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Many Possible Worlds: An Interdisciplinary History of the World Economy Since 1800

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Cameron Gordon provides a crosscutting interdisciplinary account of how the disintegrated, global subsistence economy circa 1800 has transformed into a global complex delivering unprecedented levels of material production and consumption.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 16, 2024

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This video is a detailed discussion on the evolution of economic thought, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, while critiquing the narrow lens through which economic changes have often been perceived. It highlights how traditional economic analysis has focused primarily on production, distribution, and consumption, often overlooking the sociopolitical and psychological dimensions that also drive economic change. The speaker argues for an interdisciplinary approach that includes sociology, history, and political science to fully grasp the complexities and effects of economic transformations.

Key points include:

1. **Historical Context**: The speaker emphasizes how standard economic frameworks have failed to account for the profound social and political changes accompanying economic developments since the 18th century.

2. **Limitations of Traditional Economics**: Economics has often been viewed too narrowly, concentrating on production technologies and market efficiencies while neglecting deeper social implications.

3. **Interdisciplinarity**: The speaker advocates for a more integrated approach to studying economics that includes perspectives from various disciplines to address limitations and the impact on individuals and society.

4. **Neoliberalism vs. Classical Liberalism**: A distinction is made between neoliberalism, which the speaker argues is a pro-business ideology that often disregards working-class interests, and classical liberalism, which offered a framework for understanding market dynamics alongside the role of government.

5. **Meritocracy Critique**: This video critiques the idea of meritocracy as an illusory concept that does not genuinely allow for equal opportunity, leading to stability and unrest.

6. **Future Considerations**: The discussion concludes with a call to consider new limits and challenges facing modern economies, including resource constraints, the role of technology, and the importance of meaning and psychology in social cohesion.

Overall, the speaker urges a reevaluation of economic systems to encompass broader societal issues, advocating for ongoing interdisciplinary research to understand and address the evolving landscape of economic thought and practice.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The standard way

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that you look at economic change since 1800.

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So we're talking about really, or

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1750, whatever you want to talk about it.

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You know, the industrial revolution

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and everything that's followed from that.

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The standard way of, of looking at

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that is looking at it from a very narrow economic frame.

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And what I mean by that is that, you know,

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when you think about an economy, you've got production then

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that out of that flows, distribution, consumption, and,

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and then, you know, that tends to be what you focus on.

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And you focused a lot with the, in, with the,

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the industrial revolution.

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There was a lot of, a dramatic increase in productivity

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and ara technological, advance

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and, a, dramatic increase in sophistication

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and technical difficulty.

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And, so I know there's another question about the rise

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of economics as a field, so this kind of relates to that.

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But, so what's tended to happen is,

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or what has happened, I shouldn't say tenders to happened,

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is that, the economic history has been looked at in

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terms of, all right, well, what's happened?

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We had, how did production get so productive?

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Um, what was the technology behind that?

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What were the causes and effects in terms of technology

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and in terms of other things that

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were affecting the technology?

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Um, and then how did that then in turn increase consumer,

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you know, consumption, distribution?

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Um, and so people look at that

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and there's a very standard way of looking at these things.

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It's a very sophisticated and sub literature.

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So I, I'm not saying that there's a problem with it,

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but, what, what I was dissatisfied with,

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because I, I, I read a lot about economic history.

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I study it. Um, I'm also taught in a number of disciplines,

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and I was a history major as an undergraduate as well.

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And so thought about being an historian.

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And I've, I've worked in government and,

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and worked in various, you know,

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I have other taught disciplines.

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So I have, I have kind of a, a varied background

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besides economics and, and sort of

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what was dissatisfying about the narrow approach is that,

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basically economics is not just about,

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or the, the changes in the economy aren't just about

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changes in production technology.

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They're not just about changes in what people consume

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or how much they have available to consume,

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or mass marketing kinds of mechanisms, not just about that.

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Uh, the causes

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and effects have been both, at a profound, you know,

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involvement, profound social changes,

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and they've had profound social, political,

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sociological psychological impacts as well.

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So, I mean, there's a lot I could say about this,

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but just to give an example, for example,

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even in the case of English industrialization, you know,

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like what caused that, you know, so economists will look at

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that and they'll sort of say, well, you know,

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technological advance

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and what caused the technological advance?

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There were changes in incentives.

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You know, people had, you know, you know,

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and sometimes there's cultural things that happen there,

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you know, English, it was an English tradition of, you know,

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practical innovation.

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And that led to this invention that didn't happen

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as much in France, which has rationalist

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theoretical kind of innovation.

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So that's, you know, so economists look at all these

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factors, but they're still looking at it from the point

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of view of the, of production and changes in production.

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Whereas, you know, if you look at

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what happened even in England was that, well, they were,

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you know, and I'm not, I'm not, we, I didn't point this out,

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others have noted this, but you,

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with dramatic changes leading up

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to the industrial revolution in politics, in, sort

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of the rise of parliamentary systems,

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but which were driven by the rise of commercial interests,

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which displaced older interests.

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And then there were, you know,

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things like the enclosure acts, that sort

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of drove people out of, off the lad, you know,

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privatized, commons.

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Um, and, you know, and sort of created the conditions

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and in some ways directly created markets, you know,

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and the conditions that set up, you know, sort

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of the establishment of factories,

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the putting out system, and then factories.

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And so, you know, I mean, again, I,

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Carl Palani has famously written about this,

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and he's not the only one.

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Um, so you had this thing where, well, we'll sort of, well,

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how much that's, a lot of that isn't really

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that economic in a sense.

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Um, and, so it's kind of like, well,

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you really need kind of other disciplines like sociology,

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for example, to really study that.

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And to add to that and to really get into that.

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And then on the effects side, I mean, I'm not, I won't go on

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and on about this, but, you know,

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once you had industrialization, then you had urbanization,

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you had rural depopulation, you had, you know,

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dramatic changes in, in social structure

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and increases in, in movement.

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You had densification of activities,

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things like ref factories became very large

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and concentrated, and that created sort of new communities

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that, you know, really radically changed,

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social structures and changed the way,

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people experience daily life.

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Um, again, economists have written about this.

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I, I don't wanna say that, this hasn't been a, a part

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of economic history or economic theory.

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There's been a lot of sophisticated writing about it,

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but the tendency then is to still go back

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to really the basic notion that, well,

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let's look at it from, from a production focus,

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and then also this benchmark of the market

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and market exchange as being sort of an optimal, right?

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So that's another thing in the background too.

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So what's the optimal, basically exchange organized on

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markets, that's an optimal state, it maximizes productivity,

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and then let's look at all these variety of factors that led

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to that, as opposed to saying, well, it's too narrow,

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you know, that's already defining the economy in a very

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narrow way and defining cause

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and effect in a very narrow way.

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So anyway, look, I, I could go on and on about this,

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but, but that's sort of really what motivated me

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to take an interdisciplinary approach

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besides my own personal interests and personal donations.

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But to say, okay, well, let's, you know, not just to sort

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of have an economics focus

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with some other disciplines pulled in, which you see a lot,

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or not take an economics focus,

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which I call sometimes the Christmas tree kind of model,

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where you have sort of, what's a nice economic Christmas

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tree, and let's put some ball about the slave trade

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or about, you know, like that really decorates things.

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But fundamentally, I'm talking about an economic process

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of economic optimization.

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You know, I said, okay, let's actually have coequal,

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approaches of different disciplines as opposed

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to just having economics

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and the focus, even though the story is

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about economic change.

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So I, I am focusing specifically on economic change, not,

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not the primary focus being, for example, social change.

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Even though I, I look at that

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or political change, those things all come out.

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But again, there is a, there is a focus there,

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but really the idea is to have sort of, you know, co-equal,

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cooperative complementary approach

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to interdisciplinary transdisciplinary,

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if you wanna call it, sort of approaches.

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So that's what motivated me,

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and that's what I tried to do, in this study.

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You know, when you start getting into the area

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of European colonialism, extensive European colonialism,

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which by which I really mean really moving out into regions,

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well beyond, sort of traditional, sort of spheres

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of influences, spheres of interest.

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I mean, everyone, colonialism is very old, of course.

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It goes back to the ancient world.

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Many countries have practiced it.

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China have practiced it, for example,

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that had its own empire.

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But generally, you know, that was generally sort of,

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usually in this particular area of the world now,

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when you have sort of European colonialism,

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you have this sort of international sort of focus in areas

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that are, you know, just the age of discovery,

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the misnamed age of discovery, since we were,

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since these things, the people

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who lived there didn't need to be discovered.

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But from a European perspective,

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we were discovering, you know, new regions.

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Um, but, so basically this is

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what started in the 14 hundreds and 15 hundreds,

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and economics as a discipline begins to be born.

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Then when these kind of trading companies were set up,

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by the Europeans,

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and, the, there was, people were sort of,

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the traditional idea was, well, let's just take over a lot

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of, territory, trade, you know,

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get a monopoly in, in precious metals and things like that.

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And then build big crate surpluses

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and build big, reserves of,

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you know, gold and silver.

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Um, and what was happening even at that time is

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that you already have this sort of globalized,

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but state centered, sort of trading system.

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But you had people within the trading companies sort

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of looking at their own accounts

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and beginning to, this is the sort of the birth

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of sort of modern economics.

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And beginning to say, well, wait a second, actually,

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we don't always maximize our profits, our trading profits,

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by accumulating trade surpluses.

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Sometimes running deficits is okay, you know,

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and accumulation of, of gold

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and silver is not necessarily an ideal thing either.

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So you began to get already, out of these kind

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of realities, and this is how I would argue,

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it was kind of a theory.

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People began to look at, I fixed ideas

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and then how things are really working,

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but always thinking, excuse me,

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about national strategic advantage.

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So you begin to get a formalization,

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people looking at evidence.

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This is also an, an era of the enlightenment

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and the scientific revolution.

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So this fits in with that.

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But the classical economics in particular,

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these are just sort of the anthes, of course, you know,

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everyone knows about Adam Smith.

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Um, and, you know, he's very much a creature

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of the Scottish Enlightenment.

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And of course, Scotland at

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that time was actually in some ways, in many ways,

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more prosperous and advanced than, the rest of, of,

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you know, of the, the other, you know, parts of the,

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of the British, kingdom.

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Um, I'm part Scottish, so I guess partly I, I say that out

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of, national pride.

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Um, and so, but,

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but M Smith is basically,

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he's seeing all these changes going on,

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but from a very particular perspective, sort

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of the perspective of sort of an incumbent really, you know,

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sort of, he's not a business person,

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but he is sort of, sort of seeing,

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developments through their eyes.

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Um, and Smith is a very complicated figure, you know,

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he is been very, very, sort of simplified, right?

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People think of him as this last,

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I fair, that's how he's presented.

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That's not what he is. Of course, if you really read him,

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he's actually quite, subtle and,

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and not, not generally saying, well, business is good.

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He's often very skeptical,

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very scathing about business practices.

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But, you know, he has this,

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but he's the first kind of systematizer of, of modern

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economics as it was at that time, looking at, well,

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looking at the factory, the rise of the putting out system,

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the rise of factories, you know, these sort of,

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the division of labor, right?

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One of his famous, phrases where he says, well,

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how are people getting more productive?

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Not just concentrating production,

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but they're splitting up jobs that artisans used

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to do from beginning to end.

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And now he's saying, what's, you know,

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like the famous pin factory example, how do you make a pin?

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You know, you don't have just one person making one

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pin and another than another.

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You just have some people making the head another,

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making the shaft another, putting it together,

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and that increases productivity.

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So he is analyzing these things.

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Um, and of course, his famous phrase is the invisible hand,

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which has been misinterpreted to say

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that the market is always right.

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Uh, but he was saying that, well, actually,

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we don't need government direction

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to have a productive economy.

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And that's what he was seeing,

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even though he was ignoring a lot

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of the government direction that was already there, such

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as the putting, such

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as enclosure movements, for example.

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You know, such as, you know,

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even even the imperial trading companies, which by the way,

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Trump, Trump, excuse me, pardon me, that, Smith was,

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was, anti empire.

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You know, I, I'm just reading

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something about Trump, that's why he gave it there.

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Uh, he was, he was, kind of anti, he,

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he actually was against Empire

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because he thought it was too costly.

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So in that sense, he was very consistent with his principles

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of just let's, well just sort of, you know, kind of,

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you don't need centralized

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institutions to have productivity.

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So, but basically, you know, he

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and other classical economists would follow, follow him.

11:36.665 --> 11:38.385
Were really just like the Merkin, the people

11:38.385 --> 11:39.505
who looking at mercantilism

11:39.505 --> 11:41.985
before were just trying to, looking at dramatic changes

11:42.525 --> 11:47.105
in the way the economy was running, very contrary to sort

11:47.105 --> 11:49.145
of state centered, kinds of ideas

11:49.215 --> 11:50.745
that you needed the state to be in there,

11:50.925 --> 11:54.165
or, you know, you had a sort of a landed nobility

11:54.635 --> 11:55.805
that ran things, you know,

11:55.805 --> 11:57.245
and then a peasantry, you know, he was, he was sort

11:57.245 --> 11:58.805
of very much kind of going against that,

11:58.805 --> 12:00.605
and he was really trying to sort of rationalize it,

12:00.605 --> 12:01.485
you know, try to, I mean, I

12:01.645 --> 12:02.485
rational, I mean that in two ways.

12:02.585 --> 12:04.365
One, in that he was trying to build a system of thought

12:04.475 --> 12:06.525
that made sense of it, but he also was an

12:06.525 --> 12:07.605
apologist for it, in effect.

12:07.805 --> 12:09.005
I don't missay that in a bad way,

12:09.005 --> 12:10.005
but he was sort of saying, well,

12:10.005 --> 12:11.085
yeah, this is kind of a good thing.

12:11.905 --> 12:13.605
He was seeing the order as it existed,

12:13.625 --> 12:15.605
and he was sort of, sort of justifying it.

12:15.865 --> 12:18.885
So it kind of, with him, you had the birth of sort

12:18.885 --> 12:22.525
of just really this idea about systematizing an approach

12:22.525 --> 12:25.245
to economics, and he did it with very pithy phrases.

