通往自由之路：经济学与美好社会
https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Freedom-Economics-Good-Society/dp/132407437X
作者：约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨（作者）——2024 年 4 月 23 日
来自世界顶级经济学家之一，令人信服的个人和经济自由新愿景。
我们是一个从人民必须自由的信念中诞生的国家。但自上个世纪中叶以来，这个想法已被利用。政治右翼势力以自由的言论为幌子为剥削行为辩护，导致制药公司随意收取药品费用，大型科技公司不受监督，政客自由煽动叛乱，公司自由污染，等等。我们是怎么走到这一步的？我们是谁的自由——我们应该——考虑吗？
在《自由之路》一书中，诺贝尔奖得主约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨剖析了美国当前的经济体系及其背后的政治意识形态，揭露了两者共同的失败。“自由”和不受约束的市场只带来了一系列危机：金融危机、阿片类药物危机和不平等危机。虽然一小部分人积累了可观的财富，但大多数人的工资却停滞不前。自由和不受约束的市场剥削了消费者、工人和环境。这些失败助长了民粹主义运动，他们认为自由意味着放弃公民之间的任何义务。随着这些运动的壮大，它们现在对真正的经济和政治自由构成了真正的威胁。
作为总统的经济顾问和世界银行的首席经济学家，斯蒂格利茨亲眼目睹了这些深刻的变化。正如他所说，失败源于精英们对“新自由主义实验”的坚定不移的奉献。斯蒂格利茨直言不讳地批评了弗里德里希·哈耶克和米尔顿·弗里德曼等巨人，揭露了我们政治和经济生活中的既定观念的真面目：扭曲的观念在使极少数人致富的同时，也撕裂了社会结构。
《通向自由之路》开辟了新局面，展示了经济学（包括斯蒂格利茨在其中发挥了重要作用的最新进展）如何重新定义人们如何看待自由以及国家在二十一世纪社会中的作用。斯蒂格利茨借鉴当代哲学家的著作，解释了一种更深刻、更人道的评估自由的方式——一种仔细考虑当一个人的自由与另一个人的自由发生冲突时该怎么做的方式。如果我们要创建一个人人都能蓬勃发展的创新社会，我们必须重新构想我们现有的经济和法律体系，并接受包括监管和投资在内的集体行动形式。这个任务十分紧迫，斯蒂格利茨的最新著作对于那些致力于美国理想的人们来说是必读书籍，即建立一个为所有人带来福祉、机会和有意义的自由的经济和政治体系。
The Road To Freedom: Economics and the Good Society
https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Freedom-Economics-Good-Society/dp/132407437X
by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Author) – April 23 2024
From one of the world’s leading economists, a compelling new vision of personal and economic freedom.
We are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we—and should we—be thinking about?
In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America’s current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. “Free” and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom.
As an economic advisor to presidents and as chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz has witnessed these profound changes firsthand. As he argues, the failures follow from the elites’ unshakeable dedication to “the neoliberal experiment.” Explicitly taking on giants such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Stiglitz exposes accepted ideas about our political and economic life for what they are: twisted visions that tear at the social fabric while they enrich the very few.
The Road to Freedom breaks new ground, showing how economics—including recent advances in which Stiglitz has played such an important role—reframes how to think about freedom and the role of the state in a twenty-first century society. Drawing on the work of contemporary philosophers, Stiglitz explains a deeper, more humane way to assess freedoms—one that considers with care what to do when one person’s freedom conflicts with another’s. We must reimagine our existing economic and legal systems and embrace forms of collective action, including regulation and investment, if we are to create an innovative society in which everyone can flourish. The task could not be more urgent, and Stiglitz’s latest book is essential reading for those committed to the American ideal of an economic and political system that delivers well-being, opportunity, and meaningful freedoms for all.
YouTube 通往自由之路：经济学和美好社会
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhGkgb1dwc
LSE 2024年5月3日
我们很抱歉出现了技术问题，部分音频没有录制下来。
欢迎参加这次特别活动，诺贝尔奖获得者约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨将谈论他的新书，这是对资本主义与自由关系的重大重新评估。
