Tyler Cowen: recommendation

Transcript context

…I have no memory of this. [laughter] Number 5 was the Knicks. So clearly you have no memory of this. [laughter] But over time how has your view of Washington, DC, changed?There’s a 2007 radio show you did with your mother. It’s actually my favorite of all your outputs. I love this podcast; I recommend it to everyone. But there you said, and also she did as well, because you were always serial outsiders. Now do you feel that in any way Washington, DC, with its culture that is in some ways fairly bland, passively pushy, nervously ambitious, and just too full of politics — has this now become a city where it’s a good place to be a serial outsider, or simply not? Wow. That’s really a good question. What was particular about . . . ? So, I was in DC from January of 1985 until July of 1993. And the city obviously has gotten a lot wealthier and safer and wider, and the area a lot more diverse, since I was there. I came here in Reagan years when an upheaval was going on politically. I suppose that’s happening again, in some sense. The thing that’s peculiar about DC is — particularly if you’re in your twenties — is the turnover. There are very few places . . . and you actually make this point in Complacent Class, about how Americans are a lot less mobile than they used to be. Strikingly less mobile, and this has huge consequences for society. I actually think you’re absolutely right. It’s a really, really important point. DC, if you’re in your twenties, is this grand exception. This massive turnover, everyone — not everyone, but when I think of the cohort I was with when I was 23 in DC — none of them are in DC anymore. All gone, with a few exceptions. And I feel there is that kind of churning. And that churning is really, really useful in terms of giving people opportunities to look at what’s going on from an outsider’s perspective because you’re not committing to the city. There’s the permanent Washington, and in your twenties, you’re not part of permanent Washington. You’re skipping through, you’re ringing the permanent city. And that was what made my time here so special. If I had stayed, I feel like it would, in my memory, have diminished a little bit.…

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