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]]>Intro. [Recording date: February 22, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is February 22nd, 2024, and my guest is activist and writer, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. His family is originally from Palestine before the establishment of the state of Israel. From the age of five to 15, he lived in the Gaza Strip until he went on an exchange program to the United States. He was unable to return to Gaza and ultimately became an American citizen.
He has been an eloquent writer on what is happening in Gaza today, and in a recent article he wrote for Foreign Policy, he wrote the following. Quote:
I am originally from Gaza. I have lost more than 31 of my family members who were killed by IDF airstrikes in Gaza City and Rafah. Both of my childhood homes are gone. My immediate and extended family are all homeless, having had to regularly flee in pursuit of safety. This personal dimension is precisely why I've been desperately seeking pragmatic ideas, outlined below, that address humanitarian aid provision and the stabilization of post-war Gaza through new security arrangements. This is not an intellectual or analytical issue for me. It is an existential one that threatens the survival of what remains of my family in the Gaza Strip and the preservation of the territory that I once called home.
End quote.
And those words will be the basis for our conversation today. Ahmed, welcome to EconTalk.
Ahmed Alkhatib: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Russ Roberts: I want to add, before we begin: this episode will probably air three weeks after it's recorded. Please keep that in mind. Things may change quickly for some of the issues we discuss.
Russ Roberts: Let's talk about your boyhood in Gaza, to start. That was during the time when Israel was occupying the Gaza Strip. Israel withdrew in 2005. You left just as Hamas began to take power. Can you share your memories of Gaza as a boy?
Ahmed Alkhatib: Certainly. I mean, as I had shared previously, our family moved back and forth between Gaza and Saudi Arabia during the 1990s. We lived in Gaza for almost three years out of that decade. We permanently moved to the Gaza Strip in June of 2000, right before the Second Intifada, three months before the Second Intifada. And, I remember always feeling an outsider, if you will, because I never--I mean, our accent that we spoke wasn't exactly 100% in accordance to the Gazans who never left the Strip. And so, I remember that.
But once the Second Intifada took place, and once the violence began spreading as far as the demonstrations, the protests, the strikes, the funerals, later on suicide attacks and suicide bombings that took place within Israel, which would then elicit a significant Israeli retaliation--once that took place, I was very much so a Gazan, just like everybody else. There was a complete erasure of any differentiation.
We went to UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] schools because our family is from historic Palestine, and my parents were born in Rafah in refugee camps. And, the word 'refugee camp'--I mean, they started as actual literal refugee camps. But, as time has gone on, they evolved to be their own mini small neighborhoods or even mini small cities, if you will. So, that's why they're exceptionally crowded. They're particularly just undeveloped, and the scene historically of a lot of trash and sewer, whatever, even though as time has gone on, there have been efforts to improve them.
But, the area where we lived in Sheikh Radwan, right between the neighborhood of Rimal and Jabalia--you hear about the Jabalia Refugee Camp--that was, I would say, in a quasi-developed area where it was. We didn't have any sewers. There were the people who had septic tanks that I just remember; and we didn't have paved streets in the entirety of the area where we were in. So, just from a quality-of-life point of view, anytime it rained, the streets would become these massive ditches because there was no drainage, no infrastructure.
We went to UNRWA schools. It was crowded, it was rough. They had two periods--they had the morning period and the afternoon period. And, I always begged for the morning period. That way you could be done with school by 12:30--because I just despised going to school from 1:00 to 6:00.
Well, UNRWA schools were very crowded. They had a serious lice problem. I have an Afro: I actually have hair, but I choose to shave it. But, in Gaza, anytime you saw someone with my cut, you assumed that they had lice from school, and the UN [United Nations] and UNRWA would--well, I don't know that it was an UNRWA directive, but a lot of the UN teachers would instruct us to use gasoline to get rid of the lice.
Nevertheless, I will say the UNRWA schools were very good in terms of the academic standards.
Russ Roberts: In the aftermath of October 7th, UNRWA schools have gotten a lot of criticism, and I think a lot of Israelis believe that they teach children to hate. I don't know if that is true today. Was it true--to hate Jews? Excuse me--to be clear. Did you sense that in your time?
Ahmed Alkhatib: Well, it's complicated in the sense that I don't believe that UNRWA schools specifically teach to hate. UNRWA doesn't control the curriculum. That is controlled by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, which is driven by the West Bank-based Ministry, which, historically--when I was there, for example, I was in the first year of the pilot program for a new curriculum that was funded by the European Union [EU]. And, I remember specifically--because I had a lot of family members involved in the Ministry of Education--I remember the stipulations that the European funders had for the curriculum such that there were things that you could not--there were clear and explicit instructions on what could not be said.
So, I think where a lot of the incitement and the potential for hatred comes from the instructions provided by the teachers, some of whom just believe that there's--like, some of whom basically editorialize the content. But, I don't believe that UNRWA specifically and explicitly either teaches hate or, at least on paper, allows for the teaching of hate. UNRWA does have standards for what its teachers can and cannot say.
I remember hearing stories of teachers getting in trouble, when I was in Gaza, for having overt political activism. Again, keeping in mind, this was before the withdrawal of Israeli settlements. This was before Hamas. Like, this was an entirely different era. So, I concede that perhaps some things might have slightly changed.
And, I'm not here to say that UNRWA was flawless. But I do think, unfortunately, there are reductionist, over-simplistic points of view and kind of statements made about UNRWA that are just factually wrong. They're just factually inaccurate. UNRWA doesn't control the curriculum. Neither does Hamas.
UNRWA schools, I will say, because they--so, 2/3 of Gaza's populations are considered refugees; 1/3 are considered natives. Those are actual Gazans from Gaza. I mean, there are cultural and political differences between those two subsets, those two populations, and even just amongst each other, like, at least when I was there. And, things have changed, but nevertheless, it still exists today. It's even a big thing when the refugees--we call them [foreign language 00:09:04, sounds like 'hajirim']--marry from [foreign language 00:09:08, sounds like 'moachnim'], the native.
So, like, when you just--people's last name can be indicative of, 'Oh, where are you from?' And, they don't mean, like, what neighborhood do you live in? Where are you from, from? What part of Palestine are you from?
And so, there is this kind of segregationist mentality that exists within Gaza's community that are descendants of refugees such that those are the populations that go to school--to the UNRWA schools. That's the population from which the teachers come. So therefore, there's very much so this sense of historic injustice. Like: We're kind of languishing in these--a lot of the students are living in horrible, crowded refugee camps and throughout the Gaza Strip, and a lot of them are aid dependent. For a variety of reasons, including Hamas's practices and choices later on.
So, I believe that's where a lot of the hatred that we hear about comes from.
Russ Roberts: Now, I mentioned on the program that I've seen--we actually hosted a showing of a documentary about Gaza here at Shalem College that was very sympathetic to the Gazan experience--and it was fascinating, and it was very depressing, because it highlighted the shutting off of electricity frequently, insufficient access to clean water sometimes, limits on activities in the ocean because of Israeli surveillance.
But, I always assumed--trying to be empathetic--that that was all of Gaza, the slum-like poverty. And now it appears--and I just want your take on this--since the war started--we see lots of footage of parts of Gaza that look quite nice and developed. Are those videos--is it true? Were there swaths of Gaza City that looked like a resort, that had luxury cars, and so on? And was that part of your experience, again, in the time you were there up to 2005? Or that your relatives tell you about?
Ahmed Alkhatib: Certainly, no--I mean, and that's the irony. That's, again, the nuance and the multiple truths and just the need for kind of an intricate understanding of this without the simplistic reductionist views--on either side.
Ironically, Gaza got its first shopping mall in the year 2010, and it was during the height of the Israeli blockade and restrictions. And, it was also, ironically, a bunch of Hamas-affiliated businessmen who got together: I mean, Hamas invested in luxury and leisurely stuff and businesses and shopping centers, partly because it was a way for them to collect more taxes and a way for them to create an economic base that filled the vacuum due to the financial sanctions on them, the blockade. And, it was an economic engine to help Hamas sustain its government and its group and its members.
But also, because--and as we've seen in other parts of the world, like, with the kind of information technology, with digital technologies--like, there is an economic evolution in different parts of the world that includes in the Gaza Strip that has happened while the blockade took place--while 70% of Gaza became aid-dependent, while youth unemployment reached 76%, while overall unemployment in Gaza kept worsening, reaching up to 41%.
So, that's what's challenging: is to understand that multiple things happen simultaneously.
However, it is absolutely the case that there are beautiful parts of Gaza, partly because just random people decided to develop them, partly because there were businessmen and there was commerce, and partly because of Hamas-led initiatives.
And I'll say, finally, that Qatar actually poured some of those billions of dollars that Qatar has poured into Gaza were in fact directed toward economic development and infrastructure projects that really transformed parts of Gaza.
Russ Roberts: So, how much access have you had since you left Gaza in 2005 to information about what's happening there over that time period?
I understand that there's a lot of restrictions on Gaza by Israeli Security Forces. We can debate whether those were justified or not. I don't want to--in a way it doesn't matter. They obviously made life hard for people in Gaza: whether they were defensive or not, it doesn't matter for this conversation.
But, have you been able to talk to people there over the last 20 years, in general? Are you able to have open conversations via cell phone and in other ways, to have a feel of what's happening on the ground there? And in particular since October 7th?
Ahmed Alkhatib: Absolutely. So, generally speaking, yes, I have not only kept in contact with what's happening in Gaza, I've also very much so been--through family, through contacts, through friends--making a point of understanding the developments, political, economic, the humanitarian, kind of the security, having an understanding of how Hamas operates, what are they doing, who are the players, how are the tunnels being dug. Like, down to even understanding how Hamas even digs its tunnels.
And I'm not saying I have information that other people may not have. I'm simply saying that in addition to keeping up through just the news and the analyses and the developments and the political events, I have been interested in Gaza because--like I shared in the Foreign Policy piece--I've always envisioned using the privilege of being in the United States, using the privilege of having lived there, to ultimately turn around and do something useful and meaningful and pragmatic and practical that helps people there.
So, I had every intention of eventually being involved in Gaza's affairs, even though I didn't know how exactly that would transpire.
Now, I haven't physically accessed Gaza since 2005, but I honestly would claim that I know Gaza in a way that most don't, by virtue of having family and having kept those contacts.
I will further add that I launched a nonprofit organization in 2015 to advocate building an international airport--a humanitarian, internationally run, IDF-approved [IDF=Israel Defense Forces] airfield in Gaza. And, I worked through an army of volunteers and emissaries and intermediaries in Gaza to collect information and relay it to relevant parties. So, that was also particularly helpful. Since October 7th, it's become exceptionally difficult to just--because the network doesn't work; there's no Internet. Nevertheless, I do maintain contact with quite a few contacts and family members there.
Russ Roberts: And, we'll put a link up to your nonprofit on this page.
Russ Roberts: I'm curious about what it has been like for you to have access to American media--which of course is a mixed bag like any media--but it is relatively, it's much freer than the media that your friends and family in Gaza are receiving. Or at least I would think so, and you correct me if I'm wrong. And I'm curious, I mean, you're a remarkable person and I deeply appreciate you coming onto the program. I follow you on X--on Twitter--and you are the most--one of the, if not, the most thoughtful commentators on the situation and tragedy of what's happened since October 7th from a Palestinian perspective. Which is why I invited you to be on the program.
But, I'm curious whether in this period where you're in the United States and you're interacting with people in Gaza, your impressions are different because of information you have access to that they don't. Or vice versa: that they have experiences that you don't that color their attitudes.
I mean, in particular, there's a lot of conversation--we've had some on this program--about October 7th itself. A lot of people in Israel feel that a lot of Gazans supported October 7th. Celebrated. We have video of some of that.
And my answer has always been, my response to that is that: Well, there were some people who celebrated. I don't know how many. In the video, it's not a large number. It's a large number for a city street. It's not a large number out of 2.2 million.
There's also a question of whether people in Gaza know what happened. They're getting access to information that could be highly limited. They may not know the scope of it. Hamas has, in Arab language broadcasts, has often said, Hamas leaders: 'We didn't attack any civilians. It was a military operation.'
So, it's a terrible long rambling question, but I'm curious if you could just reflect on differences in both perception and reality as you see it, between someone living in America who is sympathetic to the Gazan people and people living there on the ground.
Ahmed Alkhatib: Absolutely. I mean, I have--this is a recurring theme in terms of, yes, I mean, let's say 5,000-10,000 people celebrated. And I think that was shameful. And, I think there was also just the initial--I think there was just a spectacle of having how the attack unfolded with the paragliders, with naval commandos and the sappers[?] blowing holes in the wall, and the motorized units and the motorcycles, and the successive waves of the attack. That, I think to a lot of people, it was just unprecedented and there was definitely a spectacle component of it. There was a wow component to it. And then, scenes of Israeli Humvees being driven around Gaza. I mean, that's never happened before. Scenes of dozens of hostages being brought back to Gaza, some of them being paraded, some of them being subjected to horrendous abuse, which I once again think is shameful.
Nevertheless, I immediately--and I remember very vividly; it was October 6th here. It was Friday night, and I had just come back from a long walk. And I went immediately to social media, which I have thousands and thousands of accounts that I check out and follow and whatever and list from my airport advocacy days.
And I saw hundreds of posts of people saying, 'Oh my God, you just signed our death sentence.' 'Oh my God, guys[?] as we know it is going to cease to exist.'
Some people, for example--I saw--opposed the scene of that one elderly woman who was paraded on a golf cart and they thought that this was shameful. Like, why didn't you at least put that woman in a closed off area and just, like, offer--this is an elderly woman. Why did you have to parade?
Like, people detested the acts that anticipated the consequences or knew that this is Hamas basically running away from its failures as a government, as a political entity, as an economic provider for the people of Gaza by launching this horrendous attack.
I think the other thing that is absolutely true, in the same way that I have Israeli friends who tell me that in Israeli media right now, in the mainstream media at least, is very sanitized. You don't see images of dead Gazans. You don't see widespread imagery of the maiming and the killing. Similarly, in the Palestinian Press and in kind of, like, the Arabic media led by Al Jazeera, led by Hamas propagandas, they don't put it out there that Hamas killed civilians.
Many Palestinians still believe that the Israeli military erroneously or deliberately killed a lot of its civilians during October 7th, either during the confusion of the battle or during the execution of the so-called Hannibal Directive--which, some of that may have been true, but therefore they're, like, 'Oh, well, Hamas didn't kill any civilians.' And, Hamas put out this long statement recently about, 'Well, we don't actually target civilians and we never have.' Other lies, of course.
So, there's that component to it.
Well, I think what's shameful, in my opinion, is--while I can understand why some people in Gaza think that way and are impacted by either, call it the conditioning, the priming, the circumstances, the totality of their lived experience leading them to, or many of them or some of them to believe that--what I think is exceptionally shameful are the folks who purport to be pro-Palestinian, in the Western world, where there is kind of a broader margin for accessing information and doing your own research and doing your own homework, parroting those Hamas talking points, further propagating the idea that this was strictly a military attack that did not target civilians.
And, that's where I think--I, talking to people on the ground in Gaza and interpreting them--I mean, even some of my own, like, extended family members, initially, didn't believe that there were any civilian casualties.
And, when I sent them some pictures and I sent them some videos and I detailed to them what was going on, not only did they believe it, but they genuinely, there was this feeling of, 'Oh wow, we really are screwed, aren't we?' And, I said, 'Yes, we're absolutely--this is going to be a continuous disaster of epic proportion.' And, I never once thought that even though there've been the Palestinian National Movement and the armed resistance in the past has engaged in some horrific crimes, either in the Munich Attacks or the 1970s and 1980s with a secular or Marxist resistance, or in the 1990s and early 2000s with the Islamist resistance and the suicide bombings. But, even though that was horrific in its own way, I was horrified that this was yet another chapter of brutality that I never--I'm ashamed to have that be permanently now associated with what I perceive as the urgent and just Palestinian quest for freedom and self-determination, and statehood, and sovereignty.
The other thing that I will say is that: I understand, I mean to me, this is not just an opposition to Hamas based on their ideology or based on what I perceive are their corrupt practices, etc. But, for years and years and years--personally, through my own personal, professional work, or just through my contacts, hearing about what Hamas does to torture people, hearing about Hamas beating up protestors, hearing about Hamas schemes for essentially, like, siphoning off not just the aid that's coming in now, but historically, a lot of the development money that makes it into the Palestinian Territories or in Gaza in particular--how Hamas had the best of both worlds: basically, it outsourced its responsibility as a government to the United Nations, to UNRWA, and turned its people into aid-dependent subjects while it received funding from Iran for its militant component and armed resistance efforts and money from Qatar and other sources for its members, for its leaderships, for its government.
So, like, there's just thousands and thousands worth of, I don't know how to quantify them, call them words, call them pages, call them minutes of conversations that I have at recently and historically, and since 2006 when Hamas won the election since 2007, when they violently took over the Gaza Strip--they took over on June 14th, 2007, which was actually the very day that I was 17. But, I was here in the United States having a political asylum interview--the very day of my interview--when they took over.
So, all of that information enables me to be, like, 'Okay, well, there's obviously Israeli propaganda and some of it is real. Some of it has kernels of truth. Some of it I think is false.' But, nevertheless, I have a detailed understanding of how nefarious and destructive and sinister Hamas is, in a way that a lot of others--including again, the well-intentioned pro-Palestine, people who think they know and think that simply by just focusing on Israel and everything is Israel's fault--that that is somehow doing a service to the Palestinian people.
When I actually think it's doing a disservice, because we need to normalize critique of Hamas. We need to isolate them. We need to humanize our people. We need to separate Hamas from Palestine. We need to condemn them and isolate them and call them out, not normalize them and call them resistance fighters and legitimize essentially the horror that they did on October 7th.
And, I try to write about this--I'll leave you with this: One of the biggest challenges for me, unfortunately, and yes, I'm big on dialogue, I'm big on engagement, and I have a large following of pro-Israel folks or Zionists or self-described Zionists and right-wing Zionists, or left-wing Zionists, and centrists, or a lot of Israelis across the spectrum. And, that is deliberate. That is by design. Because that is an unreachable target audience right now, and I want to build bridges because peace and coexistence are the only path forward.
But, one of the challenges for me is that there's so much that I know about Hamas. There's stuff that I want to talk about Hamas. From--and, again, from their tunnel digging, from their use of civilian infrastructure, from their, even, strategies--indirect strategies--of using human shields: It's not like they're holding Gazans and being, like, 'Okay, let me use you as a shield,' but it's an indirect strategy.
I want to write--I have tens of-, hundreds of thousands-worth of words that I want to write about it.
But I struggle; and I still am writing about it.
But, I struggle with that because that then gets picked up by folks who are blindly pro-Israel. And then, they use it to say, 'Oh, look, Ahmed Alkhatib, he's a Gazan[?]'--it gets used to dehumanize my people. It gets used to justify horrible mistakes by the IDF, including the killing of dozens of my family members to say, 'Oh, well, don't blame us.' The idea of, 'Blame Hamas for using them.'
That's where I struggle: is, like, how can I relay this information as a matter of, like, a historical record? And, I have the gift of writing and the gift of just being, kind of, detached, a little bit, without inadvertently feeling the dehumanization of Gazans and my own people.
Russ Roberts: It's hard to be an honest man. I feel for you because I know how often things get taken out of context like that. Any nuance that you try to offer is going to be stripped away, often, in those kind of propaganda settings.
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to what's happening on the ground now and the tragedy you're talking about. You know, I look--again, it's very hard for those of us who aren't on the ground to understand what's happening. It's pretty clear to me that much of the northern part of Gaza has been reduced to rubble, a significant part. My impression is that Israel made some effort--maybe a lot; I want to be open-minded about it--I like to think we made a big effort to evacuate people, to encourage them to leave before those buildings were destroyed.
And, obviously there are precision bombings that Israel does that literally take out a handful of people, and we also make mistakes and we maybe do some cruel things that are unacceptable. I am proud of the fact that Israel, at least to some extent, investigates certain incidents. I hope what happened to your family is investigated. But it may turn out it was just callous, insensitive, just an error. And, God forbid it could even have been done on purpose. I don't know, obviously, and I hope we find out.
But, talk to me about what you experienced again from talking to people in Gaza now about what it's like on the ground there. Because at the same time that the northern part of Gaza looks like the moon--meaning totally decimated. There's a refugee camp further south. You'll tell me the name. It's there--'Al-something.' And, I saw a video yesterday of people buying Valentine's Day presents for their wives. And, you see in the background, there's a lot of people on the street, but there's some normal life.
And, yet at the same time, I'm aware that when 2.2 million people or a good chunk of them are trying to get away from bombing and are in a very small area now, which is mainly Rafah, as far as I understand, there's really no place left to go.
And, Israel is going in there. And it's horrible. Because that's where we think Hamas is, where we think the last remaining hostages. We don't know how many are alive even.
Talk to me about that. Talk to me about--share your own tragedy, which again, I salute you as a fellow human being and as a bridge builder that you've maintained your humanity in the face of that loss. So, talk to me.
Ahmed Alkhatib: So, starting with October 13th, soon after the horrible events of October 7th and the massacre, that's when my family home where I grew up was hit. It was--and I've kept in contact too with, like, I've kept tabs on understanding who are my family members? Who are they associated with? What are they doing? And, again, with the full confidence that I have, I can assure you that there were no tunnels or Hamas militants or fighters in that building where I grew up. Which is multiple stories. And each uncle--my dad and our family lived on one story, and then each uncle kind of builds above. That's a very common Gazan practice due to the lack of space.
So, it was hit, with 33 people, no warning, and miraculously most survived in that building, although a lot of people were injured horribly. And then--and my brother and his children were there, and he has four kids, and he and his 13-year-old boy pushed their way out of the rubble to try to escape and everything was gone.
Then some of my uncles and some of my cousins moved over just a few houses down to try and seek safety with their in-laws. And then, on the 25th--about a week later or two weeks later--another massive strike basically wiped out the whole neighborhood, and that's when I lost my dad's brother, Uncle Riyad. We had lost my niece--my cousin's daughter was 13 years old, she's one of a twin--and my cousin, who was quadriplegic, then, who was, who became quadriplegic, and my uncle's body wasn't retrieved for nine days.
And then, slowly my brother and his family began moving from house to house, even southern Gaza, moving south within Gaza City. And he works for an international NGO [Non-Governmental Organization], and he was responsible for a lot of, not just some efforts that he was working on, but he was also, like, looking after our surviving family members who were in the Shifa Hospital and who were injured. And, basically he made the decision not to leave the north because he said if he left, they would die. There's no one just to even change their gauze and administer basic, basic care due to just the sheer numbers of casualty. And then, they slowly started making their way down south.
Right now, Rafah is horrible. Yes, you see Rafah and Deir al Balah--you see resemblance of what looks like daily living, people walking around, people trying to fetch food, trying to fetch water, trying to fetch supplies. Some of that is just organic things that people have had, and it's dwindling and running out. Some of that is those tiny bit of the trickle of aid, making it through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings.
There's unfortunately--like, multiple things can be true also at once. For example, some people who have some money are able to afford the extremely expensive supplies that are in there. Some of these supplies are stolen aid goods that get resold for massively inflated prices. And, that's done partly by Hamas, partly by organized crime, partly by just desperate civilians who are basically, they're, like, 'Okay, well, I have a little bit of food, but my mom has diabetes and there's very little medication of that left in Gaza, but it costs a thousand shekels, and so I'm going to take the little bit of food that I have and go and do a little stand in the street and sell it.'
Some of that is barter-based system. Some of that is just utter desperation.
Also--and a lot of these things are incredibly uncomfortable to talk about--but I mean, we're talking, people haven't taken showers in weeks, and even if you do clean up, it's simply just you do a basic wipe, you do just a basic wash. Imagine going through that. You can't do a laundry. It's cold. A lot of children and young girls are placed in horrendous crowded conditions. They're at elevated risks of sexual abuse and being molested or whatever. Like, there's just layers upon layers upon layers.
Then there's obviously the elephant in the room, which is ongoing Israeli bombardment--ongoing in that it doesn't always happen in a sustained fashion. Sometimes it's like a series of strikes, successive strikes, and those tend to be particularly horrifying because when they happen, those tend to be like when you have the fight-or-flight response: there's fight or flight or freeze. When a bunch of strikes happen at once and you see them and they surround you--and they call them these fire belts, these successive strikes--you're, like, 'Oh, where do we go? What do we do?' Versus, like, one strike here: you know you can retreat somewhere.
So, then you have the threats of the incursions in Rafah where people are, like, 'Well, okay, we want to head back up to Deir al Balah, to the center. My brother, who again went through seven different displacements, with each time the place that he and his team were at being partially or fully destroyed. Now they're in Rafah. They found a place in central Gaza in Deir al Balah, and then all of a sudden after they found this place for his team, there was just an unprecedented increase in the amount of bombardment, such that two days ago--I've shared this on Twitter--there were three families that had fled Gaza, sorry, Rafah, and went to the center in anticipation of this military operation, and then they were killed, Deir al Balah. So, the horrible irony is that they might have been better off just staying in Rafah than leaving.
So, the IDF has identified a bunch of supposed safe zones along the coast--and we can talk about this more in detail later--but, you can't simply just tell people, 'Okay, well here's a bunch of coastal areas'--right on the water, where it's freezing, where there's sand dunes. Like, there's nothing. There is no infrastructure, no tents, no access to any food. You're cut off from any tiny supplies that are coming through the Rafah crossing. People aren't just going to pack up and say, 'Okay, well let me leave my tent and whatever and go and freeze to death in front of the ocean.' So, like, that's where I have been calling for the IDF itself, because it has units there; the United Nations, Arab Nations, using small boats that can offload some tents and supplies and some food to make it feasible for people to just sustain themselves, to not freeze to death or starve to death onto the coast.
So it's, again, layers upon layers from the bombardment, from the lack of treatment, from just--you have blood pressure, you have diabetes, you have any chronic illnesses and diseases, forget any kind of follow up or care, even having regular access to your medication. You have the weather conditions.
You have, even just--I had friends who were doctors who went in there as part of delegates to go and do surgeries in Deir al Balah and Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital before it was taken out of commission, and now they're at the Emirati Field Hospital in Rafah or the Yousef El-Najar Hospital, which my uncle who was killed in an airstrike used to manage. He retired a few years ago. They speak of the stench, man[?] just of garbage everywhere--of the smell of dust, the smell of gunpowder, like I said, the lack of sanitation, the lack of people having showered, people having taken, people can't do laundry. Just the smell of death. It's just the stench. Gaza is now just has the stench of misery that you can just immediately detect, any- and everywhere you go.
Russ Roberts: So, the terrible dilemma--regardless of how one feels about the Israeli Defense Force [IDF] and the cruelty or misfortune of the aftermath of October 7th--Israel has this terrible dilemma. Which is that Hamas doesn't wear uniforms--obviously--or if they did, they don't now. Hostages are mingled in with everyone else, as are their keepers, and we're kind of desperately eager to get those folks back.
I feel the people who claim that Israel is genocidal in its response: Israel could have easily decimated much larger swaths of Gaza than it has.
We did see people streaming away from the north in the early days of the war.
It's a terrible situation. I think any compassionate human being, regardless of their political views, has to empathize with what you're describing. And, yet we don't have an easy path as long as Hamas is, quote, "in control" or could regain control. I think right now their sovereignty is very decentralized, is my impression.
But, we want our citizens back. We don't want this to become a common occurrence. It's already scary.
What could make this better? I mean, some people suggested--in a minute we'll talk about longer-run solutions, which you write about in your piece. They're very thoughtful. I call those intermediate solutions.
But, just if you think about it from the Israeli perspective, what I would have liked is for the world to tell Qatar that it's unacceptable to shelter the leadership of Hamas. It's unacceptable to fund Hamas, which clearly was not widely shared among the people of Gaza. And there should be pressure for Hamas to surrender and to give the hostages back.
It hasn't really happened. So, we're pursuing a military solution, which is horrible. My heart goes out to you, Ahmed. It's brutal. I live in Jerusalem. There aren't a lot of airports in Jerusalem. None. What there are, are air bases. And, when I hear planes in the air, I know where they're going. And, a friend of mine reminded me that they're going to kill people. And, some of them are not Hamas. They're innocent people, as you have tragically described. So, it's a terrible thing. Any thoughts on what might make it--might have made it better? Did we have a better strategy in responding to October 7th, in your mind?
Ahmed Alkhatib: To begin answering that is that I--and while I speak for myself, I can confidently tell you that a huge number of Gazans don't want Hamas. They don't want the group to be back in charge. They want this to end as soon as possible. We share the goal of seeing a fundamentally transformed Gaza with a different future and different administration.
I have studied elements of military science and insurgencies and counter-terrorism, intelligence and national security. And, what I will tell you is that unfortunately, there are inherent limits to what can be achieved militarily when organizations like Hamas or others hold hostages. I mean, look back at the crisis of the American hostages in Iran in 1979 and 1980. Look back at what happened with the pirates in Somalia, for years, initially, at least back in 2007, 2008, and 2009, when they would have taken hostages from commercial ships.
And, the strategy initially was very much so to have a negotiated settlement of a lot of these hostage-taking situations. Look at what happened with Bowe Bergdahl. I mean, there are multiple examples where--Bowe Bergdahl was a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who was released in a deal with the Taliban.
So, I don't think there's an alternative to negotiating with Hamas and to having a settlement that entails the release of some Palestinian prisoners.
Now, who gets released and how--I understand that's the thorny sticking point. And, I also know that Hamas is now presenting pie-in-the-sky, like, ridiculous conditions or statements about--they call this the Aqsa flood, and now they want to present things about the Aqsa Mosque and what's happening in Jerusalem, etc., which is not even under the Palestinian sovereignty. It's like between Israeli control and the Jordanians. So, I do think Hamas's negotiating strategy and positions are ridiculous.
And I wish--and you saw what I wrote in Foreign Policy. I called for unprecedented pressure on Qatar to get Hamas to moderate its position, even if we have to push the Qataris through kind of the cornerstone of their national security, which is the Al Udeid Air Base. And I've talked to--like, I put that out there because a lot of people are thinking it, but for some reason it's very taboo in Washington to bring that out even though people are genuinely thinking it, and they know that Qatar would ditch Hamas--and wants to ditch Hamas, which is ultimately becoming a geopolitical headache.
So, that's where I believe that--I don't believe the military strategy right now is going to help with either retrieving the hostages--which we know a lot of hostages were killed by a lot of the bombardment. Yes, of course: like, it's criminal for Hamas to have them in the first place, 1000%, but because of how they're dispersed, in tunnels, above ground, among the population. And, because of few attempts we saw at increasing pressure on Hamas, hostages were killed by Israeli bombardment.
So, I dispute the idea with the exception of the limited successful operation, which we know came at the expense of dozens of Palestinian civilians and children in Rafah last week. This operation has not achieved that goal, Number One.
Number Two, in terms of degrading Hamas--I mean, I don't think you can do both at once. I don't think you can work out--you can pressure Hamas to release the hostages while also degrading the group's military capabilities because of how they fight, because of how they're embedded among the population. Even though you can weaken Hamas, you can't fully eliminate them. And, I don't know that eliminating Hamas fully and entirely should even be the goal. I think you weaken Hamas enough to prevent them from controlling Gaza, prevent them, obviously, from launching another massive attack on Israel.
And then, you do a political settlement to basically starting out with a long-term truce--5, 10, 15 years--between Israel and Hamas. You basically push for some kind of a political and administrative rehabilitation of Hamas--what remains of Hamas in Gaza--even though you offer alternate options for leadership to leave, but the actual rank and file.
Just like we saw with the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in the Oslo Peace Process, just like we saw with the FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] rebels in Colombia. Just like we saw with the IRA [Irish Republican Army] in Northern Ireland. There are precedents where people who were involved in either violent ideologies or extremist actions, with the exception of those who are maybe involved in especially egregious acts, there could be a political path forward to basically transform what remains of Hamas and turn them into a new administration.
That's my vision, is: I don't think the military operation--I've talked to families of hostages. I talked to a couple of former hostages who were held by Hamas and released. And I've been making a point of trying to humanize the hostages. And, any time I talk to Palestinians or pro-Palestine activists or people who want to do a ceasefire proposal or resolution, city councils and across the United States, I say, 'Don't call for a ceasefire without calling for the immediate and release of Israeli hostages. Pair both of them.' Like, you cannot forget about the hostages. You cannot lose sight of the humanity of the hostages while also mourning the lives of dead Palestinians. So, I don't believe the current campaign is going to retrieve the hostages, unfortunately. [More to come, 50:01]
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: February 20, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is February 20th, 2024, and my guest is author and technology expert Azeem Azhar. He is the author of Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology, which is our general topic for today along with what is coming next. His Substack is Exponential View.
Azeem, welcome to EconTalk.
Azeem Azhar: Russ, it's really great to be on the show. Thank you.
Russ Roberts: What is your background? What have you done with yourself besides write a book and a very interesting Substack?
Azeem Azhar: I'm just a really lucky creature of time because I was born just as the microprocessor revolution took off in 1972. So, as a child I had a computer. We had a couple of computers by 1981 in the home. I always had them. But, my parents were economists and I ended up doing a social science degree, which included economics, but never leaving sight of my love of computing.
And, my career has been a bridge between those two worlds for the last 30 years. And so, I've worked in the tech industry. I know a little bit about economics. Not as much as you. Not as much as some of your guests. And, I try to bring them together in my daily life.
Russ Roberts: I hope your parents are okay with the fact that you've slipped into a more practical realm of life.
Azeem Azhar: I think they were quite happy when the book came out and it wasn't about building products: it was about presenting ideas to the world.
Russ Roberts: So, let's talk a little bit about your book to get started. It's called Exponential. Why?
Azeem Azhar: What I had noticed was that there were a load of technologies--several technologies that were improving at these double-digit exponential rates other than computers. We'd known about computers improving at this 50, 60% per annum rate because of this articulation of Moore's Law. But, it became clear to me by about 2014 or 2015 that we were seeing exponentials in other domains. So, in the cost of lithium ion batteries or the falling cost of solar panels. And, as I started to look around, I found more and more of these relationships that looked like Moore's Law relationships, and I wanted to understand them. And so, I started to dig a bit deeper.
Now, of course, you are an academic and I was writing a trade book, so there is always a little bit of artistry in connecting those ideas for a general audience. But, I think the idea that we're in an age of exponential technologies where things get cheaper by 10, 20, 40, 50% per annum on a compounded basis, and therefore they get deployed in our economies at very, very high rates is reasonably robust empirical observation. We can see it across a lot of different technologies.
Russ Roberts: And, it's--a dramatic example of that which you use and illustrate is the speed of adoption of various technologies: how long it takes a technology to reach a particular threshold of market penetration. And, it's faster today.
Azeem Azhar: It is so much faster, and it's perpetually out of date. Because, when I submitted the written manuscript to the publishers, TikTok wasn't a thing. And, while I was writing the second draft, TikTok had gone past a billion users faster than Facebook. And then, of course since then we've seen ChatGPT get to a hundred million users within a matter of a few days.
There are some obvious reasons for that. The first is that you don't need to build out the infrastructure. We all have smartphones, we all have internet access, and that wasn't the case for Yahoo or Amazon back in the mid-1990s.
But there's a second reason, which is really to do with, I think, our stance and willingness to explore--maybe not the entirely novel, but the incrementally new. There are just mechanisms. Social media lets me find out about something far faster than I did previously. The idea that you psychologically might have fallen off the latest cool trend drives people to experiment with these things in ways that I didn't really see people dipping into the Internet in the late 1990s.
And, yeah. So, this idea of time compression for adoption is very true on digital technologies.
But Russ, I also think that it is true in physical technologies. Because if we just look at this as an Internet phenomenon, we ignore the fact that there's a lot of stuff going on in the back end in supply chains, in logistics, in marketing that makes it much more efficient for markets to let a customer know about a product and then physically get that in their hands.
And so, we can look at something as big and clunky as an electric vehicle. It weighs 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 pounds. And, these things are flying off the shelves far faster than anyone had forecast. And, the question is: Why is that? And, part of it is to do with the same phenomenon that makes us all learn about ChatGPT very quickly. Right? It's social networks. The information spreads faster, firms are much more efficient.
At the heart of that, of course, remains information technology--IT. But, we are at this moment where it's not just the digital products: It is the big heavy physical ones that are also being deployed in our economies at rates that we haven't really seen before.
Russ Roberts: And, as you point out, this is driven--well, let's talk about--you mentioned Moore's Law in passing. For listeners who don't know what it is, explain what it is. And then talk about Wright's Law. W-R-I-G-H-T, Wright's Law. Which actually is more interesting. So, talk about both of those and what drives them.
Azeem Azhar: Yeah. Moore's Law is the thing that has made the computer industry the big successful thing that it is today. It was an observation by one of the founders of Intel that we would be able to put more transistors on a single silicon wafer at an increasing rate--roughly twice the density--every couple of years. And, if you did that, you would get performance improvements.
Russ Roberts: And, as you point out though, it's not a law like gravity. So, what's causing that phenomenon? It has slowed down a little bit in recent years and it's caused some people to wonder whether it, quote, "no longer holds." But, it held quite remarkably with quite a bit of reliability for a very, very long time. Why?
Azeem Azhar: So, it was so reliable for six decades. And, I think the beauty of it is that it was about collaboration and it was about incentives. So, you'll discover in our discussion that I'm a wishy-washy centrist. I think there are things on liberal approaches and collaborative approaches and market approaches and communal approaches. They all have a part to play. And, I think Moore's Law was exactly that. So, the Moore's Law articulated effectively a social contract across the very big and increasingly complex semiconductor industry where people felt that they had to hit this clock speed of the doubling. And, it required lots of alignment in a way and individually developed R&D [Research and Development] plans to dovetail to the results that we saw for six decades.
But at the heart of that was the economic incentive of a growing market and being able to sell more products at better margins.
And, at the very top of that pile was the relationship between Andy Grove and Bill Gates, which was: What Andy giveth--Andy Grove from Intel--Bill taketh away. In other words, every time Andy came up with a new processor with more processor cycles, Bill Gates would figure out how to use them for a new application, forcing Intel to do that again.
But that process echoes all the way down the supply chain, and that micro-economy that was the semiconductor industry.
And so, in a way, some of the best analyses I've seen of it have been, say, this was as much about a sort of social belief that emerged within the participants of this economy and these individual agents--these firms--worked to deliver on it in a way that can only work in a market economy.
But it isn't a law of gravity. And that, I think, is the important observation.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I don't know if you're right. I suspect you are. But what's fascinating about it is the idea that a cultural norm--almost like a religious belief--that people strove to fulfill it. That people made an effort. Partly because they were afraid they'd be left behind, by the way, if it was sustained. And, of course, that fear helps sustain that pace.
Now, talk about Wright's Law.
Azeem Azhar: Yeah. So, Wright's Law, I think, has got more of the attributes of a law that can be predicted. And, Wright's Law emerges in 1936 when Theodore Wright is an aircraft engineer and he is looking at how the unit cost of making an airplane--an airframe--would decline as the engineers acquired more knowledge. Other economists--Marshall, I think, had said this 50 years ago, but hadn't got the empirical data to back it up.
And essentially, what Wright said, was that for every doubling in cumulative production, the per-unit cost would decline--in this case by about 15%--as a result of learning rates. Right? So, the compounding knowledge of the engineers' figuring out which screws weren't needed and shaving off a little bit of the airframe here, being a bit more efficient with a process, reordering things, delivered this learning benefit. And then, it was revived in the 1960s by the Boston Consulting Group as the Learning Curve or sometimes the Experience Curve.
And, when we look at engineered products with many components, there should be a learning element to them. In other words, they're big and complex and clunky when we first build them. And, as we get better and better, we are able to optimize that.
Now the thing about Wright's Law is that Wright's Law can be applied to the cost declines that we see in the semiconductor industry, and it ends up being more predictive than Moore's Law. But, it also can be applied to other technologies. So, solar panels, lithium ion batteries, various types of other mechanical processes.
And the question is: Why does it come about?
And I think that it's easy to tell by way of a story. During the COVID lockdowns, I started to bake. And the first loaf of bread I baked was really expensive. I mean, I just wasted lots of flour and the ingredients.
By the time I got to my eighth loaf of bread, it was so much more better value for money because I got better at what I was doing. My processes were better. And, that is at the heart of Wright's Law.
Russ Roberts: And of course, the biggest cost of baking is your time. And, I'm sure you get better at that. Even though it's not out of pocket, it's an expenditure you have to make.
You know, it actually goes back before Marshall: It goes back to a guy named Adam Smith--
Azeem Azhar: Well, of course, yeah--
Russ Roberts: Smith writes that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. And, it's a nice phrase. Economists learn it at some point--some do--and they can roll it off their tongue.
But, it's more about--its as much about learning by doing. In other words, it's not just to the extent of the market: it's the extent of the process that the individuals in the firm are using. And, of course, he writes very eloquently in his very simplified and perhaps inaccurate, but still valuable, story of the pin factory of how you get better. It's about learning by doing.
And it's phenomenal, that process, that improvement, that better understanding that--Smith has all these examples of the kid who is working on this process, figuring out how to do it a little bit better. And, the idea is that if you're specializing in it, you get focused on improving that process.
And, it doesn't have to work that way. It could work that if you're specializing in, you're bored and you get driven insane--but, in a modern complex engineering problem, the opportunity for those improvements, as you say, is almost always there. And, they come about through experience. It's really an amazing thing.
And, the other part of it that is so powerful, as you point out--they're also related to Smith--is globalization.
So, at the same time that firms are expanding and price is falling--which is increasing the quantity demanded of the product--in a world of globalization, that opportunity to expand the scope of market penetration and learn by doing, as you expand, and drive the price further via competition, as others--firms--are doing that--getting better, finding those improvements--it's a really beautiful feedback loop that's, I think, not well understood by economists or laypeople because it's dynamic. It's not easily described in, say, a supply and demand picture. But it really is a beautiful thing.
Azeem Azhar: It's really dynamic.
And, I think there's something else that we can pick up on from learning-by-doing, which is that the idea of learning means that there is some knowledge which is likely to be intangible. And, the ability for us to share that knowledge can expand the number of firms who are applying that knowledge and can contribute back into the rate of learning.
And, a simple model would be that--you see this in Silicon Valley in California--where people leave firms regularly and they go from one to another and they take with them that tacit knowledge. And, while it's harder to work out the learning rate for a software product, you can see, analogously, that there is an increased rate of learning because of that revolving door.
And you can also see, historically, moments where we started to pool knowledge: we were able to drive exceptional social outcomes in terms of driving prices down.
And one of my favorite examples is around the steel-making process when you had this period of time in the late 19th-century--Bessemer collected invention--where the demand for steel for the railroads and for industrialization was so great that some of the steel manufacturers pooled their patents--their know-how--together in order to share in a much larger market.
And, I think information technology plays a role in accelerating learning rates, because we are much better at codifying that knowledge and therefore using it within and across firms that are getting bigger and bigger.
And, I think one of the things that I touch on in the book is how in computer science it started, but it's moved into other disciplines. Academics now shortcut the very long peer-review process. And they pre-print their information on something called Archive.
Now, in computer science, theory and practice are quite closely related, right? Because you just put the code in.
But, I think that it's really interesting to me that the period of time from an innovation of being sort of identified by academics and making its way into working code has really collapsed.
So, in the late 1970s, some mathematicians--Ron Rivest and his colleagues--came up with an encryption algorithm called RSA [Rivest-Shamir-Adleman]. And, it was first published in some academia in the mid-1970s. But it didn't make its way into mainstream consumer products for two decades.
And, today what will happen is that an academic--I've just before I spoke to you, spoken to one of the authors of the transformer paper from Google in 2017--the transformer being the architecture that gives rise to large language models. And, that paper was written and published in 2017. We had the first products--products/productizable products--within a year. And seven years on, yeah, there's hundreds of millions of users.
And that's quite a long timeframe compared to where we are with the spread of knowledge.
That's not always learning by doing, Russ, but my observation is that learning by doing happens in a distributed way. It happens within organizations. And, because of IT, they're able to share that knowledge much more rapidly.
And, they're now moving into the next phase of this, which is to simulate the learning by doing so. There are many companies in physical engineering and manufacturing who instead of building 10,000 prototypes, each one better than the previous one, they model 10 million in a computer simulation and they get to a point of efficiency much, much more quickly. So, their starting point is better.
Now what I don't know--and I would love to find research on this--is how that affects the ongoing learning rates, if you already start at a good place. One of the reasons I'm excited about where we stand is because once we see the value of economies of learning, not just economies of scale, once we start to acknowledge something that I think economists have known for such a long time, which is that technology has compounded knowledge, we can find ourselves at a point where we can drive these social outcomes, which I mean in the pure economic sense--right? welfare, prosperity--in ways that are not left to the spirits of arbitrary decisions.
And, I think this insight that was an insight for me and your peers had known for a long time about a decade ago, has really electrified me about how I feel about the next 20 or 30 years and what it might mean for the state of humans and humanity.
Russ Roberts: Well, let's talk about that a little bit. Your book is, in a sense, out of date. Was written in 1921--
Azeem Azhar: 2021.
Russ Roberts: 2021.
Azeem Azhar: Feels like 1921 now.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. It was written two and a half or so years ago, or published two and a half years ago.
For better or for worse, most of it hasn't changed at all. It is in that sense a tragically timeless book in the following sense. There's two themes of the book. The first theme is that these technologies, both in the world of silicon and also in the world of physical processes are speeding up. So, you focus on computing, energy, biology, and manufacturing. I assume--I'll let you talk in a sec--but I assume all those trends have just continued.
The second part of the book is our ability to cope with this change has--we haven't kept up. You call it the exponential gap. You talk about regulation, you talk about norms, legal systems like copyright. And, you suggest lots of interesting ways that we might respond to this changing world we're in and how the world that we have of regulation, copyright, intellectual property, and norms or institutions and so on isn't keeping up. But, not much has changed there. It seems to me that we've not made much progress at all in how to cope with this change.
So, let's start with first, have the trends that you wrote about continue to accelerate in those four areas? And then, we'll talk about our lack of progress in coping with that.
Azeem Azhar: Yeah. They've definitely--we've seen an acceleration. Within computing and the world of AI [artificial intelligence] it's just hard to put words on what we've seen. One thing to look at is that the firms that make the largest capital investments every year now are the big tech firms like TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] and chips and Google and Amazon and Microsoft. It's no longer the oil industry, and the oil industry is sort of a distant second place as industries go. And, we're also seeing it, of course, in terms of the way in which companies are spending money in that area.
But, I think one area that I spent a bit of time on in the book and deserves more attention is what's happening in energy. And, what's happening in energy is that the price of solar panels is coming down really, really dramatically. And, in fact, I had tracked a 15-19% compound decline since 1970. If you ever watched the James Bond film--there is a James Bond film called The Man with the Golden Gun which was all about stealing a piece of solar power technology. You wouldn't do that now, because it is so dirt cheap.
But, in the last year, Chinese manufacturers halved the price of solar panels or one of the components within solar panels. And so, that's continuing.
And, I think it's worth thinking about how dramatic and radical that is in an economic context for our economies. What you do when you are running off solar power rather than off fossil fuels is that you are away from the commodity volatility. Your price of energy is not dependent on what the regional autocrat feels like on a given day. You can make 20-year forecasts of what your price will be, and every subsequent installation will be, much, much cheaper. So, you trade off uncertainty and volatility, which has all of these frictional costs that we have to live with and contend with as the energy crisis of the last few years has shown.
The other thing is that solar panels are a modular technology; and modularity is a key part of taking advantage of Wrightean economics. Because, in modularity, your number of units produced is much, much larger than with these monolithic systems. So, you have more iterations of the learning rate because cumulative capacity is doubling faster.
But modularity also hugely expands markets. Because, 25 years ago, to become an energy producer, I would need a billion dollars, maybe $2 billion. Today I need $5,000, and I can stick some panels on my roof and I can connect them up to the grid. And, markets will then really expand rapidly. And, we've already seen that. So, if you consider it as an economy, China's rooftops--domestic rooftops--are the second-largest provider of solar electricity anywhere in the world--right?--compared to all the utility scale in other parts of the world.
And so, I think understanding what's happening in solar really is critical.
And, I'll just share with you a couple of data points. So, the amount of new solar that we've added globally has increased by effectively 61% compounded since 2010. That is: net new adds each year. And in 2022, global electricity generating capacity was about nine terawatts across coal, and nuclear, and wind, and solar, and so on. Bloomberg has just forecast today that they think over the next seven years to the end of the decade, solar will add seven terawatts of new generating capacity. And, Bloomberg's forecasts are always far short of what actually happens.
And that's remarkable. Because, energy is wealth. The thing that has transformed humanity from 9,000 B.C. has been our ability to harness energy. And, the fact that we can have an energy system that is affordable, predictable, and in a sense, almost abundant--I mean, not literally abundant--has really significant implications.
And I'm excited. I'll give you two economic implications. One is: It means that energy independence is affordable for many more nations. It's not just the United States and Saudi Arabia and Qatar who can achieve this.
But, the second is that it enables local economic agency, local economic production. There's a fascinating battle going on in South Africa at the moment which is full of brownouts because there's not enough generating capacity. But, Cape Town has substantial renewable resources because of wind power; and Eskom, the sort of national body, has been really reluctant to allow Cape Town to access its own electricity resources because it wants to spread that energy nationally. And, the regulatory framework doesn't make sense, right? Because you've got these local investments taking place.
And, I think this idea that decentralized low-cost, solar power can create much more local economic agency, create more economic principals, is a really, really exciting one. And, what it means, especially in underdeveloped markets, I think is yet to be fully thought through.
Russ Roberts: Have we gotten better at storage?
Azeem Azhar: Slowly.
Russ Roberts: The big question with wind is wind and solar have two problems. They're not on a hundred percent. There's cloudy days and windless days or days with much less wind. And then it's hard to store. Have we gotten better at that?
Azeem Azhar: We're getting better at storage. We have, for the short duration, battery prices have come down really substantially over the last 20 years. They were about over a thousand dollars per kilowatt-hour a decade or so ago, and it's now approaching a hundred dollars per kilowatt-hour. So, it's becoming more affordable.
There is still an enormous gap in terms of medium-duration storage and longer-duration storage, both in terms of proven technologies, but also in physical capacity that exists and investment that's going in there.
But, the thing that I would say is that it's natural that storage will follow generation, because the need doesn't emerge until the need exists. And so, I would expect storage to follow up quite quickly.
And, how that creates a patchwork of solutions is going to vary economy by economy. In a country like the United Kingdom where 25% of every car sold is an electric vehicle with 10 days worth of storage for a house in the battery, you might be able to solve part of the storage problem through a decentralized solution like that. In other markets, incredibly energy-poor--like Tanzania or Kenya--the amount of storage you need to keep a 'fridge running--which transforms outcomes--and to keep an irrigation system running, is a few cheap lead acid batteries.
And so, we're able to move into this space of transforming people's lives. When we think of it from the bottom up rather than the top down, GOSPLAN [the state planning commission of the former Soviet Union] would not be able to make sense of how we have to plan for storage. But, I think that the market can do that if the incentives are allowed to flow through to the innovators and to the entrepreneurs and to the business people. I mean, I think it can.
Russ Roberts: Do you have an idea of what portion of solar energy is coming from rooftops versus solar farms? You mentioned the Chinese rooftops. After a while, you'll have a solar panel on every roof. Possibly--potentially. There's sort of a limit. Now maybe there's not a limit for how it absorbs it. I don't know. But is that what's driving it? Is it rooftops getting solar panels, or is it also solar farms?
Azeem Azhar: The beauty of solar is that it's both.
And I think the analogy to go back to is the microchip. So, prior to the arrival of the microchip, computers were very, very big. And, they were only bought by large companies; and they were in rooms. And then as we started to miniaturize the computer, it gave access to a whole new segment, which was corporates buying computers for their employees desks. And alongside, individuals could go off and buy the same.
And, today it effectively--no one buys mainframes. If you're going to spend a hundred million dollars on computers for a data center, they're not too dissimilar than our laptops without a screen. But, what you're able to do is address a very, very broad market. And so, which part of the computing industry is the most important when it comes to selling chips? Well, there's a bunch of quite large segments.
And so, I think, the beauty of that is that a given economy can put in the set of incentives that it feels are appropriate given its natural wind and solar resources, and whatever hydropower it's got, and nuclear, kicking around. And, if it makes sense to incentivize homeowners to fill the gap, then you can do that. And, if you want to incentivize building on brownfields--old industrial land--for solar farms, you can do that. But, you have have the choice in a way that you didn't have the choice when it was really about building big nuclear power stations. And, that was then all about where do you site them and who's going to be willing to have it in their backyard? And, I think that that creates, I think, a much better starting position for the marvels of economics and incentives to play their role.
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to computing. You have an essay on your Substack about just how much computing we're going to need in the next 10, 20, 30 years. It's unimaginably large. So, talk about why that's the case, first of all; and then I want to turn to AI. So, first talk about just the demands for computing power that are coming.
Azeem Azhar: Yeah. Today's demands for computing are visibly coming from AI systems that need huge numbers of these GPUs [graphics processing units]. In terms of processing, I think that we're talking about 10-to-the 25-floating point operations to train the big state-of-the-art models. I mean, that--it's a number that doesn't really exist in economics, etc., in the worst cases of hyperinflation.
And, that's why you are seeing $50-billion-dollar-a-year-plus CapExes [Capital Expenditures--Econlib Ed.] in servers by the big cloud providers.
I want to--let me just zoom back and say: What have we actually seen with the economy's willingness to use computing? There were less than a hundred computers in the world in 1945. There are more than 25 billion today. So, the economy, pre-large language models and pre-AI, had a really insatiable desire to put information processing throughout the economy in the center, in the edge. Because what you are doing with information is--actually it's game of efficiency. Information makes processes efficient. It's a sort of analogous to learning by doing.
And, many of the issues that we used to run into in the 1970s--when my dad was working, and you'd have to look at stock levels. And, stock levels had to be really high because you just didn't know what demand was going to be and you didn't know when your supplier was going to supply. Well, with the arrival of IT and computers, we could better forecast demand and we could better predict supply. And, the amount of inventory that companies hold as dead capital has declined significantly.
So, the economy has shown an enormous appetite for the ability to process information. And, we can really go back to--you know, Khipu in Peru, in the South America, and tally sticks before that, to understand that.
So, then the question is: Well, let's be a bit more discriminative and reductionist about where the sources of demand will come from.
So, AI is one. Another is each of us individually. You know, whether we like it or not, we upgrade our phones. A billion people-plus don't have smartphones. Two billion don't have modern smartphones. All of those will require upgrades. And, there are places where we don't yet have intelligence that will make really meaningful differences to how well people can live their lives.
So, we don't necessarily have small edge-based computers in fields across farms in India and Africa and the United States, all of which will help in precision agriculture to improve agricultural yields, to reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides and the like.
