Tyler Cowen (2017)

What confluence of events led to GMU having such a diverse and cogitative economic faculty? (You, Alex Tabarrok, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, Arnold King, etc.) And what other groups of faculty do you think are comparable or similar?

Professor Cowen,

If given the opportunity, would you ever produce a show akin to Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" in order to better educate about and interest more people in economics?

Hi Tyler,
When asked if they would rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses, many people say they would be more scared of a horse-sized duck. My question to you is, duck-sized horses, over-rated or under-rated?

Hi Tyler,

Your and Alex's blog is my first stop in the morning. Can you explain (like I'm 5?) what you mean when you say someone has "mood affiliation" and, separately, when something is "Straussian"? I see these on the blog all the time and I never quite understand what you mean.

Thanks and keep writing!

Professor Tyler, I'm a big fan of yours. In one of your interviews, a while back, you mentioned that if you were young today and had to start your career today, you wouldn't pursue an academic career. What would you do if you were to start all over, something that would allow you to satisfy the demands of your "extreme curiosity"?

At the margin should we spend more or less time on Reddit?

It's great fun for infovores.

It is probably not that productive a use of time. Productivity growth seems to have slowed down once social sharing sites got popular.

Are we likely to only read people in our bubble and get complacent?

Hi Tyler,
I recently found your blog, Marginal Revolution. It has a lot of interesting things about economics. But, why is the comment section so terrible? It's full trolls constantly taking swings at each other, that make no sense to anyone else. That, and it's full of far-right people, which doesn't really match the theme of the blog. I get that a comment section does not represent the blog owner(s), but yours is unusually bad. I will read an interesting blog post, open the comments and be disappointed every time.

About your book, what is in it that I cannot pick up from blog posts? Also, when is it coming out in the U.K. and Europe?

What is the best way to combat growing nihilism about both politics and news quality?

Also, what are the best paths to reforming entitlements and what political coalition do you think would successfully pursue them?

Thank you for your great books and impeccable blogging! Please let Tyrone blog more!

Hey Tyler!!

Amazon page of your book says

> The Complacent Class argues that this cannot go on forever. We are postponing change, due to our near-sightedness and extreme desire for comfort, but ultimately this will make change, when it comes, harder. The forces unleashed by the Great Stagnation will eventually lead to a major fiscal and budgetary crisis: impossibly expensive rentals for our most attractive cities, worsening of residential segregation, and a decline in our work ethic.

Given that, universal basic income or similar scheme will become necessity after large scale automation kicks in, will these arguments about fiscal and budgetary crisis still hold true?

And with self driving cars and tech like hyperloop, wouldn't the rents in the cities go down?

PS : I am layman in economics

Which modern commentator on economics, political philosophy, public policy, and/or current affairs do you agree with most often?

I'll guess Megan McArdle.

I am a single guy. Can learning economics help me find a girlfriend?

Dear Prof. Cowen,

thank you for your frequent blogging! I've been a daily reader since I found marginal revolution. Whenever I stumble upon an interesting person or issue, I first look whether it has been mentioned by you. I have several questions, feel free to answer any of them:

1) What is your favorite or pet theory of the Industrial Revolution?

2) What is the best post-crisis book that could be titled "In Defense of Neoliberalism"? Why is it underrated in contemporary Germany?

3) Is sociology over- or underrated? What are your views on Bourdieu and Luhmann?

4) Robin Hanson and the top amazon review criticize your concept of historical cycles. What's your answer?

5) Is the DSGE-program nowadays over- or underrated?

6) How does the Great Stagnation fit with the risk of increasing automation?

7) What is Ray Lopez up to?

8) If I was going to do research on the role of trade for the German Reich, what should I look for? :)

Vielen Dank und viele Grüße aus Berlin!

whoa, I didn't realize you were doing an AMA today!

What is an issue or concept in economics that you wish were easier to explain so that it would be given more attention by the public?

What is the most underrated city in the US? In the world?

