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The Future of Economic Growth: TED Talk
My TED talk, an optimistic account of the past and future of economic growth, is up. I haven't watched it yet but at the time I thought it went well.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on April 27, 2009 at 08:15 PM in Economics, Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Thanks for the talk! really interesting and with some brilliant ideas. lets open up the world for thinkers and scientists all over!
Posted by: BjarniM at Apr 27, 2009 10:32:52 AM
That's a great talk. Congratulations.
Posted by: Dave at Apr 27, 2009 10:40:58 AM
Clever ending! Very well done.
Posted by: John at Apr 27, 2009 10:42:33 AM
You've got some charisma, Alex. Congrats.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Apr 27, 2009 11:24:17 AM
good stuff!
Posted by: oops at Apr 27, 2009 11:38:13 AM
Brilliant - reminds me of why liberalism, in the European sense of the word, is still right despite all this financial hoo-ha.
Posted by: Giles at Apr 27, 2009 12:18:26 PM
Great stuff Alex. Excellent presentation.
Posted by: Peter Boettke at Apr 27, 2009 1:51:56 PM
Great talk, but a tough crowd in the comments over there.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 27, 2009 1:57:07 PM
Thanks for the comments, everyone! Much appreciated.
The comments on TED are interesting - much doom and gloom about how the world will end before we get wealthy.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Apr 27, 2009 2:07:02 PM
Very nice, Alex! Thanks for sharing the information and the link. I think it is hard to change anyone's mind in 15 minutes, so inspiring a sense of wonder and possibility -- hitting the emotional lever -- is important.
Posted by: blink at Apr 27, 2009 2:24:32 PM
I'm amazed they allowed you at TED!
The general talk is along the lines of "if we do this new technological / artistic thing, we can save the world" which is generally a quiet anti-capitalist rant implying that the "old way" of freeing markets is not working - when we know that the stats show the poorest places on the earth have little economic freedom.
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Apr 27, 2009 2:50:01 PM
Only thing is there is often this sense from economists that we are nearing the end of history. Trade is fragile, partly because most people have no idea what is going on, and especially in need of defending at times like these. Hopefully a few more people understand. Good work.
Posted by: Andrew at Apr 27, 2009 4:51:41 PM
Reading the comments is pretty sad. They remind me of Bush supporters (including me, unfortunately) 2003-06, except way too pessimistic instead of way too optimistic.
For example, many comments excoriate Alex for dismissing the concern of oil running out. But consider this: if plug-in hybrids pan out, then most Americans will use ZERO oil to accomplish their daily commute, while we switch to a source like Nuclear, with a fuel very far from peaking. Not to mention how much oil simply switching to more diesels and manuals will save.
But that kind of point gets little traction among most liberal blog commenters for some reason. There's just a fanatical obsession now with the end of the world, and I just don't hope it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Posted by: MW at Apr 27, 2009 5:44:15 PM
Prof. Tabarrok,
Thanks for your TED talk. I've watched it and read the interview on TED, but I can't help but feel that your assertion is that freeing up markets will lead to more sustainable growth. While I have no pretensions of being an economist, I can't help but feel this view ignores important externalities like the damage we do to the biosphere that supports us. You gloss over this in your interview (hardly surprising since they don't really go for an long, in-depth format), stating that "if" we can solve the problems everything will be fine.
I feel that the strategy of unlimited growth and free markets exacerbates, rather than ameliorates, the problem, and makes humanity as a whole less likely to tackle the issue; ultimately, this will curtail growth (perhaps disastrously). If you're a believer in Simon's "ultimate resource", how to you deal with the criticisms against cornucopism? Do you believe there really is a "free lunch"?
Posted by: Aaron at Apr 27, 2009 5:54:29 PM
The regression of my internet connectivity (Verizon sold Northern New England rather than install FIOS and service has declined) makes video delivered by truck (USPS) far faster than "instant" video on demand.
As the CTO of Sun often pointed out, ideas by powerpoint required massively more bandwidth then a text file, or its closest analogue, HTML. But a this point I would settle for powerpoint slides, though ODS would be preferred.
Is the content of the presentation online in text form?
Posted by: mulp at Apr 27, 2009 5:58:41 PM
I'm puzzled that no one has expressed a cristicism of any sort so far here. Is that because only those who want to lavish praise on Alex are bothering to comment here or because that talk was so apparently manipulative and rose-tinted (and whoever disagrees is just gloomy, right Alex?) that to point that out is just a waste of time.
Posted by: Serj at Apr 27, 2009 6:09:58 PM
Thanks to Mr Econotarian for straightening them out at TED on poverty in China. I love that he did so using gapminder, itself made famous through TED.
