. And thats dangerous, its dangerous politically. As donald trump made clear ambitions to run for president of the United States, this country is a hell hole and we are going down fast and morning in america, it aint anymore. And that changes perspectives on the world. If you look at trumps voters compare today 50 years, life in the u. S. Is worst. Yes, 75 of the voters say but so does Bernie Sanders voters because its the same thing among the leftist populist. They also think the country is a hell hole probably inequality, rising sea levels, global warming, disasters, and so on. And Hillary Clinton says the same thing only in full sentences. [laughter] she tells us that, yes, you are angry, you should be angry because everything is awful and only i can make things right. And this is the problem, fear is the health of the state. Political forces can always stifle progress and they can stop creativity and block the technology, they can block trade if they like. You know, the old joke, if the opposite of pro is con, whats the opposite of progress . Yeah . Its not new. It has always happened. In every election you threaten people that if the other guy wins the water taps will run dry and the sun will not set tomorrow, will not rise tomorrow. But this is new. The sense that everything is already awful in the u. S. And in europe and in other places. The world is dangerous. It is dangerous and if its dangers and if the world is falling apart, you need a strong man or a strong woman or a muscular government that sets things right. If a martian tried from the planet mars tried to understand what goes on on planet earth by listening to a speech by donald trump or Bernie Sanders or jeremy or mar irrcion ne in france, he would think that everything is on fire on planet earth. Poverty is rising everywhere and everything is dangerous and if everything is dairncion we have to protect what little we have and we need that strong person, that Big Government that helps us. If people left to their own devices, created a lot of progress, in that case we can have more freedom and open societies and economy because we will see more progress in the future. If we think that people left to their own devices and free to do things and trade and move and if we think that they create chaos, chaos everywhere, then we need those strong men who will take care of all of us. In social psychology, theres a discussion about this about authoritarian reflex, people like jonathan, karen have pointed out that authoritarianism which is a loaded term, we can say some kind of interest in blocking peoples freedom, blocking globalization, controlling people rather than setting them free. That kind of authoritarianism is not a stable permity trait. Its more like a predisposition that a lot of people have and it can be triggered and it triggers when people get the sense that their way of life is threatened when they have the sense that their society, that people like them or their country is being threatened by external forces or chaos, that author tar ape dynamic sets in. They become more authoritarian in other fears that are not related to the very thing that went wrong in that fake story which means that we all sort of end up in a protective mode. If you wake up and listen to the breaking news, whats your twitter feed and find out there are weirdos out there and to destroy your way of life. You become more authoritarian and you begin to vote for the strong man or for the Big Government. So i wrote this book to sum out not out of complacency, not telling people that, look, everything is in order, we do ent have we dont have to bother. I wrote this book because im worried about the progress, we cannot take it for granted. It didnt happen automatically by itself. It happened because people were given more freedom to explore, to experiment and to exchange the results of that. If we have Political Forces in power that blocks those freedoms, those individual liberties, those Economic Freedoms, then we will see less progress in the future, so we have something to fear and that is fear itself and the risk that fear will become a selffulfilling prophecy and selfgenerating because we think only problems out there, only stagnation, then we will block reforms. New technologies, free trade reforms that should take place to create more progress and then we will see more stagnation and more fearful in the future and difficult to pursue reforms we need to make progress. It could happen. We can block progress like that. It has happened before. Its a boring way to stand in the way of peoples progress. To conclude in the words another one of my heros, great thinker, captain james kirk of the enterprise, only a fool stands in the way of human progress. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. [laughter] i was hoping to have on sale and for reasons that i show, i have to apologize for the rest of my life, its not out there. It makes wonderful, wonderful presents, both of them for the upcoming holidays. Ron bailey is an awardwinning science correspondent for reason magazine and reason. Com where he writes column and he was one of the original optimists out there and has a tremendous pedigree in terms of promoting ideas that johan is talking about or was talking about today. Bailey is the author of the end of doom, environmental renewal of 21st century and also liberation biology, moral and scientific case for the biotech revolution. From 1987 to 1990 bailey was a staff writer for Forbes Magazine covering economic scientific and business topics. Prior to joining reason in 1997, he produced several Weekly NationalPublic Television series including think tank and technopolitics. Hes also an editor of a number of books including global warming. Earth reports 2000, visiting true state of the economy and also echo scan, false profits of apocalypse. The American Society of bioethics and humanity, with that, help me welcome ron bailey. Progress in its enemies. Im going to be taking a very unaccost unaccustomed role here. Whatever nostalgia is, i suffer from the exact opposite of whatever that is. Fortunately johans excellent book which you should all buy just as soon as you buy mine, completely makes the strong and very powerfully does so. What im going to do is go through some of the challenges at which john also discussed and go into greater detail of what enemies we have to face as the 21st century unfold. Which way do i push . What am i doing wrong . All right. [laughter] technical difficulties. Progress is being made. Dont worry, just one second. Give