June 24, 2025 • 31 mins
Roger welcomes Marian L. Tupy, founder and editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, for a compelling conversation about human progress, population growth and the myth of scarcity.
They explore the legacy of economist Julian Simon, the surprising data behind global trends and why more people often means more innovation, not less. They also break down how human ingenuity continues to drive prosperity across the globe and why doomsday narratives about overpopulation, resource depletion and environmental collapse fail to reflect reality. Plus, they examine how the idea of “the ultimate resource” shifts our understanding of economics, freedom and the future of human flourishing.
In addition to his work with Cato and HumanProgress.org, Marian L. Tupy is the co-author of “Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet” and “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting”. He’s also a co-creator of The Simon Project, an initiative that examines the relationship between population growth and resource abundance and publishes the yearly Simon Abundance Index. His work focuses on the intersection of data, human liberty and long-term optimism.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today I'm your host, roger Ream.
It's a pleasure to welcomeMarion L Tupe to today's show.
Marion is the founder andeditor of humanprogressorg, a
(00:23):
senior fellow at the CatoInstitute's Center for Global
Liberty and Prosperity andco-creator of the Simon Project,
an initiative that examines therelationship between population
growth and resource abundanceand publishes the yearly Simon
Abundance Index.
He is the co-author of 10Global Trends Every Smart Person
(00:44):
Should Know and Many Others youWill Find Interesting and
Superabundance the story ofpopulation growth, innovation
and human flourishing on aninfinitely bountiful planet.
Marion has also appeared on CNN, msnbc, fox News and the BBC
and has been published widely innumerous outlets, including
(01:05):
Newsweek, the Atlantic, theFinancial Times and the
Spectator.
Marian.
Thank you for coming on theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
Thanks for having me.
You're the founder ofhumanprogressorg, a fascinating
website, and I know every week Iget an email from you with
great news about the world.
What inspired you to launchthis project to begin with?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
About 15 years ago or so, I read a fascinating book
by a British author andscientist, matt Ridley, called
the Rational Optimist, and thebook was filled with fascinating
statistics about how the lifehas improved over time.
That I didn't know about, andsince it's my job to be pretty
much on top of what is happeningin the world, I thought well,
(01:49):
if I don't know these things,many other people won't, so I
wanted to create a websitedevoted to those statistics.
At the same time, what happenedwas that the World Bank has
released world economicindicators, world development
indicators, from behind apaywall, and many people started
looking at these indicators andstarted realizing that vast
(02:10):
majority of them were moving inthe same direction, which is to
say, in the direction of theimprovement.
So that really gave rise to awhole discipline called human
progress studies, as we try tounderstand.
Why is it that the world isimproving to the extent that it
is?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
we try to understand.
Why is it that the world isimproving to the extent that it
is?
By coincidence, a few weeks agomy three daughters asked me to
give them a list of some of thefavorite books I've read in my
lifetime and I had.
The Rational Optimist was onthe list and I'm embarrassed to
say I didn't put Superabundanceon it.
But I should add that to thelist now because you've written
an outstanding book that followsup on many of those themes and
goes into a lot of depth with alot of data.
(02:45):
I'd like to dig into that.
I know you'll be speaking to ourstudents after we record this
in giving our annual LevDobriansky lecture and it's, I
think, along the lines of whatyou just said.
It's something young peopleneed to hear because there's so
much doom and gloom out thereabout the world, about
environmental issues, populationgrowth, all these things, and
you tackle those things in yourwebsite.
(03:07):
In your book let's first talkabout, you use the title
superabundance, but abundancehas become a much talked about
word lately, with another bookbeing written along those lines.
But what do you mean bysuperabundance?
How do you choose that for yourtitle and what is your general
conclusion?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Much of the criticism concerning capitalism,
concerning economic freedom,concerning people getting
wealthy, has come from theenvironmental far left.
Not all environmentalists areagainst technological change,
against innovation, againstpeople getting wealthier, but
the people who have been incharge the vanguard of the
(03:46):
environmental movement has beenone that does not believe that
human problems can be solvedthrough innovation.
They believe that humanproblems should be solved by
depriving people of more money,of more consumption, of holidays
abroad, of air conditioning andwhatever else.
And so when I started lookingat the state of affairs, it
(04:10):
seemed to me that the extreme ofthe environmentalist movement
could be put into two bucketsthe people concerned with
climate change and globalwarming and people concerned
with consumption andoverconsumption of resources and
population growth.
So I didn't want to do morework on climate change and
global warming, because I thinkthere are plenty of people who
are doing that work, and it's alot of hard science, physics,
(04:33):
chemistry and whatever else.
I think that you need to behighly skilled and highly
educated in those areas, physicsand chemistry in particular in
order to be able to have a goodgrasp on what is happening with
regard to global warming, and sowhat I decided to focus on was
really the question ofoverconsumption of resources.
So the book Superabundance isdevoted to trying to understand
(04:54):
what is the relationship betweenpopulation growth and
consumption of resources.
The orthodox view is that themore people you have, the more
resources you are going toconsume and consequently
resources are going to go up inprice, they are going to become
scarcer and therefore you havesome sort of a calamity on your
hands.
Now that works when populationincreases because obviously, as
(05:17):
you have more people consumingstuff, you are supposed to have
less of it.
But it also works if thepopulation plateaus, because as
population of the world becomesricher, then even if you have a
steady number of people, theyare still going to consume more
and more resources because theyare richer and consequently can
afford greater consumption.
So we looked at the data andwhat we found is that actually
(05:39):
the relationship is inverse,meaning the more people we have,
the cheaper resources becomerelative to wages, and this
relationship has held for thelast 200 years or so.
Superabundance has a specifictechnical meaning in the book,
which is that abundance ofresources is growing at a more
(05:59):
rapid pace than populationgrowth.
So if population grows at, say,2% a year, but abundance of
resources is growing at 3% or 4%a year.
That means that it's growing ata superabundant rate, and
indeed, in almost all differentcommodities that we looked at we
looked at hundreds of differentcommodities, including metals,
(06:22):
minerals, fuel and food all ofthose have been becoming more
abundant at a superabundant rate.
In other words, on average,every additional human being
creates more than they consume.
They create more than wedestroy.
On average, every human beingcontributes to moving humanity
forward, including making thingscheaper.
(06:42):
Why?
Because every human being comesinto the world not just with an
empty stomach, but also with abrain, a brain that is capable
of coming up with some kind ofan innovation which can make the
world more prosperous.
A perfect example would besomething like fertilizer.
Today, half of humanity dependsdirectly on the existence of
(07:03):
synthetic fertilizer createdfrom natural gas.
If we didn't have syntheticfertilizer, half of humanity
wouldn't be able to exist.
Why did scientists createsynthetic fertilizer?