So, it's not clear that there is a point at which we have satisficed our need for compute, or the benefits that we get from compute. There will be particular applications where we don't need any more compute.
I mean, I think a good example is 8K resolution on monitors, which is already above what the human eye can discern. We might not ever need to go above that because we've satisficed that.
But, in other parts of the economy, I don't see there being a decline in demand.
And, in that essay on the Substack, I did something very simple: which is I said: How much has compute grown globally since 1971? I choose 1971 because the Intel 4004 was released in that year. And, it was roughly 65% per annum on a compounding basis, which of course gets you to a really big number. And by that, I was trying to count the number of computers and their rough processing power and multiply them together.
It's a great--I'm not even sure--Yeah, let's make fun of economists. I'm not even sure economists would be happy with that estimate. I know physicists certainly wouldn't be, but it's an estimate. And, all I did was I just drew that out.
I said, it's probably safer for me to extrapolate this at 65% than it is to say the regime that has held for 60 years is going to change.
And, that took me to a particular number. But, I'm really mindful of the fact that five years ago, six years ago, I had conversations with people in AI companies and semiconductor companies, and they were saying to me they were expecting the demand for compute over the next decade--so that's five years ago--to increase by a factor of hundreds of thousands or millions of times.
And so, I'm trying to put together both the history, the theory, some working hypothesis, and what people on the ground in industry tell me. And, it's a sort of embarrassingly simple curve that points upwards. And, even if I'm wrong by two orders of magnitude, we're still talking about huge demand for computing in 30 years.
Russ Roberts: So, let's turn to AI. In our recent survey--and I'll let listeners know that I hope to tell you the favorite episodes of 2023 in a week or so--but, in that survey I asked listeners to give me feedback. And, one of the things many listeners said was they were sick of hearing about AI on my program. Which shocked me. I thought it was so interesting. And, whether it was going to save our souls or destroy them was an important question, and I thought we should spend some time on it. But I think for some listeners it was a little too much time.
But, I want to ask a different question of you--not this one of whether it's going to destroy us. So, as you point out, the number of users of AI, CHatGPT, or others has crossed the hundred million threshold remarkably quickly, a couple of days.
Azeem Azhar: Right. Something like that.
Russ Roberts: Something absurd.
But, I'm one of those users, and I don't use it. I use it as a novelty item occasionally. I don't think to use it. It's not part of my daily workflow. When I'm trying to write, I don't think to start there. When I'm editing, I don't think to end there and get feedback from it. Maybe that day will come. But, it has had virtually no impact on my life, except as the President of a college, we've had a number of conversations about what does this mean for our students in submitting papers? As they read books, will they be tempted to use it as a crutch? Should we regulate it? monitor it? and so on?
I have a feeling I'm missing something. I have a feeling below the surface, there's a lot of usage of it that I'm unaware of as either a user or a consumer products that it's built into. So, tell me where you think AI is going as a--not as a destroyer of worlds or the builder of paperclip factories, but as a changer of our lives, both in terms--in good and bad ways.
Azeem Azhar: I hear, and I recognize every word you've just said, Russ. You are not in the uncommon at all on this question of, 'Well, what does it do?' It's a sort of moment of, 'Well, now what?'
And, I think that it is not straightforward. When I talk to companies, this technology is so general because it applies to language and most of what we do is mediated by language. Every use in a firm is going to be different to every other use in another firm.
The way that I think about these large language models [LLMs] is through the framework of compression. Of time-space compression. And, about the--it's not really a force of gravity, but it looks like that. It is about the way that our economy favors the compression of information.
It took people living either where you are or where I am thousands of years to learn about New Zealand. You know, if you didn't live on New Zealand, you didn't learn about it until the 1770s. It took the Prime Minister of England 13 days to learn about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It takes me a second to find out that Kim Kardashian has got a new car.
And so, what we're doing is we are--through these technologies--we are compressing this information space.
And, a large language model [LLM] is the next representation of that compression.
The one before was the Internet, where, on the Internet I could cross every library in the world very quickly through the search interface and learning how the library at your university works differently to the one at London School of Economics.
And, what's happened in LLMs is that we have, effectively, compressed all of the information on the Internet--roughly, give or take; some isn't there--in a single space where our search system can cross all of that knowledge in a single go and present it back to us.
So for me, while it is--in some sense, it's a paradigm shift because it is a different regime: it is like steam rather than liquid water--it's still on a continuum of the compression of the information radius of our economy.
And so, when I think about how it fits, I see that it fits in this historical trend. And when we then have to apply it, it's not as straightforward as that model. Well, what would you do if it's the year 700 before the Common Era [CE] and I gave you a fountain pen and a piece of paper? Nearly all of humanity would have no idea what to do with that. They might lick the end of the fountain pen.
And, I think that's where we are with ChatGPT, right? We're still trying to figure out how we use it. And, there are some people like me, and there are people I know who are much more advanced than me, who have started to figure out the pattern of use. I really use it like the graduate students that I don't have in my team where I can throw questions at them and I get pretty good answers, but I certainly wouldn't go off and present them in public without doing a lot of work myself.
But, I think that it's going to have really, really radical effects in ways that Development Economists in particular would understand.
So, for me, it's about human capital, in that context. Human capital is both the marker of progress and prosperity, but it's also the driver of progress and prosperity. I was born in Zambia. Zambia doesn't have many doctors per capita--not out of choice, but because there aren't many doctors per capita. And so on, the cycle continues.
What we'll be able to do--and I'm already seeing examples of this--is bootstrap human capital through specific LLM applications. And, in the development context, I think that can be really, really powerful.
And, we saw the smartphone and just the basic mobile phone do that with fishermen in Kerala in India and in the turn of the century [i.e., 1999-2000--Econlib Ed.]. And, those experiences repeated time and again.
So, when I think about how AI will change the world--and I'm sure it will have positive impact in rich countries as well. But, let's just for a moment look at what will happen in developing countries. I think what it can do is it can provide an injection of human capital and personal agency, independent of the rotten institutions that normally surround these developing countries.
Russ Roberts: Is it being used--if you know--do you know if it's being used in things that I'm consuming or using that I'm unaware of? Is it exploding in usage in products or in applications or websites that are making them more effective? Do we know that yet?
Azeem Azhar: Well, I think there will be--you will have been exposed to it unwittingly by nefarious actors if you've received spam in the last few weeks. Probably some of it came by that. I don't know yet whether the likes of Facebook and Google have, outside of their specific AI-based products, actually implemented this latest tranche of AI systems. I'm not overly excited. Can I say I'm deeply unexcited by that prospect? I'm deeply unexcited by the prospect of even more persuasive advertising flowing on my Instagram feed or so on, persuading me to buy things that I don't really need. And, I think that that's a really, really legitimate concern.
But, where I spend my time when I'm looking at AI is at the--both at that development end that I've just described, and I've come across some interesting projects there, but also in the scientific realm.
So, people are taking the same technology as we see in ChatGPT, and they're applying it to biological data--not just medical data, but biological data and protein data--to build foundation models that can answer questions like what would be a good protein that would have the following physical properties--for sake of argument, that could be used as a dye[?die?] or as a plastic replacement. And those types of applications, I think, are really exciting because: why do we not have a good plastic alternative? By which I mean something that doesn't require fossil fuels, that doesn't leach into the environment, that isn't biodegradable?
It's not because there isn't one. It's because we don't know how to build it. We don't know how to make a plastic alternative at scale for the right price.
So, any tool that helps us discover the phenomenal complexity of the information space of chemistry or biochemistry, to help us find both that material and the mechanisms by which we could economically produce it, has got to be something that we should welcome. Right? These are real problems for which we know there exist, in the physics, solutions, but we just haven't found them yet.
So, I think that those are the types of places where I'm looking at applications and I'm seeing teams and researchers starting to come out with applications in those fields, which we can look back in a decade and say, 'Oh yeah: that was the moment where we were able to make that breakthrough, and we replaced this industrial process by one that was much more renewable and sustainable.'
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to the question of how we cope socially with the changes that we're talking about. Some of them--solar panels--are pretty great. Prices fall, gives you more money to spend on other things. It's a pleasant improvement. When you look out over the rooftops of a city, it may be not be as aesthetically pleasing as it used to be, but that's a small--probably a small cost. Not anything about a technology like the smartphone, which as you point out and others have pointed out, starting around a little about the turn of the millennium, but also the turn of the 2010 period, the last 10 to 15 years because of its more common availability, has really changed daily life in all kinds of ways.
And, I remember sitting in a meeting--this is probably in the early/mid-1990s. I was in a business school. There was a wealthy donor at the table at a meeting, and his phone rang. I had seen his cell phone at that point. I think at that point I had a friend who had one: it looked like a walkie-talkie. It was a giant, boxy, World War II walkie-talkie kind of thing. And, when he walked down the street talking on it, he looked incredibly cool, even though now he would look like a total idiot. When this donor's phone rang and he took out his phone, in my mind it was the size of a peanut. It was probably bigger than that, but it was shockingly small. He had whatever was the state-of-the-art cell phone at the time. And, in this middle of this meeting--he may have even been talking--he snapped open this phone and started conducting a conversation.
And, I remember being both shocked, horrified, fascinated that he thought that was a socially acceptable thing to do.
And, of course, we have over the last 10, 15 years as cell phones have become both, not only just more common, but the way we interact with them has become more addictive, you see behavior in parties, dinner, meetings, which are radically different. It's really rare that people say, 'Let's now put away our cell phones and let's all pledge not to use it for the next hour,' whatever it is.
So, I would argue that we haven't adjusted our norms very much. And, if anything, we just continue to accelerate into isolation. That's what it feels like to me. That may be an old person's observation. But, it feels like the social acceptability of ignoring the people around you to devote yourself to your screen has increased steadily. Not exponentially, but steadily.
And then, we get things like Vision Pro, which Apple released I think last week, which make me even more horrified. You're wearing these goggles, you look like--it's like a perpetual mask. Your humanity, your eyes, your smile, and your eyes obviously are hidden from the people around you. You're interacting in these weird ways with maybe others elsewhere, but not the people around you. Does this alarm you at all or excite you? What are your thoughts on that?
Azeem Azhar: I have so many mixed feelings of alarm and excitement, in different measures.
I think it's a really hard question because, you know, historically as technologies have moved in, they have changed the existing manifestation of power. Right? Power has shifted from one group to another. And, I think that discussion about which elite is losing out and who is the new elite when there is a technology change is a really important one to have. It helps us frame where things are going.
And we know that there's been a moral panic around many technologies. I have collections of stories from the New York Times, you know: Girls are staying up late to read using electric light, which is a thing that every parent would be desperate for today, but it was apparently going to shock and sort of ruin society.
But on the other hand, we have cases--and I think Jonathan Haidt as an academic has done a lot of work on this, on the really provably harmful effects of social media on some groups. And then, I think you've also talked about what happens to the set of norms that we live by that have allowed us actually to be human. And, these are really quite persistent. They're persistent in our ancient stories. They're persistent in the plays of Shakespeare. Love and respect and anger and jealousy and all these things that happen in the physical space.
So, I find it quite hard to pause through that noise and come out and say, 'Look, I have a grand theory about what this looks like.'
But, I'll venture something, which is that we have--I had a period of time where an increasing proportion of people have said the world is moving too quickly, and that some people are saying that in the 1930s. And that proportion has risen and risen and risen. And, what we were seeing was really subjective experience--right?--that is valid from a subjective perspective. But it's not really something that you could go off and measure.
But, I think there is a moment where that subjective experience could turn into something that becomes an objective reality, that the world does move too quickly. And, in some sense, the modern economy does move too quickly.
I'm sure you remember the essay, "I, Pencil," and about spontaneous order. And, even 70 years ago, no human could encapsulate and hold all the knowledge that was required to produce a simple graphite pencil in a wood barrel.
And so, in some sense, we've always coexisted with systems that move--or we have in the last couple of hundred years--coexisted with systems that have moved much faster than us.
And, I think, and I want to say, Russ, that this is really just me thinking. And I wish I had deeper theory to back this up. But, I think that we are at a point where the pace of change and innovation is going to be objectively faster than even complex groups of humans can handle.
I also think that a lot of that is going to be desirable in a very basic way in terms of energy security and energy equity and access to information and welfare and so on. So, it'll be desirable in the same way that I do want my smartphone to always update itself for the latest security update every week without my having to worry about it.
And so, I think then the question is: How do we govern a system like that, benefit beneficially for us as humans, so that we can live at human scale and at human speed?
And that's what I'm thinking about at the moment. I'm trying to work through that question, which is: Is my problematization real? Does it make sense? And, I'd love your opinion on that. And, if it does make sense, how do we think about human speed and human scale while taking the benefits of the tremendous learning rates of technologies and an economic system that has information exchange at the heart of it? But, does that framing make sense to you? I mean, you can tell me it's total nonsense.
Russ Roberts: Say it again? Give me the punchline.
Azeem Azhar: So, the framing is that we're at the moment at a point where the pace of change would become objectively too fast for humans. So, sort of silicon speed rather than biochemical speed. And so, the game is not for us to try to keep up with it, but it's for us to work out how to govern it and harness it so that we can live at a human scale and a human speed.
Russ Roberts: I like that. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I understand it. And, I'm not sure what it means, I understand it.
And I think--for some reason this is what comes soon to my mind. I invite some friends over for dinner--I want to give you a couple of images to chew on, and you can respond.
Imagine going to a dinner party. Six to eight people are sitting around a table and you say--you take out a book in the middle of dinner and you start reading. Someone says, 'What are you doing?' 'Oh, I'm just reading for 30 or 40 seconds. I'm really enjoying this book I've been reading and I just wanted to read another page.' And, people would look at it like you're crazy. But of course, people do that with texts and WhatsApp and other things all the time.
I think of my father, who was an introvert. Very much an introvert. And, he would sometimes say, after a dinner party, 'I wanted to go upstairs and read my book,' because he knew it was socially unacceptable to read your book in the middle of the dinner party. So, he would say, 'I'm tired,' or 'I don't feel well,' and he would go upstairs and read on his own. And, that was socially acceptable.
And now fast-forward to the present. So, I invite a group of people over for dinner, and they're all wearing Vision Pros. And, because--I don't even know what they do exactly yet. I have a vague idea. But, I have a vague idea. It's like saying, 'Well, I want to be at your dinner party, but I don't want to miss the latest score of the team I'm following in the NBA [National Basketball Association],' or, 'I don't want to miss my notifications,' or even a little more legitimately perhaps, 'My kid is not feeling well and they told me they'd text me if they needed a ride,' or whatever it was, or some help.
So, everybody's wearing the mask. Except me. Because I haven't gotten into this world yet.
So, you know, we could sit around and you could look like large insects wearing your masks. And I'd be sitting there like a old-fashioned human being. And we could, I guess, have a dinner party.
But, I think what will normally happen is people will say, 'I want you to come over for dinner and leave your masks at home. Leave your Vision Pros at home,' if it becomes ubiquitous. I keep the Jewish Sabbath. When you have the Jewish Sabbath, you forego cell phones and Vision Pros and other things for 25 hours, and you're guaranteed when you invite people over for lunch that they're not--usually--if they also are Sabbath observant. Not always, but sometimes everyone at the table is. In which case they're not taking out their phones. And, you have a different kind of experience around food.
Azeem Azhar: You're guaranteed some conviviality.
Russ Roberts: Exactly. At a minimum.
Azeem Azhar: Right.
Russ Roberts: Conviviality is the minimum level. At a high level, you get a profound human connection. You might get a deep feeling of connection to other human beings that raises up your soul, whatever that means. But, I don't know how we're going to do that, given how much fun they're probably going to be outside of a religious impulse where you feel compelled to have a norm.
So, my worry--it's not a fear, I guess; it's a concern. My concern is that my children and my children's children will grow up in a world that is less convivial--will be a nice way to think about it. And, I really don't like regulation. Like you, I think in your--in parts of your book, at least, you talk about: norms will emerge that help us cope with these things. Institutions will emerge, habits will emerge.
But, as I said, I don't feel like that's happened yet. There is a bit of a pendulum. There are people who are--Jonathan Haidt is an example--of people who sounded an alarm. There are schools right now that don't allow cell phone use among the students during the day. There may be some pushback against that.
I would just recommend--one last thing and I'll let you react. Two things that come to mind. One is a book by Alan Watts, I think it's called The Wisdom of Insecurity. And, it was written I think in the 1950s. And then, the second is an essay by Mark Helprin, one of my favorite living authors, who was a guest on this program. He wrote a magnificent essay called--I think it's called something like "The Acceleration of Tranquility"--I'm not sure. But, I think it's available on the Internet and I'll put a link up to it [Helprin essay is under copyright; links to other online copies are not reproduced on this webpage--Econlib Ed.]. And, both of those essays in different ways were incredibly prescient about this trade-off of human speed versus silicon speed, digital speed, particle speed, and how jarring it is for human beings to cope with it.
And in a way, it shouldn't be hard. I mean, what's the big deal if you find out more quickly that Abraham Lincoln died if it's 10 seconds, 30 seconds instead of 13 days? But--because more than that. It's not just the compression. It's the volume. It's like drinking from a fire hose. And I don't think human beings are good at drinking from a fire hose. So, we need ways to either put the water over here where I can drink it from a container I'm used to, or turn down the speed that the water is coming out of the hose, or only go over to the hose when I'm in a certain frame of mind, I can handle it.
And, I think we need to develop those institutions and norms. But I'm not sure we can.
Azeem Azhar: You know, temperance was such an important part of what made culture successful. And, there's a phrase, I think it may come from the idea of the commitment device: that successful cultures and religions and communities have commitment devices to slow down our decision-making. And, marriage being a great example that gets enforced in many different ways. Most of them not--non-economic.
There's a wonderful book by an economic historian called Avner Offer called The Challenge of Affluence. And, the book came out in about 2002 or 2003. But, if you read the first couple of paragraphs or the first couple of chapters, you'll think he's talking about Facebook. But he's not, because Facebook arrives two years later. He's actually talking about the function of the modern economy, the intersection between advertising, the way it generates desires and needs, and that sense of FOMO [Fear of Missing Out] and the effectiveness of aspects of the economy to meet those.
And so, I think of this as something for which we've got precedent, both in terms of the etiology, what is the pattern that has caused this? But also, strategies that we have used collectively as humans in the past to address them. I think that the technical solutions are helpful. I think it's more helpful that Apple phones have got the screen time control in them that allows you to put limits on. I think it's also helpful that people have--certainly with art within my family, we have many more conversations about this usage. But, I think the way in which this ends up being addressed is one that is around the norms and the behaviors that we establish and we have to fight to establish. Now, I suspect again, this may end up being something that divides around economic lines because in the same way that every human needs 2000 calories of food a day per dollar it's cheaper to get carbohydrates than it is to get protein. So, the poorer you are, the more carbs you have, and that's much worse for your endocrine system and your obesity and your outcomes. And, the rich can afford their grass-fed steak, which is 20 times the price per gram per calorie.
And, I think this will end up dividing across economic lines because it will be much more expensive to have an experience that is about being with nature, disconnected, breathing, fresh air, looking at dappled sun through leaves in person physically than it will be to do in your VR [Virtual Reality] system. And, in some sense, much as I think about change and the change in society that is driven by technology, we've seen that particular pattern play out before.
Russ Roberts: The funny part about it is that, as you point out, I also enjoy those old things about the dangers of books or the dangers of electric light or whatever. And we all laugh at it. And, there is a worry that our anxiety about modern technology, current technology, is as silly as the worries of the past.
The fundamental question is whether the--this is a point in which the frog gets boiled. Faster and faster, we're pretty good at. As you point out, the car changes a lot of things in our world, and it did. Can debate whether suburbs are anti-human. Some people think they are. But, we've coped pretty well with the car. We could debate it. But, the cell phone seems to be a ratcheting up of--it's not just quantity, it's quality, of how things have changed. And, that's going to be--you know, I hope I stay alive long enough to watch how it turns out. Because, as you would, I think, agree: You ain't seen nothing yet.
Azeem Azhar: Yeah. I don't think we're at the end of the story. And the question, I suppose, is: What is different about the smartphone and the information system that it sits on top of to the car in the suburb and the 'fridge and the air conditioning unit?
And, there are a few things that I think are different. One is that the system of incentives has been honed to the utmost extreme and that being engagement. And, years ago, more than a decade ago, I was a product manager on internet apps with some small companies. And, one of the things that you had to do was increase engagement for your users because engagement was the way in which you got to a profitable customer and that was how you built the business. I think that particular characteristic lies at the heart of what makes cell phones or smartphones problematic.
It's quite interesting that Apple, who has the majority of the profits in the smartphone industry, doesn't really benefit by the amount of time that we spend staring at it. Because, they've got a different business model. They sell the phone and 20% of their revenue is services.
And so, that feels to me like it's more of an addressable problem, and it can be addressed by interventions or civil society. It can be addressed by parents being more aware and alert to the risks. But even that's a very leaky sieve. And, you know, we've known about healthy eating for a long time. We've known about obesity and so on for a long time. And, it's very difficult for people to make those changes.
And so, when I look at a question like this, it is a many-headed problem. In a way it feels a little bit like the climate change question, which is: we can agree to offset our flights and we can agree let's not eat meat and let's eat pulses and beans and so on. But, it just doesn't make a difference unless we are able to infect other people in large numbers to do the same. So, we create a cascade because you and I look like pretty cool guys, and I think whatever we do, our friends will do. Or, it requires incentives from the state, or it requires economics to just change the decision. The beauty of our discussion about solar is: it doesn't matter what you believe about solar versus coal. If you're a rational economic actor, you'll buy the cheaper thing, which will end up at some point being solar and batteries.
So, I look at this particular question and I think it's not going to get solved easily. I felt about the Vision Pro that it was a really un-Apple product. Because, Apple has never built products which demand the user spend loads of time on them. The things we spend time on, on our iPhones, are not Apple products. It's a Meta product, or it's TikTok, or it's Amazon. And, the Vision Pro is really an inversion of that. It is all about spending as much time as you can in it. And, that did worry me a little bit.
But then, how we tackle that, Russ, I think is a really tricky one. And, it may require the threat of the government to, not necessarily come in and legislate, but to threaten to legislate for the companies within the fold who are driving a lot of the behaviors to say, 'We're going to behave differently because we actually don't want these regulations, whatever they happen to be, coming in.'
And, that's not about the moral panic. That's not the idea of the moral panic. As somebody who does use Instagram to unwind, I also know there are limits, and I could absolutely live without it in a way that I couldn't live without my LLM [large language model] or my smartphone today. So, I can imagine that in order to tackle this, it's going to require more than just hoping that parents get educated in this process. I just think our track record of parental education pales into insignificance compared to just fluoridating the municipal water. Right? That was just--that was kind of easy, right?
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Azeem Azhar. Thank you for being part of EconTalk.
Azeem Azhar: I loved it, Russ. Thank you.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: February 1st, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is February 1st, 2024, and my guest is economist and author Jeremy Weber. He is the author of Statistics for Public Policy: A Practical Guide to Being Mostly Right or At Least Respectably Wrong, which is the topic of our conversation. Jeremy, welcome to EconTalk.
Jeremy Weber: Thanks so much for having me. It's a privilege.
Russ Roberts: How did you come to write this book?
Jeremy Weber: The book was in development in my head for probably more than a decade. It began after I spent four years working in the Federal Government, in a Federal statistic agency, the economic research service. And, that was a great place to be as a recent econ Ph.D. grad. And, it was a mix of and more academic research, very policy-oriented research, and generating real official federal government statistics, interacting with policy people.
Then I went into academia to teach statistics to policy students. And, the book I was using, the course that I inherited, very quickly I had the feeling I was more or less wasting students' time, or at the very least there were huge gaps such that when they left my class, they weren't going to be prepared to use any of this to help anyone in a practical setting.
And, from that point on, I started to accumulate notes on things that, if I were to write a book, I would want to include and things that I was now using to complement the statistics textbook to give my students more.
And then, in 2019, I spent a year and a half at the Council of Economic Advisers [CEA] and that was like a accelerator for this whole idea. Because, being engrossed in that environment, gave me many examples, many ideas. And then when I came back to the University of Pittsburgh and had a sabbatical, I said I've got to write this.
Russ Roberts: What is its purpose and who is the audience?
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. I'll start with the audience.
The audience is broad, because frankly, whether it's your first statistics class or your fifth, many of the issues are the same and neither the intro nor the advanced tends to do some things well. In particular, the communication of statistics to a non-academic audience, the integration of context and purpose of the moment or of the organization or of the audience into what you're presenting--its significance for the situation at hand--we tend to not do that well, I think, at the undergraduate level. Or for Ph.D.s who are in their fifth year of econometrics. So it's--the audience is broad.
Russ Roberts: So, it's a very short book. There are a couple of equations, but there as--kind of like illustrations. And, what is spectacular about the book I would say--and I would recommend it to non-technical readers--what is very powerfully and well done about the book is giving the reader who is not an econometrics grad student, a very clear basic understanding of terms that you've heard all the time out in the world from journalists and occasionally a website you might visit that highlights academic research.
So, you'll learn what a standard error is, you'll learn what a confidence interval is. But, it's not a statistics textbook in that sense.
However, those--that jargon--and other concepts that are used widely in statistics are very intimidating, I think, for non-academics.
And your book does an excellent job of making them accessible.
And then, of course it goes well beyond that. You're trying to give people the flavor of how to use these concepts, use data that's produced in all kinds of ranges of applications, calculation of means and correlations up through regression results that is more sophisticated. Statistical analysis. You're going to give people insights in how to use them thoughtfully.
And, as you point out, no one teaches you how to do that in graduate school or in undergraduate if you take statistics. They're taught more as, I would say, a cooking class. You learned to add certain ingredients together. If you want to make a cake, you need flour and you need eggs and you need this and a certain amount of heat. Whether it's going to be a good cake or not is a different question. Whether that cake belongs to a certain kind of meal or a different meal, those are the things that practitioners learn if they're lucky. But, you're not taught those things.
And certainly people who don't go to graduate school or don't take a number of statistics classes in college will never, ever have any idea about it. So, I just want to recommend the book. If those kind of ideas appeal to you, you'll enjoy this book and it will be useful to you. Is that a fair assessment?
Jeremy Weber: That's a very fair assessment. You use the cooking example. I allude to kind of a vocational example in the book, where our statistics education, I would say teaches--it shows you: Here is the saw. And: Here are the parts of the saw. And, maybe we even, like, start it. And then, we put it down and we move on to another tool. Or, maybe we work with 10 different types of souped-up chainsaws, really sophisticated chainsaws. But, we're just like, these are again, the features and parts of the chainsaw.
Actually going out and cutting down trees, like, do that--we don't do that. That is--we don't do that. We know people do that, but we're not doing that.
And, that's a bit of the gap I'm trying to fill.
Russ Roberts: And, the more standard metaphor you also use is the hammer. And, we may come back to this, but of course the standard, the cliché'd condemnation of mindless statistical education is: Once you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And, it's really fun to run regressions and do statistical analyses once you understand how basic statistical packages work, without wondering whether it's a good idea, what's the implication of the analysis, how reliable is it, and does it answer questions as opposed to just provide ammunition for various armies in the policy battle?
And I think for me, that's one of my concerns. We'll come back and talk to it later I hope in terms of how we should think about the education in the practice of statistics. But, it's such a fun tool. It's a lot more fun than a hammer. It is more like a chainsaw. It's noisy and attracts attention and people like to cut down trees. So, there is a certain danger to it that your book highlights--in a very polite way--but, I think there's a danger to it. You can respond to that.
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. It is fun until it's not.
And, when it's not is when you are using this regression tool and you've maybe used it with the academic crowd; and that was fun. But then, you go to another crowd--the City Council crowd or some sort of more non-academic crowd--and you present it; and suddenly it's not fun because nobody knows what you're talking about and the conversation quickly moves on and you feel, like, out of place. Fish out of water. You've miscommunicated. People are confused. And now they're ignoring you.
Russ Roberts: But of course, the flip side also occurs, right? The scientist in the white coat. And, in this case it's the economist or policy analyst armed with Greek letters in their appendix. At least in their paper if not their physical one.
And, there's an awe of these kinds of people: 'And, obviously they're smarter than I am and obviously they're experts. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic here.'
A lot of times I feel like in those settings outside of academic life, there's a lot of trust in the reliability of numbers produced with what I would call standard practice. And, once you follow the rules of standard practice--which means statistical significance, confidence intervals and so on, and you frame your work with those footnotes, then you're credible.
And just simply because you're in the arena and you've been trained accordingly, you're a bit of a shaman. And, I think that's a little bit dangerous.
As is the opposite: 'Well, they're obviously wrong. They are a bunch of academic eggheads and they don't know what they're talking about.' So, I think there's an interesting challenge there, I think, when we go out into the world.
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. You're right. In certain environments there's that deference, that credibility conferred because of the mathiness, because of the training, the aura. I agree: That is a case that does happen in certain environments.
Russ Roberts: Now, I argued in a recent episode that statistical analysis is used more for weaponry than truth-seeking in the political process. And, I think it was misunderstood by some listeners. I think it's very useful to politicians to have data numbers and policy players. But I don't think they're so interested in the truth, and I wonder how your book would be perceived by them.
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. I agree with your assessment. Primarily weaponry, especially in the D.C. [Washington, D.C.] area.
But, if the weapons being picked up are actually real, understood measurements that accurately reflect an issue--they don't reflect the full scope. They're being used selectively. But if there's good measurements out there and there are competing parties fighting, it means the party is going to pick up the most effective weapon that most appeals to the audience out there.
And so, if there are, in a way, better weapons out there that can be picked up, I think you have a greater tendency to some major problems being avoided or opportunities pursued.
And I'll give you a concrete example. When I was in the White House, the commerce department was petitioned by some uranium mining producers for protection. They didn't want imported uranium into the United States. The Commerce Department conducted an investigation, did a Report on the issue. They did their own--they did a survey. They presented some statistics in this Report that went to the President recommending restrictions on imports. Okay? You know.
So, Commerce Department, they've got their weapon. All right? And, CEA got involved--
Russ Roberts: The Council of Economic Advisers--
Jeremy Weber: That's right. Council of Economic Advisers got involved.
I grabbed some other data. I did some analysis. I generated, you could say, another weapon that I thought was actually a better depiction or reflection of the economic reality and what was likely to happen under the Commerce [Department of Commerce] proposal.
All right. So, we got together Commerce, other agencies in the room, and in a way we had our battle. We picked up our weapons. I think we--at the end of the day--we ended up at a better place because I was able to pick up a weapon and there was this back-and-forth with the data. So, but, had CEA not been there, nobody or those reports that I relied on from the Energy Information Administration had that not been there, everybody would have bowed down to Commerce and they would have rolled right through, and the President would have said, we've got to import or restrict uranium imports so we can prop up these several producers out in Utah--at the expense of the nuclear power industry and electricity consumers.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. That's a great example. In theory, the Council of Economic Advisers--and I think it to some extent plays its role as best as I can understand it--is more of a technocratic fact-checker in some dimension of advocacy by other agencies and in theory is somewhat unbiased.
In this case I assume the argument was that this was going to create a lot of jobs in Utah. Was it Utah?
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. There's several places where uranium mining occurs. Utah is one of them. That's where the companies--at least one of the companies that was filing the petition was located. You had the argument--there was a national security argument. There was a whole resiliency of the uranium supply chain argument. There was jobs argument, too. That's right.
Russ Roberts: If I can ask, what was the key finding that you felt was at least somewhat decisive in derailing a strong impulse toward restrictions on imports?
Jeremy Weber: The key finding was: Commerce Department had said at $55 a pound, we think the domestic uranium sector is going to produce the amount that we're going to require domestic nuclear power producers to purchase from them. So, this is not going to increase domestic prices for uranium much. $55 is just a little bit above what the market price was at the time.
My analysis said: Unlikely. The price on the domestic market will be a lot higher. For the uranium sector in the United States to produce six million pounds of uranium--which is what the requirement was going to be, the buy-American requirement, so to speak--you are going to need a dramatically higher price. And, that price is either going to get passed on to consumers--especially in places with a lot of nuclear-generated electricity--or, the nuclear producers were going to eat it and it was going to push some of them over the edge, particularly in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania where there's--and Ohio. Important states.
And, so my basic argument was: this restriction is going to call[?cause?] prices to increase a lot. And the key statistic--I did some more sophisticated stuff in the background, but I didn't bring that in as the Game Plan A in the meeting. I brought in two figures--two graphs--that simply showed, look, in recent history, the price of uranium has been way above your price for several years and the domestic sector didn't come anywhere close to producing what you're saying they would produce now at a much lower price.
So, this simple descriptive statistic I think convinced everyone in the room except Commerce that there's no way the domestic price is going to be $55 and six million pounds are going to come out of the ground. So, in the Decision Memo to the President, our estimate, CEA estimate of what the price is going to do, what it's going to do to electricity prices and electricity consumers was in there. And, I don't know what proportion of influence that had, but people who were familiar with the matter said it was really important that that point was made.
Russ Roberts: For economics majors out there, this was a debate about the elasticity of supply. A phrase that I don't know if it's been uttered more than a couple of times in the history of this program. Meaning how responsive is production to changes in price? And, if the answer is not very much, then you're going to need a much larger price to make the market work effectively; and the demand for uranium once foreign supplies are unavailable is going to push the domestic price up much higher than $55.
And, that's very nice. Now of course that as you point out--you had more sophisticated stuff in the appendix. But, the fundamental--often the facts can be persuasive or at least provocative [?] reconsider a position.
Russ Roberts: What are your thoughts on our profession generally and our ability to establish something like a truth on the basis of statistical analysis?
So, for example, what's the effect of the minimum wage on employment among, say, low-skilled labor? The profession used to believe the answer was minimum wage is very bad for low-skilled labor. It would cause a lot of jobs to go away. In recent years, there've been a lot of thoughtful people who've made the opposite argument: it's effects are either small or zero. There's been pushback against that by other people saying actually that's wrong: In the short run it might be true; in the long run, it's big; or, you didn't fully measure it correctly.
And, if I said to an economist: 'What's the effect of a, say, 25% increase or 15% increase in the minimum wage?' it would depend on who you asked. And, that's weird. If you ask a physicist what the effect of gravity is, they don't argue about it. There's a consensus. We don't really have those kind of consences--I don't know if that's the right word--consensuses in economics, it seems to me. Do you agree?
Jeremy Weber: I agree. And, I think the key difference is that, as long as we're in the earth realm, gravity is pretty contextless. It's not context-dependent. Social settings are so varied, and so the situations in which we estimate these relationships are oftentimes conditioned by the moment in history, the place.
And, I'll give you a concrete example. My subject area of expertise is energy and environment. I've done work on fossil fuel extraction, effects on communities. A big question that the literature was considering several years ago was if you have fracking--if you have natural gas drilling in an area--what happens to property values? Somebody looked at that question in Pennsylvania and found, well, for many homes it will be a negative effect. People are not going to want to live near this, particularly homes dependent on groundwater. Okay? That's Pennsylvania.
I looked at Texas. I found housing prices go up quite a bit in the vicinity where the fracking took off. Well, the reason for the difference was--or primary reason--in Texas you tax natural gas wells as property. So, when you drill a well, the full value of that well enters the tax base. That's like we just built a bunch of million dollar McMansions and now those people are paying taxes on those houses. That's going to the local government. That's going to the schools. It turns out in Texas then they lowered the property tax rate and so people's tax bills were going down, the school was getting more revenue, and property values generally went up in the area.
That's a very different finding than in Pennsylvania where they don't tax. There's no revenue generation for the school, no reduction in property taxes. Same basic phenomena of fracking, fundamentally different effects on this outcome because the context--the policy environment--was so different.
And, I think that's just one illustration of how--are we raising the minimum wage in an area where the market wage is already pretty high and we're just going to basically move it close to the market wage? Or, not?
So, I think part of the reason why it's hard to come up with a consensus is because context matters; and that matters certainly for policy. That consideration of context is something that I emphasize in the book so much.
Russ Roberts: Of course, you would like to think that the fundamental market forces are the same. They may be, in, say, the case of minimum wage. And, people might disagree about what those are. That was, again, not so true I think in the past--say, 50 years ago--but is much more true, say, in the last 15 or 20 years.
But, I do think there is a feeling among younger economists and I would--Jeremy, I put you in that group relative to me. Just looking at you, I would say--
Jeremy Weber: I appreciate it--
Russ Roberts: No problem. I think there's a concensus--not a consensus--there's a flavor of recently-trained economist who says: 'I don't look at theory, like what theory says about what the minimum wage impact should be or is likely to be. I just look at the data. I just read the output from my statistical package, and I look for the truth, and whatever it says, that's our best understanding of how the minimum wage affects low-skilled labor at this point in the areas I looked at it.' And, I find that an untenable view, but I think I'm in the minority in the modern world. Is that true?
Jeremy Weber: No. I agree with your assessment that there is a tendency, culture shifting or it has shifted, where we just want to go right to the data and not do the heavy thinking beforehand about setting things up, in a way: What are we trying to answer? What is the general theory that we're trying to test? And, we're just going into the data too quickly.
And, one of my recommendations in the regression chapter is: never run a regression without a clear purpose for doing so. It is so easy to be led in strange places just by kind of meandering through the data. And, you know, we all know we're not supposed to look for certain results, but that is so easy to do. You start getting a hunch: 'Oh, this would be a great story if it works out this certain way.' And, lo and behold, then you start looking for that story and you're like, 'Oh, it doesn't work quite right here, but what if I subset the data this way?' and suddenly the story emerges and then at the end of the day you're, like, 'Well, I can sell this story.' Like, 'This is coherent enough.' But is it a manufactured story? And, I think that does happen more often than it probably should.
Russ Roberts: I remember hearing from George Stigler, who was a professor of mine at the University of Chicago, that in his day there were no statistical packages. I don't even think they had punch cards and computer analysis. They had fancy calculators. The kind of calculators that were used, say, in the Manhattan Project. And, they would have a handful of variables--because they didn't have the amount of data we have now. This is like, say, the 1940s and 1950s. And, he said you would decide one or two things you'd run a regression on and it would take a long time and lots of calculations and then you'd find out what that answer was. And, because you were only going to do a couple, you thought very long and hard about what belonged in the analysis and what didn't. And when you were done, that's what you found. And, if you didn't like it, you had to then decide what you were going to do with that. And, the answer wasn't: Well, I'll run another 30 or 40 until I find something more amenable to my preexisting views.
But, I think the real difference in the modern world, we not only have--you can run a regression in a fraction of a second--we have immense amounts of data. And, because we have so many different variables and different ways of manipulating them, you do have to have some kind of theory as to how you're going to do that wandering through the data you're talking about.
And, in particular, otherwise--I'm going to say it differently. Even though we have lots of variables and lots of data points, we're not close to having all the data on everything that's relevant for the decision. We don't have data on people's moods. We don't have data on their childhoods, and how they were raised, their genetics. It's so many variables obviously that could be important. And so, we pretend we have all the data. And then it's just a question of throwing out some of it that we don't think is relevant. But, we always have in the back of our mind this haunting ghost that--that almost by definition in a social science perspective, you can't have all the data.
But that's unpleasant. That's no fun. I want to be in the sandbox. So I pretend I've got enough. And, I think that's the danger of theory-free exploration, because you don't have enough and you're prone to your own biases--confirmation bias and other things.
Jeremy Weber: There is that danger of maybe we constructed a narrative that it's just somewhat disconnected from reality because it's only found through torturing the data.
I think there's another danger, and it's similar to--there's this book called The Shallows: how the internet is making us think more shallow,--
Russ Roberts: Nicholas Carr--
Jeremy Weber: superficial. Yeah.
I think there's a parallel in the data or the statistics world. I was recently talking with somebody involved in a data science program and they brought in employers of their graduates and said, 'What's your assessment of the skills and how we're equipping our students?' And, they said, 'Look, we love their ability to manipulate data, calculate stuff. They can't [?] tell us the meaning of these things they're calculating for our purpose, for our organization. So it's like, it's like: Data, data everywhere, but understanding is nowhere. And, that's very easy to do when at a click, you've got oodles of data, oodles of regressions you can run. You're not slowing down and doing what Stigler had to do. And, that is, like, think twice, or measure it twice, cut[?] one sort of thing. You just run right into it. And, that's what I stress for my students.
I said, 'Before you touch the data, stop. Think.' This is something I'm trying to get across in the book. It's just: Slow down and think about what you're trying to accomplish. What is the problem? And then, with that clarity of understanding, you go and you learn something from the data. Then step back. Get away from the data for a minute and reflect for a few days on what you have calculated. All right? And go forth this way so that you have a deeper meaning. There's greater understanding being created by what's being calculated rather than 'I calculated a bunch of stuff and I'm reporting measurements.' And, I think people will find it interesting.
Russ Roberts: Let's go back to the chainsaw analogy. I think it's useful. Also makes me think of the current President of Argentina who liked to campaign--I don't know why it became his campaign image. He may be the most sophisticated economic thinker in office at a high level in the world right now. He's a pretty good economist, at least in terms of explication in the video clips I've seen of him. But, it's fun to use a chainsaw--in theory. I've never used one, by the way; but I can see the appeal of it.
So, imagine if I were going to have a course in how to use a chainsaw and I said. So, here's where the gasoline goes. Make sure you close the cap well and we'll practice that. And, here's how you turn it on. In the old days you pulled a cord and it was this exciting causal connection, and a loud noise results. And, here's how to make sure you don't cut off your fingers, because it's a dangerous weapon. Or yourself. But, over there some trees. Have at it.
And, that would be a weird course, because the students would say, 'Well, I don't really know how to cut down the trees thoughtfully or carefully. And I'm worried that if I cut them down the wrong way they will fall on innocent bystanders in houses.' And, it's a strange thing that, that's the response of the employers of students who study data science. It's like: 'Wow, they're really good at.' Meaning what? They're really good at turning on the saw and they're really good at refilling the gasoline and refueling it. But, they're not really good at making sure that houses don't get crushed. Something is wrong with this picture.
Jeremy Weber: Exactly. In fact, I'm experiencing this just now. I'm running a capstone class here at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, part of our Master's program. We serve a client--City of Pittsburgh. It's about our deer overpopulation issue. And, I have a student who--great student--we sent her to look at the data on deer incidents, deer-related police reports on a neighboring municipality that had implemented a management program. She's getting the data, she's looking at it; and she stopped and she says, 'I think maybe somebody else should take over for me because I'm not sure I'm the best person to learn from this data, calculate this stuff.' And I said, 'Well, what classes have you taken?' Well, she's taken two graduate level statistics courses. She's looking at the chainsaw, she's seeing the tree, and she's, like, 'I'm going to step away.'
Russ Roberts: Good for her.
Jeremy Weber: I'm like, 'You are exactly the right person to be doing what you're doing. Let's do this together. Let's start here. Let's take one step at a time.' So, it's going to be great for her, it's going to be great for us.
But, I'm somewhat appalled that she's taken two--a year's worth--of statistical education, postgraduate, and she doesn't have the confidence to pick up the chainsaw.
And I somewhat don't blame her. I understand it. It is intimidating to walk into the room. It's intimidating to take up that chainsaw and start laying it into that massive oak. And, the equivalent in reality is then stepping into the room with a City Council person and reporting these numbers that then the staff are going to look into, maybe a journalist looks into; maybe somebody gets the data and shows that you did something stupid and you end up looking like a fool. And so, the students are averse to doing that.
Russ Roberts: I think there's two things going on here, though, at the same time. Theoretical programs in law, or business--sometimes students and outsiders, employers will complain: Well, they taught you legal theory but they don't teach you how to be a lawyer. Because to be a lawyer you have to learn how to read the client. You have to understand when you need to push back against the client's demands. You need to understand how to read a jury. You need to know how negotiate in a settlement question. And, law schools don't do that.
Same for business schools. Business schools teach theory of finance, theory of marketing, and so on. But, when push comes to shove, only life gives you the education you need in the trenches and in the real world.
And, I think what's going on here--and your students are a special case. But, I think most of the time the things you're taught in graduate school in statistics or data science are really everything you do need to know about how to use the chainsaw. It's that you don't know how to use it thoughtfully. And, that's an entirely different thing than you don't know how to use it in the real world. You can use it in the real world really well. You can put up a big set of tables and charts and appendices, but there's no thoughtfulness to it.
So, I think--when I taught in a Master's Program at George Mason, I taught a class called How to Think About Numbers. And, that was for me the things that students weren't getting in a cookbook econometrics or a statistics class. But in general, those classes aren't taught. And, the kind of things you teach in your book are not taught.
And, my question is: Why do you think that is? Why do you think the world wants somebody--because I really think that employer often wants somebody who is really good using the chainsaw and they don't care where the trees fall. They just want a really sophisticated user of the saw. And it's kind of strange that is the way it seems to me that the world works.
Jeremy Weber: I think that you're absolutely right. I think the reason they're not taught--it's not taught--that sort of more careful thinking about the numbers and those practical issues--is: who is teaching--who teaches statistics courses in university, undergrad or grad? They are academics. Okay. How do those academics use their statistical skills? They use it in research articles to academic audiences. They are then attuned to what is the editor and the reviewers--what are they going to go harp on? What will be the bars that I have to pass? What are they going to scrutinize?
All right. That is what they're doing, nine to five.
Then when they go to teach, they are teaching students to do what they do, by and large. Okay? And, the unfortunate thing is: It is as if they are teaching students, 'This is how you speak to and relate to this tribe.' Okay? This Swahili tribe.
Well, then the students go out and the majority of them are not going to be writing academic articles dealing with reviewers. They're going to be using these for employers, businesses, or nonprofits, or city council. And that's a different tribe. And then we're surprised, 'Oh, they're speaking Swahili to the Germans here and there's miscommunication or not understanding that's being conveyed.'
And so, the emphasis is off because the people teaching are accustomed to speaking to a different tribe. So, they're spending all of this time on three different ways to refine your standard air calculation because the reviewers are going to ask about that. They're spending all this time on refinements to identification because they know they're going to get nailed on that. And so, they convey that to their students. And they're not spending the time on, just: Are the data good? Like: What do your variables mean? A one-unit increase in X--like, what is that? Is that big? Is that large? Is that small? And, don't tell me statistical significance or not. Like, I want to know: is a 0.5 increase in that thing, should I care?
We're not teaching that for the most part.
Russ Roberts: I'm the president of a college. We're small. We're hoping to add an economic/public policy major in the coming years. And, if we do that while I'm here, it will emphasize the challenges and limitations of the chainsaw--of statistical analyses alongside the hammer/chainsaw part, which is you got to have that if you're going to enter the battle. If you're going to be in the arena, you better understand how your opponent's weapons work. If you're going to claim they're dangerous or they don't work well or they're inaccurate, you need to understand how to use those weapons and then explain the limitations.
And, part of me says--the romantic part of me--says: Well, this will be good for the country, for the state of Israel because there will be a set of bright, articulate people with a grounding and philosophy, in addition, but also who understand the limitations of statistical analysis.
The question is, is anybody going to hire those people? This is a different way to look at this question of this mismatch. Does anybody want someone who is going to always remind them that this finding which they want to wave around and print on a big banner might not be true?
Jeremy Weber: I'm going to say a guarded optimistically yes.
Russ Roberts: Good.
Jeremy Weber: When I teach policy analysis--so I teach these capstone classes that are more client-oriented--I use the analogy of a lawyer and a client. And I say, 'Look: we are lawyers. We are like in a lawyer-client relationship. Clients are not well served by lawyers who just cherry-pick things in their communication with the client.' Now, there are two different levels of interaction here. There's going before the judge and the jury. Which the lawyer is not going to present damaging things to that audience. But, I would think that the client wants and is best served by a lawyer who in the private confidence of the lawyer-client relationship is shooting straight. Fully understands weaknesses of legal theories, the strength and limitations of the evidence, and implications for the client's case. And so then the client, knowing that--okay, it's not the client that needs to be convinced, it's whoever the client is turn arounding and serving or speaking to, that needs to be equipped well.
So, I do think clients want lawyers who are not fly-by-night known for inventing things, cherry-picking things. They want people who will shoot it straight with them so they can then turn around and make better decisions that are going to be more persuasive, more bulletproof to the audience they're working with. The Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers would not be well-served by me being a data lackey and just saying, 'Oh, Kevin, I think you wanted this number. It sounds good. Go run with it.' Because Kevin [Kevin Hassett, CEA Chairman, 2017-2019--Econlib Ed.] is going to turn around and go to a meeting with thoughtful, sometimes aggressive people who are going to find holes in it and potentially make Kevin look very bad. So, Kevin actually wants somebody who is a straight shooter and not a data lackey.
Russ Roberts: I love that.
Russ Roberts: Let's take an example from the book which I very much enjoyed and hadn't thought of this way. I thought it was really great. You talk about the well-known idea--hard to remember, surprisingly hard to remember--that correlation is not causation. It's well known but remarkable how many times people either forget it or want to forget it. So, it's a great point.
But you make a deeper point, and I think it is quite profound and very, very rarely thought of, which is: You really should be thinking of correlation and the magnitude of causation. So, there could be a correlation. Sometimes it is causation. But, that's not the only thing we care about. In fact, almost always we care about the magnitude of the impact, not just that they're correlated.
And, the reason that matters--you say that, 'Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure, that makes sense.' But the point you make, which is fantastic, is that in the real world, the world we live in as opposed to the textbook, there's more than one thing changing at the same time. So, past data that we look at to examine relationships is of course affected by more than the thing I'm looking at that I'm calling the causal factor.
So, you give the example of your storm drain. Why don't you share that and generalize it to other issues?
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. And, I use this example in my classes as well. A few years ago, my drain in the back of my house was overwhelmed in a storm and it flooded my basement. This happened twice. And, my neighbor learned about it and she quickly said, 'Well, this is climate change. Clearly. We're having more intense storms,' which suggests that the problem is the quantity of water hitting the drain. And, I didn't think too deeply about it. I kind of wanted to get rid of some asphalt anyway. And so, accepting this premise that the storm had been more severe and that's why it flooded recently and not in prior years, I went then and rented a concrete saw and dug up a bunch of asphalt and replaced it with grass so the water could percolate down and the drain would drain a smaller area. Then the drain flooded again. And clearly, water falling and my drain flooding, these are causally related. Intuitively there's a connection. But, what was the main reason why my drain wasn't able to handle this water?
It turns out it wasn't because the storms were more severe than they had been in the past. And, it took a conversation with a plumber visiting my neighbors. Said look, 'You don't understand how your drain works. It's draining in this other direction. There's a kink here. If you go into your garage, you're going to find an access point.' I pulled that out and there's some mud clogging it, clogging the drain. I pulled that out. It's never had any issues since then. We've had a tremendous storm since then. The main cause was the clog in the drain.
And, tying it in with climate change and the storm intensity, that was a distraction. Yes. It might be true. I didn't go and look at the data. It might be true that those storms were in fact a bit more severe. And, it might be true that that was driven by rising greenhouse gas pathogens. Might be true. All right? But, we could have solved climate change completely, and my drain would still have been overwhelmed at the next storm. It was a secondary/tertiary issue. The primary issue--the primary causal factor--was the clog in the drain.
And without understanding that, I was just going to be throwing money and effort at a tertiary issue that wasn't going to solve the problem.
Russ Roberts: And, that's just so common in policy arguments. Of course [?]. Correlation--not causation--is the English version of a more pretentious Latin phrase, which I always loved, post hoc ergo propter hoc--'after this, therefore, because of this.' And, your point is that: Yeah. After this sometimes is because of this. What happened after is because of this thing that happened before. But, eight other things happened along the way. And, the fundamental question isn't whether this one affects that one, but by how much relative to the others.
And so many policy debates are about--again, going back to maybe the first EconTalk episode with Don Cox. I think we talked about this, what he calls the 'dreaded third thing.' You have two variables, one affects the other. There is that third thing that--it's actually on a later episode with Don. Or some essay he wrote.
It's not the first one--that was on parenting. But, the dreaded third thing is that the world is complicated. There's actually more than three. There's the dreaded third, fourth, and fifth thing. And, the fundamental question is if you want to affect the variable that you're caring about, is it the one you're focused on or is it the third, fourth, and fifth one that have the bigger bang for the buck? Statistics can help you answer that, but you do have to keep it in mind and to look for it.
Jeremy Weber: And, unfortunately, our statistics culture with the emphasis on statistical significance is usually focused on that question: is there any causal relationship at all? Is the coefficient zero or not?
And, as my chapter--I think one of the most important chapters in the book is: Know large from small and explain the difference. Is that we're so used to using statistical significance as a crutch for saying: Is this important? Does it matter? And, the reality is, like you said: Ten things are probably causally related to this outcome we care about, but for policy purposes, we obviously want to prioritize. We're not going to make much progress on the problem if we're focused on this fourth-order issue that yes, is causally related, but the magnitude is so small.
There's an issue here with political speech that's really tricky that I just want to point out--I faced it a lot in reviewing speeches by White House officials--where you have two or three things presented together as equivalent contributors or causal factors. One or two of which might've been Administration-driven, and maybe they don't even mention other factors. And, the reality is: yes, all these things are causally related, but--I'll give you the concrete example. The rising oil production in 2018 and 2019 was primarily driven by higher energy prices. Did deregulatory efforts help? It certainly didn't hurt. And, it probably--intuitively it would be causally related. But, if you speak of those two factors in the same sentence and you're going to communicate to the audience: they're equally responsible for this rise in U.S. energy independence and so on, when they're not. 95% of it was just producers who are responding to price.
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: The other example that I think about a lot is--and of course as you say, political speech, a lot of times things get emphasized not because of their magnitude, but because of their salience in the minds of voters and others.
One I think about a lot, a friend of mine talks about--he may be listening to this episode. But, he will argue that that trade with China is the source of many of our cultural malaise--much of our cultural malaise, many of our cultural problems. I'm not convinced of that. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not true. Whether it's true or not, it has a very strong political impact when people hear that.
The reality, I think, is that there are many, many things going on, many at the same time. It's hard to know whether those things are independent of each other. Some could be caused by the economic challenges that certain parts of the country face in response to trade with China. But, certainly using China as a source of fear--Chinese trade--is very powerful and very effective. Whether it's true or not is much, much harder to establish. And, in particular, it could be true but the magnitude is quite small relative to the other factors. But, as a politician, often that will be irrelevant. It'll be invoked simply because it's effective.
Jeremy Weber: This is very true, and this happens. I think this is a good moment to make a point that I make upfront in the book. And, it speaks to some of your pessimism around data and our ability to untangle things and so on.
There are two camps of people, I find. Generally those people who are data enthusiasts: We're going to be able to solve the issues, identify the priorities, the results disputes if we just let the data speak. We look at the evidence, we do evidence-based policymaking, this is it.
And then there's another group that says: There are 'lies, damned lies, and statistics.' Like: It's a tool for manipulation--as you say, it's just weaponry to shoot at people. It's worse than not helpful. It's distracting, misleading, and so on.
