Charles Murray is a really interesting fellow. Normally I don't post thirty minute videos. I think our Ideas Matter readers generally want quick contact. Few of us have thirty minutes to spare. But occasionally we have those videos that get to some of the deepest issues of our time. And they require more. I hope you get a lot out of this Reason interview with Murray (the excellent Ron Bailey is the interviewer).
And if you enjoy the video I hope you'll enjoy my own 2006 interview with Murray below the fold:
Rory Sutherland is always a delight to listen to. (Well, by my lights anyway. Value is subjective.) If you've ever been interested in the psychology of advertising -- and if you love liberty, perhaps you should be -- then you could do much worse than Sutherland, one of the top brains at Ogilvy.
What's always fascinating to me is that while a few of us Mises and Hayek lovers are busy trying to learn a few tricks from Madison Ave., Sutherland and Co. are determined to learn a thing or two from the Austrian economists (and the behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman). So what does this cross-pollination yield?
Do you realize that most politics and political programs are the products of irrationality? I don't mean that people are crazy -- although that can certainly be true sometimes. What I mean is that -- if people took the time actually to look at the data -- they would not support many of the causes and policies they believe make us better off. Here's the crux of the problem:
Off today, but didn't want to leave you without a nice nugget. Here's Christopher Coyne explaining the economics of Valentine's Day (which, don't forget, is tomorrow).
Are people basically self-interested or basically altruistic? The answer is not so simple. If you get through the ten minute Leavitt and Dubner (Freakonomics) video above, you might ask whether it's better to be altruistic or to seem altrustic -- a question that goes back thousands of years.
Then, you might enjoy this excerpt from an article I wrote in The American magazine on the subject of the Ultimatum Game and wider implications for questions about envy and equality:
There are two major stories of the Great Recession: one is of capitalist excess carried out in an environment with too little regulation. This supposedly created a need to regulate and intervene in the economy, so we got stimulus spending and financial "reform." Indeed, this master narrative has been offered by behemoth and its supplicants on the left to justify more state intervention. The other narrative is that the Great Recession was caused by multiple factors -- all of which originated with government. It's time more people knew this latter story, because it has the benefit of being true.
Remember last week we saw the debate between Coase and Becker on utility? We may not be able to settle that debate today, but we might all agree on a broader commitment in economics: the idea that incentives matter.
Ronald Coase and Gary Becker. Jeez. Can you get any heavier with the heavy hitters?
Before offering my insignificant opinion about their debate, I want first to say, Dear Reader, that you'll find no bigger treasure trove of great thinkers on film than you'll find at Free To Choose Network. So stay tuned.
Now, what could we possibly say about a debate between two Nobel Prize winners on one of the critical ideas driving modern economics?
