Intro (00:02):

Welcome to the Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund hosted by Mitch Daniels.

Mitch Daniels (00:18):

Greetings, friends of freedom, and welcome to the latest edition of The Future of Liberty, a series in which we invite guests to talk with us about the future of human freedom, dignity, and autonomy. Things The Liberty Fund, our sponsor, holds dear. We’ve had some very interesting and impressive guests but this is the first time I’m going to  use the word daunting. Our guest today is eclectic, but that’s not a big enough word to encompass the interests, the knowledge base, and the insights that he has. Dr. Tyler Cowen is the chairman of the Mercatus Center, one of the most respected institutions, certainly by me anyway. He is both intellectually and physically knowledgeable about economics, yes, but literature, art, and a host of other topics. It occurred to me last night, this is a little like pitching to the young Babe Ruth, who was both the best hitter and the best pitcher of his early baseball career. Dr. Cowen, you’re a seasoned host of podcasts as well as a frequent guest on them. Thank you for sharing some time with us this morning.

Tyler Cowen (01:39):

Happy to be here and I’m a longstanding affiliate and friend of Liberty Fund, I should add.

Mitch Daniels (01:45):

Yes, I watched your most recent visit with Russ Roberts; I believe it was the 19th time you’ve graced that program. So, you’ve been more than kind, and we thank you for being so today. I feel a little guilty this morning, you reputed to read four to five books a day, and now you’re going to spend this time with us. Maybe it’ll limit you to four today. How in the world do you even choose that many books, let alone get through them?

Tyler Cowen (02:19):

Well, not all of it is my choice. Some of it is the review copies that come in the mail. Some of it is which books are new into the local public library. Some are what I spend my money on. I’ve been reading more and more history as I get older, but I would say very recently I’m spending a lot of time reading and studying the outputs of large language models. So, I’ve actually been reading fewer books in the last year. I’ll read one book and keep on asking A.I. about the book and the topics in the book. 

Mitch Daniels (02:51):

Well, I’d like to get to the topic of AI after a while, but on our way there, let me start by asking about one of your many books. It was titled “The Great Forgetting,”  and in that book, you question why so many well-learned lessons seem to have to be retaught again. You mentioned rent control, the destructive nature of unchecked crime, and so forth. Isn’t conservatism, as we’ve known it, largely about holding society or holding up to society a truth, so they’re not forgotten. Why do you think this continues to be a problem?

Tyler Cowen (03:41):

It may just be a matter of memory and what you grew up with. There’s an economist named Ulrike Malmendier, and she has some excellent papers, but say you came of age during a great depression or a stock market crash, you carry that memory with you for a long time. So, when we got to 2007, 2008, we had another financial crash. We hadn’t had a really big one since the Great Depression. So, people think this can’t happen because we’re in great moderation and it won’t happen again. Of course, they turn out to be wrong. But when it comes to government interventions, whether it’s central planning, price controls,  rent control, or  farm subsidies, we see the same things. There’s just a forgetting because, over time, the very bad features of these policies drift away in the collective memory.

Mitch Daniels (04:34):

One of the, I believe, verities that some of our great scholars have reminded us of over and over again is the importance, in economics, of culture. This theme appears in the work of Thomas Sowell and, more recently, in that of one of our guests, Charles Murray. Among your—let’s see, is “polymathic” an adjective? If it is, it applies to you. I’m told that Haitian art is one of your areas of expertise. I confess I know zero about it, but it has led me to wonder about something that has long intrigued me: Haiti, occupying the same island as the Dominican Republic, has ended up in such a different circumstance. Is that a result of cultural differences? Could you help explain that?

Tyler Cowen (05:37):

While it’s correct to say it is largely cultural, I’m not sure that’s an explanation. It may just be pushing the matter back some bit. So, in the post-World War II era, the Dominican Republic was wealthier than Haiti, but not by that much compared to what had happened. So, there’s a big divergence, I would say starting in the 1970s or 80s. So, if it were only culture, you would think it would’ve been very longstanding. The Dominican Republic is now one of the two or three richest countries in Latin America. It’s fairly well developed. They did special enterprise zones. It’s a pretty nice place. I’ve been there fairly recently, and Haiti gets worse and worse and worse. It may not even be a viable nation state. So, there’s something about the path dependence of the relative dictatorships they each had in the 60s and 70s where the Dominican situation could evolve into something stable. They created better interest groups and the Haitian situation for whatever reason could not. It may be that the Duvalier’s did so much to destroy Haitian civil society that the only paths before them were those of gang rule and ultimate collapse, and then they had the big earthquake. So yes, it’s cultural, but there’s also something about the political evolution that multiplies with the cultural factors, and it’s just led to this big, big difference.