12:25.275 --> 12:27.805
He's a very, you know, he's, he's, his, his logic is,

12:27.985 --> 12:32.465
is sort of, anecdotal, but, and sort of wooly,

12:32.465 --> 12:34.265
but he has sort of a structure to it.

12:34.265 --> 12:35.665
And then he has these great phrases.

12:35.665 --> 12:38.105
That's one sense I think why he is so influential.

12:38.105 --> 12:40.105
Like, things like, you can't forget, like the invisible ad,

12:40.105 --> 12:42.025
you know, the division of labor, these are phrases

12:42.025 --> 12:44.785
that are very pithy and punt and really capture an idea.

12:45.525 --> 12:48.585
But his, one of his most significant successor,

12:48.795 --> 12:51.065
David Ricardo, is the one who kind of,

12:51.065 --> 12:52.705
and I'm gonna put these two together in

12:52.705 --> 12:53.785
terms of modern economics.

12:53.995 --> 12:57.105
David Ricardo was a much different character.

12:57.105 --> 13:01.865
He was much more the abstracter, the synthesizer in terms

13:01.865 --> 13:03.385
of analytics, you know,

13:03.405 --> 13:05.545
and he was much more, let's not just look at

13:05.545 --> 13:07.585
and make stories from what I'm observing,

13:07.585 --> 13:11.185
let's have a deductive model that makes predictions

13:11.805 --> 13:13.745
and then can then be generalizable.

13:13.845 --> 13:16.265
And one thing about Ricardo, very important of course,

13:16.265 --> 13:19.825
is Ricardo, unlike Smith, Ricardo is politically active.

13:20.445 --> 13:22.865
He comes from a long line of financial traders.

13:22.865 --> 13:25.905
He's a very sign successful financial trader himself.

13:26.205 --> 13:28.905
So he's already involved in one of the advanced sectors

13:28.905 --> 13:30.265
of the economy, the finance sector.

13:31.085 --> 13:33.505
Um, and he's very interested in influencing policy

13:33.725 --> 13:36.065
and, not very successful electorally.

13:36.065 --> 13:38.865
He, he did end up holding a, a seat in a rotten borough

13:39.035 --> 13:40.865
after a long time in parliament,

13:41.755 --> 13:43.255
but he was very interested in policy.

13:43.435 --> 13:44.935
So, so I think you have this sort

13:44.935 --> 13:46.535
of template outta classical ergonomics,

13:46.795 --> 13:48.935
and this is kind of, that's coming out of the, the changes

13:49.035 --> 13:51.055
of the time that are both trying to ra say,

13:51.085 --> 13:52.775
give some rationale to what's going on,

13:52.775 --> 13:56.455
but also then coming up with ideas that,

13:56.795 --> 13:59.815
what's optimal, what's best that, you know, and that,

13:59.815 --> 14:01.695
and what policy should be followed.

14:01.795 --> 14:02.935
And of course, you know,

14:03.215 --> 14:05.215
Ricardo basically nails down the kind

14:05.215 --> 14:07.455
of lassez fair kind of idea.

14:07.475 --> 14:09.975
And Ricardo in his, not in his lifetime,

14:09.975 --> 14:11.735
but in the decades, immediately

14:11.735 --> 14:13.735
after his lifetime, he is a very controversial figure.

14:13.855 --> 14:15.735
I mean, he wasn't, he was not seen positively

14:16.195 --> 14:19.415
by people in England, including Arnold, Arnold Tobe, who,

14:19.635 --> 14:21.495
who wrote and then coined the phrase

14:21.495 --> 14:23.015
industrial revolution in the 1880s.

14:23.515 --> 14:26.495
You know, who sort of saw him as, you know, well, he's,

14:26.645 --> 14:29.575
he's people are, he, his I thinking is too tight,

14:29.955 --> 14:31.495
and he's still too influential.

14:32.155 --> 14:34.015
So it's interesting, even though, you know, now we,

14:34.015 --> 14:35.095
we don't really think of him that way.

14:35.115 --> 14:37.375
You know, Ricardo was, was a figure of, that was seen

14:37.375 --> 14:38.695
as like, well, you know, sometimes you can,

14:38.695 --> 14:41.255
your ideas can be a little too well

14:41.265 --> 14:43.335
formulated, a little too pat.

14:43.555 --> 14:44.695
And, you know,

14:44.715 --> 14:47.975
and parliament was of course very much, sort of,

14:47.985 --> 14:51.095
influenced for years by his way of thinking.

14:51.125 --> 14:53.925
So anyway, that's, that's a long discursion, you know,

14:53.925 --> 14:55.685
but that's sort of classical economics,

14:55.695 --> 14:58.765
which then leads into what the modern field is neoclassical,

14:58.765 --> 15:00.725
and then what we call neoclassical economics,

15:00.935 --> 15:03.125
which really has those traits, these, these sort

15:03.125 --> 15:04.685
of same premises,

15:04.685 --> 15:08.325
and the, these preference for deductive logic, abstraction,

15:08.865 --> 15:11.365
generalizable conclusions,

15:11.595 --> 15:14.125
that then you quote unquote test against reality

15:14.625 --> 15:16.445
and then supposedly modify the theory.

15:16.465 --> 15:18.485
But that, if, if reality doesn't match it,

15:18.485 --> 15:20.765
but that doesn't seem to happen, often in economics,

15:20.765 --> 15:23.725
we often tend to modify, our interpretation

15:23.725 --> 15:25.645
of the world, but that's a whole other story.

15:25.685 --> 15:28.045
I won't necessarily go down that, that track in the moment.

15:28.145 --> 15:30.765
So, so liberalism is of course, is the political doctrine,

15:30.765 --> 15:32.005
the English political doctrine,

15:32.005 --> 15:33.045
but it becomes very,

15:33.045 --> 15:35.765
influential throughout the Anglosphere, more or less.

15:36.035 --> 15:38.445
This is not necessarily the German approach, for example,

15:38.665 --> 15:40.685
Germans have kind of a different way

15:40.685 --> 15:42.565
of looking at things, or the French approach.

15:42.595 --> 15:44.445
They have more status kind of approaches.

15:44.445 --> 15:46.445
But, but liberalism is this idea.

15:46.745 --> 15:49.045
So you have really, again, what's going on is this,

15:49.395 --> 15:51.125
this sort of economic change

15:51.145 --> 15:53.285
and sort of this classical economics,

15:53.785 --> 15:55.725
but then you also have this idea, well, well, alright,

15:55.725 --> 15:57.565
we don't want the state to interfere with markets,

15:57.785 --> 15:59.685
but what is the role of the state?

15:59.685 --> 16:01.925
What is the best form of government?

16:01.945 --> 16:04.965
And so liberalism really comes out of, I,

16:05.245 --> 16:08.085
I would say the fact that, you know, England is in a period

16:08.085 --> 16:12.875
of where there is constitutional parliamentary monarchy,

16:12.885 --> 16:15.675
which is fair, stable, relatively speaking, you know,

16:16.415 --> 16:19.075
not like what's going on, in the continent

16:19.075 --> 16:20.155
after the French Revolution.

16:20.695 --> 16:22.675
Uh, also seen as a counterweight, of course,

16:22.855 --> 16:25.315
to the revolutionary tendencies of the 19th century,

16:25.365 --> 16:27.035
which particularly in the first half, or, you know,

16:27.035 --> 16:28.635
after the French Revolution, of course, you know,

16:28.795 --> 16:29.915
Edmund Burke, you know, sort

16:29.915 --> 16:32.155
of famously sort of criticized that.

16:32.335 --> 16:33.835
Um, and of course, you know, so,

16:34.095 --> 16:35.835
but there were a lot of people who were concerned about,

16:36.015 --> 16:36.515
we don't,

16:38.955 --> 16:43.475
what's the alternative?

16:43.475 --> 16:44.515
What is the right form of government? Well,

16:44.515 --> 16:45.515
you don't really allow the form

16:45.515 --> 16:46.795
of government, though, that's desired anymore.

16:46.895 --> 16:51.235
So, so liberalism comes out, with really this fusion,

16:51.375 --> 16:53.955
I'd say, of classical economics, which calls

16:53.955 --> 16:57.355
for free markets, which implies laissez-faire government,

16:58.175 --> 16:59.595
and then sort of says, well,

17:00.175 --> 17:03.395
and the best form of government to execute

17:03.395 --> 17:05.995
that policy is parliamentary democracy

17:06.815 --> 17:09.755
and equates democracy with elections, really.

17:10.015 --> 17:12.795
So this is a kind of another, I won't go into sort of that,

17:12.795 --> 17:13.995
that side line,

17:13.995 --> 17:16.395
but that's an interesting equation that which we still have

17:16.395 --> 17:17.515
that, well, if you have elections

17:18.015 --> 17:20.395
and you have some kind of legislature,

17:20.945 --> 17:22.235
therefore you have democracy,

17:22.415 --> 17:24.955
and that's not really what democracy is,

17:24.955 --> 17:26.635
but that's, that's a different, kind of story.

17:26.655 --> 17:29.035
But this is kind of this political doctrine that comes out

17:30.155 --> 17:32.855
at the time that essentially is, that really is not

17:32.855 --> 17:34.775
that all, not all that consistent, not all that clear.

17:34.775 --> 17:37.295
It's not really clear whether a parliamentary democracy

17:37.325 --> 17:39.975
that really has a genuine, genuine franchise

17:40.115 --> 17:41.735
and genuine represent representation,

17:41.875 --> 17:43.855
but actually support lassez fair

17:44.585 --> 17:45.975
government policies, for example.

17:45.975 --> 17:47.895
It's not very clear, but this is this kind of idea that,

17:47.895 --> 17:49.245
that, that because of what is,

17:49.245 --> 17:52.685
because England is at the forefront of industrializing.

17:53.065 --> 17:54.565
That's the other thing too. A lot of people are saying,

17:54.565 --> 17:55.685
well, what's the secret sauce?

17:55.705 --> 17:56.925
And they sort of say, well, I guess, you know,

17:56.925 --> 17:58.365
England's got parliamentary democracy

17:58.465 --> 18:00.925
and they've got, you know, last say fair economics.

18:00.925 --> 18:02.845
And so I guess that's what gets you ahead, you know,

18:02.845 --> 18:04.045
that's kind of what all the debate is.

18:05.145 --> 18:07.445
And so the question is though, how much influence did

18:07.445 --> 18:09.325
that have on economic growth?

18:09.345 --> 18:10.725
What's the cause? What's the effect?

18:10.725 --> 18:12.525
That's kind of getting back up to your question,

18:13.185 --> 18:15.085
and I don't think that's a question

18:15.085 --> 18:17.085
that you can settle in one sense.

18:17.085 --> 18:18.685
You can't really prove anything here.

18:18.825 --> 18:23.815
So, but, you know, I would argue that, the,

18:23.815 --> 18:26.215
safe answer is that it, when I say safe answer,

18:26.335 --> 18:27.855
it's an answer that it's defensible.

18:27.855 --> 18:29.695
But there, you know, may be other things you can point out

18:30.275 --> 18:34.335
is that this liberalism was an example of a doctrine

18:34.405 --> 18:39.245
that allowed, people to justify sort of,

18:39.325 --> 18:40.605
a certain set of economic policies

18:40.605 --> 18:42.725
to justify a certain economic order that give,

18:42.785 --> 18:45.045
did give a certain, stability.

18:45.065 --> 18:47.405
And this is where, where people's need

18:47.405 --> 18:48.525
for meaning is very important.

18:48.525 --> 18:51.005
This is, of course, something that sociologists look a lot

18:51.145 --> 18:53.685
at and looked a lot at during the 19th century

18:54.185 --> 18:55.965
and early 20th century, and,

18:56.025 --> 18:58.605
and max of Eber being, of course, the giant here.

18:59.145 --> 19:01.725
Um, and so you do need, there's this idea that you kind

19:01.725 --> 19:03.565
of believe in something,

19:03.865 --> 19:05.885
and, it's good if it's something

19:05.885 --> 19:08.365
that has functional value,

19:08.705 --> 19:11.925
and that, I don't wanna sort of just reduce it to that,

19:12.025 --> 19:14.085
but, you know, it's just kind of holds the idea of,

19:14.085 --> 19:16.565
you know, if you wanna use the word hegemony in the sense

19:16.565 --> 19:20.045
that Gramsci used it later in the 20th century, this idea

19:20.045 --> 19:24.855
that, well, you know, a state and staff needs an ideolog

19:24.915 --> 19:27.655
and a set of ideas, i i, I don't wanna use ideology just

19:27.655 --> 19:31.215
yet, but a set of ideas that both justifies it allows people

19:31.215 --> 19:34.775
to make sense of, it, allows people to, support it,

19:35.235 --> 19:37.335
to feel part of it, to have a meaning in it.

19:37.355 --> 19:40.695
And so that's, I'd say in one sense what liberalism served,

19:41.395 --> 19:44.895
as sort of a kind of a, a civil religion of capitalism,

19:44.895 --> 19:46.215
if you wanna think of it that way.

19:46.395 --> 19:48.055
And that's a very necessary thing.

19:48.755 --> 19:51.495
Um, and, and so in that sense, without liberalism,

19:51.595 --> 19:52.895
you might've had more instability,

19:52.915 --> 19:54.095
you might've had more revolution,

19:54.095 --> 19:57.855
you might've had more impediment, to economic growth,

19:57.875 --> 20:01.375
but it's probably not a cause of economic growth,

20:01.435 --> 20:04.535
but it does shape it and, and supports it.

20:04.595 --> 20:05.815
You know, that's a safe answer.

20:05.815 --> 20:07.015
Again, then you can get to all other,

20:07.485 --> 20:09.055
there's other debates you go on to.

20:09.075 --> 20:10.575
But, you know, I would, I would say

20:10.575 --> 20:12.215
that's probably a pretty, I I'd say I would,

20:12.295 --> 20:13.975
I would be comfortable making that argument.

20:14.035 --> 20:15.815
So there's a lot of ground covered there,

20:15.815 --> 20:17.615
but that's, sort of how I would, you know,

20:17.715 --> 20:18.895
try to approach your question.

