Niall Ferguson: Doom

#NiallFerguson #covid #bitcoin
Niall Ferguson’s most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. In this book he posits that disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, and financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck.
Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work.
Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is the author of sixteen books.

In 2003, Ferguson wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4, the UK broadcaster. The accompanying book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The sequel, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, was published in 2004 by Penguin, and prompted Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The international bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, published in 2008 was adapted into a PBS series, winning the International Emmy award for Best Documentary, as well as the Handelszeitung Economics Book Prize. In 2011 he published Civilization: The West and the Rest, also a Channel 4/PBS documentary series. A year later came the three-part television series “China: Triumph and Turmoil.” The book based on his 2012 BBC Reith lectures, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, was a New York Times bestseller within a week of its publication. Ferguson has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He began writing a twice-a-month column for Bloomberg Opinion in June 2020.

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:51 The story of the book title and cover
00:05:08 What is the role of politics in averting disasters? What is natural V manmade?
10:28:00 Could COVID have been averted? Why did our institutions fail? Echoes of the Challenger space shuttle disaster?
00:15:47 Niall’s killer apps for civilization. How has science done?
00:22:00 How should we communicate and balance risks? Fixating on the wrong things.
00:28:50 How do you balance your personal and professional life?
00:34:22 The obsession with finding alien life.
00:35:37 Would the impact be of finding alien life? The DARK FOREST theory.
00:39:44 Lessons from finance history. Is inflation today similar to the hyperinflation in the 1930s? The impact of blockchain and crypto and bitcoin.
00:49:00 Should we be concerned with being dominated by a few powerful organizations?
00:54:00 How has being a professor impacted your life, and the future or academia.
00:59:00 The state of academic freedom and The University of Austin Texas approach.
01:04:00 Thrilling Three questions
01:05:30 What would you put on your monolith
01:08:00 What have you changed your mind about?
01:11:08 How does Niall Ferguson handle criticism?

Join this channel to get access to perks:

📺 Watch my most popular videos:📺

Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

Executive Producer- Brian Keating
Producer- Stuart Volkow P.G.A.
Editing- Lucas Scheiblich

[DrBrianKeating]

Was COVID primarily a political failure or a scientific one?

[lucasscheiblich]

Niall Ferguson is extremely well-spoken. He makes topics I never cared for a lot more fun to listen to.

[michaelmorgan]

thankyou Dr Keating.. Niall Ferguson is a great guest

[IntuitiveIQ]

You need a producer, Brian. It will be well worth the money. Your channel is already too big to be having these technical (sound) issues, and you need to increase the production quality if you want to build your channel to be much bigger. 🙏🏻

[dgh]

Enjoyed this video. I am always very pleased to see what a good host you are Dr. Keating. You allow your guest(s) to shine and respectfully allow them to speak without interruption. A rare trait these days from many of the other channels I have watched. Thank you for this foray into the realm of history and topics that stray from the usual.

[jazzunit]

On a personal level it’s all in our head.
On a species level it’s all on the surface of earth.

[BlackHoleForge]

After hearing his argument about how scientists made mistakes I think I might have to change my stance. I should have broadened my scope for what qualifies as a mistake. I never thought to take in account how difficult it is for scientists to communicate to the general population. I think those mistakes are a good argument as to why we need more people like Kyle Hill and Dr Keating. Being a communicator, helping to connect the gap between knowledge and practical application sounds hard enough. But adding another layer of complexity with political spin makes it seem impossible. It's a good thing for us, that humans are adaptable. Even better, science can take the impossible and place it within our reach. Good show today.

[pshehan]

I am a now retired scientist and a fan of Ferguson having a number of his books and am also a fan of Keating so found the discussion fascinating.

Regarding the pandemic, even discounting the manufactured in a lab hypothesis, humans made covid a catastrophe simply by crowding into cities and engaging in mass intercontinental air travel.

Whereas clearly Trump did not cause the worldwide pandemic, he kicked it along in the US by minimising it even though the Bob Woodward interview tapes show he clearly understood the threat from the beginning. His promotion of quack cures and hostility to mask mandates and lock downs and attacks on Fauci which led to the latter receiving death threats and calls for him to be impeached or be investigated from Trump's MAGA supporters certainly resulted in many more deaths or be investigated than were necessary.

In the UK Boris Johnson, "I shake hands with everybody" similarly downplayed the disease until he caught it, and he started listening to the medical advice except as the regulations applied to parities at Downing Street.

Here in Australia we did pretty well when our Federal and state governments convened a national cabinet and listened to the scientists. We had a much lower death and sickness toll per capita than comparable countries. I did not enjoy the long lockdowns here in the state of Victoria any more than others but most of the public supported it.

