Tyler Cowen: prediction

Transcript context

…And you’ve written several books about culture, but among them Creative Destruction, and this is, at least as I read it, on the face of it, a defense of the effects of globalization on culture, right? And that while globalization might cause a decrease in across-country cultural diversity, we shouldn’t look at it at some God’s eye view, objective level. We should instead be focused on the individual, the subjective, and the operative level of diversity. Here in San Francisco, we see the fruits of all that globalization, right? But you also say in the book, you do acknowledge the point, that there might be a decrease in total global cultural diversity as a consequence of globalization. If you think culture is so important and so underinvested in and so understudied, is it not too hasty to advocate for a force that’s producing a net reduction in the quantity of it in the world? Well, there are multiple readings of a number of my books. And I would say, when you’re looking at the globalization of culture, we’ve engaged in a rather significant cashing-in exercise. Say you have a very small community, Inuit in Canada or artists in Bali, they’re very small in number. And until they’re in some way reached by larger, richer cultures they can trade with, in many instances, they’re not that creative. They have some tradition, but it’s not fully mobilized. Then there’s this intense cultural interchange, and it’s very fruitful. There’s a flowering, there’s more commercial sale. Top creators come to be, more genres are defined. There’s more diversity within the Balinese world or within Inuit sculpture, say. But eventually, that peters out as the smaller communities are absorbed by larger ones. Over the last century, we’ve done an unprecedented amount of this cashing in, by having smaller cultures obliterated. Now, one way to look at it is, well, they’re there and if you never touch them, that’s a shame. Is there an optimal rate of cashing in? I’m not sure that’s a variable you can control. But I think along some critical dimensions, our next century will be less creative than the last because we’ve cashed in on such a large number of small groups. And I worry about this with Ireland, too, a place you’re familiar with. The Irish literary tradition flowers, arguably, in the first half of the 20th century. Right.…

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