Making Sense - Sam Harris - #257 — The State of the World

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:36.680 we're doing here please consider becoming one the last episode was an ama which i think got somewhat

00:00:50.520 overshadowed by the first 20 minutes where i responded to all the vaccine hesitancy stuff

00:00:57.640 anyway those of you who listen to the whole thing seem to enjoy it so i will do more amas going

00:01:04.620 forward it had been a long time and generally use that forum to respond to more topical stuff

00:01:12.260 well today's podcast is really on the state of the world entirely mostly through an economic

00:01:21.080 lens but also political because today i'm speaking with dambisa moyo dambisa is a prize-winning author

00:01:31.000 of several bestsellers the edge of chaos winner take all dead aid her most recent book is how boards work

00:01:41.620 she is an economist trained at oxford she also has a master's degree from harvard from the john f kennedy

00:01:50.320 school of government i think she has an mba as well time magazine has named her one of the hundred

00:01:56.620 most influential people in the world she's worked for the world bank and goldman sachs and serves on a

00:02:04.480 variety of corporate boards and she regularly contributes to the wall street journal and the financial times

00:02:10.860 anyway as you'll hear dambisa gives me an education on many topics we discuss public goods economic

00:02:19.680 growth capitalism american economic history bad public policy choices different forms of inequality

00:02:28.340 tax avoidance among the wealthy government inefficiency current problems with democracy the breakdown of trust in

00:02:37.900 our institutions failures of transparency voter participation the future of automation identity politics the reality of racism in america and we have a very long discussion about affirmative action and its problems which i found very interesting and we also talk about the rise of china and what that means for america

00:03:04.600 anyway i love this conversation and i hope you do as well and now i bring you dambisa moyo

00:03:11.740 i am here with dambisa moyo dambisa thanks for joining me it's a pleasure i'm glad to be here

00:03:25.940 so um you have one of these ridiculous cvs it's just uh i mean it's quite amazing who you are thank you on paper and so i want to get into that but before we summarize your your academic and intellectual and professional background give us your your origin story you came from you were born in zambia

00:03:49.080 what was your upbringing like so you're right i was born in zambia um i think the old timers might recognize it as northern rhodesia um it country became independent in 1964 um some high-level statistics

00:04:01.980 it is a copper exporter about 97 percent of exports maybe a little lower now come from come from copper exports um we are a former british colony so english is the official language

00:04:14.840 i was uh born and raised in zambia and uh you know it's it's changed so much even in in my lifetime um i'm 52 years old now but the interesting thing is that

00:04:27.260 in uh the the rules in government basically the law of the land in in zambia was that blacks were not issued birth certificates until uh 1973

00:04:37.220 and it was a you know a sort of artifact of the colonial era so to this day um i have no birth certificate but i do have an affidavit which is very clearly uh states that

00:04:49.580 what i just said which is that birth certificates were not issued to um to black africans and so it's been a wild ride what i was i was you know my formative years were in africa in zambia

00:05:00.620 and uh you know primary secondary and university we had a coup in 1991 where there was an attempted overthrow of the government um but before that

00:05:10.920 we had been in a one-party state which was uh run by a man who just died a few weeks ago kenneth kaunda

00:05:18.880 and um basically it was a relatively peaceful existence we were very much on the front lines of the struggle for

00:05:27.740 independence for the african region uh particularly sub-saharan southern africa south africa etc so a lot

00:05:34.860 of the anc freedom fighters we actually lived in zambia and president mandela upon his release uh the

00:05:43.540 first country he visited was zambia to basically acknowledge that so you know it's in terms of my

00:05:48.620 specific upbringing i'm the first child and first daughter of two people who were born and raised in

00:05:55.800 rural africa from two different tribes two different parts of the country but they met and married

00:06:02.500 at university in they were two of the first 11 black graduates allowed to go to university in zambia

00:06:09.860 um and so uh my parents i mean if you think about it 11 blacks in the class and two of them were my parents

00:06:16.180 it's quite it's quite a remarkable story so uh you know 20 years later i went back to that same

00:06:21.980 university to start my own university career but you know on the whole very fortunate in the in the

00:06:28.320 sense that my parents were born in poor rural africa i had an opportunity to get an education and that

00:06:34.960 really put the basis in play for myself and my siblings to get an education and uh to be here

00:06:41.200 today in just uh you know just over 50 years quite amazing to be on the sam harris uh podcast well this is

00:06:47.960 not your crowning achievement as we will uh we will detail in a second so how do you how do you

00:06:53.280 summarize your your intellectual and academic background at this point what what are you doing

00:06:58.700 i know you serve on several boards give us a snapshot of where you're placed in the world

00:07:04.480 yeah so my phd is in economics from oxford university and so i i guess i view myself first and foremost as a

00:07:14.220 macro economist um i nevertheless um i have spent about 10 years on uh working at goldman sachs

00:07:22.920 on wall street and then another almost 10 years um on the board of a bank barclays bank one of the

00:07:30.200 large global sort of important significant institutions in the banking industry globally and

00:07:35.760 so in that respect i feel like i was sort of born and raised in finance um and uh although i've

00:07:41.880 subsequently spent a lot of time serving on the boards of large global and complex organizations

00:07:47.640 such as chevron and energy mining companies you know industrial companies like 3m who are making

00:07:54.080 the masks and the ventilators during the covid pandemic but also fast-moving consumer goods as

00:07:59.920 well as technology companies so it's been quite a varied experience over the last decade in which i've

00:08:06.840 sort of evolved from being specifically an economist working in the area of finance into now much more

00:08:13.880 of a jack of all trades in in terms of thinking about policy issues thinking about how public policy

00:08:20.420 as well as the private sector think about allocating capital and navigating through challenging times

00:08:26.580 so you and i recently met at a dinner party and i've referenced this gathering a couple of times

00:08:33.660 on the podcast without naming any of the participants i guess i've just outed you as a as a member of this

00:08:39.360 star chamber so for better or worse but you know the the conversation we had there was pretty