Mitch Daniels (07:04):

You’re an economist, first and foremost, and you’ve written about the importance of economic growth and the various threats to it. Mercatus again is, I believe, one of the nation’s premier centers of scholarship on the hazards of excessive government control and so forth. In the context of freedom, how worried should we be about the future growth trajectory of the United States and its effect on freedom? Growth and the promise of a better life has always been an important mainstay of American harmony and unity and the sense of morale in the country. So, talk a little bit about our economic prospects and their implications if you see any for our political institutions.

Tyler Cowen (08:10):

Well, I’m very worried about this question. I believe you and I would largely or maybe completely agree, we’re an aging society, which can limit growth and productivity growth. We’re in a rather dire fiscal situation where we’re spending far more than we’re willing to pay taxes for. So, at some point we need a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes. I would prefer to do that on the spending side, but no matter what mix we choose, that can slow growth in the short run because the economy at the moment is somewhat addicted to debt and government spending. In general, we’re over regulating and not getting rid of many regulations. DOGE has not gone especially well in that regard. So, there’s a lot of different forces that could lead to lower growth through the United States. There’s now at least possibly protectionism from President Trump. We’ll see what the final court rulings will be. At the very least, there’s high uncertainty as a kind of tax on investment, so we need to get our act together. There’s a lot of forces operating against us. There’s some in our favor. We’re cutting back, it seems, on high skilled immigration and letting very good students and graduate students into this country from abroad but we’re making many, many mistakes. I wish you were in charge. I said this to you before we started. I feel we’d be in a much better growth position.

Mitch Daniels (09:31):

Oh, I believe the country has enough problems, as you just detailed them, but thanks for the sentiment. Yes, the overhang of debt, which has been a preoccupation of mine for a very long time, gets worse and worse and it’s hard to imagine that it won’t crowd out, if not already, crowding out, the investment that could make us wealthier over time. How long do you think we can sustain this sort of debt and the debt trajectory that we’re on before we pay a price both economic and as I say, maybe political?

Tyler Cowen (10:12):

Well, I believe we’re paying a price right now. Real interest rates are considerably higher than they were a year ago. It depends what you mean by the word sustain. I don’t think America is headed to be the next Greece where we are literally bankrupt and in hand looking for some bailout or defaulting on our debt. But does it mean that this mix of higher taxes, possibly financial repression, more government control, and tightening our belts, leads to slower growth and much, much lower living standards for future generations? I mean, we’re living that now, so we need to reverse course in some big way. This is not an if or a when. This is now. We’re not doing much about it and we’re making it worse.

Mitch Daniels (11:00):

And back to the work and leadership of Mercatus, I think some of us believe that the most positive thing that may have been done in this question of growth over the last few years has not necessarily been tax improvements, although I believe those were, on balance, well advised, particularly when talking about the Trump tax cuts, which are now back on the table. Rather, it may have been the lifting of the dead hand of regulation off so much of the economy. There is evidence that this trend could continue for at least the next couple of years. Are there particular areas in which you think thoughtful or sensible deregulation could most effectively liberate faster growth?

Tyler Cowen (11:51):

Well, at the state level we’ve seen a  great deal of regulatory reform. I don’t need to tell you this, the states that have partially deregulated have indeed grown much quicker. The most visible examples, because they’re large states, are Texas and Florida, but even your own state, Idaho. There’s numerous examples of this working. I see very little progress at the federal level. I believe a significant part of the Trump administration wants to do this, which I’m sympathetic toward, but they don’t have Congress on board. They’re not good at getting Democrats to work with them. They often don’t understand the system, speaking in May 2025, other than nuclear power and permitting reform and getting rid of DEI. I don’t think they’ve made nearly as much progress as they could have. Now, I’m happy they’ve done those few things, but there’s a lot more they could do and I’m worried that they’ll drop the ball.

Mitch Daniels (12:49):

Yes, I agree.  I would add to that the recent voiding of the California air standards or carbon standards that threatened to become a national rule de facto, but I agree that’s an exception.

Tyler Cowen (13:12):

AI policy has been good so far. I would add that, and I’m sure that if we thought about it, we could come up with a few more things, but I’m worried that they’ll end up doing less than a fifth of what they’re actually capable of doing.

