Eric Weinstein – Sunday Special Ep. 11 (YouTube Content): Difference between revisions

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 So even though I’ve been handed a mug that says ''Leftist Tears'', the fact of the matter is that I would much rather have a full-on, drag-out discussion about trade, immigration, and terror with an honest conservative than someone trying to win an election inside the DNC.
+''00:36:14''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+Which is why I think that you're more of a liberal than you are a leftist. And I don't mean liberal in the sense that Dave Rubin means liberal, as in classical liberal.
+I mean that there are people who disagree with me on economics but agree with me that we have to actually have honest conversations about this stuff rather than trying to shut it down.
+That's why when we actually looked at making these tumblers, the original suggestion was "liberal tears." And I said, I don't want liberal tears—I want leftist tears.
+''00:36:34''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+This is why I see you as a conservative and not as right-wing.
+''00:36:37''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+I appreciate it. So let's talk about your proposal for fixing capitalism.
+I obviously am a very laissez-faire, free-market-oriented guy. You have proposed something called anthropic capitalism. So what exactly does that term mean, and what does it mean in material terms and in terms of policy?
+''00:36:54''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+Well, the short answer is that we don't know, and we better come up with an answer quickly.
+What if capitalism was a pretty terrific solution for the 19th and 20th centuries, but then in the era of machine learning, robots, and world labor markets, if you actually just let the machine run, it doesn't deliver enough stability?
+Jobs may go away. While opportunity may be plentiful, stable, repetitive activity that's lucrative may, in fact, be quite scarce. It's not at all clear to me that if you let the wheels of capitalism run in the current era, markets will clear in a way that leaves us happy with the way in which our resources are distributed.
+Many people may become very disenchanted. And these are people who need purpose, sustenance, and activity with dignity—something the market may have provided very well in the past.
+So we're not going to disagree with you about the past. What I'm worried about is the future. And I think this is one of these paradoxes where conservatives tend to be very right about the past, and progressives, if they are right, tend to be right about the fact that things may need to be very different going forward.
+''00:38:06''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+Well, it'll be interesting to see. As far as the people on the right—including Charles Murray and Milton Friedman—have proposed, some form of universal basic income as a solution to the rise of artificial intelligence and the fact that you are having a lower-skilled population that is just not going to be able to compete in this market where machines take over all the truck driving, for example, and all of the repetitive labor.
+''00:38:27''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+Radiology may now be low skill compared to a machine.
+''00:38:30''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+I mean, that's true too, although I think that the diagnosis seems to be better. At least from what I can see, diagnosis seems to be better when it's a combination of machine learning and expert systems.
+''00:38:40''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+Fair enough, but I'm just trying to say that—
+''00:38:43''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+What we define as low-skilled is gradually being redefined.
+''00:38:45''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+Quite a bit, right? Yeah, I think that the fact is that we all acknowledge that it has to be some kind of a hybridized system.
+But what I think is also true—and this is good news for you—is that those few people who can actually manage these incredibly complicated enterprises to deliver really profound innovation and growth may need to be freed from burdensome regulation that’s completely inappropriate to creating new sectors of the economy.
+At the same time, if those windfalls occur, we may need radical ways of redistributing some of that.
+If, in fact, jobs are affected in some new way where instead of machines traditionally chasing us from repetitive behavior of low value to repetitive behavior of higher value, the new paradigm may be that all repetitive behavior is not lucrative.
+And the reason that the huge windfalls occur is that those people who...
+''00:39:44''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+There will be a natural IQ hierarchy as well, it's—
+''00:39:46''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+Not just IQ hierarchy. It may be that what's going on is that these are one-off special situations.
+There are always some guys you know, and it's not clear that they have a job—they just sort of meet people, sign pieces of paper, and make tremendous amounts of money. What are they doing? They're opportunistically searching the landscape for things that are not repeatable but that are very well compensated.
+Most people are not going to be in a position to do that. And I think it's very important to actually get hyper-capitalistic because we have to deregulate certain sectors in order to get innovation. At the same time, we have to realize that we're going to have to do something hyper-socialistic because of what you were saying.
+If even Milton Friedman understood this, one of the things that's most meaningful to me about these conversations is that if we get hyper-specific about what these alterations are, then perhaps we can get conservatives to stop worrying so much about the kind of envy-driven desire to tax as a punishment for success—because it's not about fairness or resentment.
+In return, conservatives can acknowledge that we have a nation of souls, and it's not good enough to just say, "Well, the market metes out harsh justice, so tough luck."
+''00:40:59''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+Well, this is why I think that, for a lot of consumers, particularly religious conservatives, there always has to be a balance between liberty and virtue.
+You have to have freedom in the markets, but that can’t exist unless you actually have a social fabric. If somebody at my synagogue needs a hand, then that person gets a hand—that's always been the way in religious communities.
+One of the great tragedies, in my view, of government growing beyond its boundaries is that people have stopped giving as much.
+''00:41:22''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+People have stopped relying on their local community or their families as much. You see this particularly with Social Security, where people have stopped relying on their relatives.
+You had a lot of kids because they were going to support you when you got old, and your kids knew that going in. But now, it’s, "I’m supporting your mother through Social Security because she paid fifty bucks and now she’s getting two thousand bucks a month out."
+So the idea of saving for when you're really old, of making plans for that—savings rates have gone down, and people have stopped worrying about it because the government's going to take care of it.
+It creates all of these inefficiencies and perverse incentives that result in worse outcomes.
+But there's another element here worth discussing. Let's say one of the things that’s happening technologically is that we are coming closer and closer to something like the ''Star Trek'' replicator—a machine that just makes anything.
+It’s easier to buy cheap things now than it ever has been in human history. Most people in the United States can afford these things.
+By global standards, the number of people in extreme poverty in the U.S. is below two percent. The vast majority of people in the United States, by global standards, are upper-class or at least middle-to-upper-class.
+We're reaching a point where prosperity, at least in an absolute historical sense, has grown to magnificent proportions.
+I mean, a middle-class person today is living better than an unbelievably wealthy person in 1880—who was still going outside to use an outhouse.
+''00:42:42''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+By material standards.
+''00:42:43''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+Material standards.
+But this is the real problem. UBI doesn't solve the biggest problem of all. I think you sort of mentioned it—the need for human fulfillment is not going to be filled by a government check or by redistribution of income.
+For most of human history, we’ve filled that need with work. We didn’t have much to do, but we had to work—otherwise, we’d starve.
+That filled our days. Sure, I’m doing a repetitive task at the factory, but that’s what earns me the money so I can come home and take care of my kids.
+''00:43:17''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+And let’s—
+''00:43:18''
+'''Ben Shapiro''':
+Make a better life for them.
+''00:43:19''
+'''Eric Weinstein''':
+And let’s expand that slightly to include not only work for money but also work—particularly the work traditionally done by women—which is a vital part of society that often happens off-market and needs to be recognized.
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