00:08:46.500 instructive for me because i it was a remarkable snapshot of the thinking of some very powerful

00:08:52.520 connected people about this trend we're seeing you know especially in american public life around

00:09:01.040 a very illiberal activist culture capturing our institutions and i'm going to want to talk to you

00:09:08.820 about that but i think let's save that to the end of our conversation because there's there's so much

00:09:15.260 more uh to um explore given your expertise so let's start with um big picture concerns around

00:09:24.380 the global trends that most concern you at this point i mean let's maybe take the the economic side

00:09:31.140 first what does global economic growth look like now and and how do you see that relating with any

00:09:40.060 geopolitical concerns we might have you know the the rise in populism the weakening of institutions

00:09:45.620 the weakening of america in particular i you know i want to cover all of this so um yeah give me your

00:09:52.840 view of the world from 30 000 feet so you know perhaps unsurprisingly as an economist i'm deeply

00:10:00.680 concerned about the question of economic growth economic growth is is critically important because

00:10:06.220 it really does help us solve macroeconomic problems such as living standards improving people's living

00:10:15.120 standards over time but it also helps fund public goods like education national security

00:10:22.080 infrastructure health care although i know in america health care is a question of whether it's

00:10:27.560 a public good actually dembisa would you you just listed a few but would you define what you mean by

00:10:34.200 a public good sure so a public good i mean the to me the most basic and sort of straightforward way

00:10:42.180 of thinking about it it's something that we all benefit from but no one of us pays for so something

00:10:49.000 like a road you and i can use the same road but we didn't pay for it we may have contributed to it

00:10:54.660 through our taxes but we didn't pay the full freight for that and it's similarly if you think about things

00:11:00.720 like education or national security big big expensive programs that government seeks to undertake

00:11:07.180 to protect but also to support an economy and a society somebody has to pay for that and uh and

00:11:14.920 really through partly through taxation but also through government borrowing that public goods

00:11:19.940 tend to be funded right so my point is that in order to have a tax base your economy needs to be

00:11:25.320 growing the pie has to be expanding so that we can tax and use that money to fund these public goods

00:11:33.460 education health care infrastructure national security and of course to my mind um we're seeing

00:11:39.440 that list expand when you have things like climate change um which again is a is a public risk in some

00:11:46.180 sense because uh we all not not one of us is responsible for the full onslaught of the of the

00:11:52.920 challenge that we're dealing with but the truth is we've all somehow contributed to it so it's sort of a

00:11:58.120 negative externality so that's that's how i think about growth and look here's the uh rule of thumb

00:12:03.100 with respect to growth in order for a country to double per capita income so to double the income

00:12:09.600 of uh the average person in one generation and the generations about 25 years you need the economy to be

00:12:17.200 growing by three percent per year and even before covid hit we were already seeing many economies large

00:12:26.580 small developed developing you know democratic and non-democratic already struggling to make that

00:12:33.380 three percent number so just to give you some examples germany in the fourth quarter of 2019

00:12:39.240 had zero percent growth um the uk was at around 1.2 to 1.4 and then you have very large emerging markets

00:12:48.780 like economies like brazil argentina south africa russia that since the financial crisis have struggled to get

00:12:55.640 beyond two percent so really snapshot was already pretty bad we were already worried about growth

00:13:02.760 we were worried that public policy had become quite impotent by that i mean governments had already had

00:13:09.360 enormous amounts of debt on their balance sheets but not just government households corporations

00:13:14.680 as well as uh as well as as how student loans auto loans were all over a trillion dollars and then with

00:13:22.800 respect to monetary policy we know that after the financial crisis of 2008 interest rates have been

00:13:28.880 at historical lows in fact they're negative rates in europe as well as uh as japan so very very

00:13:35.260 challenged situation in terms of slow growth challenged situation in terms of public policies ability to

00:13:42.260 effect change and then if i may sam just add on one additional thing that was causing so many

00:13:47.780 challenges for us and continues to do so um is a confluence of factors that was creating a greater

00:13:53.820 drag on economic growth things like climate change issues around demographic shifts there are going to

00:14:00.440 be 11 billion of us on the planet india is adding a million people a month to the population to her

00:14:05.940 population who are already worried about technology and the risk of a jobless underclass already deep

00:14:12.840 concerns around productivity decline so the ability for people to contribute to gdp was stalling so all

00:14:19.700 of this happened before covid and now we then end up with covid which i would argue has actually been

00:14:24.880 catalytic and making things much more precarious than in terms of our ability to generate growth and to

00:14:31.960 solve these problems and in fact has has sort of hastened a lot of the challenges that we've been worried

00:14:39.640 about in economics i think that this is um the basis of what you just said could be counterintuitive

00:14:48.740 for many people so to make a point of contact with what we'll talk about later this uh culture of

00:14:55.380 activism there's a fundamental skepticism around capitalism itself of being a a salvageable system

00:15:04.160 for improving the well-being of humanity and producing wealth is obviously part of that picture

00:15:10.680 and but in everything you just said you have taken for granted a kind of imperative for growth that i

00:15:18.200 think many people certainly younger people who are skeptical about capitalism as a system would find

00:15:24.760 counterintuitive i mean it just sounds like the global economy is just this vast ponzi scheme

00:15:30.900 which has it has its the mechanics of its own failure built into it why is there this growth

00:15:38.280 imperative why is growth even necessary and how do you view this this fundamental skepticism around

00:15:44.960 basing our economy on capitalism in the first place so that is a wonderful question and i think that

00:15:52.760 unfortunately our public policy makers have not done a good job of articulating why growth matters but

00:16:00.340 even more than that they've not done a good job of really highlighting the times and places where

00:16:06.580 we've made mistakes of which have been many and i'll come to those in a moment i should say just to

00:16:12.560 telegraph you know ahead of time you know the vast majority of the problems that we're dealing with in

00:16:17.700 terms of public policy and weakness in the economy have really very little to do with china but china for

