The Joe Walker Podcast - There Is Such A Thing As Society — Sir Paul Collier

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Sir Paul Collier is a British development economist. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Oxford and was the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003. Paul has authored numerous books, including The Bottom Billion, The Plundered Planet, and The Future of Capitalism. His latest book, co-authored with John Kay, is Greed is Dead: Politics After Individualism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ladies and gentlemen, this episode is brought to you by my weekend email. Every weekend, I send out a few interesting links, articles, sources that I've been reading. Last weekend, for example, I shared five links, including the only video I've been able to find of John Maynard Cain speaking, if you've ever wondered what he sounded like, and Clive James' sad but beautiful farewell poem. To join my mailing list and get access to my weekend emails, head to thejspod.com. You're listening to the Jolly Swagman Podcast. Here's your host, Joe Walker.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, swagmen and swagettes, welcome back to the show. It is great to be back with you. I am honored to introduce this episode. Regular listeners of the show will have noticed that many episodes in the past six months have been exploring the ways in which modern capitalism has gone awry and how we can correct its course. This episode is in that vein. In recent years, my guest has been producing some of the most eloquent and authoritative critiques of both modern capitalism and rampant individualism. Those of us who own smartphones,

have ever taken medicine, and use flushing, are familiar with the triumph of capitalism. But despite its stunning achievements, modern capitalism is, in the words of my guest, morally bankrupt and on track for tragedy. But he doesn't just lob hand grenades, he also offers pragmatic solutions like, for example, taxing the gains of agglomeration to curb rent-seeking, an idea that we discuss at the end of our conversation. My guest is Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University. Paul was the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003, and he's the author of several brilliant books, including The Bottom Billion, The Plundered Planet,

The Future of Capitalism, and most recently, Greed is Dead, which was co-authored with John Kay. The Future of Capitalism and Greed is Dead are written like nothing I've ever read from the hand of an economist. They're written with, and I hesitate to use these words because they feel like those platitudes you read in book reviews, but I think they're true in this case, a sense of urgency and passion. I strongly recommend them. I think that comes through in this conversation as well. And I do hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Without much further ado, please welcome the great Paul Collier.

Paul Collier, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks for inviting me on. Paul, it's so great to have you on the show. We were connected by David Tuckett and I'm a huge fan. I've read two of your books, Greed is Dead, co-authored with John Kay, and previous to that, The Future of Capitalism, which is written with such urgency and passion.

And I can't wait to have this conversation with you Paul I was born and raised in Newcastle Australia but Paul you were raised born and raised in Sheffield which is England's version of Newcastle what was Sheffield like when you were growing up and how has it changed today yeah well I'm not Paul Collier for nothing right so some of my ancestors were coal miners. One was a miners' leader. And my great-grandfather was a cutler, which was the most dangerous work in the Industrial Revolution

because when you ground the knives on a stone, the micro particles messed up the lungs. So my whole family grew up in Sheffield, a coal and steel world, and it collapsed. I was the only one to get out both my parents left school when I was 12 and so my entire relatives were people working in those industries and they collapsed pretty well all at once in the early 80s with the closure of the steelworks

and the closure of the mines so my lived experience is Newcastle, Newcastle in England, as it were, Sheffield. Indeed, there was a great film, you might have seen, called The Full Monty, which depicted that tragedy. People forget, quite often they know the film, they just forget that's Sheffield. I know this is a personal story, but your book, The Future of Capitalism, is dedicated

to your cousin Sue. Can you tell me about why her life is an important symbol for you? Yeah, well, it was a toss-up. I'm a very private person, so I didn't like to make it personal, but in the end, I did, and my cousin's happy about it. This is the opening page of the book, and it's two little kids aged about four. One is me and one is my cousin.

We were born on the same day into very, very similar worlds. Neither of our parents had any education. We both happened to be clever enough kids, so we both got to state grammar schools. And then at 14, our lives diverged, because her rather authoritarian father died, and she went adrift. It was 1963 and there's a famous line in a poem by Philip Larkin which says sexual intercourse began in 1963. Larkin laments that it was just too late for him and it was certainly too early for Roedd yn amlwg yn ddewr i mi, ac roedd yn ddewr i Sue, ond fe ddododd yn mab teinaig, a roedd hynny'n cynyddu'r genhedlaethau, felly fe ddododd ei ddau ganddyn nhw'n mab teinaig. Ac fe wnaeth hynny And that sort of cascaded down.

So the divergence between us became quite astounding. Meanwhile, I carried on at my grammar school. I was the freak that got from my background to Oxford. I progressed up the various ladders of academic attainment, eventually becoming first a professor at Harvard, then a professor at Oxford, and now also a professor in Paris at Sciences Powodraeth yn rhoi CBE i mi, roedd Llywodraeth Ymddygiad yn rhoi Cymru i mi, ac yn dda ac yn dda. Felly, mae'r math hwn o ddiffygwyrddol yn ymwneud â phrofiad byw, ddiffygwyrdd sydd wir yn dweud y dylai fod yn allweddol. Felly dyna pam mae'r llyfr wedi cael ei ddifonu. Byddai'r collwm o Sheffield wedi bod yn allweddol

ac roedd y gwahaniaeth rhwng bywydau'n ddewis. Ond nid oedd yn cael ei allweddoli. Felly dyna'r ddifonwyr o ddifonwyr. Yn y diwedd, rwy'n economaidd, felly rwy'n am ddefnyddio fy economaeth i ddeall pam yw'r gwahaniaethau mawr hyn wedi digwydd I'm an economist, and so I want to use my economics to understand why these massive divergences occurred and, more important, what can be done about them. But there is a major passion to the book.

There's no question of it. Michael Young, the sociologist who helped british labor draft its 1945 manifesto also coined the term meritocracy in his 1958 book the rise of meritocracy and a meritocracy obviously is a society where social position is a function of talent rather than birth but it's often forgotten and you and john k point this out in Greed is Dead that Young intended the term meritocracy or he depicted a meritocracy as a dystopia and in 2001 he wrote that it is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit

to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that. How do you think about meritocracy? Yeah, so why is it a dystopia? What's dystopian about it? And it's that word merit. Of course you want talented people to get jobs that are appropriate for their talent.