Well, because naturalfertilizer, such as manure, for
example, is very inefficient.
And then we used guano, whichwas starting to run out.
So then we came up with a newinnovation, which once again
(07:24):
means that every year, we areproducing more food than the
year before.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
When you said, as the population grows, resources
become cheaper, the immediatereaction would be well, that
means we're going to use more ofit and use it up.
But your meaning by that isthat's a signal that resources
are becoming more plentifulbecause the prices are dropping.
Gold isn't becoming reallyexpensive.
These metals aren't becomingreally expensive.
They're getting cheaper becausewe're innovating and finding
(07:50):
efficiencies.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
That's the basic supply and demand.
If something is falling inprice, you know that you have
more of it.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And some of this goes back to, I know, a bet that was
placed between Paul Ehrlich andthe economist Julian Simon
about resources and aboutpopulation growth, which I think
was in maybe the 1970s and theneven goes further back to
Malthus Thomas Malthussuggesting that the population
growth was going to meanterrible things for the world.
But could you talk a little bitabout that famous bet, because
(08:18):
I know you've followed a lot ofwhat Julian Simon has done with
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I'm actually very privileged, very lucky, very
honored to be a senior fellow atthe Cato Institute, and Julian
Simon was a senior fellow atCato back in the 1990s.
He died, unfortunately in 1998.
But everything goes back reallyto Malthus, to Reverend Malthus
and his essay on the principleof population where he claimed
back in 1798 that the morepeople we have, the fewer
(08:44):
resources we are going to have.
Now, even as Malthus wrotethose words, that essay on the
principal population, back inthe 18th century, he was already
wrong because all he saw, allthat Malthus saw, was that the
population of England wasgrowing.
But if you looked at prices,what he would have realized was
that wheat in Britain wasactually becoming cheaper.
So even though the populationof Britain was increasing, the
(09:06):
main staple, food staple of theEnglish people, which is wheat,
was actually decreasing in price.
So more people, greaterinnovation, greater agricultural
productivity, consequentlycheaper wheat.
The Malthusians experiencedsomething of a renaissance in
the second half of the 20thcentury when you had a massive
increase in population inespecially what was called third
(09:27):
world countries China, india,bangladesh, so forth and the
concern simply returned.
And the primary advocate ofMalthusianism in the second half
of the 20th century was PaulOrlick.
He's still alive, I think he's95 now.
He's a biologist at StanfordUniversity and as a biologist he
sort of thinks of human beingsas any kind of other animal.
(09:48):
So you know, if you haveplentiful rain and a lot of
grass, rabbits are going to havea lot of babies, they are going
to consume all the grass andthen they are all going to die
right, and biologists sort ofthink about the world in those
terms, except that human beingsare not like rabbits or rats or
bacteria in a petri dish.
We can figure out a way out ofscarcities, and the man who
(10:12):
opposed Paul Ehrlich, by thename of Julian Simon of the Cato
Institute and University ofMaryland, was an economist and
he basically looked at thenumbers and realized that
actually prices were coming down.
And so he challenged PaulEhrlich to a bet which started
in 1980 and would last 10 years,and Ehrlich not Simon, but
Ehrlich chose five metalstungsten, zinc, chromium and tin
(10:36):
, I believe.
And basically they made afutures contract.
They invested $1,000 in thosefive commodities and if they
became more expensive over those10 years then Simon would pay
Ehrlich.
But if they became cheaper thenEhrlich would pay Simon and, as
a matter of fact, the fivecommodities between 1980 and
1990 fell in price by 36%,adjusted for inflation, and
(10:59):
consequently Paul Ehrlich had tosend Simon a check for
something like $537 or so.
So it was a famous bet and itshould have really solved the
issue, but it didn't.
And the same concern aboutrunning out of things that were
prevalent in the second half ofthe 20th century still remains
to this day.
I mean, it's extraordinary howmany times you switch on TV or
(11:22):
read a newspaper that we aregoing to run out of water, as
though desalination didn't exist.
Or where are we going to getall the lithium for electric car
batteries, even though maybe in20 years' time we will not be
using lithium?
In fact, already we are usingsodium-ion batteries rather than
lithium-ion batteries.
So there are lots of reasonswhy something that you think is
(11:43):
going to go on infinitely isgoing to become incredibly
scarce but simply doesn't.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You created the Simon Abundance Index.
Your project is running that.
Tell us about that SimonAbundance Index.
Is that a continuation oflooking at that basket of metals
?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Not exactly.
We have decided to expand thescope of the research.
So instead of five commoditieswe are looking at 50 commodities
.
We are looking at everythingfrom uranium to chicken, to wood
, to hides, to crops and fuelsand so on and so forth, and
basically it's an index whichstarts at a value of 100 back in
(12:21):
1980.
And then we see how much moreabundant these 50 commodities
become relative to wagesglobally.
And basically right now Ibelieve we are like 500% rather
than 100.
So they are about four or 500%more abundant than they were 45
years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
One environmental issue that relates to this, I
guess, as population grows, isthe disposal of all these
consumer goods.
You know, I know there arerecycling programs.
There's people concerned aboutthe buildup of plastics in the
environment.
Do you tackle some of thoseissues that come with growing
population, that even thoughresources are becoming more
abundant, there is perhaps anenvironmental impact still from
(13:04):
this population growth?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yes, I don't want to be Pollyannish about it.
Economic growth has resulted insome ecological damage.
There is no way around it.
Industrialization, theIndustrial Revolution, has
created a lot of damage, butwhat's important is that richer
countries are moreenvironmentally friendly and
they have better environmentsthan poor countries.
In other words, there is whatis called a Kuznets curve of
(13:28):
environmental quality.
So what tends to happen is thatwhen you are poor, as you grow
richer, environmental damageincreases, but then, after you
become rich, environmentaldamage declines and
environmental quality improves.
Why?
Because at some point, when youare rich enough, you start
caring much more about theenvironment than when you were
poor.
A perfect example would be ifyou go to the Caribbean, the
(13:50):
dirtiest beaches are in the poorCaribbean nations, but the most
pristine beaches are also inthe most prosperous Caribbean
nations, such as Turks andCaicos, for example.
The same way, if you go toDenmark or Sweden or Norway, the
environmental quality isincredible, whereas if you go to
, say, poor countries of Africa,places like Zimbabwe or
Mozambique, environmental damageis much greater.
(14:12):
Environmental quality issmaller.
So what I'm saying is that, yes, enrichment comes with
environmental damage, but richpeople are much more cognizant
about the environment and theyare willing to part with some of
their income in order tobreathe clean air, swim in clean
waters, etc.
(14:34):
Now you were asking specificquestions regarding, for example
, plastics.
Plastics are a problem, butonce again the issue of poverty
versus riches plays a role.