And, I speak to both of them. And, an important point I make to the 'you can say anything with data'-crowd is: Statistical claims are with us always. We cannot help but make statements--claims--about what is common, what is general, what is causing X versus Y. We will make those statements. It's better if we tether them to actual observation. Because, we're going to make them: The politician is going to make them. The nonprofit leader is going to make these statements about what's generally the case. And statistics at least helps constrain us somewhat. But, those claims are going to be made anyway. And if there's a culture there, a habit of good use of statistics, it's at least a constraining power on specious claims about what is generally the case, what is rare, what is common, and so on.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I really like that part of the book. And I just want to say that if you had to pick a religion for me where one religion is 'Data analysis reveals the truth' and the other religion is 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics,' I would be in the latter. I would be in the 'lies, damned lies, and statistics'-group. And, a lot of people then conclude: Oh, obviously I'm not a scientist. I'm irrational. I believe in going with your gut. The only reason I push the 'lies, damned lies, statistics'-scripture is because most of the religious enthusiasm is at the other end.
I'm actually in a third camp. I'm in the camp that worships the idea that it's complicated. And that reality is beloved by neither the 'statistics reveals the truth'- and the 'lies, damned lies, and statistics'-group. So, in reality, I actually am in this third group. But I think I am often misunderstood as being in the second. But I do think, just for the record, there's nothing worse than anecdotes. They're dangerous--as are statistics misused. So, it's complicated.
Jeremy Weber: Yeah. And, I think I probably--I mean, I think I'm where you are, Russ, generally.
And by speaking to the, 'Let's just get in the data-driven car; it's going to tell us where to go'-people, and the, you know, 'statistics are just manipulation,'--by speaking to both of them and the access or limitations of the extreme, I think the result is you would end up somewhere in the middle. Okay. We can't stop trying to tether our claims to summaries of observations. Not just what your brother's cousin said--and that's your one data point and then you extrapolate. But rather, what many people have said or what's been measured in many places or moments.
Russ Roberts: There's a lengthy discussion in the book relative to what I would have expected on fact-checking. And in particular based on your experience in the Trump White House. Describe how thorough that was, and why that was, and how you felt about it.
Jeremy Weber: So, one of the first things I learned in arriving at CEA was they have a fact-checking process. And, the Chairman at the time, Kevin Hassett, was insistent on before anything reached him, it should be fact-checked. Before anything--certainly anything that left CEA--needed to be fact-checked. And by that, what was meant was the original author of the Memo, the facts in it would have to pass it off to somebody who was not involved in it, and they go through all of the factual claims and verify them.
And, sometimes that was very simple. That was just: 'Okay, here's a number, here's the source. Did you actually copy the right number and the meaning of it? Was it described correctly?' Or, it can be more complicated. It can go into spreadsheets and calculations. Our junior economists, who did a lot of the fact-checking, they would have to go step-by-step all the way back to the beginning of the calculation and verify, you know, when you said you multiplied X by Y, you were actually multiplying them, and so on. And then, once that fact-checking--usually then there would be queries or questions raised in the fact-checking. 'Oh, it didn't seem--this thing didn't make sense, what you did,' or, 'The report spoke about it a little different way. Are you sure this label is right?' And, those queries had to be resolved before the 'Not Fact-checked' label could be removed from the Memo or the PowerPoint.
And then, once those queries were fully resolved, then it could go on to the Chairman.
And, this took a lot of effort. It slowed things down. It required a lot of hours of staff time. But, I think it made a lot of sense, because CEA's currency in the building was its credibility.
And, it's very easy in the White House to become irrelevant. Like, people are vying for influence and access. And, just because you're doing good work doesn't mean anybody's going to pay any attention to it. So, what CEA needed to do is maintain and bolster that credibility as a straight shooter, as somebody who gets the numbers right. And, if we were sloppy with that and word got out and we couldn't really trust them, nobody would read all the stuff that we produced anyway. And so, there was a focus on: We've got to get it right. We've got to preserve that CEA brand, so to speak.
And, that was a great learning experience for me. In fact, it is easy to not be nearly as thorough in academic work because--I mean, the reality is the cost of being wrong is likely very low. If I give the Chairman a bad number and he goes in and shares with the press--it might be tweeted the next moment. Or, Kevin says on national news, and then the fact-checkers are going after it. The consequences of making a silly mistake are high. Much higher generally than in academia.
And so, it really raised my appreciation for going slow, making sure that what you've done is defensible. Is, as I say in the book, right. Meaning: it's defensible to reasonable people. It doesn't mean it's perfectly predicting the future, it's perfectly getting the numbers right. Future data might reveal that our estimates were a bit off. But, given the information at the time, what was done is defensible to a reasonable person--a statistically savvy journalist.
Russ Roberts: I wonder if that's Kevin Hassett's pet peeve or whether that was standard operating procedure at the Council and part of the culture. Certainly you and I have friends who are careless with facts. I don't have any like that. They wouldn't be my friends. But, people will quote sports statistics, the actor in a particular movie, the year something happened. And, most people say those things with authority and confidence. And, years ago on this program, I said something about how if you then say, 'Are you sure?' to those people, they immediately back down. Immediately. They're incredibly confident, but if you say, 'Are you sure?' they immediately have to concede that not a hundred percent. But, some do. Some say, 'Oh, of course I am sure.' It still means they're sometimes wrong.
So, it's a fascinating thing how, as you say, in academic life, big bottom line conclusions with dramatic implications will get checked. People will challenge and look into things. But, it's amazing how many things just get passed by.
And, if you ever publish something in a magazine or a newspaper that has a serious fact-checking arm, they're asking you a question; and it's, like, 'What do you mean, how do I know that's true? Of course it's true. I would never say something wrong.' And, of course, sometimes you're wrong because your memory fools you. And sometimes you're careless. And sometimes you're dishonest. So, it's a very interesting thing to be in that intense an environment, I suspect. And, it is definitely different in most other areas.
Jeremy Weber: It is. But, it's something I've taken with me and really appreciated. And, being wrong, being pushed on something--in academic settings we're often pushed in certain ways and in policy settings pushed in other ways.
I found myself in CEA being pushed not so much in the complicated statistic techniques, but on a more basic understanding of the numbers: You said X, you said this certain number. What does that mean?
I'll give you an example. Not from the White House, but from this deer capstone. A big part of the deer issue is deer/cars and cars hitting deer and people having accidents. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has a dataset and a subset that are deer-related. And, I had a student compile that, subtotal it by year. What is the level--just the extent of this issue--in the city of Pittsburgh? And, they report out a number. And then, I asked, 'What is that? And, how does it get into the PennDOT [Pennsylvania Department of Transportation] data? Does somebody have to be killed? Does the car have to be totaled? Is it picking up far less severe cases?
Well, it turns out in this case, you only get in the data if it were serious enough that the police showed up and filed a report. And, in 96% of the cases, the car had to be towed away. So, imagine somebody just coming in, running with the data, totaling it, and going and reporting there's 25 deer/vehicle incidents in Pittsburgh in a given year. And then, being asked, 'Well, what's a deer-related incident?' and not having a good answer. Or worse, being confronted with this: 'Wait. Animal Damage Control reports that they picked up 600 deer carcasses last year.' And then, you've got two problems. You've got, One: You've created confusion with your statistics. Your statistics were supposed to add clarity. Now people are confused. Is it 600? Is it 25?
And then, the second problem is: If you don't have an answer to reconcile the two, you've got a credibility problem. Here you are coming in as the data guy, the data person, and now we can't believe anything out of your mouth.
And, the error, again, isn't--it's not that you calculated the total wrong. It's not that you manipulated the data. You just weren't thinking much about the data and the number you actually calculated. And, that would happen in CEA.
In fact, very early on, I met with Casey Mulligan, one of your prior guests. And, Casey is such a careful guy. And so, he was a bit of a quality control check on people. And, I gave him a memo with some numbers in it. And, I remember him asking me about one of the numbers: 'Is this one time or this a flow?' It was a dollar value. And, it was embarrassing: I didn't have a good answer. It's $25 billion. It's $25 billion. One year? Every year? Basic question. I wasn't well-prepared to answer it. And, that was just a reflection of Casey being a careful, thoughtful guy and also aware of the audience.
The other thing that he did that was helpful: There were several numbers there, and there was a GDP [Gross Domestic Product] output number, and there was another number that was more of a welfare number. And, he's like, 'Let's just stick with the GDP number. The people we're talking to, they get output, they get production. They don't understand opportunity costs. Let's not distract them with this welfare number that they're not going to know how to reconcile the two numbers.' And, that was a thoughtful incorporation of: Who are we speaking to? What are they going to understand? So, it was both a interpretation of the number, knowledge of the audience that Casey was teaching me to be sensitive to, and I've taken that forward and now helping students interact with the city about deer.
Russ Roberts: That's awesome.
Russ Roberts: I want to close with a question about civic education, and understanding, and the political process. Alexander Pope said: "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
And, it has become popular in recent years to require high school students to learn statistics. You know: Statistics are everywhere. It should be part of basic education.
My guess is most of those classes are dangerous. A little learning is a dangerous thing. They get sort of a cookbook course, maybe. They don't get a very thoughtful class. And, they're taught by people who don't understand the complexity of randomness, the complexity of data, causation, multivariate issues.
And your book is an attempt to improve that. Your book is an attempt to help thoughtful people get a better understanding of complexity, of measuring things, and how those measurements should be interpreted.
It's interesting to me how little of that there is in the world. Part of that is because it's really hard to write a book like this. Most people who understand the concepts are unable to explain the concepts and therefore they can't do it well. And, part of is because I'm not sure how much demand there is. Most people are more comfortable just being told what the truth is. They don't really want to look and see whether the support and evidence for it is reliable or not.
But, as thinking human beings, it seems to me that if we want to be civilized and educated, the book that you've written and books like it that are yet to be written should play an important role in being a fully developed person. Because, the world is a complicated place; and statistics are one way to access that complexity. React to that.
Jeremy Weber: Well, I appreciate the comment about the book. That is the hope. I talked about students and advanced students as being the audience, but really the audience is broader, and I would take it really anyone who has some basic statistical education and wants to think more carefully about statistics. So, it does have that broader audience in mind, and it does have that aim of thoughtfulness and the broader good that that can bring about.
As far as: is it a bad idea to teach statistics to high school students or at some--teach it poorly, I mean, anything taught poorly can be problematic because it's kind of worse than not having been taught it, because you go out thinking you know it, and so you are in a sense inoculated to the real thing. You've heard the prosperity gospel, and then you confuse it with the true gospel. And so, every time you use the word 'gospel,' you are thinking a certain thing and it's the exact opposite of the true thing. So, it's worse than being a blank slate.
That said, my experience in teaching introductory students--I mean, these are Master's students, but they're nonprofit-focused. They're policy-focused. They're not coming in because they're generally stat-focused people. They're taking this class because they have to. They're intimidated.
I have found that students, I think, generally do want to get it right. There is a side that's, like: 'Just give me the numbers to--I already know how the world works and what the policy should be, and now I just want the numbers to back it up.' But, I've also seen students get really excited about learning from statistics. That is, being surprised by them and having the confidence, having thought a little more deeply about the statistics that: Hey, this can't be dismissed. We have to deal with it. We understand the number, where it comes from, and we have to deal with it.
And, maybe they change their view or they come to appreciate: 'Oh, going back to the data, tethering our broader claims to observation about the world is a good, confidence-building exercise.'
And so, I do have a side of me that's hopeful that good statistical education can bring about better insight. More prioritization of main causes from tertiary causes. A greater understanding of what's a real problem and what's a problem that just is because people are talking about it, not because it's a real problem.
But, I'm fully aware of the challenge. And, things can go wrong very easily. So, I appreciate your skepticism. I share much of it, but I think there's no other way. You got to get in the statistics game and you got to do it better because somebody's going to do it, and they might as well do it well and thoughtfully.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Jeremy Weber of the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Statistics for Public Policy. Jeremy, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Jeremy Weber: Thanks, Russ. It's been a pleasure.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 29, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 29th, 2024, and my guest is journalist and author, Charles Duhigg. His latest book is Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, and that is the subject of our conversation today. Charles, welcome to EconTalk.
Charles Duhigg: Thanks for having me on.
Russ Roberts: What is a supercommunicator?
Charles Duhigg: Well, I think one of the easiest ways to describe it is by describing someone that we all know, which is, if I was to ask you if you were having a bad day, is there someone you would call who you just know would make you feel better? You just know that they're the right person to call. Does someone come to mind for you?
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think so. Other than my wife. I mean, my wife is the first person, but after my wife--I think wife is unfair. So, keep going. I can think of a couple of people.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. So, whoever came to mind, those people are super-communicators for you; and odds are that you're supercommunicators back to them: that you know what to say to make them feel heard and to make them feel like everything is going to be okay, and that they've had this great conversation.
Now, there's some people who can consistently do that, right? They can do that with almost anyone. They are the person everyone calls if they know them. And those people, what we know about them is that they tend to not necessarily have any special inborn talents. In fact, one of the things that we know is that becoming a supercommunicator, or just communication in general, is not something anyone is born with more than anyone else. It is entirely a set of learned skills. Some people have learned those skills a little bit more deeply than others simply because they think about communication a little bit more. Those are the people who tend to become supercommunicators.
And what's interesting is if you look at the background of supercommunicators, they are not necessarily, or usually, the most charismatic people or the extroverts. In fact, many of them are folks who, if you ask them, say things like, 'I struggled to make friends when I was in high school,' or, 'I was scared. I was a really shy kid,' or, 'My parents got divorced and I was the one who had to be the peacemaker between them.' And those experiences often forced them to think about communication.
What we've come to learn is that thinking about communication just half an inch deeper--thinking about what we're going to say before we open our mouth, about how to show other people that we've listened to them--that's what makes us a supercommunicator. These are skills that literally anyone can learn and so that's kind of the goal of the book.
Russ Roberts: So, I'm a little bit skeptical about that, which we'll talk about that. I would say--the part I'm skeptical about is the learned part in the sense that I think you can be more reflective about how you converse and interact with human beings, your fellow human beings. I think it's hard for most people to get better at it. Your book is an attempt to do that, and we'll talk about how. I got some very practical things from it.
But, I want to talk for a minute about when you asked me to think of a supercommunicator in my life, two came to mind. And, I find it interesting, and I think it's very consistent with your point: I am not the only one who would list them.
In fact, one of them I would say, everyone thinks he's their best friend. That's not possible. Excuse me, everyone thinks they're his best friend, and that's not possible. But, he makes them feel so comfortable with the friendship and the relationship that it's very special, and I think that's a tremendous skill. The other one I'm thinking of, people call him all the time. Advice, problems, pressure, stress, insight; and he's really good at it.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And, it's wonderful to meet those people right?
One of the things that's interesting is that communication is humans' superpower, right? The reason homo sapiens have succeeded as a species so well is because we learned to communicate and because our physiology changed to allow us to communicate. So, as a result, through evolution, we've built a lot of neural pathways associated specifically with communication.
One of those is that when we communicate well with other people, when we connect with someone, it feels wonderful. It feels fantastic. The reason it feels so good is because evolution has helped reinforce the reward associated with that. Because, if you were the type of person who could communicate well with others, then you were more likely to build families together and societies together and to survive longer because you are able to do so.
So, this act of connection is actually something that, as humans, we crave--we crave from a neurological perspective. As a result, once we learn a little bit about how the brain processes communication and processes words and listening, then that helps explain why some of those folks, as you pointed out, are the ones that everyone thinks is their best friend. Which again, is probably not possible, but doesn't make it any less true for all the people who say it.
Russ Roberts: That's correct. The other thing I would add, and I'm curious your thoughts on this: Obviously much of human communication is nonverbal. It's our eyebrows, smiles we share. You write about laughter, that either we share or punctuate our reactions with.
The two people I'm thinking of are very good to talk to on the phone, not on Zoom. It's better to be on Zoom. It's better to be in person--much better to be in person--but I find it very helpful and powerful to talk to them on the phone without those verbal cues.
Charles Duhigg: Well, so what's interesting is when we say nonverbal, sometimes--
Russ Roberts: Nonverbal cues, sorry.
Charles Duhigg: When we say nonverbal, sometimes what we mean is non-linguistic, because there's a lot of emotion that can be conveyed or a lot of sentiment that can be conveyed through noises.
So, laughter is a good example, right? Laughter is a verbal activity, but it's not a linguistic activity. On a telephone you get a lot of that same non-linguistic activity. But, what's interesting is--and again, without knowing and studying these folks in particular, but I can say pretty confidently this is probably true--I'll bet you that if I was to study how they talk on Zoom versus telephone, what I would find is that their behavior changes slightly on the phone without anyone realizing it, including themselves.
So, one of the things that we know is that when we're talking on the phone, people tend to overemphasize their words a little bit more. They tend to highlight their reactions a little bit more strongly--for exactly the reason you just specified, which is: if we can't see each other, you can't see my lips. Sorry, sorry. If we can't see each other, you can't see my lips, and you can't see my expressions. And, in part of my brain, I realize that and I start accommodating it when we're talking to each other on the phone.
Now, again, this is completely subconscious for most people. And, in fact, the reason why these supercommunicators are probably so good at it is that at some point it has occurred to them, like, 'If I'm talking on the phone, I might want to behave a little bit differently than if I'm talking face to face.' Once they decided, made that decision, it just became a habit and they stopped thinking about it. So, they're not even aware that they're doing it now. But it's something that they probably practiced at some point--again, just half an inch more deeply than other people. And as a result, it's become this really powerful tool.
Russ Roberts: I would just add that, for years, EconTalk was not visual. It was a phone interview. People assumed that when it became visual, either for Zoom or face-to-face, which I've done a chunk of EconTalks face-to-face, that it would be better: you'd have a better conversation. I'd always say: That's not true. A lot of people are uncomfortable talking to a stranger face to face for the first time. The phone allows some anonymity and privacy that is comforting to many people.
So, Zoom in particular is hard because you can't really do banter; and you can't do banter because of the delay in the transmission. If you banter a lot, you override each other and you get crosstalk. And I try to avoid that here at EconTalk; and that's hard for me. I like to banter and interrupt and be interrupted and go back and forth with those non-linguistic verbal signs. But, it's very hard to do on Zoom, and on the phone it's much better.
Charles Duhigg: Well, it's interesting. So, when you go on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, even if you're in Philadelphia, even if you're in the same studio as her, she will insist that you sit in a separate room so you can't see each other. And that's because the audience is not going to be able to see you, so she wants to create the environment where people put that emotion into their voice rather than into their face. And, it works. It works.
Now, one interesting thing about this--and this has some salience for today in the Internet age--is that when phones first became popular, there were all these articles that appeared saying people will never be able to have real conversations on a telephone. Right? The fact that you can't see each other--it's going to be useful for, you know, like, sending grocery lists or stock trades, but no one is ever going to have a real conversation on the telephone.
What's really interesting is, there were some researchers who actually listened in to telephone conversations and they would transcribe them. And those people were exactly right: nobody was having real conversations on the phone. They did not know how to do it. They had not learned this kind of almost unconscious new rules for this mode of communication.
Now, of course, by the time you and I were teenagers, people were talking on the phone for seven hours a night and feeling like it was the most important conversations of their life.
And I think that there's an important lesson here, which is, throughout history, because, again, our brains are so well-designed to communicate, particularly when we think about communication--when we try and study it and learn from it, just even casually--because our brains are so well-designed to do so, we have the ability to adapt to new kinds of communication.
And, right now in the Internet age, we're living through essentially the birth of the telephone when nobody--but I look at my kids, I have a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old, and they have no problem communicating online. They know exactly that a snap is different from a text, is different from an email, is different from a post on Facebook; and they have a different lexicon for each one and different norms. Eventually, we'll get there where it'll feel as natural as anything else.
Russ Roberts: You mistakenly, by the way, threw in the word cellphone when you meant phone.
Charles Duhigg: Exactly.
Russ Roberts: Because cellphones are the way we do this thing.
Russ Roberts: Are you a supercommunicator? Did this book make you a better conversationalist?
Charles Duhigg: I certainly try and be one. So, part of the origins of this book were twofold. First is that I was working at the New York Times and they made me a manager, and I thought I'd be a great manager. I was like, 'Oh man, I got this.' I've had lots of bosses. I have an MBA [Master of Business Administration] from Harvard. I was, like, 'I got this.'
And then, it turns out, I was terrible at it. And, the part that I was terrible at--I was fine at logistics and planning and strategy. It was the communication part that I was really bad at, and I was supposed to be a professional communicator. And so, that was kind of a wake-up call.
But then, I started thinking about my own communication. I realized there was this pattern I'd fall into with my wife all the time, which is: I would come home from work and it would be a long day and I would be frustrated and complaining about my boss or my coworkers. And, she would respond with this very practical advice where she would say, 'Why don't you take your coworkers out to lunch or get to know them a little bit better?'
And, instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get even more upset. And, I would say, 'You're supposed to have my side on this. I want you to be outraged on my behalf.' And, she would get upset because I was overreacting. And so, I went to these experts and I asked them, 'What's actually going on here? Why am I having this problem?'
Russ Roberts: And, explain.
Charles Duhigg: So, what they told me was they said: Look, what we've learned in the last decade about communication is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing. But, in fact, every discussion is made up of multiple different kinds of conversations. And, in general, they fall into one of three big buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're trying to make plans or solve problems. Then there's emotional conversations where I might bring up a problem and I don't want you to solve that problem for me. I want you to empathize. I want you to be there emotionally for me. And then, there's social conversations which are about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society, and others relate to us.
And they said: The key is, if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you're unlikely to really hear each other and connect.
So, when I came home from work, I was having an emotional conversation, and my wife was responding in a very appropriate way but she was having a practical conversation. And that mismatch meant that we couldn't really hear each other. And so, now we have learned how to do that better.
Russ Roberts: And, that's a fabulous example. One of the things I find fascinating in that particular type of interaction is that: you come home with a frustration that happened at work or with a friend--it doesn't matter what it is--and you vent it, you share it. And, the other person can sometimes respond with, 'Oh, it's not so bad'--
Charles Duhigg: Yeah--
Russ Roberts: which is a variant on the solving the problem. In other words, something went wrong at work and your spouse says, 'It's not so bad. It's a small thing. Don't worry about it.' And, that should be comforting, but it's not often because it's diminishing exactly what you're talking about, which is that I want affirmation. And, in fact, the attempt to diminish the problem--which is very reasonable by the way, and in some settings totally appropriate, even in a venting conversation: you could be reassured, say, by that, 'Oh, it's not so bad.' But, sometimes that is not what you want to hear.
And, I find that--it's very interesting, right? And it's very hard. I think this goes in both directions with spouses, by the way, obviously, not just me to my wife, but my wife to me, and I assume other people. It's very hard to read the subtle cues of what the other person needs in that moment.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And, that's kind of what Supercommunicators is about, is how to identify what conversation is happening and then how to match the person or invite them to match you.
And, to the example that you just raised: so, you're right that there are times--so I think when saying, 'Oh, this isn't such a big deal' is appropriate, is: you come to me and you're upset and I engage with you in an emotional conversation. I affirm you. I show that I'm listening. And my wife does this all the time--like, oftentimes when I come home complaining, she says, 'Look, do you want me to help you think of a solution for this, or do you just need to get this off your chest?'
And, it's actually very edifying for me to hear that. Right? Because sometimes until that moment, I haven't even asked myself that question. And then, I can say, 'Oh, no, no, I just want to complain. I just want to complain.'
And then, after I complain for a little while, then she or I can say, 'Well, look, let's figure it out. Is this actually a big deal? Now let's move to the practical conversation.' Because you're exactly right. Diminishing it is not--is a practical conversation. But because we move together, we feel like we're connected; and we, in fact, are.
Russ Roberts: But, diminishing actually should be a good emotional response: 'Don't be so worked up about this. It's small.'
Charles Duhigg: Except that it ties into another factor, which sometimes comes up, particularly when we're having a conflict, which is this issue of control.
So, one of the things that we know about married couples in particular--but this is true for any conversation in which you disagree with someone, in which you have any conflict--is that conflict is such a scary thing that our first instinct is to try and find something we can control. And, oftentimes the easiest thing to control is the person sitting across from us.
So, we'll say things like: If you only listen to what I'm saying, then you'll agree with me. If you only understand all the facts, then you'll think that I'm right. I want to control how you see this. I want control what you listen to.
Or, people will say things like: I'm only going to talk about this for five minutes. Or: You can't bring up my mother. I'm not going to talk--like, this has nothing to do--right? We're trying to control the other person.
Sometimes people will say something like, 'This really bothers me,' and we'll try and diminish him. We'll try and say, 'Oh, no, it shouldn't bug you as much as it does.'
We're trying to control your emotional reaction.
So, trying to control someone else is toxic. Like, we know that it destroys a conversation.
A much better thing, though: You can't ignore this instinct for control. So, a much better thing is to find things you can control together with the person you're talking to.
And, there's usually three that present themselves.
Usually we have the opportunity to control when this conversation is happening. Right? So, instead of fighting at 2:00 in the morning: Let's wait until we're both well rested in the morning. We can control the timing. Oftentimes we can control ourselves and make that obvious by saying, like, 'Look, I'm going to take a breath before I answer your question, and I just want to think about it.' And so that we're controlling ourselves, which feels better.
And, Number Three is controlling the parameters of the fight itself. There's this thing called 'kitchen sinking'--which again, completely toxic--which is we start by arguing about where we're going to go for Thanksgiving, and then it becomes about, like, your mother hates me, and you don't earn enough money, and if you are home, it becomes--a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything. That's really, really bad. So, controlling the parameters of the fight and saying, 'Look, we're just talking. I am not going to bring up your mother. You shouldn't get upset about that. We're just going to talk about Thanksgiving.'
The thing is that when you control these three things--the environment, yourself, and the boundaries of the disagreement--you are cooperating with the other person. Suddenly, you're on the same side of the table and you're deciding to control things together. Now, that does not mean you're going to agree with each other, but it does mean that it's going to be easier for you to find places where you can agree.
Russ Roberts: I think that's incredibly profound. It may sound trivial to some listening at home, but I think it took me a long time to realize how important control was in my life and to be sensitive to my own needs for it, and to realize it. I don't think about what I could do to control things, like myself, that could subdue that. I just sort of recognize that, 'Oh, my control urge is out of control here. I need to subdue it.' But, I think there's practical ideas of partnering with your combatant, whether it's your spouse or a friend or colleague at work, because what often is--I think this is actually one of the deepest things about the human experience--our drive for autonomy and agency is so strong.
I see it in my year-and-a-half-old granddaughter, who, when you do not give her the oatmeal in the format that she desires, gets extremely mad. She likes oatmeal; she wants to eat it. But your telling her how she's going to eat it--meaning she wants to eat it with her hands instead of the spoon, or vice versa, whatever it is, your cutting it up for her thinking, I'm doing her a good service--she's done with it. This is not the oatmeal, this would be the banana or whatever it is that you cut up.
And, I think it is--I haven't read much about it, but I know in myself that way too many of the times that I get frustrated, annoyed with the people around me, it's simply because I don't have control. It could be when dinner is going to start. It could be the trip to the airport. I've gotten better at both of those. After 69 years, I've gotten a little better at it. But just the ability to recognize when your own personal need for control is presenting and to realize that that's what's on the table and not whatever appears to be the issue--is just control--is very, very powerful.
Charles Duhigg: No, I absolutely agree. In the book, there's this story of this experiment that was done where they brought together gun rights advocates and gun control activists. And, the goal was not to see if they can get them to agree with each other: the goal was just to see if they could have a civil conversation. Right? And so, they taught them some skills, and one of the skills in particular is really powerful that we can talk about called looping for understanding.
But, the most important thing that I think they did--and this is what looping for understanding does--is they emphasized: your instinct is going to be to try and control this conversation. You've had this conversation a thousand times. You're very practiced at it. You know the traps, you know the contours. And so, your instinct is going to be to try and control it. Do the opposite. Just give in to what--and, that doesn't mean you have to change your mind. It doesn't mean you have to agree with the other person, but let the other person have their say in the way they want to have it, and they will be more willing to listen to you have you say in the way you want it.
And, it's kind of magical, right? It is such a small shift. And, it used to be that, I think, particularly in the United States, but around the world, we used to teach communication in schools; and we would teach that the goal of communication is not convincing someone else you're right. The goal of communication is simply understanding what they're trying to say.
America used to be filled with these reading circles where basically people would debate ideas. America, in many ways, was born in conversation. The Constitutional Convention was people who hate each other coming together and having conversations until they forged a constitution.
But, I think what's profound about that is that in today's world, we sometimes forget that the goal is understanding. We think the goal is winning. Certainly, on Twitter, that's true.
And, yet, if we change our mindset and we say: Look, my only job here is just to understand what the other person is saying and then help them understand what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling, then suddenly it becomes much easier to just listen. Because, you're not giving anything up.
Russ Roberts: Well, listeners always ask me--encourage me--to have more guests on that I don't agree with. And, I recently had Robert Wright on the program. Many, perhaps, listeners of this conversation will have heard that. And, that was sort of a conversation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but it was more of a debate. He made his points, I made my points. We correspondingly responded to each other. We didn't respond a point at a time. We made long lengthy speeches.
I think it was somewhat interesting. It was a fascinating intellectual challenge. But, it was not a conversation. It was more of a debate.
I don't like debate, generally. I like conversation. And, conversation means trying to understand partly what the other person's thing. And, I'd say it a little differently. I'd say it's trying to learn something. It might be about what you're trying to say. It might be about what I actually believe and where my own shortcomings are.
Debate doesn't let you do that. Debate says: Don't give in, crush them. Don't concede anything. Never admit that you might not be right; and say the cleverest, most difficult thing to respond to. And, I generally don't like that. I don't think it's educational.
And, I think the power of conversation is that it's educational. And that is why--I'm going to turn to looping, now, and listening--I think you mentioned it a few minutes ago. That's why I think listening is so important and looping is an important skill. So, talk about what looping is and how [inaudible 00:25:34] with listening.
Charles Duhigg: Absolutely. Absolutely.
And, I'll mention one thing that--because I think this is a pretty profound distinction that you brought up between debate and conversation. And, the thing about debate--look, there's always a place for debate. Not everything has to be a conversation. When I say to my kids, 'I want to have a conversation about your rooms,' what I'm not really saying is I want to have a conversation about rooms, right? I'm telling them, 'I want you to go clean your rooms.'
But, the thing about a debate is that a debate is designed to convince the audience. It's two ideas being presented side by side so that the audience can determine which one they think is most true.
If a debate is happening without an audience, then it's a missed opportunity because it should be a conversation. Because in a debate, you're not going to convince the other person that you're right. It might be interesting, but a conversation allows us to say. I want you to understand me deeply enough. And this is where looping for understanding comes in.
Russ Roberts: And just one other point: Debate is a form of performance. It can be very entertaining: I say something clever and you have a repost that shoots me down, and you have a fact that I didn't know and I can't answer it. And, it's a duel. It's a form of intellectual fireworks. Sometimes it's fun to watch. It is not a form of human connection, which is what your book emphasizes. For that, you have to have conversation.
So, I could enjoy debating you. There are people I enjoy debating and we spar, and it's like sparring. You beat the other person up or they beat you up. And, my joke with Robert Wright, by the way, afterwards was everybody who agreed with me before this episode is going to say that I was the winner. And, everyone who agreed with you before the episode is going to say, 'Boy, you really showed him.' And then, he said something even cleverer, more interesting. He said this--I think it was all off the air--he said, 'Yeah, and they're going to also say, 'Why did you let him get away with that point? Why didn't you answer that one?'--
Charles Duhigg: Right--
Russ Roberts: 'He was wrong and you let him--.' And, that's about sports. That's about entertainment. But, connecting to another human being requires listening and not just waiting your turn to make your killing point.
Charles Duhigg: Yes.
Russ Roberts: So, now talk about looping. Sorry about that.
Charles Duhigg: No, no, no. I think this is really--and I would love to talk more about it because one of the things I think is interesting is in religious traditions, how much conversation we see and how little debate we see, because the goal is to understand.
But, so, looping for understanding is this technique that is designed to exactly do what you just suggested, which is: Oftentimes, how do we prove to someone that we're actually paying attention rather than waiting our turn to speak? Right? Particularly when we're having a tough conversation, when it's something where everyone's back is up a little bit?
We think that sometimes we can show we're listening by, like, nodding and smiling. But the truth is--and studies after studies show this, including by this guy Michael Yeomans at Imperial University in London--speaking is such a cognitively intensive activity that when we're doing it, we basically don't notice what other people are doing. We're kind of focused on our own words and inside our own head.
And so, somebody could be showing you that they're agreeing with you and you're just going to completely miss it. So, the way that we show we're listening--the way that we prove we're listening--is what we do after someone stops talking.
And, what's particularly important is just these three steps, looping for understanding: You should ask a question--and some questions are more powerful than others, and we can talk about that. Then you should repeat back in your own words what you just heard the person say. And it's important to do it in your own words. Show them you're processing. And then, step number three--and this is the step everyone always forgets--is: Ask if you got it right. Because, what you're doing at that point is you are giving them permission to tell you that you've understood or to correct you if you haven't.
And, if I do that, if I prove to you that I am listening, what study after study shows is that you are going to become more likely to listen to me in return. Even if you don't know what looping is, you're going to use the same technique back on me. And then we're actually listening to each other. Then we know the other person isn't just waiting their turn to talk.
Russ Roberts: And I think two things happen there that are important. One is: I might learn something. But the second is just this human connection that I think is greatly underrated in 2024 in the digital world most of us spend a lot of our time in. Some of my favorite moments in life--I've said this on the program before--were conversations that I didn't expect to get into, often with strangers. And we're going to come to that in a minute--why conversations with strangers can be more powerful than conversations with people that you know better than strangers, your friends, your family, and so on.
But, I think there's a delight in looping and in listening. And it's a gift. It's me saying to you, it's not, 'Oh, now that I've really heard you, now you're going to be more sympathetic to my point of view, and I'll win.' Which is I think what can often happen. It's just simple; it's: 'I'm giving you something: my attention.' And, nodding and smiling is one way; and not talking, that's another way; but showing that I've actually understood you is much more powerful.
Charles Duhigg: Well, and I think that there's a sort of a self-hack that happens here, which is that: sometimes I'm in a conversation and I genuinely do want to listen, but I'm so riled up that I'm already thinking up the counter-arguments in my head. Right? It's so easy to stop listening.
And, the thing that I love about looping for understanding, and again, it's, like,--it becomes totally instinctual; I actually do it all the time now without even thinking about it. But, the thing is that once it's in the back of your head, you're telling yourself, if someone's talking, 'My job is to listen closely enough that I can repeat back what they're saying to me.' And, it's kind of like a self-hack where you're tricking yourself into listening more closely when you want to listen. Because sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's hard to put our own thoughts aside.
And, I think that it does feel wonderful. It feels wonderful to feel, like, we're being heard.
Russ Roberts: You are heard, you are seen. And, it's the equivalent--I never thought about this--it's the equivalent of taking notes, right?
Charles Duhigg: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: Most of us don't take notes unless we're a reporter. We don't take notes on the conversations we have. And, this is a form of note-taking. It's not verbatim, but it's saying: I am sufficiently attuned to you.
In fact, it's really better than taking notes because taking notes requires a whole separate kind of part of your brain. And, I've often wondered whether it's good for students to take notes in a lecture, for example, as opposed to giving the lecture their full attention. But, it's a form of mental note-taking.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And, studies show, again, if you do looping for understanding that you're going to recall more of what's said.
Now, one thing you raised--so I mentioned that the first step of looping is asking these questions, right? Before you repeat back and you ask if you got it right. And, one thing that is important is that some questions are more powerful than others. And, within the psychology literature, these are known as 'deep questions.'
And, a 'deep question'--it sounds more intimidating than it actually is--a deep question is just something that invites the other person to talk about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And, a deep question can be as simple as talking to someone and when they say, 'What do you do for a living?' 'I'm a lawyer.' 'Oh, what made you decide to go to law school? Do you love practicing the law? What's the best case that you ever had?'
Those are pretty easy questions to ask. They don't feel overly intimate or overly intrusive; but all three of them are deep questions because what they're doing is they're asking, what were the values that led you to law school? What are your beliefs that being a lawyer reifies? What are your experiences in trying cases that were meaningful to you?
And, when we ask deep questions, what happens is that people often will share a vulnerability with us. Not a huge vulnerability, right? Not anything that feels uncomfortable to share, but something meaningful about themselves. And, our brains have this instinct towards emotional reciprocity, which is: when someone exposes something vulnerable to us, if we are vulnerable back with them, if we say, 'Oh, the reason I love my job is because of X and Y,' not only do we feel closer to each other: we trust each other more.
It's an almost inborn instinct that when we share, when we reciprocate vulnerabilities, we trust and like the other person more. And, that doesn't mean I'm going to loan you money, but it means I'm going to trust during this conversation that you're listening to me and that you can share things with me that are important.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I want to talk about 'deep questions,' so let's dig in a little bit. I apologize, Charles: I'm going to take probably a little more airtime in this section--
Charles Duhigg: No, I love it--
Russ Roberts: than I might in an average episode because I've spent a lot of time thinking about this enterprise called podcasting, and as, of course, as a form of conversation. So, I appreciate you letting me vent.
Charles Duhigg: No, I love it. And, by way, that was a very supercommunicator move to tell me what kind of conversation you're moving into. I love it.
Russ Roberts: So, when I prepare for an interview, I make a list of questions. And, I never assume I'm going to just go down the questions and just ask them and let the guest respond. I assume we're going to have side-digressions and we'll diverge, and I won't get to some of them, because I try to make sure I have too many, in fact. But, what I find often in my daily life--and I think of myself as an interviewer more than a conversationalist in some settings--but, I meet a stranger, say, and I want to find out about them. So, I ask them questions. I think I tend to do more of the list than the real conversation.
So, I meet someone at a--let's just say at a party. So, I ask a standard set of questions--and I have a long list, so it's not going to be a quick conversation. I have plenty to ask about.
So, I'll say, 'Where are you from?' And, they'll tell me, and if I've lived in that place, I have something to say and I add that in. 'What do you do?' And, they'll tell me, and I'll ask you something about that experience.
But I tend to go down the list mentally without thinking about it, and I don't always ask the deep questions. I think the most valuable thing I got out of your book is the understanding that these smalltalk questions--where are you from, what do you do? How long have you been here in Jerusalem? Where'd you live before? Where were you born? Where'd you grow up? Et cetera, etc. These sort of, they're polite, they're nice, but the idea that you could go deeper without demanding intimacy, without demanding vulnerability by saying, 'Oh, how do you like being a lawyer?' usually isn't in my toolkit. Which is interesting and a failure.
And so, I'm deeply grateful for that because I think those are deep questions. They do allow people to share things. Sometimes they don't want to and they won't, but sometimes they will, and then it allows you as the conversationalist to respond, 'Yeah, I hated being a lawyer, too,' or whatever is the thing that comes up. And, the deep question idea is just--it's deep. Sorry.
Charles Duhigg: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Well, and I should give credit to Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago who has done a lot of the seminal research in this.
And, one of the things that I heard you just say--and tell me if I'm getting this wrong--is that oftentimes--and this happens a lot in conversations--oftentimes that you fall into the role where you are asking questions and the other person is responding. And, that's probably because you're really practiced at asking questions, right? You're really good at it. You have a podcast. And, this dynamic can emerge where, like, I ask a question, you answer, but then you don't ask the question back. And, the nice thing about deep questions is exactly what you just said. A deep question creates a platform for answering the question you just asked, even if the other person doesn't think to ask it.
So, if you share something meaningful about yourself--'I hate being a lawyer because of X'--then it's so easy for me to say, 'Oh, I hated being a lawyer, too,' and essentially answering the same question that I just asked you. But it doesn't feel like I was just waiting my turn. It's not like, 'Where did you go on vacation?' because I really want to tell you where I went on vacation. Right.
But, a deep question--we tend to ask questions about facts, and those tend to be conversational dead ends. But, if we ask questions about 'What do you make of that?'; if we ask questions about 'Why is this important to you? What was your experience around it?' then, when they answer, we can also answer that same question, and it feels very natural. And, that's when the conversations start. That's what allows you to go back and forth and really get into a conversation.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. One of the stranger moments for me in a conversation is when I ask somebody something and in my head I say, 'Your turn,' and they don't. They don't play. Either they're not interested in you or they're uncomfortable. And so, I just ask another question. I've got plenty.
But, you're right: sometimes you can volunteer your own answer.
But, in some settings, it's awkward. Like, the vacation one is a good one just because there's so little at stake at it. And I can reveal that in our conversation, Charles. Sometimes I say, 'Where are you going on vacation this summer?' And, they tell me. And then they don't ask me about my vacation. It feels weird to say, 'Well, I'm going to--wherever.' And so, a lot of times I'll just ask another question: 'Where'd you go last year?' Or, 'Have you been there before?' Or, 'What's your favorite thing that you did there?' Or, 'What's a highlight?' Some people don't converse well.
Charles Duhigg: I think that's right. I mean, some people just haven't thought about--again, as I mentioned: kind of, the difference between supercommunicators is they've often just thought, like, half-an-inch more about communication, and they're usually showing us that they want to connect with us, which is an important part of that. And, some people just haven't thought about it.
Now, what I would say is that if you say, 'Where'd you go on vacation and they answer and they don't--and it feels awkward to respond--it's probably because you were, again, asking about a fact. But, that next question you asked, 'What do you like about that place?'--when they answer that question, it's much more natural for you to say, like, 'Oh, yeah, no, I've been to Hawaii, too. I thought Maui was amazing, wasn't it? I had such a great time there, and I'm so sad that what happened with Lahaina.'
So, when we ask a 'deep question,' the response that people give us usually tees-up us to answer that same question. And, again, it's because of this emotional reciprocity, is that if I ask you about a fact--you're exactly right--and you answer the fact question, it feels weird for me to answer the question I just asked because there is really no factual reciprocity expectation in human communication. But, if I ask you something about a deep question and you respond with something that reflects how you feel about the world, reciprocity actually dictates that I should do the same thing. And so, it feels very natural to react that way.
Russ Roberts: Well, we're going to talk some more about deep questions, but I want to derail you for a second and digress and ask you a meta-question about supercommunicators.
One of the supercommunicators I know, that when you asked me if I knew one, he and I talk a lot about human interaction, communication. And he's more, I think even more of a student of it than I am. I do pay attention, but I think for him, it's a form of entertainment. And potentially it's a form of disengagement. Because I wonder if, for him, he sometimes rises above the conversation--mentally, not physically--mentally, and is looking down on it going, 'Well, this is hilarious. This is going really badly.' And he knows why. Or, 'It's going really well and I'm getting what I need out of this,' and so on.
And, I think there's a huge challenge, which--this is one of my challenges to your book--spontaneity.
Doing these things naturally is very important. And, I think if you do it too thoughtfully, you are going to fail. And so, I think there's an art to making these habits, habits rather than strategies. So, that's one criticism I would have of your book. Respond to it.
Charles Duhigg: No, I think it's a great point. And it's important to create a distinction here, which is: when are we thinking about communicating?
So, oftentimes when I say this, people think, 'Oh, in the conversation, I ought to be thinking about how this conversation is functioning.' And, that's not right. Actually, that's when your instincts take over--these instincts that evolution has honed so well. And, in many ways, the point of Supercommunicators is to teach you how to listen more closely to your instincts.
The thinking happens before you speak and after you speak; or before the conversation and after the conversation.
To your point you raised about, you write up a bunch of questions for each interview and you don't use all of them. There was a study done by these professors from Harvard Business School where they had all these students write down three topics. They said, 'Look, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger'--this, of course, is completely-anxiety producing for most people--'Write down three topics that you're going to discuss.' It took, like, 10 seconds. It was, like, things like: The TV show I saw last night; and the game this weekend.
And then they said, 'Okay, now put that piece of paper in your pocket and go have these conversations.'
And, what they found was two things. Number One: people inevitably almost never discussed the topics they had written down. Number Two, the conversations went much, much better because people were much, much less anxious.
But, the point here is: The work was not done in the conversation. The work was done before the conversation. Just 10 seconds of work.
And, to your point, my guess is that for that friend that you're mentioning, most of the time, they are completely in that conversation. They are in the moment. The same way that even though you wrote down 30 questions for this conversation, we've only gotten to five of them, you're in the moment in this discussion. But, it's the preparation before and after that allows you to be in the moment. Right? That the prepared mind is--what is it, that luck comes to the prepared mind. That, when I say we should think more about communication, I don't mean we should think in the conversation. I mean, we should do things like read books or reflect back on conversations and think about, 'Oh, here's a technique I should practice until it becomes automatic.'
Russ Roberts: So, I want to go deeper into 'deep questions.' And I'm going to ask you some, and then you can respond if you want. It's up to you, and ask me some.
But, one aspect we haven't talked enough about is vulnerability. We alluded to it, and it's something I think about a lot, and you write about a lot. And, the power of deep questions is, I think, as defined deep--not meaning what's the meaning of life, but deep, meaning getting at things that are below the surface is to create vulnerability--is to make vulnerability possible. And, that creates that connection that I think is so powerfully human.
And, I want to go back to this chitchat with a stranger. You know, I say, 'Where are you from?' I've lived in a zillion places, so usually I can say something about where they were from, but let's say I don't.
And then, I say, 'What do you do?' And then they tell me, and I'm thinking, 'Well, that's not interesting. I don't have a single thing to say about it.' And, that's the wrong model. The right model, which I think you've taught me, is 'Well, how do you feel about that?' And, 'Tell me more about it,' and 'Tell me what you like and don't like about it.' And, that allows that person to share things that might be very powerful even though the actual job description is not something that interests me or that I have any thoughts on, but I will have thoughts, perhaps, on what they share when I ask a deep question. And, I think that's really very cool.
Charles Duhigg: That's exactly [?]. And, one of the things that I think you just teased out is everyone is a fascinating expert in themselves. And, if I can get you talking about yourself, it's going to be an interesting conversation. And, you're exactly right, that vulnerability is part of that.
Now, I think people sometimes misunderstand vulnerability because they think that it means that you have to expose something that could be used against you. But, if I ask you, 'What do you love most about Jerusalem?' and, you answer that question, that's actually exposing a vulnerability to me, because it's something I could judge. Right? You say, like, 'Oh, I love the people and I love the food.' And, in a terrible world, I could be, like, 'I've been to Jerusalem, and those people are terrible. They're so mean. It's horrible. And, a falafel who--likes falafel.' Right?
So, by stating a preference, by stating a value or a belief or describing an experience and why it was meaningful to us, we are actually exposing a vulnerability.
Now, we might not care what the other person thinks. We might not care that they disagree with us or think that it matters at all, or you don't care what my opinion on Jerusalem is because you live there and I don't. But, it's the act of exposing that vulnerability that, if I reciprocate it, if I say, 'Oh, it's interesting you mentioned that about the people because I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the thing I loved most about it was the people.' Or if I just say, 'I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the people weren't what I loved, but I loved the landscape.' Now, I'm also exposing a vulnerability to you.
Again, I don't care if you would take advantage of that vulnerability or your judgment, but the fact that I allow you to judge me means that we feel closer to each other. It creates trust between us when we don't abuse it. And, there's a part of our brain that's really well-designed to be on the guard for betrayal. And, when someone exposes a vulnerability and we don't match it, it feels like a betrayal and it feels alienating.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's like going skinny-dipping by yourself with somebody else.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Russ Roberts: It's different than two people skinny-dipping.
Charles Duhigg: Yes, it's better the second way.
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: I'm going to tell you what I like about Jerusalem, by the way. I'm going to tell you the first thing that came into my mind. I'm going to let you respond to it. Because it's funny--it's a small thing, and I don't think about it as a vulnerability, but it could be, you're right. I like the color of the sky on Friday afternoon as the Sabbath's about to arrive. The city slows down. It gets quieter, and the sky turns this particular color of sort of a pink blue wash, and you can't quite see where the blue and the pinks start and end. And I feel serenity. And, when I share that--I never thought about it--is that really a vulnerable? Am I really making myself vulnerable for telling you that? But you could respond, 'Well, that's kind of a petty thing. That's what you like?' It's not the only thing I like about Jerusalem, but it's the first thing that came to mind. You can react to that.
Charles Duhigg: Or I could bring up Gaza--right?--and say, like, 'Oh, it's so nice you like that, I guess.'
But, what's really interesting about what you just said is that if I engage with it--well, first of all, you just told me so much about yourself, not just about why you like Jerusalem. You told me that you have this appreciation for aesthetics and beauty, that serenity is something that's important to you. And, the fact that you mentioned that this happens during Shabbas, before, suggests to me that a connection with the spiritual is important to you. You've told me so much about yourself.
Now, if I heard you say that, what I could say is, I could say: In Albuquerque, we had these beautiful skies. I could also say: I used to live in Egypt, and the thing that I loved about Fridays in Egypt, it was exactly what you just said, was that everyone would go to mosque on Friday. This whole city, which is this crazy chaotic city, would shut down, and then the smog would stop, and you would just hear these birds along the Nile. It was magical. It's like the things that people have been listening to for thousands and thousands of thousands of years. Our ancestors heard those same birds.
And, I think that it's a moment of connection that we both--what we're really saying to each other is: here's some things that we share. We share this love of nature and our connection with a place that we're in, and we both care deeply about where we are, and we try and find the positive aspects of it. Because I know life in Jerusalem is tough. Life in Cairo is tough, but the thing that you mentioned is this wonderful, sublime moment.
Now, I've spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, and I love Jerusalem, and I love being in Israel. But, let's say I never had, which many people in Cairo never have. Just the fact that we both can share that we've had a similar experience in completely different places, that's meaningful, that allows us to connect.
Russ Roberts: And, we all get to enjoy that sunset, by the way.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: It's not personal to me. It's not like, 'Oh, I had a great plate of falafel, and the people who go to that restaurant know that it's really good.' There's something really beautiful about that. And I didn't mention that silhouetted against that sky in my mind is a palm tree. There are a lot of palm trees in Jerusalem, which you wouldn't necessarily think you'd associate Jerusalem with palm trees. But, it turns out, out my window in my living room facing west is--excuse me, facing east. So, I'm not getting the literal sunset, I'm getting where the sun is no longer at, is this wash, and there's a palm tree silhouetted against it, which is also a beautiful thing.
Charles Duhigg: It's beautiful.
Russ Roberts: I'll say one other thing. When you said Gaza, in your attempt to be witty, Charles, I had a stab of anxiety. It's like, 'Oh, am I going to have to talk about that?' And, I have to figure out how I'm going to say it, and it's intense. And, I'm just talking about a sunset, and you're bringing up Gaza?
Charles Duhigg: Exactly.
Russ Roberts: Just interesting, right?
Charles Duhigg: That's that vulnerability. And, again, you don't care really what I think, but just the fact that I brought up this topic that is so antithetical to what you're describing to me, to the beauty of this moment, it causes that stab of anxiety because what you brought up is vulnerable. It's vulnerable in a very small way, but that vulnerability is still real. And, it might be useful to talk about what's happening in our brains when we're having that conversation.
Russ Roberts: I love the Cairo story.
Charles Duhigg: Oh, thank you.
Russ Roberts: Even if it's not true. I assume it's true.
Charles Duhigg: It's a hundred percent true. It's a hundred percent true. My wife and I lived in the Middle East for a number of years, and I will actually say we would escape to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Cairo because it was, like, 'Oh, it just felt so good to get out of the traffic in Cairo.' When Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is your luxury getaway, you know that you're living in a tough place.
Russ Roberts: Especially on the traffic front. Traffic is pretty bad here at times.
Russ Roberts: I want to continue with the vulnerability issue because I think, as I mentioned, I think many of the best conversations--more than best conversations--many of my favorite moments in my life were conversations with strangers.
And, I hadn't thought about it until I read your book and until we're talking now, they were about people sharing things that are very personal, unbelievable moments. I'd like to talk about them, but I'm not going to because I don't want to try to think about what the person told me that I shouldn't repeat or not.
But, that's why they're special, is because of the vulnerability. And, when you've tasted that, you'd like more of it. And, one way you might, and I put the emphasis on might, do--get more, have more real conversations as opposed to empty chitchat is to, first of all, ask those deep questions.
But, as you point out in the book, a lot of the moments in people's lives when they have these vulnerable, deep, connecting conversations are very artificial. They're in lab experiments or a workshop at work where you've got to interact with a colleague like a ropes thing, and now you got to talk about your childhood and you reveal stuff, and then you get closer.
And, it could sometime actually work, but it's very hard to replicate that in everyday life, and I think--as opposed to in the study or in the experiment or the workshop. And, one of the sort of in-between ways is this idea, which I'm intrigued by, of the 36 Questions that lead to love. So, tell our listeners what that is; and then I thought we'd ask ourselves a few of them and see where we go.
Charles Duhigg: I love it. I love it. This is a wonderful idea.
So, there's this couple, they're married, who are researchers, psychology researchers, Arthur and Elaine Aron. And, they were trying to figure out, basically they wanted to find a way-- a technique--that could encourage strangers to become friends.
And so, what they did is they set up a room and they would bring two strangers in together, and they gave them a bunch of questions to ask each other. And, eventually, they settled on 36 of the best questions. But, what would happen is they would say: Okay, ask each other these questions and then answer back and forth. I ask you, and then you ask me, and we go through all 36. It usually took about 60 minutes--or actually about 45 minutes, but sometimes it went to 60. And then, they would go ahead and watch the conversation and they would say, 'Thank you so much. You're free to go home.'
And, everybody who participated thought that was the experiment. But it's what happened next that was important. Seven weeks later, the Arons hunted down everyone who had participated in that. And, this is pre-Internet, right? This is during a time when finding other people is really hard because you have to, like, look them up in the phone book. There's no Facebook. So, they hunt down everyone who had participated and they asked them, 'Did you go hunt down the person you did that conversation with?' And, 70% of the people who had participated found the other person somehow, after the experiment. Sometimes they would wander through dorms looking for them. Sometimes--because they weren't all students--sometimes they would call the 12 people with a similar name in the phone book until they got the right one.
One of them ended up getting married. One of the couples, one of the pairs who had met each other this way got married.
And this became known as the Fast Friends Protocol. And, it's been fairly influential in psychology. And, as you mentioned, leads to these articles like "The 36 Questions That Lead to Love." And, what I love about this procedure, the Fast Friends Procedure, is that some of the questions are crazy. Some of the questions are questions you would never ask someone at a party. Like, when's the last time you cried in front of another person? That's a tough question to ask. But, a lot of them--and again, they had to experiment to figure out which questions worked--a lot of them are things that are deep without appearing deep.
Like, if you could have a dinner party with anyone from history, who would you invite? It turns out that's an enormously revealing question. I can tell you so much about myself by mentioning the three people I would invite. Because the difference between saying I would invite Winston Churchill versus I would invite Barack Obama versus I would invite Jesus, that tells me so much about that person. And, that's kind of why I love this experiment.
Russ Roberts: So, let's take a crack at it.