And that still doesn't happen enough in Britain, anything like. But it's that word merit, which is not just a neutral description of capabilities. It's a praise word and it's a praise word that people with talents and competences attach to themselves and so it's a dystopia once people who become successful say to themselves I'm Felly mae'n dystopiwch pan fydd pobl sy'n llwyddiannus yn dweud wrthyn nhw eu hunain, dwi'n llwyddiannus oherwydd rwy'n ei dderbyn. Dyna'r symud sy'n y symud anodd, oherwydd y bobl llwyddiannus yn cymdeithas because the successful people in a society set the narratives and the norms by which everybody else has to think. We control the media for a start. And so if we're asserting the successful people deserve their success, mae pobl llwyddiannus yn derbyn eu llwyddiannus, yna mae yna ddiflwydd arall,

sy'n dweud bod pobl sy'n falle yn derbyn eu llawr. Ac mae hynny'n cael ei olygu gan Michael Young, gan gael ei gadael yn ddiflwydd, gan fod wedi cael ei ddiflwydd yn ddiflwydd. Ac wrth gwrs, nid yw'n wir bod pobl llwyddiannus yn derbyn eu llwyddiannus. And of course, it's just not true that the successful people deserve their success. They contribute to their success. But that's all. Contribute.

Here I am, this fancy professor, I've contributed to that. But to think that it's purely a matter of my desert is ridiculous. I was astonishingly lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. The dice rolled in the right way at the right time and I had really good teachers and really good colleagues who really have really helped me I mean my god I can tell you writing a book with John Kay is an education in itself right um so um there there is um the notion that individual talent fully explains success is a complete indefensible myth. And that applies both in the field of education and in the field of where you live. a'r ffordd o ble rydych chi'n byw. Mae pobl Sheffield yn cael eu hwynebu i ddim yn llwyddiannus oherwydd maen nhw'n byw mewn deser cyfleus. Nid yw syniadau da'n gallu cael eu cymryd cannot be matched to the money, which is the fuel that scales ideas into real new activities. Whereas if you live in London, you're in an opportunity oasis and so there are a moment huge spatial differences in Britain worse

than any other high-income country which keep which say that opportunities are skewed both by by education and by where you live. And that is nothing to do with individual talents. It's to do with the fortune of where you live and whether you've been placed on a track that gets you a good education or not. Brief digression, what is it like writing a book with John Kay? A privilege, I should say, first of all. We sat down together and arranged to have lunch. And it was John's idea. yn gyffredinol, fe wnaethon ni sefydlu i gael bwyd i gyd. Ac roedd yn syniad o John bod yn rhaid i ni ysgrifennu llyfr gyda'i gilydd. Ond nid oeddwn ni wedi ei fod yn ei fodd i fod yn llyfr yn gyntaf.

Roedd yn rhaid i ni ysgrifennu rhywbeth gyda'i gilydd. Ac yna, wrth i ni ddod i'r ysgrifennu, rydyn ni wedi penderfynu, ac fe wnaeth ysgrifennu'n gyflym o'r ysgrifennu i llyfr bach. Ac yna, fe wnaeth ysgrifennu'n gyflym, fel Topsy. Y mwyaf rydyn ni'n gweithio gyda'n gilydd, y mwyaf rydyn ni wedi gweld ein bod ni wedi cytuno a'n cael ein cymryd ar bethau newydd. Roedd yn brofiad greadigol. and that we hit on new things. It was a wonderfully creative experience. And we converged. Johnny's a man of firm opinions.

If he thinks you're wrong, he doesn't beat about the bush. He says, you're wrong. And then there's a long pause. And then he explains why you're wrong. And then there's a long pause and then he explains why you're wrong. And if you have any wisdom at all, you listen and think. But actually it was a wonderfully wonderfully creative and compatible process where we sort of stumbled into a book we're both really rather proud of I think and it was a genuinely joint product but the idea behind John's y prydag yma, ond y syniad y tu ôl y cyngor o'r John oedd ei ddweud, chi'n gwybod am gymunedau lle ac rwy'n gwybod am gymunedau gwaith, you know about building common purposes

and I know about radical uncertainty because that's the book you've just written. And these proved to be extraordinarily well-matched, fertile territory when you brought these two ideas together. And then we found ourselves writing at a time of COVID. We started in November 2019 and no sooner had we started

writing than our society was hit by COVID. And COVID was just an extraordinary application of these two phenomena. Radical uncertainty. Did anybody know what to do when faced with COVID? No. Did we need to build new common purposes fast? My God, we did. Were be able to do it, it took longer than it should and enormous differences between societies. How did British Labor lose the underclass or lose the working class and become the party of meritocracy?

Yes, that's unfortunately what happened, of course British Labour by its very name was created by and for the working class around the country. But what happened was, and indeed with the rise of meritocracy, educated and well-intentioned people moved into the party. And by their education, gradually sort of found themselves running the party. wedi cael eu hunain yn rhedeg y partw. Roedd eu profiad byw yn ddwyfio o'r clas gwaith. Roedd rhywun fel Tony Blair wedi mynd i'r gyfranogol ysgol o Eden ac wedyn wedi dod i Oxford i ddarllen Llywodraeth. Ond roedd yn gwbl yn llenwiol o'r clas gwaith. Roedd yn golygu'n dda, ond roedd ei ddodd yn bennaf yn y clas cymdeithasol,

yn y clas cymdeithasol. Ac fe ddododd i'r problem sort of rather technocratically. He was very well-intentioned, but he was also very detached from the lived anxieties of ordinary working-class people. And then it got a lot worse. It got a lot worse. Because he and Gordon Brown brought in a whole new class of London-based technocrats who, again, meant well. Wel, roedden nhw'n meddwl bod eu sgwrs yma yn eu cymryd i wneud pethau. Roedden nhw'n meddwl eu bod nhw'n gwybod beth roedden nhw'n ei wneud. Felly doeddent ddim wedi cynnwys anodd radigol o gwbl. Roedden nhw wir yn meddwl, rydym yn gwybod y model, rydy what levers to pull, and off they went and pulled them. I'd like to ask a few different questions about individualism and jump around a bit, Paul.