Aaron, no I do not believe in a free lunch but I do believe that problems get easier with growth not harder. Convince a billion, poor Chinese to stay poor for the sake of the planet? No way. Convince a billion, rich Chinese to use less coal and more solar and nuclear? Difficult but not impossible.
mulch, I will find a place for the powerpoints.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Apr 27, 2009 6:10:40 PM
Alex, point taken. On a side note, one of my main problems with TED (even though I love it) is the brevity enforced by the format, and the lack of interaction.
I do agree that growth makes the problem easier to deal with in the sense that those who have economic freedom are more likely to realize it than those without. However, that same growth also exacerbates the problem, so you have a higher cost associated with solving it in the future. At this stage we (or at least I) don't have the data to say what a graph of that particular relationship would look like, but I strongly suspect (perhaps my native pessimism talking) that it wouldn't look encouraging.
Posted by: Aaron at Apr 27, 2009 7:00:16 PM
I found it a little interesting that the theme was globalization and world trade, but the impressive graph on growth was for the U.S. only. Sure, the U.S. got on a fast path of growth, but how much of that was due to the rest of the world being devastated? Feels a little like picking a choosing the stats to make the argument.
While I have little doubt that increased trade will raise global growth numbers, I'm more dubious about how/whether the U.S. will manage to keep a relative advantage over the up and comers.
Posted by: Curt at Apr 27, 2009 7:20:54 PM
I found it a little interesting that the theme was globalization and world trade, but the impressive graph on growth was for the U.S. only. Sure, the U.S. got on a fast path of growth, but how much of that was due to the rest of the world being devastated? Feels a little like picking a choosing the stats to make the argument.
While I have little doubt that increased trade will raise global growth numbers, I'm more dubious about how/whether the U.S. will manage to keep a relative advantage over the up and comers.
Posted by: Curt at Apr 27, 2009 7:21:07 PM
First of all, I am not the "Curt" who commented above. (Just to be clear.)
Secondly, cool talk! Your talk and Steven Pinker's are refreshingly optimistic, so they're especially good for watching on Mondays.
Posted by: Curt Fischer at Apr 27, 2009 7:46:00 PM
Alex is a very good speaker. Did the people at TED know that before hand? I'm guessing it would be hard to find such a good speaker amongst economist. well done.
Posted by: thehova at Apr 27, 2009 8:05:37 PM
Yeah, I'm shocked from the comments under the video. Since when did economic growth become the problem. Ugghhhh.
Posted by: thehova at Apr 27, 2009 10:05:29 PM
Stephen Sass, a Cornell materials science professor, wrote a book about the history of materials, The Substance of Civilization. It is incredible how throughout history we have had resource shortages - making metals once used too much timber and water to make charcoal- only to find something better. Coal (electricity) currently produces too much greenhouse gases, but is in sufficient supply to outlast all of us. Oil (fuel and polymers) appears to not be in sufficient supply. Have some optimism that increases in wealth or technology improvement will enable us to find a way around emission problems, resource shortages, and ultimately find a better alternative. Like those that made charcoal for their materials processing, we just may not be around to see it.
Posted by: Joe at Apr 27, 2009 10:18:21 PM
I found this talk (Much like Prof. Taborrak) to be very limited in the discussion of the downside. We currently already use much more resources (including energy, in its current storage form) than can be sustainably reproduced. Therein lies the fact that it is impossible to guarantee the same standards of living for China and India that are enjoyed in countries like the USA or Australia (my home country).
Not only will we witness restrictions on natural resources but restrictions on labour resources. The wealth of Western consumers is partially based on cheap foreign labour. This wealth has been decreasing as (before the recent crash) we were re-importing the inflation we previously exported to China. As China pulls its population out of poverty this access to cheap labour will diminish, decreasing the absolute wealth of the west and diminishing the wealth divide on both sides of the equation.
Additionally your belief in market size is short sighted, populations do not create markets but wealth. You can have a country of 120 Million, but if the power of discretionary spending lies within only 1 million of those people then how do you determine the true market size? Malaria is huge in Africa, but the funding given to those companies researching cures or preventative medicines is mainly regarded as charity, not investment.
This polarisation of wealth is inherent in the free market system that you put so much faith in. Whereby through the increase reliance on entrepreneurial skill, and risked-based rewards individuals can increase their wealth by virtue of being wealthy (through investment geared companies, buying of bonds/debts, or even interest payments).
I don't share your faith in the current free-market system. I do not think the simple explanation offered is enough to ensure that will we progress to an egalitarian society... However I am interested in your responses to these economic problems.
Posted by: Alex Vic at Apr 28, 2009 12:14:52 AM