20:19.115 --> 20:21.255
So neoliberalism is, again,

20:21.255 --> 20:22.535
I'm not the one who's made this point,

20:22.595 --> 20:25.455
but liberalism, neoliberalism is a bit misnamed

20:25.455 --> 20:28.255
because it suggests that it's an update of liberalism,

20:28.995 --> 20:32.655
and it sort of sounds like that, in the sense that it,

20:32.755 --> 20:36.815
seems to be sort of hypercharged free market

20:37.675 --> 20:41.435
reliance and kind of hyper charge, minimal government.

20:42.845 --> 20:46.255
It's actually, but there's differences between the two.

20:46.255 --> 20:49.045
And I, and I argue that in Neoism is really a kind

20:49.045 --> 20:51.045
of a distinct ideology for a couple reasons.

20:51.115 --> 20:52.805
It's not really based on liberalism.

20:53.265 --> 20:56.325
Uh, one is that of course it's actually rather,

20:56.515 --> 20:58.245
mute on form of government.

20:58.865 --> 21:01.445
Um, you know, liberalism did attempt to really sort of,

21:01.465 --> 21:04.405
at least nominally talk about, the, the sort

21:04.405 --> 21:06.645
of advantages of parliamentary democracy, for example.

21:07.265 --> 21:09.085
Uh, liberalism doesn't really, you know,

21:09.085 --> 21:12.205
other than elections, liberalism doesn't really have much

21:12.205 --> 21:13.365
of a political doctrine.

21:13.625 --> 21:15.565
And the other thing about it, even though it sort

21:15.565 --> 21:18.765
of purports to sort of just support free markets,

21:19.105 --> 21:22.365
and let's say fair government liberalism, nominally, again,

21:22.415 --> 21:24.605
liberalism sort of overlooked a lot

21:24.605 --> 21:26.645
of things in its own time, but liberalism

21:26.945 --> 21:29.805
and laissez fair was more about, okay, yes,

21:29.805 --> 21:32.445
we want government that supports markets,

21:32.545 --> 21:33.925
but mainly doesn't get in their way.

21:34.395 --> 21:39.085
Whereas Nebel neoliberalism is explicitly about wiping away,

21:40.535 --> 21:42.115
any institutions

21:42.615 --> 21:47.075
or interest groupings that, sort of are that

21:47.775 --> 21:49.435
in any way, kind of either not,

21:49.555 --> 21:50.555
I won't even say antithetical,

21:50.555 --> 21:52.275
but in any way sort of constrained,

21:53.135 --> 21:54.915
and I would say this, I would put it this way,

21:55.305 --> 21:57.555
incu economic incumbents within the current

21:57.555 --> 21:58.755
marketplace environment.

21:59.375 --> 22:02.475
So, which is very different than what liberalism called for.

22:02.475 --> 22:04.755
So the idea, for example, you know, anti unionism,

22:05.085 --> 22:07.755
there was certainly a lot of anti unionism in England,

22:08.215 --> 22:10.795
but there was also under liberalism a recognition that,

22:10.795 --> 22:12.875
well, if they organized,

22:13.335 --> 22:15.315
and they established political parties

22:15.335 --> 22:17.995
and they ran in parliamentary democracies,

22:17.995 --> 22:21.275
and they changed policies to sort of account for,

22:21.275 --> 22:23.075
working class interests, you know, that was all right.

22:23.545 --> 22:25.595
Neoliberalism doesn't see that as a, right, right?

22:25.665 --> 22:27.515
It's just, you know, nope, let's just get,

22:27.575 --> 22:28.755
get rid of these things here.

22:29.015 --> 22:30.715
And the other thing about neoliberalism is, of course,

22:30.715 --> 22:35.155
it has a very clear documentary, set of evidence

22:35.155 --> 22:36.155
that shows where it came from.

22:36.375 --> 22:38.675
You know, so there's the famous, you know,

22:38.855 --> 22:42.395
Powell memorandum by Lewis Powell Chamber, US Chamber

22:42.395 --> 22:43.595
of Commerce, you know,

22:43.595 --> 22:45.315
where he lays out or here's the strategy.

22:45.895 --> 22:46.955
Uh, you know, so we've got,

22:46.955 --> 22:49.435
liberalism is a more organic thing in that sense.

22:49.465 --> 22:51.195
It's not sort of from one source, but, but,

22:51.215 --> 22:54.315
but neoliberalism clearly has clear roots in special

22:54.635 --> 22:56.835
interest groups that are very pro-business,

22:57.325 --> 22:59.355
which is not the same thing as being pro-market.

23:00.305 --> 23:03.325
Um, and that also supports policies that go against,

23:03.325 --> 23:04.845
for example, the, you know, anti comp,

23:04.955 --> 23:06.165
anti-monopoly policies

23:06.165 --> 23:08.805
or pro-competition policies are not part of neoliberalism.

23:09.355 --> 23:12.485
Whereas they, they did in one sense come out of liberalism,

23:12.485 --> 23:14.365
classical liberalism, because, you know, there's notion

23:14.365 --> 23:16.605
that yes, you want perfect competition

23:16.625 --> 23:19.605
or comp competitive markets that guarantees yes, well,

23:19.605 --> 23:21.645
I guess we should do something about monopoly.

23:22.145 --> 23:23.445
Um, and that's what kind

23:23.445 --> 23:25.125
of happened in the late 19th century

23:25.305 --> 23:27.205
and early 20th century where people said, actually,

23:27.205 --> 23:28.845
we do have to cut back monopoly

23:28.875 --> 23:31.405
because it interferes with the workings of markets.

23:31.625 --> 23:34.505
So neoliberalism is like, no, no problem.

23:34.595 --> 23:36.105
Let's you know that, which is odd.

23:36.155 --> 23:37.385
Again, that's so neoism,

23:37.425 --> 23:39.225
I considered definitely more of an ideology.

23:39.885 --> 23:41.545
Um, that's more really,

23:41.835 --> 23:44.905
liberalism was definitely supported by business interests.

23:45.705 --> 23:47.285
It was consistent with business interest,

23:47.345 --> 23:49.765
but it also had a broader connotation

23:49.795 --> 23:53.125
that didn't always work in the interest of all businesses,

23:53.325 --> 23:55.645
particularly his policy got formulated based on it.

23:55.645 --> 23:58.525
Whereas ne Neo was clearly to me, and,

23:58.525 --> 24:03.365
and sort of a pro-business, you know, anti, well

24:04.255 --> 24:05.805
anti-union and, and,

24:05.825 --> 24:10.565
and anti-social welfare net, kind of ideology

24:10.565 --> 24:12.965
that also, by the way, has of course, you know,

24:13.095 --> 24:15.285
rolls back income redistribution policies,

24:15.755 --> 24:17.565
even though they might, and these are often,

24:17.565 --> 24:19.685
even if they support social stability

24:19.705 --> 24:23.485
and economic growth, stability, neoliberalism would say,

24:23.485 --> 24:25.005
Nope, fine, let's have another tax cut.

24:25.465 --> 24:27.645
Um, and increase in equality, right?

24:27.645 --> 24:31.205
Which is not necessarily good for economic growth.

24:31.705 --> 24:33.285
So yeah, that's a bit of a discourse,

24:33.285 --> 24:34.965
but that's how I would put neo liberalism.

24:34.995 --> 24:37.165
It's a very kind of different animal despite its name.

24:37.905 --> 24:40.365
You had, there was a postwar order, right?

24:40.365 --> 24:42.925
We had very high growth post World War, war, world War ii,

24:42.925 --> 24:45.645
excuse me, where you had a sort of very high growth.

24:45.745 --> 24:48.245
You had unions that were established in most developed

24:48.445 --> 24:49.725
countries, more or less, you know, the,

24:49.725 --> 24:51.965
in the US less than in places like England,

24:51.965 --> 24:53.805
for example, or places like France.

24:54.465 --> 24:56.645
Um, I'll put aside the whole Cold War

24:56.645 --> 24:57.725
element that was there.

24:57.825 --> 24:59.805
But, but so you had,

25:00.105 --> 25:01.765
and then you had this, so you had these sort

25:01.765 --> 25:02.805
of unions that were established.

25:02.825 --> 25:04.245
You had, yes, the rise now

25:04.245 --> 25:07.445
of the corporate form was the established form of business,

25:07.825 --> 25:09.725
and they were big, these were big companies,

25:09.945 --> 25:11.645
and big unions.

25:12.225 --> 25:13.885
And so you had this sort of order

25:14.035 --> 25:15.365
that came up in the seventies

25:15.435 --> 25:16.725
that came up in the fifties and sixties.

25:16.835 --> 25:19.405
Some people call it the Keynesian order, which was that,

25:19.405 --> 25:21.325
okay, well, we we're gonna have economic growth.

25:21.735 --> 25:23.325
We're gonna basically be pro-business.

25:23.345 --> 25:25.245
So we're, you know, we're not gonna have much income

25:25.405 --> 25:27.165
redistribution, but we're gonna have, you know,

25:27.165 --> 25:28.805
what was referred to as the social wage.

25:28.825 --> 25:30.085
That's the most important thing, right?

25:30.265 --> 25:32.245
So we're gonna have unions, big unions

25:32.245 --> 25:35.565
and big companies sorting out the trade-offs between price

25:36.225 --> 25:38.245
and wage levels, and we'll negotiate that

25:38.245 --> 25:39.245
to collective bargaining.

25:39.505 --> 25:41.045
And then where there are shortfalls,

25:41.045 --> 25:42.445
like people are not unionized

25:42.585 --> 25:45.485
or people aren't working we'll, have the government come in

25:45.985 --> 25:47.965
and, and sort of make up the gap.

25:47.985 --> 25:49.765
And that's what the social wage refers to,

25:49.825 --> 25:53.205
is not just whatever income people get, whether it's from a,

25:53.405 --> 25:54.845
a paid wage from a firm,

25:54.985 --> 25:57.085
or whether it's, transfer payments.

25:57.305 --> 25:59.045
And that's the whole welfare state that came out there.

25:59.045 --> 26:01.325
Of course, you also had the Keynesian ideology of,

26:01.835 --> 26:02.965
well, we have to, to do that.

26:02.965 --> 26:04.525
We want stable growth, we want high growth,

26:04.525 --> 26:06.405
we want stable growth, so we'll manage the business cycle.

26:06.425 --> 26:09.085
Now, that all began for various reasons to come apart

26:10.025 --> 26:11.685
in the late sixties and 1970s

26:12.225 --> 26:14.085
as a whole debate about why that is.

26:14.085 --> 26:15.925
There's a standard story about that,

26:16.105 --> 26:17.365
that I think is wrong.

26:17.445 --> 26:19.525
I won't get into that one. Um, but,

26:19.785 --> 26:22.965
but what, what the point here is that what that happened is

26:22.965 --> 26:27.285
that you no longer, you had this, this sort of accord,

26:27.635 --> 26:28.685
that governed policy,

26:28.865 --> 26:32.245
and that governed sort of the big players in the economy

26:32.755 --> 26:36.325
that included union, representation

26:36.465 --> 26:37.765
of the working class, which is not

26:37.765 --> 26:39.045
necessarily the whole working class, right?

26:39.105 --> 26:41.125
So, and that now became,

26:41.125 --> 26:43.855
that was fine when you had steady growth,

26:43.875 --> 26:46.415
but then now you had a point where now you had sort of

26:47.295 --> 26:50.015
unsteady growth and in fact declining or diminishing

26:50.035 --> 26:53.215
or stagnant growth, and now you just had really the old

26:53.215 --> 26:55.415
power struggles that came up, you know, so

26:55.995 --> 26:58.175
big capital now said, you know, I don't really, you know,

26:58.735 --> 27:02.295
I actually don't really wanna, I, now it's costing me

27:02.295 --> 27:04.135
to share it with big unions,

27:04.435 --> 27:06.695
and, I'm not that interested in this anymore.

27:06.875 --> 27:09.215
And then maybe actually taxes are getting fairly high,

27:09.455 --> 27:12.695
although taxes had reduced dramatically throughout the

27:12.695 --> 27:15.815
fifties and sixties from their very high World War II

27:15.815 --> 27:17.295
levels, which is another story, right?

27:17.315 --> 27:20.215
So, you know, that that's ignored in this whole story.

27:20.315 --> 27:22.535
But the idea is that well, still tax levels are too high.

27:22.555 --> 27:25.535
I'd rather have more money for profit, less for taxes.

27:25.755 --> 27:28.215
So you had this kind of just standard conflict

27:28.215 --> 27:29.735
that came out, and in this case, you know,

27:29.975 --> 27:31.175
business was very organized,

27:31.675 --> 27:34.415
and I, you know, I think you could clearly say organize an

27:34.535 --> 27:35.855
ideology,

27:35.855 --> 27:38.175
and this is tied in with other social movements to sort

27:38.295 --> 27:40.855
of knock, really knock all this, back.

27:41.695 --> 27:44.795
Um, and that's sort of the genesis of kind of,

27:45.845 --> 27:47.235
where we are now.

27:47.545 --> 27:49.155
Because now what's happened is

27:49.155 --> 27:50.995
that you've now got a momentum on the other side.

27:51.055 --> 27:53.515
So in the fifties and sixties, well, going back

27:53.515 --> 27:56.555
to the Great Depression, but, and before,

27:56.575 --> 27:58.955
but mainly particularly a, after the Great Depression

27:58.955 --> 27:59.955
and the end of World War ii,

27:59.975 --> 28:02.115
you had at least tendency towards, okay,

28:02.175 --> 28:05.035
the social wage redistribution, labor capital,

28:05.775 --> 28:08.635
big labor capital, working together, sort of stable growth.

28:08.975 --> 28:11.595
And you now then start shift the momentum to actually,

28:11.595 --> 28:15.425
let's have, big agglomerations of capital

28:15.485 --> 28:20.085
and big agglomerations of wealth, clawing back money,

28:20.585 --> 28:22.605
you know, not redistributing downward,

28:22.605 --> 28:24.365
but re redistributing upward.

28:24.365 --> 28:26.925
That's the rather, sort of a sort

28:26.925 --> 28:28.925
of remarkable thing, that's happened.