Mitch Daniels (13:22):

Yes, there certainly are big obstacles. I was just going to begin asking you about AI, a subject in which you are a recognized expert. I’ve been fascinated about the incredible electricity demands of both crypto, but now especially artificial intelligence. It began to appear to me, I’m going to  use a term I don’t want to confuse anyone with, this was going to “trump” environmental and other concerns that had been in the way of energy growth. Do you see that happening? I believe I do, but maybe I’m just looking for it.

Tyler Cowen (14:12):

Absolutely. I think we need to relax our NIMBY based constraints on solar and wind power and significantly build out our nuclear power and make it much easier to build in less than 10 years. It would be ideal for  three to five years, which we know is possible. We need to learn some lessons from South Korea and learn how to do it for less money. There’s a lot of work embodied in that when you look at every detail and level. We’re not close to doing it. The Trump administration has made some good first steps, but we’re not yet in the position to build a nuclear power plant, say, in five or six years the way we should be.

Mitch Daniels (14:53):

Right, it’s not purely a nuclear regulatory matter and it doesn’t seem to me it costs more to build everything here. I think of the struggles, even though there’s consensus about building semiconductor fabs and other facilities here, they cost so much more simply by virtue of overall cost of living factors here. Sometimes preferential laws with regard to unions and so  forth.

Tyler Cowen (15:27):

There’s so many layers of regulatory review. So, it’s not just the final cost on paper, it’s the uncertainty along the way. It’s a big deterrent.

Mitch Daniels (15:38):

With regard to artificial intelligence, you were one of the early voices to recognize its imminent arrival and significance. You’ve been a strong proponent of it and, if I’m reading you correctly, you’ve generally taken a “go mode” stance, favoring forward momentum and innovation rather than the more cautious approach that many others have urged. Are you still in that “go mode”? Do you continue to see the potential upsides as more than sufficient to justify the possible risks?

Tyler Cowen (16:14):

Still in the “go mode.” One point I would make is you learn nothing by sitting around waiting. Whatever risks you may think there are, and one can debate that, you have to actually confront how the thing is working and interacting with your actual institutions. And the six-month pause was absurd. We just would’ve had all the same issues six months later. The other reason to be in the “go mode” is simply because we don’t want China or other nations to beat us and get there first. That would be very bad for our national security. A third argument, which is maybe less definite, is simply, I think we are going to be fine. That does not convince everyone. I think the first two arguments are stronger and more universal.

Mitch Daniels (16:58):

People have been, long before AI fully emerged as it has in just the last few years, raising alarms about the so-called singularity and similar concerns. Some of us have been reading about these possibilities for 15 years or more. Can we be cavalier about even some of the things we’ve seen so far, unless they’ve been misreported? For example, there have been reports, at least in experimental settings, of a machine allegedly attempting to blackmail its operator to prevent being shut down, and even of code rewriting itself to avoid deactivation. Are these not the very kinds of scenarios that Stanley Kubrick was warning us about a long time ago?

Tyler Cowen (17:49):

I don’t think we should be cavalier about any safety issue. Consider airplanes, right? You’re very careful about getting on a plane that you regard to be safe. But that said, the notion that it’s going to kill us all, or in the world, I don’t see realistic support for that in any kind of data or peer-reviewed science. I would make this general point: AI is a big, big change over time and any big change is going to bring a lot of problems. It’s naive or misleading or just wrong to assert those problems do not exist. Typically, we don’t know what form those problems will take. I would say I would rather deal with problems with more intelligence on our side rather than less. If we can’t handle a dose of more intelligence, I would say we’re not going to do very well anyway. But it is one of the major challenges facing our civilization and we need to be up to it. We need to know what’s coming. We all need to learn more about how it works. I sometimes say there are no experts on AI. I’m not an expert. I’m a person who uses it a lot in its powerful form and it’s too new for us to really have true experts.

Mitch Daniels (19:03):

Let’s stipulate that it’s not going to kill us or kick Homo sapiens aside. But one thing it’s already doing, and is certain to continue doing, is changing our economic system: our modes of production, the goods and services we create, and the ways in which we produce them. Each time we enter a new technological era, people begin to worry about “the end of work,” about there not being enough jobs to go around, and what that might mean. So, first question: do you think this is simply the next chapter in the ongoing story of the economy adapting and creating new kinds of work to replace the old, or is this time truly different, where we will idle millions of people? 