One of your favourite studies in social science comes from New Zealand, and it's about regret. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, I can. So when I speak to an audience of a mixed age group, I always start with a warning. I say you can do this on your own at night, but if you're over the age of about 60, I advise you not to because you're liable to hurt yourself. I think yours is such a young age group

that you can all safely do it because it won't be painful. But the reason it won't be painful is you've not had enough shit happening in life yet. Though I dare say COVID's accelerated the exposure to shit. Anyway, so what's the experiment? The experiment is to write down the three things in your life that you most regret. Your three biggest regrets.

You have to do it seriously, on your own, sitting down with a piece of paper and you have to write them down. And they have to be your three biggest regrets. And then the psychologists gather those bits of paper up and classify

the regrets. Put them into buckets. And if we were all the individualist, selfish, greedy, lazy people that economics assumes, homo economicus, it would be quite clear which bucket was full. byddai'n llawn o anghenion am ddewisiynnau a ddod â canlyniadau materol fel llwyddiant o arian neu llwyddiant o ddewisiynu pethau a ddod â llawrth. Felly, byddai eich anghenion mawr yn ystyried, os ond nid ydw i wedi gwneud y cyfweliad â Goldman Sachs. Os oeddwn i ddim wedi colli'r cyfle i bwyta Bitcoin. Os oeddwn i'n unig.

Byddai pob un o'r angenion fel hyn wedi bod. Ond pan fydd y psycholegwyr yn dod i But when the psychologists come to add up these regrets and they look in that bucket, it's virtually empty. We all have regrets like that. They don't make the big three. At least by my age, they don't make the big three are too painful to contemplate which is why it's so ill-advised for people of my age to do it but the sort of regrets are all about

I let down my parents at a critical time I let down my spouse I let down my spouse, I let down my friend. These are the ones where it really, really hurts. They're failures in terms of your proper fulfilment of your obligations to others. Those are the things that hurt. o'ch ddyfyniadau i'r eraill. Dyna'r pethau a wnaeth hynny'n peidio. Ac oherwydd ein bod ni wedi peidio yn llawer, ar y cyfan, rydym ni wedi dysgu i ddewis gwneud y math hwnnw o wneud ymddygiadau. Fodd bynnag, os byddwch chi'n byw am ddiwedd, byddwch chi'n gwneud nhw, ond rydych chi'n dysgu bod yna mor anodd iawn, bod yn well i geisio a chymryd eich cymorthau. Ac mae hynny yn wir yn hynny,

yr hyn rydyn ni wedi dysgu am ddynion dynion, yw bod dynion yn gwybodol iawn iawn. Rydyn ni'n gwybodol, ac felly, fel y gwylltiau eraill, rydyn ni'n ymgysylltiedig â bod yn ddifrifol, ddifrifol a ddifrifol. Ond rydyn ni'n gwybodol iawn amdano, we're inclined to be greedy, lazy and selfish. But we're a very extraordinary mammal because we're vastly more pro-social than pretty well any other mammal. We care about others.

We bond into groups. We care about the opinions of people in our groups. And so we're desperate to retain their good opinion and that's why that bucket which has our top three regrets are regrets where we failed in that basic human emotion of wanting the good opinion of other people. So these twin aspects of human nature, that we're not just self-interested but that we're also pro-social, were known at the inception of economics. They were understood by Adam Smith, at least if you read the theory of moral sentiments and not just the wealth of nations.

At what point did economics lose its way? Because its models began to be populated by, frankly, psychopaths. In other words, homo economicus. Yeah. At what point did things change? In the 50s um it was it was the it was the period of um rampant simplistic darwinianism um uh and uh so at the time um uh evolutionary biologists were saying our darwin Darwin means the survival of the fit,

and that means the survival of the shit when applied to economics. And so economists thought that they were absorbing evolutionary biology just like they were desperate to worship physics, yn cynnwys biologi ddysgu, yn unig eu bod nhw'n ymddygiadol i ddysgu ffisig, y ffisig o Newton, o ddwyliadau o ddwyliadau yn cymryd o amgylch y byd, felly roedd unigolion gyda'r ddwyliadau o ddwyliadau yn y atomau, fel y gynnydd. A sut fe wnaeth y atomau ymddygiadu?h oedd y theoriad o'r ymdrech o'r atom? Wel, yna,

cawwch chi'n ei gael o'r biologi, oherwydd yn anffodus roedd y dynion yn bywydau yn hytrach na llwythoedd o roc, ac felly roedd angen rhywbeth o theoriad o ymdrech dynol ac roedd hynny'n cael ei gael o'r syniad darwynol iawn o'r ffordd y byddwn ni'n holl ffyrdd, rydyn ni'n ddifrifol, yn ddifrifol ac yn ddifrifol. Mae biologi ddyfodol wedi symud yn fawr o'r 1950au. Y newydd o ddyfodolwyr biologi ddyfodol, y Prif Weitholwr Ddipartnedd Biologi Dynol yn Harvard, yw Joe Heinrich, sydd â'r llyfrau hyfryd yma, Y Sgrinio'r Succes, y bobl fwyaf anodd yn y byd,

ei gyfranog, Yael, Nicholas Christakis, llyfr hyfryd o'i enw Blueprint. A beth yw eu neges? Yr eu neges yw, myn, ryd very pro-social. Our natural unit of taking decisions is not even the individual. You shouldn't even be starting with a theory of atoms. Humans cluster together into groups.