28:28.945 --> 28:30.965
And so, and yes, I mean,

28:30.965 --> 28:32.725
and one says you, I don't wanna simplify too much to say

28:32.725 --> 28:34.925
that it's the corporations that are in charge,

28:35.145 --> 28:37.325
but there's no question in that corporate,

28:37.555 --> 28:39.965
when you have big changes in, you know,

28:39.965 --> 28:42.485
and big accumulations of wealth, big accumulations

28:42.485 --> 28:45.725
of political power, both by very wealthy individuals,

28:45.745 --> 28:48.325
and by big corporations, well,

28:49.145 --> 28:51.685
and then they also really start basically,

28:52.555 --> 28:55.565
essentially managing the state apparatus, right?

28:55.565 --> 28:56.765
You know, I mean, there's, there's really,

28:56.785 --> 28:59.125
and we have representative democracy that doesn't really

29:00.155 --> 29:01.645
kind of represent, you know,

29:01.645 --> 29:02.885
you see this often with polling data.

29:02.985 --> 29:04.965
You know, representative democracy does not,

29:05.145 --> 29:07.165
for the most part, deliver what

29:07.685 --> 29:09.455
poll majority say people want.

29:09.995 --> 29:11.855
That's, that's, that's a situation we're in.

29:11.935 --> 29:13.695
This is very demonstrable.

29:14.275 --> 29:16.695
And when you have that, then what happens is that yes,

29:16.695 --> 29:17.695
by definition, in a lot of ways,

29:18.315 --> 29:21.775
the power center moves away from state, the state,

29:21.795 --> 29:25.335
and then a democratic setting from the quote unquote will

29:25.335 --> 29:27.615
of the people towards these big interests.

29:27.615 --> 29:28.655
Of course, now we're getting more

29:28.655 --> 29:29.815
and more powerful economically

29:29.955 --> 29:31.655
and basically have less and less constraint.

29:31.655 --> 29:33.615
Now, whether this is gonna end well,

29:33.795 --> 29:35.775
is another question, but to get

29:35.775 --> 29:37.935
to your second question about sort of the Asia,

29:37.995 --> 29:39.695
so the other thing, but what's happening here,

29:39.975 --> 29:42.085
I think is it's, I, I actually take a bit

29:42.085 --> 29:43.525
of a different view than a lot of people take here, is

29:43.525 --> 29:44.805
that we have the Democratic West

29:44.865 --> 29:49.605
and the autocratic, sort of east, if you wanna call it

29:49.605 --> 29:52.085
that, because I think what's happening is we're actually

29:52.085 --> 29:57.005
getting a system more generally that is dominated by private

29:57.065 --> 30:00.405
or public private entities, even in China.

30:00.905 --> 30:01.925
So even in China. So,

30:01.925 --> 30:03.445
and I'll, I'll, I'll just, you know, so for example,

30:03.505 --> 30:05.725
now China, clearly, right, the state is still kind

30:05.725 --> 30:07.405
of central authority,

30:07.905 --> 30:09.765
but it works a lot through the,

30:09.885 --> 30:11.325
a variety of corporate entities.

30:11.785 --> 30:14.725
Um, and many of these of course, are explicitly controlled

30:14.785 --> 30:17.725
by, the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese state.

30:17.755 --> 30:20.885
Some of them are not explicitly controlled that,

30:20.985 --> 30:22.725
and of course, it's an autocratic system.

30:22.725 --> 30:24.285
But then if you look at, for example,

30:24.605 --> 30:25.725
a country like the United States,

30:25.745 --> 30:28.605
and you look at, for example, where Google gets a lot

30:28.605 --> 30:30.565
of its money or Amazon gets auto, its money,

30:30.905 --> 30:34.365
and you look at the sort of vast, for example, defense

30:34.705 --> 30:37.605
or surveillance or, you know, like big tech gets a lot

30:37.605 --> 30:39.405
of these contracts, you know, Amazon, for example, controls.

30:39.405 --> 30:42.205
I think about, you know, 90% of the cloud space as I,

30:42.315 --> 30:44.565
something like that, very high amount of the cloud space.

30:44.565 --> 30:47.005
And of course, it makes a huge amount of money from,

30:47.005 --> 30:48.725
renting out cloud space to all manner of actors,

30:48.725 --> 30:49.805
including a lot of, from government.

30:49.805 --> 30:51.445
There's government tech contracts,

30:51.445 --> 30:53.965
government defense contracts, you know,

30:54.115 --> 30:55.165
financial arrangers.

30:55.165 --> 30:57.845
A lot of these are, there's a lot of state money

30:59.005 --> 31:02.855
that is going into private western companies.

31:03.315 --> 31:05.735
And then you do have to ask the, sort

31:05.735 --> 31:07.095
of legitimate question is like, well,

31:07.635 --> 31:08.655
you know, how much different?

31:08.655 --> 31:10.015
So I'm asking this as a provocative question.

31:10.115 --> 31:11.175
I'm not saying that they're exactly the same,

31:11.175 --> 31:12.935
but you have to ask, how much difference is there between

31:13.795 --> 31:16.975
the way the Chinese economy is, is, is ordered,

31:17.035 --> 31:18.095
and how much versus

31:18.115 --> 31:20.015
how the ameri I'll just focus on the American economy,

31:20.035 --> 31:21.415
how much the American economy is ordered.

31:21.415 --> 31:22.775
They both have big corporations,

31:23.045 --> 31:26.695
they have very close nexuses, between government,

31:27.035 --> 31:29.895
the state, between parties as well, democratic and,

31:29.895 --> 31:31.375
and Republican party, right?

31:31.515 --> 31:34.375
Uh, in the United States and the Communist Party in China.

31:34.915 --> 31:36.655
So very close. Next is they look different,

31:36.655 --> 31:37.735
they look nominally, right?

31:37.735 --> 31:39.935
We have just Chinese companies that are, you know, have,

31:39.935 --> 31:42.135
you know, major influences or major shareholdings

31:42.135 --> 31:45.215
or what have you, by the, by the Chinese government.

31:45.435 --> 31:47.735
But they look different than they formally speaking.

31:47.795 --> 31:50.215
But practically speaking, I think one has to question,

31:50.235 --> 31:52.695
and then as you go back to my prior point about

31:52.915 --> 31:56.845
how representative democracy is not delivering,

31:57.795 --> 32:01.295
basically the will of the people as measured by polls,

32:01.295 --> 32:04.695
if just take that, you do, my point here is not to say,

32:04.715 --> 32:05.855
I'm not trying to draw equivalence here.

32:05.855 --> 32:07.655
So I don't wanna say, okay, well, you know, I've just said

32:07.655 --> 32:09.095
that China US equivalent.

32:09.095 --> 32:10.655
I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that you,

32:10.795 --> 32:13.215
you really actually have to look at actually what's

32:13.215 --> 32:16.455
happening in terms of the operations of, of, of government

32:16.475 --> 32:18.375
and non-government entities in these places.

32:18.795 --> 32:20.495
And I think what you see, if you look at that is

32:20.495 --> 32:22.095
that there's a lot more convergence.

32:23.005 --> 32:24.545
And I'm not saying this is positive, you know, but,

32:24.545 --> 32:27.145
but there's a lot more convergence in the way the economies

32:27.145 --> 32:30.865
and the political, authorities operate across the world.

32:31.365 --> 32:33.025
Uh, so actually, you know,

32:33.345 --> 32:34.225
I do think there's obviously a

32:34.225 --> 32:35.985
geopolitical shift that's going on.

32:36.215 --> 32:37.745
There's an economic shift that's going on.

32:37.935 --> 32:38.945
There's a real thing there.

32:39.345 --> 32:42.205
But institutionally, you, you can make some arguments

32:42.205 --> 32:45.205
that there's a lot more convergence than one would suggest,

32:45.465 --> 32:48.125
or that the typical rhetoric suggests, suggests like, well,

32:48.125 --> 32:50.685
what happens when Asia's dominant to our democracy?

32:50.795 --> 32:52.285
It's like, you know, I, I'm just, so,

32:52.285 --> 32:53.325
I'm more of an empiricist that way.

32:53.325 --> 32:54.765
It's like, let's look at what's actually happening.

32:54.835 --> 32:56.165
When you look at what's happening in the ground.

32:56.645 --> 32:59.245
I don't think it fits very well into these categories.

32:59.295 --> 33:01.565
Again, I, I'm, I'm agnostic in the sense that I,

33:01.565 --> 33:02.765
you know, there's a lot to study here.

33:02.805 --> 33:04.765
I don't have, I don't think everything's, I, I don't think,

33:04.765 --> 33:06.525
think west is identical to the East, for example.

33:06.585 --> 33:08.405
I'm not saying that, but it's,

33:08.405 --> 33:10.615
more similar than you might think.

33:11.155 --> 33:12.575
So I think actually,

33:12.685 --> 33:14.815
this is a question I gave some thought to,

33:14.935 --> 33:16.295
I actually gave some new thought to this.

33:16.315 --> 33:17.815
Uh, I wrote about it in the book, of course.

33:19.315 --> 33:21.655
So, and I think in some ways, I mean,

33:21.705 --> 33:23.535
young is extremely prescient,

33:23.535 --> 33:26.535
but in some ways, if you go back to when he wrote the book,

33:26.775 --> 33:30.435
1957, we're talking about the kind of heyday

33:30.435 --> 33:32.275
of the Keynesian order I just talked about.

33:33.335 --> 33:36.235
Um, and yet, you know,

33:36.255 --> 33:37.555
and you're talking about, in his case,

33:37.655 --> 33:39.075
he coined the term meritocracy,

33:39.075 --> 33:40.595
where you're talking about there's this really

33:40.595 --> 33:42.275
technocratic order, right?

33:42.405 --> 33:46.635
Where formal education, formal credentials,

33:46.635 --> 33:50.355
formal institutions have become the gatekeepers of

33:50.375 --> 33:52.195
who has access to resources.

33:53.015 --> 33:54.675
Um, and,

33:55.825 --> 33:59.085
and you, you have also a shift that's going on in England

33:59.085 --> 34:02.725
where England, of course, is shifting to a services economy.

34:03.115 --> 34:06.485
It's manufacturing sector, still robust, but declining

34:07.695 --> 34:10.435
and of course, will kind of crash out rather spectacularly,

34:10.905 --> 34:13.315
spectacularly as you get to the seventies and eighties.

34:14.335 --> 34:16.875
Um, and this whole order about, so,

34:16.935 --> 34:19.715
and that means that unions the working class,

34:19.775 --> 34:22.115
are getting, a lot less influential e even

34:22.255 --> 34:24.795
and, you know, as well, they have less leverage.

34:24.975 --> 34:26.195
Uh, they're less needed as you get

34:26.195 --> 34:27.315
internationalized economies.

34:27.575 --> 34:30.435
And I think in some ways what young saw,

34:30.435 --> 34:33.195
and again, this is not to diminish his prescient, I mean,

34:33.195 --> 34:36.235
it's pretty remarkable, how prescient his book is,

34:36.495 --> 34:38.915
but in some ways he's, it's the kind of thing where,

34:38.915 --> 34:40.755
you know, sometimes you see things in plain sight

34:40.755 --> 34:42.115
and you don't really see them.

34:42.855 --> 34:44.755
And so it was easy in that time to see,

34:44.755 --> 34:45.915
it's like, well, there's a new order, you know?

34:46.495 --> 34:51.315
Uh, yeah, Britain's not quite the world empire than it,

34:51.315 --> 34:53.675
than it, than it was, although, yeah,

34:53.675 --> 34:57.475
and Suez, the Suez crisis pretty much put the nail in

34:57.475 --> 34:59.915
that coffin, but still, it's hard to give up the notion

34:59.915 --> 35:01.035
that you're an empire, you know?

35:01.035 --> 35:02.835
And always will be. So,

35:03.135 --> 35:05.635
but you could still say, well, we're prosperous,

35:05.635 --> 35:07.715
we have a sort of a good social order,

35:07.825 --> 35:09.755
have a good economic order, we have growth.

35:10.375 --> 35:13.595
Um, and, and of course we also don't have the old,

35:13.595 --> 35:16.995
baggage of the class system, you know, which is false.

35:17.215 --> 35:19.195
But that, that sort of appears to be that way.

35:19.895 --> 35:23.905
And I think, you know, in one sense, a young saw through

35:23.905 --> 35:25.305
that, he sort of said, well, actually,

35:25.305 --> 35:28.025
fundamentally what's happening is just the way you get in

35:28.365 --> 35:30.785
to the system is has changed,

35:31.205 --> 35:33.225
but it's still the haves and the have nots.

35:33.695 --> 35:35.305
Like, that's still the fundamental thing.

35:35.445 --> 35:39.325
And, you know, and you know, you,

35:39.585 --> 35:40.645
and it was just remarkable

35:40.675 --> 35:42.405
that he could sort of see that, well, what happens?

35:42.815 --> 35:45.085
Let's just, he just sort of did, I think a reductio out

35:45.085 --> 35:46.925
of sur He's sort of saying, well, what happens now

35:47.515 --> 35:49.125
when you have the, the North, for example,

35:49.335 --> 35:52.525
which is the center of manufacturing and that's declining,

35:52.665 --> 35:54.805
and the south, which is the center of finance,

35:54.945 --> 35:56.325
and that's, and services,

35:56.345 --> 35:59.085
and that's, sort of rising what happens, right?

35:59.085 --> 36:01.365
These are old splits, you know, that came out

36:01.365 --> 36:04.205
of the industrial revolution, and now they're shifting once

36:04.205 --> 36:06.485
more to the, the north being, poor again

36:06.545 --> 36:08.045
or slowly becoming poor.

36:08.555 --> 36:10.205
What happens, you know, when those people,

36:10.345 --> 36:11.485
if you just carry it out

36:11.485 --> 36:12.765
to its logical extreme, what happens?

36:12.945 --> 36:15.045
Ah, you get, you know, regional conflict.

36:15.045 --> 36:16.885
And the same thing happens on class conflict.

36:16.885 --> 36:20.125
It sort of comes like, well, what happens now when any rec,

36:20.125 --> 36:21.445
and this is kind of obvious in one sense,

36:21.445 --> 36:23.405
because he's a Labor party activist, I think you could see

36:23.405 --> 36:26.165
that is that this, this sort of, conceit

36:26.755 --> 36:27.925
that, well, it doesn't matter.