Tyler Cowen (19:57):

We will create new jobs to replace the old. Many of the jobs we have, including the jobs you’ve had,  also involve interfacing with the physical world and AI doesn’t do that at all. So, you will use AI as your aid, your assistant. It will be very powerful. The real threat to jobs is someone else who knows how to use the AI better than you do, not the AI itself. Now there are various self-contained systems. Programming would be one of them. Graphic design, you could say in the world of chess, where AI can just replace humans flat out and we’ll see some of that, but that’s a pretty small part of our economy and overall we’re going to see a lot more new projects, new ideas, advances in biomedical science, advances in materials, and that’s just going to create a lot more new jobs. But of course, people will have to adjust. People don’t like adjusting. We shouldn’t trivialize those adjustments, but the alternative is to do nothing and just stay where we are with our debt and our lower rate of economic growth. How well is that going to go?

Mitch Daniels (21:06):

So, does that mean that the recurring conversations about fashioning some sort of universal income for those people who would be left behind is a moot question or is it back on the table?

Tyler Cowen (21:24):

Well, I don’t think we will do it, should do it, or can afford it. There was a recent randomized control trial that was actually funded in part by Sam Altman that looked at guaranteed income on a limited basis and people didn’t end up better off. Giving people free money when they need a safety net is absolutely the correct thing to do, but in terms of your overall life trajectory, it is not how you make people better off.

Mitch Daniels (21:55):

On the related topic of cryptocurrency, it’s especially relevant in the week that you and I are having this conversation, and I think it’s likely to remain so for quite some time. I’m interested in your views on that. What is your take on the current state of crypto? It began, as some of us understood it, as a way to free and protect people from the effects of fiat currency and the inflation that comes from it. Is that still its future? It seems to have branched out into new ranges and new realms, which some would describe primarily as speculative investment.

Tyler Cowen (22:45):

I see crypto as quite useful, but I don’t think it’s a useful hedge against dollar collapse. What we see in the data is that crypto is typically quite pro-cyclical. That is, it does well when other things do well. It seems to be a compliment with the dollar-based system. The form of crypto that’s taking off as we’re speaking is stable coins , which are ways of participating in dollar-based systems, but avoiding some of the regulation and we’re seeing great mainstream interest in stable coins, whether it be from Stripe or MasterCard. And I think that will cement dollar hegemony around the world and will be a pretty useful thing. It will mean I can send remittances to Mexico, which I do regularly, much more cheaply.

Mitch Daniels (23:32):

If the initial appeal of cryptocurrency was to insulate people’s assets and their activities from a government. What should people think? What should people, friends of freedom, think about state sponsored digital currency?

Tyler Cowen (23:58):

It’s going to depend on the government. If you are a country like Singapore or Sweden, small high-trust societies whose currencies are not dominant globally, issuing a digital asset may work perfectly fine. I’m not opposed to that; of course, it’s up to those countries. But I worry that if the United States did the same, since we are the major global player, it could drain funds from the private banking system and, over time, lead to nationalizing or partially nationalizing a much larger share of investment and lending decisions. So, I don’t want to do that.

Mitch Daniels (24:35):

In 2024, with a few months yet to go before the election, you quite correctly forecast that change was coming. You said the vibes had changed, and you were right, as you customarily are. I want to ask you now, looking back, particularly with regard to the issue of immigration. You often remind us of the high value that immigration brings to the country. Are we better off or worse off now that the essentially open border has become essentially closed, and with other limits now being proposed? 

Tyler Cowen (25:22):

My sense was in the last two years of the Biden administration; we did not do nearly enough to have a secure and predictable border policy that was politically unstable. From an economic point of view, I actually have been fine with those individuals crossing over. I believe they’re a net contribution to our economy. But nonetheless, a nation is based on laws and some sense of cultural continuity, and a lot of Americans didn’t like that, and I understand that, and I just think you need to enforce the law at some point. That said, there’s been a spreading of the anti-immigrant mood against students who are immigrants, high skilled immigration, and that’s a big negative for our country. So, we run the risk of losing our position as the number one place to do science in the world, in part because we’re cracking down on immigration in many different ways.

Mitch Daniels (26:16):

Some of us have hoped for a very long time that closing the border or reestablishing control at the border would be sort of an earnest money payment, a necessary prerequisite to building public support for a more open immigration policy, particularly with regard to skilled immigrants. I believe we see evidence that the public is open to that. This administration may not be, but I’m hoping that the American people would welcome it if someone would just simply advance that.

