Ben Sasse: prediction

Transcript context

…You have a PhD in history from Yale University, American history, and I’m sure you’re familiar with Frederick Jackson Turner. This idea of a Turner thesis: America being shaped by its interaction with the frontier. In the physical sense, that frontier would appear to be closed; we’re not in the middle of the space race anymore. What today do you see as the American frontier that’s still shaping our dynamism? Here I could tap this guy named Tyler Cowen who has an interesting new book about a lot of our sapped dynamism at the present moment. I think the absence of a clearly defined set of strategic choices around the next frontier is one of the things that leads to a real worry about declining ambition for lots of folks. So I’m mixed on the Turner thesis but the idea of a frontier . . . David Brooks has done some really interesting stuff, talking about the way Americans have historically looked to the future in ways that there’s clearly a transition happening right now, where there’s enough worry that we have a lot of looking to the past. The way we talk about deindustrialization is a pretty good example. The vast majority of transformation of industrial economy jobs is because of technology, and we’re pretending it’s because of trade because it’s easier to come up with a way to try to demonize somebody. I worry that there’s not enough looking to the future, and we need a lot more shared vision about what those big opportunities of things we can build together are. I think it’s 2004 when you finished Yale and your dissertation. There’s a copy of it here, which I enjoyed reading.…

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