Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…And if you buy Hayek's explanation that the reason he rose to the top is just because the most atrocious people win in autocracies, what is that missing? I think what Hayek said is subtler than that. And I wouldn't say it's Hayek's explanation; I would say Hayek pinpointed one factor. There are quite a few autocracies in the world today where the worst people have not risen to the top. The UAE would be, I think, the most obvious example. I've been there. As far as I can tell, they're doing a great job running the country. There are things they do that are nasty and unpleasant. I would be delighted if they could evolve into a democracy, but the worst people are not running the UAE, this I'm quite sure of. So, it's a tendency. There are other forces, but culture really matters. Hayek is writing about a very specific place and time. It really surprised me. There are these family-based Gulf monarchies with very large, clannish interest groups of thousands of people that have proven more stable and more meritocratic than I ever would have dreamed, say in 1980. I know I don't understand it, but I just see it in the data. It's not just UAE; there are a bunch of countries over there that have outperformed my expectations, and they all have this broadly common system, actually. And they're not ruled by their worst people. That makes you wonder, when you go around the world—because I know you go outside the Bay Area and the East Coast as well—and you talk about progress studies related ideas, what's the biggest difference in how they're received versus the audience here?…

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