自由是人类的核心价值。但很少有自由倡导者问过这个想法的真正含义。”我们在考虑谁的自由——我们应该考虑吗？当一个人的自由以牺牲另一个人的自由为代价时会发生什么？是否应该允许公司的自由以现在的方式侵犯个人的自由？斯蒂格利茨与哈耶克和弗里德曼等新自由主义巨头展开较量，从右翼手中夺回自由的语言。他指出，“自由”——不受监管的——市场非但不能促进增长和企业发展，反而会减少大多数人的经济机会，并将财富从多数人手中转移到少数人手中——无论是个人还是国家。他指出，新自由主义经济学及其隐含的道德体系如何以令人惊讶的方式影响我们的法律和社会自由，从财产和知识产权到教育和社交媒体。
发言人：
约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨教授
主席：
玛丽·卡尔多教授
详细信息/
出席：https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2024/04/...
介绍
好的，欢迎大家，我们很高兴能邀请到乔·斯蒂格利茨，观众的爆满证明了这一点，呃，这次活动是为了庆祝或听取他的新书介绍，这本书看起来非常令人兴奋和着迷，《通往自由之路》，由 LSC 的项目主办，名为“凝聚力资本主义”，由开放社会资助，嗯，我想大家都知道乔·斯蒂格利茨是谁，他是诺贝尔奖获得者，他是美国经济顾问委员会的成员，他是世界银行的高级经济学家，但实际上这个房间如此拥挤的原因
是因为乔在这个非常疯狂的世界中是一个非常理智的批判性和实质性的声音，所以我真的很期待听到他要说的话
约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨
非常感谢玛丽，最后我会试着让你改变你的中心的名字，进步资本主义中心的名字，所以，到最后你会明白的，很高兴再次回到这里，主持我的最新著作，我准备了一些幻灯片，希望有助于讨论，自由和自由与经济体系的关系已经成为大西洋两岸讨论的焦点，部分原因是俄罗斯入侵乌克兰，一个国家的自由真的处于危险之中，但更促使我写这本书的部分原因是疫情期间发生的事情，当时人们戴口罩非常重要并接种疫苗，但右翼人士说，右翼人士说，这剥夺了我的自由，作为一名经济学家，我的反应是，他们不戴口罩或不接种疫苗的自由剥夺了我生存的自由，或者不住院的自由，或者不感染疾病的自由，在任何情况下，任何理性国家的人都会说生存权比携带 AK-47 的权利更重要，但同样的想法也延伸到诸如污染权之类的概念，威胁他人健康生活的权利，你知道这是有权衡的，但社会必须做出判断，但我认为在每一种情况下都很容易，但我想说，有很多情况有些困难，有些情况非常困难，我接下来要谈的是分配，在累进税再分配的概念中存在权衡。把钱从某人手中夺走，实际上是把钱给了别人，自由主义者声称他们有权获得自己的收入，而税收实际上剥夺了这一权利，因此税收是一种强制形式，它限制了他们的预算，限制了他们的机会，但与此同时，这种再分配税收正在扩大其他人的机会，当然，这意味着我们必须做出判断，判断就是说，如果从杰夫·贝佐斯或伊隆·马斯克手中拿走钱，他们的行为会受到显著影响吗？如果他们只有 300 亿美元而不是 3000 亿美元，我认为答案很清楚，如果他们只能得到 300 亿美元，他们的行为就会和现在的 3000 亿美元一样好，他们的行为无论是好是坏都不会受到显著影响，但与此同时，这笔钱会如果这些钱被有效地用于教育投资，就会产生巨大的变化或研究或向低收入者转移收入，但实际上不平等也会带来外部因素，因此不平等的减少可以使整个社会变得更好，这实际上是我早期一本书《不平等的代价》的论点，在某些情况下，纠正不平等的政策实际上可以使整个社会变得更好，这导致了这样一种观念，即某些强制措施，例如强迫人们纳税，实际上可以解放所有人，我举的交通信号灯就是最有力的例子，如果没有交通信号灯，交通信号灯就是一种强制形式，你不能通过十字路口，直到绿灯亮起，它就强迫你不要过去，所以这是对你的自由的真正限制，但如果没有交通信号灯，你无论如何都无法移动，网格网格锁，所以一个简单的规定，说你必须轮流，这是一个规定，但你必须轮流，实际上可以让每个人最终都更自由，就像我定义的那样，扩大他们的机会集，因为他们实际上可以跨越交叉点，所以这个论点实际上是更多的公共产品，比如基础研究搜索对基础设施教育和健康的投资可以扩大所有人的机会，嗯，明显的例子是另一个明显的例子是资助mRNA平台，这是我们在美国和世界各地非常成功的疫苗的基础，最有效的疫苗，我们可能不会在这里，但对于创建该mRNA平台的基础研究，但如果你要做那种研究，你必须资助它，如果你用税收来资助它，经济学家会说，在没有你知道问题的情况下，这就是所谓的自由作家问题，每个人都希望其他人做出贡献，自由人可以搭便车，所以你必须有纳税的强制，但这种强制允许所有人我们可以更自由地生活，或者活得更长，所以，这里的概念是，强制可以让人自由，而且有些强制协调，政府的集体行动解决了协调问题，只需付出很少的努力，就能维持协调，带来巨大的好处，最明显的例子是，我们必须协调你在道路的哪一侧行驶，如果你访问某些国家，你知道他们还没有解决这个问题，如果你这样做，你就会知道生活是什么样的，你会不断面临风险，但我们已经在英国解决了这个问题，在美国，你解决问题的方式不同，我不明白你为什么用错误的方式解决问题，但只要你呆在这两个地方中的一个，它就会起作用，但不要试图在另一个地方开车，但关键是，解决协调问题实际上会以非常重要的方式冻结我们这涉及到更广泛的背景，所以这就是剥削在实践中出现的地方，监管不足的剥削市场以剥削为标志，你知道你每天都能看到市场力量，金融领域的剥削，那些掠夺性的贷款人滥用信用卡实践，现在你知道每天都有新的骗局，至少在美国，最新的骗局是每个人都想拥有太阳能电池板，所以现在有很多掠夺性的太阳能电池板供应商，他们与华尔街合作，向你提供贷款来安装太阳能电池板，只收取你 30% 左右的费用，当你不付款时，费用就会翻倍，我的意思是，这是华尔街发现的一种新的掠夺性行为，利用他人，再次，这里有一个权衡取舍但我再次认为这是一个权衡，我们知道如何做到这一点，也就是说，嗯，哪个更重要，企业剥削他人的权利，还是他人不被剥削的权利，嗯，垄断企业对市场力量本能的剥削限制了消费者的机会，嗯，再次重申，这是广泛的共识，但我不想说这是普遍的，嗯，我在金融部门的朋友不同意，他们认为他们应该被允许剥削他人，但嗯，不知何故，它会从他们身上渗透到社会的其他人，我认为这扭曲了经济，我认为他们都是道德和效率的依据，可以限制他们的行为，嗯，这里有一点需要注意，我之前在我的亲社会行为介绍中提到过，有时候会有非强制性的方式以亲社会的方式改变行为，嗯，你知道，嗯，这些是现代行为经济学的见解，嗯，我的下一本书是 继续讨论这个话题，所以我希望我能再来一次，嗯，经济学中的其中一个假设是，偏好是外生的，决定了你进入一个固定偏好的生活，不会改变，但当然，我们中没有人真的相信，作为父母，我们花费了大量的精力试图让我们的孩子变得乖巧，嗯，我们有时会失败，嗯，但我们至少相信，我们对偏好和我们希望我们的孩子成为什么样的人有一些影响，作为老师，这是我们试图做的事情之一，不仅仅是把知识灌输到你的大脑里，嗯，它实际上是试图改变你对世界的看法，嗯，你认为什么是对的，什么是错的，嗯，这与上个世纪柯南、泰勒和特西主导的行为经济学非常不同，后者关注的是我们如何有偏好但是，因为我们必须快速思考，所以我们通常不会按照那些深层的偏好行事，在这种情况下，我们的社交互动实际上会改变我们的偏好，我只想说两点，有时我们成功地改变了它们，使我们不像经济学家那样自私，假设最后通牒游戏、独裁者游戏、实验室实验和其他情况下有很多证据表明，人们并不像经济学家那样自私，假设有些人真的很自私，比如唐纳德·特朗普，不要误会我的意思，所以不是每个人都是这样的，但大多数人都是这样的，当我们想到自己时，我们不会认为自己像唐纳德·特朗普那样卑鄙，自私贪婪等等，所以我们不想这样看待自己，希望我们不是，所以如果我们能够产生亲社会行为，我们可以部分地内化一些外部因素，所以我们可以，你知道，你去瑞士，人们不会，垃圾，你知道，通过高额罚款来强制执行，嗯，这真的在他们的行为中被内化了，嗯，第二点，我没有太多时间谈论，那就是经济和政治制度，经济和政治制度实际上影响着我们的行为，嗯，如果你有一个奖励自私贪婪的经济制度，嗯，短期主义，你们这些贪婪、自私、短期的人，嗯，这真的是我对新自由资本主义的批评之一，米尔顿·弗里德曼等人把它捧上了神坛，嗯，事实上，你知道，他写了一