We're designed to bond for very good evolutionary reasons. The people who didn't bond into groups died out i gyd yn grwpiau. Rydyn ni'n caniatáu i ffurfio am ddewisiadau da iawn o ran y ddewisiadau. Roedd y bobl nad oedd yn ffurfio i grwpiau wedi marw oherwydd bod yna'r trefion yn y savannau mor anodd. Roedd angen i chi fod yn grwpiau, rhai eithaf mawr, er mwyn byw. Felly rydyn ni'n cael ein llwythyn ar gyfer ydym yn bro-gymdeithas i weith mewn tîm gyda'n gilydd, a chael ein penderfyniadau o'r coleg. Y penderfyniad mawr yw, os ydych chi'n cymryd un penderfyniad mawr o'r llyfr, yw'r coleg neu'r ni'n cymryd y rhan fwyaf o'n penderfyniadau, nid gan ein hunain yn ffynhau, Homo sapiens sapiens, nid ydym yn ddiddorol, rydyn ni'n cymryd ein penderfyniadau o'n cofnod grwp. Ac mae'n storio'r gwybodaeth o'r senswm o'r holl bobl yn ein grwp dros llawer o flynyddoedd, the information from the sensors of all the people in our group over many, many years. And so it's much better informed than any individual can possibly be. And so it's clever

to base most of our decisions off the group mind rather than our pathetic individual little minds. ymdrin yn hytrach na'n ein meddyliau bachodol, fathodol. Felly, rhaid i ni ddechrau economiwm o theori ymdrech cymunedau, nid o theoriol ffyrdd analitig yn y economaeth a oedd wedi'i ddatblygu yn y 1950au. Felly, mae'n cymryd y theoriad hwn o ddiddordeb unigol. Rydyn ni'n gweithredu'r peth hwn yn enwad,wad, sy'n ymwneud â'r ddyluniad ffatuol. Nid yw'r gwyddonwyr neu'r ddysgwyr yn gallu gweld unrhyw lle yn y brôn sy'n cyd-dysgu â phroses cymaint o enwad. Nid yw'r peth hwn yn y brôn. Beth mae ein brôn yn ei ddweud i ni ei wneud? Rydyn ni'n ymddiriedol o ran golau. Rydyn ni ganddo golau, rydyn ni ganddo ddyluniau. Rydyn ni'n ymdrin am ddyluniau. A'r pwysigrwydd arall ar y pwysigrwydd sydd yn ymdrin, dyna'r ffynion rydyn ni'n ymdrin amdano ar hyn o bryd. So the idea that we've got some big calculator in our brains maximising our utility is a little fantasy.

You know, it's like, it's a theory equivalent to Father Christmas, right? It's a little fantasy. Father Christmas is something we tell children, a nice fantasy. Maximising utility is something economists tell themselves. Because it's so bloody handy mathematically. We've got all this very simple maths of how to maximize under constraints. So why?

We need something to maximize, please. And so it's individual utility. And then we put a sigma in front of it and the purpose of public policy is to maximize sigma utility and so we're really in business we've got a theory of public policy which says what we should be doing the government is maximizing sigma utility and what individuals are doing is maximizing their own individual utility and so now the y mae Llywodraeth yn cymryd cymaint o ddoddau, a pha mae unigolion yn ei wneud yw cymaint o ddoddau eu hunain. Felly, dyma sut y bydd y twain yn cyfarfod. Mae problem gwirioneddol. Mae polisi cyhoeddus yn anodd ei fod yn rhaid ei osod gan dynion dynol. Felly, rr enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n enw'n en and avoid things like the tragedy of the commons. And so saints at the top, deus ex machina,

there's no real process of generating saints. They're self-appointed. Plato started that idea with the idea of platonic guardians. His one mistake was that he thought the Platonic guardians should be philosophers. So we economists put him right on that one. So there's some economists at the top maximizing the sigma utility for the society. And then greedy little shits underneath maximizing their own utility. ac yna sgwyddoion bach sylfaenol o dan ei gilydd, a'u cymryd i'w ddefnyddio eu hunain. Ac yna'r tric y mae economaeth yn ei ddod o hyd i

yw adeiladu system lle mae'r arweinwyr, ymddygiadwyr, yn gallu cael y sgwyddoion bach sylfaenol hyn i ymddygiadu yn y bwriadau'r cymdeithas, ac mae hynny'n ddewis prinsipleidyddiaeth. Iawn? James Murley, nidel ei rannu. Ac beth yw'r peth? Mae'n ymwneud â'r ffordd rydych chi'n gwarchod pobl,

rydych chi'n eu gwarchod fel hawc, ac yna rydych chi'n eu cynnig arnynt. Rydych chi'n cysylltu cynnigau i ffyrdd gwarchod. Ac yn y ffordd hynny, mae'r bach o'r ffyrdd gwirioneddol yn gyrru eu hunain o'u llwyddiant cymdeithasol, to monitored behaviour. And that way, those greedy little shits are running after their own maximum utility, but in order to get the incentives, they've got to behave well. What an awful depiction of human society.

It's a complete travesty of human society. ddiffygiad o gymdeithas dynol. Mae'n trafodaeth cyfan o gymdeithas dynol. Nid yw cymdeithas dynol da yn gweithio fel hynny. Ond, yn y 40 mlynedd diwethaf, oherwydd ein bod ni wedi gwneud y systemau hyn drwy gydol ein sefydliadau, drwy ein ffermau, systems through all our organisations, through our firms, so that our communities of work were subject to these monitored incentive systems. And even our public organisations then aped this whole system, monitored incentives. mewn ffordd o ddysgu cymorth. Felly rydyn ni'n cymaint i mewn i ffyrdd ddiweddol lle rydyn ni'n cael ein llwyddo i ymdrech fel y bobl hwmwyr economaidd, sy'n ddwylo, ddwylo, sy'n ddwylo. Nid yw cymorth cyffredinol No well-functioning human society functions like that, as we've seen in COVID. So the analogy between utilitarianism and Santa Claus doesn't just stop at the fact that both are based on fantasy, but also, just like Saint Nick, the utilitarian policymakers are sort of distributing gifts from on high and you make a very powerful point paul which is that what we need is not to transfer to the unsuccessful consumption but productivity and that kind of derives from this view of human nature

that we don't just want to consume but we want to contribute. Yeah, absolutely. So in the standard economic model of a human being, the only thing that raises utility is consumption and idleness. So in the economic model view, if you remember, L, labour, enters negatively, C, consumption enters positively. And that's about it. So what we all should want to do is just lie there on a beach all the time. And we do that. It's called holidays. But remember, we're purposive people and our purposes actually range wider than that. Because of the nature of my work, I've come to know quite a few billionaires.

