Tyler Cowen: commitment

Transcript context

…OK. I think you intend that question to be rhetorical, meaning as an objection to the whole enterprise. But I hope, on reflection, it’s actually a good, substantive question that does have a pretty easy answer, which is our elected representatives, subject to the democratic and constitutional safeguards that they face. So if you have, let’s say, a libertarian president who wants no — . [laughter] That wasn’t meant to be funny. If you have a libertarian president who, let’s say, is generally against bans, is OK with nudging but doesn’t want a whole lot of that, then that is what “we the people” want. And, you know, there we go. If we have a president who, let’s say, is pretty bullish on bans in accordance with Tyler’s points, maybe, about — well, I guess he wasn’t there, but some people are, not me, not Tyler — so, more upbeat about bans, then there are constitutional and legal restrictions on that. And the reason I’m saying that that’s the inevitable answer, our elected representatives — there’s no other option. So, if you intend your question — forgive me if I’m wrong — as I think I detected, as a kind of objection to the whole enterprise, I think what you’re saying is, you want something like strong constitutional safeguards against any of this stuff. And that’s a reasonable view, but that would have to come from “we the people” also. Over the summer, we will have podcast-only episodes of Conversations with Tyler. We’ll have some fantastic guests, to be announced. The next live, in-person event is Steven Pinker, October 24th, Arlington campus. But most of all, big round of applause for Cass. [applause] Thank you.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.