36:28.125 --> 36:30.565
Everyone can get education if they want it.

36:30.675 --> 36:32.685
Well, it's not really true. We all know that, right?

36:32.705 --> 36:35.685
If I, if I'm come out of poverty in the working class,

36:36.365 --> 36:38.725
I don't have, by definition, this is something

36:38.725 --> 36:40.925
that meritocracy doesn't really address.

36:40.985 --> 36:42.605
It just assumes that everyone has, well,

36:42.605 --> 36:43.485
it's just all based on

36:43.485 --> 36:44.685
merit and everyone has the same access.

36:44.685 --> 36:45.965
But of course, we know that's not true.

36:46.675 --> 36:48.725
That, you know, where you start very much

36:48.725 --> 36:50.565
affects where you end.

36:50.565 --> 36:52.965
That's, that's the reality, I think. I think he saw that.

36:53.265 --> 36:55.085
And, and what's interesting, I I,

36:55.325 --> 36:56.525
I didn't mention this in the book,

36:56.525 --> 36:57.725
but I, I was thinking about it.

36:57.725 --> 36:58.965
I don't know if you're familiar with a film

36:58.965 --> 37:00.405
called I'm All Right, Jack.

37:01.155 --> 37:03.645
It's a 1959 film. I, I recommend, it's very funny.

37:03.675 --> 37:06.485
It's, Peter Sellers is in one of the roles,

37:07.385 --> 37:10.805
and it's basically about, sort of,

37:12.105 --> 37:15.805
is a union leader, and there's a, a company, that,

37:15.865 --> 37:17.685
and there's a strike involved, and there's a,

37:17.685 --> 37:20.645
but it's basically very, it's a black comedy, really

37:20.645 --> 37:23.125
that shows that basically everybody is corrupt, you know,

37:23.505 --> 37:24.765
the unions are corrupt.

37:25.345 --> 37:27.405
The, companies are corrupt.

37:27.425 --> 37:29.085
Of course, he's got the class system in there

37:29.085 --> 37:31.605
because these are sort of arms manufacturers,

37:31.605 --> 37:33.085
or one of them's an arm manufacturers,

37:33.085 --> 37:34.365
and they're sort of like, they, they have these,

37:34.365 --> 37:36.005
these shady deals between the,

37:36.425 --> 37:38.045
and in fact, the guy, well, the other guy,

37:38.045 --> 37:38.805
the guy who's the main

37:38.805 --> 37:40.205
protagonist, I can't remember the name of the actor.

37:40.475 --> 37:42.525
He's a sort of naive person who's in the upper class,

37:42.745 --> 37:44.805
and he's trying to find a position now that he has,

37:44.865 --> 37:46.285
you know, ready to go and find a position.

37:46.345 --> 37:48.445
And he, and he decides he's really, you know, he tries

37:48.445 --> 37:51.685
to find jobs, and of course, he's, he's kind of a, he's sort

37:51.685 --> 37:53.565
of a, a naive innocent.

37:54.305 --> 37:55.565
And so anyway, he can't, they,

37:55.635 --> 37:56.765
they can't place him any place

37:56.765 --> 37:58.605
because he just speaks the truth about things, you know?

37:58.625 --> 37:59.645
Uh, and, and so,

37:59.645 --> 38:01.485
but he finally, well, manufacturing's where they kind

38:01.485 --> 38:04.205
of place him, but he, he wants to be a worker, you know?

38:04.205 --> 38:06.565
So anyway, this is kind, I won't go to the whole, thing,

38:06.565 --> 38:07.605
but it's interesting.

38:07.605 --> 38:10.685
This is 1959. This film came out young, wrote in 1957.

38:10.685 --> 38:13.485
Everything seems to be all good on the surface

38:13.745 --> 38:14.765
of British society,

38:14.865 --> 38:17.845
but this film really shows how cynical,

38:18.655 --> 38:19.625
like people are saying, like,

38:19.725 --> 38:20.905
you know, what's really going on?

38:20.935 --> 38:21.985
Like, is, is there really,

38:22.125 --> 38:23.385
you know, what does it mean to be working class?

38:23.385 --> 38:25.025
What does it mean to be, well, what does it mean?

38:25.025 --> 38:28.505
What does anything mean? And there's a final scene basically

38:28.505 --> 38:30.185
that involves, you know, money being thrown

38:30.185 --> 38:32.745
around a panel program at the BBC,

38:33.205 --> 38:35.325
and everybody is just running for the money.

38:35.745 --> 38:38.045
Um, and then sort of saying, this is what it's all about.

38:38.315 --> 38:39.845
Grab what you can when you can,

38:39.845 --> 38:41.205
doesn't matter what the coits are.

38:41.265 --> 38:44.205
And Malcolm Ridge actually plays himself in that film,

38:44.665 --> 38:46.365
and he's, you know, he's kind of the doan

38:46.365 --> 38:49.125
of the intelligentsia, the sort of popular intelligentsia

38:49.125 --> 38:51.405
of the time, sending up that as well.

38:51.595 --> 38:54.765
It's like, so the keepers of the meritocracy, the sort

38:54.765 --> 38:57.245
of intelligentsia is also set up.

38:57.745 --> 39:00.885
And so anyway, I mentioned that simply to say that the times

39:00.885 --> 39:04.605
that he was writing at, I think a lot of people didn't see

39:04.605 --> 39:07.485
what he saw, but if you stood back, you could sort

39:07.485 --> 39:08.925
of see there's something rotten about this order.

39:09.065 --> 39:12.125
It doesn't really work the way it says it works.

39:12.825 --> 39:16.785
Um, it's not really about the best person winning,

39:17.685 --> 39:20.545
and if it's not about the best person winning, what happens,

39:21.325 --> 39:25.265
and I think young was sort of being tongue in cheek,

39:25.265 --> 39:27.305
but I think he was saying, well, if you don't really address

39:27.305 --> 39:29.385
these things, and I'm going back to earlier things,

39:29.385 --> 39:30.745
like even things like meaning as well,

39:30.745 --> 39:31.985
if you don't address like what's the meaning

39:31.985 --> 39:35.185
of these things, if you don't address helping the haves

39:35.785 --> 39:38.245
and the have nots, actually trying to help them actively,

39:38.245 --> 39:40.725
as opposed to just having a system which supposedly sorts

39:40.725 --> 39:42.005
out people according to their ability.

39:42.005 --> 39:42.765
If you don't do that,

39:42.765 --> 39:44.045
you're gonna end up in a lot of trouble.

39:44.985 --> 39:46.325
Um, and that's why, again,

39:46.365 --> 39:48.205
I don't pull down his preference at all,

39:48.205 --> 39:50.285
but in some ways you can sort of see,

39:50.285 --> 39:53.085
it's like Jonathan Swift in some ways as well, you know,

39:53.105 --> 39:54.325
as another political satire.

39:54.325 --> 39:56.645
He's one of those people who you sort of look at, it's like,

39:56.645 --> 40:00.525
yeah, actually that's pretty obvious, but you saw it

40:00.525 --> 40:02.725
and you put it in such a way that I could see it.

40:02.825 --> 40:05.045
But see, nobody really believed him when he wrote,

40:05.785 --> 40:07.525
and when he tried to sort of push his message,

40:07.525 --> 40:11.045
because the fifties and the sixties, despite what was sort

40:11.045 --> 40:13.445
of lurking beneath, seemed to be prosperous.

40:13.665 --> 40:15.165
And the system seemed to work,

40:15.505 --> 40:18.005
and it seemed that meritocracy was working you, yeah,

40:18.005 --> 40:20.045
you get a college degree or a university degree,

40:20.665 --> 40:22.005
you can get a place in the system.

40:22.065 --> 40:23.245
It seemed like it was working.

40:23.745 --> 40:25.805
Uh, but I think young just saw that it wasn't,

40:25.805 --> 40:27.725
and I think it's, I think it's kind of as simple as that.

40:27.745 --> 40:29.365
It really is the, this basic notion

40:29.365 --> 40:30.525
of haves and haves, nots.

40:30.985 --> 40:32.925
You know, if you don't, you have to do something about that.

40:33.025 --> 40:35.005
You have to address that in any society.

40:35.005 --> 40:36.365
And meritocracy doesn't address it.

40:36.365 --> 40:39.405
It just sort of codifies it and formalizes it.

40:39.745 --> 40:41.605
And, and, and y pointed out that that's,

40:41.605 --> 40:43.685
that's gonna just lead to the same little trouble you've

40:43.685 --> 40:46.445
gotten throughout the ages of history.

40:46.585 --> 40:48.725
So that's kind of, I, I thought about this quite a lot.

40:48.725 --> 40:50.085
It was an interesting question to think about,

40:50.105 --> 40:52.685
but I think that's, in some sense, I think,

40:53.025 --> 40:54.325
in one sense, in retrospect,

40:54.585 --> 40:56.445
his prognosis was rather obvious,

40:57.385 --> 41:00.245
but not at the time, unlike young,

41:00.825 --> 41:02.325
didn't try to make predictions.

41:02.505 --> 41:05.245
I'm more of a, you know, scholar, more of an observer.

41:05.565 --> 41:09.005
I more try to sort of point out, kind of what I,

41:09.155 --> 41:12.165
what I see, and then I try to, in a sense, think about,

41:12.165 --> 41:14.205
well, you know, just where that might lead,

41:14.205 --> 41:17.405
but without predicting, I'm not particularly optimistic,

41:17.485 --> 41:19.445
I will say that, but I won't say to get into

41:19.445 --> 41:20.605
that in terms of how we're going.

41:20.625 --> 41:22.405
And so in the final chapter of the book is

41:22.405 --> 41:23.445
where I pull all these things together,

41:23.665 --> 41:27.645
and I sort of really talk about in terms of

41:27.645 --> 41:29.485
where we are now, is that essentially we're,

41:30.145 --> 41:31.565
and again, I'm not unique in saying this,

41:31.565 --> 41:33.725
but I think what's, what modern, what modern,

41:33.795 --> 41:34.805
what the modern economy,

41:35.105 --> 41:38.725
modern economic change has shown is in the past, it's shown

41:39.575 --> 41:42.965
overcoming of limits, particularly material limits,

41:44.065 --> 41:48.565
but it's also shown, I'd say, a very much an ignorance,

41:48.565 --> 41:53.085
or you could even say denial of other limits,

41:53.475 --> 41:55.765
that are sort of, kind of inherent in the system.

41:55.865 --> 41:57.485
So some of them are, are well known.

41:57.605 --> 41:59.805
I talk about, limits to resources,

42:00.775 --> 42:02.005
which have been been talked about

42:02.025 --> 42:04.325
for a long time in the context of climate change.

42:04.325 --> 42:06.725
But this came up in the seventies with the limits

42:06.745 --> 42:08.885
to growth, movement.

42:09.265 --> 42:11.165
Um, so one of the things that, well, yeah, there's a notion

42:11.165 --> 42:13.085
that, you know, the classical economics

42:13.085 --> 42:15.685
and neoclassical economics is like, well, we're just smart.

42:15.685 --> 42:19.325
We're so clever, we will invent a way out of these limits.

42:19.825 --> 42:21.645
And, and in one sense, it seems to be

42:21.645 --> 42:22.765
that that's what's happening.

42:22.795 --> 42:24.365
That has happened. We have like, you know,

42:24.365 --> 42:27.125
well increased agricultural productivity when agricultural

42:27.125 --> 42:28.725
limits seem to be reached and so forth.

42:29.185 --> 42:31.605
But on the other hand, you know, it seems to be

42:31.605 --> 42:35.785
that we're in a systemic, earth systems crisis, right?

42:35.845 --> 42:37.945
So maybe we've pushed past some limits

42:37.945 --> 42:40.585
that are on the surface, but we're sort of, kind

42:40.585 --> 42:43.145
of coming up against and ignoring deeper limits

42:43.695 --> 42:45.825
that are within, so that, you know, so I talk about sort

42:45.825 --> 42:49.185
of limits, to the, that we're approaching there,

42:49.215 --> 42:50.825
that saying, okay, I think it's pretty clear

42:50.825 --> 42:53.625
that these limits are there, we're up against them,

42:54.245 --> 42:55.425
where that's going.

42:55.575 --> 42:56.945
It's hard to, it's hard to know.

42:57.185 --> 42:58.465
I don't go straight to, you know,

42:58.465 --> 43:00.065
climate change catastrophe, for example.

43:00.165 --> 43:01.945
But, you know, there's clearly a lot of problems,

43:01.945 --> 43:03.545
and I talk really about other limits as well.

43:03.545 --> 43:05.785
So a lot of ways, the final chapter in particular, I think

43:06.485 --> 43:09.105
if, to simplify, I think a lot of it is about limits.

43:09.165 --> 43:10.545
So not just limits. This is the

43:10.545 --> 43:11.905
interdisciplinary part of it as well.

43:12.285 --> 43:14.745
Not just limits the resources, the technical limits

43:14.805 --> 43:16.265
and the economic limits and the sort

43:16.265 --> 43:17.385
of narrow economic sense, but the

43:17.385 --> 43:19.465
limits to knowing, for example.

43:19.565 --> 43:21.265
So, you know, we have a conceit,

43:21.285 --> 43:22.745
and this came out, this was, you know,

43:22.745 --> 43:24.385
this came outta the French Revolution as well

43:24.545 --> 43:26.705
as the industrial evolution that we have this, and,

43:26.705 --> 43:29.225
and the enlightenment before this conceit that, well,

43:29.225 --> 43:30.265
everything's a technical problem

43:30.725 --> 43:32.265
and we can solve everything technically,

43:32.265 --> 43:33.385
and everything's a material problem,

43:33.765 --> 43:36.265
and we can solve the material problem, then we're okay.

43:36.805 --> 43:38.265
And what's happening now, we're finding

43:38.265 --> 43:39.945
that we're getting limits to what we know,

43:40.925 --> 43:43.705
but we think we know limits to meaning.