They are all purpose-driven workaholics. And a lot of their work isn't anymore about making my billions. It's about trying to help others. So what does a society look like that is actually purposive? And it doesn't look like these laying around on a beach. It doesn't look like a lot of consumers. It looks like people who are fulfilling their purposes thanks to their own agency. And so what needs to be redistributed in a society like Britain is not just we'll give you consumption because you're bloody useless at producing anything you're so lacking in talents but don't worry we'll tickle you under the chin

with some consumption right no in Britain's opportunity deserts, there are plenty of people wanting to do things, but they have neither agency nor the opportunities to be productive. Felly mae angen iddyn nhw gael cymorth gyda chyngor. Ac mae rhan o gael cymorth iddyn nhw gyda chyngor yw rhoi'r sgiliau, eu gweithredu gyda'r sgiliau, a wedyn dod i'w lleu o'u cwbl, y cyfleoedd gweithredu sy'n eu gallu eu gallu bod yn gweithredol ac yn ymwnedu i'r cyfan. Nid ydym wedi siarad am ddyniaeth newydd, yw'r dyniaeth Michael Sandell o ddigwyddiad cyfrifol. Ac mae hynny'n llwyddo a'i hwylio'r gynnyddiaeth o ddarparu cydnabod. Nid oedd Rawls yn ddiddordebol, ond roedd yn y fframnaeth sylweddol honno o

gwneud i bobl yn llwyddo'r cyllid gyda chynnydd. Gadewch i ni rhannu'r cwbl felly mae pawb yn cael ei ddod o hyd. Yn llythio ac mae'n broses creu sy'n y rhan fwyaf ddiogel o hynny. Mae'r agen i wneud pethau a chyflawni'r cyfan hwnnw, i fod yn gallu ddweud, roeddwn i'n rhan o bwydo'r cwc hwnnw, a byddwn ni'n mynd i'w ddefnyddio nawr. able to say, I was involved in baking that cake that we're now going to consume. That confers dignity. It's purposive. That's where the sort of societies we need to build. I have a lot of sympathy for utilitarianism, Paul, and consequentialism more broadly.

I think consequentialism is a very powerful ethical theory. But as I've got older, I've sort of fallen out of love with it and gravitated more towards virtue ethics. The fathers of utilitarianism were famously quite weird. Should we infer anything about their theories from that weirdness? or is that just ad hominem no i think it isn't i mean um um they were very weird i mean um the idea that they should be uh really influential in public policy um is is somewhat alarming the only reason they're polisi yn rhywbeth o'n anhygoel. Yr unig rheswm eu bod nhw'n effeithiol yw, fel y dywedais, ei fod yn dda iawn i gael rhywbeth i'w gynnyddio. Felly, mae wedi cael ei ddod o hyd gan economiwm, sydd wedyn wedi digwydd yn effeithiol yn fawfiad cyhoeddus a phrofiad cyhoeddus.

Roedd pob pwysig a phrofiad cyhoeddus wedi cael ei ddod o ran syniadau economwyr. Ac fe wnaeth ymddygiadwyr ddod â'r hyn sydd gen i i'r amgylchedd hwnnw i gyd-ddiogelu ein cymhwysoedd. Felly, gadewch i ni gael rhywbeth y gallwn ni ei gydymdeimlo. maximize utility, sigma utility. Great. So that's the problem. So let's have a look at them. The big one was Bentham. So Bentham was, I think the best measure of his weirdness was that he arranged to have himself stuffed when he was dead so that he could continue to preside over committee meetings at University College London to guide, by his presence, the decisions being taken. And so he really did have himself stuffed. To be in that sort of mindset,

you have to be very, very peculiar, to say the least. And then if we turn to his disciple, Mill, Mill was deliberately raised so that he did not play with other children. So he was force-fed Greek, which he could understand from the age of three. So by the age of 20, he knew a lot more about ancient Greece than about the society in which ym mhob cymdeithas. Roedd y poorl o'r mill wedi cael llawer o ffyrdd o ffyrdd meddwl ac ati, ond mae'r bobl hyn yn rhyfeddol. Felly, y meddwl y byddai'n dweud y byddant yn arwain ein cymdeithasau, the thought that they should be the people who guide our societies, their behaviour should flag warnings. Are these the intellectual leaders that we want to be guided by? I think not. And then, of course, when we look at their ideas and look at the consequences of their ideas, it's no surprise that they've led us into some very uncomfortable forms of social behaviour. So to summarise, should we think of utilitarianism on the one hand

and selfish gene theory on the other as the two sources of fuel for methodological individualism in economics? Yes, I think so. I think so. It's trying to recreate the world of physics, this bottomawr, mae'n gallu cynnig popeth o'r atomau. Ac rydyn ni'n gwybod, mae hynny'n ddewr. Mae'r gwyddoniaeth byd-eang, y cyfnod cymdeithasol, yn abandio'r ystyried hwnnw. Mae drosoddau cyhoeddus mawr o fewn pob un o'r pwnc hyn. biology, modern social science, abandoning that view. There are big civil wars within all of these subjects. But I'm part of networks with, you know, fellows of the Royal Society that Britain's sort