篇论文，说公司的首席执行官应该最大化股东价值，不管它对环境、剥削工人或利用消费者的影响，你知道，这一切都是为了最大化股东价值，无论你能逃脱什么，他的观点是不这样做是不道德的，我认为这是错误的，而且经济体系对人们的塑造有着重要的影响，这里有一些微妙的微妙之处，关于同侪压力和社会制裁之间的区别，制裁是社会胁迫，但我注意到我的时间不多了，所以让我继续说，再说一点，当我们考虑塑造媒体观点时，我们必须意识到媒体扮演着非常重要的角色，它们帮助创造你可能会说的元叙事议程，我们如何看待世界，我的一个担忧是，今天媒体的控制权不成比例地掌握在非常富有的人手中，因此，传达的信息元叙事在英国被扭曲了，至少你有一个非常强大的英国广播公司，你知道，它可能资金不足，但你和瑞典有很多信任，瑞典也有类似的公共媒体美国我们没有任何可比性，有证据表明，强大的媒体实际上创造了公共媒体，有助于在社会上建立更多的信任，这真的很重要，不仅仅是为了确保元叙事不被少数高层人士控制，而且是为了加强社会信任，信任对于经济体系的运作非常重要，让我继续分析这本书的第二部分，即什么样的经济体系最能为大多数人提供最多的自由，在这里，显然，我试图比较两个系统，一方面是新自由主义资本主义的讽刺画，但实际上不是讽刺画，另一方面是我想添加的倡导某种形式的进步资本主义的体系，嗯，这背后有几个定理和几个基本思想，嗯，我自己之前研究的一部分就是，嗯，我们知道不受约束的市场不会带来有效的结果，而且这不仅仅是在我谈到的具有外部性的世界中，而且更根本的是，每当有不完善的信息或不完整的火星时，嗯，火星总是没有效率的你效率不高，嗯，我曾经说过，换句话说，亚当·斯密提出的观点，他并没有真正相信，追求利益会像一只看不见的手一样，导致社会的福祉，嗯，这是错误的，嗯，假设是，不受约束的市场不会带来社会的福祉，嗯，我简洁地说，看不见的手之所以看不见，是因为它不存在，嗯，嗯，重点是，米尔顿·弗里德曼认为股东价值最大化会再次带来社会福利，这是错误的，嗯，有趣的是，与此同时，弗里曼在 N 推动了这一进程，他在 1970 年的《纽约时报》杂志上写了一篇著名的文章，嗯，我，我，一个人和与桑迪·格曼一起工作，都在写文章，证明股东价值最大化并没有导致社会的福祉，但我犯了一个错误，我们犯了一个错误，我们在《QJ》和《金融杂志》上发表了我们的论文，他在《纽约时报》上发表了他的论文，你认为哪本杂志更受关注，嗯，他赢得了公开辩论，我认为我们赢得了知识辩论，事实上，有一次我在芝加哥举办了一个研讨会，弥尔顿在那里，他说你错了，我说我的假设或分析哪里错了，他说我知道你错了，我们继续这样讨论一段时间，然后很明显，它并没有取得多大进展，进化论，嗯，同样，我，我，我，我之前提到过他的书《自由选择》，我说真的，他应该把他的书称为《自由利用》，因为那真的是他所提倡的，嗯，hyx进化论，同样有缺陷，甚至虽然这有点微妙，但他的主张是，进化系统动力学将导致更好的结果，更有效的结果，但是当他在 LSC 时，他写了更多的数学文章，随着年龄的增长，他变得越来越空洞，他从来没有证明过这个结果，显然原因是它不是真的，我们现在知道进化没有任何理论，我已经证明了这一点，事实上，很容易证明进化过程可能导致非常糟糕的结果，如果我们能够更好地引导它，我们就能得到更好的结果，实际上，我在书中指出，新自由资本主义甚至可能不是一种可持续的制度安排，正如我在幻灯片的最后一点所说的那样，新自由资本主义是一个可能吞噬自身，因为没有强大的政府，你就无法维持竞争，因为从环境上讲，它不可持续，你会污染环境，整个世界都处于危险之中，分裂导致政治上不可持续，它们破坏了信任，没有信任，市场经济就无法运作，你不能像唐纳德·特朗普那样，把每一份合同都告上法庭，他和承包商签订的每一份合同，就像我之前说的，它鼓励破坏信任的特质，从而破坏经济可持续性，所以这就涉及到一个关键问题，什么样的制度更好，什么样的社会最有可能维持政治自由和民主，所以这里真的是系统分析的关键，新自由主义认为，解放经济，取消监管，减少经济规模国家完全控制不受约束的市场将导致高增长，涓滴经济学确保所有人都能共享利益，但这并没有奏效，它催生了民粹主义，而民粹主义又催生了威权主义，而目前的环境正走向一种21世纪的法西斯主义，所以另一种选择是我对进步资本主义的看法，首先让我说一下，有些人说，资本主义这个词本身就是一个矛盾体，你知道这两个词不相容，我想说的是，在一个大社会，一个大经济体中，你必须有权力分散，你可以集中决策，但你知道，我们现在知道，这是行不通的，所以你必须有权力分散，这意味着你必须在我们的社会中有不同的单位，而使用资本主义只是提醒你，在社会中，会有一些单位，在一个有组织的社会追求利润最大化，你知道制造钢铁可能有意义，让一个利润最大化的公司制造钢铁，但我们真的应该考虑一个更丰富的制度安排生态，嗯，政府是集体行动的一部分，但还有其他形式的集体行动，嗯，工会是一种收集形式
The road to freedom: economics and the good society
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhGkgb1dwc
LSE 2024年5月3日
We apologise there was a technical issue and part of the audio was not recorded.
Join us at this special event at which Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz will talk about his new book, that is a major reappraisal of the relationship between capitalism and freedom.
Freedom is a core human value. But few of freedom’s advocates ask what the idea really means.” Whose freedom are we – should we be – thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? Should the freedoms of corporations be allowed to impinge upon those of individuals in the ways they now do? Stiglitz takes on giants of neoliberalism such as Hayek and Friedman to reclaim the language of freedom from the right. He shows that ‘free’ – unregulated – markets, far from promoting growth and enterprise, in fact lessen economic opportunities for majorities and siphon wealth from the many to the few – both individuals and countries. He shows how neoliberal economics and its implied moral system have impacted our legal and social freedoms in surprising ways, from property and intellectual rights, to education and social media.
Speakers:
Professor Joseph E Stiglitz
Chair:
Professor Mary Kaldor
Full details/attend: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2024/04/...