95% of all the plastic in theoceans are flushed into the
oceans from eight rivers, all ofthem in Asia and Africa, not in
(14:54):
Europe, in Europe and in NorthAmerica.
Obviously, what we do, weincinerate our plastic or we
recycle it, whereas in poorcountries they simply flush it
into the rivers and into theoceans.
So there are two ways that youcan solve it.
One, you can make thesecountries rich, and the second
thing, you can start developingalternatives to plastics.
There are a number of differentcompanies which are working on
(15:16):
developing plastic-likesubstances which are easier to
dissipate, to dissolve, and weeven have some progress in
creating bacteria which can eatup plastic under room
temperatures.
Consequently, what you couldsee in the future is that we
don't just incinerate plastic,because that has its own hazards
(15:40):
, but we simply destroy plasticthrough different types of
bacteria, for example, orreplacement of plastics by
something else which will behavelike plastic but it's not
really plastic.
I should point out thatterrible tragedy in the Gulf of
Mexico, when one of those wellsblew up and a tremendous amount
of crude spilled into the Gulfof Mexico Well over time.
(16:00):
What happened, of course, isthat sun rays have destroyed
that crude and eventually thatgot solved through environmental
conditioning.
So there are ways in whichnature can fix itself, but we
can help it along.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
You know, we hear a lot now about a birth dearth in
particularly in rich countriesand perhaps globally.
People aren't having as manybabies.
Some populations in some placesare leveling off in Europe and
North America.
Do you see that as an ominoussign in terms of the world if
populations aren't growing?
Since you consider the humanmind the ultimate resource, to
(16:36):
use Julian Simon's phrase, do wewant to encourage more
population growth?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
It does worry me along many different dimensions.
Some of them are purely.
You know, life is wonderfulfalling in love, going to
different places in the world,exploring different cultures,
just staying alive andexperiencing this wonderful
earth of ours.
That, you know, if we are goingto have fewer people, fewer
(17:03):
people are also going to beenjoying all those wonderful
benefits of being alive, andthat's unfortunate.
But it's also unfortunatebecause we rely on future
generations to pay down themassive American debt.
We rely on future generations topay for tomorrow's retirees,
and we rely on futuregenerations, in order to produce
more solutions to our problems,to come up with new ideas.
So it's people who have ideaswhich lead to inventions and
(17:25):
innovations which then lead toincreases in productivity and,
consequently, higher economicgrowth.
This is not Marian Tupi'sthesis.
This is a well-known way ofdoing things, that Nobel Prizes
have been given for these sortsof discoveries to Paul Romer and
Michael Kramer and others.
So there are many differentways in which having fewer
people in the world isunfortunate.
(17:46):
Now, those of us who believe infreedom and free choices of
people, how we are going tosolve this is not entirely clear
.
Obviously, none of us thinksthat we should force women into
having more children than theywant.
We want parents to have as manybabies as they want, but here
maybe we can help.
Maybe part of the reason whyparents don't have as many
children as they want is becausehousing is too expensive.
(18:08):
And housing isn't expensivebecause there is some sort of
law of nature which says thathousing needs to be expensive.
We just put too many barriersin place of building new houses.
Maybe we can fix that.
It would be easier.
Maybe what will happen in thefuture is that there will be
some technological solutions towomen's childbirth, for example.
(18:28):
Women currently have tointerrupt their careers in order
to have babies.
Maybe we can have artificialwombs where the child can
gestate, in the same way that,for example, we already have
incubators devoted to a similartask.
Maybe in the future we aregoing to have robot nannies that
are going to take care of thekids, so that mom and dad can go
(18:49):
to the opera or dinner or canhave a job.
So maybe there's a futuresolution to it.
But currently, obviously, it'ssomething that is of concern.
But we have time.
We have time because the worldpopulation is going to peak in
about 2065 or so, so we stillhave time to come up with
technological solutions to thepopulation decline.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And without getting into the issue of legal and
illegal immigration, your book,your conclusions, your data
leads to the conclusion thatimmigration can be very
beneficial to a country becauseyou have more people and
immigrants often come with newideas.
They have an entrepreneurialspirit that drives them to leave
their country and seekopportunity.
So it lends a good, strong casefor countries being open to
(19:31):
immigration.
I would take it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, I have to be very careful about talking about
immigration, because I'm animmigrant into the United States
and so I have skin in the game,so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
As I recall, Marian, your family is an immigrant to
South Africa as well, right FromSlovakia.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, we moved from Czechoslovakia to South Africa,
then to Britain, then finally tothe United States, and I'm not
in favor of uncontrolledimmigration.
I think that we need to makesure that people come to this
country, love this country, thatthey don't have any criminal
backgrounds and so forth.
But I do think that we ought tohave a liberal immigration,
which is to say that we ought tobring in people and especially
and there really is very littledownside to bringing people who
(20:06):
are able of moving the Americaneconomy forward.
Obviously, the American Southand the agricultural sector
needs a lot of unskilledlaborers, but the Silicon Valley
and so forth, they also needhigh-skilled immigration.
So many of our most famouscompanies have been started by
immigrants Peter Thiel, born inGermany, elon Musk, born in
South Africa, david Friedberg ofOhalo, extraordinary company,
(20:40):
also born in South Africa.
Then you have people behindGoogle who are also foreigners.
So there's an extraordinarybenefit that America has gained
as a result of, especially highschool immigration, and
international affairs had beenbecoming a little less stable
recently, I'm sure that many ofyour viewers will have realized
and if there are going to besmart people working on how to
defend the country, how todevelop new systems of
protecting us against missilesand whatever else.
I would like them to work inthe United States rather than
(21:02):
against the United States.
So let's bring them here.
Yes, some of them are going tobe spies, but we'll have to
handle that.
But most of them just want abetter life.
They want to be free.
They don't want to live inrepressive regimes like Iran and
China and God forbid Russia.
We should welcome them here.
If we want to really punish ourenemies, if we really want to
make life difficult for VladimirPutin, we should allow their
(21:24):
smartest to come to the UnitedStates and work for us rather
than for him.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You also wrote a book called 10 Global Trends Every
Smart Person Should Know.
Could you touch on some ofthose trends that you think
particularly young people aren'taware of, that they need to
learn?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, I think that this book has come out about
five years ago, so at some pointI will have to do an update
because, you know, data gets old.
But we looked at something like78 different trends, and the
basics that young people oughtto understand is that they live
much longer than their ancestors.
The standard life expectancyuntil about 200 years ago was 35
(21:59):
years.
Now, when you're 20, 35 soundslike antiquity.
But my point is that, you know,we want to live into our 80s
and to our 90s and perhapsbeyond, because living is good,
living is great, and so justthat Also.
You know, it took the Frenchuntil the middle of the 19th
century to get to 2,000 caloriesper person per day.
People used to starve.