00:16:23.880 example has become a boogeyman and what it means is that we're not really doing the hard work that's

00:16:28.640 necessary for an economy to thrive and survive over the long term but you know your question is a very

00:16:34.940 fair one you know why why is it the case that somebody like myself continues to speak up about

00:16:41.140 growth and a lot of that has to do with having lived worked and traveled to over 80 countries

00:16:47.200 developed and developing as as we just uh i highlighted but also economies that have chosen

00:16:53.440 other paths and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that a system that allocates capital and

00:17:01.880 resources which by and large tend to be scarce in a way that is driven by innovation driven by

00:17:11.400 not cronyism is the system we ought to aspire for aspire to and capitalism is really based on that

00:17:18.840 now just to be absolutely clear the type of capitalism that we have practiced has tended

00:17:25.900 to pursue shortcuts and we can come to that so governments reaching for more amount of debt

00:17:32.380 um which you know short term looked attractive tax breaks etc but longer term we're not investing in

00:17:39.480 infrastructure or education or future generations but also it's important to say that the the lack of

00:17:48.840 long-term thinking has led us to reach both in terms of corporations but also governments

00:17:57.340 to for short-term solutions that don't fully reflect the trade-offs and the challenges of delivering

00:18:05.540 economic growth at scale for many companies and countries so if i may just pick at this a little

00:18:12.040 bit more um and then i'll send it back to you so china was the largest economy in the world

00:18:17.540 in gdp terms in 1820 and they made a number of catastrophic policy errors that really cost them

00:18:25.700 today china is the second largest economy in gdp terms but it still remains one of the poorest

00:18:32.540 economies in the world in terms of a per capita income basis so on average in fact it's poorer than

00:18:39.320 many countries in south america and africa so here you have from 1820 to 21 to uh to 2021 where we are

00:18:47.160 today and they made enormous policy mistakes the u.s itself has made policy mistakes uh in the era post

00:18:55.440 the gilded age so from the 1870 to 1900 you see a lot of economic growth a lot of exchange and trade

00:19:03.780 and movement of capital movement of people so globalization as we know it today we saw a lot

00:19:09.840 of the the rise of corporations relatively laissez-faire government but that era of guilt the gilded age was

00:19:17.440 punctured by a number of things spanish flu a war and the financial crisis and what subsequently happened

00:19:24.600 was progressive politics very similar to the type of progressive politics that we're hearing about

00:19:29.940 today people wanted bigger government as an arbiter of capital labor people wanted to see smaller

00:19:36.080 corporations they wanted them broken up and more antitrust less globalization and i'll tell you now

00:19:42.480 that left the united states in an economic malaise for 25 years from 1930 to 1954 you had low growth

00:19:53.540 high unemployment and if you look at just the dow jones industrial index as an as one indicator in

00:20:00.880 1929 it peaked at 381 points the next time they saw 381 points was in 1954 so you saw a stalled economy

00:20:10.640 and it's true that we had a breakdown of globalization so we had smooth holly policies that were very

00:20:17.120 aggressively anti-foreign goods and services coming into the u.s very aggressive aggressive

00:20:23.560 anti-immigrant uh stance which we're hearing again now um you know just to give you some numbers

00:20:29.580 in the gilded age that 1870 to 1900 the uh the the percentage of american foreign foreign born americans

00:20:37.700 was around 13 percent that number went down to six percent in this malaise or progressive period i'm

00:20:44.780 talking about it is it is true that government became bigger we have a lot of the welfare programs

00:20:50.820 in the united states social security medicare medicaid really built up in that period uh of 25

00:20:57.600 years but the but if you look at unemployment rates economic growth etc it actually is a period of

00:21:06.500 of real regression i would argue in the united states so then what what happened in the 50s to turn it

00:21:13.140 around well it's funny you ask because and i hope this doesn't repeat itself but what you had with a

00:21:19.720 couple of things first of all you had a war which ended in 1945 which actually drove a lot of the

00:21:28.120 industrialization and innovation of technology in the united states it brought women into the workforce

00:21:33.960 in large scale but you also had a a real concerted unified effort globally with the establishment of

00:21:43.540 britain woods for example which became the parent of the uh imf world bank un etc really come together

00:21:52.040 and argue that we needed to see much more unified global approaches so you see more trade emerging

00:21:59.560 um and the period from 1950 to 2008 very simple symbolic what i'm going to call the golden age

00:22:06.640 uh is very uh similar in terms of uh very similar to the gilded age in terms of high economic growth

00:22:14.240 large corporations relatively listed for government lots of trade lots of capital flows um and you know

00:22:20.920 we've all been around for this period so we've seen a lot of those gains however those gains have not

00:22:28.020 been distributed fairly and widely and that's where the problem emerged um governments had massive tax

00:22:36.400 revenues instead of investing in infrastructure they invested in wars so just an example in the united states the

00:22:46.160 infrastructure is graded d plus by the american civil engineer society that has nothing to do with china

00:22:52.720 that's a deliberate choice by the american public policymakers republican and democrat over a period

00:22:57.900 of time choosing that their marginal dollar was not going to go into infrastructure so what what does

00:23:04.240 that mean it means today not only is the u.s graded d plus in traditional infrastructure like ports and

00:23:10.760 railways and roads but also we are set really behind from china in more innovative new technologies and more

00:23:18.900 new infrastructure and we're playing catch-up in fact things like facial recognition ai um for many of these

00:23:25.760 we're actually considered behind and so public policies trying to catch up with that um there are other

00:23:31.420 examples of public policy decisions that were a folly and they've created a problem um that has really

00:23:36.900 gone to the guts of the american middle class things like underinvestment in education this country according

00:23:44.460 to a mckinsey report the the global consulting firm is going to be minority majority by 2050 but if you

00:23:53.000 look at the underinvestment in education blacks and latinos in particular who will be the majority

00:23:59.200 it could put the country in a permanent recession because we have these people you know largely these