Introduction
okay well welcome everybody it's very exciting that we have Joe siglett here and the fullness of the audience is a testament to that uh this event is to celebrate or to hear about his new book which looks really exciting and fascinating the road to freedom and it's hosted by the program at LSC called cohesive capitalism which is funded by the open Society um I think everybody knows who Joe stiglitz is he's a Nobel Prize winner he was an a member of the US Council of economic advisors he was the senior Economist at the World Bank but actually the reason this room is so full is because Joe is a very sane critical and substantial voice in a very mad world and so I'm really looking forward to hear what he has to say
Joseph E Stiglitz
well thank you very much uh Mary and and uh I'm going to try by the end to have you change the name of your uh Center the the center for Progressive capitalism uh so uh but you'll you'll understand more uh by the end and it's really nice to be uh back here again uh uh hosting my uh newest book um the um I prepared some slides to to hopefully help the discussion well the discussion of freedom and and Liberty uh and the relationship to the economic system uh have moved uh up front and center in in
discussions on both sides of the Atlantic and it's uh partly because of the Russian invasion of uh Ukraine uh where the freedom of uh a country is really been put uh in Jeopardy um but uh what part even more motivated my writing the book was uh what happened during the pandemic where uh it was really important for people to be masked and get vaccinated but the right said uh people on the right uh said uh that's taking away my freedom and uh as an economist my reaction was their freedom not to be masked or not to uh be vaccinated was taking away my freedom to live uh or not
to be hospitalized or not to get the disease those cases anybody in any Trade tradeoffs rational country would say the right to live is more important than the right to carry in AK-47 but that same idea then extends to Notions like uh the right to pollute
threatens others right to live a healthy life and uh that you know there is a tradeoff but again um and Society has to make judgments but uh in each of these cases I think those are easy but I I want to say that there are a lot of cases uh that are somewhat more difficult and some that are very difficult um the one I'm going to talk about next is um distribution there are trade tradeoffs in
um no the notion of progressive taxation redistribution you're taking money away from somebody and effectively giving it to somebody else and uh Libertarians claim that they have the right to their income and uh taxation is taking away that right um actually uh and and therefore taxation is a form of Co coercion uh and it is restricting their budget uh constraints and therefore their opportunity set but uh at the same Judgements time uh this redistributive taxation is expanding uh the opportunity set of
others and uh uh what that means of course is uh we have to make judgments and the judgment is say taking money away from Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk will there Behavior be significantly affected if they have only 30 billion rather than 300 billion and you know the answer I think is pretty clear uh they would have been as repati if they only could get 30 billion as they are getting 300 billion and uh that that their behavior you know for good and for ill would not be affected uh uh significantly but at the same time that money will make could make an enormous difference if it is used productively for investments in education or research or um transfers of income to those uh with uh low um uh uh uh income but
actually uh there are externalities that come even Inequality from uh inequality so the reduction of inequality can make all of societ Society better off and that was really uh the thesis of one of my earlier books called the price of inequality that that actually in some cases uh uh policies to redress inequalities can actually make all Society uh better off and that uh leads to the notion that some coercion like forcing people to pay taxes can be
actually freeing for everybody uh and the example that I give
Traffic lights that illustrates this I think most forcefully is traffic lights in the absence uh you know traffic lights are a form of coercion you can't proceed across an intersection until it's green it's coercing you not to go and so it's a real restriction on your freedom but in the absence of the traffic light you couldn't move anyway there would be grid grid lock and so a simple regulation that says you have to take turns it's a regulation but it you have to take turns actually can make everybody in the end Freer in the way that I've defined it which is expand their opportunity set because they actually can go across uh the intersection so this argument uh is actually more general public goods like basic research search investments in infrastructure education and health can expand the opportunity sex for all um the obvious example is another obvious example is uh financing uh uh the MRNA platform which was the basis of the
very successful vaccines that we had in in the United States and around the world the most effective ones uh we might not be here but for that basic research that created that mRNA platform but if you're going to have that kind of research you have to fund it if you fund it out of Taxation again economists will say in the absence of you know the problem is what is called the free riter problem uh everybody would like others to contribute and Free People free ride on that and so you have to have the coercion of paying taxes but that coercion allows all of us to be freeer to live uh or live longer lives than we otherwise would be so um the the notion here is that coercion uh can be freeing and there are uh some kinds of Coercion coordination uh uh uh where a government Collective action solves a coordination
problem where coordination can be sustained with the very little effort
with enormous benefits and the obvious example is we have to coordinate on what side of the road you drive on uh if you
visit certain uh countries you know they haven't solved that problem yet and uh if you do that you know what life is like you're at constant uh risk but we've solved that problem in England in the US you solve the problem differently I can't figure out why you solved it in the wrong way but uh uh it it works uh as long as you stay in one one of those two places but and and don't try to drive in the other place um but uh the point is that that actually solving coordination problems actually freeze Us in very uh important ways and that goes to a a a broader set of of
um context um so that's where exploitation comes in um in practice uh un and underregulation exploitation markets are are marked by uh exploitation um you know you see it uh every day Market power uh the exploitation in the financial sector uh of those who were the predatory uh uh lending the Abus of credit card practices uh now that um you know constantly every day there's a new scam uh at least in the United States the latest scam is everybody wants to have solar panels uh so uh there are now a host of predatory
providers of solar panels where working together with Wall Street they make you a loan to put on the solar panel only charging you 30% or so and and uh uh when you don't make your payment doubling that I mean it's a new form of of predatory uh behavior that uh Wall Street has found to take advantage uh of others and um again there there's a tradeoff tradeoff uh but again I think it's a tradeoff where we understand how to make that that is to say um which is more important the right of Corporations to
exploit exploit or the right of others not to be exploited um and uh the exploitation for instincts of Market Power by the monopolis constrains consumers opportunity Set uh again it's broad
consensus but I I don't want to say it's Universal uh uh my friends in the financial sector don't agree they think
they should be allowed to exploit others but um and that somehow it will trickle down uh from them down to the rest of society I I I think it distorts the economy and I think they're both moral and efficiency grounds for uh constraining their behavior um there's a little note here that I I I mentioned earlier uh in my
prosocial behaviour introduction is that U there's sometimes non-coercive ways of altering behavior in a pro-social way uh you know uh one of the uh these are insights of of modern behavioral economics um my next book is going to be on this uh subject uh so I hope I'll come uh again um where uh one of the
assumptions that has been inflicted on you by your uh in e in economics is that preferences are exogenous determine you enter a life with fixed preferences and unaltered but of course uh none of us really believes that as parings we spend an enormous amount of energy trying to make our children uh nice and uh we sometimes fail but uh we at least believe that we have some effect on the
preferences and what we want uh our children to uh to be like and as teachers that's one of the things that we try to do not just uh pour knowledge into your brain uh it's really trying to change your views of the world um and what you think is right and wrong so um that this is very different from the behavioral economics that dominated in the last century with Conan and Taylor
and tersi which was focusing on uh how we have preferences but
because we have to think fast we often don't act consistently with those deep
preferences this is a case where actually our social interactions alter
our our preferences and uh there're just uh two points I want to make which is sometimes
we succeed in altering them a way that make us not as selfish as economists
assume there's a lot of evidence in ultimatum games dictator games uh
laboratory experiments and in other context that people are not quite as selfish as uh economists uh assume there
are some who are really selfish like Donald Trump uh don't get me wrong and and so it's it's not everybody but there