Charles Duhigg: Okay.
Russ Roberts: The first question--there are 36 of them in the article. It's a website; it's easy to find. Just Google '36 Questions that Lead to Love.' We'll put a link to it. Some of them, I'm sure, get more and more personal. I didn't even go past the first five because I thought they were great and we'd have a good conversation about the first five; and I want to try to do that in the time that we have left. We'll see where we are.
If you could invite anyone to dinner--and I want to do living people--
Charles Duhigg: Okay.
Russ Roberts: And, you might want to think about it for a minute. If you could invite anyone to dinner, who would it be? It's the first question.
Charles Duhigg: And, let me mention, one thing that is important about these is that it's back and forth. So, they've done the same experiment where someone answers all 36 questions in a row and someone else listens, and then the next person answers all 36 questions in a row, and people do not feel closer afterwards. It's all about the back and forth. Okay, so I'm going to answer the question, then I'm going to ask you to answer it as well.
So, definitely Barack Obama would be on that list, right? I would have him up there. Alive, people who are alive. It's such a good question because I actually don't know. I don't know. Oh, Jennifer Egan, who's an author who I just love her work so much, and probably George Saunders, who's also an author whose work I love. So, it'd be a weird conversation.
Russ Roberts: I'm a big fan of George Saunders.
Charles Duhigg: Oh, are you?
Russ Roberts: "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" is, I think, a masterpiece. I want to recommend that to listeners. He would be a great dinner companion.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah, actually, I've had dinner with him and he is wonderful. He is just such a fantastic person. Okay, so now you have to tell me who are your three.
Russ Roberts: So, one of the reasons I didn't want to do this--I had second thoughts--is I don't know, who am I going to say for this? I've had dinner with many people I'd like to have dinner with. I've been blessed. And, I've also, it's another way--it's not just dinner--conversations. I've talked to many of my idols. I've been lucky in this program, but I realize there's one I haven't spoken to that I really want to get. And, my chances of getting him went from zero to 1% in the last month. And, that's Bill Belichick. I would really like to pick Bill Belichick's brain. I've written about him. He's an economics major--undergrad. I want to know how much that influenced his thinking as a coach. And, he's now unemployed. Usually you just say his job is 365 days a year. But, hey, now, I got a shot. So, listeners, anybody out there knows Bill, please put us in touch.
Charles Duhigg: Can I ask something? Have you emailed him just to say, like, 'Hey, I'd love to have a conversation with you'?
Russ Roberts: I've not emailed him directly in a long time. I may have emailed him a long time ago and I had something I thought he would be interested in, and I think I probably didn't have his email. That's the bigger problem. I don't know where to start. I would email him in a second because the other one would be, the three guests I'd like to have that I've never had who have not said no to me. So, they're still plausible guests: Bill Belichick, Tom Stoppard, the playwright, and Mark Knopfler, the guitarist. And, I've made some attempts at reaching the last two, not successfully, but if they're listening and they'd like to be on the program, please write me at mail@econtalk.org.
Okay, we're going to go onto the second one.
Charles Duhigg: Okay. I love it.
Russ Roberts: Unless you want to ask a follow-up.
Charles Duhigg: No, no, no. No. This is great.
Russ Roberts: Would you like to be famous? In what way?
Charles Duhigg: Oh, I'm very curious how you answer this question. I would like to be moderately famous. In fact, my wife, sometimes her coworkers are, like, 'Oh, your husband, he's well-known.' And, she says, 'Yes. He is moderately famous among a very small group of people.' So, I know people who are famous. I know people who are genuinely famous. Their names are recognized; and there is definitely a burden associated with that. It makes you less trusting of other people. But, on the other hand, the thing about fame that I have found, even a limited fame, is that it just opens up so many opportunities. It's a form of influence and of access that can be really, really rewarding. And so, there's a degree of fame that I really enjoy. And then, if it ever got to be too much where it burdened my children, then it would be too much. What about you?
Russ Roberts: So, I feel very similar. This is a good matching exercise for us. I am moderately famous among a small group of people. I'm sure when I was younger, I wanted to be more famous. I'm glad I'm not. There's a great essay by Tim Ferris on the cost of fame, which we'll link to, that is hair-raising. It is spectacular.
And, a handful of times in my life, someone has asked me if I'm Russ Roberts because they heard my voice and they recognize--they're EconTalk listeners. And that's a thrill. I get tremendous, irrational amount of pleasure from that. And, it's a handful. It doesn't happen very often, but it makes my heart sing, which is somewhat embarrassing. This is a vulnerable admission because it's a weird thing to get pleasure from. But, I'm glad we have listeners who care, who pay attention.
Charles Duhigg: Can I ask you a follow up-question?
Russ Roberts: Yeah.
Charles Duhigg: And, one thing I want to point out that's happening right now, which for listeners, hopefully this is true, is that that as you and I are discussing this, we're becoming neurally synchronized, right? In fact, we've been neurally synchronized for a while. And, although we can't tell our eyes are dilating at similar rates and our breath patterns are probably matching each other, even though we're separated by thousands of miles and our thinking is becoming very alike, the listeners' thinking is also becoming alike. As we're asking and answering these questions, they're probably answering the same question for themselves inside their own head. And, this is an interesting thing about conversations is that sometimes just listening to a conversation allows you to participate in the conversation, even though we can't hear what you're saying. And, that's really powerful.
So, here's my follow-up question, and this is actually even a more vulnerable one. If you could choose between being rich or being famous, which one would you choose?
Russ Roberts: Well, neither appeals to me. Now. It would have--again, when I was younger, both would have probably appealed to me and it would be a dilemma. Neither is of any--I'm financially comfortable. I'm rich by many people's standards and not at all by others, which is the nature of money. And, as you say, I'm famous among a small group of people.
The reason I'm laughing at this is that my dad never liked Woody Allen. And, one day somebody asked my dad who Woody Allen was, or some Woody Allen reference came up, and they said, 'Oh, is he famous?' And, my dad would say, 'Among a small group of people in the New York area.' Which was not true; but that was what he thought he deserved. And, I'm sorry if Woody Allen is listening. He'd be fun to interview, too, by the way. Maybe even more fun to have dinner with.
So, that doesn't appeal to me. Does that appeal to you? What would you pick? Obviously, it's really embarrassing because you think it's a question.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. So--and, I will say, I have been poor. I've been very, very poor--like, poor enough that I once started a company, before I became a journalist, I started a company and there were periods when I would sell blood to make payroll, and it gave me a very, very deep appreciation for having money. Like, I think that--
Russ Roberts: Fair enough--
Charles Duhigg: And so, I've actually really enjoyed having money, to be honest. Like, before I wrote The Power of Habit, which is the first book I wrote, I didn't have any. Like, I was a journalist. I'd gone to Harvard Business School; I was the lowest paid member of my class. And my wife and I were pregnant, and I had $40,000 in savings--like, from saving for a decade. And, in New York City, you can't live like--there's no way we would ever be able to buy a house. And so, that's one of the reasons I decided to write a book, was because I needed to earn some money.
And, I will be honest with you--and it's not like we're fantastically rich or anything like that--it is such a source of comfort for me not to worry about money every night. And, there were periods in my life when I did. So, I think, like, from a happiness place, if I had to choose between famous and rich--and again, like you, I probably wouldn't choose either--but if I had to choose, from a happiness perspective I'd probably say fame because it gives you this access, but from a--being able to sleep at night is such a gift, I think it'd be money.
Russ Roberts: So that's one of the weird things about having these 36 Questions with each other, is that there are a lot of people listening. And, it's fun to say, 'Oh, rich and famous, neither one appeals to me.' I guess when I think about it more honestly, I'd pick rich. Okay. There are things that if I had to be twice as rich or twice as famous, I'd pick twice as rich. Not so much for the security, but for the things it would let me do. And, the things that fame gives you, I think are mostly creepy and can corrode your soul if you're not careful. And so can money, I guess.
Charles Duhigg: And this is an interesting thing that you just mentioned, that it's a little weird doing this in front of all these other people. Right? And so, our instinct is to say, 'I don't want to be rich or famous.'
But, what we do know is that the people listening, when we are vulnerable, they probably like and trust us more.
And, I'm going to ask the listeners out there--who we can't talk to right now, but please email us and tell us if we're getting this wrong or right--that by being honest and vulnerable, we probably engender more admiration than what would be the admirable thing to say, which is, like, 'Oh, money and fame, I don't care about either of them.' Right? And, I think that this gets to what we were talking about: that vulnerability is just really powerful because it helps us connect with other people. [More to come, 1:09:56]
Russ Roberts: Were you making fun of me when you said--
Charles Duhigg: I was not. I was not.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think you were. Okay. I'm just kidding. Let's move on.
I know you have a hard stop coming up, so I want to make sure I get some of the good questions. So, I'm skipping one, which is before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? And, I'd say, when I was younger all the time; if it was calling a woman, absolutely. And, other than that, pretty much not. And, you can answer that quickly if you want. You want to answer that quickly?
Charles Duhigg: I do it all the time. I do it literally all the time.
Russ Roberts: Why?
Charles Duhigg: Because oftentimes I am doing these interviews and I'm, like, 'Oh my God, I get one chance to get this person to tell me something interesting.' So I practice a lot.
Russ Roberts: Well, that's the equivalent of: when I used to, at the start of this program, I would ad-lib the introduction. And they're horrible. And, I realized fairly early on that people stopped listening and switch the channel--go to listen to some other podcast. So, I script those. I read them. And sometimes they're long. So, I guess that's the equivalent.
Russ Roberts: Okay. What would constitute a perfect day for you?
Charles Duhigg: Oh, man. So, okay. I actually feel like I've had a lot of them recently. It would be with my family. Right? Maybe I would talk to a friend on the phone, but I would spend most of my time with my wife and my two kids. Maybe we'd go surfing, because my wife and I love surfing. We live in Santa Cruz, California, in part because we can surf here. And it would probably involve at least one really good meal that was also healthy. And then, I would be asleep by 9:30 and sleep through the whole night. And I'd get to read. What about you? What's your perfect day?
Russ Roberts: Well, the one that would come to mind--and what's interesting about this is that I think we have some illusions about our perfect day that when we actually have them, maybe they don't seem so perfect--but the first one that comes to mind is I'm sitting in a beach chair at Cape Cod or maybe in a part of California I'm not going to name because I don't want anybody else to go there beside me. Sorry, it's not crowded, and I love that. And, I'm reading with sunglasses because it's too bright. Sun's out, and I'm listening to the waves. And, I'm not swimming, by the way. My wife's swimming. She's having a great time. She's taking a: 'Do you want to take a walk on the beach?' 'No, I'm good.' I'll just sit in the chair and read a little bit. And, she takes a 12-mile walk or a 40 mile, she walks out of sight. She does come back, thank God. And, I'm still reading, and that's close.
But, the second is--which is really embarrassing and weird--is I had something close to a perfect morning this past Friday. My granddaughter was with us. She's a year and a half, as I said, and she was just wandering around. She's playing with some things. I got some pictures of her. I got some good news about something for my college, Shalem College. I got an interesting opportunity. I had an idea. And I realized: I'm having a Faustian moment. Now, Faust says to the devil, or the devil says to Faust: If you could--if you have to give me your soul, says the devil--if I can create a moment for you that you wish would last forever. And, I actually had a taste, I've had a few of those in my life. Many, if you're lucky, you have more than one, but this was one of them. It was sublime. And grandparenting is way underrated. I am shocked at how exhilarating it is.
Charles Duhigg: I cannot wait. I have to say as a parent, which I love, grandparenting seems amazing.
So, what I love about what you just said, and tell me if you think I misheard this, is that you mentioned, so the sublime moment. And, when that happens, and particularly when we allow ourselves to enjoy it, when we have the presence of mind to allow ourselves to say, like, this is a special moment and just enjoy it.
What you mentioned were these things that all have to do with connecting with other people. You are connecting with your granddaughter and getting to know her. You got some good news for your school, which probably is meaningful to you because it's going to help other people because you can think about those students who are going to benefit from it.
And, there's a lot of research to show this. You know, we talked about the importance of connection. But from a neurological perspective, but it's also from a psychological perspective--there was this, and I'm sure you're familiar with this--the Adult Study of Human and Happiness, which is one of the largest longitudinal studies, and that's like the fourth or fifth name it's ever been given. It actually started as the Grant Study. It was funded by a guy named Grant.
Russ Roberts: You write about it in the book.
Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And, there's some stuff about it in the book.
And, what's interesting is: it's been going on for almost a hundred years. They've been following thousands of people trying to figure out what causes longevity, happiness, and success. And, the only thing that they have found as a reliable predictor is that if you have a sufficient number of deep, meaningful connections at age 45, you'll be happy, healthy, and successful at 65. And, it doesn't have to be a huge number. Right? The number is different from person to person. But they have to be real connections. Because it is in connecting to other people that we tend to find what feels like happiness or what feels like the sublime or what feels like awe.
And, the fact that you mentioned, like this, something good for your school was so meaningful is really powerful to me because it suggests that, like, you feel this connection to all these students, some of whom you haven't even met, but you know that their lives will be better because this thing came through.
And, the more that we invest in that, the more that we--and the way that we create those connections is usually through conversation. It's through calling up a friend and having a phone conversation. It's by going to lunch with someone. It's by telling your colleague, like, we got this grant and it's going to really help people out.
We form connections through language, through conversation. And, that's why I think, like, Supercommunicators, that's why I wrote the book, is because all you have to do is think just half an inch deeper about these conversations work and they can get so much better. And, when they do, it can bring awe into our life. Which is amazing.
Russ Roberts: And, I think that Friday morning, my wife and I were interacting in a very natural, casual way. She maybe made something, an egg, for the granddaughter, and it was blissful in a way that is not what we would normally think of as bliss. And, I think some of it is literally a chemical reaction to seeing my granddaughter. When I see her smile, I sometimes notice how happy I am, which is fascinating to me. If you said, does it make you happy? I'd say, 'Well, yeah, I guess.' But, something physical, something dopaminical, something's going on there.
However, just to disillusion you a little bit, I think the school thing is mostly my ego, but I appreciate that and I do care, I do care deeply about my students.
And, it's January 29th. Yesterday was the first day of class. We've been out of school for three months because of the war, and it's incredibly emotional. And, we could go for an hour about what that's like and that roller coaster and having them back in the building. I'd say one thing, I saw a student today, I said, 'Are you're glad classes has started again?' And, she's Israeli, English is not her native language. She said, 'Wow. Yes.' I thought that sums it up, baby. That's perfect.
Charles Duhigg: And, I'm so sorry. It hadn't even occurred to me what it must be like for professors to have your campuses closed and to see your students being put as reservists or as enlisted.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Sixty percent of our students are in the army, until recently.
Charles Duhigg: That must just be so--I imagine it's challenging.
Russ Roberts: It's intense. It's intense.
Russ Roberts: I want to get one last question in--
Charles Duhigg: Sure--
Russ Roberts: which I was fascinated by as one of the questions. I'm skipping: When did you last sing to yourself? I don't know, yesterday. To someone else, yesterday, today. I sing a lot. You? Do you sing?
Charles Duhigg: In my head, not out loud because people have told me I shouldn't.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, that's not fair. It's an unfair question. I guess you'll learn something about the other person, maybe important.
But the one I--the next one is a later one I stumbled on it that was so fascinating. It ties into a recent episode with Brian Klaas. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
Charles Duhigg: Oh, that's a good one. That's a really good one. And, I'm curious what it is for you, too.
I would say--so as I mentioned, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I live in Santa Cruz now, but we moved here from Brooklyn, New York, and we were raising our kids in New York. And, the only thing I would change is if I could have grown up in New York, I think it would have been amazing. I was so bored in Albuquerque; and it was good that I was bored. But, like, there's so much for a smart kid and a curious kid to do in New York City, and I feel like I'm just so glad we gave that to our children for a little while. How about you?
Russ Roberts: I wouldn't change a thing and here's why. In the course--I bet you many times, in this program--I did for three years, consecutive years, I did a five-day silent meditation retreat. And, one of the things--I've never been in therapy, and so I'd never meditated before, either. And, one of the things that forced me to do was to confront some of the aspects of my personality that I was not aware of and where they came from and--the way you would, I think, in a serious therapeutic experience.
Since a 100,000-plus people are listening, I'm not going to tell you what the exact thing was, but I noticed--but, I might tell you, Charles, when we go for a drink in Cairo--one of the things I learned is that: Oh, that character trait I have, which I don't really love, my parents gave me that because of the way we interacted when I was in their home. And, a part of me says, 'I wish they hadn't done that.' But, the other part of me says, 'Good things came from that, not just bad things. And, if they hadn't done that, I wouldn't be me.' And, this is this idea that I learned from Brian Klaas about amor fati, of loving one's fate. And, I like my fate, so I wouldn't change it.
The things I don't like about it, that's a different, I guess, way to answer the question. Maybe a little more. What are the things about the way you were raised that you think were unpleasant? That might be a better question for me, but in a way, answering it. Nothing is sort of a cheap trick, but that's my thought.
Charles Duhigg: But, I think it's true and it's vulnerable. I think that anytime we say something true, we actually reveal more of ourselves, even if the answer doesn't seem like the answer. I was talking to someone the other day, who is a podcaster, and I asked them, what have you learned about communication since you became a podcaster? And, their answer was: 'Actually, nothing.' And, they were like, 'I'm sorry to not have a good answer for you because I don't.' But, actually, I learned so much about this person from them telling me that they were a good communicator before they did. Right? Like, I learned so much about their childhood. And, he actually said, he was, like, 'I've always been skilled at talking to girls.' And I was, like, 'Oh my God. If I could say that my whole life would be different.' But, I think that when we say something honest, even if it's not what the other person expects, even if it's sometimes not pretty, it is connection and it is real. And, that's kind of the goal, I think.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Charles Duhigg. His book is Supercommunicators. Charles, thanks for being part of EconTalk and thanks for connecting.
Charles Duhigg: Thanks for having me on.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 24, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 24th, 2024. My guest is journalist and author Robert Wright. He's the founder and chief correspondent of the Nonzero Newsletter and Nonzero Podcast, available on Substack.
He was last here on EconTalk in October 2017, discussing meditation and Buddhism, but we have a very different topic today and an unusual setup. Bob had invited me to his podcast to discuss the Gaza War and the Arab-Israeli conflict more generally. And, he invited me because he knows that we do not agree on these topics, and he thought, and I agreed, it would be wonderful to have a thoughtful conversation on a controversial topic. And in particular to try to understand ideally why two thoughtful--we think--smart--maybe--people could have different perspectives.
This conversation will air on both of our platforms.
Bob, welcome back to EconTalk.
Robert Wright: Thanks. Good to be here.
Robert Wright: So, Russ, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because we do have, I think, different perspectives on the subject. For starters, you're Jewish, you're Israeli, you're in Israel. I'm none of the above. I think we also have ideological differences that may become apparent in the course of this. I should say you're also an American citizen. In fact, you spent most of your life in America, but you've been in Israel a few years now.
And, we've agreed that this is going to be a departure from both our formats in the sense that we'll be kind of interviewing each other. That's also known as a conversation, I guess.
You suggested I ask the first question, so I'm going to do that. And, it has to do with a question some Americans are asking about what's going on in the mind of Israelis. I actually heard an extreme version of this last night in talking to a young Progressive, and I do think this is a question that's more on the mind of people Left of center in America. What he said was, 'I think the Israelis have lost their minds.'
Let me put that--before I ask you to respond, let me put it in slightly less confrontational terms and also set the context with some numbers.
So, as a lot of people know by now, on October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel; killed, I guess, more than 1100 people, nearly 800 of those civilians.
President Biden early on, putting that in context, noted Israel is a smaller country than America, and if you correct for population--which of course, it's a crude exercise, but a kind of useful one--that would be like more than 40,000 Americans being killed. The civilians alone, I guess would be like 30,000. So, again, to put it in crude terms, like ten 9/11s or something--leaving aside the qualitative difference in the nature of the attack.
So, since then, of course, Israel has launched an attack or counter-attack on Gaza. And the numbers we have--I've heard you express some doubt about these numbers--I've heard that American intelligence in the State Department thinks they're solid. I haven't heard Israeli intelligence--reports of Israeli intelligence--disputing them, but if you want to talk about this later, we can. But, anyway, the official numbers are: 25,000 Gazans dead. Israel says 9,000 of those are militants. Now, historically, militaries have always erred on the high side in assessing enemy casualties. But, even if we accept those, that leaves 16,000 dead civilians in Gaza.
If you do the same crude-but-useful kind of conversion correcting for population, you get the equivalent of 3.6 million Americans dying, 2.3 million civilians.
So, if you look at civilians alone in Gaza, you would say that that's like 770 9/11s or something--eight 9/11s every day since October 7th, or nine, or whatever the number turns out to be.
So, again, in both cases, I think you can only go so far with this kind of comparison. I would say in both cases, if you look at the qualitative dimension, it is worse than 9/11. So, people should add that to that.
But anyway, so the question that a lot of people on the Left are asking--there's actually two questions, I would say, about the way Israelis are processing this. There's surprise expressed by some people that we're not hearing more Israelis saying, 'Wait a second, my moral qualms about what we're doing to civilians in Gaza have gotten to a point where I just think we should stop.' My sense is that there's still overwhelming support for the military operation in Gaza.
And then, there's a different version of the question--it's actually more like the one I asked--which is about the wisdom of it. Like: You're creating a situation where, if you do the math, hundreds of thousands of Gazans will now be able to say, 'A member of my immediate family--or my best friend, or something--was either killed or maimed as a result of this.' And, that's--out of a population of 2 million people, that's a lot of intense hatred. And, I'm certainly not saying there wasn't hatred already, but the question I ask is, even if you somehow magically eliminated Hamas, killed everyone in Hamas, wouldn't you expect that with that much hatred, that many people, I would say in many cases, willing to die to kill an Israeli in retaliation? Given that kind of trauma. Don't you think you're just planting the seeds for the next Hamas, even if you somehow kind of extinguish the Hamas brand, so to speak?
So, there's a lot there. Take your time. There's a lot of context for you to establish, as well.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. So, the two things that at the heart of your opening question are the moral issue and the strategic issue. And, I'm sure in answering this, I'll get lost and I'll forget one of the two and you'll bring me back. It's 4:30 in the afternoon here. It's 9:30 in the morning where you are. It's been a long day for me. I'm old, Bob--
Robert Wright: We're both old, Russ--
Russ Roberts: I lose my train of thought more than I used to. I'll do the best--
Robert Wright: I'm sorry. I'm not going to let you have that one. But yes, it is later there.
Russ Roberts: I'll do the best I can.
Robert Wright: Later in the day, not later in your life necessarily. But go ahead.
Russ Roberts: What?
Robert Wright: I said, 'Later in the day, not so much later in your life,' I think.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Fair enough.
Robert Wright: Go ahead.
Russ Roberts: So, it's interesting. One of the things that has fascinated me since October 7th--it has fascinated me for a long time, and my listeners will be familiar with it, and we did a recent episode with Hillel Cohen on the historical events of 1929 which has not aired yet; you haven't heard it. But, that conversation focused a great deal on the fact that, inevitably, we all have our narratives; and in having our narratives, we build them from evidence. And, that requires pretty much accepting some things as true and some things as not true. And a thoughtful person should be aware that some of the things that I think are true, for example, are not. And, some of the things I think are not true might be. So, I think that's an important background to this conversation.
One of the reasons that we might differ in our viewpoints is simply because we have different facts. Literally, you've chosen a set to think about. I've chosen a set to think about. And of course, some of my facts aren't facts, and vice versa, probably. And so, I hope in this conversation we'll explore some of the things that we believe that you and I might disagree on whether they're true or not, even. Forget about how we weight them or value them.
So, it's interesting, just from your opening remarks: when I talk about October 7th, I say 1200 people were killed.
I don't make the distinction between civilians and soldiers--which I should. I usually just say 1200 people were killed. I think it's important to make that distinction. The soldiers who were killed on that day were mainly Israeli soldiers who, in a very disorganized, chaotic way, responded to what they realized was happening in the southern part of the country near the Gazan border and fought back. And many of them got killed. And that was more like a war. And so, those casualties are different compared to, say, people who were in their house and Hamas broke in and murdered them.
Two other things you did not mention--very interesting--were the sexual violence. A lot of women, it appears, pretty conclusively, were raped on October 7th. And of course, 250 or so Israelis, 240, were taken hostage; 136 of those are still unaccounted for in Gaza. We don't know if they're alive or dead. Some of them are alive, we think. Maybe most of them or all of them, but we don't know.
No international agency has visited those folks. The ones who aren't there anymore were released. Those were mostly women and children, but there are still women and children in Gaza at least who were abducted.
Russ Roberts: And so, the first question is the moral question. And proceeding it, I should say, is your question about the mood of Israel, which I think is very accurate. Most Israelis that I know--and I swim of course in my particular circles--most Israelis I know are not happy. We are unhappy that civilians are being killed, but we still are resolved to press forward. There is some, I think, underlying anxiety here in Israel that the two goals that the Unity Coalition has set for itself--eliminating Hamas and rescuing the hostages--are not just not compatible, but actually at odds with one another.
And, many of us also worry--as you do, and I'll come back to this--the strategic question: You can't really eliminate Hamas. It's an idea. You could eliminate people who currently espouse the values of Hamas; certainly they are likely to be replaced by other people, and so on.
As a backdrop for all of this discussion, I want to add one more thing, and then I'll turn to the explicit question. One of the most jarring things about moving to Israel, which I did two and a half years ago, as you say, after six decades plus in the United States, is that the Middle East is not like the Beltway outside Washington, D.C. where I lived most recently. Nor is it like Silicon Valley and the Palo Alto area where I've summered and lived for a couple of years of my life. Nothing like the Midwest where I lived for over a decade in St. Louis, Missouri.
It's a very different set of expectations here as a resident in terms of what the culture is. Even though I've known a lot of Jews in my life, Israel's culture is distinctive. And, the military culture here in the Middle East is also very different. The rules of the game--the so-called expectations and what's fair play--are really different, and I think that's very hard for people to accept.
A lot of the people I do talk to are either one-time former Americans, what we call Anglos here--people who speak in English because they grew up in the United States or England.
But, I know a number of native-born folks, and you're absolutely right. I have met a couple of people who think that the military response to October 7th is both a immoral response and a strategic failure, but that's a very, very small view. It's a minority view. I'd say the biggest variation is how relatively horrified they are about the civilian casualties; and I'll turn to those.
I would just say one more thing before I continue, which is: I tried to write the case for the military action in an essay. You can find that on my substack, which is Listening to the Sirens. And that essay is called, I think, "Can a Nation Turn the Other Cheek," or "Should a Nation Turn the Other Cheek?" Because some people said--not many--but some people said because they think this is immoral and because they think it's a tactical or strategic mistake, Israel should have simply in response to October 7th sealed off its border more effectively than it had, used different kinds of technology more effectively than it had, and so on.
Russ Roberts: So, now let's turn to the issue of casualties, and I'll try to both talk about what I think the general attitude is here and my own personal attitude, which are not always the same, but often are.
First, I want to make say one thing very clearly. There's not a lot of bloodlust here that I sense either from the soldiers or their parents. And, I speak to a lot of parents of soldiers. They're my colleagues. There's a lot of resolve to do something about what happened on October 7th. There's a lot of misgiving about whether we're being effective, and we will talk about that in the strategic part because there are different components to that.
But, there's not a lot of vengeance, literally. It's more like, 'This cannot stand. We cannot live in a country that was designed to be a haven for Jews from Jew-hatred in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and allow our citizens to be slaughtered as Jews and our daughters and sisters to be raped and our children to be abducted from a Jewish state.' So, the strongest impulse--there are two impulses that people have here. The first is to get the hostages back. We've had some success--not much--some.
And, the second is to remove the threat of a second or a future October 7th. In doing that, we have leveled much of Gaza, maybe half of the buildings. And, in Northern Gaza it's much more than half. It's rubble. It has been flattened to a large extent. Many of the people who lived in those buildings are not in them--weren't in them when the bombing occurred--but some of them were. And, those are the civilian casualties. I have expressed some uncertainty about their number, but it kind of doesn't matter in a way, right? The idea that, 'It's not 16,000 civilians, it's only 10.' Is that okay? Is that proportionate? I mean, the whole idea of 'proportion,' I think is a very strange concept in this context.
So, the first thought that I have in answer to the moral question is simply: This cannot stand. And so, when people ask me--and I'll ask you, Bob, when I'm done with this long monologue; I apologize. When people say to me it's disproportionate or it's immoral, or Israel is committing genocide in Gaza or mass murder--which I disagree with both those claims, but we are killing a lot of civilians, and it's horrifying, and I hate it. The Israeli response overwhelmingly is twofold: We didn't start this. We were attacked first. We are defending ourselves. And, second: We are acting in a way either because of our own moral code or pressure from the outside world--could be both--to minimize civilian casualties consistent with making progress in our goals.
So, yesterday, 21 Israelis died because two buildings collapsed that we had not flattened. There's a lot of anger here about that and a feeling that we are protecting civilians in Gaza with our own children's lives--and I call them children--some of them are 18 to 20, our soldiers--but a lot of them are grownups. They're people with kids. They're in the Reserves. Many, many of the people who've died are not conscripts of 18 to 20. They're people in the ages of 25 to 40 who have wives and children. Most of the dead are men, almost all I think, in the war part.
So, the moral case for most Israelis--and I'm keeping it short, we will talk more about it--is: We didn't start this. Hamas could end this anytime they want. They could lay down their arms, surrender. The leadership could surrender and evacuate or leave and release the 136 people or whatever number is still alive, and we would stop. We don't like it. We have no desire to kill civilians or innocents in Gaza, and we have even less desire to see our own people killed.
So, on the moral case, that's the standard argument you hear; and I'll let you respond to it.
On the strategic case, I think the idea is that, while it's true that many people will hate us who are currently there, who will lose loved ones, and I understand that. Don't blame them. They're also very mad at Hamas, by the way. Today for the first time that I have seen anywhere in the world, there were pro-Palestinian people, who--this was within Gaza--rallying--not a big group, looked like about a hundred--saying, 'Hamas, this is your fault. You need to give up and release the hostages.' As opposed to what the rest of the world is demanding, which is a ceasefire on Israel's part because of the horrific losses of Gazan civilians.
So, my view on the strategic side is that you might be right: people here have skin in the game, and it's true that in after times of violence, you might overreact and in a moment of emotion or passion, do something that could make things worse in the future.
We waited three weeks to invade Gaza. I don't think it was such a hotheaded response. We may have been unrealistic. We may have been overly optimistic about what might be achieved and what it would take. But, I think strategically, the idea here is to force the people who perpetrated October 7th to pay a horrific price.
Not the civilians. I don't believe that they are to blame. I don't like this argument that says they voted for Hamas in 2006. I hate that argument. I think that's grotesque. I don't think you deserve a death sentence because of a vote you cast that may not have--you had no idea what was coming. It would be absurd to hold[?call?] those people morally culpable. Yes, when bodies of probably dead, semi-naked women were taken into the streets of Gaza City, large groups of people cheered and enjoyed it. But so what? That's a few hundred people. It's not 25,000. I don't find that morally compelling at all, that argument that says they've lost the right to life because they were celebrating it. It wasn't The People. Some people. I hate that, that argument.
So, that's a rough idea of what I would say in response. There's a lot more to say on both pieces of it; but, why don't you respond to what I've said so far?
Robert Wright: Okay. Starting with just relatively small-scale characterizations of the situation you made that some people might contest.
You said--well, there's a little thing where you--in terms of this, the death of these 20 or so Israeli soldiers yesterday. This is a minor thing, but I think you said it's because we hadn't flattened the buildings, that the buildings collapsed. Well, no, but they were preparing to flatten the buildings with explosives because they want to create a buffer zone inside of Gaza. Now, some people have suggested that's a war crime. Gaza is not a big place. So, you create a half-a-mile buffer zone the whole way around, you've cut into 10% of Gaza.
You said that you waited three weeks to invade. That's true. But, the bombing began earlier. And, I know it was before that--
Russ Roberts: Fair enough--
Robert Wright: that I looked at the numbers, and I saw that in the last week, they had dropped 6,000 bombs on a place that's slightly larger than Queens, New York. And, that's when I--that was probably the first time I tweeted critically about the assault itself.
And, I think--you know, you mentioned the Rules of Engagement. I have read, even in the Israeli Press, that the Rules of Engagement are actually looser this time around than in past incursions. Certainly looser than Americans use. If you look at the way Americans have gone through cities, number of airstrikes, number of civilians lost--all those indicators suggest that when Americans went through cities in Iraq, they were more willing to take casualties themselves to avoid civilian casualties than seems to be the case here.
Now, these are all things--we probably shouldn't--let's stipulate that you probably don't agree with any of that, and if you want to get back to it, you can. These are relatively--relatively--minor things.
To get back to--well, I want to say one more thing.
I think one thing you could say in defense of the Israeli people in the context of the question I ask, but which also can be deployed on behalf of the Gazans, is: Everyone is operating in a different information environment. These days everyone is operating in a different information environment. And I don't think that Israelis have seen as much in mainstream media of the carnage in Gaza as Americans have in at least many mainstream media. It varies in America, but that's my suspicion.
By the same token, you can rest assured that people in Gaza were not hearing, 'Hey, our guys are beheading babies. Our guys are putting babies into ovens.'
Now of course, those things turned out not to be true, even though Bibi Netanyahu assured President Biden personally that some of them were. And, I think, not--perhaps consequentially--those unfounded claims were still in play during the formative phase of Israel's psychological reaction.
And, but in any event, even the atrocities that did happen, those were not--I don't think those were being spread far and wide in Gaza by Hamas' communications media. So, people are operating in very different information environments. You know, in terms of, you said, 'Well, they started it.' Well, of course, that's not the view in Gaza, right?--
Russ Roberts: Correct. Fair enough--
Robert Wright: And if you--and they will say they can cite horrible things that have been done to them by Israelis.
Now, Israelis can reply, 'Okay, but let's go back another year in history. And let's go back another year.' As you know, you eventually get to the late 19th century--literally, right?--with these claims and counterclaims. And, this is probably easier for me to see because I don't have a strong tribal affiliation with either side by virtue of my heritage.
But, I'm constantly struck by the fact that on both sides, people are convinced that they have the original grievance. And, I'll just say that, as an observation: I would encourage both sides to try to, you know, transcend their perspective.
But it's, of course, very hard, if you're in either position. Via--I would say--you said something like, 'Well, yes, they're going to hate us.' I guess, maybe in closing, I'd say: I'm not just saying they're going to hate you. I'm saying they're going to hate you way more than before. And there's going to be a lot of people who are literally willing to die. Like, those Hamas soldiers who went into Israel, a lot of them probably knew there was a real chance they weren't coming back. And, whatever you want to say about the religion and martyrdom: You know, I have been, I was brought up Southern Baptist. I have been in a religion where people think they're going to heaven when they die. Believe me, they still don't want to die. Okay? And they--of course--they have the sense of that they're serving their people and everything, and that drives them as well.
But, if you want to mobilize a lot of people to join a movement like Hamas and become militants, it really helps if, like, their sister is growing up without legs because of an Israeli bomb. That is a huge recruiting asset for Hamas, or the next Hamas, or whatever.
And I think one difference between the way I view this, and the way a lot of people in Israel view it, is, like, I view the hatred, in general, in extremist movements, as being closer to the prime mover than things like the infrastructure that the leaders of the movement set up to channel the hatred into violence.
I saw a really good documentary that was made in 2003 called "Death in Gaza." What's good about it is that--this is during the occupation phase of Gaza--and what's good about it is it actually sustained, in a way, both of the theories of the case. In other words, it showed the infrastructure. There are these young Hamas militants.
And one of the creepiest scenes I've ever seen anywhere was when they had a 14-year-old boy--who looked like he was 12--and they were kind of encouraging him, you know, their, to--not to go out and get killed right now, but to embrace the idea that someday he might be a martyr. It was really creepy, and the interviewer challenged them on it.
And so there is that infrastructure for channeling hatred into violence.
But, the other thing you saw in that was these people were under occupation, which they were no longer literally--after, whenever, 2005, under occupation--but which some people in West Bank still are.
And, you just saw, from the perspective of this kid, 'Well, how could you grow up not hating Israelis?' There's just no way. You never have a conversation. You only see them with guns. They've killed people you know.
So, this is--my theory of the case is that the hatred is fundamental; and of course it's going to take patience. It's a long-term gain to try to pursue policies that let the hatred subside, and try to build on the less unfavorable sentiment. That's a very hard thing. But I personally think it's maybe the only thing that works, unless you want to do actual ethnic cleansing. And I worry that that may be what happens here.
Russ Roberts: Oh, God forbid.
Robert Wright: Yeah, I know. I know, I know.
Robert Wright: I want to say one more thing, is--and then I'll turn it over to you. I worry that I think the Israeli--it isn't just that most Israelis don't buy my theory of the case. It isn't just that they say: 'It's this institution of Hamas that's implanting the hatred: if we could just get rid of this institution of Hamas.' I think a lot of them do think that, but I think it goes beyond that, which I think there's this idea in Israel that, and has been for some time, 'Look, they'--and I think they almost mean the world, but a lot of people in the world--'They are going to hate us no matter what we do.' Right? Whether it's anti-Israel sentiment, antisemitism, whatever. I think they think of it as like a universal constant, almost. And so: We might as well play hardball, because they're going to hate us no matter what.
I will say--
Russ Roberts: Well, let me--
Robert Wright: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'll--
Russ Roberts: There's so, many--
Robert Wright: Sure.
Russ Roberts: so, many things I want to say, and I'd love to comment briefly so you could react, but it's going to be hard, because there's so many great things that you said that I feel differently about, so I want to be clear.
Let's start with the point that--I'm going to try to go in reverse order. Yes, Jew-hatred goes back a long way. Yes, there is a feeling here that they're going to hate us anyway, especially because part of their religion seems to believe that Jews should be killed. That's not good. And we do feel it. And, certainly on October 7th we felt it. So that's part of it.
It's not quite true that the only thing they see are Israelis with guns. Many of the people, unfortunately, who were killed on October 7th were people on the left who were working to encourage cooperation interaction between Israelis and Gazans. Many of them had had Gazans working in their villages and towns; and they had had permits to cross the border. There is a belief--it could be true--that that helped them chart out where they attacked.
Many of these people drove Palestinians to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment that was not available in Gaza. There are a whole lot of hospitals at Gaza, we've discovered. Real hospitals, not just sham covering up of, say, terrorist command centers, but there are real hospitals there. They have real doctors--quite a few, actually. A lot of people are shocked how many there are, and how many doctors there are. But, a lot of people drove those folks when there was a treatment they needed that they couldn't get in Gaza. There were[?] are people, and were people, and will be people, I hope, in Gaza, who don't just see airplanes, bombs, and soldiers.
But, your basic point is correct. And I think a thoughtful person has to confront the reality that if I lived there, I might feel the same way as they do: hatred, desire to kill, [?], and so on.
We might come back--I think, I hope we do come back and talk about, 'What do you do with that? How do you break that?' The point you made a minute ago, which I'll say something about it, about where you start.
I want to make a meta-point first, which is: it's interesting how much we want the moral high ground. I talked about this recently in this episode that hasn't aired yet, with Hillel Cohen and others, made the point before. See, I actually believe that Israel has been less destructive than the United States in its war against civilian populations, say, in Mosul and elsewhere in its war against the Islamic State.
But, here's what's weird. Why is that the moral exemplar? A lot of people would say what America did in there was horrible. In fact, Israel is a little bit better. It would be interesting--we're not going to do it--but it would be interesting for you and I to sit down and just look at why I actually think Israel has done a better job in keeping civilian casualties down. But, in a way, again, it's interesting that I want to believe that, and people who don't like Israel's reaction don't want to believe it. I think it's just interesting: as human beings, we want to believe that our cause is just.
But, the only point I would make is that if Israel could do whatever it wanted, and had no moral scruples, and didn't care about an international opinion, it could have flattened Gaza without losing a single soldier. We have total control of the airspace. We have a lot more bombs. We didn't have to warn people to leave town. We didn't have to warn people to move to the south.
So: It is horrible, yes, those buildings that the 21 soldiers died in yesterday, were flattened anyway. We could have flattened them from the air though, and we didn't because there's collateral destruction.
So, again, I'm not sure how important that is, but I think it's interesting that it feels important. And it feels important to you, too, I think, which is just a human response.
Let me try to say something about ending this so-called cycle. You made the point of, 'What year do you start?' I said they started it. They did start it on October 7th, but of course, you're right. There was a mistreatment of Gazans before that. Israelis and defenders of Israel like to point out Israel withdrew in 2005. You could then debate whether they stayed. They did have some presence there. They did have still military response. They did have a blockade. I wasn't here, but we had a blockade.
It wasn't an open air prison. That is, I think, a propaganda line. There are many, many parts of Gaza, we have learned--I didn't know this; I thought it was something like an open air prison--there are many parts of Gaza that, on October 6th, were beautiful parks, and villas, and beachfront, and restaurants, and car dealerships. I thought it was all a giant slum. It's not. Much of it is, but I blame Hamas for that. We know now that they took enormous amounts of money and used it to build tunnels. An extraordinary achievement, by the way, engineering achievement. Did it somehow, without Israel knowing. Despite the so-called relentless surveillance, Israel did not do a good job. They didn't do a good job blockading them, because Gazans got access to lots of weapons--either they built them, or they somehow smuggled them in. So, if Israel was preventing Gaza from flourishing, even after we withdrew, it certainly was overcome, at least for military purposes.
But, I think the deeper question is--and we could spend the whole rest of time just on this; I don't know if we want to--but, how do you move forward? Israelis, there are some who hate Arabs, who would like to take vengeance; but the average Israeli just wants to live here. Now, I understand that that phrase, 'just wants to live here,' is a little bit misleading. In the course of doing so, we have a military presence in the West Bank. You called it occupation. It certainly--I think that's the right term, militarily. Although, over the years, we have given increasing control to the Palestinian Authority, just as we have left Gaza--which was a real military occupation. We had, again, men in the streets--mostly men, probably some women, too--with military equipment. We tried pulling out. It didn't help. Could argue it was too tough on the Gazans.
But, I think the problem is, is that they do seem to have a serious number of people who are hateful to the point of--as you say, and this is the key point--willing to sacrifice themselves to kill the enemy. And, why do they only feel that about Israel and the Jews? There are many, many people who are abused in the Arab world. Palestinians have been abused--and many, many times--by the Jordanians, by the Lebanese, by many others. But, they don't harbor a deep, hateful feeling toward those folks. They don't sacrifice their lives. They put that down and moved on. We're different--'we' meaning Israel and the Jews.
Now, when you say, 'How far back do you want to start?' You said you could go back to the 19th century. I think we should at least go back to 1948. We should at least talk about that, as to how some of these entities populated and got created.
But, I think if we say, 'What about going forward?' The optimism I have--and it is limited--is I would say a couple of places to be optimistic. One is: I like to believe, perhaps not true, that most human beings simply want to have better lives for themselves and their children. I understand overlaying that sometimes is religious beliefs, including fanatical, extremist religious beliefs on all sides, in all religions, at various times in history. But, I like the idea that perhaps, if Gazans had more autonomy as citizens, they would be less hateful, or more willing to not sacrifice their life because they have something else to live for. It certainly seems to be the case for Arab-Israelis. Two million Arabs live with full rights here in Israel, not Palestinians; and they're very supportive--I think the number is 70%--of the Jewish state and the right of Israel to defend itself. They don't want to live under Hamas. Hamas is a tough, corrupt, hateful, dead end, unless you want to be a martyr. It's really good at that.
So, my hope is that the people who do want a good life for their children and themselves would have the opportunity to voice that belief. They don't now, particularly because they could be killed. It's not a tolerant regime either; nor is it in the West Bank. So that's one source of optimism.
I do like an idea that if we could talk about our different narratives, perhaps we could understand why we hate each other, and maybe if we respected each other's narratives, we could understand that this problem is not easily resolved. And we'd[?] have to make some sacrifices.
Part of me just says--and this maybe is unattractive to hear--but, we live here. We've made our lives here. More than that: We have built a country that has a very nice standard of living. It could do a better job with some of its populations, but we can work on that. But, we built a good country that is a haven for Jews in a world that is often hostile to Jews, and we're going to fight to preserve it. We understand that if our neighbors don't like it, we're in a bad neighborhood, but we're going to fight to keep it. And, it doesn't excuse immorality. It doesn't justify immorality, but we will defend ourselves, and we see this in Gaza's defense. Again, maybe it's too harsh, and maybe it's not proportionate enough, or it could be better. But we see a lot of the moral shortcomings on the Hamas side, so it's hard for us to see the other narrative.
So, I invite you, as a non-tribalist--and it's beautiful that we're having this conversation--I invite you to make that case, and respond to anything else I said. Again, sorry I went so long: just you said so many interesting things.
Robert Wright: Okay. The case is--what case is it that you're inviting me to make, just so I'm clear?
Russ Roberts: Well, I think on October 6th, most Gazans lived unpleasant lives. Some of that was due to Israel, but a lot of it was due to Hamas.
On October 8th, and after, or the 9th, 10th, whenever the bombing did start--and it's a great point you made: the ground invasion was three weeks later; but we did start bombing long before that. That's a great point, an example of my tribal bias. I think life in Gaza has gotten worse, and I blame Hamas, and so do some Gazans. It's like, 'Didn't you think this was going to happen? Did you really think that Israel was going to just do a token response to having 1,100 people killed, dozens raped, and their people kidnapped?' You think they were just going to say, 'Well, that's not good.'
We spent five years--five years--with a single soldier in captivity, Gilad Shalit. That was a remarkably unforgotten, just relentlessly-remembered tragedy, until finally the government gave up Gilad Shalit for 1,000--one soldier who had been captured and kidnapped--a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Including Sinwar, whose life we saved from a brain tumor when he was a prisoner in Israel, in an Israeli hospital, and who is the architect and mastermind of the October 7th attack. So, we kind of lost a lot of our patience. Maybe we should be better, but we'd kind of had it. So, there is a resolve here that we have the right to defend ourselves.
Robert Wright: I actually think that Gilad Shalit may be one of the reasons that Hamas thought the response would not be this strong--
Russ Roberts: Correct--
Robert Wright: I think they thought, 'Oh, you'll give us 1,000 prisoners for one guy? Well, what if we have a couple of hundred people?' I honestly think, I thought at the time, when I heard that they were trading 1,000 prisoners for one guy, I thought, 'This is crazy.' I mean, look at the precedent you're setting. But whatever. Leave that aside--
Russ Roberts: It was insane. That was a bad strategic--
Robert Wright: Well, just game-theoretically, yeah.
So, okay. As for--I'm certainly not going to say, 'Well, Hamas was justified in attacking.' I want to emphasize, whenever I try to explain why something happened, I'm not excusing it. I try to understand, on both sides, why people have done things. This isn't about justifying anything. But, with that said, let me start, again, with some relatively--
Russ Roberts: Can I interrupt for one sec?
Robert Wright: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: You're unusual. I agree with you. I'm certainly capable--I like to think I'm capable of understanding something without justifying it. But, you're rare in the loud echo chambers of social media and on the streets. A lot of people have not just tried to understand October 7th, they've justified it. Right? So, that's--I just want to say that. I think that's important. For our conversation, I accept your point, but it's not the common view. A lot of people think it was just, what was done. Part of it, by the way, is what you said.
Robert Wright: Right, but--
Russ Roberts: A lot of people don't.
Robert Wright: It works both ways. I mean, I understand that it's human nature for Israel, given what happened on October 7th, to do what they did. As I've often said, I've long been a critic of Israel's behavior, for starters in the sense that I don't think it's wise; but I've always said they're not reacting any more crazily than America reacted to 9/11. But, I was arguing against that, too. People could Google a piece I wrote in September of 2001, a week and a half after 9/11, about why it doesn't make sense to obey your retributive impulse uncritically. The piece is called "Feels So Good," in Slate.
I've tried to be consistent about this now. On the broader point of conflating, explaining with justifying--which again, I think applies to both sides--it's human. It's literally human nature do that. We all do that. It takes effort to try to listen to someone explain why your adversary did something without screaming at them, 'Oh, so you're justifying it?' So you're absolving them of blame. That takes--but I think if we want to understand why these things happen, we have to work to do that. I've already endured one round of this over Ukraine whenever I try to explain why I think Russia invaded, and how, in some respects, if American foreign policy had been better, it might not have happened.
Let me, again, take some of the, maybe not more critical points you made, but quickly, when you said, 'Well, I had said all the Gazan kids see is Israelis with guns.' You said, 'Well, it isn't Israelis with guns, and just Israelis with gun.' It's true. You can point to Israelis doing very laudable work, and you can point to kinds of interactions that happen. I'm just saying, for the average kid in Gaza, they didn't see any of that. By the time you're 15 or 16, your worldview is starting to crystallize.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough.
Robert Wright: All you've seen is that they're enemies, and you can name a cousin that died or was maimed. And now, again: now it's a brother or sister this time around.
You mentioned open air prison. I think one thing people mean by that, it's not that there are no nice places in Gaza, or were, it's that they can't leave. Now, they can get special permission to go to a hospital, blah, blah, blah. But, it's a very small area.
Russ Roberts: True.
Robert Wright: And it seems, to all of us, it's pretty strange to grow up in a city--again, slightly larger than Queens, New York--you can't leave for your whole life. Okay? If you don't like it there, tough luck.
And again, the other part of the open air prison metaphor is that Israel does control the flow of materials in the Gaza. Israelis say, 'Well, but it's all about keeping weapons out.' Yeah, but it's not just weapons per se. It gets complicated. There are limits on how far the fishing boats can go. I don't want to get in it, but open air prison doesn't just mean they all live in cells and have concrete floors.
Yeah. On the West Bank, have they ceded more control of the Palestinian Authority? They did, as part of the Oslo process. Still, Israel has the right to go into any place in the West Bank, and they have on some occasions. Once they go in, they're in charge. They can do what they want. Palestinians, the West Bank, do not have due process of law. They go to a military court, with an exceedingly high conviction rate. Whatever the soldier who brings them in says is taken as the decisive evidence, by and large, as I understand the way this courts work. Of course, they're not allowed to vote.
Now I'm inching toward kind of big issues that it would take you a long time to respond to. I don't mean to. Before I get back to something larger--you can write this down if you want--but it's often said, 'Well, Israel, it's a beacon of democracy.' And, I don't know. I would just say, 'Look, you are ruling the West Bank,' and the rule in West Bank is, 'If you're Jewish, you get to vote. If you're Palestinian, you don't.' Of course, the indignities inflicted on Palestinians by the occupation go well beyond that.
Russ Roberts: Absolutely. I agree with you, Bob.
Robert Wright: Again, I hate to do these kind of drive-by shootings, bringing up these, like, major issues that you should, in theory, have a Ph.D. dissertation to respond to. But, I do want to, just now, before throwing it back to you, get back to this--the whole thing about, 'Well, we tried withdrawing from Gaza; we've seen withdrawal doesn't work.' Leaving aside the question, whether you call that a good faith withdrawal--in other words, was designed to work--you know, there was no--there's a lot of things you could say about that, and about what the motivation was. Was the motivation--I think part of the motivation was just to change the demographic equation. To say, 'Hey, we're not responsible for these guys. So if worst comes to worst, and the world somehow forces us to let all Palestinians vote, or something, we still got a huge majority.' I think it was partly about that.
Robert Wright: But the main thing I want to bring up is about the rarely-told in the media story about what happened after the election that brought Hamas to power. I listened to your podcast with Matti Friedman, who is at AP [Associated Press], and he was saying, on balance--well, I think his view is that on balance, Western media coverage is biased against Israel. I disagree.
As part of that, he was talking about his own experience within Associated Press. That I can't speak to. Maybe AP is biased; I haven't kept track. But he did say one thing that seems to me to illustrate actually a bias that you find in favor of Israel in U.S. media, and here's what he said. I wrote it down. He said,
In 2006, the Palestinians have an election in Gaza and the West Bank, and that election is won by Hamas. In 2007, Hamas, in a kind of violent coup, gets rid of the remnants of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and takes over Gaza. And in the following year, 2008, there's a real war, which involves rockets fired.... [time mark 40:30--Econlib Ed.]
Now, one might ask, 'If they won the election, why would they have to stage a coup?' And that's an excellent question, and I would encourage people to read a piece I wrote for the Nonzero Newsletter called 'The truth about Hamas.' Let me summarize what happened.
So, the Bush Administration insisted on letting Hamas run in the elections. I don't think the Israeli government was so enthusiastic about that, but it happened. The Bush Administration said, 'Sure, Hamas can run.' Hamas won. They didn't get a majority of the vote, but they did win control of the Legislative Council, which at that point, had control of finance and national security. So, it was quasi-parliamentary in its implications, if you will. If you control the legislature, you largely control the government for both Gaza and the West Bank. Bush Administration said, 'That's unacceptable,' so they encouraged Fatah to stage a coup, even to the point of, apparently--and people can read the piece, some of this stuff is a little fuzzy, but--funneling weapons to Fatah through Egypt.
So, the Bush Administration basically started that civil war. I don't think Fatah was chomping at the bit, honestly, but the Bush Administration wanted it to happen. It happened. So, there was a civil war. And, in the middle of it, Saudi Arabia said, 'Wait a second. Can we work something out?' They convened, officials from the Palestinian Authority, from Hamas, from everybody, and they worked out a deal that Hamas signed on to, Abbas signed on to; and the deal was going to be unified government for the West Bank and Gaza.
Let me quote Khalid Mishal [also spelled Khaled Mashaal, Mashal--Econlib Ed.], who was the leader of Hamas. First of all, they agreed--Hamas agreed, on paper--they would abide by the Oslo Accords and other existing treaties between the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and Israel. They would support negotiations over a two-state solution. Meshaal said, quote: "Hamas is adopting a new political language. The Mecca agreement is a new political language... and honoring the agreements is a new language because there is a national need and we must speak a language appropriate to the time."
The Bush Administration and Israel further demanded that they recognize the state of Israel.
Now, at that point, most of the Arab nations hadn't done that. That was asking for, like, a 180-degree, exceedingly politically difficult thing for Hamas, let's just say. And, I think it was designed to kill the deal. And, we will never know what would have happened if we had followed up on that. You don't know.
And again, it gets back to the theories of the case about whether Hamas is this thing with essence of evil implanted in it and it can never be erased. Or you think, well, these are people. They like things like social status. And, suddenly, Khalid Mishal is a globally significant figure. Maybe you can steer him toward a particular channel to further elevate his status. Who knows?
My point is: Time and again, it seems to me we have not picked up on--we have not explored the hypothesis that moderation is possible, not just with Hamas, but I would say more broadly. People often say, 'Where is the Palestinian Martin Luther King?' Well, when you ask the Palestinians, they say, 'Well, every time that we see one, Israel puts him in jail.' And look, given what we know about Bibi Netanyahu, I don't doubt that a bit. By his own account, he has spent his political career trying to sabotage a two-state solution. He is totally upfront about it, and he has been the Prime Minister for the last two years.