Tyler Cowen (26:59):

The prediction I made a while ago is that if we start talking negatively about low-skilled immigration or illegal immigration, that the word people here is “immigration” and the negative sentiment spreads more generally. So, I’m afraid we’re getting into a situation where immigration is just somewhat politically toxic even for Democrats and you see a lot of Latino voters who are really not on board with immigration no matter at what level. And I believe we’re headed toward an error where we cracked down on immigration more than had been the case and that we do it across the board. It was my hope that we would be more liberal on high skilled immigration, but I think it’s gone the other way.

Mitch Daniels (27:44):

Well, one can hope, as the pendulum swings, that this one will swing back as well. Let me ask you another question. Few words are more pejorative these days than “elite.” Clearly, there have been many factors, not just politicians but also technology and changes in how people communicate and receive information, that have undermined the authority of institutions of all kinds. But one thing your fans, of whom I count myself a charter member, appreciate about you is that you are contrarian in many ways. You’ve said some positive things about elites. What do you say today?

Tyler Cowen (28:36):

Well, I would draw a big distinction between elites in government and elites in the sense of who are the smartest people on a topic. So, elites in government have screwed up a lot, whether it’s COVID, or Biden being too old, the list goes on and on and on. We don’t have to go through it. But on a given question, if you want the right answer, the best thing to do is to ask the actual elites. They’re not always correct, but they have the greatest expertise, and they’ve acquired a bad name because they’re being confused with elites in government. I would say some of our elites are far too left-leaning or self-righteous or have other problems. They’re too woke. Again, you could go on with the list and that turns off the American people. That’s a lot of common sense on the part of the American people, but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Scientists still know a lot of useful things and we need to be listening.

Mitch Daniels (29:29):

I did want to ask you about the pandemic, at least at the time, you wrote that the lockdowns made sense and that the Great Barrington Declaration was an error. Have you changed your thoughts about that? We have some more facts than we had at the time.

Tyler Cowen (29:52):

Well, I would be more specific about what I actually said. The United States did not have lockdowns in the same way England did, but we did have many things closed. The NBA stopped its season, and you could not go to a game. That was at first a private activity, but over time different levels of government essentially mandated that such things could not happen. In my opinion, those were the right decisions. Once we had vaccines, beginning in January 2021, things should have reopened promptly, but they did not. My beef with the Great Barrington people, including Jay Bhattacharya, is that they have been anti-vaccine from the beginning. Jay is against mRNA vaccines,you can see the tape on Youtube, and those vaccines were our greatest protection. They saved millions of lives worldwide. Yet they said nothing about promoting vaccines, encouraging uptake, or supporting effective vaccine programs. I feel that was grossly irresponsible and anti-science. Once vaccines became available in early 2021, we should have ended the closures. Some states did so faster than others, but many did not, and that was a big mistake.

Mitch Daniels (31:13):

I wanted to ask you about another of your books. I should always wave these around, not that you need any help selling books, but here was one that is still several years later being handed around. Are we still the complacent society you saw then and what are the principal problems that causes?

Tyler Cowen (31:37):

That book, I believe it was 2018, give or take, and that was a time when mobility was at a low level. Things were very static. There was not a lot of technological progress. And I predicted in the book that this era would end and another book, I called it “The Great Stagnation.” I think that prediction has come true a bit quicker than I would’ve expected. So, AI is the single biggest change, but we’ve had a lot of advances in biomedical science and the world is now in this very rapid flux in a way that’s quite disorienting. So, it’s a very different picture from what I painted in the book and the change came quicker than I thought. I thought it would take 10 years or so before it would flip. And it’s happened already. I would think right now we’re a bit of a terrified class, not the complacent class. I believe it will work out, but we’re seeing so much change now so quickly.

Mitch Daniels (32:34):

We’ve been jolted out of our complacency as opposed to working ourselves out of it.

Tyler Cowen (32:39):

And we’d like to have quite a bit of it back again. It’s understandable, right?

Mitch Daniels (32:43):

Yes. I may be conflating thoughts that should be kept separate, and if so, you can correct me. Another of today’s high-tech leaders, Alex Karp, who has recently written a book, has criticized Silicon Valley for concentrating too much on consumerism. I believe that was part of the complacency you’ve written about. He has suggested that others in the tech industry should follow the lead of Palantir and a few other companies by committing more of their talent and resources to the national interest. Is that an idea Libertarians should salute and applaud?

