Matt Yglesias: belief

Transcript context

…So doesn’t that mean, actually, there aren’t increasing returns to scale? Oh, I see. I do think on some level, some of the deep structures of economic growth do have to do with our basic ability to exploit natural resources. I say in the book, it’s like we’re not all farmers here who need to worry about running out of wheat fields. But when you look at the big long-term trends — Industrial Revolution takeoff and slowdown in postwar years — that has to have something to do with the technology of energy exploitation on a pretty fundamental level. That is an area where I don’t think you’ve seen, necessarily, those same clear returns to scale. We’ve had some big advances in fracking, some promising advances in solar power, some other kinds of things like that. But the fundamentals of how we produce and use energy have driven a lot in the macro picture, and I think the news from the latter quarter, whatever it is, of the 20th century — on that front was just very disappointing, notwithstanding other things that might power growth forward. Would your recommendations be much more potent if paired with a better energy policy? I don’t here mean a greener policy, though that’s justified in its own right. But just command over much more energy, something like nuclear power that, say, Peter Thiel has proposed. Would that make the increasing returns from a billion Americans much stronger?…

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