https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qffpHem5UUk
And if there is one message that I would like to pass on to your young followers, who are having a tougher time than would be expected for young people to have, things could get much worse if the basic underpinnings of what made Western society rich and prosperous, which is to say liberal democracy and some form of free market capitalism, free enterprise, if those two are eroded or destroyed, we are in for a much tougher time. If you want to see how young people, how a society can deteriorate, go to Venezuela. You know, it’s not that far away, it’s a couple of hours from Miami, and see how young people live there. Now, Venezuela was a country where in the early 1950s GDP per capita was higher than in the United States, higher than in the United States. Today, people are eating cats and dogs and slaughtering animals in zoos for meat. Young women have no other option but to prosecute themselves, men have gone into crime. It is basically a failed society. But long ago, some of the leading lights of American progressivism, such as AOC, have been singing the praises of 21st century Venezuela socialism. So things could get much worse, and they will if we forget the lessons of history and if we don’t understand that the political stability, to the extent we still have it, is a result of liberal democracy, limited government, and the outcome and the reason for economic growth and the reason why we have all the nice things that people in Venezuela don’t is because we have free markets, free enterprise and free trade. OK, OK, let’s let’s. Well, you’d also think it’s kind of strange that given our proclivity, let’s say to devour bad news, you’d think that the story of Venezuela would get a lot more coverage than it actually gets. So that’s kind of maybe we can return to that. Let’s go through the trends here. So the first one. So the book is structured so that on the right hand page, there’s a graphic graph showing progress across time, time or change across time, a variety of different trends, let’s say. The first one, the first trend is the great enrichment. And tell us what that means and what it signifies. So the chart, which you may be able to show at some point in the future, looks like a hockey stick, which is to say that for all of our recorded history, let’s say going back to 4000 BC, but we can estimate even even further back in time. There it is, the hockey stick of human prosperity. The line has flatlined. It is estimated that prior to the Industrial Revolution in the late 17 and early 1800s, global economy grew by about 0.1 percent per year, which is to say that to double your prosperity would have taken thousands of years. As late as 1900, which is to say the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who in Victoria was on the throne, the globe produced roughly three trillion dollars in output. This is all inflation adjusted. So three trillion dollars in output, the entire globe. In 2018, it was 121 trillion dollars. So from three trillion to 121 trillion dollars in a scope of 100 years adjusted for inflation. And if the growth that we have experienced, the growth rate that we have experienced over the last 100 years continues into 2100. The world will produce 600 trillion dollars in output, real inflation adjusted output. Over the next 80 years, the globe could produce six times more value than it is currently producing if we maintain the current economic growth rate. And do you think that’s an optimistic projection or a conservative projection? That’s what leads us back to the original point that we discussed. It very much depends on economic policies and political stability. If you don’t have civil wars around the world, then and government change hands in a peaceful and predictable way, then we should be OK when it comes to political stability. When it comes to economics, we are seeing as surprising and to be quite frank, well, surprising and almost inexplicable renewed interest in more restrictive economic policies from socialism on the left to hardcore protectionism on the right. And if our economic growth rate falls from 1.82 percent that we have experienced over the last year to 0.1 percent, which we have experienced over the previous 10,000 years, then it will take us 6,000 years to get from 100 trillion dollars to 200 trillion dollars. So the most remarkable thing about this is exactly the hockey stick shape. As you pointed out, nothing at all happened until the mid 1800s, essentially. And then all of a sudden things improved so rapidly that it’s virtually incomprehensible. It’s a miracle. It is the most important question in economics. What happens in the late 1700s, early 1800s that produces that hockey stick effect? And just to clarify, there have been in human history periods of economic efflorescence flourishing, but they were usually restricted to small parts of the world. And they were usually they usually petered out. So, for example, Song China has produced some remarkable technological discoveries. And it appeared to be a time of relative plenty compared to other countries in the world. But that petered out when Song dynasty was replaced by the Ming dynasty. Similarly, the Roman Empire appears to have been a place that was largely at peace internally and quite prosperous. But that came to an end in 467 or whenever that happened when Rome fell. So there are these periods that you can have prosperity. Also, let’s stay with Europe. I mean, Europe has experienced the greatest century of peace and prosperity between 1814, the end of Napoleonic Wars and 1914, the breakout of the First World War, which slaughtered tens of millions and destroyed a lot of wealth. So, you know, economic progress can certainly take a knock and it can take a time to recover. But in order for it to recover, you have to rediscover the reasons why you had high economic growth rates in the first place. So, OK, so the first lesson is that something happened in the last 150 years that propelled human productive capacity and distribution globally into the stratosphere. And there’s no sign that that’s slowing, although we could disrupt it and we could disrupt it because we don’t exactly understand why it happened. And we’re not appreciative enough of its miraculous nature and the perhaps fragile preconditions for its continued existence. Well, when I said that it’s the biggest question in economics, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t theories of why it happened. The theory that I espoused and the theory that has convinced me is that over hundreds of years in Western Europe and in North America and then later in other parts of the world, our economic and political institutions have grown more inclusive, open, or to use a political word, liberal. Now, I’m using liberal in its European sense, not liberal in the current American sense. And what that meant was that you no longer needed permission from the king in order to open a shop or import a bag of wool from another country. So there’s an autonomy, there’s an element of autonomy, but there’s also an element of generosity that autonomy leads to increased productivity, but the product, the consequences of the production are also being shared and rather than hoarded, they’re being distributed reasonably well.