I'm trying to make two points with this. First of all, I want to push back on the claim made in your podcast with Matti Friedman that by and large Western media is biased against Israel, because his--Matti Friedman, he's a journalist. His account of things is the standard account that's prevailed. And, I just think it's flat out wrong.
In fact, David Wurmser a NeoCon [Neoconservative] who--in the Bush Administration--who opposed the fomenting the coup--bless his heart--is a NeoCon who actually abides by the professed principle of democracy promotion. He was against the coup, and he said, 'Look, it was the opposite.' He said, 'We tried to start a coup and it failed.' That's what happened.
And, I could explore this thesis of pro-Israel media bias by reference to the common claim that the Palestinians rejected a state that was offered them: which, I don't think a true state was ever offered them.
And, I actually happened upon--I'd forgotten about--a piece I wrote in 2002 for Slate called "Was Arafat the Problem?" Which lays out my view of that.
But, I strongly contest the views that by and large American media is biased in favor of Israel. And, I mean, I think it is biased in favor of Israel.
And, I want to say that I think time and time again, we have really not truly explored the possibility of moderation. I don't know if it would have worked, but in my view, we keep failing to find out.
So, there's a lot there. I doubt I ever got around to answering your actual question, but--
Russ Roberts: That's all right. That was really interesting.
Russ Roberts: Let me respond to a few of the points. My understanding, which might be wrong--again I think it's useful for listeners who are not as deeply immersed in these issues, they do often get a soundbite summary like, 'Well, Israel withdrew in 2005.' But they don't hear what we did after that. So, to be fair, you need the full picture. I'm trying to share that with you--my listeners on EconTalk--as much as possible.
I take the points about it's hard to be a Gazan. Most of them--you're right--don't leave. Some do. They get out through Egypt and they can travel the world and they come back and they certainly can get out for medical treatment. But it doesn't matter: it's still hard to live there. I don't disagree with any of that.
But I think, just to say something historical about 2005: In 2005, there were Israeli Jewish settlements in Gaza and they were a thorn in the side of Gazans. Whether they should have been or not is irrelevant. They were not accepted. And, it was very hard for the people who lived in those settlements to enjoy a normal life. And, to some extent, the only way they were able to do that was by the presence of the Israeli army.
And, at some point in 2005--this is again my narrative; I don't know if it's accurate or not--but my understanding is: the reason we pulled out is because our soldiers were getting rocks thrown at them and occasionally getting killed. And, the people who lived there were occasionally getting killed. And, we said, 'This is a price not worth paying.' And, we said, 'We're withdrawing.'
And, we didn't just withdraw. It's really important for people to understand this. We forcibly ethnically cleansed Gaza of Jews--to say it the most provocative way. We dragged Jewish 'settlers'--they're called in a disparaging way, but people who are living in places in Gaza, which historically has been places where Jews have lived in the past--we said, 'You can't live here anymore. We're taking you out.' And, the Army forcibly evicted people from their homes.
And this was an enormously painful moment for Israel to have the Israeli Army forcing Jews to leave. For both reasons that there were people here who thought we should be allowed to live in Gaza; but, I think more than anything else, the symbolism of it was extremely painful for many Israelis and many Jews around the world, that military force--a Jewish army--was being used against Jews.
But we did that. We withdrew all the people from those settlements and we didn't allow them to go back in. There's a standard narrative that says: 'And we left all these nice greenhouses that we had built there, and the Gazans destroyed them.' I don't know if that's true. I have a feeling that that story has some untruth to it, but I don't know. But, that's the way Israelis often--and certainly Jews that I know--have talked about this withdrawal.
And, I think the coup part--I'm not going to defend Matti Friedman on this because I'll let him defend himself. I'll send him a link to this and he can respond to the comments if he wants. But, the point about what--it would not surprise me that the Bush Administration armed Fatah to try to beat Hamas because the Bush Administration encouraged an election. They didn't get the outcome they wanted. Huh. Well, that didn't turn out so well. And then, they were probably--it wouldn't surprise me if they tried other ways to overcome that election.
And, the bottom line is: Yeah, it is probably not exactly a coup by Hamas. But, I think probably what Matti was referring to is the fact that there was a lot of brutality after those moments. Maybe is understandable. It doesn't matter. I think Hamas and Fatah, the two rival political and military and civil organizations that are active in both the Gaza and the West Bank on the other side, they don't get along. And Gaza took some revenge. I don't think it was merely a military struggle. I think they did some unpleasant things.
But, put that to the side. I want to comment on some other things you said.
It's true that people in the West Bank--when people make the claim that Israel is an apartheid state, Israelis and defenders of Israel point out, 'Ah, but in Israel, Arabs have full rights. They get to vote. They can go to college. They get healthcare.' They can serve in the army, but they usually choose not to. And, that's all true. Many Druze serve in the army in Israel proudly. Bedouins do. But Muslims generally don't. Very few.
So, when critics of Israel call it an apartheid state, they say, 'Well, we didn't mean in Israel. We meant in the West Bank.'
And it's true: the West Bank is very unfair. It's not equal treatment. The Israeli settlers, which is now I think around 500,000--I've seen 700,000 is the number. But, there's hundreds of thousands of Israelis--of Jews--who live in the West Bank. They do vote in Israel. They do have access to Israeli services. And, yes, the Israeli Army will protect them.
And, yes: The military courts that are often used against Palestinians in the West Bank are probably not due process. Of course, the Palestinian Authority is not a beacon of democracy there, either. If Israel pulled out, I don't think they'd live in a democratic heaven. But at least it would be theirs. And I understand the human impulse for tribal autonomy and a feeling that it's your people and your place. I totally understand that.
Russ Roberts: But let's talk about this issue about bias. I think it's really interesting because--it's a perfect example where you can share[?] it. But, I pointed out on EconTalk that if you write for the New York Times or you broadcast for National Public Radio [NPR], you get hate mail from both sides. The supporters of Israel say that the New York Times hates Israel, is anti-Israel. And, the supporters of the Palestinians will say that the New York Times is pro-Israelis and anti-Palestinian.
So, I'm sure it's easy to cherry-pick examples.
But I think--I think for most Jews and certainly Israelis in the aftermath of October 7th, the mainstream media response has been shockingly unsympathetic to the Israeli side. At least that was the way I read it. I'm going to make a little bit of the case and let you respond.
Most--a couple of dramatic examples: There's a bombing of a hospital early in the war, very early. Reports from the Washington Post, the New York Times--the two most respected American newspapers, along with maybe the Wall Street Journal--those two papers immediately said that 500 people had been killed. And, there were quotes. The Times had a video up for awhile--I can't find it anymore--but it showed a doctor saying, 'I've never seen a scene like this, the bodies.'
And, it was not true.
First of all, it wasn't Israel. It was almost certainly a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that had done the damage. It didn't kill 500. It didn't hit the hospital: it landed in the parking lot. The New York Times ran a picture of the destroyed hospital. It wasn't actually the hospital. It was a different building.
All done overnight without--now, there's pressure, wartime coverage. You could maybe say it was they were trying to get to press. But it really soured a lot of people here on that.
Matti Friedman worked for the Associated Press for five years between 2006, 2011. Most of his comments in my episode with him were about that experience, where basically Hamas in those years controlled coverage. There are no real journalists in Gaza. If you report something that's embarrassing to the regime, you're not going to be allowed to keep reporting. They'll either kill you or threaten you or stop you.
And, his examples were things like they wouldn't let you film certain casualties coming into the hospital.
But, more importantly, he was working out of the Jerusalem office of the Associated Press, the Jerusalem Bureau. Stories that were sympathetic to Hamas got ran. Stories that were critical, they wouldn't run. That's his take. Maybe he's wrong. There's a nice back-and-forth. We posted links to it. You can follow that and read the people who disagreed with Matti and tried to defend the AP. And, whether you agree with that or not, you can take a look.
You think about how the world has responded--both the Press and others--to the accusations of rape against Hamas on October 7th and any other Gazans who came in on that day. I mean, we have videos of a lot of this. By the way, they did behead some people; I don't know if they beheaded babies.
Robert Wright: Of the rapes themselves? I'm just curious because I've heard that contested, but of the rapes themselves?
Russ Roberts: Say that again?
Robert Wright: Are there videos of the rapes themselves?
Russ Roberts: I don't know about that. There's a 47 minute--here's what we have video that I've seen, and I'm just a casual consumer of this on X, on Twitter. You know, there's a woman dragged out of a--it's a horrific photo--a woman being dragged out of a jeep or car. Her Achilles tendon has been cut, so she can't run away. Her sweatpants are bloody around her inner midsection. It's grotesque. Maybe she wasn't violated. I don't know.
But, the 47-minute video that was put together that has not been shown publicly out of respect for the victims, I think is more graphic. But certainly there are many, many, many women who either saw rape or reported rape and have not been believed by lots of people.
Robert Wright: I don't mean to contest this claim. I'm just curious because I've been vaguely aware of arguments about how direct the evidence is. I haven't had the time to look into [inaudible 01:07:53].
Russ Roberts: It's a fair point. It's a fair point. I don't mean to suggest you're a skeptic. But I do think that's a fair point.
I do think, however, that what has been publicly available since October 7th about the brutality of what happened that day, including beheadings, maybe not of children or the burning of children--I'm not sure those are refuted by the way; it's a perfect example of where our own biases are in play here. But, there was quite a bit broadcast by the perpetrators. By the people who did these acts, in pride and delight and joy. It's a heartbreaking betrayal of humanity, in my view.
But, many of those things are simply not believed. Or were treated with a level of skepticism. And, the idea that you could have--even now--136 people who have been in hostage for I think 109 days without a visit from the Red Cross, any international pressure.
And, I'm just going to throw this in, because it infuriates me--and certainly not from the UN [United Nations]--there was no condemnation of October 7th from the Palestinian Authority. I don't think there still has been one. I don't think there has been one yet. I think the UN Women's Organizations made a very lukewarm condemnation months after the sexual violence of October 7th.
One of the strangest things about this crisis is the role of Qatar. Qatar houses and hosts much of the leadership of Hamas. They have been the sort of good-faith mediator and the first ceasefire--maybe the last; we'll see. But, certainly the first ceasefire that allowed 100 or so hostages to get out and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to be released from prison.
But, Qatar is treated like a normal country. There's no pressure on Qatar. There's no pressure on Qatar to say, 'You have given shelter to some of this wickedness.' Qatar has donated I think $3 billion to American universities over the last--I don't know what the time period is--10, 20 or 30 years. It doesn't matter. It's a lot of money.
No American university has said, 'Boy, these are not nice people. We shouldn't take their money and we should return it.' Or, 'We will never take money from them again until they turn over the masterminds of this project.' Or, 'Since they seem to have a lot of say in this now, could they at least get the Red Cross, at least see if these people are alive and should be getting medication?' Nope, not a word.
So, that's kind of the reason I think that this sequence of the media coverage, the UN, the Red Cross, Qatar and how they're treated, all of these create in Israelis and in many Jews of feeling that we're kind of not getting the fairest treatment.
I agree with you: historically there's been plenty of bias against the Palestinian cause. There's a certain natural connection between Americans and the Jewish story, partly because they're more Jews in American than there are Palestinians, partly because there is a democratic underpinning of it and there's a certain connection. But, lately we don't feel like it's been so even-handed.
Robert Wright: Okay. Well, I certainly agree, first of all, that post-October 7th--I mean, the first thing I witnessed was an outpouring of support and sympathy for Israel. That did not last very long, at least not without being diluted by a reaction of a very different kind, which I think to some extent was, you know, due to how rapidly massive bombing began. I'm not trying to justify it. I'm just saying I think that's the causal sequence of events.
And, world opinion is now turned very much against Israel. There was a Morning Consult poll--they periodically poll, like, forty-something countries. And, Israel's net favorability overall in these countries, the average, has dropped by something like 18 points in between late September and now. So, there's no doubt about that. And, I think that is largely a response to how the assault on Gaza now is being covered, rightly or wrongly.
Again, I think it is a devastating assault. I'm not happy about the fact that my tax dollars are going to pay for it, at all. But, leave all that aside. There's no doubt that there's been that shift, kind of opinion.
And, the other thing is that I think October 7th revealed something that has been happening slowly in American politics, which is that younger liberals, including younger Jews, have a very different view of the Israel thing than their parents did. And, that's something which will[?] follow. And is, I don't know how politically consequential it is yet. It hasn't swayed Joe Biden particularly. But it's there. And it's interesting.
Quickly on just Qatar: I think there is--some people would say there--well, first of all, Bibi Netanyahu, right?, has, again, has supported in the past apparently the transfer of money from Qatar to Hamas because he wants to sabotage a two-state solution. He has said as much himself.
Now, I personally think, separate from that, there is value--however loathsome you find the leader of the enemy--I think there is value in having a place where conversation can take place to resolve situations like the one we have now, which may lead to the hostages released among other things. So there's that.
It's true that that hospital strike, which turned out to be apparently an errant Palestinian missile that didn't hit the hospital per se, although it killed some people because people had congregated around hospitals for safety. Yeah. The media coverage was rapid. I think if you look at it, they attributed it to whoever was making the claim.
I would say similar, same thing with the beheaded babies. That circulated rapidly, was accepted uncritically in America. If you look at the fine print, they were probably attributing it to the Israelis who made the claim so they didn't--in both cases, the journalism was technically sound. You report what important people are saying. But, I think that works both ways.
Now, in terms of media bias, I would emphasize how subtle I think it could be. And, I'd like to draw attention to at least one subtle cognitive bias that I think you see at play sometimes. So, back whenever--12, 13 years ago, 14 years ago, whatever--I was writing an online column for the New York Times. And, there was some reception in the Times building or something that I went to.
And, I got to talking to an editor on the foreign desk. And, I said, 'You know, I've noticed something. Your Jerusalem Bureau Chief, when he reports, like, bad things that Bibi Netanyahu does, kind of things that aren't going to play that well in the American media, he seems to take pains within a few paragraphs to describe the political constraints that seem to make it hard for him to do otherwise.' I said, 'When the Palestinian leadership does bad things, there's no reference to the political constraints on them.' And he said, 'Yeah, yeah, we've noticed that.' And I said, 'Well, so wait, this is okay? Like, a systematic bias?' And, he said, 'Look, I don't run this paper.'
So, the New York Times was aware of this.
And I want to talk about the cognitive bias, because it is so underplayed. It's called attribution error. And, the way it works in its full form is when your friends or allies do something bad, you explain it away with circumstantial situational factors--
Russ Roberts: Incentives--
Robert Wright: 'My daughter didn't get a nap.' Right? Whereas 'The kid who hit her on the playground is just a bully.' When it's your enemy or your adversary, you explain it in essentialist terms, in terms of their basic character, their basic disposition. Okay? And, when they do good things, it's the opposite. When your enemies do something good, 'Well, it seems to be good, but there's actually a reason. It is not reflective of them.' And, it works the other way with your--I don't know if I said that right. When your enemies do something good, it is not taken as reflective of their character.
I think if you pay attention, this is everywhere. It drives conflict everywhere. And I think it was on display in that case. And, I doubt that the Bureau Chief was even thinking about it. Okay? He wasn't doing it on purpose. You just naturally--he was identifying more with the Israeli government than with the Palestinians.
Robert Wright: Now, there's a second--it's kind of a cognitive bias--but are you familiar with the term security dilemma in political science? Okay. So, it refers to a tendency to, when the enemy or adversary does something for defensive purposes--some deployment of military force, development of a weapons system, whatever--they may have defensive in mind and you interpret it as offensive. Now, that may be a misreading of intent--
Russ Roberts: It doesn't matter--
Robert Wright: You may think they're going to attack, or it may just be that you understand it's defensive for now. But, you just say, 'Well, yeah, but if they develop that capability.' I mean, Russia's Foreign Minister said to Bill Burns, I think in 2008, said, 'Look, we understand you don't plan to use Ukraine to attack, but we can't let NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] in Ukraine because we don't know what the next administration will be.'
So, that is also--that's not a misreading of intent, but that's also an example of a security dilemma.
And, you get these spirals of, 'Oh, that's offensive or has offensive potential, so we have to do something defensive'; then that is misread as offensive; and so on.
So, anyway, this is backdrop for the fact that I wrote a piece for the Intercept some years ago called 'How the New York Times Is Making War with Iran More Likely.' I argued that they view things that Iran may well see as defensive, as offensive. The Times just reports them that way, the way Israel would see them. And, they don't report Israel's attacks on Iranian proxies, or assassination of nuclear scientists, whatever, in the same terms. They depict that as defense. That was my argument, at least.
And, I want to say just one quick thing about something we don't have time to get into today, but it has become relevant with this whole Harvard controversy, which is the policing of speech around the Israel issue. Okay. So, that piece that I did in the Intercept, it wasn't about Jews. It wasn't about Zionism, even. It wasn't anti-Zionist; it wasn't anything. You would think I would not get blowback from the Anti-Defamation League [ADL]. Right? The way I've described the argument, you wouldn't think.
But, no, Jonathan Greenblatt, President of the ADL, called my piece--on Twitter--'illogical at best, biased at worst.' And, let's see, there are many--oh, blaming--yeah, whatever. So, that's not--he's not saying I'm anti-Semitic. I get it. But somebody might ask, 'Wait a second, the head of the ADL is casting aspersions on--suggesting this guy is biased. What does that mean?'
And, look, the ADL has done much more direct accusation by way of trying to discredit people who criticize Israel, direct accusation of anti-Semitism. And, I don't know how you view this, but on the Left, it's just taken for granted that the ADL is effectively part of the Israel lobby: One of their goals is to police speech around Israel in the guise of policing speech around anti-Semitism.
And, I throw that in there because I could give you other examples where I think that's relevant to what I see as what has historically been, on balance, a pro-Israel bias in mainstream media, though I grant you that October 7th--well, and the Israeli reaction to October 7th--have collectively revealed something that's changing significantly in America, and we'll see how it plays out.
Russ Roberts: So, a lot there. Let me try to respond to it.
I think the security dilemma is a deep insight. There's a piece of that insight that I think is often missed. You didn't mention it. Maybe you've thought about it. But, intent on the part of a nation is kind of a meaningless idea. It's a way that we attribute things to our enemies and our friends that make us feel good. Leaders can have intent. Individual politicians, kind of. It gets back to your point about political constraints. We don't know when someone says their reason for why they're doing it, whether it's the actual reason, whether it's what they want the public to believe. So, I think that whole thing is a way that we exploit information and PR [public relations] and communication and media to advance our causes.
I mean, I'll give you an example that I'll be honest about. If I were Iran, I would work on a nuclear weapon for purely defensive reasons. Israel's got one. The United States has one. More than one. There's lots of them. As long as that's the case, Iran is vulnerable to pressure, and I understand why they're working on a nuclear weapon. Of course, I also understand why people who are afraid of it treat it as if it's only offensive: it's only being created to destroy Israel. Which I am worried about. It is, I think, a legitimate concern. But, I also understand that there's a defensive reason there, too.
The attribution bias is a fantastic point: that we often attribute the worst motives to--how would you describe it again?
Robert Wright: It's that you describe things that are seen as bad, maybe broadly. Everyone agrees they did something bad. If it's your enemy, you describe it as a reflection of their character, their basic disposition--
Russ Roberts: Their essence--
Robert Wright: They're not going to change. They're going to keep doing that. If it's an ally or friend, you emphasize the constraints that we're operating under, the behavior--
Russ Roberts: The incentives--
Robert Wright: The situational versus dispositional is the technical terminology.
Russ Roberts: It's a great insight. And I think it's true. The case you're talking about--of course, Netanyahu does face really interesting political constraints.
I would just say, for listeners, it is an overwhelming consensus here in Israel that he not be in office in the future. We understand--everybody here understands that that creates a very unhealthy incentive system for him with respect to this war. And there may come a point where, even though we are at war, he will be forced to step down. That can happen through the democratic process--not a coup. If only a few members of his own party decide to leave the coalition, that will trigger elections.
And I think Bibi is also very aware of that. So, he's between a rock and a hard place. It's a rock and a hard place overwhelmingly of his own making. He will be judged by history, at least within this country, as having failed unimaginably badly on October 7th. Most of the blame will fall on him; and, in my view, correctly so. He had one job. He failed. More than that, it was his overwhelming political essence. His whole political popularity was built on the fact that he would make Israel secure, and he failed. I think he knows that. So, it's going to be very interesting to see how that turns out. But, that's a side issue.
So, your point about whether the New York Times reporting his decisions would report political constraints--of course, there are some. Now, does it mean they were decisive, as you point out? I think that's really a fantastic insight. And, similarly, the fact that Hamas--or the PA [Palestinian Authority]--doesn't operate in a democratic environment, I think, that would be the natural reason that people wouldn't invoke political constraints. But, they still have them.
Every--you know, one of my favorite lines that came from my--I read it from political scientist John Mueller--he said, 'Mexico is a democracy 364 days a year.' This was written 25 years ago, say 30 years ago. What's the one day it's not a democracy? Election Day, because the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional] wins every time. But, the rest of the year, when there are no elections, the PRI is still subject to political forces and democratic influences from the people, even though it's not the normal route of an election. A deep insight, I think.
Robert Wright: Yeah. There's a line I heard from Tom Friedman, which is, 'Nobody does more public opinion polling than authoritarian leaders.' They live in fear--
Russ Roberts: Sure--
Robert Wright: because they know they're not legitimate. But, anyway, go ahead.
Russ Roberts: So, I agree with you very much that speech on campuses and in the streets of America and England and elsewhere in the West is complicated. And, we've moved very much toward an unhealthy attitude towards speech. Unfortunately, how students and faculty talk about Israel is only the latest chapter of that. The response to it has been somewhat repressive, agreed. But, of course, it was repressive before that in different directions.
So, I wrote a piece, "The Dilemma of the West"--we'll put a link up to it--where I tried to argue that the challenge is, if you believe in free speech, what do you do about the fact that on October 8th in Sydney, Australia--which is a lovely, tolerant place, as is most of the country--there was a large crowd of people chanting 'Gas the Jews' near the Sydney Opera House. And Jews were told, 'Don't go near there. It's not healthy.' So, how does the West--and it's happened in America many times. There'll be a pro-Palestinian rally. And the police or the government will say--the mayor will say--'Don't go over there. It's not safe. We can't protect you.' That's awkward.
But my general view, by the way, is that people should be allowed to say, 'Free Palestine.' They should be allowed to say, 'From the river to the sea.' What they shouldn't be allowed to do is chant it in large, angry mobs and end up barricading people in buildings who are afraid for their lives.
Now, maybe we should deal with that in a different way. But, I personally make a distinction between having an opinion, for example, that there should not be a Jewish state--that's a legitimate opinion. Having an opinion certainly that--you can certainly argue in a classroom. You should be able to argue in a classroom that Israel is immoral or has acted horribly in Gaza. That's not anti-Semitic. I don't think you're anti-Semitic, Bob. I think it's important for Jews--very important for Jews--that people do not squelch speech.
At the same time, Jews often report--perhaps untruthfully, but I think it's true--they're uncomfortable saying things in support of Israel in classrooms in certain universities.
So, I think there is--the dilemma is that speech should be open, I think, on campuses on all sides for all views. But, speech and the threat of violence or mob behavior is--I would make a distinction. That's my view.
I'm an American taxpayer, like you are. I agree. I do not think American taxes should go towards supporting Israel. Right now, Israel gets, I think, before the war, $3 to $4 billion dollars a year. It's all with strings. It has to be spent on American military equipment. Americans say, 'Yeah. It's good for America. It creates jobs.' I think it's bad for America. I think it's bad for Israel. I think that should end. That started decades ago when Israel was a relatively poor country. We're a relatively rich country now. We should not be relying on the United States. And I think that's a mistake.
I agree that Bibi bears some of the burden of Qatar's strengthening of Hamas. I think he has said so. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's true.
And--I think that's all for now.
Robert Wright: Okay. On 'The river to the sea'--I mean, first of all, the way I would--I would just say angry mobs that trap people are bad, whether they're saying any given thing or not saying anything. I think--
Russ Roberts: Most of the people who chant 'From the river to the sea' don't know what it means.
Robert Wright: That's important. That's important. Well, I wouldn't say it's that they don't know what it means. It's that meaning is not a fixed thing. They have a different conception of what it means.
Russ Roberts: I agree. Much better said.
Robert Wright: And--but, I want to emphasize that. I mean, my daughters have been to some pro-ceasefire demonstrations--by the way, they go with friends who are mainly Jewish. That matters. Again, it reflects something that's going on here. And, you know, I asked them, 'What do you think? What do other people think?' It means a variety of things to these people. Almost none of them are thinking, 'Kill all the Jews' or 'Kill all the Jews in Israel.' And many of them aren't thinking, 'Eliminate Israel. Eliminate the Jewish State.' Some of them mean, 'Look, let all Palestinians vote.' Okay? Would that lead to a Palestinian state? Maybe. It depends on how it's set up. Blah, blah, blah. Wouldn't necessarily lead to an Islamist state. Who knows?
I mean, I'm just saying this is the way they think of it. When they hear Bibi Netanyahu say 'From the river to the sea,' a phrase, which, by the way, is in the original Likud Charter, they say, 'Well, why should Palestinians find it any less threatening for Israeli Jews to talk about a Jewish state from the river to the sea than Jews should find it for Palestinians to say about a Palestinian state.' Of course, you would bring in history and say, 'Well, the original Hamas Charter, granted it's been superseded by some other document--the original Hamas Charter was flagrantly anti-Semitic,' and so on.
There's a lot you can say. I'm just saying a lot of them don't know that much about the history. I'm just trying to keep people from freaking out. I understand how given phrases come to be almost traumatic for some people to listen to through history. But, I'd encourage people to bear in mind different people mean different things by this.
Also, of course, we are in a social media environment where, depending on how your feed works, you are going to be shown the most provocative stuff. You'll naturally start thinking it's everywhere. You can find somebody at one of these demonstrations with a Hamas flag. I have seen somebody from The Foundation for Defense of Democracies--this ardently pro-Israel and anti-Iran think tank--tweet that and even assert that it's typical. Which is just flat-out not true.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I agree.
Robert Wright: But, I would encourage people to keep all of this in mind. It's funny. My view about supporting Israel--it's not so much an in-principle thing about ever sending any money to Israel. It's in the context of this thing that's going on right now. I just can't bear to see what's happening in Gaza and think that, literally, my tax dollars are paying for it. As an American, I'm going to be held accountable for it. That becomes a little bit of a national security threat.
I mean, you know, if you look at what homegrown terrorism there was after 911, and when they asked people why they did it, it was almost invariably: 'What you are doing to Muslims in other countries. Bombing and so on.' This can come back to haunt us on our soil. It can lead to terrorism against American targets.
And again, I think it's bad for Israel. I am not somebody who has to say, 'Well, screw Israel. America has got to pursue its interests.' In this case, I don't think what Israel is doing is particularly in its interest.
There's one more point I could make. But, if you want to jump in?
Russ Roberts: I just want to say one thing about 'From the River to the Sea' and 'Free Palestine.' What's sad to me, and somewhat scary, is that--so, here's what we agree on. There are many, many phrases that have both general--go back to a favorite EconTalk concept from Marvin Minsky--they are 'suitcase words.' They are things you could stuff lots of different things into.
I'll take intifada, for one. The intifada--people chant about the intifada now at many of these rallies.
For Israelis, the intifada is when people blew up buses and pizza parlors and coffee shops, and killed dozens of people. Innocents. It's a threat of violence.
I don't think every person who chants on a college campus 'intifada' has the vaguest idea of that association or is advocating for that. So I agree with you.
I'm also aware that there are many young progressive Jews who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. I'm sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, as I try to make clear. I think the life that young people and old people live in Palestine and the West Bank--in 'Palestine and the West Bank,' in Gaza and the West Bank--is very unpleasant and cruel. And, they bear terrible costs from both their leadership and the role Israel plays in their lives. We can debate, as we have, whether Israel should play that role, is entitled to play that role.
In many ways, it does not matter. They don't like that feeling. And I get it.
So, I understand that those rallies have lots of emotions going under the surface. For every single participant, they're probably a little bit different. We understand that.
What I think is sad and a little bit scary, as I started to say, is that those rallies have three themes that--two themes--that I hear over and over again that I don't think are like the Hamas flag. I think they're broadly represented in the crowd and in the themes. One is 'Free Palestine/Free Palestine and From the river to the sea.' The second is 'ceasefire.'
No one has marched--and this breaks my heart--as far as I know, and I'd love to be wrong about this: Many, many, many people--individuals in Arab countries that have some comfort in speaking; most can't--have condemned October 7th. But, there's never been a rally that I know of, of pro-Palestinian people who, on October 8th, said, 'Not in our name. That was not done in our name. We advocate for the Palestinian cause. We advocate for anything they want: Free Palestine, From the river to the sea, Two-state solution, One-state solution--but not that way. Not what happened on October 7th.' I don't think there's been a rally that's said that.
And, no rally for a ceasefire or 'From the river to the sea,' the two themes, says: Free the hostages.
In fact, the world has mostly defaced--maybe not the world; it's a small group of people, obviously--defaced the posters of hostages, the kidnapped people, put swastikas on them in some situations, torn them down in others. I don't understand that. It's hard for me to understand that.
And so, what--the theme of 'Free Palestine from the river of the sea'--we could debate how many people--stupid to debate it--but, I'm sure there's a range of emotions in the people who say those things. But, I wish they'd say something else alongside it. And certainly, many of them do believe it should be an end to the Jewish state and an ethnic cleansing of the country.
And I think when somebody like Bibi Netanyahu says, 'We're going to keep it, from the river to the sea,' that's for domestic--we call this attribution bias. I think they--he's playing to the home crowd. He knows that people like me are tired of hearing other people say, 'We're going to throw you out of there.' And he's saying, 'No, no, no, we're going to keep it.'
In fact, I think a lot of--some of--the challenge of Israeli politics, and Israeli culture, and Israeli life are that we have a swagger about us. We don't care what the world thinks. We do what we think we need to do to defend ourselves.
And at the same time, we really want the world to love us and to embrace us. And sometimes, we need that support.
So, there is a strange, paradoxical, cultural aspect to that.
But, my only point is--and we can stop here, maybe. We've been talking now for an hour and 40 minutes. I don't know how much more we want to talk about this.
Robert Wright: We've brought world peace. That's the good news.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, we've done that. We've solved it.
Russ Roberts: So, what I was just going to close is that I wish they'd chant some other things. I understood that they mean different things by those phrases. Not everybody can name the river, and not everybody can name the sea. Certainly, 'Free Palestine' is a nice sentiment. It sounds good. It sounds like a liberation thing.
But, some of them do mean it. Some of them do mean that there should not be a Jewish state and that the people who live here should not be allowed to live.
So, we're going to always err on the side of caution, I think, and it would be nice if some of those rallies showed some sympathy for what happened on October 7th. 'Gas the Jews' is not so sympathetic, in Sydney on October 8th. So, that's, I think, why we're a little bit paranoid. Sometimes when you're paranoid, it's because people are chasing you. It's part of the problem.
Robert Wright: Yeah. I mean, again, I'd say--so, too, with the tearing down of the posters, is, like, we live in a world where if one person does that, it's going everywhere. It's going to reach almost everyone who it drives crazy. Same thing with Trump. The craziest thing any Trump supporter does is trot it out as typical--look, I mean, I remember when my daughters had been in these demonstrations. They were chanting 'From the river to the sea.' One of my daughters said, 'Some people are starting to chant global intifada.' I said, like, 'Don't do that. Tell your friends,' like--
Russ Roberts: What it means. Yeah.
Robert Wright: Yeah. Of course, they can say, 'Well, it means uprising.' They can point to the first intifada as mainly kids throwing rocks. I was actually in Israel for two weeks during the First Intifada. But, well, of course, what Israelis remember is the Second Intifada, which is a traumatic memory, naturally.
But again, kids chanting 'Global Intifada'--I mean, they mean something that goes beyond Israel, I think. It's about imperialism and all kinds of things.
Let's see. Is there anything--I don't think I got around saying: I wish Joe Biden would use the current flow of weapons as leverage. Not just because it could lead to terrorism against America but because there's danger of a regional conflagration. Be nice to--
Russ Roberts: We, by the way--here, Israelis feel very strongly that while there's a great deal of appreciation for American support of Israel militarily; and certainly Joe Biden, in the aftermath of October 7th, gave a full-throated condemnation of it, as has his spokespeople. There's not a lot of what-about-isms or even-handedness. It's been pretty pro-Israel overwhelmingly. We didn't talk about this. We're talking about the media. But, certainly, the American government, with the exception of some dissatisfaction in the State Department that got reported, it's unparalleled how much the United States government has supported Israel.
Having said that, in recent days, the Biden Administration has, I think, affected at least--I'll just say it this way. Israelis believe that the Biden Administration has had an impact to reduce civilian casualties. It has changed some of the tactics. And there's a lot of resentment here for it. And my view of that is if we don't like it here in Israel, we should stop taking the money. Which means they don't--and we might lose those aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, which deter Hezbollah and deter Iran. It's really complicated. And lot of Israelis have started to realize that not only do we need American ammunition--and munitions generally, bombs, and so on--we need American firepower, at least the threat of it.
If I were just an American and if I did not care about Israel, and if I did not see ties between Israel as an ally, like you, I would understand that this is--we're close to World War III right now. Very, very close. It's Russia and Iran versus the United States. You can throw in Syria, Israel--you can throw in China if you want. We're on a precipice.
And it's bizarre to me that we are recording this on January, I think--what did I say, 24th? We're about to lock in two very elderly people into the Presidency in one of the most risky and threatening times in recent history in America. Forget everything else. That these are the two candidates of the two major parties is something we might want to think about as Americans.
Robert Wright: We could have a whole new conversation about that. I mean, I don't remember a time when I felt less encouraged about both the national situation and the world situation.
Russ Roberts: Maybe we should stop here, Bob? We could maybe revisit these topics. I want to invite you to come back to Israel for two weeks at your convenience, maybe when this war is over.
Robert Wright: How big a budget does your university have?
Russ Roberts: Not very big.
Robert Wright: I'll tell you the first time I went there, it was under the auspices of Marty Peretz, the owner of the New Republic. I was about to be acting editor of the New Republic for seven months. Marty felt--of course, he was a pretty ardent Zionist and very well-connected in Israel. And when you go there on Marty's dime--I mean, the hotels were nice enough. But, the main thing was the connections. First of all, Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem, came by my hotel. We had drinks. I had a one-hour conversation with Bibi Netanyahu on a park bench. Now, he was just a member of the Knesset. He was not Prime Minister. But, my advice to anybody is get Marty Peretz to make some calls before you go to Israel.
Russ Roberts: It's a small country.
Robert Wright: It is.
Russ Roberts: Everybody is at most two degrees of separation from anybody you'd want to talk to here. So, I don't know everybody. But, I know enough people who know everybody.
Robert Wright: All right. Well, let's do it. In reciprocation, should you ever be in New Jersey, I'll drive you down the turnpike. Show you the whole thing. You'll see all the high spots of New Jersey.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Robert Wright. Bob, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Robert Wright: Thank you, Russ. And thanks for being part of the Nonzero Podcast.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 22, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 22nd, 2024, and my guest is historian and author Hillel Cohen of Hebrew University. He's the author of many books. In 2015, he published Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929, which is our topic for today. Hillel, welcome to EconTalk.
Hillel Cohen: Thank you very much for having me.
Russ Roberts: I want to let listeners know that there may be parts of this conversation that are not appropriate for children, so you may want to listen first.
Russ Roberts: This is a remarkable book, partly because it illuminates a year of the conflict that indeed can be described as Year Zero, but it's equally remarkable for the perspective that Hillel brings to the year and his deep commitment as an historian to understand how each side of the conflict experiences its own narrative in the moment, and the challenge that provides to the historian.
In addition, it's a remarkable and very painful book because the events of 1929 are not so different from the events of October 7th and its aftermath: the seemingly senseless murder and rape of defenseless civilians and the attempts by each side to justify or explain what happened. And, in the course of doing that, it can be quite disturbing because whatever your perspective on this conflict is, Hillel's book forces you to be aware of the other side, and that can be very uncomfortable.
And, to add one more element of pain, some of the deaths of 1929--just as they were on October 7th--for the murder of people working toward coexistence and mutual respect, people who had helped the other, it's very heartbreaking.
So, let's go back to 1929, and of course you call it Year Zero. But you start before 1929 because you have to. Nothing happens in a vacuum. But, many of our listeners know nothing about the so-called Hebron Massacre--in Hebrew Hebran is the town Hebron in English--so-called Hebron Massacre, other massacres that took place. And, as you chronicle in your book, Hillel, the deaths of Arabs at the hands of Jews which are not as well known to those who promote the Jewish narrative.
So, let's begin, though, with the Jewish narrative of what happened in 1929, and then we'll try to look at it from the Arab perspective. So, what is the standard--not the best you can do at the standard--what is the standard summary of what happened in 1929 that Jews tell one another?
Hillel Cohen: I would say that the Israeli, or Zionist, or Jewish narrative of 1929 is based on the very fundamentals of Zionist narrative in general. And, the Zionist narrative in general is that we Jews came to Palestine as Zionists--meaning mainly, but also before the British conquest of Palestine in 1917--in order, first of all to establish a national home for the Jew. But, the idea was to live in peace with the Arab. I mean, the self-image of Zionism was of a peaceful movement, which has a full right to settle in Palestine and with the very best intentions to live with the Arab communities of the country.
So, 12 years after the Balfour Declaration, we are in the year 1929. The numbers of Jews in Palestine are increasing during this period, and Jews established kibbutzim [plural of kibbutz--Econlib Ed.] and moshavim and expanded their entrenchment in the country.
The Arabs didn't like it. And in 1929--it was not for the first time because there were anti-Zionist riots in 1920 and 1921 in Jerusalem and in Jaffa and in other places, but mainly in a small scale--but, in 1929, the attacks on Jewish communities were in much larger scale.
So, it started in Jerusalem, and it started in Jerusalem because of Jerusalem is a holy city, and Jerusalem is a place of al-Aqsa Mosque or al-Haram Sharif or the Temple Mount. And, there was a rumor, and it was not only a rumor--I have to think how exactly to define it, but it started as a rumor--that the Jews want to blow up the mosques on Temple Mount in order to build the third Jewish temple.
Now, what the Jews actually did was very far from this. What they did was to pray in the Western Wall, but to establish a kind of fence between men and women in the Western Wall.
Now, the Jews--the Western Wall is known almost to everyone as holy place and a place of prayer for Jews for centuries, but actually it is also a holy place for the Muslims. It's called in Arabic al-Buraq, meaning the place in which the prophet Muhammad put, or parked, his holy horse when he ascended to heaven. So, this is also holy to the Muslims. And, in addition to that, it is a waqf land. Waqf land, meaning a holy Muslim place. But, for centuries, the Muslims allowed the Jews to pray in this place. The condition was that the Jews keep the status quo: They changed nothing. So, they would have prayed standing. There were no chairs, there were no tables, and there was no fence between men and women. They prayed together. So--
Russ Roberts: Just to clarify: if you've ever been to the Western Wall--or in Hebrew the Kotel--in Jerusalem today, it's a huge plaza. But until 1967, it was a very narrow alley abutting Arab homes. And it is--the Western Wall, the Kotel in Hebrew, is the supporting wall of the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is an enormous plaza where the Temple of Solomon was built, the Second Temple was built, and where, after Islam was established, two very important mosques were built on these spots--the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.
And, I did not know until I read this book that even this area of the Western Wall, which again is a supporting wall of the plaza called the Temple Mount in Hebrew, in Jewish tradition, that that is also sacred to the Muslims. So, in Islam and in Judaism, these are very sacred and holy places; and there are of course many restrictions about who is allowed to be there and under what conditions, both within the religion and those who are not in the religion, as in many situations like this. There's a lot of rules.
So, carry on. So, keep going.
Hillel Cohen: So, actually in September 28, this was a Yom Kippur in which the fence was put by the Jews. And immediately after it was put by the Jews, a British officer came and take it out.
And from this date, the tension between Jews and Arabs, or Muslims and Jews around the Temple Mount, and then in Jerusalem, and then in the whole country increased and increased.
Then in August 29, at the beginning of August, there were some clashes between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem in small scale on football play in one place and near the Temple Mount or the Western Wall in another point of conflict. Until the day of the 23rd of August, in which thousands of Muslims who went out of the prayer of Jumu'ah--of the Friday prayer--in al-Aqsa Mosque. They went out from the mosque towards the Jaffa Gate and Damascus Gate, the two main gates of the old city of Jerusalem, towards the Jewish neighborhoods, which were close to this gate, and started to attack Jews in their way.
So, this is at the beginning; and we are now telling the Zionist narrative: 'It was out of nowhere. They tried to attack us because they imagine that we are trying to blow up the mosque. We don't have such intentions whatsoever.' There were some clashes in some neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
And then, the day after, on Saturday, the small Jewish community of Hebron was attacked by mob Palestinians. Muslims from Hebron and from surrounding villages attacked the Jews of Hebron in their homes. And the Jews of Hebron, most of them were very veteran in the country, some of them since the expulsion from Spain. Some arrived in Hebron only in the late 19th century. But, it was community that had relatively good relations with the local Arabs, to the degree that the local Jewish community refused to receive members of the Haganah--of the Jewish Defense Forces who wanted to come to Hebron to protect them. They told them, 'No, there is no need. We are in good relation with the Arabs. So if you come with weapons, it would deteriorate the situation.'
So, of course, they didn't come. And, the Jews were attacked by knives, by [?lums?], mainly by 'white weapons' [non-explosive, non-noisy weapons such as knives--Econlib Ed.].
And, 66 Jews were killed in Hebron in their homes by their neighbors--actually most of them by their neighbors. Or actually in the same day, Jews were attacked also in Motza. A week after in [inaudible 00:11:49]. Attacks in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem continued. Some moshavim and kibbutzim also were attacked, but they were armed. So, there were much less casualties there.
And, at the end, there were 133 Jews who were killed in this wave of violence.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, the saying is: History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
The attacks of October 7th from Hamas coming out of Gaza were called the al-Aqsa Flood. And it was a reference to the claim that Jews wanted to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque--today. So, this is a very old story.
The next twist of the story is the Palestinian perspective. And, you've read many of the available, if not all, the contemporaneous accounts from Arab sources of the time and after. And you've spoken to Palestinians today.
And of course, what is human, and difficult, is that there's a very different perspective than the one you just told.
For most Israelis and most Jews that I know, the story you just told is the standard story: the Jews were--yes, there was a serious question of whether it was right or wrong to try to populate the land of Palestine and create a Jewish state, but nothing could possibly excuse or explain, even, these events of these deaths.
And, of course, many, many other people were injured and we're not a 100% sure, but there's some evidence of rape. We don't know how much, you point out. The victors often underestimate the amount of sexual violence, and the victims often overestimate it, or make it more lurid.
But, the bottom line is: That's a horrible story. And you, in your course of your research and trying to understand the Palestinian narrative today--how Palestinians today look back on what people at the time experienced almost a hundred years ago--you discovered an event and you speak about it--there's a wonderful video of a lecture you gave, we'll put a link up to it--about how challenging it was for you to realize that there had been some Jewish atrocities, as well, at that time.
So, talk about the 'Awn family and Simha Hinkis [Simcha Hinkas, alternate spelling--Econlib Ed.] and what happened there, as best you can. It is complicated. There are many details. It's hard to understand exactly what happened, but we have a pretty good idea of the generality.
Hillel Cohen: Well, maybe I'll say a few words about how I started to write the book and what made me write it in the way I wrote. So, I'm a historian and I work in archives. And, one day I was in the library, actually, in the library of the Hebrew University, and there is a famous book of a Palestinian writer; his name is Mustafa al-Dabbagh. Very interesting writer, and he wrote a kind of geographical lexicon of Palestine. And, I read about Jaffa. And, when I read about Jaffa, he wrote, according to years, a chronology of Jaffa. And, when he wrote about the year 1929, he wrote: In the year in 1929, the Jews attacked the Arabs of Jaffa. And, one Jew who was also policemen in the British police entered the house of Muslims in Jaffa and he killed five people--two women, two kids and old person.
And, this is the year 1929.
Now, for me that 1929 is the year of the Massacre of Hebron.
I read this description and I said--I cannot say in a podcast how I say it--but I said: What is it? Is it a kind of oriental imagination? How come I wrote my Ph.D. about Mandatory Palestine, about Palestinian collaborating with Zionism during the Mandate. So, I knew more or less the history of Mandate period.' And I said, 'So, in 1929 Jews attacked Arabs in Jaffa? This is a story of 1929?'
And I said, 'Okay.' I just photocopied the two pages of this description. I put it in the drawer--I mean, it was 20 years ago--and I continued my work.
Five, six years later, I was working in the Haganah Archive, which is part of the Israeli army archive, and I found a document from 1913. In this document, an officer in the Haganah described how he bribed a British judge--or actually the Attorney General--in order to change the way he would talk in the court about a case of murder of an Arab family by a Jewish policeman. I said, '[?gling, gling?], I mean, this might be the same story.'
Okay. So, now I have a kind of Jewish source for the same story. And, I had the name of the accused; and I started to look for details of the story. And, I found, yes, this is true. There was a person in the Haganah who did exactly that. Of course, the details are not the same. He killed only four people. The baby was three years old and not 1-year-old. These small details which were not accurate, because I reached also the files of the court when I continued; but okay. Now, I said, 'This is very surprising story.'
And, when I said to myself, this is very surprising story, immediately I asked myself, 'Surprising to whom?' I mean it was surprising for me, but I'm sure that for Palestinians, this was not surprising because they know that the Jews all the time kill innocent Arabs. Because they know what happened in Deir Yassin and they know what happened Kfar Qasim, and they know what happens in Gaza, and they know.
So, this was a moment in which I understood that what is surprising for me is not surprising for other people. And, what is surprising for them is not--and vice versa.
So, I said, 'Okay, we have here totally two different stories,' And, this is what I want to tell. I want to tell how come that we have events that everybody knows what happened, but what they know is totally different.
But, now I have another problem. The other problem is: First of all, I realized that when I read Arab source, I don't believe, and when I read it in the same material in a Jewish source, I do believe. So, I have to think why. There are good reasons, because when someone tells about atrocities committed to him, it might be less reliable than when it tells about--okay, this is one reason, but it's not the only reason. The main reason I think, is that we tend to believe what we want to believe. This is who we are, and this is also who I am.
But, I thought whether to take on myself the mission of trying to tell the story from both sides in the way that both sides would tell them. Of course, it might be better that to do it with a Palestinian colleague or whatever. This didn't work. So, I did it myself and tried to be as honest as possible.
And for me, it was also an opportunity to tell the Zionist story, the Jewish story of 1929 to Arab audience. Because this book, I wrote it in Hebrew and I wrote it in Hebrew to Israeli audience, to Hebrew readers; but it was translated both to English and to Arabic. And, I think this is the first book in Arabic in which the details of what happened in Hebron in 1929 are written. And, what happened in Tsfat [Safed--Econlib Ed.] in 1929 are detailed. It never appeared in any book, even of the great Palestinian scholars that I admire, they would write: 'In 1929 there were clashes between Jews and Arabs. In 1929 there were riots against Jews.' But nobody would detail the cruel events in the way that we, let's say, in the Israeli narrative would.
Russ Roberts: What kind of reception did it get in the Arabic world?
Hillel Cohen: First of all, the fact that an important publisher was ready to publish it. And, there was event in Ramallah about the book, which I was not invited because of the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]--which is fine, I mean.
Russ Roberts: Because of the--why were you not invited?
Hillel Cohen: Because of the BDS. Because of the boycott on Israeli scholars.
Russ Roberts: The BDS stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions? And, therefore the event you were not allowed to attend?
Hillel Cohen: Not 'not allowed.' Not invited. I don't know if it's the same or not.
Russ Roberts: Go ahead. But, did you hear something about it? Did you get some reports?
Hillel Cohen: Yeah, I heard, not fully. And, there were some people wrote reviews--there were some people wrote reviews, some Palestinians wrote reviews, but this is Israeli-Palestinians, not Ramallah. So, Israeli-Palestinians wrote reviews. I think [?incomprehensible, 22:11: Iman Hodem?] was one of them, which was very--I mean, he liked it very much because he also believes in: Yeah, we should know, we should study the history and know the truth, and so on and so forth.
And, also, I have to add to this--I mean, also to the main story--that hundreds of Jews of Hebron were saved by Arabs in Hebron during the riots.
So, when you are trying to tell the whole story, you can also the narrative of the people who were saved and the people who saved. And then, you have a different narrative than this of the good guys and the bad guys; and, we are the good and the Arabs are bad.
But, I bring two stories, and in each story I bring also the savers and the killers. So--and we have your multi-dimensional narrative of the events in general.
Russ Roberts: I can't help but quote Richard Feynman--and I think I'm going to get it close to a 100% accurate: "The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
And, it's a beautiful part of your book on the lecture that I mentioned where you confront the fact that, certainly we like to think that an historian would of course be open to all the facts. But historians often are--we say in English--grinding an axe. They are telling a narrative, and they cherry pick. They leave out the things that ruin the story and they exaggerate, or are not careful, or don't examine as closely the things that enhance the story or make it more dramatic.
And so, I salute your honesty. At least as far as I understand it. I'm not an historian. It's hard for me to know whether you've done what you've tried to do well, but it strikes me that you've done a remarkable job. So--
Hillel Cohen: If I can add to that, I mean part of my, I would call it even methodology, when I found the documents and the memories about the event. First of all, for me, every document who makes me uneasy, I know that I have to use it. I mean, this is a methodology. So, this is important--Number One--because especially if I want to tell one-sided narrative, it's different. So, just ignore it. But, if you want to tell the whole stories, so this is exactly why the story about the murder in Jaffa was for me, I mean, mind-blowing. I mean, I know, this is what I need: I need to understand.
And then, I need to understand, and this is very easy, why the Palestinians prefer to tell this story and not the story of Hebron. Okay, this is very clear why. But, these are the methods.
And, the other one is about my own emotions. And, this helped me very much to understand the story in general, because when I read about--I'm a Jew, [?], cannot be but a Jew, right? And, when I read about an incident where Jews were killed, it really hurts me and I feel deep sorrow. And, when I read about incidents in which Palestinians were killed, I feel different. I mean, I feel some sorrow and I might feel some anger, but it's really different. I must admit. And I mean--my mother came to Jerusalem in 1929--I mean, I'm part of the story. I'm part of the story.
But, when I follow my emotions in this way, it helps me as historian to understand how narratives are built. Because--this was my conclusion--that narratives are not built from up down. It's not that the Ministry of Education tells us how to think about 1929. Not at all. It is our friends. It's ourselves, it's our kids, it's our parents--when we see them cry about one thing and they don't cry about other. So, this become part of our emotional me--right?--self. And when they don't cry, they say, 'Hmmm, this is [?], or they're happy.
So, we build our narratives according to where our emotions are and not according to what a minister of whatever tells us. And, I learned it from my own emotions. What I told you, this is part of my methodology.
Russ Roberts: So, in economics, we would call this an emergent phenomenon. It's bottom-up rather than top-down. It's not any one person deciding what the narrative is. It gets told and retold the same way that a language develops. Some things get used, some things get dropped: it's alive. And after a while it hardens around a certain story.
I just want to echo what you said. Some of my listeners and some of my readers, for the things I've written about this moment in 2024, complain that I'm too even-handed. I should be--what am I giving ammunition to the other side for? I should just tell the good parts. I'm a Jew, I'm a Zionist. I live here. I moved here; I became a citizen; and I'm very proud of that. I have no embarrassment about it. And I understand the urge to only listen to the things that make you feel good and ignore the things that make you feel bad.
But, I can't help it. As sort of my ethos of this program and who I am, I think it's important to understand the complexity. In many ways, the motto of this show is, 'It's complicated.'
It doesn't mean that it can't have a moral position. At the end of this, I want to talk about the challenges that this richer picture poses for one's own views and confidence in what we do. But, the point is, is that, certainly as an historian, I think, and as a thinking human being, you should be aware of the complexity of the world.
The only thing I want to add to your discovery of this murder that took place in Jaffa: it became part of the Palestinian narrative. It's well-known among Palestinians, and most Jews know nothing about it.
Now we can debate--and we might--about whether the murder of five people by a crazy policeman enraged by what he saw earlier that day, the morality of that: How can that be equated with--and so on--the murder of 166 people, the terrorizing of thousands? Those are serious deep, deep questions. But, I think it's important to know the facts.
And, the facts that I would add, that you just pointed out that also run all through your book, is that not everybody joined in. Some people didn't join in. Some people did more than not join in: they protected the other side. They protected the other side at the risk of their own life. It's hard to do, it's rare. In that way, in some sense, it's the exception that proves the rule. But that also cannot be ignored.
Russ Roberts: I want to talk--let's talk about the moral high ground. When I talk about listeners, or friends even, who are upset that I present, say, a more complex picture, one of the things that's uncomfortable about that, and one of the reasons that we ignore the stories that make our side look bad, is we want to hold the moral high ground. We want to feel that our side is doing the right thing. Why is that so important to us? Why is it not enough to say: 'Well, I don't care whether it was right or wrong. We had the power--,' whichever side it was, 'We did some things. End of story.' Why is it so important to us to feel virtuous, especially about things that the other side calls evil? Not just, like, 'Well, it wasn't so great.' Evil. We want to often say to ourselves: 'Those things were not just not evil, they were moral.'
Hillel Cohen: Yeah, this is a very good question for now in 2024, as you mentioned beforehand. I mean, Israeli soldiers in Gaza, they are sure that they do the most moral thing in the world. And, by the way, I don't know how many thousands Palestinian kids were killed. And, the same is true for Hamas. They are sure that they do the right thing. It's not that they say, 'Okay, maybe right, maybe no': 'This is the time to do it and we should do it. Killing Jewish civilians now is right, and it's moral.'
And, I think this is a very basic human need--I mean, to feel moral. Because humans are not--they're also about power, and they use power. But, you always will say, you have to be crazy in order to feel that only power talks. You don't want to be like that. You say, 'Okay, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, yeah, he only power,' Or North Korea. But, most nations and groups and people, they would say, 'No, we are moral.' People want to feel moral because this is to be human.
Russ Roberts:> So, when I look at the--let's go back to 1929. It's a little more comfortable than 2024 right now. But, we'll come back to 2024. But, when I look at 1929 and I look at these two narratives, the thousands who terrorized Jews in Jerusalem, in Hebron, in Tsfat [Safed], in Motza--and then, okay, you're trying to be even-handed, Hillel. It's very impressive. So, you found a policeman who killed five people in Jaffa, in Yaffo--Jaffa in English. Or: Yes, they were worried that the Jews might destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque and therefore they got enraged. Do I want to keep score? One of the horrible things--I'm going to come back to 2024--one of the horrible things for me is this claim: 'I think the war in Gaza that Israel is waging is the right thing to do.' It doesn't mean everything that Israel does there is moral. But, here's what I find strange.