(22:20):
I mean, famines were onceomnipresent throughout the world
.
People used to die by themillions.
Today, our problem is notfamine but obesity, which we are
obviously tackling throughthings like GLP-1s and so forth.
What else?
50% of children between theages of 1 and 15 would die
before the age of 15 until about, once again, 200 years ago.
(22:41):
Today that number is somethingdown to 4% or so.
So from 50% to 4%, that'sextraordinary.
I encourage you in your classesand so forth, to point to the
classroom and do you realizethat 200 years ago, half of you
would not be here?
Maternal mortality is muchlower than it used to be, even
violence At the time ofMichelangelo, for example.
(23:09):
In the 15th century, 75 out of100,000 Italians could expect to
die due to murder, beingmurdered.
Today, italy has one of thelowest homicide rates in the
world.
It's now lower than one per100,000.
So there are all sorts ofdifferent ways in which the
world is much safer.
It is much better educated orat least certainly literate.
We are better fed, we livelonger and we are healthier.
(23:30):
People think that if you lived200 years ago, that life was
hunky-dory because, you know,you're walking through the
fields and whatever else.
No Food was often adulterated.
People would die from foodpoisoning all the time because,
of course, they had norefrigeration and whatever else.
You know, meat would spoil andso forth.
People would be infested withall sorts of parasites against
(23:52):
which they had absolutely noanswer before the age of modern
drugs.
So no, life was prettymiserable.
And not to mention that justabout eight out of 10 people in
Europe would be pockmarked bysmallpox.
Those who survived smallpoxwould be disfigured by it.
This was a terrible time to bealive.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, about 200 years ago the leading cause of death
among women was childbirth.
I find that astounding.
And you know, 100 years ago ifa child got diabetes it was a
death sentence.
There was no treatment, no cure, until I think it was a
Canadian who developed insulin.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, and what about antibiotics?
Antibiotics are now 97 yearsold, so the antibiotics came out
in 1928.
In 1924, son of President ofthe United States, Calvin
Coolidge Jr, was playing tennison the White House lawn,
shoeless, developed a blisterwhich got infected and he died.
This was the son of thePresident of the United States.
(24:48):
He had access to the besthealthcare in the world, but
because they didn't haveantibiotics, he died.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, I like telling that story to young people and
the story of Abraham Lincolnlost a son and Henry David
Thoreau's brother died fromcutting himself while shaving.
I mean, these are the thingsthat killed people back then.
It's remarkable, and youngpeople today and all of us, I
guess take so much for grantedabout the world we live in today
.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, read history and read economic history.
It's full of fascinatinginsights about how our lives are
much better than those of ourancestors Did your?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
path of being from Czechoslovakia, your family, and
then South Africa to England,to here.
How did that upbringing toenjoy higher standard of living?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
because we lived in an open air prison where nothing
worked and everything was uglyand we had food shortages and so
forth.
So moving to the West wasobviously a tremendous
(25:50):
improvement in my life, but italso, I think, it made me wonder
about why countries are poor,why countries are rich.
Obviously, I'm not the firstone or the last one to wonder
about those things.
Going back all the way to AdamSmith, people have been
wondering about the causes ofthe riches and poverty of
nations, and so it's veryimportant that we continue to
learn the right lessons, whichis to say that freedom works.
(26:12):
If you allow people to have ago, in the words of Deirdre
McCloskey, then people willgenerally tend to improve their
own lives and those of theirfamilies, and basically, this is
best achieved in countrieswhich have a very high degree of
economic and political freedom,whereas in countries which are
suppressed, like communistcountries, where freedom is not
(26:35):
allowed to flourish, theyobviously fall behind and become
impoverished as a result.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Right, Well, I have a high regard for the Cato
Institute.
It's wonderful you're a seniorfellow there.
I've supported it for manyyears and I think it's a
terrific project.
That you run under theirauspices is like Sweden.
(27:07):
Of course Bernie Sanders doestoo but as this paradise because
it's socialist and somethingthe Swedes reject.
They say they aren't asocialist country.
But what about that kind ofwelfare state economy like
Sweden?
How does that fare?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
in the way you look at these things, First, it's
important to understand thatBernie Sanders picks and chooses
what he likes about Sweden.
He doesn't like, for example,that Sweden has essentially
privatized its educationalsystem.
Its high school education isnow privatized.
Students can go to any school,whether it's religious or
(27:40):
for-profit, and for-profiteducation thrives in Sweden.
That's not something that younormally associate with a
socialist country, not somethingthat a socialist like Bernie
Sanders would want to adopt inthe United States.
But Sweden in many ways leadsthe way in terms of economic
freedom, by which we meancapitalism.
Sweden is much more free tradecountry than the United States.
So there are many aspects tothe Swedish economy which are
(28:00):
highly competitive, highlycapitalistic.
What Sweden does have that wedon't have as much is a very
high rate of taxation, includinga very high VAT rate.
It's a value-added tax, correctValue-added tax, so our taxes
generally are much lower thanwhat they are in Sweden and
(28:21):
other Nordic economies.
So the economic model of theNordic countries is not
socialistic, it's capitalist,but they have a much higher
level of taxes.
Now.
Sweden overtaxed itself in the1970s and the 1980s.
It had a massive economic crashin early 1990s 1988 to 1992 or
(28:41):
so and consequently Swedenactually became much more
capitalist than it did before,but it retained these high taxes
.
Now the question is whether theUnited States can have such
high taxes and also what hightaxes do to things like
innovation, for example, is oneof the reasons why innovation
happens in the United States isbecause our taxes are relatively
low.
In other words, in some ways,sweden parasites on American
(29:05):
innovation.
Innovation doesn't reallyhappen in Nordic countries
precisely because a lot ofpeople who might come up with
innovation come to the UnitedStates rather than part with 70
or 80% of their income in Sweden.
Second, would Americans put upwith high tax rates as they are
in Nordic countries?
I doubt it.
But more importantly, or mostimportantly and this is not
(29:28):
something that is verypolitically correct and that is
that very high tax rates usuallyrequire a very high homogeneity
of the population.
In other words, people who feellike they're a part of one big
family are usually willing toput up with much higher taxes.
But once you have a verydiverse population I'm not just
talking about race, althoughrace matters.
(29:49):
I'm talking about culture andreligion.
When you have a hodgepodge ofdifferent peoples, like they are
in the United States, you knowit's much more difficult to
increase taxes to such a level,because people who share the
same culture, who share the sameethnic background, who share
the same expectations and hopesand so forth, they are much more
likely to put up with hightaxes than very diverse
(30:11):
countries do.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Wonderful Appreciate you talking with me today on the
Liberty and Leadership podcast.
Marion's book, published threeyears ago, is Superabundance.
It's the story of populationgrowth, innovation and human
flourishing on an infinitelybountiful planet.
