I think Hollywood movies are getting worse. It seems to me what you might call the design of neighborhoods, in the United States, is not obviously progressing. I think in some areas of the arts we’ve moved backwards. TC: William Hazlitt wrote that famous essay in the early nineteenth century, suggesting the notion of progress in art is not well defined. JB: Do you believe we make progress in art? But overall, we see the wealthier, freer, democratic countries of the world becoming more tolerant. You want to sell what you’re doing to a larger audience, discrimination is costly. That commerce makes people more tolerant. And theorists since the eighteenth century, at least, have suggested this: Montesquieu, Adam Smith. JB: Do you think there is a relationship between that kind of progress and the other kinds of progress you’re interested in-technological and economic progress? In most wealthy countries, putting oil autocracies aside, we’ve seen broadly similar trends. But there are just many groups of human beings who, it seems to me, are treated much better than they used to be treated. Obviously, the answer will depend upon the country. TYLER COWEN: In my lifetime in the United States, I would cite the civil rights movement and gay rights as two examples of cultural progress. I was wondering if you could say more about what you mean by cultural progress. JON BASKIN : In the 2019 Atlantic article that you and Patrick Collison co-authored introducing “progress studies,” you define progress as the “combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries.” Reading that I have a pretty good sense, I think, of what you mean by technological progress, economic progress, scientific progress. This January, Cowen and I spoke over Zoom about the meaning of progress, the role of technology in human happiness and Tolstoy. was stuck in a “technological plateau … waiting for the next major growth revolution.” In response, along with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, he has proposed a new discipline, “progress studies,” which attempts to theorize the causes of economic, technological, scientific and cultural growth. In his 2011 book, The Great Stagnation, Cowen argued that the U.S. He is also the co-founder of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution, and the host of the podcast series Conversations with Tyler. Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the director of the Mercatus Center, a free-market research center and think tank.
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