Public ideas
Economic history in 53 minutes
There are two ways to learn economic history.
One way is to enrol in economics at a university. They will probably make you do pre-requisites, such as Economics 1 with all those dimensionless diagrams and funny freehand lines. And you will be up for student fees.
Or you can spend an hour listening to Andrew Leigh, in his role as a professor of economics (his day job is as Assistant Minister for Competition and Treasury). He explains it all in 53 minutes on the ABC in conversation with Richard Fidler, who, himself, has a sound knowledge of economics: From ploughs to cash cows: a short history of economics. Fidler introduces the session with the reminder that “economics is about humans”, and they go from there, mentioning the usual suspects – Elinor Ostrom, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Mariana Mazzucato, and others – along the way, and covering the main ideas that have guided economic thought.
It’s also a plug for Leigh’s book The shortest history of economics (only 224 pages).
Two thinkers on the history of inequality
Branko Milanovic is a Professor at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the City University of New York. Guido Alfani is Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Milan. Both have made recent contributions on the history of inequality.
Writing in World Development – The three eras of global inequality, 1820-2020 with the focus on the past thirty years – Milanovic provides a macro analysis of global inequality (everyone on the planet), inequality between nations, and inequality within nations. Global inequality rose steeply after the industrial revolution, but levelled off in the latter part of last century, and has been falling over this century, reflecting the rise of incomes in Asia, particularly China. The mathematical influence of China on this phenomenon is waning, and the future could see a widening of global inequality, particularly if there continues to be low economic growth in Africa.
Alfani, a guest on Late Night Live – From Medici to Musk: a history of the super-rich in the West – takes a longer-term view while focusing on the extreme rich – the people you don’t see boarding first class because they have their own Cessna Citation or similar “executive jet”. He describes their various behavioural patterns, influenced in part by whether they had a sense of civic responsibility, and in part by whether they thought the mob was ready to revolt and cart them through the streets in a tumbril. Sometimes they show off their prosperity with acts of lavish vulgarity, sometimes they invest in the public domain with acts of magnificent generosity – a library, a university, a temple. The ultra-rich of our time, he fears, are not inclined to such acts of redistribution.
The idea of a university
In a week that we are reminded of the practicalities of university funding, Joe Walker brings to our attention a 42-minute podcast by Peter Singer, his final lecture after 24 years at Princeton University where he was Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values.
He covers recollections of his early years at Princeton, where his critics, particularly people who had not taken the trouble to understand his work, made all manner of extravagant and wild statements about the malign influence he would exert on young minds – an atheist advocate of free love, a threat to western civilization, someone with contempt for human values, an advocate for culling the weak.
He goes on to outline his philosophy of effective utilitarianism – a philosophy that is only a minor extension of JS Mill’s utilitarianism, in so far as it considers the interests of other species with which we share the planet. Radical perhaps in 1999, but more mainstream in 2024.
His main message is about the university as a place where academic freedom is preserved. The “cancel culture” poses a huge threat to academic freedom, manifest not only in aggressive moves to “de-platform” those who challenge mainstream “left” or “right” ideas, but also in self-censorship by academics who carefully avoid territory that, if entered, could be career-limiting.
In defence of academic freedom he gives a plug for the Journal of Controversial Ideas, which he helped establish. And he concludes with some ideas about what constitutes a life well-lived. Spoiler – it’s not about having a BMW 7 Series rather than a Toyota Corolla, or drinking Chateau Lafite Rothschild rather than the Aldi $8 Shiraz.