Would you describe your new book as overrated or underrated in your opinion?

Hi, Dr. Cowen. I'm a "millennial" in my early 30s and think a lot of the predictions you make in this book are very persuasive. Like a lot of my peers, I'm actually not averse to greater economic and social dynamism - it's very scary for our Baby Boomer parents, but sounds like opportunity (and social good!) to us. What I want to ask, though, is what do you think this means for wealth/asset generation for our generation?

No one I know believes our Social Security will be funded at 100% when we retire (if it's there at all). None of have pensions. A lot of us have student debt, which makes most of us delay household formation (houses, marriage, babies, etc). Tons of folks I know would love to start businesses, but between debt, rent and cost of living, it's almost impossible to do unless you come from family wealth. And when the Boomers retire/need old age care, most of those costs will inevitably fall to us.

So... what do? Besides political choices, how do I, as a part of the generation who will be most affected by greater disruption over the next 20/30 years, avoid getting screwed?

What is your prescription for the 'bottom 50%' of society in 20-30 years when the majority of their jobs have been automated away, and they lack the flexibility/natural talent to retrain for higher paying, more abstract forms of work? In Silicon Valley, a Universal Basic Income is floated as a common solution. Do you think UBI is workable/practical? Or do you advocate for something else?

In the past you've given some reasons for why you don't support futarchy. Do you still agree with those reasons, and do you think we could perhaps move closer to futarchy in some (useful) ways?

Why do you ask whether things are over/under rated rather than just good or bad? Surely in the vast majority of domains (tourism being one possible counterexample if you wish to avoid the crowds) the latter is what matters?

1. What do you think about Peter Thiel's relationship with President Trump?

2. I haven’t done any real travel and would like to but don’t have a grasp even on the basics. At a really basic level, what do you do during the day to maximize your limited time in a foreign environment? Eating good food is obvious, but what else? If tourist sites are overrated, then what do you replace them with (for someone maybe not so interested in GDP tourism)? Are there any good books on how to travel?

3. I know you consider alcohol a social ill. What are your thoughts on marijuana or LSD?

Thanks for doing this AMA!

If you were in your mid twenties, what counter-to-the-conventional-wisdom life decisions would you make as a consequence of the picture you paint in The Complacent Class, Average is Over, and on your blog? Or, put another way: what life decisions for young people deserve to have their status raised, and which deserve to have their status lowered?

Separately, I wanted to thank you for writing the one blog I read religiously. One of the best metrics of whether I think someone is smart and interesting is whether I reflexively recommend that they read Marginal Revolution.

What do you think is currently the most underrated ethnic food amongst people who seek out and try uncommon ethnic food?

Are you familiar with the work of Karl Polanyi? What do you think of it? Was your book title, The Great Stagnation, a riff on his, The Great Transformation?

1) As technology displaces more and more jobs in our economy what is the best way to (1) measure and (2) provide meaning in peoples' lives decoupled from work?

2) You've made a career by 'specializing in being a generalist.' For millennial polymaths who have diverse interests, do you have any career advice re: what to pursue that would allow you to learn about a diverse set of topics?

What is your ranking of Mahler symphonies? And who are the conductors who get him best?

Is he trolling or writing in Straussian esotericism?

Tyler,

Hi. I'm a mod @ r/badeconomics and a former student of yours (and, for the record, I hope you get to go to Oban, Scotland and have a nice dish @ EEUSK).

In a recent article by you, you spoke about who in the US was experiencing the American Dream, finding evidence that the Dream is still alive and thriving for Hispanics in the U.S. What challenges do you perceive now with the new administration that might reduce the prospects for this group?

Where can we find the influence of René Girard in your thought?

TL;DR: Do you think there is less "great" theory/ideology today (e.g. thinking about capitalism, communism, etc. in broad strokes)? And, why or why not? Also, what is your take on why academia has become increasingly granular and "grand theories" have seemingly gone out of fashion?