So if you ever get depressed ordown on things in the world, I
urge you to buy his book andread it.
(30:32):
He'll be giving our LevDobriansky Lecture in Political
Economy a few days after we'verecorded this podcast to our
students who are studying fromcampuses around the United
States.
Thanks for being with me today,marian, my pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
(30:53):
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg andbe sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast appand leave a five-star review.
Podcast app and leave afive-star review.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
(31:18):
things, large and small.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today I'm your host, roger Ream.
It's a pleasure to welcomeMarion L Tupe to today's show.
Marion is the founder andeditor of humanprogressorg, a
(00:23):
senior fellow at the CatoInstitute's Center for Global
Liberty and Prosperity andco-creator of the Simon Project,
an initiative that examines therelationship between population
growth and resource abundanceand publishes the yearly Simon
Abundance Index.
He is the co-author of 10Global Trends Every Smart Person
(00:44):
Should Know and Many Others youWill Find Interesting and
Superabundance the story ofpopulation growth, innovation
and human flourishing on aninfinitely bountiful planet.
Marion has also appeared on CNN, msnbc, fox News and the BBC
and has been published widely innumerous outlets, including
(01:05):
Newsweek, the Atlantic, theFinancial Times and the
Spectator.
Marian.
Thank you for coming on theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
Thanks for having me.
You're the founder ofhumanprogressorg, a fascinating
website, and I know every week Iget an email from you with
great news about the world.
What inspired you to launchthis project to begin with?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
About 15 years ago or so, I read a fascinating book
by a British author andscientist, matt Ridley, called
the Rational Optimist, and thebook was filled with fascinating
statistics about how the lifehas improved over time.
That I didn't know about, andsince it's my job to be pretty
much on top of what is happeningin the world, I thought well,
(01:49):
if I don't know these things,many other people won't, so I
wanted to create a websitedevoted to those statistics.
At the same time, what happenedwas that the World Bank has
released world economicindicators, world development
indicators, from behind apaywall, and many people started
looking at these indicators andstarted realizing that vast
(02:10):
majority of them were moving inthe same direction, which is to
say, in the direction of theimprovement.
So that really gave rise to awhole discipline called human
progress studies, as we try tounderstand.
Why is it that the world isimproving to the extent that it
is?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
we try to understand.
Why is it that the world isimproving to the extent that it
is?
By coincidence, a few weeks agomy three daughters asked me to
give them a list of some of thefavorite books I've read in my
lifetime and I had.
The Rational Optimist was onthe list and I'm embarrassed to
say I didn't put Superabundanceon it.
But I should add that to thelist now because you've written
an outstanding book that followsup on many of those themes and
goes into a lot of depth with alot of data.
(02:45):
I'd like to dig into that.
I know you'll be speaking to ourstudents after we record this
in giving our annual LevDobriansky lecture and it's, I
think, along the lines of whatyou just said.
It's something young peopleneed to hear because there's so
much doom and gloom out thereabout the world, about
environmental issues, populationgrowth, all these things, and
you tackle those things in yourwebsite.
(03:07):
In your book let's first talkabout, you use the title
superabundance, but abundancehas become a much talked about
word lately, with another bookbeing written along those lines.
But what do you mean bysuperabundance?
How do you choose that for yourtitle and what is your general
conclusion?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Much of the criticism concerning capitalism,
concerning economic freedom,concerning people getting
wealthy, has come from theenvironmental far left.
Not all environmentalists areagainst technological change,
against innovation, againstpeople getting wealthier, but
the people who have been incharge the vanguard of the
(03:46):
environmental movement has beenone that does not believe that
human problems can be solvedthrough innovation.
They believe that humanproblems should be solved by
depriving people of more money,of more consumption, of holidays
abroad, of air conditioning andwhatever else.
And so when I started lookingat the state of affairs, it
(04:10):
seemed to me that the extreme ofthe environmentalist movement
could be put into two bucketsthe people concerned with
climate change and globalwarming and people concerned
with consumption andoverconsumption of resources and
population growth.
So I didn't want to do morework on climate change and
global warming, because I thinkthere are plenty of people who
are doing that work, and it's alot of hard science, physics,
(04:33):
chemistry and whatever else.
I think that you need to behighly skilled and highly
educated in those areas, physicsand chemistry in particular in
order to be able to have a goodgrasp on what is happening with
regard to global warming, and sowhat I decided to focus on was
really the question ofoverconsumption of resources.
So the book Superabundance isdevoted to trying to understand
(04:54):
what is the relationship betweenpopulation growth and
consumption of resources.
The orthodox view is that themore people you have, the more
resources you are going toconsume and consequently
resources are going to go up inprice, they are going to become
scarcer and therefore you havesome sort of a calamity on your
hands.
Now that works when populationincreases because obviously, as
(05:17):
you have more people consumingstuff, you are supposed to have
less of it.
But it also works if thepopulation plateaus, because as
population of the world becomesricher, then even if you have a
steady number of people, theyare still going to consume more
and more resources because theyare richer and consequently can
afford greater consumption.
So we looked at the data andwhat we found is that actually
(05:39):
the relationship is inverse,meaning the more people we have,
the cheaper resources becomerelative to wages, and this
relationship has held for thelast 200 years or so.
Superabundance has a specifictechnical meaning in the book,
which is that abundance ofresources is growing at a more
(05:59):
rapid pace than populationgrowth.
So if population grows at, say,2% a year, but abundance of
resources is growing at 3% or 4%a year.
That means that it's growing ata superabundant rate, and
indeed, in almost all differentcommodities that we looked at we
looked at hundreds of differentcommodities, including metals,
(06:22):
minerals, fuel and food all ofthose have been becoming more
abundant at a superabundant rate.
In other words, on average,every additional human being
creates more than they consume.
They create more than wedestroy.
On average, every human beingcontributes to moving humanity
forward, including making thingscheaper.
(06:42):
Why?
Because every human being comesinto the world not just with an
empty stomach, but also with abrain, a brain that is capable
of coming up with some kind ofan innovation which can make the
world more prosperous.
A perfect example would besomething like fertilizer.
Today, half of humanity dependsdirectly on the existence of
(07:03):
synthetic fertilizer createdfrom natural gas.
If we didn't have syntheticfertilizer, half of humanity
wouldn't be able to exist.
Why did scientists createsynthetic fertilizer?
Well, because naturalfertilizer, such as manure, for
example, is very inefficient.
And then we used guano, whichwas starting to run out.
So then we came up with a newinnovation, which once again
(07:24):
means that every year, we areproducing more food than the
year before.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
When you said, as the population grows, resources
become cheaper, the immediatereaction would be well, that
means we're going to use more ofit and use it up.
But your meaning by that isthat's a signal that resources
are becoming more plentifulbecause the prices are dropping.