What I find strange is that people say, 'Well, only 1200 people died in Israel on October 7th and 250 or so people were kidnapped and dozens of women were raped, but 25,000 Gazans have been killed,' As if it's just a scorecard.
So, I think one of the complexities of either 1929 or 2023 of October is this idea that--you don't want to keep score. And certainly our moral anger, or better yet, our outrage is not about numbers. It's a visceral emotional response. So, I want you to respond to that thing about the numbers, but then I want you to answer the question: If I can always see the other side, doesn't that justify their actions? Don't you, as an historian, because you can tell me a story that they were afraid we were going to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque, and there was this policeman in Jaffa that killed five people who were defenseless. Then is anything goes? Is it all equal? Can you make a moral judgment at all?
Hillel Cohen: It is very good question, but everybody does moral judgment and everybody judges according to what he was thinking before. So, the question is, why our moral judgment is better than the Palestinian moral judgment? So, even the moral judgment is not of even-handed judge. It is our--so, of course we believe in our moral judgment.
So, you had a couple of questions. So, first of all, why to write it? And, the reason to write it is, I think that if each side continues to believe in his own narrative without knowing the other narrative and his own moral judgment, believing that this is the own possible moral judgment, we'll continue to fight forever. I mean, this is what happened to me. When I understand that the other narrative--it's not about support, it's about being, being strong enough, being valuable, being important. For them, I have to take it into consideration.
In my case, it became part of my own narrative. I mean, yeah, this is part of my narrative, the Palestinian narrative now. And, it has nothing to do with justifications. Like you, you do not justify Israeli soldiers who would shoot by intention a Palestinian kid. But, you accept the general movement of the Israeli army. Okay.
So, we can start to challenge our own narrative, to see the other narrative, to understand the world better. And, as I said, for me, it has much more meaning when the Palestinians do the same.
And, this is why I told you, too: it was important for me that it would be translated into Arabic. Of course, it cannot be one-sided. I mean, both sides have to understand many things about the other side that today they do not understand.
Now, I go back to the very general idea of both narratives. For the Islamist narrative, as I said, I mean, Jews came here to live in peace, and we were attacked by the Arabs. What is a Palestinian Arab narrative? The Arab narrative is that Zionist came here in order to make our land, our country into a Jewish country. And, all what we do is self-defense.
So, we have our two nations that believe that everything that they do is self-defense. When we bomb Gaza it's self-defense; and when they attack [inaudible 00:37:45] it's self-defense. Okay, so everybody has moral justification for what they do.
And so, now what? So, I was also attacked, as you were attacked. I mean, 'No, you give them ammunition.' 'No, how can you be even-handed, you are a Jew? How come that you care about the Arab the same way you care about Jews?' Actually, I'm not sure I care the same way, as I told before. But, even if I care only about my kids and about my family and about my tribe, I think that the best way to protect them is to widen our understanding of the reality and act within the wider understanding, and not to see only ourselves and our just case and ignore others. Because ignoring others brings October 7th.
Russ Roberts: So, I think one of the frustrations for Jews around the world--certainly here in Israel, Israelis--is a feeling that the--while we are often at least aware there's another narrative, we may not agree with it a 100%. There's a separate problem--which of course your book highlights--which is that the facts in each narrative are often different because of our natural confirmation bias. But, there was, before October 7th, and there has been for the last 30 or so years here, a very, very strong movement on the left of the Israeli political spectrum supporting Arab/Palestinian rights, supporting a Palestinian state, decrying and criticizing--strong, forceful responses--to Palestinian terrorism. And, we don't feel that coming from the other side.
And, you know, when I deal with that in my own thoughts, personally, I like to believe--and it may not be true--that there are people who can empathize with the Israeli narrative, but they can't speak up because they live in a world, tragically, where there isn't freedom of speech.
In Israel, we have freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. There are massive, massive, protests happening in Israel against the current government--for all kinds of reasons. Not just one. They get--more than one reason that people turn, come to the streets and criticize the government.
But in the Gaza, if you do that, they kill you.
So, I'd like to think that there is the potential for the kind of sharing we're talking about. We interviewed Yossi Klein Halevi on the program. I interviewed Yossi Klein Halevi on the program, and his book very much put the two different narratives at the center. His book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, didn't get that big a reception in the West Bank and in Gaza. But, again, I like to think maybe that's because they live in something close to a police state.
But, I think that's frustrating for those of us who are trying to be more open-minded. Do you feel that way?
Hillel Cohen: No, I feel totally different. I don't think that Palestinians do not empathize with Zionists or with the Zionist project because they're living in a police state. Maybe because they live under occupation. Maybe. In the sense that if you take--I mean, the best example, of course, is the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, you can see two schools now, right? You can see more than two schools. But you can see Hamas on the one hand, and you can see Mansour Abbas on the other hand. So, how comfortable--
Russ Roberts: Mansour Abbas being the head of the Palestinian Authority.
Hillel Cohen: No, no. Mansour Abbas of the Islamic Movement of Israel, the Member of the Knesset [Israeli Parliament--Econlib Ed.].
Russ Roberts: Oh, of the Knesset. Sorry, they have the same last name. One is Mansour and one is Mahmoud. Sorry.
Hillel Cohen: Yes.
So, Mansour Abbas, he came from the same school of thought. He came from the Muslim Brotherhood Organization, and he now a member of the Knesset, and he believes in the partnership between Jews and Arab, between Muslims and Jews. He even declared that he can accept Israel as a Jewish state. And he condemned what Hamas did in October 7th.
So, how come that from the same school of thought, you have such different--and they pray the same prayers, they have the same books that they read. Not only the Holy Quran, but also the books of the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood. The main reason is the difference between if you live in a relative equality or you live under occupation. It's not the same.
And, I did a research about that. So, this was the only time that I did quantitative research, and I gave questionnaires to hundreds of Palestinian students for education, both in the West Bank and in inside Israel, and asked them question about narratives and about rights, about peace with Israel, and so on and so forth. And, the interesting point for me, the result were that about the historical narrative, about the rights of the Palestinians, there was no debate. This is our land, and the Jews came here and they tried to take the land from us. They don't have--I mean, they didn't have right to do that--and so on and so forth.
But, when it came to what should be done, the Palestinian-Israel, most of them were, first of all, against the armed struggle. Against using violence.
Second, they were more accepting the presence of Jews here. And, what they wanted was a kind of partnership. And, the Palestinian in the West Bank, I mean, they can be from the very same family--that you know--Palestinian and Israel and the West Bank. They say, 'No, the Jews have no right here. They have to go wherever they came from,' And so, on and so forth.
Of course, this is--it was after the Second Intifada, because the same questions when they were asked before the year 2000, also, many Palestinians in the West Bank accepted the idea of Jewish presence and Jewish sovereignty on part of Palestine.
So, what we have here is the condition of leaving the political options that they have and so on and so forth, and not the police state of the Palestinian Authority, which is also--this is a totally different story.
And, if I may add another point. The other point is that you said: you know there is a strong peace movement in Israel. There is a strong protest in Israel against the government, and so on and so forth.
Russ Roberts: That peace movement is smaller today than it was on October 6th--
Hillel Cohen: True--
Russ Roberts: for better or for worse. Yeah--
Hillel Cohen: Sure. Sure--
But, Palestinians, many years, they told me, 'We don't care about what you say, we care about what you do.'
And, even when Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization were signed in 1993, there were 100,000 settlers in the West Bank.
During the seven year of Oslo process, before the eruption of the Second Intifada, there were 200,000 Jews settling in the West Bank. Meaning, the number of settlers doubled.
For Palestinians this was the most important factor. They said, 'You are telling us that you want peace and you want to negotiate, and you might be ready to establish a Palestinian State in the West Bank, and meanwhile, you send hundred dozens of thousands of Jews inside. So, we don't care about what you say.' Today, we have almost half million, I mean 480,000 settlers in the West Bank. So, who cares about, you know, 50 people who held, or 500 people who held Palestinians to reach Israeli hospitals? It's nothing.
I mean, the Palestinians, I mean the people, I guess Palestinians who were helped by these people wouldn't go to kill them. But, for us, a Palestinian, it means nothing. This is what I understand from what they tell me. Okay, there are nice people among you. There are nice Palestinians who saved Jews in 1929. It has nothing to do with the great story of the national debate here. You want the whole land from the river to the sea. And, this was a decision--this was part of what the last Netanyahu government declared--that all the territory between the river and the sea is for the Jews, and there will not be another national entity in this territory. So, what exactly you tell me, that there are some nice Jews?
Russ Roberts: Of course the--just to be clear, when Netanyahu for propaganda and PR [Public Relations] reasons says that from the river to the sea is Israel, he of course does not mean to expel the Arab-Israelis that you were mentioning who elected Mansour Abbas to the Israeli Parliament. Which I think would shock many people who did not know that: there are Arab members of the Israeli Parliament. There's Arab members of the Israeli Supreme Court. But, that the Hamas, 'From the river to the sea,' does not allow for Jews to have a presence in the land of Palestine as a minority. You disagree?
Hillel Cohen: How come that you say it? According to what? I mean--
Russ Roberts: Well, the original Charter and their subsequent remarks after October 7th was, first, they like to kill Jews, and second, they would repeat October 7th, millions of times. Now, maybe a million times. Maybe they meant by that until they were allowed to run the current state of Israel as a--well, I don't know what you would call it, a theocracy? There would be Jews there with minority rights. There's no Arab country right now where Jews can live comfortably. So, it's not an encouraging idea, 'from the river to the sea,' for Jewish people.
Hillel Cohen: Yes, but in--
Russ Roberts: In Hamas' words.
Hillel Cohen: Yeah, it's not encouraging. I can understand it's not encouraging for the Palestinian, the Jewish state, 'From the river to the sea.'
But, Hamas, according to Hamas' Charter--that most people know what is written in it, without reading it. Hamas's charter includes also the very, it's Article 31. I'm not a spokesperson, you know, for Hamas, but I spokeperson for truth.
Russ Roberts: Go.
Hillel Cohen: It says that under Islam, Jews and Christian and everybody can live peacefully under the rule of Islam.
So, it's not about expelling the Jews. It's about Jews accepting the sovereignty of Islam in the Holy Land.
Now, there the Article Seven or Eight with the story about the trees that will tell that they are Jews behind us, which is a story for about the last day, not about political--I don't know, settlement. It's not settlement [inaudible 00:49:59] the behavior today. So, it's totally different.
And, I mean, this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I mean, if you want to--not you personally--but if one wants to quote Hamas charter, better he read it from the beginning to the end and look at the discrepancies within it. I mean, this is very important--
Russ Roberts: And, it's been revised since its original publication.
Hillel Cohen: No, the original. I speak about the original, which is more antisemitic. Even in the original, they accept Jews.
Now, of course, we can say, 'No, we don't want to live under Islam.' Okay, this is our right. We want independent, whatever. But, we have to be accurate about what they say.
Russ Roberts: Agreed. Hillel is trying to ruin all of my preconceived beliefs, which I appreciate.
Russ Roberts: But I want to come back to something you said about the West Bank and paying attention to actions versus [?] words. So again, for listeners who are unaware, the West Bank, which was acquired by Israel in the defensive--what most people would say is the defensive war of 1967. Israel suddenly inherited a large number of Palestinians. Israeli leaders felt that that land was crucial to create a buffer zone, to reduce the risk of future wars from our national neighbors--Jordan, for example, or Syria in the case of the northern in the Galilee. So, that land was taken.
And then the question was: what's going to happen there? And of course, originally it was a full military occupation. We didn't annex it. It was supposed to be negotiated whether we would give it back with certain terms. But, eventually the Israeli army was basically running it. And then, over the years we have ceded--Israel has ceded, C-E-D-E-D--ceded control increasingly to the Palestinian Authority, but not completely.
So, it is still--of course, there is an Israeli army that frequently goes into places like Jenin and other places to stop what we fear are terrorist attacks. But, it's not pleasant to live there. It's not pleasant to live there under the Palestinian Authority. It's not pleasant to live there with the presence of the Israeli army. And, the cooperation between those two is fraught with all kinds of problems.
But, the point is that, after 1967, many Israeli settlers created towns and cities in that territory, which are islands of Jewish settlement within this much more widely Arab population.
But, here's what I want to ask you. Just [?]establish this for clarification. When people say that the settlements are the problem, the barrier to peace--which is what you just suggested, that the expansion of the settlers from a 100,000 to 200,000 and now almost 500,000, that's what is part of the problem--a lot of people say, 'Oh yeah, well, how come in 1929 they slaughtered Jews when there were no settlements? There wasn't even a state.'
Now, there are many answers to that, but I want to let you answer that, and then I want you to talk about a more practical and interesting, I think, historical question. You suggested that a lot of Palestinians have become accepting of the fact that there's a Jewish presence in what they call Palestine and what we call the State of Israel.
And by the way, we've said nothing about the religious challenges of this problem, which you talk about your book very, very thoughtfully. But, over a hundred years, there is a bunch of people who have become accepting that, 'Okay, so there's a Jewish presence there and it's a Jewish state, and maybe we should live with that. But we want our own state, too.' And then I think the question is--the practical strategic question is, first of all: Do you think that's true? You seem to think it is. And then, secondly: A lot of people would argue that, 'Well, that's what the settlements are. Eventually they could tolerate the presence of Jews in the West Bank as well.' True or false? Well, not true or false to such a thing. Bad question. How do you think about these issues?
Hillel Cohen: No, no, it's nice question. I mean, even in true or false. I think that this is what the right wing believed before October 7th, and what we see is that it doesn't work like that. I believe that they still believe in it. I mean, that more power would bring--I mean this idea of the Iron Wall of Jabotinsky. In 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky published these famous articles, "An Iron Wall," in which he said that native people usually wouldn't accept foreign settlements among them, but--and this is very natural. So, he really understood the Arab rejection of Zionism. But, he added that if we will be strong enough, if we build an Iron Wall between them and us and they would understand that they cannot actually expel us or take us out of the country, they would accept our presence.
Now, this is partly true, of course; but the problem with Zionism--if I might say, us, as Zionists--the problem of Zionism is what is called in Arabic [?]tawassul iyya[?], meaning expanding itself all the time. I mean, 'Okay, you put an Iron Wall in the 1948 border and we accepted it. So now you move it farther to the east in order to take more land. And then you want more and more and more.' So, this is not Iron Wall, this is curtain that you move everywhere to where you want. And, if it's curtain, it cannot stand attacks. And, this is the situation that we are here. We made our Iron Wall into a curtain.
Russ Roberts: Two things, or maybe more. First, for listeners who have never--I don't think the word 'Jabotinsky' has ever been mentioned on the program. So, Ze'ev Jabotinsky is called a Revisionist Zionist. That essay--I think we'll find a link online for it--of 1923, is really an extraordinary essay. Many of the Zionists before him and many after said, 'Zionism, a Jewish state in the land that is called Palestine, the Arabs will like it.' And of course, some do. There's a lot of advantages to living here as an Arab, as opposed to, say, in Gaza or in the West Bank or in Syria. So, Arab-Israelis, who are full citizens, they may be uneasy with the Jewish state. They may prefer something different. But it's not the worst thing that could happen to someone living in the Middle East.
But, there was a certain idealism and romanticism and, really, dishonesty in suggesting that we as Jews coming to our ancestral homeland--a phrase we haven't mentioned yet, part of our moral high ground--we would be embraced. It would be great. The desert would bloom--which it has--and there will be a great high-tech sector, and it will all be good. And, of course, many Arabs work in the high-tech sector, and it's all great. They're going to love us. It's going to be fantastic. Well, that was--Jabotinsky in 1923 said, 'That's a lie.' These are people who have lived here for a long time. They haven't had their own state. Doesn't matter. They've lived in--as you point out, very, very powerfully in the book--they live under Arab rule. It may not be Palestinian rule the way we think--
Hillel Cohen: [?]--
Russ Roberts: of nationalism, but it's not Jewish rule. And, they're not going to like living under Jewish rule. And, Jabotinsky said: 'Let's not condescend and treat them like some kind of primitives who we can bribe with the candy of material wellbeing that might accompany the creation of the Jewish state.' Which turned out to be true. Incredible standard of living here compared to the rest of the Middle East in our immediate neighborhood, and certainly for the Arab-Israelis who live here. He said, 'Don't treat them like children, like we can bribe them with candy. They're going to have national aspirations and tribal feelings, and the only way that we can survive here is that Iron Wall.'
So, that's just background, again, for listeners. What I have trouble with, with the narrative, as you said, is that it's a curtain. They're always moving it. And we move it because they start wars with us. We didn't want to move the curtain in 1967. If they hadn't surrounded us with armies amassed to attack us. That was not an offensive war to gain territory.
But, I see you shaking your head on the YouTube version of this. So, explain why I'm wrong.
Hillel Cohen: Look, I am not here to debate with you about Zionism or about politics. What I do as historian is to try to make people understand the other side. My own view, sometimes, of course, I tell it; I don't hide my views. But, my views were shaped by many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many hours of talking with Palestinians from Hamas, from Fatah, from none of them, people who worked in Israel, people who never worked in Israel, with intellectuals, with farmers. This is what I did for 30 years, okay? So, what I'm trying to do is to help people who want it.
Now, I would add, I understand that many people do not want to know or to understand the Palestinian version of reality, or Palestinian perspective or whatever, because it doesn't fit what they want to hear. And, I know--many times when I start, I don't know, a lecture, I say, 'I'm sorry, I'm going to say things that you might not be interested in. If you feel uncomfortable, feel comfortable to leave.' I mean, people to be uneven, they don't want it. They want something to strengthen them, especially in times of conflict, of bloodshed. Why should we understand the other? Okay, I understand this view. I understand it. But, this is what I do. This is [?] the only [?] important thing that I can do.
And it is based--so when I say, 'This is what the Palestinian feel,' I mean, so to tell me, 'No, I think differently.' Okay, think differently. I mean, maybe I also think differently. Not everything that people tell me, I accept. I sit with settler. I sit with people from who are going to pray in the Temple Mount, Jews who pray in the Temple Mount, because I have to understand. I have to know what they feel, what they think, what are the political views. And then I can tell this to the Palestinian and this to the Jews. And, I teach crowds who are consisted of Palestinian, Israeli together, and I tell them both narratives. I mean, if you want to take it, take it, but to debate with me? Okay, my opinions are insignificant. I mean, even my kids don't ask me what I think. I mean, sometimes they do. Who cares?
Russ Roberts: You're not alone there. My kids don't ask me what I think very often either, but I take your point. I didn't mean to debate you about whether their feeling about a curtain was right or wrong. But that's an important point, right? That's the way they see it. I may feel that they're wrong to see it that way. I may feel that they don't have as rich an understanding, but I could be wrong as well, of course.
Hillel Cohen: You are wrong. You are wrong. You are wrong.
Russ Roberts: Which part?
Hillel Cohen: I'll tell you the exact part. No, generally you are right, and I'm fascinated by your insights. But, about the very point of the wall and the curtain: Israeli settlement in the West Bank was not a result of a war. It was--
Russ Roberts: Oh, I agree--
Hillel Cohen: Yeah, it was in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. When Ariel Sharon was the Minister of Agriculture, and then the Minister of Defense, he said it so many times: Go to the West Bank, live there so that there will not be a Palestinian state.
So, if we go to the former question of yours, so how come that they don't care about Israeli democracy and the peace movement in Israel? They don't care because they see what's really going on on the ground.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough. I didn't mean to dispute that, and I certainly agree that the settlements, although there's a religious component we're not going to get into, was very much a real politik move to reduce the likelihood of a Palestinian state. Which, we could debate, again, whether that's good or bad; is not relevant right now. I was reacting more to the 1948 part. So, I think we're on the same page.
Russ Roberts: Let's close. Let's come to the future. One of the hard things right now for me living here and spending too much time on X, formerly known as Twitter, is the dueling narratives of both sides of who has the moral high ground in Gaza on October 7th--the disbelief that certain things did or did not happen.
Of course, one of the most extraordinary parts of this historic moment is that unlike you, who had to spend those many, many, many, many hours in the archives digging through and discovering documents that were not well known, is that a lot of October 7th appears to have been broadcast. It was recorded, posted on social media. We have a lot of footage, and there is always the uncertainty, especially in the future, about whether footage is real or not. It looks pretty real. It certainly was revealed in real time. It wasn't posted months later and changed and different.
So, we have something slightly different than we had in 1929. But, it doesn't matter. We've all got our own narratives. We have our own facts. Tragedies happen. There's a debate about whether it really happened, who actually did it. And these are part of a form of entertainment, a form of sport, a form of collecting hits and clicks and eyeballs. It's pretty depressing.
So, my question is, given that you have, for 15 years or however long it was, you explored the reality of 1929. Now it's 2024 in the aftermath of October 7th: it looks like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
As I said, there's so many parallels when you read your book. And, they published it nine years ago; it could have been written today about today's events. There were heroes on both sides, helping do the right thing, but there's a lot of bloodshed on both sides. I do think I have the moral high ground, but I'm open to the understanding that it is more complicated. I don't think it's, 'Well, both sides do bad things. There's nothing more to say.' I don't agree with that. Again, for listeners, I definitely think that's the wrong attitude.
But it looks really similar, and it's almost a hundred years. You got any optimism for both our people and our neighbors about how this might get better? And, you can react to anything else I said, as well.
Hillel Cohen: Since October 7, I swore that when I asked this question, I say, yes, I have optimism. Before I said, I don't have any optimism, because I knew that 7 October is coming. We all knew. Actually, we all knew, and we tried to close our eyes; and we did. Every person who deals with Israeli-Palestinian affairs can show you a couple of pieces that he wrote, or she wrote, that in couple of--I mean, it's matter of months or years that such eruption would happen. It was clear. This is why I was not optimistic before.
And now, the question is whether we, both Palestinian and Israeli, is with maybe the help of the international community, which feels that we reached the level of bloodshed that we can now try to find another way to live together. So, this is the kind of optimism--not the best optimism, but yeah.
Russ Roberts: That's it? That's the best you could do?
Hillel Cohen: Yeah. Maybe you can find a better optimist than mine.
Russ Roberts: I'm looking. I'm looking.
My guest today has been Hillel Cohen. His book is Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929. Hillel, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Hillel Cohen: Thank you very much.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 16, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 16th, 2024 and my guest is Michael Oren. Between 2009 and 2013, he was Israel's Ambassador to the United States. He was later a member of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. He is the author of many books, but I particularly want to recommend Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, which is a superb treatment of the Six-Day War. Michael's Substack is entitled, Clarity. Michael, welcome to EconTalk.
Michael Oren: Hey, Russ, good to be with you.
Russ Roberts: You're a former ambassador of the United States. In 2011, you published Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. How do you understand the United States' role in the Middle East right now, in this intense moment?
Michael Oren: Unclear. Unclear. If I'd been asked to define President Biden's Administration's policy in the Middle East--this is going back to the inception of his Administration till today--I can't. There's no clear line. There's a tremendous amount of zigzagging.
For a small example, for several years the Administration cold-shouldered Netanyahu--for whatever reason. They cold-shouldered him. That was a fact. They didn't invite him to the White House. They cold-shouldered the Saudis--because of the Khashoggi affair, they cold-shouldered the Saudis. And then suddenly, last summer, they turned around and started bear-hugging both the Saudis and Bibi [Netanyahu--Econlib Ed.] in an attempt to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But, the total volte face, as they say: about face.
In this crisis, they started out unequivocally in support of Israel--the President's astonishing speech of October 10th. I've never heard a speech like it in my many years of following U.S.'s relations. Unequivocal support for Israel, categorical condemnation of terror, and signing on to our goal of destroying Hamas.
Secretary Blinken came a few days later; he reiterated that pledge. But in both their remarks, they also stated they expected Israel to conform with international law regarding warfare. And then, over the coming months, criticism began to mount that Israel was, to quote Secretary Blinken, 'killing entirely too many Palestinians.' Which begs the question: How many Palestinians killed would have been enough? Okay, it's a strange thing to say. And, one wonders, what did they expect in a brutal urban warfare against an enemy that's deeply embedded behind a civilian population?
America has had similar experiences in Fallujah and Mosul. They know what it's like. And in fact, in both those battles, as well in Kosovo, the civilian-to-soldier ratio of dead was much higher on the American side than it is on the Israeli side.
But the criticism kept on mounting. And then it was tied into the day after--whether we're going to have a two-state solution, whether the Palestinian Authority would be involved in that, whether Palestinian refugees from in the south of Gaza would be admitted to the north, back to the north. It was like one issue after another.
And throughout, the Administration kept up two principle policies which were crucial for Israel's security. One was casting vetoes in the Security Council [United Nations Security Council--Econlib Ed.] over attempts to impose a ceasefire. And, the second was to maintain a steady and a sometimes expedited flow of vital ammunition: we'd run low on ammunition.
And, those two core policies have remained, but everything around it is very confusing.
For example, if you're a leader of Hamas and you're dug in a tunnel and you hear the Secretary of State say this, what you would conclude is: I've got to dig in my heels and hold on for a little while longer, get Israel to kill more civilians. And that's eventually going to cause a rupture. And, at that point, the United States will start demanding a ceasefire. And, that's what I need as a leader of Hamas. Hamas needs a ceasefire in order to win the war. Ceasefire simply means Hamas wins. So, the message is very, very confusing.
And, with regarding Iran: So here, U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked something like 135 times by rockets and drones. United States has for the most part withheld its fire. There's been some return fire, but very little. The Houthis, backed by Iran, have closed international--all but closed--international shipping through the vital Bab al-Mandab waterway. The United States has returned fire, but ineffectively. With some Western allies. Today, the Houthis are firing again.
And, this Administration simply refuses to say the 'I-word'--refuses to say 'Iran.' And, it's extraordinary. Iran, I would say, bears something close to 97% of all the warfare interruption violence going on in the region today. And, it's the one country that has paid zero price. Zero. And, I haven't heard any utterances from Washington saying, 'Iran, you're going to pay a price if you keep on doing this,' and backing up with the [inaudible 00:05:50].
So, if you ask me, I'm confused as an Israeli and as a person who personally knows Joe Biden fairly well--I worked with him. I'm deeply appreciative of the fact that he's maintained these two core policies. But, I'm confused/deeply concerned. And I'm asked on the Israeli Press, 'How long will that continue?' And, my response is always, 'Not indefinitely.'
Russ Roberts: I want to go back to something you said in passing that is a little mystifying to me as an outsider. You talked about the two things the United States is doing for Israel: supplying munitions, which they have done briskly and thoroughly; they have also worked at the United Nations to veto condemnation of Israel.
At the same time--last week--the International Court of Justice through South Africa brought a case against Israel, therefore accusing Israel of genocide. Now, reasonable people might disagree about what exactly genocide is. I don't think it's what Israel is doing in Gaza. But, maybe someone could make the case. Well, they have made the case. Someone might find it persuasive: thoughtful people might find it persuasive.
But what's the significance--the practical significance--to Israel of those two kinds of condemnations: either the United Nations demanding a ceasefire, say; or whatever statement they might make condemning Israel for its actions, or the International Court of Justice?
As a lowly citizen, I look at those things and see it as--the old-fashioned expression would be so much 'chin music.' That probably doesn't communicate to many younger people these days. Is it important? and why? And, as a former Ambassador, I assume you were involved in attempts to stop those things from happening, in your time. Why are they important?
Michael Oren: For one reason, and one reason only. They can serve as a basis for boycotts and sanctions. They could put further pressure on the Biden Administration to cease applying those two policies that are essential for our security. That's why they are important.
Russ Roberts: Okay. Well, they are. The munitions are important. Which raises a question that my colleague, Danny Gordis, has raised, and I'm sure other people have as well, and you probably have, too: One of the wake-up calls of this moment is Israel's dependence on the United States for, one, munitions and, two, some level of deterrence of Iran in the area. We don't know exactly what's going on behind the scenes. Probably: yes, they haven't mentioned Iran; but they did bring two large aircraft carriers into the Mediterranean. I think one of them went home to fuel up. But it's a significant step. Do you think the United States-Israel relationship is now from Israel's side more important than ever? That--evidently we have a nuclear weapon, it's the worst kept secret in the world--is that not a sufficient deterrent? And, how much does Israel depend on the United States and what might Israel do about that going forward?
Michael Oren: That's about five different questions. So, let's unpack it.
First of all, cards on the table. I was the only member of the Israeli government who in 2016 opposed the MOU--the Memorandum of Understanding--renewing the 10-year package of American Aid. The Obama package replaced the Bush package. It was slightly improved monetarily, but with harsher terms.
And I have long been opponent--me, Mr. America-Israel, right?--I've been an opponent of the aid. For many, many reasons. And, it's everything from the fact that we are an affluent society. We're a strong society. Receiving aid at this point is not consonant with our being. It sends the wrong message to the region of dependency and weakness--certainly at a time when America's foreign policy is unclear, when America is withdrawing from many areas of foreign affairs. The value of the aid was always greater than its monetary [inaudible 00:10:26], the strategic value of that aid. It sent a message to everybody: Look, the greatest superpower in the world stands behind the State of Israel, and everyone should get that message. Well, how strong is that message today?
And, we pay a price for the aid. We pay a price in terms of opportunity costs. You're an economist. And, we pay a price in the fact that we don't actually get to buy what we want to buy. And, sometimes we buy things that we may not need that remain very costly. And, I'm thinking of one thing is the F-35 jet, which costs twice as much as any other jet to maintain. And, it is the last manned fighter aircraft in history. And, we've got it now for about 30, 40 years. Very, very expensive jet. Many issues like that.
But, the biggest issue now is the control it gives [?] over our foreign policy. It is a concession of sovereignty and the decision-making. And we see it now very poignantly. If you would have asked most Israelis on October 6th whether they believed that Israel could defend itself, by itself, against any Middle Eastern adversary or any combination of Middle Eastern adversaries, most Israelis would have said, 'Of course, we can.' Ask the same question to Israelis on October 7th, and you get the same percentage of Israelis saying, 'We can't do that.' We can't get these [?]--we can't tell the aircraft carrier strike groups, 'Okay guys, we got it. You can go home. We're in control here.' And, no one's willing to say that.
And here we have the Secretary of State [U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken] sitting in our War Cabinet--which is an extraordinary concession of sovereignty. I think there's a deepening realization in this country--and I hate being the person ahead of his time--that we're going to have to move on to something else. That one of the great goals of Israel, post-Gaza War, will be to achieve strategic independence from the United States of America.
That doesn't mean that America doesn't remain our principal ally, that we don't share the democratic values, that we don't have close, close relationships with American Jewry.
But the relationship should be one of partnership. We should be cooperating in fields that are vital to both our security establishments: in cyber, in laser technology--it's called reinforced energy--computer science, and joint maneuvers. We should continue that; but not on the basis of someone giving and someone receiving. Because as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And, this lunch is anything but free.
Russ Roberts: I just want to clarify to listeners who may not know: Aid to[?from?]] the United States to Israel is essentially--and correct me if I'm wrong, Michael--is essentially vouchers for purchasing military equipment. To say there's strings attached--it's not strings are attached. It's more like puppeteer strings. It's explicitly in the form of in-kind transfers of military products, as you say, some of which we may or may not want, and others which are more expensive. And it's certainly--and I totally agree with you--as a wealthy--now--sovereign nation, which we were not in the past, but Israel is now a wealthy sovereign nation, the idea that we are on welfare for the United States is very bad I think for our relationship with our neighbors. It gives them excuses and stories to tell that I don't think are helpful to us. But, is that a correct characterization of U.S. aid?
Michael Oren: I also think it gives our enemies--even in the United States, they say, 'We can criticize Israel because we pay taxes.' And, 'We pay Israel, and, our bombs--'
Russ Roberts: And they're right.
Michael Oren: Well, actually, if you do the math, it comes out to something like $1 a month per American in aid to Israel. I mean, by the way, the aid is about $4 billion a year. And, you know what $4 billion buys you today in military terms? It buys you half of one Zumwalt-class destroyer. So, you're paying a huge price for an aid package, which--okay, 40 years ago was 50% of our defense budget, but now it's closer to 16%. And, you're right.
Now, in the past, one of the reasons I opposed the Obama MOU--Memorandum of Understanding--as opposed to the Bush one, was because of three initials. Three initials, by the way, categorize all our relationship with the United States. There's QME--Qualitative Military Edge. MOU--Memorandum of Understanding. And, there is OSP--OSP is Off-Shore Procurement. And, under the Bush package, Israel could retain more than 26% of the aid to do with that aid what we needed to do, of course[?first of all it?] [inaudible 00:15:08] created several tens of thousands of jobs in this country. But beyond that, our military has to create capabilities that the United States doesn't need, that we need.
The Obama MOU eliminated the 26%. So, all of the aid has to be spent in the United States.
There were also [?] strings put on our request to get what's known as plus-ups from Congress. We go back to Congress and say, 'Listen, we got the $4 billion dollars, but we need more money for Iron Dome, for David's Sling,'--which is an interim-level anti-ballistic system. And, Obama wanted to cut out our ability to go to Congress. Our friends--Lindsey Graham--taught us how to end-run that. But, there were a lot of strings attached--even more strings attached and[?] MOU--for $4 billion a year.
And, you ask yourself, is it worth it? And the answer, of course, is No.
Now we have a problem that we're deeply dependent on the United States for ammunition. There is a global--certainly Western--depletion of ammunition because of Ukraine. Underneath where we're sitting are station warehouses with pre-positioned American munitions and equipment, about $2 billion worth. They were put there by George Bush--beginning of the [21st--Econlib Ed.] century--to serve American military personnel in the Middle East. They have mostly withdrawn. And the myth remains that these munitions serve those forces, but everyone knows they're for us.
And, what happens is when we run low on ammunition, we get the keys--literally the keys--to these warehouses. We go down, we take what we need, we write it down, we pay for it.
But in 2014, during an earlier war with Hamas, President Obama denied us the keys for certain forms of ammunition because, quote-unquote, "We were killing too many Palestinians."
And, so that makes us dependent on American munitions.
I can give you one case in the Second Lebanon War. And I remember this very succinctly because I was there. In the army we were using American cluster bombs and the United States was criticizing us harshly for using cluster bombs. And so, after the war, we developed our own cluster bombs, and we became independent in terms of cluster bombs, which were an important part of munitions for fighting a deeply embedded enemy like Hamas. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that with 105 millimeter tank munitions. We're going to have to do that with 155 millimeter artillery. And, most important, we're going to have to do that with missile--with jet-fired air-to-ground missiles known as JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions].
Russ Roberts: I want to talk about your tenure as Ambassador, if you can. I think most of us think of ambassadorial life--it depends on what country you're representing and where you're visiting--but, some dinners, some occasional ceremony. I have a feeling being Ambassador from Israel and the United States is a little different. So, reflect on that. Give us a picture of what that was like when you were there and what it might be like now for Michael Herzog, who is the current Ambassador from Israel to the United States? How is it different? Might it be different in wartime?
Michael Oren: Okay. First of all: ambassadorial day, okay--you can't really talk about a day because it's 24/7.
So, what it is: I mean, just on the surface that you are the nexus between 435 members of Congress, 120 members of Knesset, how many ministers we have here--the Cabinet, the President, the Prime Minister, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], the American Armed Forces, the Pentagon, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], the Mossad, FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], Shabak [Sherut haBitachon haKlali, General Security Services], the economic community, commerce, the scientific community, the Jewish communities in the state of Israel, various Christian communities, African-American communities, Latino communities, state governments, local governments, the Press, the Israeli Press. How should we go on? I mean, I could literally spend an hour telling you this. And that's just the daily routine.
And then, of course, you do have a social schedule. And my social schedule was something like Superman. Why? You'd go to maybe two or three different events a night. Each one required a different change of clothing. So, you'd run in with a business suit, put on a tux, then run into something and put on tails; and back and forth and back and forth. The hardest thing for me was at seven o'clock when the rest of the Embassy went home, I began another day.
Then you come in at 11:00, 12:00 at night from having schmoozed professionally for several hours and being on your feet. Then the phone starts ringing because it's morning in Israel. And you're called in, you can be called in to the Embassy, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, to have a secure phone call there. And, you are constantly, constantly sleep-deprived and depressed.
Now, in my period, we didn't have crises in U.S.-Israel relations. We had daily, revolving crises, and they sort of blended into one another.
And, the Obama period was the toughest period. I'll tell you what, for someone who is a historian, it was the toughest period in U.S.-Israel relations. And so, it was constant. And then you're also sitting on a volcano known as the Israeli Embassy, which has 125 people in it, and all sorts of interesting shenanigans going on there. And then, you try to get out of Washington as often as possible. There is a very big place called the United States of America, so you try to get out and travel and speak, get to campuses.
And, I was-- this is to answer your question about Mike Herzog. I am very fond of Mike. We go way back. I've worked with all the Herzogs, by the way. I've worked with his brother, I worked with his father, and I worked with his uncle. I was the last adviser to Abba Eban. And so, I know the Herzogs very well and deeply respect them.
But, every ambassador is different. I can say that--Ron Dermer, my successor, he was very much Bibi's ambassador to Obama and Trump. I was not that. First of all, I wasn't[?] a member of the Likud. I was a professional appointment, not a political appointment. And, I saw myself as being the Ambassador of the State of Israel to the people of the United States.
Mike Herzog comes from the world of diplomacy and quiet diplomacy. He's very much the diplomats' diplomat. He's not a person who is going to get on CNN [Cable News Network] or MSNBC [Microsoft-National Broadcasting Company] and start arguing with people and firing back.
There were days and nights where I would sleep in my vehicle outside the studios in Washington because I'd be going from one after another--and I continue to do that now--because I saw that the way to attain influence, because I wasn't such a close protege of Netanyahu, which is a source of most ambassadors' strength. You think it's the Plenipotentiary idea: that when you're talking to the Ambassador, you're talking to the Prime Minister--the same guy. That was certainly the case of Ron Dermer. It was not my case. So, I had to get influence and achieve influence and access by constantly being in the press, constantly being on TV. And, the Obama Administration was an administration that was very sensitive to the media because it was actually composed of a lot of people from the media. And, it worked. It was a successful policy.
Russ Roberts: You know, people like to say that Israel is not very good at hasbara, which is Hebrew for--I don't know--I'll call it communications. You could call it PR [public relations], you could call it propaganda. But that Israel doesn't make its case. Israelis are gruff. They don't really care what the rest of the world thinks. And so, they give it short shrift.
And, having lived here now for two and a half years and living through the middle of this, I have a very different perspective. I think Israel desperately wants to be loved by the rest of the world--which is a human, but I don't think a very helpful emotion. Israelis feel that way. And, hasbara--communications--can only go so far when social media is just relentlessly amplifying lies--on both sides, I'm sure. But, it of course feels like to me that it's a little one-sided, but I could be wrong. What are your thoughts on that question of whether Israel is doing a good or bad job in making its case in this current moment?
Michael Oren: As someone who has been representing Israel in one form or another literally for a half a century, that is the most frequently asked question: Why is Israel's PR so bad? There's almost never a meeting where that question isn't asked.
And, there are many answers to it. It's the old Ben-Gurion adage that it's not important what the non-Jews think, it's important what the Jews do. There is a parochialism here, provincialism, in Israel. Even--you look at what our military spokesmen are speaking to the world: They put on TV to speak to the world the same people they put on TV to speak to Israelis. And so, when you speak to Israelis, you want a gruff, tough officer. But, when you speak to the world, you may want a pleasantly-speaking woman officer from a different ethnic background. They don't do that. They don't understand they're talking to different audiences. But, these are very technical things.
So, I must tell you what the conclusion after 50 years--and I bring this conclusion to government meetings--is: we can invest another billion dollars. We can train a generation of spokespeople. Something I tried to do many years at the Shalem Center was to train a generation of what I called the Cadet Program. Recently pitched it to Tel Aviv University as much as two years ago: that we'd have to get young people out of the army who speak different languages and come from different backgrounds. Not much interest. Okay.
But the basic reason our public diplomacy--I would call it--is so bad is because we are the Jewish State. And, as much as we like to think we're not--that we're a normal state, we're just like any other state--we are far from being like any other state. e judged by a completely different set of criteria. Held under that microscope of a power that no other country is examined. And, much of the criticism leveled out of us, if you would look at it closely, echoes classic antisemitic tropes. Whether it be the Massacre of the Innocents from the Book of Matthew, whether it be the blood libel, whether it be deicide. And it just comes up.
Listen: How many times have you read since this war, first of all, that we've killed 23,000 Gazans? Which is an inflated number that includes the number of terrorists we've killed and the number of Palestinians killed by their own rockets. Okay? But no one says that. And, the source of that statistic is Hamas. How many times have you seen that cited multiple times a day? And then, they'll always add, 'Mostly women and children.' Is that verifiable? or is someone just trying to say that Jews like killing women and children? Now, in the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] they'll simply say, 'Hey, you guys like killing women and children.'
I have to give a credit to AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] in New York. She actually came out on Christmas and mentioned the Murder of the Innocents and attached it to what was going on in Gaza. She's the first one to actually come out and do that. But, I've noticed this for years.
And, when we are dealing with the media, we are dealing with hatreds that go back 2,500 years. And so, we have to be humble and realistic, and noting that: Okay, we can respond to this. We must respond to this. We have to defend ourselves as best as we can. At the end of the day, we are Jews and we are up against--and a hatred that has very deep and ancient roots.
Russ Roberts: So, on this question on the Murder of the Innocents--it's a reference to the Christian Bible, correct?
Michael Oren: Yes. Matthew.
Russ Roberts: I think--I just want to say to listeners, it's not a--I'll try to say it briefly; it would take a very long time to explain this fully--but, it's hard for non-Jews to understand the Jewish historical legacy that we carry around. Once a year, religious Jews fast for 25 hours, not drinking water, not eating, because the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed 2000 years ago--and beforehand. And we also commemorate lots of other things.
But one I want to mention--I want to tell a brief story. I was asked by colleagues--I was at George Mason University and I was asked by colleagues--as a Jew who is publicly identified, and people knew me as Jewish, why I was not interested in--or my reaction to Mel Gibson's movie about the life of Jesus. And I said, 'Well, I'm not going to see it, so I don't know if it's interesting to you, what I'm going to say about it, because I don't plan to see it.' And, they were surprised. 'Well, why wouldn't you see it?' I said, 'Why don't we talk?'
So, we had a session and invited people to come, and there were, I don't know, 15, 20 people there. Some were very serious Christians. Some were just interested: they weren't religious at all. Some were probably Christian in name only. I think I was the only Jew--I'm not sure. But, I think I was the only Jew. These were staffers and colleagues of mine. And, I started off by saying that there's a long history of Christian anti-Semitism where we were accused of killing Jesus. And that the Crusades, for example, loomed large in Jewish consciousness when on the way to the Middle East, the Christian Crusaders practiced on the Jews. They swept through Europe and killed hundreds and thousands of Jews in France and Germany and elsewhere--and in the name of Jesus Christ, their Lord.
So, I looked up and I looked around the room as I was telling this story about the Crusades, and a lot of people were looking at their shoes. They were horrified. They were unaware of this. It was not part of their Christian history. They didn't know about it. They were ashamed, they stuttered and struggled to respond to what I was telling them. Of course, in the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children to make matzahs for Passover.
So, these kind of things loom large in Jewish consciousness. And the rest of the world--many educated people know about this, but many don't. And, they think, 'Well, Jews are so obsessed with this anti-semitism thing. I mean, like, enough already.'
By the way, I don't like to call it antisemitism anymore. I call it Jew hatred. It's a little more straightforward. [More to come, 30:29]
So, when you have murderers, rapists, and kidnappers broadcasting their escapades with the light and reveling in the fact that they're bragging to their parents even that they're killing Jews--which we have recordings of--it strikes a historical chord for Jews that I think may be difficult for non-Jews to understand how it resonates with us.
So, it is tough that we do seem to be held to a double standard. I don't want to--I'll just add that if you work for National Public Radio [NPR] or the New York Times, I know you get criticized from both sides that your coverage is grossly unfair. And of course, it probably is. It's a very complicated issue and it is hard to cover it objectively and with balance. So, I want to recognize that. But I think, as you say, I think the very fundamental--we could do better, Israel could do better defending itself, but I do think--I happen to agree with you: we're held to a double standard.
Russ Roberts: Let's move to the current moment, which you're writing about a lot on your Substack, and let's dig into it. Let's start with the question of the number of civilian dead in Gaza, which is horrifying. And, the situation there is horrifying.
You said you see the number over and over again of 23,000. That will stop soon, because it will go up--for many possible reasons--but it may sadly go up because more people will die as this war continues. And, I don't know what the actual number is. Like you, I recognize Israel says that 9,000 of the 23,000 were Hamas fighters. So it's, quote, "only 14,000 civilians." That's still an enormous number. Still a tragedy. What should Israel do, if anything, to fight this war humanely and whatever that--I don't even know what--that's a hard phrase to define. But, what might it mean to you? And, certainly as someone who has been involved in the government in a number of different ways, how could Israel--how can it do better? Should it? And how should we think about it as observers?
Michael Oren: Yeah. We have to also add, Russ, that out of the 23,000, 9,000 are terrorists, but about 30% of the remaining 14,000 are casualties caused by Palestinian rockets.
So, you're down to--I said it before--a ratio of about two to one, civilian to soldier. Soldier to combatant deaths: that is roughly half the ratio of United States and Iraq and Afghanistan, half the rate of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and Kosovo--something of a world record by the way. Certainly a world record for intense urban combat against an enemy that is dug in and using its civilian population as a shield.
The criticism in this country is not that we're killing too many Palestinians. The criticism in this country is not doing enough to protect our soldiers and that we are taking unnecessary risks with our soldiers' lives in order to curry favor internationally.
Now, that argument, of course, is more complex because we need that favor in order to gain time and space for the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] to get ammunition, for example, from the United States. If we killed too many Palestinians, that supply of ammunition might be threatened.
So, even that--even the way we're conducting this war and trying to minimize Palestinian deaths also has not just a moral component, but a strategic component.
And then, there's the notion that we aren't just any state, and we aren't just any army. We are the Democratic Jewish State of Israel with that army, which has a strong moral code. I spent about 35 years in that army, and I've fought in Gaza. I know what that's like. We are facing--you know, we are having this conversation with our nice libraries behind us. But, as we're speaking, there are tens of thousands of Israelis who are engaged in week after week after week, 24/7 of intense combat. Now, I've been in several wars, but I've never experienced anything remotely like this.
And the soldiers I'm talking to are coming out and saying to me: Gaza is hell. Everything is booby-trapped. The cats are booby-trapped. The roosters are booby-trapped. The babies are booby-trapped. Every single second you don't know if the last second is your last. You don't know whether the entrance to a tunnel is behind you and someone's going to come up and shoot you in the back. You don't know this. You're living in constant fear. You're living in constant toxic environments, physical environments. And they say it's hell.
And, if you say to these soldiers, 'We should take greater care in trying to limit the number of Palestinian casualties,' they'll look at you like you're crazy, you're detached from reality. You're dealing with the--and we don't even have a word in the English language to describe Hamas and their barbarism and their Satanism--it's pure evil. And, our soldiers will fire at anything. They're just trying to stay alive. Anything that moves. That's how, unfortunately, our own three hostages were killed and why no one was arrested afterward, because this is the state of our soldiers in Gaza.
So, we can have a nice academic discussion about this, but there's a reality discussion. And that is: This is war. It's a brutal war. It is a war of national survival for this country in which tens, and at some point, even hundreds of thousands of our citizens were involved defending us.
And yes, it's painful. It's agonizing to see the pictures. And I'm on the international presses all day. The press you've seen in Israel was completely different than what you see internationally. And, I go on the Israeli--
Russ Roberts: Explain.
Michael Oren: Well, I go on the Israeli news every day almost. And, their coverage is about heroism, stories of survival, stories of bereavement.
The stories in the international press are almost uniformly about Palestinian suffering--in great detail. Particularly the suffering of children, children, children. It's always children. Right? And, they are detached from that reality.
The question is, you know, in order to sort of placate that international opinion, do we have to risk the lives of our soldiers?
This is one of the many grueling, fundamental dilemmas we face. We face a whole series of dilemmas around the hostages. But, this is one of them. And, go tell the parents who have just lost their 21-year-old son or daughter, that that son or daughter had to die in order to take greater care to limit Palestinian casualties.
This was the lesson of the Jenin Battle in 2002 where we lost something like 24 paratroopers trying to limit civilian casualties. And afterwards we were accused of perpetrating a massacre, the Jenin massacre. So, we lost the 24 soldiers and we still got blamed for producing a massacre that never occurred, by the way--completely fabricated.
And within Israeli society--that was within the IDF--in the Israeli society, people said, 'Enough. We're not going to do this anymore.' And, those 24 were reservists with kids and we're just not going to do this anymore.
So, we have a moral code. We have a strict moral code. We are not leveling Gaza. Many people would like to. We have the ability: Sure, we have the military ability to level Gaza. We're not going to do that, because we are the IDF. Because we are the Jewish state. And because we have to, yes, function in the world.
But, I don't think you can say to the Israeli Army--as the Americans have been saying to us, I think unfairly and disingenuously--that we have to slow down and be more precise: 'You get into Gaza, and be more precise.' You send your soldiers in there and see how precise they're going to be: about as precise as they were in Fallujah and Mosul.
By the way, the Americans are giving us--and as I told you earlier about mixed messages--the mixed message from Washington yesterday is: 'The operation is going too slowly.' Okay? 'It should be going faster.' But they want us to slow down. Go figure that one out. All right.
Russ Roberts: So, just to clarify, the IDF is the Israel Defense Forces. It's what people call the army here. You said we're not leveling Gaza. My limited viewing of the news--I don't watch the news much, the TV news here--but I do spend way too much time on X, formerly known as Twitter, looking at video and hearing people discuss and describe it. Northern Gaza looks like a moonscape, at least the part that's being broadcast. It does look leveled.
Now, one thoughtful observer said to me--those videos, which are disturbing and look something like Dresden, they're not like Dresden, by the way, because most of the people were not in those buildings when they were leveled. It's an important distinction. But, it looks like a moonscape.
And, this thoughtful observer said to me, 'Well, those videos are not for the West.'--and they do make Israel look bad for the West--'Those are for the Middle East. Those are for our neighbors to say,'--where there's a very different culture, I should emphasize, here, and you become very aware of it when you live here for any length of time. It's a different culture here in the Middle East. And, those pictures are designed to say to our neighbors: 'Don't mess with us because you will bring this onto yourself.'
Respond to that. It looks to me like we've pushed about a million people south. They don't have enough food. That's not our fault, Israel's fault: that's probably Hamas's fault. But, we are going to lose that battle of information--that info-battle, info-war--because the pictures are horrible and it does not look good. It looks like we're leveling Gaza and we have no plan for tomorrow. We'll turn to tomorrow in a second, but just react to this claim that we are in fact--it sure looks like we're leveling Gaza.
Michael Oren: Well, we have destroyed between--they say between 40% and 60% of the houses have been damaged or destroyed. And, that is a result of Hamas because Hamas is hiding in those buildings, and we have no choice. And, they're shooting from the buildings.
Again, we didn't go in there to level Gaza. And, again, we could: we could have no buildings standing. We didn't have to have the 1.2 million Palestinians leave the battlefield. We're paying a huge price for that--for saving them, the best we can.
There are just no easy answers here. And I, for the life of me--I've been involved in government for many years, involved in the military many years--I don't see where Israel at any point had any choice other than to exhibit greater cruelty. Which is what many Israelis want because they feel that we're paying too high a price in terms of our own soldiers' blood.
Israelis oppose the humanitarian quarters, which the United States pressured us to make. Israelis oppose the supply of fuel to Gazans because they're saying, 'Listen, Hamas has now a 132 of our hostages,'--back then it was up to 242 hostages--'Why should we give them anything? This is the only leverage we have over them. They won't even let the Red Cross in to visit these people. This is the leverage we have.' So, it wasn't just vengeance. It was just an attempt to simply get these hostages back.
One of the hardest things I have to explain to Israelis, Russ, is that the events of October 7th--we talked about barbarism and evil and the satanic nature of them--were pretty much par for the course for the Middle East. This is what Arab peoples have done to one another. It's what the Syrians did to their own population.
You don't think they beheaded and burned and raped them, and dismembered them? Of course they did. It's what the Lebanese did to one another; and I spent a long time in Lebanon. It's exactly what they did to one another. Whether it be the massacres in Damour or the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, it is exactly what they did to one another. Why would they treat the Jews any differently?
You talk about cultural differences. This is the Middle East way of war.
I was interviewing for a major American network two days ago, and the interviewer was Iranian, and she was talking about how the Iranian regime has treated the protesters of the revolt--the most recent revolt, about two years ago, the Women's Revolt--how they arrested thousands of women, threw them in prisons, and raped them every single day. Every single day. Welcome to the Middle East, folks.
Yes, there is an element of sending a message, and that message has to be internalized.
Just, if I can go on for one second?
Russ Roberts: Sure.
Michael Oren: A good friend of mine was--Jeff Goldberg; he's the Editor of The Atlantic. And, after one of the many rounds of fighting with Hamas, Jeff called me and says, 'I get what Israel's tactics are, but what's the strategy?'
And I said, 'Jeff, you don't understand. The tactics are the strategy. Since coming into being in 1948, every couple of years, they're going to try to destroy us again. And, every couple of years we're going to have to remind them that it's not a good idea. And, that buys us a certain number of years. And, during those years, we build the society: we build Israel, one of the world's most successful nation-states; and we live our lives. The Middle East stays where it stays. It doesn't go anywhere.'
And, every once in a while, there will be Arab leaders who say, 'Okay, enough of this.'
The Egyptians waged, not one but four wars of national destruction against us. And, afterwards they said, 'okay, enough.'
Jordanians, two wars of national destruction against us. Afterwards, they said, 'Enough.'
Now we have the Abraham Accords, signatory countries. So, it's not as if the tactic cum strategy goes on indefinitely, maybe with some factions, like Hamas will go on indefinitely, but not with everybody. Even the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] at a certain point realized enough is enough. Maybe. At least superficially.
So, I remain optimistic that, you know, this is a strategy. Maybe it's a strategy--a tactic cum strategy that many countries in the world are going to have to adapt in the Twenty-First century.
Russ Roberts: So, yesterday somebody posted--maybe it wasn't yesterday--somebody posted a video on Twitter--on X--that appeared to show a crowd of Gazans, or I think it was Gazans, running and being shot at. And, it was posted by saying, 'The IDF is trying to mow down civilians.' They were looking for food evidently or coming to receive humanitarian aid, and they were being sniped at and killed. Observers, when I said, 'How do you know this is Israeli snipers?' It was a claim. They said, 'Well, how do you know it's not?' Which is a tough standard. But I said--my answer, by the way, many people weighed in and said, 'You can tell from the noise of the gunfire. These are AK-47s. They're not the Israeli rifle, the M16. So it's not Israelis.'