Tyler, just wanted to say I completely devoured The Complacent Class this past weekend, and I'm on your last chapter. I wanted to say that you certainly provided a vocabulary for something I've been thinking a lot about recently. Thank you for the food for thought.

I've read a lot about the past and the various ideological movements that gripped the 20th century (e.g. fascism, socialism, communism, and lesser known yet still influential ones such as anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, etc.). The lack of ideological clashes in the current day really strike me. I feel as though we are living through a time that is devoid of ideology (which, of course, can still be seen as an ideology...), and as though people are not thinking as big as they have in the past. As a voracious consumer of political news, most of the fights I see are over whether or not we can afford x or continue to do y, but there is really no questioning of the underlying systems outside of what we would likely perceive to be "fringe" and/or in academia. I'm guessing, from your book, you would agree (forgive me if I am misremembering, it was quite a bit of information to work though and I'm still reeling from it :) ), hence my questions above.

Just wanted to give you a huge thank you for all the work you put into your blog and your latest book. You always provide a lot of food for thought even if I don't necessarily agree with you 100% :)

Also, if you ever find yourself in Philadelphia, be sure to stop in to South Philly Barbacoa and Khmer Kitchen. There is a surprisingly large expat Cambodian population in South Philadelphia and a lot of good eats. (I know you're always on the prowl for good spots... so those are my local contributions. Thanks again for the AMA!)

Would you be open to adopting whatever mechanism the Language Log uses? (A blog with similar pop-academia flavor to it, but with a much more constructive comments section.)

I mean you'd expect a post on language difficulty to attract all sorts of xenophobic ire, but it's remarkably civil, especially for a comment section where the second comment is from a "Dr. BUTTOCKS"

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31341#comments

Hi Tyler, I'm a long time reader.

Sometimes when I'm reading certain of your posts, I'm almost convinced that they're salted with statements or questions that amount to trolling. I usually laugh it off, but I often wonder - was it really trolling? Would you mind tipping your hand to us a little and maybe tell us about a few favorite times you had a little fun with a posts?

Alternatively, if you're totally serious all the time, you're pretty darn unique!

Are you familiar with Cliodynamics or any of Peter Turchin's work? He predicts that we will see a spike of violence in the 2020s, and that the main driver of most revolutions/civil instability is intra-elite competition. What's your take on the likelihood and character of future political instability?

How do you invest your money? Do you agree with Buffett's assertion: "The bottom line: When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients. Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds."?

Overrated or underrated:

• Beethoven's 9th?

• John Coltrane?

• Rationalism?

• Originalism?

• Fan-fiction?

• David Hume?

• Abraham Lincoln?

• EMH?

• Indoor smoking bans?

Why teach at a law school? I'm heading to law school next year and am considering pursuing academia, would very much appreciate your thoughts on it.

Do you think convenience apps like Amazon grocery make us more complacent?

On a personal level, what are a few of your favorite films?

You seem to be a lot more worried about automation than most other economists. What should people who are skeptical about the dangers of automation look at to change their minds, and what do you think is the main thing other economists are missing when looking at the issue?

What does the average day in the life of Professor Cowen look like? Do you have a specific morning ritual that gets your day started on the right foot? How many hours a day do you devote to reading and writing? Any tips or tricks you use to maintain your impressive productivity?

Thanks for doing an AMA! I've read MR for about 6 years and listened to your
Conversations podcast for about 6 months. Both have taught me a lot.

My question: I've heard you ask some variant of this question on your podcast: given a billion (or 10 billion, if you like) dollars to attack a problem of your choosing, what problem do you choose to attack? How, and why?

What are some overrated/underrated questions you wished someone would ask you? And what are the answers?

Whats going on dude?

About "complacency" what do you think about education? People are moving less and starting fewer businesses, but they're getting more education. High schoolers have more homework and college admissions are more competitive. With credential inflation, more education has occured accross the board, with more people going to community college and more going to graduate school. On the other hand, to many students, college is paid vacation which doesn't ask much of them. Do you see this trend of more education as an exception to or a part of what you consider the greater "complacency" of Americans?