00:24:04.720 populations are ill-equipped to uh to compete in a in a much more techno world and it's not just blacks

00:24:11.400 and latinos you we know about from uh he'll be the elegy the likes of the appalachia and pockets of

00:24:17.340 america that have been written about extensively uh white america where they're living living life

00:24:23.680 expectancies of declined opioid use i mean it's it's a corrosive uh degradation of society which again

00:24:31.140 as i mentioned it has a lot to do with bad public policy choices bad policy decisions in in corporations

00:24:38.540 as well as society writ large and has relatively little to do with china even though china is the one

00:24:44.760 that we focus on okay i think we're gonna have to give out antidepressants with this episode of the

00:24:49.360 podcast hopefully not so yeah i mean there's so many there's so many topics you just raised that

00:24:56.100 in the fullness of time i would like to discuss but let's focus on wealth inequality for a moment

00:25:02.260 and i think this somewhat relates to an illusion of continued growth that many people suffer from

00:25:08.960 because when you look at the stock market now it seems like we don't have a problem of growth

00:25:14.980 the economy looks like it's booming it looked like it was booming during covid obviously the stock

00:25:21.620 market isn't the economy but what we have is is an economy you know globally speaking this is

00:25:27.940 probably true i mean you can tell me how true it is globally compared to to um within any given

00:25:35.600 society like america but there is a something like a winner take all certainly winner take most

00:25:42.420 phenomenon now where the gains in productivity the growth such as it is is accruing to the one percent

00:25:51.940 and even you know to an asymptotic degree to the the one-tenth of one percent and beyond

00:25:59.240 how do you think about wealth inequality now so it's i think that the first of all the issue is

00:26:06.980 not just about wealth inequality i think the issue is inequality in general because um the problem with

00:26:13.760 inequality is that it it it means that people have less access to education health care political rights

00:26:24.720 opportunity opportunity writ large and so you know i know people love to focus on wealth in of itself

00:26:32.560 and i do see that very much as an easy target um there's a uh in my my book from 2018 edge of chaos i talk

00:26:40.960 about how oxfam the uh the charity had cited that and you know just a couple of years ago that uh the eight

00:26:48.700 wealthiest wealthiest men they're all men in the world um had more wealth than the bottom 50 percent

00:26:54.720 of the world's population and there are many of these types of statistics we're familiar with uh even

00:26:59.360 within the united states but also between country sort of uh excess and and uh inequality but i do i do

00:27:06.800 worry that sometimes the term inequality and how it's defined does conflate a number of issues

00:27:13.500 and it's also easy to be confused about the distinction between wealth inequality and income

00:27:19.520 inequality correct those are correct quite distinct so correct and look i'll say right out that i think

00:27:26.220 for every argument that somebody like myself who's more a believer in market capitalism um obviously

00:27:33.880 understanding it needs to be regulated it needs to have good policies behind it but i lean into a much

00:27:40.260 more capitalist type mindset there will be people who will argue vehemently and quite compellingly to

00:27:46.060 the untrained ear i would say uh that uh you know that the root of the problem that we see in

00:27:52.480 capitalism or inequality today is inherent in capitalism in of itself and so government needs to do more on

00:27:58.780 that but you know let's let's put the debate to aside for one moment let me just highlight a couple of

00:28:05.080 issues with focusing on in fact i'll highlight two issues very quickly with focusing on this idea of

00:28:12.880 wealth inequality or inequality without really getting into into the the weeds um so first of all

00:28:19.320 as economists we don't know the answer on how to solve inequality and i i say that with uh with

00:28:26.680 temerity but also some humility in there because i think economists and public policy makers love to

00:28:32.280 sound like we have the answers just not being executed upon um we are looking for short-term

00:28:37.980 solutions to what is effectively long-term problems uh we have tried left-leaning solutions tax and

00:28:44.880 redistribution those have not worked in terms of stemming inequality we've also tried more right-leaning

00:28:53.080 supply-side interventions where we've cut taxes and we've sort of tried to spur investment i can assure you

00:29:00.000 those have also not led to to greater uh or rather less inequality so we are kind of stumped because

00:29:08.280 uh you know i think we are looking for some quick fix oh if i tax and redistribute or if i cut taxes

00:29:14.140 you know bob's bob's your uncle we're gonna have uh inequality reduce and that has just not happened

00:29:20.160 so if you ask me what kinds of things could help solve this inequality problem they're not appealing

00:29:26.000 because they're all long-term they require intergenerational choices things like investing

00:29:31.600 in education investing in infrastructure in innovation um you know the the american historical

00:29:38.540 contract construct you know over 200 300 years has really been one of investing in the future and yet

00:29:46.840 this generation of americans for the first time in the history of the country is less educated than the

00:29:52.440 previous preceding generation um so that's one problem the other issue is when we say inequality

00:29:59.040 you know we aren't really being articulate about whether or not we're talking about inequality within

00:30:08.420 a country versus between countries and the reason this is quite interesting is that here this is one of

00:30:15.560 the to me the one of the biggest conundrums that we're facing in society today we're living

00:30:20.280 in a live experiment number one and number two largest economies in the world are the united states

00:30:26.060 and china respectively the united states is a market capitalist society and by and large has chosen

00:30:32.580 democracy as its political ethos china second largest economy in the world has deprioritized democracy

00:30:40.260 and has market state capitalism as its political approach and these two economies two different political

00:30:47.160 systems two different economic systems but they have the same gini coefficient which is the measure of

00:30:52.420 inequality around 0.42 so if you come from like myself somebody born and raised in africa or you're in

00:31:00.620 south america and you're looking for a which path to address inequality you don't really have a clear

00:31:07.540 line of sight of what policies actually deliver better outcomes because as i mentioned the story is quite murky

00:31:16.580 and neither the left nor the right has delivered emphatically uh an answer to how do you actually

00:31:23.780 limit inequality in certainly in the short term because as far as i'm concerned we know longer term

00:31:29.540 it's about investment in the future well couldn't someone from the left charge that that we really