are that that most people and when we think of ourselves we don't think of ourselves as as nasty
as Donald Trump and as selfish greedy and and so forth so um we don't want to
think of ourselves uh that way and hopefully we we aren't um so um if we
can engender pro-social Behavior we can partially internalize some of the
externalities so we can you know you go to Switzerland people don't
Litter um you know enforce that by a big
fine uh it's really uh internalized uh in their
behavior um the second point that I won't have much time to talk about is
economic and political system
that the economic and political system actually affects our behavior and that
uh if you have an economic system that rewards selfishness
greediness uh short-termism you people who
are greedy selfish and short term and uh
that's really one of my criticism of uh neoliberal capitalism that people like
Milton Freedman put on a pedestal uh in fact you know wrote a paper that firms
CEOs should maximize shareholder value regardless of the effect that it had on
environment exploit ation of workers or um taking advantage of consumers and you
know that was it was all about maximizing shareholder value whatever you could get away with his view was it
was immoral not to do that and I think that's wrong and and that the economic
system has an affecting shaping people in important
way there are some subtle subtleties here about the distinction between peer
pressure uh and social sanction sanctions as social coercion but I noticed my time is running out so let me
go on uh and just make one further point
that uh as we think about uh shaping
media
views uh we have to be aware that the media plays a very important
role uh they help create you might say the mer meta narrative the agenda how we
see the world and uh one of my concerns
is that disproportionately today control of the media is in the hands of very
rich and uh therefore the messages The Meta narratives that are being conveyed
are distorted in britainy at least you have a very effect uh strong BBC you know
it's maybe been underfunded but you and there's a lot of trust in Sweden there's a similarly a public media in the United
States uh we don't have anything comparable and there's evidence that a
strong media actually creates a public media helps create more trust in society
more generally and U uh is really important not not just
for uh uh making sure that the meta narrative isn't controlled by a few of
the people at the very top but uh for uh
strengthening uh trust in society and trust is really important for the
functioning of the economic system uh let me uh move on to the
second part of the uh analysis of of the book which is uh um what kind of an
economic system uh best delivers on the most freedoms for the most
individuals and uh here uh obviously uh I'm trying to compare two
systems um a a little bit of a caricature but not really a caricature
of of neoliberal capitalism on the one hand and and the system that I'm trying
to add advocate for uh some form of progressive capitalism and um underlying this are a
couple theorems a couple basic ideas that um part of my own uh research uh
earlier was that uh we know that unfettered markets uh do not lead to efficient
outcomes and it's not just in in Worlds with externalities of the kind I've talked about but more fundamentally when
Whenever there is imperfect information or incomplete Mars um which is always Mars are not
predo efficient they're not efficient um I've argued that that in
other words that the idea that Adam Smith put put forward but didn't really
believe that the pursuit of Interest would lead as if by an invisible hand to
the well-being of society uh that's wrong uh the presumption is that
unfettered markets do not lead to the well-being of society uh and the way I
put it succinctly is that the reason that the Invisible Hand is invisible is
that it's not there and um so
um uh the point is that Milton Freedom's idea that shareholder value Max
shareholder value maximization
imization uh would lead to societal welfare again is wrong uh
interestingly uh when uh uh at the same time M Freeman was pushing this forward
uh in N he he wrote a uh a famous article in the New York Times magazine
in 1970 uh I uh both alone and working with Sandy Gman were writing articles proving
that shareholder value maximization did not lead to the well-being of uh
Society but I made a mistake uh uh we made a mistake we published our papers
in the QJ and the Journal of finance and he published his paper in
the New York Times a magazine which do you think got more attention um and he won the public
debate I think we won the intellectual debate
in fact there was one time I gave a seminar at Chicago and uh Milton was
there and and uh he he said uh you're wrong uh and I
said well where did I make a mistake in my assumptions or my analysis he said I
know you're wrong and uh we continued in that vein
for a while and then uh it was clear it was not making much progress uh
evolutionary theory
um uh similarly uh I
I uh I mentioned before his book free to choose uh I said really uh he should
have called his book free to exploit uh because that was really what he was uh
advocating um The hyx evolutionary theory uh was uh
equally flawed even though it was a little bit more subtle uh his claim was that the evolutionary System Dynamics
would lead to uh uh better outcomes efficient
outcomes um but while he when he was at LSC he was writing more mathematical
articles after he as he got older he got uh more and more fluffy and uh uh he
never proves that result and obviously the reason is it's not true um and uh we
now know that Evolution doesn't have any thology that uh I've shown that in fact
uh that uh it's very easy to show that that uh evolutionary processes uh can
lead to very bad outcomes uh and uh if we can guide it better we
can get better better outcomes uh actually I've argued I argue
in the book that neoliberal capitalism may not even be a su a sustainable
institutional Arrangement that uh as I say in the last Point here uh on the
slide uh neoliberal capitalism is a system which uh may devour itself and it
both because you can't sustain competition without strong government uh
because uh uh it is not environmentally sustainable you pollute and the whole
world is put put in Jeopardy um the divid that gives rise to
make it politically unsustainable uh they undermine trust and without trust a market economy can
function you can't uh couldn't go to court with every every uh contract in
the way that Donald Trump tries to do with with uh uh every contract that he
uh uh contractor that he engages with um and uh as I said before it encourages
traits which uh undermine trust and thus undermine economic sustainability so
that comes to the critical questions of what kind of system is better um and
what kind of a society is most likely to sustain political iCal freedom and democracy so uh here is really the the
the Crux of of of the systemic analysis neoliberal uh neoliberalism argued that
freeing the economy stripping away regulations reducing the size of the state giving full Reign to unfettered
markets would lead to high growth trickle down economics ensure the benefits would be shared by all and uh
this hasn't worked out it's given rise to populism and populism is giving rise
to authoritarianism and ex setting is on the road to a a 21st century uh uh form
of uh fascism so uh the alternative is uh my
vision of uh Progressive capitalism uh let me first say some
capitalism
people say uh putting the word capitalism there is an oxymoron uh you
know the two words don't go together uh the point I want to make is in a large
Society uh a large economy you have to have decentralization the idea that you
could centralize decision making it's just you know we know that now that that
doesn't work so you have to have decentralization that means you have to have different units in our society and
using capitalism is only a reminder that among the units that you have in society
there will be some that in a in a well organized society that are profit
maximizing that you know making steel may make sense to have a profit
maximizing firm make steel but there are we we really ought
to be thinking about a richer Ecology of institutional
Arrangements um the government is one part of that Collective action but there
are other forms of collective action um uh labor unions are a form of collect
collective action that are very important uh for workers Civil Society
is an important part of collective action to oversee both the public and the private
sector um uh other form of collective action
are class action suits uh when somebody gets injured a single individual may not
be able to seek remedy but uh a collective action of a class action suit
uh may be and you know uh moving more towards uh for encouraging forms of that
kind of collective action is an important part of what I view as uh
Progressive capitalism but then there are also uh all sorts of other institutional
cooperatives
Arrangements cooperatives cooperatives May encourage more Cooperative
Behavior Uh uh a little bit less selfish selfishness and we saw the most
successful uh parts of America's Financial system that were exhibit shown
demonstrated in the 2008 financial crisis were our financial cooperatives we call them Credit Unions they were the
only ones that did not engaged in rep pacious behavior that marks uh uh the
other for-profit bank Banks and after 2008 they were the only ones that
contined to provide credit to small businesses um so uh you know I we have
actually many cooperatives uh in the United States uh consumer and producer
cooperatives and again in Europe uh there being some very successful um uh
cooperatives mandran and in Spain being one of the largest in the world um and
then there are uh not for-profit organizations like Columbia
University uh and when you think about you know one of the real strengths of
universities
the United States it's our universities uh our our research
institutions none of them are for-profit uh the example of the for