But, put that to the side. When people ask me, 'How do I know?' I say things like, 'Well, my students here at Shalem College serve in the Army. I talk to them.' I know what they're told to do. I know what codes of conduct they are expected to live up to. Certainly IDF soldiers sometimes fail that code of conduct. Under the stress of war, they fail. We often have--almost always, we have investigations when egregious mistakes are made, and if they're not mistakes and they're actually decisions made by people, sometimes those folks are punished, Israeli soldiers. But, at the same time, I'm not naive. I know that under war really horrible things can happen. And I also know that spokespeople lie in the name of their country's reputation.
So, I've heard, for example, that yes, Israel pushed the northern Gazan residents into the south--which by the way, not only is it an unusual wartime strategy to tell your enemy that you're coming: your enemy is not dressed in a uniform. So surely many of the people who went south were not average Gazan citizens, but were in fact Hamas fighters with hostages dressed in clothing to hide them from Israelis when they went south. So, it's a rather remarkable moment in military history.
But, having said that, many people respond to me when I say that and say, 'Yeah, but when they went down South, Israel targeted them and killed them.' True? False? In your own personal experience in the Israeli army, do you really believe that we have moral codes of conduct where we expect more of our soldiers than other people?
Michael Oren: We do. And we do have the moral conduct. And, I know it personally. And, by the way, I was an army spokesman for, oh, let's see, 20 years and never lied once. I mean it: never had to lie not once, not in that context--
Russ Roberts: As far as you know, Michael, I appreciate that--
Michael Oren: No, I didn't lie once. Never once.
Russ Roberts: Never intentionally.
Michael Oren: Never intentionally. And, sometimes you get different information from the field and sometimes it cuts different ways.
I remember one case where a mine went off on a Gaza beach and killed nine members of one family, and Israel immediately came out and apologized. Until three days later, when it found out that the mine was not an Israeli bomb, but a Hamas torpedo that exploded. They were killed by Hamas, not by us, and we ended up apologizing for it.
So as long as you tell untruths that cut the other way, they harm us. We've learned not to apologize so quickly.
Look at the Al-Ahli hospital issue. We didn't rush to apologize for that, thankfully. Thankfully. But yes, mistakes happen. What I call the Kafr Kana Syndrome: Twice in 1996 during the Grapes of Wrath Operation, and again in 2006 during the Second Lebanon [War--Econlib Ed.] in the same village, Kafr Kana, in South Lebanon, one of our tank shells hit a target and killed between 70 and a hundred civilians. It wasn't done on purpose. We were accused of doing it on purpose. And, both times it had immediate tactical, diplomatic ramifications to our detriment. Doesn't matter: The default assumption is that we're killing civilians on purpose.
But let's put it this way: If we were the Syrian army, if we were any of the factions in Lebanon's civil war, if we were Hezbollah, we wouldn't have told those Palestinians to leave. We would have bombed them right where they were. And, I think we would have sent an unequivocal message to the entire Middle East, 'Don't screw with us. You don't do this.'
We didn't do that. And, instead we went in on the ground. Yes, we damaged and destroyed a lot of buildings, but we also lost over 500 soldiers, which is an almost insufferable burden for this country of this size. To see what it is in per capita American terms, but something the equivalent of say 15-, 20,000 soldiers killed already in a hundred days.
Russ Roberts: Just to be clear, the majority of the soldiers we have lost died on October 7th. I'd love for this war to be over and for that ratio to stay where it is, but we'll find out.
Russ Roberts: Let's talk about the goals of the war, which are in conflict. Every Israeli likes to hear that we're going to get the hostages back and we're going to eliminate Hamas. There's a huge amount of resolve to achieve both those goals; but of course, they're in conflict. And, you wrote a poignant essay recently--we'll post it--about the dilemma that Israel faces. How do you think that's going to work going forward as perhaps the world gets less patient and Israel has to decide how to proceed?
Michael Oren: I've written several articles about this, Russ, because it is, as a case study, it's sui generis. I don't know of--there's no incident like it in history facing a leadership, facing a society. But particularly this society. Israel comes into being in 1948 with a dual identity: We're Jewish and democratic. And you know how hard that's been to reconcile those two, particularly in the period leading up to this war.
But, we have another dual identity: it's a defense identity. Israel was created three years after the Holocaust--almost to the date--and it comes into being on the basis of a promise, a covenant, which is: This state exists in order to ensure that that will never happen again. We'll defend the state, we'll defend its people.
And there's another part of that covenant which says that: If in defending the state, some of our soldiers fall captive, we will do everything in our power to get them back. That's the basis of the Entebbe Raid, certainly many other instances in Israel; and it's on the basis of that understanding--that covenant--that Israelis send their children to the army.
On October 7th, Hamas hit us between the "I"s--not these eyes--the pronoun "I"s [plural of "I" as a pronoun--Econlib Ed.], the two identities we have. It got us--the defense of the state, the defense of the people, we broke that promise. But it also presented us with an impossible dilemma: How do we then, in restoring the deterrence power, destroying the security, the covenant of the state, how do we do that and at the same time redeem the hostages? And, they are largely mutually exclusive and irreconcilable goals. Because, the easiest thing for the IDF to do--besides I just talked about carpet-bombing Gaza; we're not going to do that--but, the easiest thing that we could have done was to go into Gaza, filled up all the tunnels either with saltwater or with flammable material and thrown in a match, and it's over.
But, we can't do that because of the hostages.
And tremendous pressure on the government now to make a deal with Hamas, cut a deal--as if such a deal is actually on the table for Hamas. I don't think it is. They either want victory or they want martyrdom.
But even if it were on the table, at what price? It would mean emptying all of our jails of terrorists who have killed Jews. And, you have to go to all those families and say, 'Hey, I'm sorry, the guy who killed your son or your daughter is going to go scot-free.' And what that means for Israeli society.
But it means something else also in sort of a security way: It means that every terrorist organization knows that the more hostages it gets, the more bargaining it's going to have. And that every terrorist gets who kills a Jew knows he can kill a Jew and sit in prison for a couple of years and then get out in a prisoner-for-hostage exchange.
And so, terror goes way, way up. And, hostage chasing goes way, way up. The long run we've learn from Gilad Shalit, it ends up costing you more than you've saved.
Russ Roberts: Explain the Gilad Shalit case to listeners.
Michael Oren: He [Gilad Shalit] was taken in a cross-border Hamas raid in 2006, spent five years in captivity. We negotiated for his release and we paid for it with the freeing of 1,027 terrorists from our jail. Among those terrorists, almost all of them went back to committing acts of terror. And, one of them was Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas. And so, that release to just get that one soldier back, we not only encouraged the next round of hostage-taking on a vastly greater scale, but it cost us. We saved one life, but we've lost now well over 1300. So, there we go. That's the kind of dilemma facing the state of Israel today.
I've quoted my daughter often. I should quote her again. She says, 'We should recognize that we lost the war on October 7th. There's no winning this war. And, we have one goal and one goal only, and that is to release the hostages, redeem the hostages. Because if you don't, I won't be able to send my kids to the army.' To which my son replies, 'If we don't destroy Hamas, you will not have an army to send your children to.' And, there you have it.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Well, that's a cheerful note.
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to 1967 for a minute, if we could.
You spent a lot of time immersed in that war, in your writing in the history of it. In many ways, that war feels like the opposite of this one. It was short. It was six days. It ended with a total victory, which is literally impossible. This war, it may end with some positive things, but we can't call it a total victory remotely. It will have too many tragic deaths on both sides. It will have unbearable psychological damage to this country. And, the day after, which we'll talk about in a minute, is also, of course very, very uncertain.
So, it was short in 1967, and it ended euphorically. And that ushered in a tragically overconfident period, which of course helped create the world that led to the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
As you think back on that time and your study of it, what are your thoughts with its efforts? Any lessons for this moment that come to you or that have crossed your mind or that haunt you? What are your thoughts?
Michael Oren: Oh, many. Many, many. I mean, completely different world. We fought an enemy that was wearing a uniform and tanks and planes. For the most part except for the battles of Jerusalem very far from urban centers with very few civilian casualties. Very different war.
And yes, a very short war, with a conclusive--I call it a Mount Mitsubishi moment. You know? The Temple Mount is in our hands. There's actually a moment where we declare victory over the flag. That's certainly not going to happen in Gaza.
The world was with us, too; and that was the last gasp in the West of heroism. In 1967 was an inflection point in the West generally, where the people who had been victims before were looked down upon. And, all of a sudden it became, in 1967, cool to be a victim. And it became uncool to be a victor. We sort of missed--we came out a little bit too late with that victory. And, you see the switches in Hollywood. I grew up with the cowboys being good and the Indians being bad. And, it switched to 1967 and 1968.
So, very, very different. Different country, different world. The press celebrated our victory internationally. And, the other side were the bad guys. Nasser was the bad guys. The Syrians were the bad guys. The word 'Palestinian,' nobody had ever heard of yet. It's amazing how the Palestinians don't figure in.
The most important lesson of 1967 is this: That the United States did not want us to go to war. President Johnson was adamant and reiterated over and over again that if Israel decided to go to war, it would go to war alone. United States--he was very disturbed when he got the word on the morning of June 5th that Israel had launched this attack against the Egyptian Air Force.
And, the lesson is this, not just in 1967, but of all of wars--1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, I can go on and on 1982, 1991, the First Gulf War, Second Lebanon War, all our wars with Gaza, and I'm probably leaving out a few--in almost every case, the United States said to us, 'Don't go to war.' Every case. Even the Iraq nuclear operation, 1981, they said 'No.' And, every time we said, 'Thank you, but we have to defend ourselves,' the Americans got angry and later they respected us for it.
Johnson turned around in 1967, and he was the architect of the US-Israel Defensive Alliance. They respected us for it. Happened with Ronald Reagan after the Osirak nuclear bomb in 1981, they condemned it, United States condemned it. United States joined with Iraq in condemning us on the Security Council. United States delayed the sale of delivery of F-15 jets, and then turned around; Reagan became one of our best friends. George Bush, by the way, was very tough with Israel at the beginning of the second Intifada. I remember we sent five tanks into somewhere in Ramallah, and he forced us to get them out in the same day. And then, finally in 2002, when we launched Operation Defensive Shield and we occupied the cities, the Palestinian Cities, George Bush became our strongest ally.
America likes a country--maybe it's human nature--it likes a country that stands up for itself. Every time the United States has said to us, 'Don't go to war,' and we didn't go to war, not only did we end up paying a price, but we ended up getting contempt from the United States. Disdain. That was the case in 1973, where Kissinger said to Golda, 'Don't launch a preemptive strike.' Did we get respect after 1973? We got a lot of pressure for territorialist[?] discussions. 1991, we were getting hit by dozens of Scud missiles fired by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and George Bush Senior said to Yitzhak Shamir, 'Don't respond. Don't respond.' Shamir didn't respond. And, what did we get? We got Madrid with pressure to make territorial concessions, but no respect for them. No, thank you. Zero, zero.
And that's the lesson I take away. It's a historical lesson. We have to stand up for ourselves. And that is a crucial lesson for right now. Because if tomorrow the Administration's position changes to: one, We need to ceasefire. If the Administration says you cannot open a second front against Hezbollah up north at a time when Hezbollah has basically made the northern part of Israel Judenrein--
Russ Roberts: Free of Jews--
Michael Oren: Free of Jews. And is outdoing Hamas in the firing of missiles--the number of missiles fired daily--we're going to have to say to the United States, 'Thank you, but.' And my, if the empirical record here is any indication, we'll get a lot of anger at us. At the end of the day we'll get respect.
Russ Roberts: I don't know how much taste there's going to be here for a second war against Hezbollah after, however Gaza winds down.
Russ Roberts: But, let's focus on that winding down for a minute and close.
Israel takes a lot of criticism that we don't have an end game for Gaza. My response to that is: that's not our problem. I'm sure we will contribute to that rebuilding if the world wants us to. If the Gazans want us to. We certainly have a strong interest in seeing Gaza be a successful place for people to flourish rather than to be poor and angry.
We may through this response, of course, if people say we're going to create a lot more people who are sympathetic to Hamas--possible--we certainly create a lot of people who are not sympathetic to Hamas, they're very angry at them, which is also part of that reality. But, there's not an obvious end-game for the day after. But, we could speculate about it. And, I am curious: you wrote a piece on it that we'll post. What's your answer for where Hamas is likely to be whenever this war is effectively not a military war any longer?
And then, what is your longer run view for where this region is headed in?
Certainly after the beginning of the war when President Biden started talking about a two-state solution, I'm thinking, 'Do you know what it's like here?' I guess not, because whatever sympathy there was in the past--and there was quite a bit for the two-state solution. And, over time it has slowly, and then sometimes decisively and briskly waned because of the facts on the ground from the perspective of the people who live in this very small country.
And right now there's zero, I think, taste for it. Virtually zero. And, it's nice to say, maybe it's just PR [public relations] on the part of the--it's just politicking on the part of the President and others. But, if that's out--which it is, I think for the at least short-, medium-run--what might be in?
So, talk about first the day after in Gaza and then the day after in the region in the aftermath of whatever this war leads to.
Michael Oren: Let me first say: We can destroy Hamas--and I think we have to destroy Hamas. You can't destroy the idea of Hamas, because the idea of Hamas is the same idea as ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], and as Al-Qaeda, as Hezbollah. These are the hottest organizations that seek to recreate the medieval caliphate in the Middle East. And then, to expand that caliphate to global dimensions.
Hamas differs only in the sense in it is ordering priorities. First you create a Palestinian Islamic state in the place of Israel, and then that expands to encompass the region and ultimately the world. No different. You can't kill that idea with bombs and bullets. You can kill it with education. Let's see if anybody's going to do that.
But, what you can do is degrade them to a degree that they can't threaten you as much. I mean, there are neo-Nazis running around the world today, but they're a lot less threatening because there's no Nazi Germany. There are ISIS cells around the world. They're a lot less threatening without the Islamic state.
So, this is what we have to do. The day after--and again, I've written about this, will be the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip--the internationalization of the Gaza problem so it won't be just an Israeli problem or even an Israeli-Egyptian problem. It will almost certainly involve a creation of a cordon sanitaire around Gaza. No one is going to get close to that border again.
Right now we have two security zones in Israel. They're both in Israel, both in the north and the south. We have to expand that again.
We need international force, hopefully with a large Arab component, to supervise the reconstruction of Gaza, giving it an infrastructure it never had--as Hamas didn't care about an infrastructure.
And, looking for an indigenous Palestinian leadership that cares more about their children and grandchildren than they do care about killing our kids and grandkids. It shan't be easy. That's the hardest stage.
The hardest stage is finding the Palestinian leadership--not necessarily importing one from the West Bank and one from the West Bank that was in turn was imported from Tunis. Right? There's no confluence of interest or grassroots of confluence of interest. It really needs someone who is homegrown.
But, all this may take a very long time. And, I understand the political exigencies of the Administration's pressure for the day-after scenario, and for the two-state solution. Most recently in the Secretary of State's comments, he used to say that we sign on to Israel's goal of destroying Hamas. In his recent press conference here in Israel he said, 'Our goal is to prevent the recurrence of the events of October 7th.' And, being an old diplomat, I said, 'Whoa, that's a huge difference.' And, my gut feeling said that this means the Administration no longer supports the destruction of Hamas. Maybe they don't believe it's possible we can do it because that's what they've been leaking to the press in Washington, and that they support the creation of a Palestinian unity government that may have Hamas elements in it, technocrats. And, I thought that was just a gut feeling. But, I was asked by a journalist several days ago from the United States, 'What do you think about the Administration's plan to create a Palestinian unity government?'
So, I mean, this is all pie-in-the-sky stuff.
And, there actually is a country here with--we are a democracy and we have public opinion. My family here in this country is overwhelmingly left of center. If you say to them today, two states, Palestine, they'll tell you, 'You are crazy. Are you off your rocker?' For us, it's not politics. For us, it's life and death.
I'm sitting here in my--in spite of the books behind me, this is my bomb shelter. And off to the left of me is a bulletproof window. I'm sitting in Jaffa. I look out that window and I see the Hills of Hebron.
You put a Palestinian state there that's going to fall apart into a Hamas state within a matter of days, then this room will not be in rocket range. It will be in rifle range.
And no Israeli is willing to take that risk [inaudible 01:08:39] once again. I thought that--personally, the Secretary's remarks here, totally look any Israeli feelings--he was talking again about too many Palestinians killed on a day that nine Israeli soldiers were killed. And, there's a total detachment from our reality.
Russ Roberts: So, do you have any long-run--long-run, meaning, say, within a generation--optimism for how--I mean the way you described our world, Israel is 75 years old, older than more than half the countries in the world. Which is quite extraordinary. It's amazing that we're still here. You have a book, by the way, Israel 2048, referencing the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Israel, which we hope will be here in 24 years. I have not read it. I look forward to reading it. Maybe we'll talk about that another time. But, the way you described it before is that, 'Well, we buy a few years and maybe somebody makes peace with us.' Is that, you think, our best long-run strategy?
Michael Oren: No. Our best long-run strategy is to create the State of Israel. Every once in a while we're going to have to defend ourselves and remind our enemies that attacking us is not a good idea. And, in between we create this.
And, what do I mean by "this"? So, you mentioned I've been here a long time. I've been here a long time. And I came here for the first time in 1970, and there was nothing here. Our major export item was orange juice. Lower middle class country that had no relations with China, no relations with India, no relations with the Soviet Bloc countries, no relations with Africa, no relations with almost all South America. Nice relationship with the United States. Not a strategic alliance by any stretch of the imagination. No peace with Egypt, no peace with Jordan. Three million Jews caught behind the Iron Curtain, prisoners; hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, prisoners.
You cannot have my historical experience--and, we're not talking about centuries here--in the decades I've been here, and not be optimistic about this country's future. Cannot. If you would have told me the first time that I landed here, that someday we would have relations with all these countries--complex relationships sometimes, but relationships--that we'd have probably the deepest strategic alliance with the United States had with any foreign country in the post-World War II period, that we would be a technological powerhouse; our per capita GDP [Gross Domestic Product] would be vying with Japan's and closing in on Germany's?; that every Jew in the world would be free today? I'd say you're nuts. That we'd have peace with a major share of the Arab world and other Arab countries that want to make peace with us? I'd say you're insane. I'd want to know what drug you're on.
And, you can't look at that and not be optimistic.
And, even in this most despairing time--and it is a time that's rife with despondency: antisemitism in the world, the human cause, our sense of loneliness--and truly there's a sense of loneliness here--in every crisis there are immense opportunities. And this is an opportunity to correct some of the flaws in this country. That's what the book 2048 is about, is the issues we have to address. Most of them relate to sovereignty, extending sovereignty over the Negev, 62% percent of the country. How the country extending sovereignty over populations like the Haredi population, which is really not under our sovereignty. Correcting flaws in our healthcare system, our educational system. It's a huge, huge opportunity.
And, we've learned something about ourselves. We've learned that Israeli society, I think, without competition, is the strongest, most resilient society in the planet. And, what an asset that is. What an asset it is to learn something about ourselves.
So, I--as despondent as I even get sometimes--yes, like I said, I'm overwhelmingly optimistic about the future. We're going to pull through this as we pulled through much harder things; and we'll come out stronger and better for it.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Michael Oren. Michael, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Michael Oren: Great, Russ. Thanks for having me.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 11, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 11th, 2024, and before introducing today's guest, I want to remind listeners to vote for your favorite episodes of 2023. The last day of voting is February 1st, so please go to econtalk.org and at the very top of the page you'll see a very thin banner and a place to click and vote.
And, now for today's guest, political scientist and public opinion expert, Dahlia Scheindlin. She is the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel, which forms the backdrop for our conversation today. Dahlia, welcome to EconTalk.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Thank you for having me on the show.
Russ Roberts: In the aftermath of October 7th, we're living in a very charged time. Today--meaning literally today, Thursday, January 11th--Israel stands accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The war in Gaza continues. Almost 200 Israeli soldiers have died as have tens of thousands of Gazans.
I want to start with the mood of the country that we both live in. What do you feel is the mood right now and how has that changed since October 6th, the day before this all started?
Dahlia Scheindlin: I'm happy that you opened with that question, and I'd like to start not by delving into numbers exactly--although public opinion is my expertise and I can talk about that. But, I just think it's not the same country.
Certainly from October 7th onward, I would say the first three weeks to one month were characterized by a sense of complete, dazed shock. Israelis were shocked on so many levels that they didn't really know how to cope with it. I realized that that whole phase, many of us spoke in half-sentences, and people were just trying to cope with understanding what had happened. Understanding both the attack itself, the nature of the attack, which in certain ways was different from other kinds of attacks. Israel is a place that has experienced terror attacks--by which I mean politically motivated attacks on civilians--over the course of many decades. But, there was something very different about these. It's what I--I haven't invented this term, but they were like intimate violence. People marched into civilian homes to slaughter them. And that was something that Israelis hadn't experienced before. It was so huge and so unpredictable for the average civilian that people were just coping with the attack.
But then, at the very same time, they were coping with the shocking realization that Israel itself hadn't anticipated or prevented the attack. And, there is an ongoing sense--I think the most common thing you hear in Israel today--is: How could you?
In fact, you opened by talking about how today we are listening to the International Court of Justice hearings on South Africa's accusations of genocide. But there was something equally important yesterday, which is that the Defense Minister visited communities in the south and he talked to a woman whose grandchildren were killed, her son-in-law was killed, if I'm getting it correctly. And, she was so speechless when she saw him. But then, she started out in a whisper and she said, 'How could you? How could you? Where were you? Why was there not even one phone call?' And, this went on and on for quite a while, and it was all broadcast on the news, and the Defense Minister watched her kind of helplessly.
And I think that that epitomizes in many ways how the country is feeling. But particularly, I would say, in the first phase, the shock, the speechlessness really characterized how Israelis were feeling.
In the phases since then, everything is equally sort of dizzying. There's multi-directional sources of events every single day that Israelis have to figure out what they think about them. The war, the accusations against Israel, the ongoing trauma because soldiers are dying, families are still losing family members. And, I think Israelis are reliving October 7th all the time: a). because the media is listening to many, many stories of personal trauma and what people personally experienced. And, because new evidence is coming to light as we get new investigative reporting about what happened that day, new bits of documentation or testimony, new stories that weren't heard.
And so, we are both reliving the original trauma; coping with the double trauma of the attack and the sense of being abandoned--is the word that Israelis most commonly used by their own authorities--and the ongoing war; and the sense that the world is against Israel. And so, all of these things are just simply creating a very complex, difficult environment.
And having said that--I promise to get into the numbers at some point--and I'll just give one quick observation, which is that the Israel Democracy Institute has been doing ongoing surveys, special surveys related to the war and their regular ongoing Israel Voice Index surveys. And they found, interestingly that there was an interesting uptick in the sense of optimism in the first--I think that they first polled maybe after about two weeks. And, a rise specifically among Arab citizens of Israel in the sense of identification with the state of Israel and its problems, but in general. And, I interpreted that as a 'rally-'round-the-flag' effect. It's pretty common in other countries during wartime.
But, those numbers have begun to decline once again. So, these are not huge shifts. We're talking about around the 40% range of people who say they're optimistic about the future of democracy and security, which is roughly where it was before the war. But, it seems like the initial sense of rallying together--which I think was mostly Israelis reflecting their spirit, their encouragement that civil society, other people were rallying so much and they were taking comfort in one another--that is starting to fade as people really are digging in for the long and depressing sense of how this war has no end in sight and Israel's troubles are ongoing.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. The best way I heard it described is: On New Year's Day, people said it wasn't January 1st, it was October 87th. Which kind of captures--I think I got the day right--captures the despair here, mixed with quite a bit of unity, quite a bit of occasional optimism.
As a newcomer, I've never experienced anything like the way the country pulled together compared to, say, October 6th when it felt like it was falling apart. And, the fact that the wars won't end--and this is the nature of war. I try to console myself by thinking about the blitz in World War II in London. They didn't know it was going to end in 1945. They didn't know who was going to win. So, I wake up every morning stupidly looking for good news, like: War Over. So, it's a challenging time.
Russ Roberts: Let's talk about public opinion in some subgroups. Many of my listeners, of our listeners don't know a lot about Israeli society.
There are two million Arab citizens of the state of Israel. Your book chronicles very powerfully how their situation has changed over the 75 years of the history of the country. It's very different at the beginning in how they were treated, and still there are many things that need work, certainly. But it is a surprise to many people to learn that there are Arab citizens within the pre-1967 borders of Israel who vote, get healthcare, go to university, and so on. That population in the 2021 war with Gaza--with Hamas and Gaza--to the shock and horror of many Israelis often joined in from within Israel's borders in what are so-called mixed cities--cities where Arabs and Israelis live side by side--and were very supportive of Hamas' response.
This time it seems different. What do we know about that? The numbers I've seen--they're not recent--that as many as 70% of the Arab-Israelis, Arab citizens of the Israeli state, support something--you can put into your own words that are more accurate. So first, give us some feel for how Arab citizens of Israel are responding to the war and why you think it's different.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. First of all, let me clarify that when we talk about the two million, that includes--usually the Central Bureau of Statistics includes Palestinians who are residents of East Jerusalem who are not full citizens. So, we need to take that into account. There's about 250,000 of those.
The other thing is that many of those people, many of those citizens identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel. Not all of them. Polls vary. My polls show that between 35 and 40%, roughly, sometimes going up and down, identify first of all as Palestinian citizens of Israel or some combination: Palestinian-Israeli, Palestinian-Arab, and others would choose Arab or Arab-Israeli as their primary identity. That doesn't necessarily block out the other identities. People have multiple identities.
Russ Roberts: To be clear, these are non-Jews who are either Muslim or Christian, or typically here and their families were here for the last 75 years and well before.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. Exactly. And, they are citizens of--again, other than the permanent residents of East Jerusalem who are not the citizens, most of them are citizens of Israel. It includes, as you pointed out, Muslims, Christians. The vast majority are Muslim. Also Druze, Bedouin.
I think the other thing I would point out just in response, quick response, to what you mentioned about May 2021. First of all, it was an unprecedented situation. As far as anybody really remembers from the beginning of statehood, there hasn't really been--I'm talking about from 1948 onward--there hasn't really been a case of citizens, civilians, rioting and implementing violence against one another between Arab or Palestinian citizens and Jewish Israelis. And that was what shocked many people so much.
But, I also want to point out that I think it would be a little bit misleading to characterize the demonstrations of some--we're talking about small portions of any people who go out and demonstrate or riot--as support for Hamas.
I think that they wouldn't put it like that. I think those demonstrations initially began as solidarity with home evacuations in the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem, which was actually part of the initial tensions that led to the beginning of that defensive wall--the Guardians of the Wall--operation. And then, it spread to, again, demonstrations that some of them became something like riots and clashes. Partly, I think they would say in solidarity with the damage being done to the people of Gaza. I don't think very many of them would characterize it as support for Hamas per se. That's how I hear their communications about it. So, I do think it's important to clarify.
And so, when we talk about why the response is so different this time: I think that from my conversations, and certainly from polling, we see that most Palestinian or Arab citizens of Israel were frankly horrified by what Hamas did in terms of the brutality, the atrocities, the attacks on civilians. They were as shocked as anybody else. And many of them lost people, as well. A number of the victims--dozens of the victims--were Arab citizens of Israel who were either killed on the spot, sometimes in very brutal ways, or kidnapped. And so, there's an equal sense of being dazed and confused, so to speak, within that community. And, at the same time, at the very same time, within hours, horror of what's happening to civilians in Gaza as a result of Israel's war, in response.
And so, I think that they are undergoing equally kind of confusing emotions around everything, trying to process these what seemed to be zero-sum or what is often felt to be zero-sum interpretations of what's happening or zero-sum positions.
Now, I don't think it has to be zero-sum, but many of us feel like we're being put in that position: Choose a side.
And, typically in some ways this isn't that different from what the Arab citizens of Israel have been through for most of history. They're always being caught in between the political sort of tectonic plates of the Israel-Arab conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the occupation.
Many of them, of course, have family in the West Bank and Gaza, in East Jerusalem, because those are families who were broken up during 1948. By most estimates, about 80% of Gazans are refugees from 1948 Israel. And so, they kind of can't be forced into one side or another demographically or emotionally.
And so, I think all of those things are playing into what's happened.
At the very same time, I don't want to underestimate the fact that the police, under the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Police Chief, took a very strict line; and very early on said they will not tolerate demonstrations against the war. They actually physically blocked--unlegally blocked--demonstrations in a couple of Arab communities in the very first weeks. And, there were quite a number of arrests. We have reports of about two hundred--a few hundred--people I would say being arrested for things like Facebook posts that were interpreted as somehow expressing either solidarity with Gaza and interpreted therefore as supporting Hamas on some level. Some of these may be, have, more genuine substantive charges behind them. Some of them seem pretty spurious. We have reports of people who were arrested or investigated for posts they wrote before October 7th.
And so, I think that we can't underestimate the fact that there's a lot of fear that if people were to go out, demonstrate, express their opinion, that they could face a very heavy-handed police response. And, all of those things play into the attitudes, I think, in that community.
I want to mention one last thing. There have been--early on, even on October 7th itself, that very evening--there was a convening, initiated by civil society leaders, particularly those who are involved in shared society initiatives, which basically just means Jewish-Arab cooperation in Israel. We have many such groups. NGOs [non-governmental agencies], nonprofit organizations, lots of people who deal with joint education and bilingual activities and peace activities and common social causes. And, they all got together even starting October 7th to talk about how to prevent a resurgence of violence through coexistence-related activities and de-escalation activities. And all of the groups, like, started filling in an Excel form saying: This is what we think we can do to help prevent escalation.
So, my reading is that all of those things have contributed to the fact that we haven't seen that kind of unrest or violence among Israeli civilians.
Russ Roberts: Let's turn to Gaza. And, I just want to say to listeners, I appreciate your coming on this journey with me to think about how we should think about this. And a lot of you have told me you appreciate that we're exploring this. It's an area you don't know much about. And, as I've said, we will have a wide array of voices on this topic.
But, I want to make one thing clear--and this also goes for my Substack writing, which I encourage you to subscribe to--Listening to the Sirens--we'll put a link to it. But I want to make something clear: I don't believe in collective punishment. I think it's deeply immoral.
And, people who are claiming that Israel's response to October 7th in Gaza is justified because Hamas was elected by the people there, I find that unacceptable.
And, some people have challenged me: 'Why?' 'They voted for them.' I said, 'Well, expressing an opinion at the ballot box should not be a death sentence,' for starters. They didn't certainly anticipate in 2005--excuse me, 2006 when the election occurred--that this October 7th was in the plans. Yes, Hamas has a very ugly charter. Yes, many people I'm sure sympathize with it or agreed with it at the time. But I just don't think that's the way the world should work. And, we'll get, I assume, into some of the ethics of the military response.
But, I want to make it clear that I do not think that Gazan public opinion justifies, say, being killed.
Now, having said that, what do you think--two questions, Dahlia. What do we know about Gazan public opinion before October 7th in the recent past as opposed to 2006 in an election? And, how reliable do you think polling results are in a place where you're in an authoritarian state--where people get killed, often, for not agreeing with the regime? It's not a smart thing to do if you want to stay alive.
So, I always take those results with a grain of salt, when we hear about how many people supported October 7th or sympathize with Hamas. Do you think those results are meaningful and how do you interpret them and what do you think we know about it?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. Thank you for that question. Also very good.
I want to also point out something about the 2006 elections. I've also heard many times this argument that people voted for Hamas, so they're all responsible for this. But, 2006 was a long time ago. Okay. That's 18 years ago--
Russ Roberts: Or dead--
Dahlia Scheindlin: And, we have to remember that Gaza has a particularly young demographic. About 70% of Gaza's population is below 30. I'm not sure if I have the exact figures of people below 18, but let's just say it's a vast swath of society in Gaza who did not vote for Hamas because there haven't been elections since then. Not something I justify. I would like to have elections in any country every four years.
Back to your question about public opinion. What we know about public opinion--let's talk first about the trends and then I'll try to address the issue of credibility.
There is extensive public opinion among Palestinians. I should also say that I myself work very closely on what's called the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Survey or the Palestine-Israel Pulse, together with my colleagues at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research run by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We've been working together on these Joint Survey Projects since about 2016. And, I've been using the work of the Joint Survey Project long before that because it's very useful. And, that Joint Project began in the year 2000. So, there's lots of data to look at.
And, what I do think we know pretty clearly--actually from the Arab Barometer survey, not the Joint Survey--is that just before October 6th--sorry, on October 6th, the Arab Barometer completed its final stage of data collection for its work among the Palestinians. And they published the analysis shortly--about two weeks after, I would say-- October 7th happened.
And, Hamas was not doing well. It's not surprising that Hamas was not doing well because Hamas has been leading a society which is living under authoritarian rule with no progress towards Palestinian statehood or liberation from Israeli control, dominance, occupation--you can choose your terminology--but Israel has vast control over life.
In Gaza as well, something to point out also, is that Israelis always say that Israel left Gaza in 2005. Israel withdrew its settlements.
But the fact is, is that Israel retains vast forms of control from the outside of Gaza in ways that we know about.
For example, controlling all of the crossings between Gaza and anywhere else other than the crossing with Egypt, which is in any case coordinated with Egypt. And Egypt joined in with this largely hermetically-closed situation.
So, all of the land crossings, sea crossings, electromagnetic fields, airspace. But also in ways that you can't see. Israel controls the population registry. Israel decides who gets to travel. Israel gives very, very limited and restricted permits for people who can or can't get in and out, which is pretty much very few. All permits are an exception. And that includes keeping Palestinians away from the West Bank, which is one of the most severe policies Israel has implemented.
So, these are technical bureaucratic things that don't make headlines. But they have so much control over the way life is actually lived that from the Palestinian perspective, they're living under Israeli occupation. Whatever Israel says about having withdrawn settlements. Which it did do. I mean, nobody's denying that, either.
And, Hamas has not made any progress on changing that. And, Hamas rules with a strict authoritarian and theocratic form of rule. And the economic situation is very difficult because of Israel's restrictions, which Israel says are related to the security needs, for the last--pretty much since Hamas took over in 2007 in Gaza, Israel has implemented a fairly hermetic kind of closure.
And of course, because of Hamas misuse of what funds it does get. And, it has gotten lots of money from the Qatari government as far as we know. We knew this over the years, but certainly since October 7th, more Israeli investigative reporting and international investigative reporting has proved, again, that the Israeli government tolerated and probably encouraged Qatar to send those kinds of funds to Hamas. And, Hamas used them largely for the purposes of building this vast underground network and building itself up militarily to implement exactly the kinds of policies we're seeing now.
So, very few actors come out of this looking good. And as a result, the Palestinian population in Gaza in particular was angry at Hamas and their indicators were going down. And, what they were blaming them for was this whole range of things: You know, No opportunities, very poor economic prospects, and no progress towards ending the occupation and achieving Palestinian liberation, nor towards a more free society.
After October 7th what we saw is a vast sense in survey research--and we'll talk about how credible it is--but a very widespread sense of rallying, like people rally during wartime.
And, the rallying expressed itself in numerous indicators in surveys. Including over 70% of Palestinians in general showing that they thought Hamas was correct to attack. Basically supported what happened or supported Hamas in general or had a positive view of Hamas.
Now, those are difficult numbers to see when you know what happened on October 7th. And, how do I explain them? First of all, I would never want to excuse them. I don't think that's my role as a public opinion researcher.
But, I will say that what I thought about is the fact that 85% of Palestinians in the latest PSR [Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research] survey--that's the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research--had not seen the video evidence of atrocities that were committed on October 7th. And the way the survey questions are asked is the way people talk about this, which is it's basically a military operation.
Now, I don't--it's hard to know whether people are brainwashed or simply not opening the right news channels, but I think we as Israelis should understand exactly how you can kind of shut out the news that you don't want to see. Because the truth is that most Israelis aren't really watching the devastation of Gaza as well.
And, I think this is the reality: is that most Palestinians see what happened, or most Palestinians who answered those surveys in that way, see what happened as a resurgent military response and an attack on Israel that was designed to shake everybody's complacency, put Gaza's suffering back on the map. And, it gave them a sense of pride that all of a sudden Hamas had managed to strike back at an enemy they feel has been tormenting them for all these years. So, it's not a pleasant picture, but it is a reality of how people behave and think in conflict.
There is another aspect to this, which is that it's not a free society. And, as we know about any polling in free society, part of the problem is that: a). people feel intimidated, as you pointed out, to say the wrong thing. However, I'm less concerned about that because I've been tracking Palestinian public opinion for so many years, and I see that the fact that we have fluctuations, you can follow trends, that there are rational trends over time responding to either negotiations or conflict, shows that people do respond honestly. But, we also have to think about what it means to live in a non-free society in terms of the range of ideas they have at their disposal.
Okay? So if everybody in your society and all your news channels and newspapers and dinner table conversations and leaders are talking about what a great military operation this was and mention nothing about atrocities, that's sort of the range of ideas you have in your head about what happened.
Again, I don't want to justify it, but I do think we have to understand what's behind these kinds of numbers.
I should say one more thing. We often see during wars with Israel--during the many wars that Hamas and Israel have waged--that public opinion supporting Hamas goes up and then usually a few months after the war, it goes back down as people sink back into the depressing reality in which Hamas rules their lives.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I think it's a fascinating--I noted that as well, that the respondents often say they have not seen footage of that video, and there could be a lot of reasons for that. But, I'm going to start with maybe they haven't seen it either because they have limited access to it, or, as you say, which I think is the more interesting idea, they'd rather not see it.
Some people have suggested--you know, we have footage; it's very unpleasant to watch--of crowds celebrating the desecration of either a corpse or a raped woman in the streets of Gaza City. We don't know exactly what the situation was. But, again, that there were five hundred or a thousand ugly people in a moment of barbarism does not justify anything in particular in my mind. But, I can imagine there are a lot of people who would just rather not see that. I don't like to see it. I don't assume that people who feel oppressed would want to celebrate it necessarily. And maybe they didn't watch it, and maybe they do think it's mostly military. In which case I could very easily imagine they would feel differently. Part of the reason I'm sympathetic to that, there are a lot of things I don't like to look at that make my side look bad. So, I do understand that, as you pointed out.
But, I want to talk a little bit more about Israel's role, and I want you to give a fuller critique. You know--I'm a new Zionist to some extent, so I tend to consume media that makes me feel good about it versus the other side. But, I have to say, I have been surprised--and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong--I was pretty willing to accept the idea that Gaza was something close to an open-air prison--the phrase that a lot of critics of Israel use. Because of the blockade, because of surveillance, because of monitoring of crossing and goods coming in both by land and sea.
I have to say I have gone a little bit more in the other direction. And what has moved me--and again, I want you to push back if you think I'm wrong--two things have surprised me. One is the amount of weapons that are sitting in Gaza. I'm sure there are many photo ops that we watched that were staged or made to look a certain way or maybe were exaggerated. But, it's pretty clear, just the fact that there's still rockets being fired into civilian areas of Israel many weeks into the war, that they managed to get a lot of weaponry. Some of which they built. But, it's shocking to me how many guns, rockets, and so on that they have.
And, the second is that: we screened a documentary here at Shalem College. It was a very poignant moment. The documentarian, I can't remember where he's from. I think he was British. And, it basically chronicled how horrible life is in Gaza. And it is horrible, in much of Gaza.
The screening was accompanied by an anonymous--meaning hidden identity--Palestinian who didn't want us to take photos of him, because he was here and he didn't want people back in Gaza to know that he was at an Israeli college. There[?] was an incredibly poignant thing: This would not have happened in Gaza. There would not be a movie screened in Gaza of Israeli suffering, say, of October 7th.
But still, life in Gaza is awful. Electricity is uncertain. Economic opportunity for those, a huge portion of young people is minimal. I'm sure education is not good. And, they're very, very poor. For many, many reasons.
But, there are a lot of Gaza that's really nice that has emerged after this atrocity that I was totally unaware of. Most of it corruption, I assume, from Hamas and its friends. But, parts of Gaza were--I was surprised at how relatively nice they are. Do you think that's accurate? And, if so, along with the weaponry, does that change any of your priors on how effective the Israeli blockade was?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Well, it certainly changed my prior attitudes of how effective the blockade was. Listen, I should say: I've been critical of the blockade pretty much since it started. But even I thought, 'Well, I understand there's a security need for it. And, I think what happened for me on October 7th--among many questions that I had to ask myself about my prior views--but one of them was a more severe criticism of the blockade. Maybe there's a security justification, but we should be limiting the damage that it does to civilians and human rights.
Now, I think after October 7th, one of the first questions I asked--and I researched this because I wrote a whole article trying to answer the question--is: What in the world did it do for us on a security level? And, I don't disagree with the fact that Hamas is essentially armed to the teeth. Where did it get those weapons? Well, from what I understood, some of them are homemade as we know. Some of them are locally manufactured. Most of them--I think that the consensus of the Israeli experts I spoke to from the security establishment--were smuggled in probably through the Rafah area, through Egypt--
Russ Roberts: That's in Egypt--
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. However, some of them indicated to me--some of the people I spoke to hinted, more than hinted--that they were probably also being smuggled across Israeli crossings. Maybe less and possibly even by sea.
And so, what we see is that the Israeli policies managed to embitter the lives of civilians in Gaza for 16 years before October 7th, but without much security benefit. Hamas was able to smuggle in all these weapons--or build them--even though Israel was severely restricting the kinds of materials that they called 'dual use'. So, materials that Palestinians would say 'We need concrete to build homes,' and Israelis said, 'No, you're going to use them for tunnels or weapons,' and so Israel restricted those very severely.
And still Hamas managed to arm itself to the teeth through these various means, and wage war together with Israel four or five times depending on how you count each operation before October 7th.
And, in between those operations, rocket fire on people in the south.
And so, I don't exactly know what the security justification was.
And in fact, there are some critical--you know, people from--I think the ones who were formerly of the defense establishment speak much more freely. And one of them said that from the earliest stages of this policy, he was critical of it because he said it didn't really have sufficient security benefit. And, even from inside the system that people in the army at the highest levels kind of were aware that the security value of the closure policy was not significant enough. Because, rockets can go over a wall or a fence and of course over an underground barrier; and that it wasn't able to really stop the actual forms of armament.
That leaves us with a lot of questions, among the many, many questions Israelis are asking of their authorities and their policies.
So, on your question of: What does it mean that there is some wealth in Gaza? I don't know how there are some people with villas. Of course, there are some rich people in every society, whether it's because they're at the top of the pyramid and whether they are siphoning off money, or maybe because they've been historically wealthy families. We all know that wealth is transmitted over generations, and that's no different when you're in an occupied undemocratic society than when you're in a free-market capitalist heaven like the United States. I mean, wealth is transferred over generations, and that could be another reason.
It doesn't justify--I don't think it has any connection to the fact that there's 45% unemployment in Gaza and over 60% among young people.
And so, the vast majority of Gazans--I haven't seen a breakdown, but I'm imagining that if there are people who have fancy villas--and I have no doubt that there are; I've seen the pictures, as well--that they represent the tiniest little sliver of the top brass, whether it's Hamas-connected people or whoever else. It just doesn't represent the experience of most Gazans.
And, wealth is also one thing, but even those people who have villas are still living in a very restricted environment under Israel's form of blockade. And again, the security justification for that has been severely called into question by what happened on October 7th.
Russ Roberts: I mean, it's a fascinating question for me as an economist that--I think a lot of economists, and pro-Israel economists especially, have a natural tendency to hope that after 2005 when Israel withdrew, that Gaza would become the next, quote, "Singapore, Hong Kong," fill-in-the-blank. That's very difficult. You can't import things. It's difficult when you don't have a port. It's difficult when you don't have a airport.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Or export. Import or export.
Russ Roberts: Either one.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Import or export.
Russ Roberts: But, I'm struck by the irony that if we didn't get much for it, maybe we should let them bring in lots of stuff and maybe there'd at least be a chance they could be attracted to some economically productive things rather than just destructive things.
But, of course, there will be a lot of things like that discussed when we turn to the day after, whenever that might be.
Russ Roberts: Let's talk about your views, if you could share them. You're on the left in Israeli politics. How would you describe your views of the conflict on October 6th and if they've changed at all? Especially in what you would see as the desired endpoint. What was your desired endpoint before this and has it changed?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. I smiled when you said that I'm on the left in Israeli politics. Of course I am, but I also always bristle just a little bit at labels only because I know that when people hear them, they tend to assume a very precise set of views. And, I'd like to think that I do--
Russ Roberts: I apologize, actually--
Dahlia Scheindlin: No. No. It's not you. It's not you--
Russ Roberts: I apologize because I hate it when people give me a label. Because, I always want to say, 'But that's not quite what I am.' And, like you say, and especially here in Israel, left and right are very different than in the United States.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. We should put[?edit?] that out.
Russ Roberts: We'll start over. We're not going to edit it out but--
Dahlia Scheindlin: No, no, no. I don't think we should start over. I think that it's a legitimate description. I just would like to clarify that I would like to hope that I don't fall into predetermined positions on everything because I have positions that are generally viewed as left-wing in Israel.
And, we should say that those focus--I know this both from my personal experience living here, but also from my survey research over the last 25 years--that when you say you are left, center, or right-wing in Israel, first and foremost, you are referring to your attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Israeli-Arab issues or Israeli-Jewish identity issues in Israel. Those are, first and foremost, the way people understand the terms left, right, and center here.
And, anything to do with economic policy or the size of the state or tax rate is so marginal as to be actually irrelevant to the concept of left, right, and center. Almost. There are slight differences, but they are not necessarily in the direction you would expect over time. And, the differences between the parties would be a whole divergent, tangential conversation to try to understand what we mean when we talk about left, right, and center.
The only other factor you should take into account when understanding left, right, and center in Israel is religion. How religious you are and your perception of whether there should be separation of religion and state is another major determinant of whether you consider yourself to be left, right, and center. I have some disagreements with colleagues of mine over whether it's the Number One determinant. And of course, it very much overlaps with attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's mostly a largely religious people--not only, but largely religious people--who think that Israel, by definition should include all of the land from the river to the sea. And, if they had their way, probably even land beyond the Jordan River: well into Jordan, as promised by the Bible.
So, and then, people who are on the center and the left don't have that kind of biblical basis for looking at the geographic spread of where the land of Israel should be, and say, 'We need a pragmatic understanding of what the state should be according to international law and ways that we can govern,' and specifically to preserve a Jewish majority within more narrow boundaries.
So, these are the kinds of things that determine whether you're left, right, or center.
So, in that divide, my views of the conflict for most of my life, I have to say, have been that a political and diplomatic resolution to the conflict is a better way of containing the reality that we have an ongoing historic--over a century old--conflict between two people who both claim a right of national self-determination pretty much in the same land.
Now, I think the first major divide is people who think that we need to resolve this militarily and that one side simply needs to defeat the other completely through some sort of military means, whether it's destroying or controlling through military means. But, that's one general approach.
And my approach has been the other side. No, I think we would do better to have a political resolution in order to determine by agreement how the people should live. And, the other side of that is that I do believe that if Jews have a right to self-determination--which I do think they have--that Palestinians also have a right to self-determination.
That's part of the organizing principle of the 20th century. And, you know, it started in the early parts of the 20th century emerging out of currents in the late 19th century that people have a right to determine their future. They don't always have to seek self-determination in the form of independent statehood. There are communities that have decided that they want to live as a national minority, or they can have some other form of autonomous entity.
But if they are a national group who seek sovereignty in an independent state and they have a reasonable claim to land, territory of people and government and the ability to have foreign relations--which is pretty much the accepted definition of a state--that they should have statehood. And Palestinians, I think, have an indisputable claim to self-determination in this region.
So, the question is: How do we reconcile these two claims?
Well, for much of my own life, I thought the best and neatest kind of political means of containing those two seemingly contradictory national claims--that they both wanted to have national self-determination in the form of a state in the same land--through a simple division of the land. Right? Just divide the land in two. It's a small land, but you divide it into slightly smaller halves and each side gets about half or whatever it is. And that should be the end of the story.
Over the years I came to be critical of my own views. It wasn't, of course, just my view. This became the general global paradigm, I should say, for how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A). It was never a half-half split. If you look at the history of Mandate Palestine, the territory that was controlled as a British-run mandate up until 1947 when the British decided to end the mandate--which then formally ended on 1948--of that whole historic region, the modern state of Israel has sovereignty over more than 70% of it. So, it's not a half-half split.
But nevertheless, many people like me still thought that the Palestinian state should exist in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem with the final exact location of the borders to be determined by negotiations. And, the two sides kind of put up a wall, separate--each side has to work out their own form of statehood. And end of story.
What happened was that around 2010, 2011, 2012, I started to realize that it was no longer feasible. That, Israeli citizens had spread out in the form of what we call settlement activity so deeply into the West Bank--which was the kind of biggest chunk of the future Palestinian state--that it became impossible to imagine uprooting so many of them. And, they were spread out much more than just these clusters of settlements close to Israel's, what we call 'the green line,' or close to sovereign Israel.
And so, first I started to think that it was unfeasible. I also was looking at Jerusalem because the idea of a two-state solution involved splitting Jerusalem: essentially putting up a boundary between the parts of Jerusalem that would be Palestinian and would belong to a Palestinian state and the parts of Jerusalem that would belong to Israel. I started to realize that that was unfeasible from a municipal perspective; undesirable from an economic and social perspective.
And so, I started to think that this really can't happen anymore. For a long time, people talked about the closing window for reaching a two-state solution due to settlement spread and these kinds of things. And I started to think what a shame. But then over time, I stopped thinking what a shame, and I started to think, 'You know, if I really consider myself to be a liberal--right? I believe in individual rights--but I also believe the universality of human worth and the universal application of human rights and the ability of people to live in pluralist societies based--on the shared basis--of human rights; and that actually isn't really a set of values that is manifested in the idea of ethno-national segregation and partition. And, I started to think that actually it would be better if the two sides are not ripped apart artificially. Not that it's possible anyway. And, that we still need two states because the two sides still have national self-determination claims.
And, that's how I came to identify more with the idea of two states in a confederated approach, which means that they are really two states expressing the national self-determination claims of both sides with general territorial boundaries. And, a boundary between them: but, a boundary that is more open, more porous, that is designed to give access to people to be able to travel and even live as permanent residents on the other side if they accept the sovereignty of the other side. And, that is a mechanism that allows you to have settlements if they accept the sovereignty of a Palestinian state, but they want to stay on land they consider part of their history. Settlers can be there. Palestinians who accept the sovereignty and law of Israel can live there. They cooperate on economy and other shared needs like climate, environment, health, security in ways that both sides are equal. And both sides are states, but they do share what are very clearly common needs on an equal basis.
And so, that's what I've been supporting up until now. And, in fact after October 7th, I think that I support it even more, which, for reasons that I can explain.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's an idea: We're cousins with the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza as well as the ones who live here within the boundaries of sovereign Israel, as you called it. We go back as cousins for a very, very, very long time. We used to live among each other. There used to be vibrant Jewish communities in Arab lands.
We've talked on the program how after the establishment of the state, most Jews fled Arab countries and came here so that those populations are very close to zero in the Arab countries. But, things change, and maybe we could go back to a more tolerant world.
It reminds me a little bit of what I think a lot of people imagine for Europe: that there's a European identity. So, France and Germany fought a lot of horrible wars. They hate each other's guts. They murdered through military means--killed millions of each other's citizens. But, now they somewhat--maybe for a long time, maybe forever--consider themselves as somewhat European with a primary identity as French or German, but also European. And, they have a confederacy--bad word. They have a confederation. Sorry.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Confederation. We prefer confederation.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Much better word. A confederation with, as you say, freedom to travel, economic freedom across borders, and so on. That's a very beautiful idea for this part of the world. And, for you, October 7th hasn't changed that. It's only reinforced it. So, explain why.
Dahlia Scheindlin: It's only reinforced it. It's only reinforced it. When you say that we used to have a situation in which we lived together, we still have a situation in which we live together. Twenty percent of the residents of Israel are Palestinians or Arabs. It's far from a perfect relationship, and the struggles for equality have been long and difficult. But I think that it's indisputably--the empirical reality is that we had Arab-Jewish violence and very limited rioting over the course of not even two weeks--once in our entire national history of 75 years. And, Gaza, which is the most isolated, shut down, hermetically sealed part of this land where you had the greatest implementation of partition and separation is where we saw the most savage violence coming to threaten Israelis. I find it even more urgent in a way to reach some sort of a mechanism that allows just the level of openness that's needed.
It's not a call for a one-state solution. I don't think either society is willing to give up on its political or national identity. I think we still need, again, those national self-determination claims. And, we do have geographic regions that are mostly Palestinian or mostly Jewish.
But, I think it becomes almost indisputable that when people have more access to each other, not necessarily because of coexistence programs--even though I like them. But, I think that what we really have to accept is that we are interdependent. We have shared needs. Where we have professional economic and social needs from one another, we manage to make it work. Just go to any hospital in Israel today. I'm not just talking about people who clean the floors. I'm talking about nurses, doctors, and heads of hospital units who are Palestinian citizens of Israel--or Arab, however they define themselves--and I don't think anybody minds being treated by them except for these very random and rare individual fringe cases that make the news because they're the exceptions.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, it's a powerful thing to remember--
Dahlia Scheindlin: I think the urgency is greater than ever.
Russ Roberts: So, here's my unease with that, or with the practicality of it; and you can respond to it. There appears to be a strong theocratic, religious element to October 7th that it wasn't just what we might call resistance or a military operation against an oppressive--an occupying state, depending on how you view the Gaza situation, but rather a call that's religiously based: that they like to kill Jews. They did amend their charter. It's important to point out. I think it's important--might not be important to point out. But, the original Hamas charter was explicitly antisemitic, anti-Jew, and wasn't just about being against Jews in Israel but Jews in the world. They amended it in--the original charter was 1988 or was that the amendment? Do you know?
Dahlia Scheindlin: It was formed in 1987. I don't know when the charter was made. It was formed in 1987--
Russ Roberts: So, the charter's probably 1988. The amended I think in 2015. They took out some of the most offensive things--
Dahlia Scheindlin: 2017. Yes.
Russ Roberts: Which is interesting--
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. And, they also began to talk about having a state within the 67 areas.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. So, the question is--it's going to require, I think some cultural and social change. It might take 10 years, 40 years. It might not be possible. How concerned are you about that religious element? Radical Islam, to be blunt about it.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yes. To be blunt about it, I'm very concerned about radical Islam, fundamentalist Islam. Any interpretation of Islam that encourages violence, particularly against civilians. Guess what? I'm equally concerned about it in Israeli society. I'd like to point out that four of the five parties currently sitting in the governing coalition are specifically religious parties. Two of them are ultra-Orthodox, two of them are ultra-nationalist religious parties. They call themselves religious Zionism. They actually ran together. So, you could say it's in a way, three out of four parties, but they've broken up ever since the government was established, so it's four out of five parties. Four out of five parties in the governing coalition in Israel are devoted religious parties that place the word of God, Torah, Jewish law, Jewish scripture above anything else. Above even Israeli civil law. How do we know that? Because they tried to undermine the judiciary without so much as a care in the world.