00:31:36.400 haven't successfully tried adequate redistribution i mean you must be aware of the pro publica scandal of

00:31:44.220 recent months where they they published the tax returns of um the richest people in the u.s and

00:31:51.880 it was it was revealed that you know even warren buffett who has been such an articulate champion of

00:31:58.260 revising our tax policy in favor of redistribution and you know if he famously said it makes no sense that

00:32:04.920 you know i pay up a lower tax rate than my secretary yeah you know he distinguished himself for paying i think it

00:32:12.620 was an effective one-tenth of one percent on his uh earnings through that period we have a tax code that

00:32:20.500 is so full of loopholes for the the wealthiest people that what we've witnessed is just um a successful

00:32:28.320 gaming of a well-intentioned policy but not the effective implementation of that policy you're not

00:32:35.640 hopeful that if we actually could get the richest people to kind of in every cohort down through the

00:32:42.320 middle class to pay a proper citizen's share to the common good we would have we live in a different

00:32:49.880 society i think so you know i am empathetic to the argument that you know everyone should pay their fair

00:32:57.660 share and there needs for sure absolutely needs to be more tax reform in this country you know i i say

00:33:03.600 this again with with great humility i have two masters and a phd from arguably some of the best

00:33:09.420 schools on the planet and even i struggle to understand what the heck are these forms talking

00:33:14.320 about when i'm filling in my taxes so there's clearly a lot of work that needs to be done there and yes

00:33:19.160 there are i'm sure um many loopholes and ways to game the system that even i am not familiar with

00:33:25.420 that people are taking advantage of so yeah i'll give you that but i think in many respects it is a red

00:33:30.600 hearing what we need is government efficiency and this is where again i find it quite disheartening

00:33:37.260 especially coming from places like africa where you know or living around the world where i've seen and

00:33:43.400 it's kind of well known that government just does a bad job at allocating resources such as capital and

00:33:49.560 labor you know i i was very struck by something that mike bloomberg um has allegedly said that which is

00:33:56.620 around what he thinks the efficacy of or what an efficient government should look like this is it

00:34:02.560 should be a government that is data driven forward leaning focuses on measured outcomes and is not

00:34:08.560 corrupt and the reality is i'm afraid to say that you know even western governments are not

00:34:15.160 ticking those boxes we we don't see them being data driven they seem to be always playing catch-up and

00:34:21.920 being reactive as opposed to proactive they aren't forward leaning you know i gave you an example they

00:34:27.640 weren't invested in infrastructure around technology they're playing catch-up you know and this is just not

00:34:33.860 acceptable for a leading economy they don't focus on measured outcomes there's a lot of evidence around

00:34:39.460 the underperformance of education but we were we're almost beholden to to uh you know vested interests in

00:34:46.360 education in in health care and other areas that are leading to to bad outcomes and and bad you know

00:34:53.060 policy decisions and of course with respect to corruption i mean how many times time and time again

00:34:57.440 we expose uh pockets of corruption so i'm afraid that uh you know more money in a system that is still

00:35:05.660 wrought with these issues to my mind is is not necessarily a solution you know i i i love the the phrase

00:35:13.000 that revenue hides a lot of solves a lot of problems but you know at some point there's something to be said

00:35:18.960 about efficiency as well and we just are not doing as good a job as i would say previous generations have

00:35:25.300 done in terms of building out the uh the the you know interstate network building silicon valley you know

00:35:32.420 the the real innovation that the united states has been known for i just feel has really whittled away

00:35:39.780 and i and i should you know be very clear sam i'm not giving up on the u.s i think the u.s

00:35:44.280 still is a country where which likes to write itself or does write itself when it goes too far

00:35:50.440 in in the in the sort of self-harm but you know if ever there were a time when the yellow masks in the

00:35:56.760 plane of should be coming down to say we really need to do something fast i would say you know this is

00:36:02.840 it the the u.s the education statistics from the oecd piece are atrocious the united states in

00:36:09.480 mathematics reading writing is at the bottom uh you know it used to be number one two and three now

00:36:15.600 it's number 27 28 29 we're being you know railroaded and overcome by emerging market economies on the

00:36:22.720 regular we've got so much debt i mean it's it's it's insane and yes it's true that there have been some

00:36:29.140 reasons compelling and you know defensible reasons for us to to raise the debt levels given

00:36:37.660 covid given the financial crisis but at some point in time we can't continue to you know assume will

00:36:45.320 always be a reserve currency assume that other economies other systems of financial and you know

00:36:51.000 networks and architecture could emerge that could put us at a distinct disadvantage and you know all

00:36:57.060 the while we are playing politics every two years you know there's just no there's no common

00:37:02.780 discussion that to my mind is not a really the sophisticated level of discussion that is required

00:37:08.160 for a leading country to continue to lead um and maybe it's happening you know behind closed doors

00:37:14.360 but it's pretty disheartening to see what's happening in washington and and with institutions and society

00:37:20.760 writ large well given that you're behind many of those closed doors i'm not hopeful that that it is

00:37:26.180 happening there if you're not seeing it yeah so much of what you said suggests that really we have a

00:37:34.040 a fundamental problem with democracy or at least democracy as it's currently formed i mean it's

00:37:41.720 just our inability to focus on long-term problems is anchored to what you just described as the

00:37:49.860 short-term political time horizon of every full-time politician i mean it seems like people get elected

00:37:57.600 simply to then get re-elected right and they have you know they have about 15 minutes to focus on

00:38:03.920 solving problems before they then have to worry about the next election so it's but we we also as

00:38:10.960 citizens we reward that you know we ought to be much more savvy much more attuned to the fact that

00:38:18.460 getting a tax break today just is postponing the inevitable we're going to owe that money back

00:38:24.620 sometime in the future we need to be more aware that when our government borrows they're borrowing

00:38:30.420 from china which is the largest foreign lender to the united states government it does flip between

00:38:36.820 china and japan but basically china who we we insult we get into fights with on a regular basis is