profit institution is Trump University I don't really mean to break Trump uh you
know I think he's a great leader but uh uh but those of you may remember
Trump University it had to pay fines and the millions of dollars because it had
exploited those who wanted to get ahead and thought they were getting education and he it was it was a it was a k job
just like everything he does is a k job so uh uh uh uh the the the um uh all of
our successful universities are either State universities like University of
California and Berkeley and Los Angeles and or not for-profit institutions like
Columbia Harvard prinston Yale um and so uh and these you know they're not
perfect institutions but human fallibility no institution is going to be perfect but they have actually worked
very well and have been the foundations I think of a lot of of our of our
success as a as a country so uh the first thing I I I you
know call for in this Progressive capitalism is a richer Ecology of
institutional Arrangements um um the other uh thing I
call for is greater efficiency and Equity with more freedom to choose um as
a result of doing a better job at reducing negative externalities through better
regulation uh more investing in public goods and uh correcting a whole variety
of other market failures um and this comes back to the fundamental theme externalities and
public goods are especially important in 21st century economies we have a high
level of urbanization that means that we interact a lot more than you w would if
you're living in an isolated Farm um and we've moved to a knowledge economy and the basic thing about
Collective action
knowledge is it's a public good and efficient provision of public goods
requires Collective action and so as we've changed our
economy we've become uh the benefits of collective action have become uh even
more important um and there are other important Collective roles limiting of
iy of forms of exploitation and ring seeking providing social protection and
social insurance um and a broader view that better risk management enables more
risk-taking and uh in some circumstances even more Innovation because undertaking
Innovation uh entails risk uh finally just a word about uh
with uh something I said earlier uh the nature of the economic political and
social system does shape individuals and I think Progressive
capitalism uh tempering some of the selfishness that has been the Hallmark
of neoliberal capitalism we shape individuals in different ways um as I
said it it shapes individuals to be greedy selfish uh with limited concerns
for others less empathy and less honest uh than we might
like and it's at least possible that cooperatives and other forms of uh
organizational forms May shape individuals to be more Cooperative other regarding and to enhance social
Selfserving argument
cohesion and um there are a lot of benefits to moving
in that direction let me uh as a next to the last slide uh talk
uh about uh a self-serving uh argument for why what we do in Academia is so
important uh this is probably an audience I don't have to convince of that but um I want to just emphasize the
centrality of liberal education and a democratic media that um
education um Pro provides a better understanding of the way our preferences
are shaped uh and our actions are affected by uh others by peer pressure and doing
this can be in that sense fundamentally freeing uh in fact that's one of the
purposes of a liberal ARS education so I I know a lot of you are
concerned about uh having an education giving you skills to get a job but what
I'm trying to encourage you to do is uh get an education also to uh uh be Freer
in your thinking uh about uh life more generally and um by the same token I
think a more democratic media frees us from having our beliefs shaped by and
for the interest of the wealthy um there are some difficult
Conclusion
philosophical problems that arise in the context of endogenous
preference formation and uh I'm not going to be able to solve them
uh today but I don't want uh somebody to say well you haven't thought about that
question so so I this is a defensive slide um so let me
conclude um with uh greater Investments including in public goods and
individuals capabilities better management of negative externalities better social social insurance and
stronger social cohesion Progressive capitalism can enhance individual Freedom far more than the kind of
unfettered capitalism that Hayek and Freedman advocated a kind of
neoliberalism that has predominated for the last uh four decades and in that
sense uh uh that links to the subtitle economics in the good Society I think
that kind of progressive capitalism uh can do a better job of
creating a good society and uh setting us more firmly on the road to Freedom uh
than neoliberalism which has been setting us on the road I think to
Social Ecology
authoritarianism thank you [Applause]
[Music]
well thank you so much Joe that was brilliant and I love your social
ecology and I say social ecology because I was trying to think is Progressive
capitalism really the term you want why stick to
capitalism um you're not talking about socialism at least not socialism as
state controlled but maybe something like the Civil economy or the social
economy I mean capitalism implies the market is still the predominant mechanism in
society yeah um well let me say first uh it was partly because I'm uh trying to
sell these ideas to an American audience so I so I don't want to undermine the sense
of pandering uh that uh I but uh that having been said uh I do think that it
still will be the case that profit making institutions will play an important
role regulated taxed uh properly uh but they're still
an important part uh of our institutional structure and um I also
use words to describe it as a rejuvenated social democracy and the
reason I use the word rejuvenated is that some places where there's been
social democracy it's really been weakened in the last 30 years with the
the predominance of neoliberal ideas so some of the places that we used to think
as the Bastion of the of of social democracy it's really been weakened in
the way that I would at least like to see it no
Social Democracy
not to mention this country um gosh we could and and can I
say one thing what I like about the term social democracy as opposed to the
emphasis of progressive capitalism it does emphasize the role that Democratic
processes have to play in making sure that our society
functions uh for the benefit of most people yeah I do I agree but anyway um
Audience Questions
we should have some questions from the audience somebody and I don't know who
is collecting the questions online Sharon okay but I'm first going to take
some questions here so yes we'll take this will be the first
because you're the first person I've seen I'm trying to get the microphone to work
well actually we're going to have very limited time so may I got the question and a standard question let me
uh which is that uh we all you know the
government often is inefficient uh ineffective and uh um anybody who's
lived through the Trump Administration knows the government can fail uh or even
through uh the last Bush Administration uh all human institutions are failable
you we're all faible so the question since the enlightenment has been how do
we uh structure Society to ensure
that uh it does what we want it to do including uh democratic
governments um now when I talk about when we talk about waste no government
is well I shouldn't say no government few governments have wasted money on the scale of what happened in the 2008
financial crisis that lead up to it in the afterwards massive misallocation of
resources uh in the Capital Market massive the result of that was massive
underutilization of resources you know costing us trillions of dollars so it
lets make clear that the private sector can be very very inefficient and you
know as we sort of glorify the the the private sector we should remember I mean
and I'll talk a little bit from the point of view of the United States the inefficiency of our private
Health Care system of our private uh uh um of our telephone systems uh every day
is a battle with the internet companies um our banks are out there to
exploit us and we see it food companies are exploiting people so that we have a
episode of of uh childhood di epidemic of childhood
diabetes um we um uh have an opioid crisis the
pharmaceutical pushed opioids on our country and the cost of our to our
country of that is lives a short you know lifespan has declined and and so we
should be clear that there are lots of imperfections on all sides around and
the main failure I think of government is not stopping the private sector from
engaging in these totally destructive activities um that's the main failure
now uh the successes of government where would we be without government
investment that led to the internet uh especially at in covid-19 it
even invented uh uh the the the first browser and then uh it gave us the M
mRNA platform that allowed us to have an effective vaccine so yes government fails Trump
illustrates but uh government succeeds a lot and the private sector fails and the
private sector succeeds a lot and so our goal is shouldn't be to demonize one or
the other but to try to say how can we use the strengths of each of them and
how can we use and one of the things I emphasize is how can we use systems of
checks and balances not only within government but within our overall Society to prevent the abuses uh that
can occur in either of the two sectors okay I've got Robert Wade here
Industrial policies
that's a great question and you know uh Robert did some uh very important research on Industrial policies in
Taiwan wasn't it and uh they worked there and then in the era of uh new
liberalism uh industrial policies were a no no uh or more accurately the United
States uh and Europe used uh the
WTO to circumscribe the ability of developing
countries and Emerging Markets to use industrial policies while we continue to
use industrial policies in the United States in our defense department and