Are there people who might be exterior complacent types - e.g., they are on the computer and social media 90% of their lives - but are interior radicals - e.g., they are not creating an echo chamber but learning all sorts of new and unusual (not matching) things?

Thank you for this AMA Dr. Cowen.

• Perhaps too late, but would you consider writing a critique of Bernie Sanders’ campaign economic policies? Besides the Romer & Romer paper, which only touched on his fiscal policies, I don’t know of any high-quality critiques of his policy proposals. Likewise, what are the best arguments against becoming a single payer healthcare system?
• Would you ever do a CwT with gay African-American conservative film critic Armond White?
• Any Chinese/Vietnamese movies you’d recommend?
• Best Greek cookbook?
• Besides Stephen Foster, what pre-1900 American composers are worth listening to?

Hi Professor,

I graduated a few years ago with a degree in economics and decided to work in the private sector. Now I am what they call a "data scientist" and I work a lot with machine learning. As I was teaching myself how to use these tools, I was struck by how machine learning and computer science communities use many of the same tools as econometricians, but in slightly different ways and to different ends. It seems that the ML community and the econometrics community would have a lot to teach each other. Are you aware of any cross-pollination in these areas? Is there any interesting recent work that joins these two areas that you know of?

Relative to the public, are you optimistic or pessimistic on Kevin Durant's return this season?

Where is the best food in South America (outside of the major cities)?

Have you considered moderating or re-engineering the comments section on your site (which tend to be populated by some fairly unsavory characters)? Is there a philosophical reason you have for leaving it as is, and what sorts of comments or posters have you been forced to remove?

Prof. Cowen, how do you see the role of religion in either making us more complacent or pushing us to be less complacent? There seems to be a large complacency gap between, for example, Mormons and mainline Christianity.

You try a new acclaimed food, supposedly authentic. It tastes gross! You wait a few days and come back again. It still tastes gross! How many times do you return to sample it so that you really get it?

(Jonathan Gold is supposed to have gone to a Taiwanese place in LA over a dozen times before he started to appreciate it.)

Why do people marry down?

What do you think are the most realistic ways for governments and other institutions to reduce global catastrophic risk?

Do you listen to music while you read? Just wandering when do you find the time to listen to all the great music you find on Fanfare?

You cited Hao Jingfang's Folding Beijing as evidence that China is "becoming a society supercharged with creativity." What is creativity, generally, and in economic terms? And have you read the Three Body Problem trilogy?

Hi Tyler!

Regarding using technology to self-segregate: I have been feeling lately that people have forgotten the art of "leaving each other alone" (in a libertarian sense) and this is negatively affecting the national mood. Everything has to be a national news story, a protest, a movement. I see self-segregation as a maximization of happiness when using technology. Why can't I just look at things and interact with people that make me happy? Maybe this is wishful thinking from a well-off white person with no real trauma in my life.

Do you think the negatives of self-segregation outweigh the positives?

Dear Dr. Cohen,

I've been following your blog for a while, and to be honest it has given me a somewhat negative view of macro-economics. It seems like you suggest any macro-economic beliefs are valid as long as they are consistent with themselves with the data. I don't have any objections to that, that's fairly standard scientific practice. However, the data seems to be of very poor quality. In some cases, it seems that there is enough data that you can draw some conclusions as to what causes a localized phenomenon, but this seems to rarely lead to well-founded policy suggestions as there isn't data available for any proposed policies. These studies also doesn't seem to generalize well as there such a huge set of variables that your localized phenomenon doesn't occur exactly anywhere else. So it seems that "consistent with existing data" doesn't play as big a role in defining beliefs as in other fields.
It also seems that given a set of beliefs, its not always clear what predictions can be made with them, since economists with similar beliefs seem to apply them differently. Even if predictions can be made, it seems nearly impossible to test them. In short, overall, the field seems to be extremely unempirical.