of really fancy hard science discipline, which are all about the revolutions in their own subjects, sy'n ymwneud â'r rhyfelwyr yn eu pwnc eu hunain, lle maen nhw'n gweld nawr nad allwch chi gosod o atomau i ddod o hyd i ffenomenau macroeconomaidd fel cymdeithas. Os ydych chi am ddeall ymddygiad yn cymdeithas, mae'n rhaid i chi weithio gyda rhyw fath o gynulleidfaoedd mezoleol, fel cymunedau, cymunedau rhwng ffermau, cymunedau gwaith, cymunedau lle. Dyma'r blociau adeiladu o'r rhan y byddwch yn gweithio. Yn ôl i sut mae pobl yn ymdrech, mae'r ffyrdd, ymdrech, y who form their behaviour, their habits are formed by the communities in which they work and live. And then that in aggregate produces

the sort of macro outcomes. But you've got to have those middle entities, communities of place, communities of work, in order to understand anything. What you're talking about there is emergence. And earlier you mentioned Nicholas Christakis' brilliant book, Blueprint. My favorite illustration of emergence is in that book. He gives the analogy of carbon. And he says, if you take a group of carbon atoms and connect them in one way you get graphite which is soft and dark and perfect for pencils but if you take a group of carbon atoms and connect them in another way you get diamond which is hard and sharp and used for for cutting and they're both made of carbon atoms but the way the atoms are structured and the way they relate to each other produces those properties of softness and darkness and hardness and clearness. Those properties are

emergent. And the same is true of human societies and human communities. Absolutely. So we can get emergent habits, which are either the habits of the greedy, y ffyrdd o'r ddiddorol, y llaw, y ddiddorol, neu ffyrdd ymchwil, sy'n ffyrdd o'r gymuned prososiol. Ac rydym yn gweld hynny. Ar ôl 40 mlynedd o unigolrwydd yng Nghymru yn ogystal â 40 mlynedd o gymunedolrwydd yng Nghymru, pan ddod Covid yn cymryd, beth a wnaethom ni? A gadewch i mi gofyn i chi. in Denmark when Covid struck what did we get and let me remind you right in Denmark we got a modest leader who was trusted who was able to say to people we

all need to protect each other if each of us has to be morally load-bearing and the whole of Denmark is up to all of us. They didn't get a first wave of COVID because of that behavior. They didn't get a second wave of COVID. They did get a third wave. They got rid of it straight away. Some of the schools are open in Denmark

and the damage to the economy is very small, the damage to people's lives is very small. And we go across to America. What was happening in America? Were people naturally understanding and being led by a modest leader to say protect each other? No. What was happening in America was a classic of people indoctrinated into individualism. It was long queues outside gun shops. It was less protect your neighbor

than shoot your neighbor. And of course, as an aggregate strategy for dealing with COVID, a chynnal eich cydnod. Ac wrth gwrs, fel strategaeth cymysgeddol i ddelio â Covid, nid yw chynnal eich cydnod yn gweithio'n dda iawn. Felly mae yna'r gwahaniaeth rhwng cymdeithas prosocial sydd wedi adeiladu ffyrdd o brosocialid, y tendensiau sy'n dod o hyd, neu'r tendensiau sy'n dod o hyd i'r ddifrifion cymrydol o fewn tendencies or the emergent tendencies to individual greedy selfishness in America, which have led to these responses of queues outside gun shops. Which society would you rather live in? I recently tweeted out that we need more individuals and fewer individualists. And it kind of, at first glance, sounds like a bit of a lame sort of influences bumper sticker. But what I was getting at was just that point that we need more individuals in the sense of

people who are de-correlated from a centralized authority and from mainstream thinking, because those are the people who push the boundaries of progress for us. Those are the entrepreneurs and the wacky scientists and the dissidents and the political activists. But at the same time, we need people like that to be acting for a moral purpose. So we don't want more individualists, which I guess is sort of the crux of your book, Greed is Dead. But if you wanted to go halves with me, we could turn that into a bumper sticker and sell some. We need more individuals and fewer individualists. The spread of good ideas from individuals who've come up with something new that's worth doing, that spread, we now know from a new book called How Behavior Spreads by sy'n werth ei wneud. Mae'r rhan o'r rhan honno, rydyn ni'n ei wybod o llyfr newydd,

yw'r rhan o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r ffordd mae ymddygiad yn ymgymryd â'r rhwydwaith. Rydyn ni'n gwybod bod yn dibynnu ar ymgysylltiadau llaw ar-lein, sy'n golygu bod pobl angen siarad â'i gilydd, hyd yn oed os nad ydyn nhw'n cytuno gyda'i gilydd. to talk to each other, even if they don't initially agree with each other. And so the tragedy of our society at the moment is this polarisation into segmented groups which don't interact other than by shouting at each other, prevents us having ideas which travel easily between different communities so that good ideas spread. Good ideas spread in societies where people behave well to each other and listen and are respectful of each other's views. That's where we can get the rapid spread of bright new ideas.

And at the moment, we need them. Do you believe there is such a thing as labour oversupply? Labour oversupply? No. I don't. This has been a sort of perennial myth for going back centuries. You know, this was the Luddites breaking machinery and all that sort of thing. People are the great resource of our planet. People are going bydd pobl yn gallu creu bydau y mae gennym ni i gyd yn gwerthfawr. Ac ar gyfer hynny, mae angen ysgogi'r cyfnod cyffredinol o ddyluniau, oherwydd mae'r esenwyr o dynion dynol yn ein bod yn ddylunio ac yn creadig. and we're creative. The tragedy is that we're better at imagining improved worlds

than at delivering them. We imagine that we can each have an individual plane that takes off vertically or whatever, and the reality is we get twitter or something you know so our imagination leaps way ahead of what we can accomplish but then our creative minds kick in and grope and innovate, experiment, and that's the dynamic process that we've been through for 200,000 years. One little vignette I like to suggest is if you look out the window, out the window i can see squirrels and squirrels are pretty smart they're better than i am running up and jumping across trees they think about the future they store nuts so squirrels are not dumb at all um but if you want to understand what a