00:38:43.780 holding you know potentially the largest amount of foreign debt it means that that we're not having

00:38:49.540 economic conversations we're having geopolitical conversations and risks to our society that are

00:38:56.060 you know as you say it goes to the heart of our democracy um you know not just the long-term problems but

00:39:01.260 also to low participation rates yeah how is this connected or is it connected to the weakening of

00:39:09.860 institutions and um that you know the rise of liberal democracies throughout the world or the rise

00:39:16.200 of populism it seems like with respect to people's consumption of information now and just our

00:39:24.820 inability to acknowledge a common set of facts on on any topic of significance whether it's you know

00:39:31.680 whether or not the 2020 election was run properly or whether it was stolen whether covet is worth taking

00:39:39.000 seriously whether vaccines are safe we just we're on a kind of a runaway train of misinformation

00:39:46.200 conspiracy thinking half-truths lies all of us being supercharged by social media and a breakdown of

00:39:54.880 trust in mainstream media and obvious failures in mainstream media organizations to do their job

00:40:00.960 what what are the points of of greatest concern here and and what can you imagine us doing to correct

00:40:07.780 course well so it is deeply disheartening um and you know at the risk of sounding like a broken record

00:40:16.360 it's particularly disheartening for someone like myself who's come from a you know poor country comes

00:40:21.880 to the united states comes to the west with great aspirations to experience the fullness of

00:40:27.580 participatory democracy you know freedom in terms of not just political rights but also economic rights and

00:40:34.460 we need to see a breakdown in what i would say are two things one it's a breakdown in belief and

00:40:41.360 transparency there's just something this which by the way i should say both of these things i believe

00:40:46.580 have happened over time it doesn't just happen in the last few weeks um so we have less transparency

00:40:53.820 our people's perceived sense that there's less transparency about where the decisions are being made

00:40:59.720 where is the quote-unquote room where these things are happening but also if there's a lack of agreement

00:41:06.380 on what is what defined what is defined as not just data but information what we where can we all agree

00:41:15.040 on in terms of facts i was struck by something a very good friend of mine told me uh some time ago that

00:41:22.520 the breakdown in transparency when really in the united states the sort of scales fell off people's

00:41:30.660 eyes was really around watergate so they would argue that that was really a turning point when people

00:41:36.760 realized wait a second we are being manipulated by public policymakers they're spying on each other

00:41:43.560 they're manipulating and for that that was a watershed moment in terms of transparency there's no doubt in

00:41:49.320 my mind that the watershed moment regarding information uh has definitely been catalyzed by

00:41:56.360 social media the ability for people to make claims and statements and not be held accountable and by the

00:42:04.240 way in an anonymous fashion and people there are other people who can make this argument much more

00:42:09.200 eloquently than i but to me has fundamentally altered our ability to judge what is data versus what is

00:42:17.660 actually information but these two things have as i mentioned i don't believe only started a few

00:42:25.540 years ago even i think this has been a sustained and deliberate sort of attack of our democracies

00:42:34.400 over time that you know perhaps we you know ignored wink wink nudge nudge whatever it wasn't that big a deal

00:42:41.680 but has been catalyzed now in such a fracture to society that uh you know it's it's deeply deeply

00:42:48.840 worrying but you but you ask me what can we do about it and i think that's an important thing because we

00:42:53.040 can sit here and navel gaze and say woe is me but what what can be done and i i know in my my my book

00:43:00.000 edge of chaos i i talk about a bunch of reforms i propose 10 things i won't go through all of them but

00:43:06.040 really 10 ways that i think we can enhance democracy to address the problem of low participation rates

00:43:13.640 but also to address the problem of short-termism that's built into our system again we as citizens

00:43:20.360 are rewarding our policymakers for taking these short-term decisions we get promised a tax break

00:43:25.700 we're rushing out to vote for these people you know without real due consideration for the consequences

00:43:30.700 uh later on so let me just maybe highlight a couple of things that i think would be quite

00:43:35.500 interesting to explore i should say two things about what i'm about to say one is that the list of 10

00:43:42.160 things that i propose in the in that book are are not a sort of that innovative meaning somewhere on

00:43:50.080 the planet and i state where they are already using these these tools and they've been tried and and

00:43:56.100 errors and so in that sense we have some semblance that they could work but the other thing is that

00:44:02.740 i'm not so inured to living and having worked in the united states to recognize that some of the

00:44:10.580 proposals might be viewed very much as anti-american meaning they just fly in the face of what americans

00:44:17.200 believe and let me start with that one um so low participation rates and the fact that a lot of public

00:44:23.660 policymaking has been captured by big money uh we know this i don't need to make the arguments billions of

00:44:29.440 dollars spent to fight campaigns we know about the the packs and the amount of money that goes to

00:44:35.200 candidates so we know that argument um this is i believe has contributed to low participation rates

00:44:40.920 and you know so just to give you some data at low incomes you know households that have thirty thousand

00:44:46.700 dollars or less the uh the average participation rates about thirty percent uh in elections that

00:44:53.720 number was around fifty percent just high fifties in the u.s you know and we have but we have seen

00:45:00.400 improvements i must say in the last few years but it's become as the country's become more divisive

00:45:05.680 we've seen actually more improvements in this but one example of something that we could do

00:45:10.080 is is so in order to to really go for the one man one vote we could have mandatory voting

00:45:15.160 i understand this flies in the face of americans who feel hey i have the right to vote or not vote or

00:45:21.980 it's my decision to choose what you know what i want to do or not do but you know there are around

00:45:27.200 20 countries around the world that have yet used it to great effect you get everybody's votes it does

00:45:33.560 matter for public policy outcomes and i think you can do it in a way that actually enhances

00:45:40.700 political discourse so that you don't have politicians rightly uh for their own goals pursuing wealthy

00:45:47.380 people and not really caring about what the average uh person thinks so that's one example if i can

00:45:52.900 ask you about that demy so what yeah it's not obvious to me why that's so important in the end

