Why do we refuse to learn from history? | Tyler Cowen

Why are we forgetting history’s lessons?

We’re told in school that we study history so as not to repeat its mistakes. But what if those lessons aren’t sticking? Today’s guest regularly invokes what he calls The Great Forgetting. And the striking thing about this collective amnesia is that it doesn’t apply only to distant, ancient history, but hard lessons learned only a few decades ago: Lessons about inflation, price controls, and crime.

Tyler Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Director of the Mercatus Center and host of the great podcast Conversations with Tyler. He and his colleague Alex Tabbarok founded the popular and influential economics blog Marginal Revolution and recently launched their own joint show, the Marginal Revolution Podcast, which recently released a limited series on the unlearned economic and cultural lessons of the 1970s.

[ephiebernstein]

Great episode.
Thanks for the food questions Liz.

[sandyevangelisti]

Such a refreshing take on what libertarians can actually get done

[TaiBernardesLucchese-lr]

Tyler Cowen is very nice to hear. He talks in a calm, compelling way. I can't agree, though, with the idea of substituting a goal of government reduction by another of government efficiency (that's what I understood he is proposing, but I know very little about what he thinks). I feel that government inefficiency really protects us from many bad and tyrannical things. It's in fact a relieve, a form of mercy on the part of God, that governments are quite so inefficient and most of all socialist governments. If they knew how to succeed in their goals it would be far worse than the tragedy in which we already live.

[jimbenham]

excellent episode. First time be back.

[chpella]

Fantastic, thanks Tyler! Yes, the libertarian movement has an issue of lack of intellectual fire power. Flirting with Putin and racism is ugly. (By the way, Mises, in Omnipotent Government and Human Action, is a strong advocate of "peace through strength" and says that striving to make the world full of liberal democracies trading with each other is the only way to end war.) There is also dogmatism when it comes to monetary policy, something which is shocking to Scott Sumner as well as Tyler.

[TaiBernardesLucchese-lr]

about the complex theory of Chilean isolation: well, we put cream cheese in sushi in Brazil too... it probably has more to do with South American foods that feel familiar to us and constitute the basis of our taste being different from American ones than with the Pacific and the Andes. People always adapt international food to local tastes, cream cheese in sushi works for us... (I know: the heresy! but I don't care)

[DangRenBo]

There's a difference between drug use being legal and public intoxication being legal. The latter covers a wide variety of already legal substances. Do your drugs at home and stay high at home.
Needles littering the streets is no different than broken beer bottles everywhere.

[DangRenBo]

17:30 I get your point, Zack, but public spaces have no expectation of privacy. Cameras everywhere allow law enforcement to easily identify violent criminals.

[rogerbarris]

It's amazing how, regardless of the question thrown at him, Tyler has a concise, thoughtful and articulate response. His breadth is incredible. You see the same thing in his "Conversations with Tyler" podcast. The phrase most often heard in CWT is "great question." And he interviews everyone from translators of ancient Greek to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[HowCommunicationWorks]

Impossible not to notice the self-serving exceptions that some libertarians are willing to make to suit their own preferences. No surveillance except in subway elevators because I have a 2-year old. Presumably when the kid is older, she’ll be against surveillance again. Hard to take such opinions seriously.

[p.d.stanhope]

The reason Nixon removed the gold standard was that LBJ was suppose to do it during his term but was occupied with Vietnam and the various city & campus riots. Also nations were buying or selling their gold reserves to mess with the U.S. Dollar value like France in the late 1960's. A fiat currency based on the U.S. being the solely the Super Power to go to with stable markets and military presence post Bretton Woods made sense then and still does in 2025. Government spending and its size is the problem.

[macsnafu]

Re drug decriminalization. For the most part, this is still a good thing, for all the reasons libertarians have given over the years. People using recreational drugs simply isn't a crime against other people. Sure, it can still be a personal or social problem, even if it's not crime. Civil society can still do a lot to discourage drug use without it being illegal, and if anything, it will be more effective at limiting drug use if it's NOT illegal. Not to mention that dealing with drug problems and helping people with drug problems is easier if it's not a crime, and people can more freely admit to having a problem without risking jail or legal consequences.

My father has a copy of Trump's 1990 book, Surviving at the Top. I'm not even sure if he's actually read it, but he has it. He also has TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome, and is sure that Trump is going to be president-for-life, end future elections, and maintain a dictatorial hold over America

Even if you limit government to a very few functions, I still have to wonder how well government would handle those functions. Government incentives themselves don't change just because you've limited government (assuming that you can effectively limit government). To expect the government to do something like policing "very well" seems hopelessly unrealistic and unlikely.

[p.d.stanhope]

The fertility issue isn't an issue, because it is happening in developed nations that do not need large populations. Since the end of the Vietnam War and ending the Male Only draft. You no longer need to conduct wars that require large numbers of boots on the ground ala World War I & II. Industrial based manufacturing & assembling to working within service industries do not need large scales of employment in the age of AI/LLM systems. The problem in developed nations is the size and scope of their national governments. Small populations mean smaller tax revenues. Inverse pyramids of certain demographic groups with government social welfare programs are going to be a huge problem. No one is going to have large families in 2025 and live in a urban or suburban environments. It would be like have a large number of expensive pets. They're not going back to the farms either.