squirrel was like a hundred thousand years ago just look at one now um because in that hundred ddiweddau yn ôl, edrych ar un nawr. Oherwydd, yn ystod y 100,000 o flynyddoedd, nid yw'r gwirf yn ystyried, a oedd y ffordd well o fod yn gwirf, ac wedyn ystyried, beth allwn i'w wneud amdano? Ond os hoffech chi ddeall sut oedd dyn dynol 100,000 o flynyddoedd yn ôl, rydyn ni'n genedigol genedigol i'r hyn y oedden ni yna, ond mae'n ddifrifol iawn edrych ar un nawr a meddwl, o, byddai bywyd years ago. We're genetically identical to what we were then, but it's absolutely bloody stupid to look at one now and think, oh, life was just the same then. Why? Because over that 100,000 years, we've kept imagining things being better, and then we kept wondering, how? How? And that's the dynamic process that we're on as human beings. It's very exhilarating, Dyna'r broses ddynamig rydyn ni'n ei wneud fel dynion dynol. Mae'n amlwg iawn, ond mae'n

cadw'n ein llwyddo i mewn i ddim yn amlwg. Felly mae angen i ni gael ymddygiad ymddygiadwy sy'n arwain at penderfyniadau ddysgu sydd ddim yn which leads to wise decisions that don't hurl us off cliffs. That's the challenge. Keep the creativity, but within bounds of safety that don't hurl us off cliffs. So I want to ask a policy question, Paul, and Sydney and Melbourne are Australia's two main conurbations and both have generated massive gains from agglomeration.

According to Henry George, why do landlords get the gains from agglomeration and do they deserve them? Yeah, so it's a really good question. So I've done quite a lot of analysis on agglomeration and the benefits of agglomeration. And it's quite clear that humans are more productive if they cluster together and specialize individually but then bring

those different skills together and cooperate. So that's why we're hugely productive in places like Melbourne, Sydney, London. Who should gain from that? Well, first of all we have to realize that the gains from agglomeration depend upon vast mae'r gwaith o'r cyfnodion yn dibynnu ar fuddsoddiadau mawr gan y cymdeithas cyfan. Mae Lundain yn y llyfr o'r rhwydwaith rhwystrau i bob un o'r Brydain, y cyfeiriadau, mae ganddo'r ddau ardal amgylcheddol, mae ganddo international airports, it's got a link to the channel tunnel linking to the continent. So basically everything, all the physical infrastructures in London, paid for by national taxes, the government's in London. And because the government's got all the power in London, and the decisions being taken in London, the financial community is all in London. So everything is in London. That makes people living in London very productive.

It goes back to this merit and desert point. They're productive because they're all clustered together in London. And London is the place where they cluster because of a huge collective lle maen nhw'n clustru oherwydd arian cyd-destunol mawr gan y dyniaeth. Felly, pwy ddylai gwella? I bawb. Pwy fydd yn gwella? Yn gyntaf a'i hwyrach, y bobl sy'n gweithio'r llyfn yng Nghymru. Oherwydd i weithio yng Nghymru, mae'n rhaid i chi fod yno. Roedd Henry George yn y mewn.

Felly, mae'r gêm yn cael eu cael eu cyflawni gan ymddangosrwydd y llawrion llyfn. inside and so the gains tend to be captured by the appreciation in land values and so sure enough in London who was the first billionaire in Britain was it somebody who invented the train no was it somebody who invented the steam engine no the first billionaire was the Duke of Westminster, who'd invented nothing. All he'd done was inherit a lot of the land in central London. all the time if you wanted, right? Because he didn't have to do anything in order to become a billionaire. Because Britain was stupid enough that it didn't capture through taxation that vast appreciation in land. And that was Henry George's insight.

What a stupid thing to do to let a few landowners capture what was the fruits of a massive collective effort, i gael ychwanegolwyr llaw i gydnabod yr hyn a oedd yn y ffrwythoedd o waith cydweithredol mawr, gan y bobl sy'n byw a gweithio yng Nghymru, a'r dyniaeth sy'n creu'r lle i'r Llywodraeth i gael clustr hynny'n gyflawniol yn y cyntaf. Roeddwn i a'r coleg Tony Venables wedi' was to say actually there's a new group of beneficiaries now and it's the people who the very clever lawyer

who by being in London next to the courts and next to the banks and next to the government becomes highly productive. And maybe they're not married and so they only live in a bedsit. They just rent a little bedsit but they earn a fortune. And so then they're using very little land and so they're keeping those gains of agglomeration Felly maen nhw'n defnyddio ddim llawer o ddau. neu lai 50-50 rhwng y llywodraethion a'r bobl sy'n meddwl eu bod yn ei dderbyn i gyd ac yn byw'n unigol mewn dim llawer o gysylltiad ac felly peidio â'i

rannu, peidio â rhoi llawer ohono i'r llywodraethion. Felly dyna'r tragedaeth o'r So that's the tragedy of the misappropriation of these huge rents of the domination. responsibility and recently on the podcast I've been discussing different examples of noblest oblige to inspire people and inspire leaders to think more about how they can be people for others and an example that I've frequently discussed is FDR who was a traitor to his own class who welcomed the hatred of his own class as he famously said in that 1936 Madison Square Garden speech. But Paul, you're a Brit, and so I thought I should talk to you about a British example. Tell me about Titus Salt, how he is a model of noblesse oblige, and what we should learn from his example. Oh, I will.

So Titus Salt is one of my heroes. And who was he? so he was the master big in the fastest growing town in the whole of Europe so there was a boomsville in mid 19th century Europe just like there was a Boomsville in America with Chicago and a Boomsville in Australia with Melbourne. And the boom town in Britain was Bradford. Bradford created the wooden industry, which was huge.