00:45:59.640 if you just imagine that uh i think correctly that most voters will be fairly uninformed about the

00:46:06.700 issues why does getting more and more of everybody who will be on balance uninformed add anything but

00:46:15.800 noise to the signal i mean couldn't couldn't one argue that it would be better for a smaller

00:46:23.140 percentage of a society to vote if that percentage were people who are actually informed about issues

00:46:29.260 and i'm thinking of things like brexit and you know other referendums that go haywire yes so well

00:46:35.500 haywire some people would say haywire other people would say went exactly the way they wanted yeah

00:46:40.080 exactly um but but you know touche i think it's a very good point because and i do funny enough one

00:46:45.740 of the 10 proposals in the book is making the argument that we should be looking at specific vote people

00:46:53.880 voting only being allowed to vote for certain things so i'll give you a very quick example you know i

00:46:59.200 think i'm a pretty in informed go ahead yeah well i just i just want to say that my comment is not

00:47:05.320 was not as elitist as it might have sounded because i think this this applies to me when i look at my

00:47:11.140 voting behavior when i you know when i confront a ballot and there are all kinds of local initiatives and

00:47:17.880 and you know judges uh and people who i have not taken the time to vet even remotely or on the ballot

00:47:25.520 you know i consider myself someone who's unqualified to vote for many of those things and often pass

00:47:32.020 them over precisely yeah and and by the way and that's and that is why i made this recommendation

00:47:36.860 it's one of the 10 in my book precisely because i consider myself pretty well read pretty knowledgeable

00:47:43.720 pretty informed about what's happening in different sectors even outside of economics but the truth is

00:47:51.180 if someone said to me dambisa here is one dollar a marginal dollar i have no idea where that is best

00:47:58.260 spent in the health care system i don't know if we need to hire more nurses i don't know if we need

00:48:02.780 to buy more pills more beds more doctors i have no idea but i have to believe that people who work

00:48:08.540 in that field physical therapists doctors nurses etc will have more information than i and so there is

00:48:15.260 there are countries that are trying this places like switzerland in canada um i believe it's in

00:48:20.940 toronto they've tried to they're flirting with this idea of saying hey wait a second it could be

00:48:26.500 knowledge-based and by the way i just for the avoidance of doubt i'm sure there are people who

00:48:31.580 are listening to this and their heckles are rising because it could very much sound like harking back to a

00:48:37.340 period where hey we don't want blacks so we don't want women to vote that's not at all what i'm suggesting

00:48:42.800 here but what i am saying is there is there a way for us to get better outcomes on public policy and

00:48:48.360 certainly this is a debate that i think we should be having but to your specific question sam which

00:48:54.220 was um you know what why is it the case that having a broader base of people who are ill-educated

00:49:01.400 voting why that might enhance our outcomes what i was addressing was it was enhancing democracy

00:49:08.620 so democracy is one quote-unquote man one vote um and all i was saying is that we are now in a

00:49:16.500 situation where we've got weighted voting and the weighted voting is money-based it's not knowledge

00:49:23.340 based and that scenario comes with its own problems because we are what we're seeing is exactly what you

00:49:29.640 just said the stock market is rallying that means the world must be writing itself well guess what

00:49:34.580 only you know a large proportion of the country's population is not even invested in the stock

00:49:40.620 market so it's you know the public policy uh the things that public policy looks at to point at as

00:49:47.040 economic success the things that society uh focuses on and especially public policy focuses on as progress

00:49:54.500 are things that perhaps unsurprisingly are basically the things that people who are wealthy who influence

00:50:02.200 public policy outcomes uh find important so all i'm suggesting is that if you want to have a much

00:50:07.580 more egalitarian society where you know the average education system is better the average um you know

00:50:16.920 health care system is better then you need to bring in those voices because the truth of the matter is

00:50:21.640 that that one tenth of percent probably doesn't really care about and i'm being simplistic for the for in

00:50:27.620 the interest of time doesn't really have an axe to grind it doesn't really have a dog in the fight

00:50:31.760 for low education standards an argument could be made that they should care because they're living

00:50:36.740 cheek by jowl with you know people who are don't have access or who are suffering but i'm just saying

00:50:42.900 that in this in the interim i'm trying to enhance the number of people participating in democracy because

00:50:49.200 i think we could get better outcomes how much of um our current uh economic woes in the u.s and

00:50:58.120 you know present and and near future do you think relate to automation and uh the evaporation of jobs that

00:51:07.220 that either are are not replaced or are replaced by by worse jobs it seems to me that i mean when one

00:51:14.000 worries about the trend line here and and the a future in which we we build better and better machines

00:51:20.940 that one is is usually met by what i consider to be bad analogies to prior advances in technology

00:51:28.880 people and this often comes from your fellow economists that people say well you know it used

00:51:33.920 to be that whatever 60 percent of americans worked in agriculture and now it's you know what i forget six

00:51:39.840 percent or you know less yeah it's less than that yeah less than three percent and and so yeah yeah these

00:51:45.200 people found we don't have a crisis of you know farmers who couldn't figure out what else to do with

00:51:50.040 their lives they they went into manufacturing and then since services i know the argument and then

00:51:55.220 18 percent have ended up in manufacturing about 80 percent have ended up in service sector jobs and

00:52:01.340 i know exactly the argument um and so you know what your question is you know how worried am i i'm not

00:52:07.620 i haven't been worried but we should be worried because uh if anything if we think about what are the

00:52:13.720 lessons learned from the pandemic digitization the deployment of uh of of human workers and labor

00:52:23.620 and really that sort of greater transparency into who actually is adding value if i can put it as crudely

00:52:31.300 as that to an organization i think has become much more revealed and uh the question about automation

00:52:38.320 i would argue in some of the boardrooms in which i sit has really rapidly moved from hey technology

00:52:45.600 advances are really about thinking around cyber risks and downside concerns into wait a minute we can

00:52:54.540 actually reduce our cost overheads in terms of the buildings that we rent and lease our you know