Gold isn't becoming reallyexpensive.
These metals aren't becomingreally expensive.
They're getting cheaper becausewe're innovating and finding
(07:50):
efficiencies.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
That's the basic supply and demand.
If something is falling inprice, you know that you have
more of it.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And some of this goes back to, I know, a bet that was
placed between Paul Ehrlich andthe economist Julian Simon
about resources and aboutpopulation growth, which I think
was in maybe the 1970s and theneven goes further back to
Malthus Thomas Malthussuggesting that the population
growth was going to meanterrible things for the world.
But could you talk a little bitabout that famous bet, because
(08:18):
I know you've followed a lot ofwhat Julian Simon has done with
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I'm actually very privileged, very lucky, very
honored to be a senior fellow atthe Cato Institute, and Julian
Simon was a senior fellow atCato back in the 1990s.
He died, unfortunately in 1998.
But everything goes back reallyto Malthus, to Reverend Malthus
and his essay on the principleof population where he claimed
back in 1798 that the morepeople we have, the fewer
(08:44):
resources we are going to have.
Now, even as Malthus wrotethose words, that essay on the
principal population, back inthe 18th century, he was already
wrong because all he saw, allthat Malthus saw, was that the
population of England wasgrowing.
But if you looked at prices,what he would have realized was
that wheat in Britain wasactually becoming cheaper.
So even though the populationof Britain was increasing, the
(09:06):
main staple, food staple of theEnglish people, which is wheat,
was actually decreasing in price.
So more people, greaterinnovation, greater agricultural
productivity, consequentlycheaper wheat.
The Malthusians experiencedsomething of a renaissance in
the second half of the 20thcentury when you had a massive
increase in population inespecially what was called third
(09:27):
world countries China, india,bangladesh, so forth and the
concern simply returned.
And the primary advocate ofMalthusianism in the second half
of the 20th century was PaulOrlick.
He's still alive, I think he's95 now.
He's a biologist at StanfordUniversity and as a biologist he
sort of thinks of human beingsas any kind of other animal.
(09:48):
So you know, if you haveplentiful rain and a lot of
grass, rabbits are going to havea lot of babies, they are going
to consume all the grass andthen they are all going to die
right, and biologists sort ofthink about the world in those
terms, except that human beingsare not like rabbits or rats or
bacteria in a petri dish.
We can figure out a way out ofscarcities, and the man who
(10:12):
opposed Paul Ehrlich, by thename of Julian Simon of the Cato
Institute and University ofMaryland, was an economist and
he basically looked at thenumbers and realized that
actually prices were coming down.
And so he challenged PaulEhrlich to a bet which started
in 1980 and would last 10 years,and Ehrlich not Simon, but
Ehrlich chose five metalstungsten, zinc, chromium and tin
(10:36):
, I believe.
And basically they made afutures contract.
They invested $1,000 in thosefive commodities and if they
became more expensive over those10 years then Simon would pay
Ehrlich.
But if they became cheaper thenEhrlich would pay Simon and, as
a matter of fact, the fivecommodities between 1980 and
1990 fell in price by 36%,adjusted for inflation, and
(10:59):
consequently Paul Ehrlich had tosend Simon a check for
something like $537 or so.
So it was a famous bet and itshould have really solved the
issue, but it didn't.
And the same concern aboutrunning out of things that were
prevalent in the second half ofthe 20th century still remains
to this day.
I mean, it's extraordinary howmany times you switch on TV or
(11:22):
read a newspaper that we aregoing to run out of water, as
though desalination didn't exist.
Or where are we going to getall the lithium for electric car
batteries, even though maybe in20 years' time we will not be
using lithium?
In fact, already we are usingsodium-ion batteries rather than
lithium-ion batteries.
So there are lots of reasonswhy something that you think is
(11:43):
going to go on infinitely isgoing to become incredibly
scarce but simply doesn't.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You created the Simon Abundance Index.
Your project is running that.
Tell us about that SimonAbundance Index.
Is that a continuation oflooking at that basket of metals
?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Not exactly.
We have decided to expand thescope of the research.
So instead of five commoditieswe are looking at 50 commodities
.
We are looking at everythingfrom uranium to chicken, to wood
, to hides, to crops and fuelsand so on and so forth, and
basically it's an index whichstarts at a value of 100 back in
(12:21):
1980.
And then we see how much moreabundant these 50 commodities
become relative to wagesglobally.
And basically right now Ibelieve we are like 500% rather
than 100.
So they are about four or 500%more abundant than they were 45
years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
One environmental issue that relates to this, I
guess, as population grows, isthe disposal of all these
consumer goods.
You know, I know there arerecycling programs.
There's people concerned aboutthe buildup of plastics in the
environment.
Do you tackle some of thoseissues that come with growing
population, that even thoughresources are becoming more
abundant, there is perhaps anenvironmental impact still from
(13:04):
this population growth?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yes, I don't want to be Pollyannish about it.
Economic growth has resulted insome ecological damage.
There is no way around it.
Industrialization, theIndustrial Revolution, has
created a lot of damage, butwhat's important is that richer
countries are moreenvironmentally friendly and
they have better environmentsthan poor countries.
In other words, there is whatis called a Kuznets curve of
(13:28):
environmental quality.
So what tends to happen is thatwhen you are poor, as you grow
richer, environmental damageincreases, but then, after you
become rich, environmentaldamage declines and
environmental quality improves.
Why?
Because at some point, when youare rich enough, you start
caring much more about theenvironment than when you were
poor.
A perfect example would be ifyou go to the Caribbean, the
(13:50):
dirtiest beaches are in the poorCaribbean nations, but the most
pristine beaches are also inthe most prosperous Caribbean
nations, such as Turks andCaicos, for example.
The same way, if you go toDenmark or Sweden or Norway, the
environmental quality isincredible, whereas if you go to
, say, poor countries of Africa,places like Zimbabwe or
Mozambique, environmental damageis much greater.
(14:12):
Environmental quality issmaller.
So what I'm saying is that, yes, enrichment comes with
environmental damage, but richpeople are much more cognizant
about the environment and theyare willing to part with some of
their income in order tobreathe clean air, swim in clean
waters, etc.
(14:34):
Now you were asking specificquestions regarding, for example
, plastics.
Plastics are a problem, butonce again the issue of poverty
versus riches plays a role.
95% of all the plastic in theoceans are flushed into the
oceans from eight rivers, all ofthem in Asia and Africa, not in
(14:54):
Europe, in Europe and in NorthAmerica.
Obviously, what we do, weincinerate our plastic or we
recycle it, whereas in poorcountries they simply flush it
into the rivers and into theoceans.
So there are two ways that youcan solve it.
One, you can make thesecountries rich, and the second
thing, you can start developingalternatives to plastics.