that's where we got the internet and we and and then we use Public Health as
another source of industrial policy but everybody is believes it's good to have uh better drugs against disease um and
we've now brought back industrial policy in the United States interestingly in a
bipartisan way and so even uh
Republicans have now abandoned the extremes of neoliberalism and and have
said you need a government partly in response to the
strong evidence of the lack of resilience of the private sector that became so evident in covid-19 you know
they had Supply chains that were just not resilient uh you the the uh just in time
inventory system made our whole economy very fragile it was very good when there
were no disturbances but it was not robust against uh disturbances so the so
I welcome this kind of Rebirth of uh Resurgence of of industrial
policy um those particular industrial policies
were not optimally designed partly uh
because we hadn't had really the experience that East Asia we hadn't learned the lesson from East Asia of how
to design good industrial policies I think they did a lot a a a better job in
designing theirs in Korea Japan uh and Taiwan uh than we have and
there's now a lot of work I'm engaged and some of this of how we can reform
those industrial policies to make them better and better in the sense of uh
better outcomes per dollar more Equitable less capture uh insulate them
against capture uh um so overall though
uh they are uh really important and just the IRA is called it an inflation
reduction act that really wasn't much about inflation its main objective was to move the United States along in the
trajectory of of the green transition uh when we had resisted doing
that and the chips Act was to um restore
the ability of the US to make certain to make ships uh um less dependence on
Conflicts
Taiwan great now I'm going to ask Sharon to read out two questions and then I'm
going to take the lady at the back on my principle of taking women but too many men have put their hands
up hello hello okay I have a question um
what oh sorry can hear her what is your what is your economic perspective about the impact of the current conflicts
around the world at two qu asked two questions what was the first question I
hear it what is the economic impact of current what's your what's the what's your perspective on the current conf
on and what is your proposal for the policy change we can make to discourage pursuit
of shareholder value at all costs will tax reform do the
trick it can you say it a bit louder oh sorry what is what is your proposal for
what policy change we can make to discourage pursuit of shareholder value
at all costs will tax reform do the trick can tax
reform uh reduce the pursuit of shareholder value oh well yeah
um okay first on the first question uh conflicts are bad uh I I think you mean
you know uh Wars and and what's going on in
the Middle East and Ukraine uh are bad uh for the people who are affected but
they're also bad for the global economy uh you know in the Middle East
there there's still a risk of of what
what uh happened in the uh 70s with the conflict where oil prices went way up
we've just been through a very bad episode of energy prices going up and it's been really hard especially for
Europe but but for the global economy uh ex uh the way uh we produce food today is
very dependent on on fertilizer and that's very depend depending on a supply
of of of energy and and so it's not just just
uh uh Direct Energy uh our Energy System but it's also our food supply system so
conflicts create a lot of risk and and uh uh when those risks get materialized
they have can have disastrous effects on the global economy and the aftermath of
the um the sharp rise in oil prices in the 70s uh was a lost decade in Latin
America it's just one example of of of the global repercussions so um uh but the most uh
obviously the the the greatest effect are still on the people in in in the
conflict areas on the issue of shareholder uh value
maximization um uh uh taxes are not uh enough um uh you
need uh multiple changes in our legal framework uh one example is Corporate
goverance laws uh in many countries corporate governance laws say that
that's what firms are supposed to do they were influenced by Milton Freedman
unfortunately and uh many many places have corporate governing laws that
say if a CEO doesn't do that uh he's not doing what the company doesn't do that
he's not doing he's not fulfilling the obligation and he can be sued uh for doing for for not maximizing uh
shareholder uh value um the uh other countries other states
jurisdictions in the United States corporate governance laws in the United States are largely the responsibility of
the individual Stakes uh say that you should have broader stakeholder value
stakeholder uh uh capitalism where you take into account uh not only the
shareholders The Balancing Act but of the workers the communities uh uh the
customers and and the environment so you take a a broader uh perspective
um we have uh uh the you know peculiar
situation in the United States if you're a pension fund uh you are not
uh a union pension fund uh is obligated
in many almost everywhere in the United States to look only at the economic
returns they get out of their Investments and so they aren't allowed to even think
about whether the companies in which they are investing their money are engaged in bad labor practices like
Amazon um you know that they they say well as a union pension fund you're just
concerned with maximizing the Returns on your Investments not with the
environment not with with with uh uh how their their labor practic is and I I
think that's wrong and and it turns out that taking a broader view can often
over the longer run get Justice ey or even higher uh returns so um those are
examples of of changes in our legal structure that that H ought to that would facilitate a move away from
shareholder value maximization great now I'm going to take
Global Governance
two questions from the floor and I'm taking that lady there and this lady
here in a blue again so yeah um governments of
course work at the country level the most rapacious corporations uh are very much Global so
what steps would you recommend and in especially in the current very challenging International context to
ensure that these very needed checks and balances can also be applied at the global level
to avoid companies jumping around between different jurisdictions and so that the checks and balances can really
work in a in a by means of a global governance hold that question can you
remember it because I I somebody was talking to me and now the lady in
blue I think you need a
mik um thank you um in relation to Progressive uh capitalism um what's the
role of AI in it and do you see it um as
potentially hindering Freedom or uh vice versa well um let me
say the way that AI interacts with freedom in in a broad
sense is that uh AI has the potential and I I would say
likely and I've written a little bit about this uh likely to have large distributive effects unless we uh
respond appropriately and when was respond appropriately what I mean is both steer The Innovation the nature of
the Innovation and to the extent that we don't succeed in steering it the right
way at least engage in redistributive actions um that uh make sure that the
benefits don't all go to a few people and are widely shared um and uh an
important ingredient in this overall policy it will entail uh
adapting our competition laws uh the question you know there is
at least there's a significant risk of further agglomeration of Market power uh
because uh they work more powerfully when they have more data and there will
be be some Enterprises that will have larger data sex and really uh at least
there's a potential they're dominating that market uh there's a lot of uncertainty about the evolution of AI uh
even among the people uh in Silicon Valley and those
engaged in in AI um uh the the the concern of course is that
AI will be what we call Labor replacing uh and therefore decrease the
demand for labor particularly not only unskilled labor which is what robuxs
have done but even skilled labor um that there are feels like you
know like uh they they can uh write a a
good uh do good journalism not great journalism but you can do journalism um
for my 80th birthday uh one of my uh
students uh former students um trained uh um AI on uh my data and the question
was uh could I be replaced uh and um uh the uh uh I asked it 10
questions and uh on the first five which were you know uh the kind of questions I
get asked all the time about you know the effect of interest rates or something like that um it did as well as
I could have done and much faster you know it just spews out the answer um uh
but uh on the last three that were more difficult
uh where it hadn't really read my 1973 article as closely as itur probably
because it's uh not wasn't fed to it uh uh was going back too too far it was a
disaster uh it got exactly the wrong answer uh 180 degrees wrong so uh I have
a few more years before I'm going to be replaced uh but uh that's one aspect of
of AI it replaces labor it reduces the demand the other aspect is the point I
just made it it can enhance our productivity and I sometimes call that
IIA intelligence assisting rather than AI uh so it it it's like a microscope a
telescope enhances our our our our own innate abilities and there are people
working on on aspects of AI that will you know that actually like uh ettech um
trying to improve the quality of Education by saying having uh qu uh
working question uh where they adapt more quickly to where you give a wrong
answer where you give a right answer so there there are things that they can do to to enhance our our ability I think
overall though I I do worry about it increasing inequality and we will have to respond on the question of um the
regulation of multinationals uh that's really it's a good question and and you know some of
the multinationals are bigger than small countries uh and that makes it more