43:43.925 --> 43:45.185
So we don't really care about, meaning,

43:45.205 --> 43:47.625
we don't really care about the non-material factors

43:47.645 --> 43:49.745
or material factors, and we don't think

43:49.745 --> 43:50.865
there's no real consequence of that.

43:50.865 --> 43:53.025
We think that can be sort of a sideline, you know, well,

43:53.025 --> 43:54.385
that's the churches to deal with that,

43:54.485 --> 43:56.185
or, you know, whatever the special interest groups

43:56.205 --> 43:57.945
or the spiritual communities, we don't, that's,

43:57.945 --> 43:58.985
but that's sort of a separate thing.

43:58.985 --> 44:01.385
It's no longer central. We don't have to worry about that.

44:01.845 --> 44:04.945
But these are all limits, that we're reaching,

44:05.005 --> 44:06.745
and including limits to human psychology.

44:06.945 --> 44:10.025
I mean, again, human beings need to have meaning.

44:10.055 --> 44:11.865
They need to have belong, and they need to have,

44:11.865 --> 44:13.305
you know, so these are, these are needs

44:13.305 --> 44:15.505
that the economic system as,

44:15.645 --> 44:17.545
as the moderate economic systems don't address.

44:18.205 --> 44:20.745
Um, in some sense, they're not meant to address them.

44:20.865 --> 44:23.385
I, I, I admit that, but you know, it's, there's the notion

44:23.385 --> 44:24.385
that you can't just ignore them.

44:24.525 --> 44:27.825
So, so I'd say in terms of the findings of the book, I mean,

44:27.825 --> 44:30.025
I'm, I can't really in one sense boil it down totally,

44:30.045 --> 44:32.010
but I think a lot of it, what I, I try to say at the end is

44:32.010 --> 44:35.365
that we have these real limits that are going back

44:35.365 --> 44:39.405
to interdisciplinary work that are not just to be addressed

44:39.405 --> 44:40.525
by the economics profession,

44:40.585 --> 44:43.805
but by sociology, philosophy, psychology,

44:44.275 --> 44:45.925
political science, political theory.

44:46.505 --> 44:49.685
Um, you know, these are, these are, these are things

44:49.685 --> 44:50.845
that we have to, that, you know,

44:50.845 --> 44:53.445
we have the disciplinary tools to,

44:53.505 --> 44:57.045
and the disciplinary understandings to have some notion of

44:57.315 --> 45:00.555
what they're about, and what's going on.

45:00.935 --> 45:02.875
And I'd say in terms of a research agenda,

45:03.065 --> 45:04.435
this is pretty vague in a sense,

45:04.775 --> 45:08.155
but if I were gonna write another book about just kind

45:08.235 --> 45:10.395
of the present and perhaps thinking about,

45:10.445 --> 45:13.355
going forward, I would focus on kind of what I focused,

45:13.555 --> 45:15.555
I would extend what I did in the last chapter, which is,

45:15.555 --> 45:17.235
well, here are the limits that we're facing,

45:17.235 --> 45:19.195
these various limits, not just material limits

45:19.415 --> 45:20.435
and technological limits,

45:20.575 --> 45:23.155
but, you know, psychological, social, political,

45:23.555 --> 45:25.035
geopolitical, et cetera.

45:25.495 --> 45:27.475
Um, and, and epistemological,

45:27.735 --> 45:28.995
if I wanna use that fancy word.

45:29.415 --> 45:31.195
Um, and you know,

45:31.255 --> 45:34.995
and sort of let's sort of spell out more what that actually,

45:35.055 --> 45:36.275
what's actually going on with that.

45:36.325 --> 45:39.435
Let's get more in depth about how that looks,

45:39.615 --> 45:42.435
what's going on right now, how it's sort of cha

45:43.075 --> 45:45.355
changing the human being, changing the society,

45:45.415 --> 45:46.715
the human collective psychology.

45:46.775 --> 45:48.435
How is it changing that, stressing it,

45:48.895 --> 45:50.115
aiding it as well?

45:50.195 --> 45:51.235
I don't wanna say it's all bad,

45:51.615 --> 45:53.315
but, you know, where are we with that and,

45:53.375 --> 45:55.875
and kind of maybe where do we need to go with that

45:55.975 --> 45:57.835
and in an integrated fashion, you know?

45:57.935 --> 46:00.705
So, that's a bit broad.

46:01.285 --> 46:04.425
Um, but, you know, that would be say, lessons learned

46:04.485 --> 46:06.465
and sort of research agenda, you know,

46:06.575 --> 46:08.225
that could be separate research agendas.

46:08.285 --> 46:10.145
I'm particularly interested in the cross-disciplinary

46:10.165 --> 46:11.545
interdisciplinary aspects.

46:11.545 --> 46:13.785
So I would like to sort of see a kind of a concerted effort,

46:14.005 --> 46:15.385
not necessarily just by me,

46:15.445 --> 46:17.745
but by others to sort of look at that.

46:17.745 --> 46:20.345
So, yeah, that's, that's sort of my takeaway.

46:20.685 --> 46:21.905
If, if I could sum it up.

"Rethinking Economic Change: Beyond Production and Technological Narratives"

00:00:00 - The standard way that you look at economic change since 1800. So we're talking about really, or 1750, whatever you want to talk about it. You know, the industrial revolution and everything that's followed from that. The standard way of, of looking at that is looking at it from a very narrow economic frame. And what I mean by that is that, you know, when you think about an economy, you've got production then that out of that flows, distribution, consumption, and, and then, you know, that tends to be what you focus on. And you focused a lot with the, in, with the, the industrial revolution. There was a lot of, a dramatic increase in productivity and ara technological, advance and, a, dramatic increase in sophistication
00:00:47 - And, so I know there's another question about the rise of economics as a field, so this kind of relates to that. But, so what's tended to happen is, or what has happened, I shouldn't say tenders to happened, is that, the economic history has been looked at in terms of, all right, well, what's happened? We had, how did production get so productive? what was the technology behind that? What were the causes and effects in terms of technology and in terms of other things that were affecting the technology? and then how did that then in turn increase consumer, you know, consumption, distribution? and so people look at that and there's a very standard way of looking at these things. It's a very sophisticated and sub literature.
00:01:29 - but, what, what I was dissatisfied with, because I, I, I read a lot about economic history. I study it. I'm also taught in a number of disciplines, and I was a history major as an undergraduate as well. And so thought about being an historian. And I've, I've worked in government and, and worked in various, you know, I have other taught disciplines. So I have, I have kind of a, a varied background besides economics and, and sort of what was dissatisfying about the narrow approach is that, basically economics is not just about, or the, the changes in the economy aren't just about changes in production technology.
00:02:10 - or how much they have available to consume, or mass marketing kinds of mechanisms, not just about that. the causes and effects have been both, at a profound, you know, involvement, profound social changes, and they've had profound social, political, sociological psychological impacts as well. So, I mean, there's a lot I could say about this, but just to give an example, for example, even in the case of English industrialization, you know, like what caused that, you know, so economists will look at that and they'll sort of say, well, you know, technological advance and what caused the technological advance?
00:02:49 - You know, people had, you know, you know, and sometimes there's cultural things that happen there, you know, English, it was an English tradition of, you know, practical innovation. And that led to this invention that didn't happen as much in France, which has rationalist theoretical kind of innovation. So that's, you know, so economists look at all these factors, but they're still looking at it from the point of view of the, of production and changes in production. Whereas, you know, if you look at what happened even in England was that, well, they were, you know, and I'm not, I'm not, we, I didn't point this out, others have noted this, but you, with dramatic changes leading up to the industrial revolution in politics, in, sort
00:03:31 - but which were driven by the rise of commercial interests, which displaced older interests. And then there were, you know, things like the enclosure acts, that sort of drove people out of, off the lad, you know, privatized, commons. and, you know, and sort of created the conditions and in some ways directly created markets, you know, and the conditions that set up, you know, sort of the establishment of factories, the putting out system, and then factories. And so, you know, I mean, again, I, Carl Palani has famously written about this, and he's not the only one. so you had this thing where, well, we'll sort of, well, how much that's, a lot of that isn't really

"Interdisciplinary Insights: Understanding Economic Change Beyond Traditional Paradigms"

00:04:10 - and, so it's kind of like, well, you really need kind of other disciplines like sociology, for example, to really study that. And to add to that and to really get into that. And then on the effects side, I mean, I'm not, I won't go on and on about this, but, you know, once you had industrialization, then you had urbanization, you had rural depopulation, you had, you know, dramatic changes in, in social structure and increases in, in movement. You had densification of activities, things like ref factories became very large and concentrated, and that created sort of new communities that, you know, really radically changed, social structures and changed the way, people experience daily life.
00:04:51 - I, I don't wanna say that, this hasn't been a, a part of economic history or economic theory. There's been a lot of sophisticated writing about it, but the tendency then is to still go back to really the basic notion that, well, let's look at it from, from a production focus, and then also this benchmark of the market and market exchange as being sort of an optimal, right? So that's another thing in the background too. So what's the optimal, basically exchange organized on markets, that's an optimal state, it maximizes productivity, and then let's look at all these variety of factors that led to that, as opposed to saying, well, it's too narrow, you know, that's already defining the economy in a very
00:05:30 - and effect in a very narrow way. So anyway, look, I, I could go on and on about this, but, but that's sort of really what motivated me to take an interdisciplinary approach besides my own personal interests and personal donations. But to say, okay, well, let's, you know, not just to sort of have an economics focus with some other disciplines pulled in, which you see a lot, or not take an economics focus, which I call sometimes the Christmas tree kind of model, where you have sort of, what's a nice economic Christmas tree, and let's put some ball about the slave trade or about, you know, like that really decorates things. But fundamentally, I'm talking about an economic process of economic optimization. You know, I said, okay, let's actually have coequal, approaches of different disciplines as opposed
00:06:12 - and the focus, even though the story is about economic change. So I, I am focusing specifically on economic change, not, not the primary focus being, for example, social change. Even though I, I look at that or political change, those things all come out. But again, there is a, there is a focus there, but really the idea is to have sort of, you know, co-equal, cooperative complementary approach to interdisciplinary transdisciplinary, if you wanna call it, sort of approaches. So that's what motivated me, and that's what I tried to do, in this study. You know, when you start getting into the area of European colonialism, extensive European colonialism, which by which I really mean really moving out into regions, well beyond, sort of traditional, sort of spheres
00:06:57 - I mean, everyone, colonialism is very old, of course. It goes back to the ancient world. Many countries have practiced it. China have practiced it, for example, that had its own empire. But generally, you know, that was generally sort of, usually in this particular area of the world now, when you have sort of European colonialism, you have this sort of international sort of focus in areas that are, you know, just the age of discovery, the misnamed age of discovery, since we were, since these things, the people who lived there didn't need to be discovered. But from a European perspective, we were discovering, you know, new regions. but, so basically this is what started in the 14 hundreds and 15 hundreds, and economics as a discipline begins to be born. Then when these kind of trading companies were set up,
00:07:41 - and, the, there was, people were sort of, the traditional idea was, well, let's just take over a lot of, territory, trade, you know, get a monopoly in, in precious metals and things like that. And then build big crate surpluses and build big, reserves of, you know, gold and silver. and what was happening even at that time is that you already have this sort of globalized, but state centered, sort of trading system. But you had people within the trading companies sort of looking at their own accounts and beginning to, this is the sort of the birth of sort of modern economics. And beginning to say, well, wait a second, actually, we don't always maximize our profits, our trading profits,

"Rethinking the Foundations of Classical Economics: Insights from Adam Smith"

00:08:25 - Sometimes running deficits is okay, you know, and accumulation of, of gold and silver is not necessarily an ideal thing either. So you began to get already, out of these kind of realities, and this is how I would argue, it was kind of a theory. People began to look at, I fixed ideas and then how things are really working, but always thinking, excuse me, about national strategic advantage. So you begin to get a formalization, people looking at evidence. This is also an, an era of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. So this fits in with that. But the classical economics in particular, these are just sort of the anthes, of course, you know, everyone knows about Adam Smith. and, you know, he's very much a creature
00:09:06 - And of course, Scotland at that time was actually in some ways, in many ways, more prosperous and advanced than, the rest of, of, you know, of the, the other, you know, parts of the, of the British, kingdom. I'm part Scottish, so I guess partly I, I say that out of, national pride. and so, but, but M Smith is basically, he's seeing all these changes going on, but from a very particular perspective, sort of the perspective of sort of an incumbent really, you know, sort of, he's not a business person, but he is sort of, sort of seeing, developments through their eyes. and Smith is a very complicated figure, you know, he is been very, very, sort of simplified, right?
00:09:47 - I fair, that's how he's presented. That's not what he is. Of course, if you really read him, he's actually quite, subtle and, and not, not generally saying, well, business is good. He's often very skeptical, very scathing about business practices. But, you know, he has this, but he's the first kind of systematizer of, of modern economics as it was at that time, looking at, well, looking at the factory, the rise of the putting out system, the rise of factories, you know, these sort of, the division of labor, right? One of his famous, phrases where he says, well, how are people getting more productive? Not just concentrating production, but they're splitting up jobs that artisans used to do from beginning to end. And now he's saying, what's, you know,
00:10:30 - You know, you don't have just one person making one pin and another than another. You just have some people making the head another, making the shaft another, putting it together, and that increases productivity. So he is analyzing these things. and of course, his famous phrase is the invisible hand, which has been misinterpreted to say that the market is always right. but he was saying that, well, actually, we don't need government direction to have a productive economy. And that's what he was seeing, even though he was ignoring a lot of the government direction that was already there, such as the putting, such as enclosure movements, for example. You know, such as, you know, even even the imperial trading companies, which by the way,
00:11:14 - was, anti empire. You know, I, I'm just reading something about Trump, that's why he gave it there. he was, he was, kind of anti, he, he actually was against Empire because he thought it was too costly. So in that sense, he was very consistent with his principles of just let's, well just sort of, you know, kind of, you don't need centralized institutions to have productivity. So, but basically, you know, he and other classical economists would follow, follow him. Were really just like the Merkin, the people who looking at mercantilism before were just trying to, looking at dramatic changes in the way the economy was running, very contrary to sort of state centered, kinds of ideas that you needed the state to be in there,
00:11:54 - that ran things, you know, and then a peasantry, you know, he was, he was sort of very much kind of going against that, and he was really trying to sort of rationalize it, you know, try to, I mean, I rational, I mean that in two ways. One, in that he was trying to build a system of thought that made sense of it, but he also was an apologist for it, in effect. I don't missay that in a bad way, but he was sort of saying, well, yeah, this is kind of a good thing. He was seeing the order as it existed, and he was sort of, sort of justifying it. So it kind of, with him, you had the birth of sort of just really this idea about systematizing an approach to economics, and he did it with very pithy phrases. He's a very, you know, he's, he's, his, his logic is, is sort of, anecdotal, but, and sort of wooly,