00:53:02.280 footprint of how many planes were flying business costs etc by having fewer people do more work i so

00:53:10.020 i think there's been already a shift in conversation it was bound to happen the world economic forum has

00:53:15.120 been talking about 85 million jobs that were going to get replaced and i do think that in the you know

00:53:22.420 the the scenario that we talked about going from 60 percent agriculture in 1900 moving to manufacturing

00:53:28.800 then services amount to r&d the difference is that we don't know what sector could absorb this

00:53:35.860 population of workers in those other sectors we were aware we knew that people were moving out of

00:53:42.800 agriculture because of both push and pull factors that took them into manufacturing part of it is that war

00:53:49.400 we talked about in the 1939 to 1945 the the whole world war ii infrastructure moved people out of farming

00:53:56.240 more out of farming into uh into industrial jobs and but that we know what has happened the problem is

00:54:03.040 it's not obvious where a large proportion of unskilled workers could land because the skill sets

00:54:11.020 required for these new jobs is much higher i'll just say one other thing here because it's that what i've

00:54:15.920 just said is really about it assumes that people are out there looking for work and are not finding it

00:54:23.000 there's another disturbing data point particularly seen in the u.s post the financial crisis which is

00:54:29.300 that the labor participation rate in this country has actually gone down and it's quite sticky and this

00:54:35.920 is basically how many people have basically decided you know what i'm just not going to i'm not going to

00:54:41.260 look for work anymore and there is actually essentially withdrawing their labor part of it could be because

00:54:47.000 of furlough schemes and covid basically people reevaluating their lives not wanting to work as hard or work in

00:54:53.240 certain circumstances i mean there's a whole list of arguments maybe even technological changes but the net net is that

00:55:00.560 not only are we demanding higher skills going forward from the people who work but we also have a situation where the

00:55:08.920 human worker is withdrawing their work number their work services and i think both of those lead me to be

00:55:14.780 more concerned about a jobless future well there's so much to talk about here then there are many other

00:55:22.280 topics i want to touch with you but i want to pivot to the quasi-political concerns that i started with

00:55:30.220 at the beginning and then we'll see if we have time for for the rest uh because i just i i don't want to miss

00:55:36.340 this opportunity to get all of your thoughts on this topic so you know so we're talking about

00:55:41.680 a crisis of legitimacy in democracy a a crisis of legitimacy around the economic system of capitalism

00:55:50.680 a space of information and misinformation that's making it increasingly difficult to talk about

00:55:57.040 any kind of ground truth uh on these topics or any other there's this growing reality of inequality

00:56:06.320 of all sorts you know income wealth education access to health care and it's both as you pointed out

00:56:13.960 you know global and domestic i i feel like the comparison is um you know what even if it's made

00:56:21.420 between countries it's not so psychologically salient for people and people care much more about the

00:56:27.700 proximate comparison you know how am i doing with respect to my neighbors as opposed to how am i doing

00:56:32.860 with respect to you know half the countries in africa or latin america i think it's probably true to say

00:56:39.880 that there are people in you know american society who are much wealthier than many even most people

00:56:48.660 in the in the developing world but who are who you know are in effect poor in our society and feel

00:56:56.920 the full the full range of burdens of that poverty you know psychologically and socially in a way that

00:57:03.820 they wouldn't if they were in a village in india or nepal or somewhere else which is to say you can

00:57:09.720 be better off in material terms and still psychologically worse off because you know the the only the only

00:57:16.560 software for running you know self-esteem on our hard drives is to make comparisons with you know the

00:57:24.040 the the nearest examples of difference so these problems are becoming even more difficult to talk

00:57:32.700 about think about and take steps to mitigate because of what is just a level of a political hyper

00:57:41.400 partisanship in our society that has just become totally unworkable and and again you and i met at a

00:57:48.020 dinner party where we were talking about the extreme polarization on the far left and you know you

00:57:54.860 know referred to on this podcast and elsewhere as as wokeism or uh social justice activism or identity

00:58:02.640 politics i mean there's a there are various lenses you can put over this but uh there's a point of view

00:58:08.440 in our society you know i think disproportionately expressed by the young and well-educated surprisingly and

00:58:17.040 often you know white and well-educated that um basically calls into question you know as i said

00:58:23.120 capitalism and you know it certainly stigmatizes wealth there's a belief that you know that there's

00:58:30.140 probably no ethical way to become a billionaire i mean the only way to be a billionaire is to have

00:58:35.160 perpetrated some horrific fraud on society or to have inherited the money or you know some other

00:58:41.360 means that is you know ethically indefensible there's uh i think a pervasive sense that any

00:58:47.880 exercise of american power is illegitimate and and probably diabolical on the world stage and this

00:58:56.380 probably runs all the way back to our founding there's a sense that american society is irretrievably

00:59:01.160 racist and that you know not only have we not made significant progress it's in some ways we've

00:59:08.720 it's never been worse than than at this moment you know the clock is you know two minutes before

00:59:14.560 midnight with respect to um the race-based inequalities in our society and so that there's

00:59:21.600 just a a sense that we are at some crisis point with respect to the the perception of of the state of our

00:59:30.560 democracy and society coming from the left we can leave the the mirror image on the right aside for the

00:59:37.820 moment and i guess let's focus i mean this this relates to every perceived victim group i mean we can

00:59:45.120 you know this is true of women's rights and and you know me too and trans rights and questions of gender

00:59:52.280 but let's focus on race for the moment and identity politics and affirmative action and you know there's

00:59:59.240 all of these nested concerns and policies that that fall there i'm wondering what your perception

01:00:05.800 as a an african woman you know whenever i speak to africans i'm always impressed at what a

01:00:13.820 unique perspective they give on race relations in the u.s what what is your perception of our moment

01:00:22.080 here and and how we should be thinking about it and dealing with it well first of all i'm glad that you

01:00:29.020 made the or stressed the point that i'm glad i was born and raised

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 13, 2021

#257 — The State of the World

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