Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…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? Well, the audience here is so different. You're the outlier place of America. And then where I normally am, outside of Washington, D.C., that's the other outlier place. And in a way, we're opposite outliers. I think that's healthy for me, both where I live and that I come here a lot and that I travel a lot. But you all are so out there in what you believe. I'm not sure where to start. You come pretty close to thinking in terms of infinities, on the creative side and the destructive side. And no one in Washington thinks in terms of infinities; they think at the margin. Overall, I think they're much wiser than the people here. But I also know if everyone, or even more people, thought like the D.C. people, our world would end. We wouldn't have growth. They're terrible. People in the EU are super wise. You have a meal with some sort of French person who works in Brussels—it's very impressive. They're cultured, they have wonderful taste, they understand all these different countries, they know something about Chinese porcelain. And if you lived in a world ruled by them, the growth rate would be negative 1%. So there's some way in which all these things have to balance. I think the US has done a marvelous job at that, and we need to preserve that. What I see happening—the UK used to do a great job at it. UK, somehow the balance is out of whack, and you have too many non-growth-oriented people in the cultural mix. The way you describe this French person you're having dinner with...…

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