There are a number of differentcompanies which are working on
(15:16):
developing plastic-likesubstances which are easier to
dissipate, to dissolve, and weeven have some progress in
creating bacteria which can eatup plastic under room
temperatures.
Consequently, what you couldsee in the future is that we
don't just incinerate plastic,because that has its own hazards
(15:40):
, but we simply destroy plasticthrough different types of
bacteria, for example, orreplacement of plastics by
something else which will behavelike plastic but it's not
really plastic.
I should point out thatterrible tragedy in the Gulf of
Mexico, when one of those wellsblew up and a tremendous amount
of crude spilled into the Gulfof Mexico Well over time.
(16:00):
What happened, of course, isthat sun rays have destroyed
that crude and eventually thatgot solved through environmental
conditioning.
So there are ways in whichnature can fix itself, but we
can help it along.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
You know, we hear a lot now about a birth dearth in
particularly in rich countriesand perhaps globally.
People aren't having as manybabies.
Some populations in some placesare leveling off in Europe and
North America.
Do you see that as an ominoussign in terms of the world if
populations aren't growing?
Since you consider the humanmind the ultimate resource, to
(16:36):
use Julian Simon's phrase, do wewant to encourage more
population growth?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
It does worry me along many different dimensions.
Some of them are purely.
You know, life is wonderfulfalling in love, going to
different places in the world,exploring different cultures,
just staying alive andexperiencing this wonderful
earth of ours.
That, you know, if we are goingto have fewer people, fewer
(17:03):
people are also going to beenjoying all those wonderful
benefits of being alive, andthat's unfortunate.
But it's also unfortunatebecause we rely on future
generations to pay down themassive American debt.
We rely on future generations topay for tomorrow's retirees,
and we rely on futuregenerations, in order to produce
more solutions to our problems,to come up with new ideas.
So it's people who have ideaswhich lead to inventions and
(17:25):
innovations which then lead toincreases in productivity and,
consequently, higher economicgrowth.
This is not Marian Tupi'sthesis.
This is a well-known way ofdoing things, that Nobel Prizes
have been given for these sortsof discoveries to Paul Romer and
Michael Kramer and others.
So there are many differentways in which having fewer
people in the world isunfortunate.
(17:46):
Now, those of us who believe infreedom and free choices of
people, how we are going tosolve this is not entirely clear
.
Obviously, none of us thinksthat we should force women into
having more children than theywant.
We want parents to have as manybabies as they want, but here
maybe we can help.
Maybe part of the reason whyparents don't have as many
children as they want is becausehousing is too expensive.
(18:08):
And housing isn't expensivebecause there is some sort of
law of nature which says thathousing needs to be expensive.
We just put too many barriersin place of building new houses.
Maybe we can fix that.
It would be easier.
Maybe what will happen in thefuture is that there will be
some technological solutions towomen's childbirth, for example.
(18:28):
Women currently have tointerrupt their careers in order
to have babies.
Maybe we can have artificialwombs where the child can
gestate, in the same way that,for example, we already have
incubators devoted to a similartask.
Maybe in the future we aregoing to have robot nannies that
are going to take care of thekids, so that mom and dad can go
(18:49):
to the opera or dinner or canhave a job.
So maybe there's a futuresolution to it.
But currently, obviously, it'ssomething that is of concern.
But we have time.
We have time because the worldpopulation is going to peak in
about 2065 or so, so we stillhave time to come up with
technological solutions to thepopulation decline.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And without getting into the issue of legal and
illegal immigration, your book,your conclusions, your data
leads to the conclusion thatimmigration can be very
beneficial to a country becauseyou have more people and
immigrants often come with newideas.
They have an entrepreneurialspirit that drives them to leave
their country and seekopportunity.
So it lends a good, strong casefor countries being open to
(19:31):
immigration.
I would take it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, I have to be very careful about talking about
immigration, because I'm animmigrant into the United States
and so I have skin in the game,so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
As I recall, Marian, your family is an immigrant to
South Africa as well, right FromSlovakia.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, we moved from Czechoslovakia to South Africa,
then to Britain, then finally tothe United States, and I'm not
in favor of uncontrolledimmigration.
I think that we need to makesure that people come to this
country, love this country, thatthey don't have any criminal
backgrounds and so forth.
But I do think that we ought tohave a liberal immigration,
which is to say that we ought tobring in people and especially
and there really is very littledownside to bringing people who
(20:06):
are able of moving the Americaneconomy forward.
Obviously, the American Southand the agricultural sector
needs a lot of unskilledlaborers, but the Silicon Valley
and so forth, they also needhigh-skilled immigration.
So many of our most famouscompanies have been started by
immigrants Peter Thiel, born inGermany, elon Musk, born in
South Africa, david Friedberg ofOhalo, extraordinary company,
(20:40):
also born in South Africa.
Then you have people behindGoogle who are also foreigners.
So there's an extraordinarybenefit that America has gained
as a result of, especially highschool immigration, and
international affairs had beenbecoming a little less stable
recently, I'm sure that many ofyour viewers will have realized
and if there are going to besmart people working on how to
defend the country, how todevelop new systems of
protecting us against missilesand whatever else.
I would like them to work inthe United States rather than
(21:02):
against the United States.
So let's bring them here.
Yes, some of them are going tobe spies, but we'll have to
handle that.
But most of them just want abetter life.
They want to be free.
They don't want to live inrepressive regimes like Iran and
China and God forbid Russia.
We should welcome them here.
If we want to really punish ourenemies, if we really want to
make life difficult for VladimirPutin, we should allow their
(21:24):
smartest to come to the UnitedStates and work for us rather
than for him.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You also wrote a book called 10 Global Trends Every
Smart Person Should Know.
Could you touch on some ofthose trends that you think
particularly young people aren'taware of, that they need to
learn?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, I think that this book has come out about
five years ago, so at some pointI will have to do an update
because, you know, data gets old.
But we looked at something like78 different trends, and the
basics that young people oughtto understand is that they live
much longer than their ancestors.
The standard life expectancyuntil about 200 years ago was 35
(21:59):
years.
Now, when you're 20, 35 soundslike antiquity.
But my point is that, you know,we want to live into our 80s
and to our 90s and perhapsbeyond, because living is good,
living is great, and so justthat Also.
You know, it took the Frenchuntil the middle of the 19th
century to get to 2,000 caloriesper person per day.
People used to starve.
(22:20):
I mean, famines were onceomnipresent throughout the world
.
People used to die by themillions.
Today, our problem is notfamine but obesity, which we are
obviously tackling throughthings like GLP-1s and so forth.
What else?
50% of children between theages of 1 and 15 would die
before the age of 15 until about, once again, 200 years ago.
(22:41):
Today that number is somethingdown to 4% or so.
So from 50% to 4%, that'sextraordinary.