This leads me to the following questions:
Have I got it wrong, and is macroeconomics more empirical than I'm giving it credit for?
In general, given the difficulty in testing predictions, how can you tell good macroeconomics from bad?

Thank you in advance.

I am torn, should I learn Chinese (more practical, more future use, larger population) or Japanese (more personal interest but Japan is a smaller declining country that is notoriously isolationist)?

PS: Feel free to add further points of differentiation between the two languages.

PPS: By Chinese I mean mandarin with simplified script, i.e. the official language in China.

Prof Cowen, although I haven't yet read The Complacent Class, its thesis seems to implicate concerns Scott Alexander discussed in "Meditations on Moloch" and Robert Hansen" has summed by saying "This is Dream Time." So my question is this: do you see the problems you describe as solvable, or do they demonstrate that western liberal democracy is in decline and destined to lose out to more autocratic competitors? Can a society focused on individual fulfillment sustain itself in competition with societies less interested in championing human freedoms?

Are the marginal returns to reading increasing or decreasing where you are?

Hi Tyler, I'm a big fan of your blog and cannot wait to read your book.

I noticed you post some interviews published in Spanish and German. Are the German interviews conducted in German or are they translated from English? Also, would you mind sharing a little bit about your experiences in Germany?

Which places in the United States will benefit the most from self-driving cars? Who will benefit the least?

Professor Cowen,

Avid MR reader here. Thanks for enriching my day the last 5 five years or so.

I've always enjoyed your insights on how as an economist you approach everyday life - food being the main one and the subject of one of your books.

However I think the world would frankly benefit from more Cowen-thinking to everyday life, for example choosing a college or career, buying a car, picking a movie to see, where to vacation, etc. You've dropped similar insights from time to time on your blog.

Have you considered doing another, potentially broader book on how you as an economist explore life decisions, both big and small?

Or maybe just another book on another specific topic? Either way, would love more of these seemingly "off-topic" subjects.

Dr. Cowen,
I have learned a lot from your work but am not an economist.
I intuitively believe that a main reason for wage stagnation is rising health care costs paid for by employers.
Some prominent economists say this is incorrect.
I don't understand their arguments or their math.

What do you think?
Can you explain their position in a way a dumb redneck
can understand?
thankyou in advance

How do you pronounce Cowen, like Cow-en or like Co-wen?

If you could make the general populace educated about one particular economic topic, what would it be?

Hi Tyler,

I have been following you for a while and have noticed you have an interest in autism, perhaps more than other health conditions. What do you find fascinating about autism? What is one thing we could be doing to make autistic peoples lives better?

My favorite Marginal Revolution posts are Markets in Everything. Can you link some particularly interesting ones for Redditors who aren't into the RSS?

I loved your book “Stubborn Attachments,” which argues that the best way to help the people of the distant future is to promote sustainable economic growth. What are some underrated ways to increase the odds of achieving said growth?

Are you optimistic about the future of the genetic study of complex traits?
Specifically where do you stand on UVA professor and behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer's gloomy prospect?

What do think about behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer's "gloomy prospect" regarding the future of the genetics of complex traits.

https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/cirge/documents/activities/events/Turkheimer_GloomyProspectWins.ppt

Is China Star still the best Chinese restaurant in Northern Virginia? What are some strip-mall gems I'm probably missing?

Hi Tyler, thanks for doing this AMA. As someone who is interested in getting into ecanomics and understanding it, what is the best "bigginers guide to economics" in your opinion?

Over-rated or under-rated: NGDP targeting as a tool of central bank governance?

What are your tips for undegrduate students wanting to become a non-academic economists? What's the best way to study the philosophical questions in economics, like social choice theory or Rawls? They don't appear in undergrad programmes.

Hi Tyler -- love the CwT and MR.

Question: High-frequency trading? Overrated orunder rated? Will today's MS Financial Engineering gradesbe tomorrow's law school grads or tomorrow's software engineers?