But after everyone got vaccinated people thought problem solved and just got bored with it so our death toll is now greater than during the lock down, mask mandate period but nobody cares anymore.

As far as economic damage goes, we have recovered from that faster than many other countries and Professor Ferguson should be able to correct me is I am wrong, but it is my understanding that many countries with stern measures fared better economically than countries which took a more relaxed attitude.

Regarding the anthropogenic climate change catastrophe. It is certainly coming and I would argue that for many it is here already. Scientists have been warning about that for decades, and despite what you hear from 'skeptics', data shows that global temperatures are warming at the rate of 3 C per doubling of CO2 as the models and theory predicted.

The problem there is that vested fossil fuel interests and conservative governments here in Australia which is a major coal exporter did not want to deal with the problem which would not be apparent within the electoral cycle. Temperatures in Australia, which are 'land only' have already hit the 1.5 C rise over the last century.

Then we had a catastrophic bush fire summer in 2019-20, and also unprecedented floods this year and decades long records show that the food bowl areas of this dry continent are further drying out. The conservatives were voted out in May and many independents who demanded action on climate change elected.

Regarding the loss of academic freedom and free inquiry, I can certainly attest to that. I was a research scientist with a PhD by trade and the problem is not so much in the sciences where you run up against reality pretty quickly, but I have also been involved in humanities courses and subjects over 5 decades. Prof Ferguson may appreciate that I undertook a very well received oral history project of second world war veterans. The Australian War Memorial wants the tapes. It is hard being a renaissance man in an age of narrow specialization.

In 2008 I was in a tutorial where the discussion was on literacy. A young social justice warrior on my immediate left was on a riff about how literate western societies had exploited colonial peoples. Even in high school my teachers appreciated my 'devil's advocate' roll in class discussions. So I said, 'On the other hand life expectancy in western nations is twice that in hunter-gatherer societies'. This led to me being called a racist by the SJW. When I replied that I have aboriginal ancestors and am aware from my own family history of the impact on my forebears, the denunciation reached near hysterical levels. Then another SJW on my immediate right said i should no longer be heard because I had "offended" the first SJW.

On crypto currencies. I don't know it this discussion was recorded before the crypto melt down but I always regarded the roller coaster ride as akin to Tulip mania in the 17th century Netherlands when you could buy a house with a single bulb. At least when that crashed you could plant the tulips in your garden.

[SuryaS_]

That was great. When's the Balaji podcast coming up....waiting for it ❤️🙏

[lgude]

The Middle Ages were clueless in the face of the Black Death. Agreed. I immediately thought of the mystic Julian of Norwich who lost her entire family to the Black Death and became an Anchorite giving people what we would call ‘spiritual direction’ from out of her experience of suffering and spiritual wisdom. I think we are more clueless in how we respond to the depths of human experience of suffering and death.

[mugin]

America's "mishandling" of Corona is rooted in, the fact that Americans only want to pay for a small government, but when the shit hits the fan they expect a big government response.

[eismscience]

Thanks for this exchange. Regarding meritocracy and the need for competition, I would say that the most important competition, if we want to survive as a species, is to compete to see who is willing to cooperate the most, by voluntarily paying the highest tax rates, for example. Typically, when I propose this "competitive cooperation", the most ambitious and "meritocratic" people are the first to give me the middle finger. Highly ambitious and "meritocratic" people believe in merit and competition only when it favors them - as opposed to believing in merit and competition as ideals - and that is the problem with meritocracy. Niall and the founders of their university will need to address this fundamental contradiction if they want to be around in 500 years.

N.B. The only organization in history that is founded on competitive cooperation and voluntary taxation, the Catholic Church, has been around fro 2022 years and counting.

[markb]

I love hearing Niall's thoughts, regardless the topic. Great interview!

[jonnythefox]

Fantastic as usual, Brian. Hello from Glasgow, Niall. I think my school (Hutchie) is still regularly beating yours at rugby 😂

[indiedrumkid]

Great listen!! Thanks so much Brian! 🤘🤘

[nunomaroco]

Hi, from Portugal, big problems in this days. ..

[skre]

Still can't get the audio sorted lol?

[sifridbassoon]

(sigh...) wish I could go to the University of Austin.

[joecanis]

Niall, the greatest concern is how competitive will the University of Austin Texas football team be. 😂

[keesdevos]

Concerning the pandemic one must consider the median health of people compared with historical situations (quite worse for several reasons). Second remark is about gold preserving value; prices might seem suppressed lately (production is growing). That might change in coming years and history is clear.