us a moment. If you want, i can do that too. There we go. No. Should be working. I find that discriminatory, johans worked. There we go. Again, i was delighted to hear that johan was quoting one of my favorite Science Fiction authors but as you can see hes making a very good point that poverty is a normal condition of humanity. In fact, johan said that would permit here and there and work of extremely small minority frequency condemned and almost always opposed by allright thinking people. Whenever minorities kept from creating or sometimes happened driven out of society the people then slipped into poverty. This is known as bad luck. Venezuela is suffering some bad luck right at the moment as an example. But to highlight of what this is, how this progress might b i would like to refer to a wonderful book by North Western economist joel, the gifts of athena, historical origins of knowledge and he pointed out that history shows that Technological Progress in a society is by and large temporary and vulnerable process with many powerful enemies with invested interest in the status quo or change continuousy threatening it. The net result that changes in technology, the mainspring of economic progress and most progress period, i would argue, have been relative to what we now know human creativity capable of. In other words, people in the roman empire and before were as smart as we were and why they could not use creativity. It is own anal and specially it is our own anal and specially the rapid technological change that have been historical. What happens . What occurs is Technological Progress involves losers and losers tends to be concentrated and find it easy to organize. Sooner or later the progress of technology will grind to a halt because the forces that used to support innovation becomes vested interest. In a purely fashion, Technological Progress creates a very force that is eventually destroy it. I hope thats not true but it is something we should be concerned about is that in fact, what you find is vested interest over time and will be discussing a bit more of that, get control of the government. Another trend, though, that johan describes brilliantly in the book is trend in education around the world, and how thats liberating both boys and girls, men and women across the world. Unfortunately there are some societies where this trend is being blocked and in some cases reversed and that is a terrible, terrible problem. There are two problems with that, one is that it has an effect on the choices that women make with regard to the number of children they desire to have and the second one is it also dramatically reduces the amount of growth and economic wellbeing that people can earn. Study after study shows that if women are educated to at least a secondary level of egg, complete secondary education, fertility is reduced by a third to 50 , that is going town from basically 5 or 6 children in countries where women are not educated to 2 or 3 children and part of the trespassedden that we see and i think its a beneficial trend, World Population is likely to top out around 9 billion people or so and begin falling during this century largely again because women will have learned, i hope, will be able to become educated and make choices that they want about their fertility. In addition, educated women participate more in the wage economy. You see in the world today that the World Economy would be would be an additional 12 billion richer in 2025 than it is now. Increase of over 11 . If men and women had the same level of education over that period of time, there would be 28 billion more of gdp by 2025, increase of 28 . We are foregoing by keeping women uneducated in the countries that do so a huge benefit for themselves and for us all. Another problem that was discussed that joha in is discussing, the notion that every country should be selfsufficient. A that unfortunately leading president ial candidates, i will not be voting for either of them, just for the record, are in favor of restricting free trade in exchange of ideas an immigration and so forth and this is a terrible problem. If we can only produce what we have here in this country, we will be denying ourselves the benefits of what other people in other countries can produce more cheaply for us and the benefits of innovation and change, this is example of what happened and as Great Depression was coming on, senator smith and representative holey managed to get tariffs in the United States raised quite substantially and the result was, is that in over a twoyear period 1930 and 1932 u. S. Trade with europe both imports and exports fell by twothirds. This led to huge job losses, within four years after that, 24 other countries had raised Tariff Barriers and world trade had fallen by almost two third. Basically activity and this is the policy that some of our leading politicians whose name start with t and c are recommending to us. This is a terrible problem and we see that Foreign Direct Investment in the United States is down 40 and International Trade is growing at its slowest rate ever. Have we achieved or fallen to the globalization . I just hope no. Then theres the problem with cronyism. You know, its a problem with International Trade largely but this is an internal problem basically and just a quote from lloyd who as the ceo of goaled man sax in 2015 said, more intense regulatory and Technology Requirements have raised barriers than any other time in modern history. Sadly, he wasnt complaining about that. He was explaining that this was great for his company and for other Companies Like it because it made it possible to competitors would not be able to challenge him in his company and extra profits could be earned from that. The problem we see this all of the time. The center just issued a study back in june where they were calculating what the regulatory drag on the United States would be and i highly recommend looking at the study but basically our economy is 4 trillion poorer than it would otherwise be because of regulations. Most of the regulations do serve as barriers to innovation and to competition. Even more starling study was done by john cedar of North Carolina state. If you could imagine giving the rate of 1939, what size would the u. S. Economy be now . Three times larger than it is now. I dont know. It seems thats a particular problem we need to be worried about. Again, something that johan was highlighting. This is, well, this is president putin and president xi jingping of china. Im calling this the return of the