And Titus Salt was the big mill owner. He owned most of the mills. So he was Mr. Big in terms of the economy of Bradford. My own German grandfather left an impoverished village in Germany and moved to Bradford. That was the future. So, Titus Holt was messed a bit in terms of the business, but he was also messed a bit politically. He wasidog o Bradford ac roedd yn un o'r cymdeithasau o'r dronon, y Prif Weinidog o'r Parlamant. Felly, roedd y cyllid yn ei ddod â'i gilydd. Roedd yn popeth.

Ac yna, yn 1849, oedd yn cael ei ddysgu fel ddisgybl, nid yn ffinansol, ond Roedden i, fel y gwahanol ddau ardal o Lloegr Cymru, wedi bod yn ddaeud ar ddaeud am fywyd. Os ydych chi'n dod â llawer o bobl i gyd, nid ydych chi'n darparu sefydliad cyhoeddus fel llwyth, dŵr, nid ydych chi'n darparu'r infrastructure like sewage, pipe water, you don't provide the housing, people are squashed up and so diseases spread. So life expectancy in the northern cities by the mid-19th century had fallen to just 19 years. On average you were dead at 19. And in 1849 when he was mayor cholera struck and so his workers were dying like flies the citizens of Bradford were dying like flies and a buck stopped with him now of course nobody knew Nawr wrth gwrs, nid oedd unrhyw un yn gwybod beth i'w wneud am cholera, ond roedd yn gwybod bod y buc wedi parhau gyda'n gilydd. Ac mae'n ymddangos fod wedi bod yn y digwyddiad sy'n gynyddu newid mawr yn ei hymddygiad.

Efallai yn gyfathrebu â'r llythyr a gafodd Bill Gates ei ddau mab. Ac felly, wrth i Bill Gates ddewis rhoi'r ffotwn i'w ddewis, fe wnaeth Tytus Salt. Tytus Salt wnaeth rhoi'r ffotwn ei holl ffotwn i'w ddewis. of salt gave away his entire fortune. He recognised his obligations to his workers. He built the first purpose-built, decent town for an industrial workforce on Earth.

It was called Saltaire and it's now World Heritage Centre because it was the first. And the rest of his money he gave away to clean up Bradford. He didn't know what to do about cholera, ond roedd yn cael rhywbeth o'i sens, bod os oedd y ddinas yn glir, yn hyffordd, gyda parciau a phethau fel hyn, byddai'n lle gwell i'w byw. Ac roedd hynny'n ei wneud. Felly, roedd ei holl ffotwn yn ei ddod o hyd i hynny.

Roedd hynny'n ddiogelwch gyda chyfrifoldeb cyfraithol. That was a capitalism with moral responsibility. It was morally load-bearing. He became morally load-bearing. And that's the sort of capitalism we need. And it's the sort of capitalism from which we were diverted by this disgusting notion o Milton Friedman, bod yn bwysig i'r Pyrm yn gwneud arian ar gyfer cyd-draethwyr. Yn ffodus, mae'r Unedigysg Chicago ei hun, y Gweinidog Cynoleg,

wedi'i ddynnu'n ddiweddar. Mae'n casgliad wych lle maen nhw'n ei wneud, a'i sefydlu gan organised by Professor Segalis. So that was the story of Bradford. Just to finish, if we go just a few miles away at the same time, we get to Rochdale. Same experience. People died at 19. Same desperate anxieties. And then what do people do? They come together. What happened in Rochdale, 19. Y cymorth anoddol yr unwaith. Ac yna, beth wnaeth pobl ei wneud? Gwnaethon nhw ddod at ei gilydd.

Beth ddigwyddodd yn Rochdale, roedd yn y nes i'r Rhymdreidydd Cydweithredol y byd. Roedd pobl yn dweud, byddaf yn cymryd cymorth i chi. Os byddwch yn marw, byddaf yn ari am eich funerol, fel y byddwch yn gwneud hynny i mi hefyd. Ac fe wnaethon nhw hynny ar sgail. Felly, fe ddodd y rhan fwyaf o'r ffyrdd cyhoeddus yn y wlad yn gyflym iawn, gan gydag llawer o bethau eraill. Ychydig mil o ffordd yna, fe ddodd Halifax yn y banch mwyaf yn y wlad. Argyfwng cyd-ddeallol. Mae angen i ni fod lle i fyw. Byddaf yn gwneud fy ngyrch a byddwn yn ei ddodd arnoch chi fel ffwrdd, os ydych chi'n rhoi'ch ngyrch i mewn ac yna'n ei ddodd arnoch i fi fel ffwrdd. Felly roedd yna'r cydweithredaethau yn dod at ei gilydd, yn y ffordd y bydd pawb yn ei gydnabod, gan ein bod ni i gyd yn bod yn ddynion llawr, yn adeiladu cyfrifoedd sy'n cyd-dynol,

gallem ni adeiladu cymdeithas llawer gwell, gallem ni addrefnu'r anghenion. Dyna'r hyn a ddigwyddodd yna, gan y busnes gyda Tytus Ffolt, gan y Rhoshdale, gyda'r Pioneerion Rhoshdale, a'r syniad sy'n cael ei rannu o amgylch y byd, ac mae'n yr hyn sydd wedi'i ddynol yn y 40 mlynedd diwethaf. Dyna'r tragedaeth o syniadau ariannol ddangos, And it's what's failed to happen the last 40 years. That is the tragedy of bad intellectual ideas, the rise of individualism leading to a train wreck of a society. Paul Collier, thank you so much for spreading good ideas.

And thank you also for your time. Come back anytime. Thanks, Theo. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Two things before you go. One, if you want to read the transcript or the show notes for this episode, you'll find them on my website, thejspod.com. Number two, please subscribe to the show. It means that you won't miss new episodes like this one, and it also makes it easier for other people to find us, and I would appreciate your help.

The audio engineer for the Jolly Swagman podcast is Lawrence Moorfield. Our dehydrated video editor is Al Fetty. I'm Joe Walker. Until next week, thank you for listening. Ciao.