Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…But these are all actions for the individuals. I mean, us as a society, are there any policies we can enact or that we ought to follow? Well, our main policies toward the arts, more and more, have to do with copyright, patent, and intellectual property. I think, for the most part, those are too strict. We could improve them, and we’d get more creativity and more borrowing. But I don’t think, at the margin, those changes, good though they may be, will have a major impact on this issue. Just the core: How do ordinary people spend most of their time? That’s the big driver here. Other than having drastic changes in policy, I think most of what we have to do are these small steps at the individual level toward the much better world. And more randomization. Think more carefully about physical space. When I was growing up, I would drive my car into a town, maybe Philadelphia, with my friend, Dan Klein. First thing we would do is get to a telephone booth. Remember those? And like evil people, we’d rip out the pages for used bookstores and then drive around and try to find them. And we would find them by basically yelling out the window and asking people where some street might be. [laughs]…

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