"Influence and Evolution of Classical Economic Thought: The Contributions of Adam Smith and David Ricardo"

00:12:34 - And then he has these great phrases. That's one sense I think why he is so influential. Like, things like, you can't forget, like the invisible ad, you know, the division of labor, these are phrases that are very pithy and punt and really capture an idea. But his, one of his most significant successor, David Ricardo, is the one who kind of, and I'm gonna put these two together in terms of modern economics. David Ricardo was a much different character. He was much more the abstracter, the synthesizer in terms of analytics, you know, and he was much more, let's not just look at and make stories from what I'm observing, let's have a deductive model that makes predictions and then can then be generalizable.
00:13:16 - is Ricardo, unlike Smith, Ricardo is politically active. He comes from a long line of financial traders. He's a very sign successful financial trader himself. So he's already involved in one of the advanced sectors of the economy, the finance sector. and he's very interested in influencing policy and, not very successful electorally. He, he did end up holding a, a seat in a rotten borough after a long time in parliament, but he was very interested in policy. So, so I think you have this sort of template outta classical ergonomics, and this is kind of, that's coming out of the, the changes of the time that are both trying to ra say, give some rationale to what's going on, but also then coming up with ideas that,
00:13:59 - and what policy should be followed. And of course, you know, Ricardo basically nails down the kind of lassez fair kind of idea. And Ricardo in his, not in his lifetime, but in the decades, immediately after his lifetime, he is a very controversial figure. I mean, he wasn't, he was not seen positively by people in England, including Arnold, Arnold Tobe, who, who wrote and then coined the phrase industrial revolution in the 1880s. You know, who sort of saw him as, you know, well, he's, he's people are, he, his I thinking is too tight, and he's still too influential. So it's interesting, even though, you know, now we, we don't really think of him that way. You know, Ricardo was, was a figure of, that was seen
00:14:38 - your ideas can be a little too well formulated, a little too pat. And, you know, and parliament was of course very much, sort of, influenced for years by his way of thinking. So anyway, that's, that's a long discursion, you know, but that's sort of classical economics, which then leads into what the modern field is neoclassical, and then what we call neoclassical economics, which really has those traits, these, these sort of same premises, and the, these preference for deductive logic, abstraction, generalizable conclusions, that then you quote unquote test against reality and then supposedly modify the theory. But that, if, if reality doesn't match it,
00:15:20 - we often tend to modify, our interpretation of the world, but that's a whole other story. I won't necessarily go down that, that track in the moment. So, so liberalism is of course, is the political doctrine, the English political doctrine, but it becomes very, influential throughout the Anglosphere, more or less. This is not necessarily the German approach, for example, Germans have kind of a different way of looking at things, or the French approach. They have more status kind of approaches. But, but liberalism is this idea. So you have really, again, what's going on is this, this sort of economic change and sort of this classical economics, but then you also have this idea, well, well, alright, we don't want the state to interfere with markets, but what is the role of the state?
00:16:01 - And so liberalism really comes out of, I, I would say the fact that, you know, England is in a period of where there is constitutional parliamentary monarchy, which is fair, stable, relatively speaking, you know, not like what's going on, in the continent after the French Revolution. also seen as a counterweight, of course, to the revolutionary tendencies of the 19th century, which particularly in the first half, or, you know, after the French Revolution, of course, you know, Edmund Burke, you know, sort of famously sort of criticized that. and of course, you know, so, but there were a lot of people who were concerned about, we don't, what's the alternative?

"Reassessing Liberalism: The Fusion of Economics and Governance in the Modern Political Landscape"

00:16:44 - you don't really allow the form of government, though, that's desired anymore. So, so liberalism comes out, with really this fusion, I'd say, of classical economics, which calls for free markets, which implies laissez-faire government, and then sort of says, well, and the best form of government to execute that policy is parliamentary democracy and equates democracy with elections, really. So this is a kind of another, I won't go into sort of that, that side line, but that's an interesting equation that which we still have that, well, if you have elections and you have some kind of legislature, therefore you have democracy, and that's not really what democracy is,
00:17:26 - But this is kind of this political doctrine that comes out at the time that essentially is, that really is not that all, not all that consistent, not all that clear. It's not really clear whether a parliamentary democracy that really has a genuine, genuine franchise and genuine represent representation, but actually support lassez fair government policies, for example. It's not very clear, but this is this kind of idea that, that, that because of what is, because England is at the forefront of industrializing. That's the other thing too. A lot of people are saying, well, what's the secret sauce? And they sort of say, well, I guess, you know, England's got parliamentary democracy and they've got, you know, last say fair economics. And so I guess that's what gets you ahead, you know, that's kind of what all the debate is.
00:18:07 - that have on economic growth? What's the cause? What's the effect? That's kind of getting back up to your question, and I don't think that's a question that you can settle in one sense. You can't really prove anything here. So, but, you know, I would argue that, the, safe answer is that it, when I say safe answer, it's an answer that it's defensible. But there, you know, may be other things you can point out is that this liberalism was an example of a doctrine that allowed, people to justify sort of, a certain set of economic policies to justify a certain economic order that give, did give a certain, stability. And this is where, where people's need
00:18:48 - This is, of course, something that sociologists look a lot at and looked a lot at during the 19th century and early 20th century, and, and max of Eber being, of course, the giant here. and so you do need, there's this idea that you kind of believe in something, and, it's good if it's something that has functional value, and that, I don't wanna sort of just reduce it to that, but, you know, it's just kind of holds the idea of, you know, if you wanna use the word hegemony in the sense that Gramsci used it later in the 20th century, this idea that, well, you know, a state and staff needs an ideolog and a set of ideas, i i, I don't wanna use ideology just
00:19:31 - to make sense of, it, allows people to, support it, to feel part of it, to have a meaning in it. And so that's, I'd say in one sense what liberalism served, as sort of a kind of a, a civil religion of capitalism, if you wanna think of it that way. And that's a very necessary thing. and, and so in that sense, without liberalism, you might've had more instability, you might've had more revolution, you might've had more impediment, to economic growth, but it's probably not a cause of economic growth, but it does shape it and, and supports it. You know, that's a safe answer. Again, then you can get to all other, there's other debates you go on to.
00:20:10 - that's probably a pretty, I I'd say I would, I would be comfortable making that argument. So there's a lot of ground covered there, but that's, sort of how I would, you know, try to approach your question. So neoliberalism is, again, I'm not the one who's made this point, but liberalism, neoliberalism is a bit misnamed because it suggests that it's an update of liberalism, and it sort of sounds like that, in the sense that it, seems to be sort of hypercharged free market reliance and kind of hyper charge, minimal government. It's actually, but there's differences between the two. And I, and I argue that in Neoism is really a kind of a distinct ideology for a couple reasons.

"Contrasting Liberal and Neoliberal Ideologies: A Deep Dive into Economic Doctrine and Political Implications"

00:20:53 - one is that of course it's actually rather, mute on form of government. you know, liberalism did attempt to really sort of, at least nominally talk about, the, the sort of advantages of parliamentary democracy, for example. liberalism doesn't really, you know, other than elections, liberalism doesn't really have much of a political doctrine. And the other thing about it, even though it sort of purports to sort of just support free markets, and let's say fair government liberalism, nominally, again, liberalism sort of overlooked a lot of things in its own time, but liberalism and laissez fair was more about, okay, yes, we want government that supports markets,
00:21:34 - Whereas Nebel neoliberalism is explicitly about wiping away, any institutions or interest groupings that, sort of are that in any way, kind of either not, I won't even say antithetical, but in any way sort of constrained, and I would say this, I would put it this way, incu economic incumbents within the current marketplace environment. So, which is very different than what liberalism called for. So the idea, for example, you know, anti unionism, there was certainly a lot of anti unionism in England, but there was also under liberalism a recognition that, well, if they organized,
00:22:15 - and they ran in parliamentary democracies, and they changed policies to sort of account for, working class interests, you know, that was all right. Neoliberalism doesn't see that as a, right, right? It's just, you know, nope, let's just get, get rid of these things here. And the other thing about neoliberalism is, of course, it has a very clear documentary, set of evidence that shows where it came from. You know, so there's the famous, you know, Powell memorandum by Lewis Powell Chamber, US Chamber of Commerce, you know, where he lays out or here's the strategy. you know, so we've got, liberalism is a more organic thing in that sense. It's not sort of from one source, but, but, but neoliberalism clearly has clear roots in special
00:22:57 - which is not the same thing as being pro-market. and that also supports policies that go against, for example, the, you know, anti comp, anti-monopoly policies or pro-competition policies are not part of neoliberalism. Whereas they, they did in one sense come out of liberalism, classical liberalism, because, you know, there's notion that yes, you want perfect competition or comp competitive markets that guarantees yes, well, I guess we should do something about monopoly. and that's what kind of happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century where people said, actually, we do have to cut back monopoly because it interferes with the workings of markets. So neoliberalism is like, no, no problem. Let's you know that, which is odd.
00:23:37 - I considered definitely more of an ideology. that's more really, liberalism was definitely supported by business interests. It was consistent with business interest, but it also had a broader connotation that didn't always work in the interest of all businesses, particularly his policy got formulated based on it. Whereas ne Neo was clearly to me, and, and sort of a pro-business, you know, anti, well anti-union and, and, and anti-social welfare net, kind of ideology that also, by the way, has of course, you know, rolls back income redistribution policies, even though they might, and these are often,
00:24:19 - and economic growth, stability, neoliberalism would say, Nope, fine, let's have another tax cut. and increase in equality, right? Which is not necessarily good for economic growth. So yeah, that's a bit of a discourse, but that's how I would put neo liberalism. It's a very kind of different animal despite its name. You had, there was a postwar order, right? We had very high growth post World War, war, world War ii, excuse me, where you had a sort of very high growth. You had unions that were established in most developed countries, more or less, you know, the, in the US less than in places like England, for example, or places like France. I'll put aside the whole Cold War element that was there.

"The Evolution of Economic Structures: Power Dynamics, Social Wages, and the Shift from Keynesianism"

00:25:00 - and then you had this, so you had these sort of unions that were established. You had, yes, the rise now of the corporate form was the established form of business, and they were big, these were big companies, and big unions. And so you had this sort of order that came up in the seventies that came up in the fifties and sixties. Some people call it the Keynesian order, which was that, okay, well, we we're gonna have economic growth. We're gonna basically be pro-business. So we're, you know, we're not gonna have much income redistribution, but we're gonna have, you know, what was referred to as the social wage. That's the most important thing, right? So we're gonna have unions, big unions and big companies sorting out the trade-offs between price and wage levels, and we'll negotiate that
00:25:39 - And then where there are shortfalls, like people are not unionized or people aren't working we'll, have the government come in and, and sort of make up the gap. And that's what the social wage refers to, is not just whatever income people get, whether it's from a, a paid wage from a firm, or whether it's, transfer payments. And that's the whole welfare state that came out there. Of course, you also had the Keynesian ideology of, well, we have to, to do that. We want stable growth, we want high growth, we want stable growth, so we'll manage the business cycle. Now, that all began for various reasons to come apart in the late sixties and 1970s as a whole debate about why that is. There's a standard story about that, that I think is wrong. I won't get into that one. but,
00:26:22 - that you no longer, you had this, this sort of accord, that governed policy, and that governed sort of the big players in the economy that included union, representation of the working class, which is not necessarily the whole working class, right? So, and that now became, that was fine when you had steady growth, but then now you had a point where now you had sort of unsteady growth and in fact declining or diminishing or stagnant growth, and now you just had really the old power struggles that came up, you know, so big capital now said, you know, I don't really, you know, I actually don't really wanna, I, now it's costing me
00:27:04 - and, I'm not that interested in this anymore. And then maybe actually taxes are getting fairly high, although taxes had reduced dramatically throughout the fifties and sixties from their very high World War II levels, which is another story, right? So, you know, that that's ignored in this whole story. But the idea is that well, still tax levels are too high. I'd rather have more money for profit, less for taxes. So you had this kind of just standard conflict that came out, and in this case, you know, business was very organized, and I, you know, I think you could clearly say organize an ideology, and this is tied in with other social movements to sort of knock, really knock all this, back. and that's sort of the genesis of kind of,
00:27:47 - Because now what's happened is that you've now got a momentum on the other side. So in the fifties and sixties, well, going back to the Great Depression, but, and before, but mainly particularly a, after the Great Depression and the end of World War ii, you had at least tendency towards, okay, the social wage redistribution, labor capital, big labor capital, working together, sort of stable growth. And you now then start shift the momentum to actually, let's have, big agglomerations of capital and big agglomerations of wealth, clawing back money, you know, not redistributing downward, but re redistributing upward. That's the rather, sort of a sort
00:28:28 - And so, and yes, I mean, and one says you, I don't wanna simplify too much to say that it's the corporations that are in charge, but there's no question in that corporate, when you have big changes in, you know, and big accumulations of wealth, big accumulations of political power, both by very wealthy individuals, and by big corporations, well, and then they also really start basically, essentially managing the state apparatus, right? You know, I mean, there's, there's really, and we have representative democracy that doesn't really kind of represent, you know, you see this often with polling data. You know, representative democracy does not, for the most part, deliver what

"Convergence of Power: Analyzing the Economic and Political Dynamics of the East and West"