I encourage you in your classesand so forth, to point to the
classroom and do you realizethat 200 years ago, half of you
would not be here?
Maternal mortality is muchlower than it used to be, even
violence At the time ofMichelangelo, for example.
(23:09):
In the 15th century, 75 out of100,000 Italians could expect to
die due to murder, beingmurdered.
Today, italy has one of thelowest homicide rates in the
world.
It's now lower than one per100,000.
So there are all sorts ofdifferent ways in which the
world is much safer.
It is much better educated orat least certainly literate.
We are better fed, we livelonger and we are healthier.
(23:30):
People think that if you lived200 years ago, that life was
hunky-dory because, you know,you're walking through the
fields and whatever else.
No Food was often adulterated.
People would die from foodpoisoning all the time because,
of course, they had norefrigeration and whatever else.
You know, meat would spoil andso forth.
People would be infested withall sorts of parasites against
(23:52):
which they had absolutely noanswer before the age of modern
drugs.
So no, life was prettymiserable.
And not to mention that justabout eight out of 10 people in
Europe would be pockmarked bysmallpox.
Those who survived smallpoxwould be disfigured by it.
This was a terrible time to bealive.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, about 200 years ago the leading cause of death
among women was childbirth.
I find that astounding.
And you know, 100 years ago ifa child got diabetes it was a
death sentence.
There was no treatment, no cure, until I think it was a
Canadian who developed insulin.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, and what about antibiotics?
Antibiotics are now 97 yearsold, so the antibiotics came out
in 1928.
In 1924, son of President ofthe United States, Calvin
Coolidge Jr, was playing tennison the White House lawn,
shoeless, developed a blisterwhich got infected and he died.
This was the son of thePresident of the United States.
(24:48):
He had access to the besthealthcare in the world, but
because they didn't haveantibiotics, he died.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, I like telling that story to young people and
the story of Abraham Lincolnlost a son and Henry David
Thoreau's brother died fromcutting himself while shaving.
I mean, these are the thingsthat killed people back then.
It's remarkable, and youngpeople today and all of us, I
guess take so much for grantedabout the world we live in today
.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, read history and read economic history.
It's full of fascinatinginsights about how our lives are
much better than those of ourancestors Did your?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
path of being from Czechoslovakia, your family, and
then South Africa to England,to here.
How did that upbringing toenjoy higher standard of living?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
because we lived in an open air prison where nothing
worked and everything was uglyand we had food shortages and so
forth.
So moving to the West wasobviously a tremendous
(25:50):
improvement in my life, but italso, I think, it made me wonder
about why countries are poor,why countries are rich.
Obviously, I'm not the firstone or the last one to wonder
about those things.
Going back all the way to AdamSmith, people have been
wondering about the causes ofthe riches and poverty of
nations, and so it's veryimportant that we continue to
learn the right lessons, whichis to say that freedom works.
(26:12):
If you allow people to have ago, in the words of Deirdre
McCloskey, then people willgenerally tend to improve their
own lives and those of theirfamilies, and basically, this is
best achieved in countrieswhich have a very high degree of
economic and political freedom,whereas in countries which are
suppressed, like communistcountries, where freedom is not
(26:35):
allowed to flourish, theyobviously fall behind and become
impoverished as a result.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Right, Well, I have a high regard for the Cato
Institute.
It's wonderful you're a seniorfellow there.
I've supported it for manyyears and I think it's a
terrific project.
That you run under theirauspices is like Sweden.
(27:07):
Of course Bernie Sanders doestoo but as this paradise because
it's socialist and somethingthe Swedes reject.
They say they aren't asocialist country.
But what about that kind ofwelfare state economy like
Sweden?
How does that fare?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
in the way you look at these things, First, it's
important to understand thatBernie Sanders picks and chooses
what he likes about Sweden.
He doesn't like, for example,that Sweden has essentially
privatized its educationalsystem.
Its high school education isnow privatized.
Students can go to any school,whether it's religious or
(27:40):
for-profit, and for-profiteducation thrives in Sweden.
That's not something that younormally associate with a
socialist country, not somethingthat a socialist like Bernie
Sanders would want to adopt inthe United States.
But Sweden in many ways leadsthe way in terms of economic
freedom, by which we meancapitalism.
Sweden is much more free tradecountry than the United States.
So there are many aspects tothe Swedish economy which are
(28:00):
highly competitive, highlycapitalistic.
What Sweden does have that wedon't have as much is a very
high rate of taxation, includinga very high VAT rate.
It's a value-added tax, correctValue-added tax, so our taxes
generally are much lower thanwhat they are in Sweden and
(28:21):
other Nordic economies.
So the economic model of theNordic countries is not
socialistic, it's capitalist,but they have a much higher
level of taxes.
Now.
Sweden overtaxed itself in the1970s and the 1980s.
It had a massive economic crashin early 1990s 1988 to 1992 or
(28:41):
so and consequently Swedenactually became much more
capitalist than it did before,but it retained these high taxes
.
Now the question is whether theUnited States can have such
high taxes and also what hightaxes do to things like
innovation, for example, is oneof the reasons why innovation
happens in the United States isbecause our taxes are relatively
low.
In other words, in some ways,sweden parasites on American
(29:05):
innovation.
Innovation doesn't reallyhappen in Nordic countries
precisely because a lot ofpeople who might come up with
innovation come to the UnitedStates rather than part with 70
or 80% of their income in Sweden.
Second, would Americans put upwith high tax rates as they are
in Nordic countries?
I doubt it.
But more importantly, or mostimportantly and this is not
(29:28):
something that is verypolitically correct and that is
that very high tax rates usuallyrequire a very high homogeneity
of the population.
In other words, people who feellike they're a part of one big
family are usually willing toput up with much higher taxes.
But once you have a verydiverse population I'm not just
talking about race, althoughrace matters.
(29:49):
I'm talking about culture andreligion.
When you have a hodgepodge ofdifferent peoples, like they are
in the United States, you knowit's much more difficult to
increase taxes to such a level,because people who share the
same culture, who share the sameethnic background, who share
the same expectations and hopesand so forth, they are much more
likely to put up with hightaxes than very diverse
(30:11):
countries do.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Wonderful Appreciate you talking with me today on the
Liberty and Leadership podcast.
Marion's book, published threeyears ago, is Superabundance.
It's the story of populationgrowth, innovation and human
flourishing on an infinitelybountiful planet.
So if you ever get depressed ordown on things in the world, I
urge you to buy his book andread it.
(30:32):
He'll be giving our LevDobriansky Lecture in Political
Economy a few days after we'verecorded this podcast to our
students who are studying fromcampuses around the United
States.
Thanks for being with me today,marian, my pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
(30:53):
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg andbe sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast appand leave a five-star review.
Podcast app and leave afive-star review.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
(31:18):
things, large and small.
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