difficult uh the particular aspect of that that I've been involved in is uh
how do we uh in our global Iz World make these multinationals uh pay their fair share
of taxes um companies like Apple and Google may have produced Goods uh that are you
know that we like a lot uh you know uh uh Apple making the corners of their
telephone round rather than square is really given a lot of people a lot of enjoyment um and and uh and I don't know
if know about there was a big intellectual property dispute over over that particular question um so you know
but they may I I don't want to minimize how what they've done but
they've been even smarter about avoiding taxes uh and uh globalization has given
them uh a framework in which they can do that with the secrecy Havens uh uh
Cayman Islands and you know uh why are so many companies located in Cayman
Islands uh you know is the weather really particularly good for engaging in financial transactions or is there
something else going on called secrecy and tax evasion and I think we are or
regulatory evasion we all know the answer it is not because the Cayman Islands are a particularly good place to
do Financial transactions uh other than tax evasion and and Regulatory uh avoidance
um so there's been a uh a big uh Global
campaign to make them pay their fair share of taxes
um but it was originally put uh in the hands of the
oecd uh which is the uh think tank of
the advanced countries and the advaned countries uh were this is a case where of capture
were captured by particularly the United States by Apple and Google and the
digital Giants and what came out eventually out of a long process lasting
over 10 years was uh something good uh a requirement
of a minimum tax uh but was set at 15% and then they
have carals to bring them rate down to 12 or 133% Which is less than half half of the
tax rate in Latin America for instance so um it having minimum is better than
zero but it really wasn't up to the task and and uh so now now there is a big
initiative at the UN to frame a better to to create a better framework for
requiring them to pay their fair share of taxes um
in terms of regulating bad
behavior uh in one way or another uh Europe and the United States
have a special responsibility and uh there is for
instance again in the area of digital uh the uh digital Giants there's something
that's now called the Brussels effect that uh
regulation of the digital Giants uh through uh the digital marketing act dma
the digital Service Act which tries to restrict some of the uh digital harms
created by uh uh these digital Giants uh is having a Global Effect it's
not strong enough uh but uh when Europe and the United States act
strongly they have Global effects and so yes you know a small country isn't going
to be able to fully regulate but they can say you know South Africa can say if
you don't play by our rules you can't come in and there are enough good South
African entrepreneurs and sufficient Global competition that
if one of the American companies like Google doesn't behave
well uh the void can be filled there's other search engines that can enter so I I
don't think even small countries should resign and just say oh you know we're
vict victims I think they can take a stronger actions great now I'm going to go back
to the online and you're going to give me another two questions
okay so can you comment on the value of social religious institutions in lower
income countries versus high income countries for example in Nepal social institutions
such as religious tabos are used to limit people from cutting down trees in local
forests I didn't neither of could hear that did you hear the beginning no no we
didn't hear anything of it oh sorry I have to really shout sorry can you
comment on the value of social religious institutions in lower income countries versus higher income countries for
example in Nepal social institutions such as religious tabos are used to limit people from cutting down trees in
local forests I think if I understand the question is yeah I mean this is part of
of of the general view that I have that uh a successful Society ought to have a
broad array of institutions um and I think I I I was going to comment uh earlier that uh this
is increasingly important because we're moving to uh a care economy where a
large fraction of the population a large proaction of GDP we've moved from
manufacturing to a service sector economy and an important part of the service sector economy is caring for you
know Education Health Care caring for the elderly and many of those people uh
they're large asymmetries of information and many of the people are not able to make really informed decisions
about uh whether they're getting adequate care somebody with dementia
can't judge whether they're being taken advantage of and in that
context uh religious Institution nonprofits of a variety of kind can play
a very important role uh you know more
broadly uh uh thinking about the infinite future future
Generations uh churches and have played an important
role in protecting the environment thinking about the Next Generation uh and the uh
Pope francis's in cyclical on uh
uh the environment climate change uh and social justice has had in many parts of
the world a lot of influence so that that's an example of of of how a broad
array of Institutions that we ought to embrace uh is uh we think about what
makes for a good Society now it's actually 8:00 but we
started 5 minutes late and there's somebody and we haven't taken anyone
from the top floor and there's somebody at the back there in a white jacket who's been trying to catch my eye the
entire time so I'm going to let him last the last question hello H thank you Professor
esle thank you Professor Calder thank you LC uh my question
is how we can apply this knowledge the workers the local people we as a student
the people that don't know about economics this we talk about a um
fredman inclusive growth the war Freedom how we can apply this H amazing
knowledge thank you so much well the the
um there are two parts of the answer uh
to that question um you know one is uh
how this affects our Behavior as individuals
um uh let me tell a little story uh
uh for a long time I you know gone to Davos and at Davos which is you know
where all all the Mucky mucks get together to talk to each other uh uh
I for a long time had sessions um with the some corporate
leaders uh some very some important ones
uh about uh Corporate social responsibility uh um sometimes about the
environment sometimes about broader issues of social justice um and
uh many of the people who you the in the sessions I go to you know are seemingly
very uh conscientious and we have discussions about inequality and talk about the data
about how bad things are getting and they express uh concern about uh
inequality and how bad it is um and then one year uh one of the
CEOs a very nice guy who a leader of a major American company
uh said um in our discussion we having
uh you know I just discovered that 40% of my labor force uh is being paid was
paid less than a living wage um which of course was what we've
been talking about for the last five or 10 years but he thought about it in a very
abstract term uh about inequality as a as a you
know as a concept and suddenly it dawned on him that it was actually something
that he was a player this was a game in which he had a lot of uh uh uh agency
and and being able to change and so he said well I mean he said after he
discovered it he raised all his way workers wages to a livable wage you know
it cost his shareholders a little bit but it made him feel a lot better and
and I think in the long run it was probably good for the company uh and the fact that the workers
in the company felt that they were actually not part of the problem but part of the of the solution so um there
are so many aspects of our individual behavior that affects all the things
that I've talked about that uh we ought to think about uh as we go about our
day-to-day life but you know this book is really written much more U as you may
have figured out by now um with a uh political objective uh in
mind um that uh it is really through uh
political action that we're going to change uh uh the way our economic system
works we have to change the regulations the tax structure expenditures the rules
the rules that govern us uh uh uh that govern the economy so uh this is really
a a call for political action and uh try to uh uh engage
governments to move in this direction my own view is very strongly I hope it came
across that uh small tweet to the system
aren't going to be enough um that uh the deficiencies in
our economic system are too grave to uh be remedied by a little bit more
education here a little bit more regulation there um somebody might say well why you know
don't we need a revolution um and I have a little discussion of of that in the book
uh the answer might be uh yes we do need a revolution but the history of revolutions is not uh very good and um and there's a good reason for that because revolutions tear the fabric of society and Society if it's going to function there has to be trust and there has to be a kind of cohesiveness and that's where the term of uh your your term of Co cohesive or what uh uh uh uh um capitalism is a good term so there has to be a certain kind of of social uh cohesion if we're going to get societal change um and so you know what I'm really uh calling for is uh the most radical change reforms that we can get out of our political system and uh uh without a revolution and uh that we can get peacefully because conflict I think is is destructive um so really I try to lay out an agenda for that kind of uh rapid change in our society well thank you that was absolutely wonderful now before
you start clapping I just want to make an announcement and then you're allowed to clap as long as you like which is
that there are signed books you can buy out side but if you want uh Joe to sign your copy of your book you have to queue up here and just for 15 minutes on this side so you can do that after you've clapped but now you're allowed to clap