00:29:09 - That's, that's, that's a situation we're in. This is very demonstrable. And when you have that, then what happens is that yes, by definition, in a lot of ways, the power center moves away from state, the state, and then a democratic setting from the quote unquote will of the people towards these big interests. Of course, now we're getting more and more powerful economically and basically have less and less constraint. Now, whether this is gonna end well, is another question, but to get to your second question about sort of the Asia, so the other thing, but what's happening here, I think is it's, I, I actually take a bit of a different view than a lot of people take here, is that we have the Democratic West and the autocratic, sort of east, if you wanna call it
00:29:52 - getting a system more generally that is dominated by private or public private entities, even in China. So even in China. So, and I'll, I'll, I'll just, you know, so for example, now China, clearly, right, the state is still kind of central authority, but it works a lot through the, a variety of corporate entities. and many of these of course, are explicitly controlled by, the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese state. Some of them are not explicitly controlled that, and of course, it's an autocratic system. But then if you look at, for example, a country like the United States, and you look at, for example, where Google gets a lot of its money or Amazon gets auto, its money,
00:30:34 - or surveillance or, you know, like big tech gets a lot of these contracts, you know, Amazon, for example, controls. I think about, you know, 90% of the cloud space as I, something like that, very high amount of the cloud space. And of course, it makes a huge amount of money from, renting out cloud space to all manner of actors, including a lot of, from government. There's government tech contracts, government defense contracts, you know, financial arrangers. A lot of these are, there's a lot of state money that is going into private western companies. And then you do have to ask the, sort of legitimate question is like, well, you know, how much different? So I'm asking this as a provocative question. I'm not saying that they're exactly the same,
00:31:13 - the way the Chinese economy is, is, is ordered, and how much versus how the ameri I'll just focus on the American economy, how much the American economy is ordered. They both have big corporations, they have very close nexuses, between government, the state, between parties as well, democratic and, and Republican party, right? in the United States and the Communist Party in China. So very close. Next is they look different, they look nominally, right? We have just Chinese companies that are, you know, have, you know, major influences or major shareholdings or what have you, by the, by the Chinese government. But they look different than they formally speaking. But practically speaking, I think one has to question, and then as you go back to my prior point about
00:31:57 - basically the will of the people as measured by polls, if just take that, you do, my point here is not to say, I'm not trying to draw equivalence here. So I don't wanna say, okay, well, you know, I've just said that China US equivalent. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that you, you really actually have to look at actually what's happening in terms of the operations of, of, of government and non-government entities in these places. And I think what you see, if you look at that is that there's a lot more convergence. And I'm not saying this is positive, you know, but, but there's a lot more convergence in the way the economies and the political, authorities operate across the world. so actually, you know,
00:32:34 - geopolitical shift that's going on. There's an economic shift that's going on. There's a real thing there. But institutionally, you, you can make some arguments that there's a lot more convergence than one would suggest, or that the typical rhetoric suggests, suggests like, well, what happens when Asia's dominant to our democracy? It's like, you know, I, I'm just, so, I'm more of an empiricist that way. It's like, let's look at what's actually happening. When you look at what's happening in the ground. I don't think it fits very well into these categories. Again, I, I'm, I'm agnostic in the sense that I, you know, there's a lot to study here. I don't have, I don't think everything's, I, I don't think, think west is identical to the East, for example. I'm not saying that, but it's, more similar than you might think. So I think actually, this is a question I gave some thought to,

"Meritocracy and Its Illusions: A Critique of Class Dynamics in Post-War Britain"**

00:33:16 - I wrote about it in the book, of course. So, and I think in some ways, I mean, young is extremely prescient, but in some ways, if you go back to when he wrote the book, 1957, we're talking about the kind of heyday of the Keynesian order I just talked about. and yet, you know, and you're talking about, in his case, he coined the term meritocracy, where you're talking about there's this really technocratic order, right? Where formal education, formal credentials, formal institutions have become the gatekeepers of who has access to resources. and,
00:33:59 - where England, of course, is shifting to a services economy. It's manufacturing sector, still robust, but declining and of course, will kind of crash out rather spectacularly, spectacularly as you get to the seventies and eighties. and this whole order about, so, and that means that unions the working class, are getting, a lot less influential e even and, you know, as well, they have less leverage. they're less needed as you get internationalized economies. And I think in some ways what young saw, and again, this is not to diminish his prescient, I mean, it's pretty remarkable, how prescient his book is,
00:34:38 - you know, sometimes you see things in plain sight and you don't really see them. And so it was easy in that time to see, it's like, well, there's a new order, you know? yeah, Britain's not quite the world empire than it, than it, than it was, although, yeah, and Suez, the Suez crisis pretty much put the nail in that coffin, but still, it's hard to give up the notion that you're an empire, you know? And always will be. So, but you could still say, well, we're prosperous, we have a sort of a good social order, have a good economic order, we have growth. and, and of course we also don't have the old, baggage of the class system, you know, which is false.
00:35:19 - And I think, you know, in one sense, a young saw through that, he sort of said, well, actually, fundamentally what's happening is just the way you get in to the system is has changed, but it's still the haves and the have nots. Like, that's still the fundamental thing. And, you know, and you know, you, and it was just remarkable that he could sort of see that, well, what happens? Let's just, he just sort of did, I think a reductio out of sur He's sort of saying, well, what happens now when you have the, the North, for example, which is the center of manufacturing and that's declining, and the south, which is the center of finance, and that's, and services, and that's, sort of rising what happens, right?
00:36:01 - of the industrial revolution, and now they're shifting once more to the, the north being, poor again or slowly becoming poor. What happens, you know, when those people, if you just carry it out to its logical extreme, what happens? you get, you know, regional conflict. And the same thing happens on class conflict. It sort of comes like, well, what happens now when any rec, and this is kind of obvious in one sense, because he's a Labor party activist, I think you could see that is that this, this sort of, conceit that, well, it doesn't matter. Everyone can get education if they want it. Well, it's not really true. We all know that, right? If I, if I'm come out of poverty in the working class, I don't have, by definition, this is something that meritocracy doesn't really address.
00:36:42 - it's just all based on merit and everyone has the same access. But of course, we know that's not true. That, you know, where you start very much affects where you end. That's, that's the reality, I think. I think he saw that. And, and what's interesting, I I, I didn't mention this in the book, but I, I was thinking about it. I don't know if you're familiar with a film called I'm All Right, Jack. It's a 1959 film. I, I recommend, it's very funny. It's, Peter Sellers is in one of the roles, and it's basically about, sort of, is a union leader, and there's a, a company, that, and there's a strike involved, and there's a, but it's basically very, it's a black comedy, really that shows that basically everybody is corrupt, you know,

"Deconstructing Meritocracy: The Illusions of Class and Success in Mid-20th Century Britain"

00:37:25 - The, companies are corrupt. Of course, he's got the class system in there because these are sort of arms manufacturers, or one of them's an arm manufacturers, and they're sort of like, they, they have these, these shady deals between the, and in fact, the guy, well, the other guy, the guy who's the main protagonist, I can't remember the name of the actor. He's a sort of naive person who's in the upper class, and he's trying to find a position now that he has, you know, ready to go and find a position. And he, and he decides he's really, you know, he tries to find jobs, and of course, he's, he's kind of a, he's sort of a, a naive innocent. And so anyway, he can't, they, they can't place him any place because he just speaks the truth about things, you know? and, and so, but he finally, well, manufacturing's where they kind of place him, but he, he wants to be a worker, you know?
00:38:06 - but it's interesting. This is 1959. This film came out young, wrote in 1957. Everything seems to be all good on the surface of British society, but this film really shows how cynical, like people are saying, like, you know, what's really going on? Like, is, is there really, you know, what does it mean to be working class? What does it mean to be, well, what does it mean? What does anything mean? And there's a final scene basically that involves, you know, money being thrown around a panel program at the BBC, and everybody is just running for the money. and then sort of saying, this is what it's all about. Grab what you can when you can, doesn't matter what the coits are. And Malcolm Ridge actually plays himself in that film,
00:38:46 - of the intelligentsia, the sort of popular intelligentsia of the time, sending up that as well. It's like, so the keepers of the meritocracy, the sort of intelligentsia is also set up. And so anyway, I mentioned that simply to say that the times that he was writing at, I think a lot of people didn't see what he saw, but if you stood back, you could sort of see there's something rotten about this order. It doesn't really work the way it says it works. it's not really about the best person winning, and if it's not about the best person winning, what happens, and I think young was sort of being tongue in cheek,
00:39:27 - these things, and I'm going back to earlier things, like even things like meaning as well, if you don't address like what's the meaning of these things, if you don't address helping the haves and the have nots, actually trying to help them actively, as opposed to just having a system which supposedly sorts out people according to their ability. If you don't do that, you're gonna end up in a lot of trouble. and that's why, again, I don't pull down his preference at all, but in some ways you can sort of see, it's like Jonathan Swift in some ways as well, you know, as another political satire. He's one of those people who you sort of look at, it's like, yeah, actually that's pretty obvious, but you saw it and you put it in such a way that I could see it. But see, nobody really believed him when he wrote,
00:40:07 - because the fifties and the sixties, despite what was sort of lurking beneath, seemed to be prosperous. And the system seemed to work, and it seemed that meritocracy was working you, yeah, you get a college degree or a university degree, you can get a place in the system. It seemed like it was working. but I think young just saw that it wasn't, and I think it's, I think it's kind of as simple as that. It really is the, this basic notion of haves and haves, nots. You know, if you don't, you have to do something about that. You have to address that in any society. And meritocracy doesn't address it. It just sort of codifies it and formalizes it. And, and, and y pointed out that that's, that's gonna just lead to the same little trouble you've gotten throughout the ages of history.
00:40:48 - It was an interesting question to think about, but I think that's, in some sense, I think, in one sense, in retrospect, his prognosis was rather obvious, but not at the time, unlike young, didn't try to make predictions. I'm more of a, you know, scholar, more of an observer. I more try to sort of point out, kind of what I, what I see, and then I try to, in a sense, think about, well, you know, just where that might lead, but without predicting, I'm not particularly optimistic, I will say that, but I won't say to get into that in terms of how we're going. And so in the final chapter of the book is where I pull all these things together, and I sort of really talk about in terms of

"Confronting the Limits: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Economic Change and Systemic Challenges"

00:41:30 - and again, I'm not unique in saying this, but I think what's, what modern, what modern, what the modern economy, modern economic change has shown is in the past, it's shown overcoming of limits, particularly material limits, but it's also shown, I'd say, a very much an ignorance, or you could even say denial of other limits, that are sort of, kind of inherent in the system. So some of them are, are well known. I talk about, limits to resources, which have been been talked about for a long time in the context of climate change. But this came up in the seventies with the limits to growth, movement.
00:42:11 - that, you know, the classical economics and neoclassical economics is like, well, we're just smart. We're so clever, we will invent a way out of these limits. And, and in one sense, it seems to be that that's what's happening. That has happened. We have like, you know, well increased agricultural productivity when agricultural limits seem to be reached and so forth. But on the other hand, you know, it seems to be that we're in a systemic, earth systems crisis, right? So maybe we've pushed past some limits that are on the surface, but we're sort of, kind of coming up against and ignoring deeper limits that are within, so that, you know, so I talk about sort of limits, to the, that we're approaching there, that saying, okay, I think it's pretty clear
00:42:54 - where that's going. It's hard to, it's hard to know. I don't go straight to, you know, climate change catastrophe, for example. But, you know, there's clearly a lot of problems, and I talk really about other limits as well. So a lot of ways, the final chapter in particular, I think if, to simplify, I think a lot of it is about limits. So not just limits. This is the interdisciplinary part of it as well. Not just limits the resources, the technical limits and the economic limits and the sort of narrow economic sense, but the limits to knowing, for example. So, you know, we have a conceit, and this came out, this was, you know, this came outta the French Revolution as well as the industrial evolution that we have this, and, and the enlightenment before this conceit that, well, everything's a technical problem and we can solve everything technically,
00:43:33 - and we can solve the material problem, then we're okay. And what's happening now, we're finding that we're getting limits to what we know, but we think we know limits to meaning. So we don't really care about, meaning, we don't really care about the non-material factors or material factors, and we don't think there's no real consequence of that. We think that can be sort of a sideline, you know, well, that's the churches to deal with that, or, you know, whatever the special interest groups or the spiritual communities, we don't, that's, but that's sort of a separate thing. It's no longer central. We don't have to worry about that. But these are all limits, that we're reaching, and including limits to human psychology. I mean, again, human beings need to have meaning. They need to have belong, and they need to have, you know, so these are, these are needs
00:44:15 - as the moderate economic systems don't address. in some sense, they're not meant to address them. I, I, I admit that, but you know, it's, there's the notion that you can't just ignore them. So, so I'd say in terms of the findings of the book, I mean, I'm, I can't really in one sense boil it down totally, but I think a lot of it, what I, I try to say at the end is that we have these real limits that are going back to interdisciplinary work that are not just to be addressed by the economics profession, but by sociology, philosophy, psychology, political science, political theory. you know, these are, these are, these are things that we have to, that, you know, we have the disciplinary tools to,
00:44:57 - what they're about, and what's going on. And I'd say in terms of a research agenda, this is pretty vague in a sense, but if I were gonna write another book about just kind of the present and perhaps thinking about, going forward, I would focus on kind of what I focused, I would extend what I did in the last chapter, which is, well, here are the limits that we're facing, these various limits, not just material limits and technological limits, but, you know, psychological, social, political, geopolitical, et cetera. and, and epistemological, if I wanna use that fancy word. and you know, and sort of let's sort of spell out more what that actually,

"Exploring the Interconnectedness of Human Change and Societal Dynamics: A Call for Integrated Research"

00:45:36 - Let's get more in depth about how that looks, what's going on right now, how it's sort of cha changing the human being, changing the society, the human collective psychology. How is it changing that, stressing it, aiding it as well? I don't wanna say it's all bad, but, you know, where are we with that and, and kind of maybe where do we need to go with that and in an integrated fashion, you know? So, that's a bit broad. but, you know, that would be say, lessons learned and sort of research agenda, you know, that could be separate research agendas. I'm particularly interested in the cross-disciplinary interdisciplinary aspects. So I would like to sort of see a kind of a concerted effort, not necessarily just by me,
00:46:20 - So, yeah, that's, that's sort of my takeaway. If, if I could sum it up.

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