Tyler Cowen (33:44):

Well, Palantir and Andel, they’ve been very impressive. They made great achievements. If you look at Katherine Boyle who runs the American Dynamism at Andreessen Horowitz, they’re trying to fund many more companies like that. That’s all for the better. My biggest worry, and I don’t blame the companies at all,  I don’t really blame anyone, is we do not have control over our own supply chains for making quality drones. I’m all for changing that, but I don’t actually know how to do it. When you look at the cost differentials, a few tariff subsidies, it’s not nearly enough. So that to me is a major problem and we’re still looking for good solutions.

Mitch Daniels (34:26):

There are multiple schools of thought that believe that our society is headed for some sort of cataclysmic corner here a few years from now. Some see it in the political fishers that we have. Some see it just economically driven. Many of us think that it could be caused by an inability to pay our debts at some point or a collapse of confidence that we can pay our debts. How likely do you think one of these occasional historic crises is and what’s the most likely cause and do you see the backside of it? 

Tyler Cowen (35:10):

Americans love to consume and we’re irresponsible as voters, so we fund too many things with debt. I think that’s the fundamental problem on the fiscal side. My best guess is we’ll use a mix of inflation and tax hikes to avoid defaulting. Now is that a crisis? I think it will be more like the late 1970s, which was very bad. But you wouldn’t say it was a crisis in the sense of a pending default. I just think we’ll have much lower living standards because of our own foolishness.

Mitch Daniels (35:42):

Well, there are a lot more zeroes involved than there were back then. And the inflation that might be necessary to forestall more responsible fiscal policy could be a crisis of its own.

Tyler Cowen (35:57):

Oh, it’ll be very bad. But we had, as you know, high inflation right after COVID. It was very bad for living standards. People hated it. They should have hated it, but it wasn’t a financial crisis. It was just a bad situation where the dollar doesn’t go as far, and people have to stint. And I just think we’ll see more of that.

Mitch Daniels (36:16):

Yes, well, unless it’s hyperinflation of a kind that we haven’t seen, and our German friends would remind us is still possible.

Tyler Cowen (36:27):

I don’t think we’ll get that though. It would raise the borrowing rates on our debt. It would be counterproductive to have a few years of 8 to 10% inflation and some series of tax hikes, which again, I’m opposed to all that, but I believe it’s what will happen next.

Mitch Daniels (36:43):

The last question, rather stray one, but recently we’ve seen something I never expected to see: actual calls for tyranny or an American Caesar. There’s a fellow running around writing, getting himself interviewed, named Curtis Yarvin. And my question to you is, is this a Carney Act, or is this likely to be, or we’d like to hear more of this, or will there be louder cries for a new authoritarian system in the country?

Tyler Cowen (37:27):

My hope is that the trend has peaked. People are seeing that life under Trump is not in every way so wonderful. When the courts strike down his measures, a lot of people are relieved. I think Congress over time will get much more involved in constraining Trump and we will return to somewhat of a saner path. But I don’t feel I’m in a good position to predict our intellectual future. It wouldn’t shock me if we started seeing left-wing versions of Curtis Yarvin calling for a left-wing tyranny. I don’t think that’s going to win elections, but just when it’s out there, if say 10 to 15% of your people believe it, that’s a very bad place to be. And we are in danger of that. And arguably we have it already.

Mitch Daniels (38:12):

Yes, well, we’ll be in less danger if more people, as I will certainly encourage them to read your work and follow your thoughts. I really want to thank you for joining us today. I’d like to close with the same question, so I’ll ask you, looking forward, do you expect the United States to be a more or less free society in the year 2050?

Tyler Cowen (38:42):

2050, 25 years from now? I think we will be less free. I see too many basic problems that we are not succeeding and addressing or even confronting. So, I’m sorry that that is my report, but I do think we’ll be wealthier. We’ll have more opportunities and in some ways we’ll live longer lives. There’ll be a lot of advances in biomedical science, and it won’t in every way be this terrible set of options. We’ll have many good things too.

Mitch Daniels (39:11):

Well, this was a great opportunity for me and for our audience. We thank you for joining us. Please continue on our series, the Future of Liberty.

Outro (39:22):

The Future of Liberty has been brought to you by Liberty Fund, a private educational foundation dedicated to encouraging discussions of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.