This is a special interview for me because Tyler Cowen (mp3 including transcript, youtube) has been an enormous intellectual and moral influence on me over the last ten years or so.
I’m not alone. Tyler blogs with Alex Tabarrok at marginalrevolution.com, which is usually ranked as the top economics blog and Tyler as one of the most influential economists of the day. Tyler’s books (see below) are also enormously influential and you name your favorite economic or financial public intellectual and they probably read Tyler every single day.
The interview I’ve wanted to do with Tyler has been the “who is Tyler” conversation. Luckily he just wrote an entire book on what he values and why. That new book, Stubborn Attachments, is the foundation for Tyler’s entire value system. What an opportunity to dig in.
And yet I am so immersed in Tyler’s thinking that it’s hard for me to appreciate that you might not yet see why I think he’s worth understanding (and he is!). So down below I’ll put a quick run-down and reading list of some ideas and books that will help prime you for this conversation.
From my interview, here is the first question:
David Wright: I want to start with what I see as the most marginally important Cowenian contribution. For the sake of the audience, marginal in this case doesn’t mean small, it means that there are a lot of commentators and public intellectuals out there saying for the most part a lot of the same stuff. But given all the very smart people saying very smart things, where does Tyler stand out? What do you *need* to go to him for? My answer is it isn’t even Tyler… it’s Tyrone. I’ll defend this selection in a moment but can you explain to us who Tyrone is… and I don’t mean the name on his driver’s license, but you can tell us that, too. Who is Tyrone REALLY..
On how Tyler might have hatched the most important philosophical innovation in 2000 years. Really, you ask? You be the judge!
David Wright:…we read the ancient philosophers because they.. they’ve.. I’ll use my my word: infected our thinking and it’s the roots of quite a lot of current philosophical thought.. they wouldn’t have had a chance to think about compound growth and and in zero time preference right. So it seems to me this is actually a philosophical innovation the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in millennia. Could that be the case?
Tyler Cowen: Yes, you know.. Agnes [DW: Agnes Callard, CoT guest, see below] has one of the deeper understandings of ancient philosophy because she also has a Ph.D. in ancient history and has studied ancient philosophy and the view of many of the early Greeks was there’s something retrogressive about history or sect like so you advance for a while and then you move backwards. So it’s hard to keep a lot of compound returns was probably correct for them to believe that in their time. But we’re now in a world where at least say Great Britain since you know the 16 twenties or so has mostly had positive compound returns for centuries. And that’s a practical innovation and our theories need to adjust accordingly.
What I think is really going on in this book (and then get one-upped!):
David Wright: So I have a Straussian reading of this book and my Straussian reading is that
Tyler Cowen: I’m happy already by the way.
David Wright: It’s that it’s actually a sequel to Average is Over. And I know it’s not. But I would think of it as a sequel to average is over and I was listening to your podcast with Russ Roberts and in that he made the point or you made it I’m not sure who made it first but you were agreeing about the fact that Average Is Over which I’d like you to summarize if you don’t mind a moment I’ll give it my shot which is it’s about how there’s this.. in society there is going to be a big difference between people who are very good at the kind of development the technology that society is producing and then you have people who are not and you’re going to wind up with you know what Ross calls a bi-modal distribution which as you have you know a whole bunch of haves and a bunch of have nots and sort of hollowing out of the middle of society. And in that conversation you were talking about how really the book was not, as you put it, this is not normative in the sense that you weren’t really venturing an opinion on it saying this is good or bad this is kind of what’s happening. And I think that the Straussian reading of Stubborn Attachments is *that that’s not true*. It actually is a message to the have nots from Average Is Over and saying *just do it for your grandkids*.
Tyler Cowen: I agree with that. But I’ll see your bid and raise you a few…
This interview is so jam-packed with awesome moments including where I worry about the social status of venture capitalists (and Tyler tries to reassure me), who the Einstein of Journalism might be, Straussian readings of Conversations with Tyler, how Tyler consumes podcasts, how we value non-economic social phenomena and of course much, much more on Tyrone.
I needed this show to try to understand who Tyler really is and why and came away pretty satisfied! Big thanks to Tyler for his time and thanks for listening!
Tyler Cowen reading list:
- Stubborn Attachments: the book we’re talking about today. Out October 16th!
- The Great Stagnation: A short book. Key observation: our great grandparents’ lives were revolutionized (television, automobiles, airplanes, microwaves, etc, etc) and our parents’ lives are almost indistinguishable from our kids’. Why?
- Average is Over: the middle class will ‘hollow’ out with an upper middle class of tech-enabled thinkers and a lower middle class of customer service workers. How will this happen?
- The Complacent Class: much of the stagnation of the last generation has come about because we want comfortable, riskless lives.
- Conversations with Tyler: as background for this podcast, I’d suggest his talks with Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Peter Thiel, Agnes Callard, Malcolm Gladwell and Dave Barry
- marginalrevolution.com. Some key posts that give you a feel for Tyler’s writing and thought process:
I haven’t even told you about his daily links, yet. Read marginalrevolution.com!
Not Unreasonable 
I highly enjoyed this podcast. As a non-actuary I actually have found a lot of episodes pretty interesting!
Thanks! My aim is definitely broader than actuaries or insurance for that matter.