In other words, the aim of fulfilling Israel's own messianic missions, for example, of annexing the West Bank, was so important that they wanted to sacrifice Israel's judicial independence and undermine its judicial institutions in order to have full freedom for the government to do that.
And, I spent this morning--on Thursday, 11th of January--watching the International Court of Justice hearings in which the major accusations against Israel were not only what Israel is doing, but the stated intentions of some of its leaders; and much was made of the fact that the Prime Minister himself has drawn on the Bible to encourage Israelis to think about wiping out the seed of Amalek--Israel's biblical enemy--drawing on religious texts and showing soldiers dancing around in Gaza citing these biblical phrases calling for the destruction of the other.
I am worried about religious fundamentalism in any political system that claims that it has a liberal democratic outlook or civilian state secular authorities. And of course, Hamas never claimed that. But Israel does claim it.
And so, yeah, I think that if we're ever going to have something like two states that live in a more open confederated association, they will have to have some basic shared concepts of human rights, which is a completely secular prospect. It says that everybody of all faith and confessions[?] from any background, any culture shares certain inalienable human rights. And, they will have to have some sort of an institution to guarantee that, especially if there are people living on the other side as permanent residents.
So, I don't think it's something we can implement tomorrow, but I do think we had better start charting a course to get there, because otherwise we're going to be locked into these cycles of non-decision, ongoing military control, ongoing resentment and hostility. And that feeds extremism on both sides.
I want to point out something else. I don't think you can erase all religious fundamentalism. I don't think you can erase all political extremism. And I don't think you can erase all violence. Nowhere in human society, anywhere on the globe, have we managed to do that. The problem is we are exacerbating it: we're fueling it, all of us in this region. And, I think that the aim should not be to promise that I can provide perfection with this approach. The aim is to say: Let's remove all factors that are likely to fuel more extremism, make people who wouldn't otherwise have been so hostile or violent into the kind of people who join in those violent efforts.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I certainly agree there's some ugly extremist views here in Israel. My presumption--and maybe it's yours, maybe it's not--is that those voices will not be part of the next government, but politics is hard to predict. And, I think some of them is the more extreme statements that you quoted about Amalek and others were--in the heat of war many times focused on Hamas but of course in practice, maybe that doesn't make a difference.
Russ Roberts: I think there's a more fundamental question which Israel faces. And, that's the question of what's Jewish about a Jewish state. I'm a classical liberal in outlook--meaning I want a smaller state probably than you do--and I want individual liberty, which I think we probably mostly agree on. But, I strongly believe in a separation in church and state, both as a former American resident and certainly as a citizen of a state that, I think the power of the ultra-Orthodox here has been bad for Judaism. That's the irony of all this. It is soured and offended, rightly so. Their use of the political system has soured many non-religious Jews who might be interested in Jewish tradition in whatever flavor they see fit to pursue it, and it should be their choice as to how they pursue it.
But of course, it's easy to say that. I think the challenge is--what is Jewish about the Jewish state is a tough question. I'm curious what your thoughts are.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Yeah. Well, this gives me an opportunity briefly to mention the book, The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled. Many people while I was working on this book, which is basically a history of democracy in Israel--that's how I thought about it while I was writing it. And, I went back to the pre-state era, early Zionism through to the present and the massive--what I see as an assault on democratic values and institutions and the backlash against it.
And, some people said to me while I was writing it, 'Is it really that complicated? The only problem with democracy in Israel is that Israel wants to be a Jewish state and that can't be democratic.' And, it's true that over the course of the entire history, much of the policies that contradicted or challenged democratic values had to do with either creating and preserving a Jewish majority or ensuring Jewish privilege or kind of superior status in Israeli society.
Having said that, by the very end of all of this thinking I did about the nature of democracy--and looking at other countries as well--I think that you can have an identity even if you're a democracy. I think there are not really very many countries in the world whose identity is purely a civic national identity. I think--we're talking about America, Canada, Australia. But, most countries are nation states, and there's a way to implement an identity that is much more inclusive of democratic values, of equality of all citizens, of the inclusion of pluralism and other cultures. And, the way I see it, Israel can be a Jewish state if you define Judaism in ways that do not discriminate against citizens other than in that very symbolism.
So, for example, you can have a Jewish calendar that recognizes the rhythm of life according to the Jewish holidays and Saturday being the rest day, and that doesn't really stop anybody else--the other cultures that are native to this region, Muslims and Christians--from having holidays that are also included in a national calendar. Those kinds of things leave it at the symbolic level and they're not exclusive.
Okay: we can have a national language. The other great example is the dispute--and I think unfortunate result of that dispute--over the attempt of recent governments, and it was even before this government, to make sure that Jews feel privileged in Israel by passing a law called the Nation State Law in 2018, which was under a different government. It was not a government that included the particular extremist, ultra-nationalist parties that we were talking about earlier. But, it still managed to pass this law that placed the Hebrew language at a higher level than the Arabic language, even though Arabic is of course native to the region.
So, why do we have to do it in an exclusive way? There's no need for it. You can have Hebrew as an official language and have Arabic as an official language.
So, I think there are ways that Israel can express a Jewish character and feel like a state that reflects the national homeland of the Jewish people, but is inclusive and does not discriminate and guarantees equality for all citizens. And, it will never be perfect. That's the nature of human society. It will be an ongoing dialogue. But, for that reason, we need democratic institutions to allow and encourage that kind of ongoing dialogue where people can make their claims about how to advance those values.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. What I meant to ask you before--and I don't think I did, although my memory in wartime is really--it's bad enough I'm 69 years old--
Dahlia Scheindlin: Well, maybe I misinterpreted your question.
Russ Roberts: What?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Or maybe I misinterpreted your question.
Russ Roberts: No, no, no. The question is the percentage question, right? So, there are extremists here. I think they're relatively small. They can grow. Their demography is very strong and powerful. But, again, I worry about that theocratic influence in our cousins. I hope that's small--I like to believe it's small. But, that comes back to the polling question. And, maybe we know something about that. I don't know. In terms of sympathy for radical Islam.
Dahlia Scheindlin: What we know is that Hamas' support tends to range from about well as low as 12 to as high as in the mid- or low 30s, I would say. And so, one way of judging support for radical Islam is to judge support for Hamas. But, I would also say that there are other reasons why Palestinians support Hamas. They're not exclusive, right? You can be both radical Islamist and support Hamas for other reasons.
But, one of the other major reasons is people's absolute resentment and hostility towards Fatah. And, that's largely because Fatah has also governed. And, for those who don't know, this is the political party that has been the dominant party in Palestinian politics over history and currently controls the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank, at least in terms of local affairs. Let's just point out that the Israeli Army and authorities generally have control over the entire region. But, Fatah has become a party that is synonymous with corruption and authoritarianism as well. And, as the dominant party anybody who feels like they want to support a party in opposition to Fatah has become a supporter of Hamas, even if they weren't necessarily radical Islamist.
But, we do know from the survey research that the breakdown is pretty clearly overlapping. If you are a political Islamist, you probably support Hamas; and more secular people support Fatah.
In terms of what's the support for radical fundamentalist religious-oriented politics in Israel, we could look at support for the religious Zionism party, which is those two parties that I mentioned were running together in the 2022 elections, and what they received was 10.83% of the vote. But, we also have 15 mandates that went to ultra-orthodox parties, which we don't even think of necessarily because we're so used to them being key members of governing coalitions as they have been for most of the last four decades. And so, they also have disproportionate power. Altogether, that's probably about 12% of the vote. And, that's not even to mention people who may be religious and share some of the values, but voted for different parties.
So, all of these are still minorities, but I do think we can't really underestimate that sometimes they have what feels like disproportionate political influence.
Russ Roberts: Let's close with the question of optimism and pessimism. A lot of people on October 6th were worried about the future of this country. It was being torn apart. Felt like we're on the verge of a civil war. And, I would add, by the way, that we're not the only country that's having big issues like this. You mentioned countries like the United States, other long-time democracies, much longer track records than ours, they're having trouble with their national narratives as well. So, it's a difficult time. But, this country has rallied remarkably. At least a lot of the schisms were mended instantly on October 7th. They will reappear almost certainly the day after. Are you optimistic or pessimistic going forward after the war is over, whatever that means?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Well, I can say that whenever people ask me to end on a note of hope after October 7th, I say it's not my job. I can't invent stuff that's not there.
However, I think there are two levels of what you're asking. If it comes to Israeli society only, to the extent that we can distinguish--and increasingly, I have a harder time talking about just Israel without talking about the Palestinians. But, let's say for the sake of the moment: When it comes to Israeli society, I do think I have some optimism because I think that a). over the course of this year, we saw an unprecedented national lesson in constitutionalism and democracy and liberal values that we'd never had to this depth before. It was really remarkable. I think that most countries have not experienced--certainly, I don't think very many countries have experienced a 39-week-long enduring protest of hundreds of thousands of people every single week, sometimes more than once a week. That in itself was really remarkable. But, it was also accompanied by incredible civic initiatives, completely--often voluntary. Mostly voluntary--although lots of money was raised in the process also from Israeli civilians just to debate and understand and learn what democracy really means.
And so, I think for the first time, we were opening up some of those most troubling questions--and contradictions, which I certainly explore in the book--about why we're in this situation of having such an argument over the role of the judiciary and the constitutional arrangement of Israel. So, that gave me a sense of optimism before October 7th.
After October 7th, I think the optimism came from, again, civil society; and many of the same figures, of course, who had been the leaders and the prominent members and organizational anchors of the protests over the course of the year were the ones who instantly transformed themselves into a civic mobilization effort to help gather donations and distribute them around the country. It was an incredible feat of efficiency when the state was frankly absent.
You know, in the days after October 7th, not only were people traumatized and suffering, they felt abandoned. Tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes, didn't have anywhere to go, didn't have a roof over their head or food. Restaurants around the country shut down and began cooking--for the people who were displaced--of their own initiative. Hotels opened their doors of their own initiative. Civil society NGOs [non-governmental organizations] suddenly rallied to raise money and help these people.
So, I think that all of that stuff gives me hope that we have a newfound sense of solidarity. Of course, the political disputes will reappear, but I'd like to think we'll have a little more good will going forward.
I'm not nearly as optimistic when it comes to the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what will happen the next day. And, I can't separate them because I don't think Israel can ever fulfill its promise to itself of being a democracy--certainly not liberal democracy--as long as it is preventing the self-determination, freedom of another people.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Dahlia Scheindlin. Dahlia, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Dahlia Scheindlin: Thank you so much for having me and for this in-depth and rich conversation.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: January 4, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 4th, 2024, and my guest is author Brian Klaas of University College London, where he is an associate professor of global politics. His latest book, which is our topic for today, is Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. Brian, welcome to EconTalk.
Brian Klaas: Thanks for having me on the show.
Russ Roberts: I want to remind listeners to go to EconTalk.org, where you can vote on your favorite episodes of 2023. Thank you.
Russ Roberts: And now, Brian. You open your book with two remarkable stories. One is about Henry Stimson, and one is about yourself. Let's start with the Stimson story and how it illustrates the idea behind your book.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, the Stimson story starts with a vacation in 1926 to Kyoto, Japan, and it's a couple, Mr. and Mrs. H.L Stimson, who go on this vacation and just fall in love with the city. And, this is relevant, because 19 years later, the husband in the couple, Henry Stimson, ends up being America's Secretary of War, who's overseeing the Targeting Committee, which is tasked with deciding where to drop the first atomic bomb to end World War II. And, all of the generals, all the people on the Targeting Committee, basically agree that Kyoto should be destroyed, but Stimson and his wife like Kyoto. So, twice, he intervenes with President Truman to get Kyoto taken off the targeting list.
And so the reason why--the immediate reason why--the first bomb was dropped in Hiroshima is effectively because a couple that happened to be in the right place and right time 19 years later, took a vacation there in 1926.
And, the reason I opened the book with that is because I think it illustrates how very small changes--decisions about where to vacation two decades earlier--can cause the deaths of a hundred thousand people in one city rather than another.
And, that's the idea behind the book: is that there's a lot of randomness, chance, chaos, and contingency that diverts our lives and our societies more than we often think it does.
Russ Roberts: And, for completeness, because I found this also quite interesting, the targeting of Nagasaki, the second city that the atomic bomb was dropped on, also had a fluke aspect to it.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, this is where the other city that was chosen for the bombing on August 9th, 1945, it was called Kokura. And, the reason why the bomb ended up being dropped on Nagasaki instead was because of brief cloud cover over Kokura.
So, they thought there were forecasted clear skies. They sent the bomber up. These brief clouds flit across at just the right time. It obscures the bomb site, and they don't want to accidentally drop the second atomic bomb in history not on the target. So, they decide to go to Nagasaki instead. And so, even in Japan to this day, people say 'Kokura's luck' refers to unknowingly escaping disaster.
And this is--one of the other themes in Fluke is that we often think about the sort of chance, contingent events that divert our lives or our societies, a lot of the time, we're unaware of them. And, in Kokura, they would not have been aware, until much later, that their city was almost incinerated, except for a cloud.
Russ Roberts: And now, tell the second story. As dramatic as those are and thought provoking, the second one might be even more so. Go ahead.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, this story starts in 1905 in a little farmhouse in Jamestown, Wisconsin. And, it's basically the story of a woman who has four young children at home and snaps. She has a mental breakdown. We'd probably call it postpartum depression today, but of course, in 1905, they weren't making those diagnoses. And, tragically, she decided to kill her four children and then, take her own life. And, her husband comes home after a day on the farm and discovers his whole family dead. Right? All four kids and his wife.
And, the reason I put this in the book is because this is my great grandfather's first wife, and he[?] remarried to what was my great-grandmother.
Now, I had no idea this story existed until I was in my twenties. And, my dad sort of sat me down and showed me this newspaper clipping. The headline was, 'Terrible, active, insane woman,' from the 1905 newspaper. And, I had this realization, and maybe subconsciously--this is one of the origin stories of this book--but I had this realization that, but for that mass murder, I don't exist. Right?
And, not just that, but I don't talk to you. No one is hearing my voice, unless there is this mass murder in 1905.
And so, what I start thinking about--this informs of my social science research, but also my philosophy towards life and so on--is that you start to realize that, when you actually unpick causality, there are just these series of things back and back and back in history, that, if they were slightly different, the world would be radically and profoundly changed. And, I am a living testament to that, because the only reason I exist is because of a mass murder, 118 years, 119 years ago in Wisconsin.
Russ Roberts: And, what's the lesson of that? You mentioned both social science and your own life. And of course, the book alternates between these two perspectives, how we should look at the world trying to understand it, which is the social science part. And, then, the second part is, how should we live? And, we'll be, I'm sure, talking about both of those. But, start with that. How should this affect the way we think about social science?
Brian Klaas: Well, I think, when you think about how we try to understand the world, we model it. Right? And all of us started modeling it with this idea that we understood--I mean, it was obvious--that this is not the real world. This is a crude, sort of funhouse, mirror reflection of it.
And, what I think has happened along the way is we've gotten so consumed with modeling that we've forgotten how reality actually works.
And so, when you think about trying to model, for example, why did the United States drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima instead of, say, Kyoto? If you were trying to identify variables in a model to choose, the vacation histories of various U.S. government officials would be like 10 millionth on the list that would come to mind. Right? It would be so far down the list.
And yet, in that instance, it was the main cause. It was the main diversion at the last minute that diverted the bomb from its intended target of Kyoto to Hiroshima.
And the same is true--you know, when I think about my own life history--I think we have all these sort of neat and tidy stories we tell about our lives. We made good decisions. We take credit for wise choices and so on.
And yet, I think that not only do we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there's all these contingent moments that could have turned our lives differently, but more profoundly than that, there's unknown moments. Right? I sort of say, the invisible pivots in life.
And that's because, until I was 20 something years old, I had no idea I was the byproduct of a mass murder. And so, I lived in my life with that ignorance, and that was fine. But it meant that I didn't understand the actual trajectory of my life history, because I didn't have the information necessary.
And so, I think this is the kind of stuff where, when you think about Social Science and we try to understand social change, most of us are actually pretty good at doing this with our own lives. Right? We think about those pivot points. We can't think about the invisible ones, because we can't know they existed. Right? But we think about the ones, 'Oh, if I had just turned left instead of right, I might not have met my spouse,' or, 'I might have gone to a different college,' or whatever it is.
When we start to model the world, all that just flies out the window. And it makes sense, right? It's a pragmatic choice.
But I think it has reflected back on us a false image of how the world actually works.
So, the idea of the book is to say: Okay, if all these small contingent events add up to profoundly different societies and also diverted lives, then everything that we do is constantly reshaping the future. And that's why the third part of the subtitle is Why Everything We Do Matters. Because I believe that even these small chance and seemingly insignificant events do reshape history in profound ways.
Russ Roberts: Well, let's think about the social science part for a minute. One conclusion you could draw from your book--and you mentioned this as a possibility; you reject it, but it wasn't so clear to me why you do reject it--we can't really understand the world. One response to these kind of observations would be there's an infinite number of variables. We can never control for them statistically in any significant way, useful way, meaningful way. And there's an enormous random element in both history and our lives.
And, I think most of us would say that's true about our lives. But we have, I think, trouble--certainly as a trained social scientist in economics, it's troubling to think that, while we know that our models are simplified, and even sometimes the point of being simplistic, the idea that we cannot understand the world--because of its randomness, because of the influence of small things that are unobservable--does suggest a very pessimistic view of social science. Now, you say explicitly, I think in the book, that that would be a wrong conclusion to draw. So try to walk me through that nuance.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, I think that modeling is--I agree completely with the statement that all models are wrong, but some are useful, right? But I think there's questions about whether there can be models that are harmful.
So, models that are useful are ones that are trying to tease out aggregate patterns that may or may not hold true in the present moment based on past data. Right?
I think you get into trouble where you try to model the future from past data, if the world has actually changed. The problem of non-stationarity, where you're actually modeling a different world from the one that the data you collected previously existed.
But, I also think you get into trouble when you start to model things that are part of the realm of what Mervyn King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, calls Radical Uncertainty, where literally, no matter what you do, you cannot understand it very effectively.
And one example they [John Kay and Mervyn King in their book titled Radical Uncertainty--Econlib Ed.] use, which I bring into the book, is whether or not it's a good idea for Barack Obama to order the raid to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011. And, the point was that all the probabilistic estimates, all the forecasts they could make, they didn't have the information they needed, which is: Was he there? Would the raid work? And would the Pakistani government attack the U.S. Special Forces if they discovered them in time? Right? And, they had no--there was no data points for this. It had never happened before. Right? You could look at all the data from SEAL [Sea, Air, and Land] Team 6's success stories in the past, but that doesn't actually tell you anything you don't know already. Which is just: they're very effective. But, you still don't know whether it's a good idea to go there. You don't know if the guy is actually there, etc. It's radical uncertainty. There's no information you have that can inform the choice.
Now, this is where I split the world into problems that are must-answer problems from the ones that need-not-answer problems. Right?
The must-answer problems are--you know, you've got a health problem and you need to treat it because you're dying. You can't just, say, throw up your hands and say, 'Oh, it's radical uncertainty. We don't know what this rare disease is. Let's just let you die.' The same way that Obama had to make a decision.
But, I think there are problems that we forecast, which we don't need to. I mean, why do we forecast what Burundi's economic growth is going to be in 2030? I mean, we don't know. It's impossible. Right?
And, I think what is the problem with the latter kind of modeling is that it creates a hubris that I think is dangerous, because when you reflect the world that is swayed by randomness, chance, and contingency, back at you, as this neat and tidy set of models, you start to think you can control it. Right?
Because if the world actually was five or six variables that create this causal outcome that you understand, then you're going to play with the world in ways that you sort of think you can control.
And so, one of the aspects of why I'm writing this: One is just the philosophy of how the world works is interesting and important to understand.
But, in terms of pragmatic advice, it's to say, let's think carefully about whether we actually have reached our limits on some of these areas. And, if we have, we should have less appetite for optimization, more appetite for experimentation, and more appetite for resilience. Right?
So, it's how you interpret the results of a more uncertain world, that causes you to make wiser decisions and avoid catastrophe, basically, by the hubris of certainty that's embedded in some flawed models.
Russ Roberts: So, I'm a big fan of humility in the face of hubris and certainly humility about the reliability of empirical work. You tell the rather remarkable story of the attempt to measure--76 teams were given the same data on the impact of, what was it, immigration on--
Brian Klaas: Social support safety net programs.
Russ Roberts: Right. Excuse me. And whether the size of the immigrant population affected the political support for safety net that would benefit immigrants, who, quote, "weren't like you" possibly. Tell what happened in that study. I had not seen that. It's in 2022, I think.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, to me, I hope that more people come across this study, because of my book, because it's excellent, excellent research. And, to me, this is the kind of study that should have the ripple effects that the replication crisis had a little over a decade ago.
So, basically, what they do is they send out 76 research teams who are not in communication with each other. They give them the exact same data. They say, 'Here's the data to work with, and we all need to answer this empirical question of: Does an increase in immigration basically cause a change in support levels for the social safety net?'
Now, what they found--all these different teams used different methodologies. They plotted every single choice they made, methodologically, said exactly what they were doing, etc., but they didn't communicate with each other. So, there's no group-think. Come up with 76 different ways to model the data.
And what they found was about half of the teams, roughly speaking, found a null result--no effect. Or at least they could not discern an effect statistically from the data. Roughly a quarter of the teams found a positive effect, and roughly a quarter of the teams found a negative effect, both of them being statistically significant.
Now, this shakes my faith in social science profoundly, because the problem is that, normally, when social research is done, one team does this and they pick their own data. They're not taking data that's ready-made and sort of hand-fed to them. They're making choices already about which data to use, what to include, and what not to. But, when they had the same data, there was still almost an even split between positive and negative results on this.
And, most of the time, what would happen is, if you got a null result, a lot of people would not publish it. Publication bias is a real problem. If they got a positive result, they would publish it; and it would become the accepted wisdom, if it was in a top-tier journal, that there was a positive effect. If they got a negative result, they would publish it in a top-tier journal, and there would be the accepted wisdom that there was a negative effect. And then, there might be years upon years where not only was this viewed as settled research, but that people made policy based on it.
And then, at some point, somebody else would come up with a new study, probably using different data, and maybe get a different result. And so, the 'Universe of Uncertainty' paper, which is what this one is called, to me, it signals what I call the hard problem of social research, that: even when you control the data, even when you try to plot the methodological choices and try to keep them in the realm of responsible methodologies, you get a scattershot result.
And, that worries me. It's something where I think it shakes the faith that we should have in the idea that a single study can establish definitively whether something is true or false in social dynamics.
Russ Roberts: Or five studies, if they all happen to be agreeing and they all happen to be on one of those quarter that found one side or the other. The phrase, 'Studies show,' is a phrase that I can no longer hear and just let it go by, mentally at least. I don't always say something.
But, if it's any comfort, Brian, I think there'd be--I've never seen a study done on the following: Does social science research actually affect public policy? Social scientists like to think it does, but I have a feeling that, most of the time, politicians, it's an after-the-fact ex-post comfort for them to wave around something that they claim helps to show whatever they're doing. But, it's not obvious that social science has much effect.
Now, I don't think that's literally true. Keynes's famous quote about listening to madmen is, I think, relevant. I think there are, every once in a while, intellectual movements and books and insights that do affect the course of the world.
But, sometimes I think we're just over here in this sandbox over here, this group of young children of an older age playing with statistical packages. So, I share your unease that this can lead to overconfidence about the impact of, say, X on Y, but maybe it's not as big as we worry about.
Brian Klaas: I think that's definitely true, by the way, for my realm of political science. I don't think that we sway policy as much as we like to pretend we do.
And, I think some of that, by the way, is because of some of the flaws that I suggest. I mean, I think there are some aspects of social science that could be improved. And, if they were, then maybe people would put more faith in our research.
But, it's still very worthwhile to do. I'm not trying to say we throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's still worth trying to understand the world, and social science is our best tool to do that. So, even though I have what I think is a rather provocative chapter title, "The Emperor's New Equations," for that chapter, I actually very much believe in the mission of social science. I just think that we need to improve how we do it.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I'm more cynical than you, but that's okay. We'll save that for another conversation.
Russ Roberts: Talk about--one way to organize one's thinking about this that you use is, which I really like, is contingency versus convergence. Talk about those two terms and how they illuminate these issues.
Brian Klaas: So one of the joys--this book was so fun to research, because I really went down the rabbit hole of evolutionary biology, which is--it's an historical science. It shows us how change happens over time and how trajectories shape future pathways.
And so, the contingency versus convergence are very easy to understand in evolutionary terms. The best example of contingency is the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and gave rise to the mammals. Right? Because if the asteroid had been delayed by a few seconds, you probably wouldn't have had the mass extinction events of the dinosaurs. Mammals might not have become dominant, and humans probably wouldn't exist. So, a span of a couple seconds, 60 plus million years ago--if that had been different, humanity probably wouldn't exist. So, that's contingency. It's where very small changes can create profound effects.
Convergence is the sort of idea that things happen according to patterns that are relatively stable and ordered, because there are pressures on them.
So, in evolutionary terms, for example--I love this example--if you look at an octopus eye and you look at a human eye, they're extremely similar, and they've been evolving on separate lineages for the better part of 400-plus million years. And the reason that happened is just because there's only so many ways that vision can work, and the human eye is one example of a very effective way that vision can work. So, when nature accidentally stumbled across this sort of solution to a problem of how to navigate the world, it stuck. And so, convergence is basically this sort of more ordered viewpoint of the world.
And, I think, by the way, that social science mostly lives within the convergent worldview. And, contingency is the worldview that small changes can throw things up that radically divert history and the course of human social change and so on.
So, I also like to use it in our own lives. So, contingency would be the idea of, like, a snooze button, where you decide it's a Monday morning and you're tired; you slap the snooze button and sleep for five more minutes. If your life unfolds basically the same way as it would if you didn't hit the snooze button, then that would be a convergent pathway. Right? It didn't really matter. If your life changes, because you get in a car accident, for example, or something shifts--
Russ Roberts: Or you avoid one--
Brian Klaas: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, that's a contingent event.
So, it's in a framework that's both applicable for our lives and for our societies.
Russ Roberts: I thought you have a really nice example in there in the book about thinking about history, and we can think about fundamental trends that are inexorable or whether individuals, through their own actions, can offset those trends or create different ones. And, you have this thought experiment, which is--it's not yours--it's a thought-provoking, though, thought experiment of: If you could kill Hitler as an infant, would you? So, talk about why that's trickier than it might seem.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So this is like Philosophy 101. There's this sort of question of: Would you kill baby Hitler? And, it's supposed to be a thought experiment to figure out your views on utilitarianism. Would you kill a baby in order to save millions and millions of people?
And, the reason why I include it is because that thought experiment actually pivots much more, to me, on your views about historical causality and how the role of individuals may or may not play a role in diverting trajectories.
So, if you have a highly convergent worldview where you think the sort of rails of life are not diverted by individuals, then the baby Hitler question is actually one that doesn't affect the outcome of history. Right? Because you figure, 'Well, the structural factors for Nazi Germany to emerge were there.' And, so, if it hadn't been Hitler, somebody else would have done it, and therefore, there's no reason to violate your Kantian ethics and kill baby Hitler.
On the other hand, if you think that small changes can have profound effects--and of course, Hitler is not a small change; he's an enormous change--then the contingency worldview would say, 'Okay, killing baby Hitler would radically change the course of history and may also make it much, much better. Save the lives of millions of people for this one baby.'
So, it's that kind of question.
There was a book written by Stephen Fry, who sort of imagined this world in which, actually, Hitler was never born, but the outcome of Nazi Germany was worse. Now, this is very hard to imagine, but the premise of the book is that the person who ends up becoming the leader of what was effectively a Nazi-style regime was actually more disciplined than Hitler. And, so, they acquired the atomic bomb sooner, and they won the war. Right?
So, the point that I'm bringing in is not to comment on the various virtues of killing or not killing baby Hitler. It's to say that the way that those questions actually should pivot in our minds is based on whether we believe that individuals drive history or whether trends drive history. And, I'm of the view that individuals can very much drive history, because I think much smaller effects change history, as you see with the Kyoto and Hiroshima example. So, surely, if a different person was in charge, I do think it would divert history.
Russ Roberts: Go back to the snooze button for a minute. And I think most people intuitively believe, whether they're right or wrong, give or take--most people intuitively believe that: Snooze-button-type things rarely derail the path of my life. Sleeping in for a few minutes here or there, stopping to eat at the buffet rather than having a sit-down dinner I was planning, having a drink--not sure whether I should have a drink before I go to bed, a scotch. So, I have on one night, not on another. Maybe I wake up with a slightly thicker head, foggier morning, the next morning. And it's, of course, possible that, because of that, my presentation is awful; and I get fired: I become a drug addict, homeless, fill-in-the-blank. Or, I'm fired, and, it turns out I find an incredible job that I wouldn't have even thought to look for.
So, life is full, obviously, of some random events.
But I think most people would say that those are rare. That they're not the--I'll say it a different way--this convergence and contingency in our daily lives, there are many broad patterns that persist, regardless of small choices or interactions we have with the world or with others. And, there's many that are serendipitous, both for good and for bad, and we don't know what those are.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So basically, I agree with you that most people think about the world this way, right?
And the way that I would sort of counteract that is by bringing up--I have this in the introduction of Fluke--but it's this example where I say, 'You know, everybody sort of intuitively accepts this notion that, if you were to travel back in time: don't change anything. Don't squish the wrong bug, be very careful, because you might accidentally change the future in such a way that you get deleted out of the present.' Right?
Russ Roberts: And, there's a Ray Bradbury short story, we'll link to, if we can, called the "Sound of Thunder," that's magnificent, that deals with this.
Brian Klaas: Exactly. And, The Simpsons also riff on this idea off the Bradbury story.
And so, I think most of us sort of intuitively think, 'Yeah, okay,' like, 'Fair enough.' That's probably good advice. Like, if you do squish the wrong bug, if you travel back 800 years or 2 million years in history, you might actually change the future of the species or your own life.
And, we don't think about that in the present. But, of course, historical causality doesn't change: whether it's past or present, it's the same thing. So, if squishing a bug in the past can divert the trajectory of history in the future, then surely squishing a bug in the present can divert the future as well.
Now, what I would say in the more realistic world of our lives is that we just simply are blind to this. I think that you're right that it's very hard for us to discern these, and our brains have evolved to make pattern detection the prime aspect of what we do cognitively. So, we overlook a lot of this stuff.
But, just examples, like: I've had situations--I'm sure you have--where somebody makes an off-handed remark that has stuck with me, either a profound witticism or sort of a cutting jab that really made me feel bad. That person has no idea what it's done, but maybe it put me in a bad mood. Maybe then I snap at somebody else. There's ripple effects that happen even on the tiniest things. When you hit the snooze button, you meet different people that day. Right? When you meet the person who becomes your best friend in your life, a series of things had to happen for that exact occurrence to take place. Right?
Now, you might say there's convergence because you were going to end up at the same school or whatever it was, but I think the ultimate contingency is where this becomes crystal clear is when we start to think about which humans get produced. Because, without going into graphic detail, the exact moment of when a baby is made, if it's a microsecond difference, a different human is born. Right? And so, it's obvious that, in that day, even slight variations are going to affect which person is born. But, if you keep going back, why do you end up on that exact date in that exact situation? Well, it's a series of events that each have an infinite regress basically back to the beginning of your life.
So, my view of historic causality is actually that--when I say everything we do matters, I'm not trying to make some cute statements about we should care about ourselves. I literally think that everything that we do affects the shape of the world in some way. We're blind to how it's diverting the future of our trajectories.
Russ Roberts: And I think that's a very beautiful idea. Of course, most of the time, we don't know what that direction will be. If I'm having a bad day and I struggle to overcome it, and I fail, and I snap at someone, that puts them in a bad mood and that has these ripple effects you're talking about. And, it is possible that, by snapping at them, I cause them to reflect on their own lives in a positive way. But most of the time, we would argue that that's bad--that, snapping at people, being rude, arrogant, pushy, obnoxious, self-centered--that produces bad ripples. The challenge, of course, is, is that many of these small things that do make a difference, we don't know how they make a difference.
So, the snooze button's a good idea. Now, whether I push the snooze button, if I push it, I may meet--encounter is maybe a better word--different people along the way on my, say, bus ride or walk to work, or whatever thoughts I'm going to have and so on are all going to be different. They might be good, they might be bad. I have no idea. It is a bad idea to push the button eight times every morning, because you'll eventually waste large chunks of your life maybe, and maybe lose your job if you're constantly late.
But, I think I would want to make a distinction between things that--because we are all connected, I have an idea of causation, even though it's imperfect. As I said, sometimes what seems like good behavior could lead to bad outcomes, or vice versa. But, most of the time, I have a theory about those ripple effects, and many times, I don't. And, the ones that don't are relatively, I would say, they have impact, but they don't guide my life, because I can't anticipate them.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, that's a perfect encapsulation, because I think you have to differentiate between how the world works and how we should live within it. Right?
So, I think that how the world works shows that these ripple effects are interconnected. And this means--I find this a profoundly moving idea--that all of our best moments in life are inextricably intertwined with all of our worst moments in life. And the way I explain that is to say: I am quite literally the byproduct of a gruesome mass murder, one of the most horrific things that happened that year in Wisconsin, these four young children. Everything good in my life is directly derived from that. My life is directly derived from that. Every positive impact I've made is directly derived from that. So, this horrible event had these consequences that I find--subjectively--very, very positive. Now, that doesn't mean you should go out and mass-murder people and hope that it produces good effects. Right?
So, because there is no way to anticipate the invisible ripples, we should live according to basically a code of ethics, trying to be decent to each other. But, sometimes, people doing horrible things does produce very good outcomes. Sometimes, people doing really good things produces terrible outcomes. This is obvious. But, I think that there's something that's still valuable, at least in the way that we process how our lives work--and also, think about social change--in understanding that there is no free lunch: There's no action that doesn't have an impact.
And I think, once you start thinking that way, you start to view yourself slightly differently in a way that can be very helpful for people who are thinking about their lives and are going through, for example, a very dark time. You think: Okay, well, quite literally, in my view of causality, that dark time is the cause of all the good times that are going to come. Now, if it were different, you would have a different life. Now, some of it might be better, some of it might be worse, but that sort of interconnection and unbroken strands of causality, I think, is something that can sometimes be comforting when terrible things are happening.
Russ Roberts: Well, you have a concept you mentioned--I don't know if it's Nietzsche's concept or whether he was using it from other folks--which I think is very provocative. It's very relevant to some things I'm thinking about these days. It's the idea of amor fati--I don't know how to pronounce it--it means love of one's fate.
So, if we look back, and my favorite example of this is-- I won't spoil the story--but I think it's called "The Story of Your Life," by Ted Chiang. It's a short story that deals with this question, and it's a magnificent story. He uses the basis for the movie Arrival, a movie I didn't particularly care for; but the story that it's based on love beyond words. The idea is that: If you look back on your own life and you see all the mistakes you made or the cruelties you endured--in your case, it's a cruelty that happened before your birth that enabled you to be here--but if we think back on those things, often, we're tempted to regret them. We say, 'I wish I hadn't done X,' or, 'I wish that person hadn't done Y to me, because I was traumatized, brutalized by it.' But, there is a tendency, I think, in the human heart--and I think religious people think about this differently, but if you're not religious, there's still a strong tendency in the human heart--to say, 'Well, if that bad event hadn't occurred, I wouldn't be me.'
And I realize--and this is, I think, the profound part of your book--I realize that who I am in this moment and my outlook and my sense of self, my consciousness of self, that's the product of all these thousands of small things. Absolutely. And, I can't pluck out one of them by itself--and you use the idea of a thread--I can't pull one thread out and leave the rest of the cloth of the fabric unchanged, so I just didn't have to suffer from that moment, say, of humiliation in seventh grade or the terrible decision I made to do XYZ on vacation, that caused me weeks of pain and I lost a friend, etc., etc.
I love the idea that those things should change, but when I face the reality of confronting the fact that, if I change any one of those, that butterfly stepped on back 70 years ago, it was 55 years ago, I won't be me.
And, I think that's probably a fallacy, but I think it's a very human way that we think about our lives. By the way, it's not a fallacy, rationally. I wouldn't be me: the idea that I've embraced it--the amor, the love of fati, of my fate--that is, I think, it might be a fallacy, but I think it's incredibly human for us to cope with that suffering we've endured.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. So, I don't think it's a fallacy. I think it's quite literally true. I think that, if anything different had happened in your life, you would be a different person.
Russ Roberts: Well, that's true.
Brian Klaas: And I think that this is--it's applying chaos theory. It's not to say that you'd be a completely different person. It's not like you have no genetic makeup, no character or personality. But some things would be different about you. And, you would be different in this moment, right?
And this--to me, it's just applying chaos theory to humans. Chaos theory is a pretty effective and validated scientific theory, and it shows that many complex systems--which I would include the human mind as well as human society--are sensitive to initial conditions, and slight changes in those initial conditions going forward in time can create profound effects.
The origin of chaos theory is the weather. And of course, we intuit this when we think, why isn't the weatherman making a forecast ten days in the future? It's because tiny fluctuations can create totally different weather systems.
I think that's the same for humans. And, I think, actually, there's a difference here between what's socially useful in a sort of aggregation and what's individually useful for processing terrible things that happen to us.
So, I think you're right that it's quite literally true, and also that it's a coping mechanism to confront terrible things by understanding that they make you who you are. But, I actually believe this scientifically is a literal truth.
Now, on top of this, there is some social usefulness to regret, because when we do stuff that inflicts pain on other people and we feel bad about it, that's socially useful. Now, of course, the fact that we did that does make us who we are. It's unavoidable. There's no way where you can rewind your life and delete that little bit of your history. And, it then causes you to behave better in the future, because you internalize that regret. And then, it changes the way that your neural network processes new information, and then you behave differently the next time that you encounter someone--maybe you're a little bit kinder.
So, I think you can have a parallel idea in your head at the same time that: Yes, it's actually useful to go back over your life and think about what could have been different, what could have been better, as a thought experiment, because that allows you to adapt and be more proactive in terms of making decisions that you're more happy with over the long run. But, I also think it's not a fallacy to use it as a coping mechanism, because it is quite literally true. I am the byproduct of everything that's happened to me, and this is partly because I believe that my mind is basically a physical object. I don't believe there's a difference between my mind and my brain. So, if that's the case, then every single thing that has affected my brain structure is every experience I've ever had. And therefore, if I hadn't had some of those experiences, my brain would process the world differently and I would behave differently.
Russ Roberts: Just to be clear, first of all, I think--I used to agree with you about regret. I don't believe that anymore. Although I think regret plays an important role in potentially affecting our behavior, I think it's very difficult for our brains to process regret in that thoughtful way. And, I'm not sure that regret is that helpful in helping me be better in the future.
Put that to the side for a minute. I just want to make clear what I meant when I said it's a fallacy. If some of the bad things that I did or that happened to me were pulled out of the fabric, I would be a different person; and I love who I am. But I'd also love who I am if I were a different person. That's all I meant. And I might be even happier. I think it's interesting, your example of--there's a long chapter in your book on free will, and I told you before we started recording, we probably wouldn't talk about it, because we'd already gone in great depth with Robert Sapolsky on it.
But, there's a fascinating parallel between a William James essay and your origin story. So, William James' defense of free will, he talks about a horrific murder, and he says, 'Do we really believe that that murder, that the world would not be a better place if that murder didn't happen? Is there any possible way for that murder not to have happened? Wouldn't the world be a better place?' Now, it turns out--of course, he understands that many, many other things would then happen, that might be good or bad. In your case, you seem like a fine fellow, Brian--I'm glad you're here--but I think the first wife of your--great-grandmother or grandmother?
Brian Klaas: Yeah, my great-grandfather. Yeah, yeah.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. It would have been a better thing, certainly in a utilitarian sense--on the surface; we have to be careful, because if those four children had lived, one of them could have grown up to be a Hitler. The world's complicated. We can't reliably say that. But I think our sense of morality--and this James' point--is that, if we can't judge that, James is saying we have to be able to say, all of us desperately want to say, 'I would prefer a world where that didn't happen.' And, the alternative view is to say, 'Well, it's all determined': that nothing could freely change anything. And so, we want to live in this world right now that has many beautiful things and some not so beautiful things. We have to accept all the mass murders of the past, all the cruelty of the past; and all the good things of the past. But, I think the idea that there are some bad things that happen is important to say, and I know you agree with that, so I'll let you say it.
Brian Klaas: Yeah, no: this is the kind of thing where, because you can't know the ripple effects of any individual action, the only rational way to live is to try to be as ethical as possible.
Now, the question about free will is more of a question of, where did the cause of those events come from? So, whether I am able to freely control my mind separately from my brain, that's a question about causality and free will and the sort of dynamic nature of matter. Right? But it doesn't change how, because I don't know the answer to that question, then I should try as best I can to behave in an ethical way.
I agree basically with Robert Sapolsky's viewpoint on this: I don't believe in free will, and I'm a hard determinist in this sense. But, I don't think that it actually pragmatically affects the ways that we should think about our own lives, because we just simply can't know.
To me, it's more of a question about: What is the ultimate origin of human behavior? Not: What is the right kind of human behavior? And, the right kind of human behavior is obviously extremely ethical.
Now, one of the things that I think--just to pick up a thread that we were talking about before that relates to this--when I was talking to, whenever you write a book, you kick ideas around with smart people, and I was talking to a historian about the Hiroshima and Kyoto example. And what he said to me was, he's, like, 'Yeah, but the war was going to end anyway, and the United States was going to win anyway.' And, it relates to this idea about the unknown effects. Because what I said to him was, I was, like, 'Yeah, you're right. They would have bombed Kyoto, the United States still would have won the war, etc. But the world doesn't have categories with binary outcomes.' Right?
So, the way he was thinking was, like, the effect of that action was indifferent, because the war still ends. I say, 'Yeah, but if a hundred thousand different people die and Kyoto no longer exists and Hiroshima does, Japan is going to develop differently.' People who go to Kyoto now, who have been--some of your listeners probably have been to Kyoto--they wouldn't have gone there. They might have gone to a different city.
So, the idea that there's these, like, categories of change that we impose on the world--like, did the war end in the way that we expected or not--isn't actually how I think this thread works. I think, if one person lives and one person dies and you swap them, I think the world changes. So, obviously, if a hundred thousand different people live or die.
And, that's an interesting situation, because in the William James story you reference, obviously, it's a choice between murder or no murder. This is a choice between which a hundred thousand people live or die.
And, I think the thing that makes us so uncomfortable with the idea that it was because of a vacation is just because it's so arbitrary. But, like, is it better if the reason was because there was a Japanese aircraft manufacturer in Kyoto? I mean, maybe. But that's also the choice that some random Japanese guy made, that caused these people to die.
So, my point here is I think that there's this aspect where we can't know the ripple effects, but that doesn't mean we should pretend they don't exist.
And, that's the sort of philosophical aspect of this. Everybody else then has to internalize, 'What does this mean for me?' And, I write about, in Fluke, what this means for me. But the reader is, I think, hopefully, going to have a different reaction to it and how you make sense of a world that's more swayed by chance and contingency and randomness and chaos and all this stuff. I hope that I'll get lots of responses that are radically different, because I think that's the beauty of the human condition, is all of us take an idea and interpret it in our own brains very, very differently.
Russ Roberts: Well, if you're right about free will, it doesn't matter, because it's all pre-determined already. It's in what James calls the iron wall of one event coming after another inexorably.
Russ Roberts: I want to read--and by the way, I think the claim that we would have, quote, "America would have won the war anyway," is--it's an untenable claim. There's no way of knowing. And of course, the bomb was dropped not to, quote, "win the war" versus lose it. That's the binary part I think you're a hundred percent right about. That's the wrong way to think about it.
The reason the bomb was dropped, whether this was moral or not--obviously, it depends on what you consider moral--but it was dropped to save what was thought to be the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not a million lives, in an invasion.
Of course, that might not have been necessary, either. Maybe the emperor could have had a heart attack and things would have changed.
But, these are the issues, I think, that are much harder ex-ante than ex-post.
But, I want to read a beautiful paragraph that sums up what we've just been talking about, and you can expand on it if you want or not, but it's a beautiful summary.
You say, quote:
Our best and worst moments are inextricably linked. The happiest experiences of your life are part of the same thread in which you suffered the most crushing despair. One couldn't follow without the other. That may sound strange, but I obviously wouldn't exist if my great-grandfather's first wife hadn't murdered her family. So, my most joyous moments are unavoidably tethered to that horrific tragedy. In a literal sense, our most euphoric moments couldn't exist without their suffering. That doesn't mean that we should celebrate suffering, but that future elation--elation will emerge directly or indirectly from seemingly senseless suffering can be a consoling truth that blunts our worst moments of pain. Conversely, my joyous moments will, in some way, lead inexorably to someone else's agony or my own. That's just the way it works. For good or ill, I find this mind-bendingly beautiful, providing the most vivid sense of interconnection between all things intertwined across space and time.
Close quote. Want to add anything? It's a beautiful quote, beautiful paragraph.
Brian Klaas: Thank you. No, I mean I think that sums up the main ideas.
I just--when I talk to people who are dealing with problems in the modern world--and I think there are a lot of people who are dealing with problems in the modern world right now--it's this idea, I think, is one that is both true and comforting.
But it's also something where it's derived from a sense, for me at least, that, if the world is intertwined in this way and if our lives can be swayed by forces seen and unseen, sometimes random, sometimes small, we have a little bit less control than we think we do. Right? And, I think we're sold this world where, like, you are in control. Right? So, the self-help industry is basically an industry that tells you, 'It's your fault you're not happy, because here's the recipe to being happy and wealthy and so on.' And, the world just doesn't work that way.
And I think it lets us off the hook a little bit. I think that's the other aspect of this that I find helpful, is--I repeatedly use this quote, and it's sort of this idea that we control nothing but we influence everything. And, when you start to think about it that way, combined with the aspects of what you just read, I think it lets humanity sort of be a little bit messy and be a little bit imperfect. And it's okay.
So, it's funny--it's really nice to chat with you as someone who has so clearly read the book. Right? This is very rare with interviewers. But it's so nice to chat about it. Because the thing that I found so interesting reading, researching all this, was I think these ideas are actually really linked across disciplines. And, it's rare to have someone, like on your show, where you'll have a trained social scientist that's thinking critically about the philosophy behind these things and also the science behind them and so on.
And, we're all grappling with the same puzzles. We're just totally different silos. And, the passage that you read is actually linked to questions of physics, right? There's like, 'What is this actually about the way the world works in terms of causality?'
So, yeah: I think the passage you read sums up my views on this. But I do love that there is philosophy to be derived from physics. There is sort of import for the way we live our lives from things that we think about social research and so on. And they're not as separate as we pretend they are.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. And, most of the social science things that we read, as you point out in talking about self-help books--which are often based on research and studies that show that this will make you happier, this will lead to a better life, and so on--those are not reliable. But they're deeply appealing to us. We deeply want those magic formulas to get rid of uncertainty, to assert the feeling of control, and so on.
And, I think a lot of those theories are simply just misleading. And the real--those of you out there read my book, Wild Problems, part of my theme in that book is that--and it's a theme in your book, Brian--is: uncertainty is not something to be conquered. It's something to be embraced. It's the essence of life. And, as you point out--I think I pointed out also in my book--you don't want to know how the story ends. Uncertainty is--actually would be deeply disturbing if you were to know the date of your death or how you're going to die. There's an EconTalk episode about that. I've forgotten who it was, but that's deep. It's Michael Blastland, who is the guest.
So, that would be deeply disturbing. And yet, we are constantly trying to overcome this unease that we have at being unable to control things.
So, I think the lesson for how to live--I think I know what the answer is. It's not an answer that's easily accepted, I think, for us as human beings. So, maybe talk about that a little bit.
Brian Klaas: I completely agree with everything you said, but in addition to that, I think we also don't know what we actually want necessarily. What I mean by that is not to sort of suggest that people can't understand themselves, but rather to say that, sometimes, forced experimentation in a world of uncertainty is a very good strategy. I think this is true, by the way, in business and economics, but I think it's also definitely true in people's lives.
And, one of the examples that--Tim Harford originally popularized this, but I think it's just a beautiful example--is the story of Keith Jarrett and the rickety piano. And basically, he comes to the Cologne Opera House for this packed crowd to play, and they've screwed up the piano order. And so, there's no grand piano for him. There's just this practice piano that's really terrible. And, as a result, he has to play the concert on it. But he adapts himself to the piano, changes things a little bit, plays with it, basically experiments. And, this is the best-selling jazz album of all time, because this unexpected, forced experimentation actually produced something really beautiful.
And, the same story--the story right before that in the book--is about the London Tube strikes, where they have this, all of a sudden, the way that you get to work is shut down for a day. And, when economists tracked mobile phone data, geolocation data, they found 5% of commuters who had to choose a different route because of the strike stuck with the new path after the strike. Which suggests they had found either a better option. It may not have been faster; might've just been more pleasant. Maybe they walked instead of taking the Tube the next time, etc. But, it forced people out of this rut.
And, I think there's a lesson there that, yes, uncertainty actually has some upsides, because as you say, scripted lives are boring and sad. The idea that we already know exactly when we're going to die or exactly which partner we'll end up with and so on takes a lot of the serendipity out of life. But also, that the experimentation aspect is a way to live within this. Because, you don't know, and the false sense of certainty causes you to optimize in ways that sometimes are unintentionally harmful, even if they are efficient.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think the--one way to think about this is to think about downside, upside, and the magnitudes of those. I write about this, the idea of optionality. If there's a downside to a decision you make, but you can stop it--you can cut that downside short and not be stuck with it--it's a very different world than one where you're stuck with it for a long time, or you can only reverse it at a horrific cost.
And then, the same is true, of course, for upside. Many of the decisions we make, upside is very small, very limited; it might be unlikely. But most of the things we do--a lot of the things we do anyway, in my experience, maybe I'm lucky--is there's a small chance of something happening. If it happens, the upside could be enormous, and you have no idea what that's going to be. It's a whole different level of uncertainty; but you open yourself to that kind of opportunity.
And, so many of the best things that have happened to me in my life were unimagined. They weren't planned, they weren't predicted, they weren't predictable. And, certainly, most of the best conversations I've ever had--outside of EconTalk--the random encounters I have with people, that were deeply meaningful to me, were chance encounters. They weren't where I said, 'Oh, I bet that's going to be a really interesting person. I'm going to have a meeting at two o'clock with that person.' And often it's just a chance encounter with a stranger. And, I think it's a wonderful thing to be open to that kind of uncertainty, knowing that, if the person is not interesting, you don't talk as long. And, if they're fascinating, you dive in deeply. And, I just think so much of the good things in life come from embracing that, rather than running away from it.
Brian Klaas: Yeah. I agree. And I also think that the downside discussion you just had is also where I think that the worldview you have about how uncertain the world is, or how uncontrollable the world is, is proportionate to how much resilience you build into systems. Right? And, this is where I think there's the danger of overconfidence in the variable-driven life, where you sort of say, 'Okay, if we just get these five variables in place, so everything will be fine,' or the self-help recipe for improving your life. When you have that false sense of certainty, you discount resilience. You discount those sort of exit ramps that you talked about in the downside.
And so, I think this is where, even if it's something where we can't necessarily know where the chance encounters are going to come, if you accept that they do actually play a significant role in our lives, you plan differently. And so, it's where the idea, the philosophy, the worldview can actually affect your decision-making in a positive way, simply by accepting that you don't have as much control as you thought you did.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I want to read another quote that you alluded to it a minute ago, the idea--and I think it's a very provocative idea, and it comes a recent conversation with Paul Bloom, had a similar conversation with Agnes Callard; I probably had others--but this question of whether we're making progress or not in humanity and whether our societies are better than they used to be. And, this is your quote. Quote:
This is the paradox of twenty-first-century life: staggering prosperity seems to be tethered to surging rates of alienation, despair, and existential precariousness. Humans have constructed the most sophisticated civilizations ever to grace the planet, but countless millions need to medicate themselves to cope with living within them. We can control more of the world than the ancients could have imagined, scraping minerals out of the earth, powering them with a flow of electrons we can direct or disrupt, conjuring up images on our screens of wizards and aliens and superheroes that once existed only in fanciful minds. Now, we're even starting to be able to invent other minds, capable of producing their own art and literature. Where has it got us? On every measurable metric, we're better off than ever before, but many of us feel worse off for it.
Close quote.
Talk about that. That might be true. Part of me accepts that summary of modern life. I worry that I'm 69 years old and I've just become an old curmudgeon who thinks that everything is worse, even though it looks better. But I think there's some truth to it. So, what are your thoughts?
Brian Klaas: I think there's some of this--aspects where I do think this is tied to this sort of optimized view of the world, this sort of constant optimization, the hustle culture. And, I think lots of people live what I call a checklist existence, which is where every goal yields another goal. There's lots of people who have written about the hedonic treadmill and how you sort of are constantly trying to keep up with your everlasting stream of goals. Because: 'Just this one change and I'll finally be happy.' I think there's a lot of stuff in life where accepting a lack of control and accepting uncertainty is actually the most useful way you can spend your time, and trying to get to that point.
This is where this book also has changed how I think about lots of things. I looked, in the Pandemic--I'm sure for a lot of people, as for me, did this as well--where I sort of grappled with my mortality a little bit more than I usually would.
And, I look at, you know, sort of February 2020, and it's funny. It's like my Google Calendar is just full of stuff I didn't want to do, because there might be some unknown benefit to my career at some point. And then, I started to think, 'I'm going to die at some point and I'd rather do things I enjoy.'
So, there's some of that aspects where I think intrinsic enjoyment of life is something that we're often told is actually something you should put on hold, in order to complete the checklist and achieve the everlasting supply of goals.
So, it's not to say: Don't strive. Humans are naturally striving beings, and we should be. We should always try to improve our lives however we can. It's just to sort of focus on what actually matters to us. And, I think that that's something where, again, when you start to think philosophically about some of the ideas in Fluke, you start to grapple with the question of, like, 'Is it really the stuff that I've been told is important? Is it the fancy car, the big house, and so on?'
Some of that might be important to people, some of it might make people happy. But for others, I think they're being sold a recipe that doesn't actually deliver what they want.
So, there's aspects of the last few chapters of the book where I'm trying to grapple with the meaning of some of these aspects of interconnected contingency, and so on.
But, I do think there's this pretty predominant Western worldview about individual agency, where you basically are in control of your own world. You're the main character in life. And you're supposed to go through that sort of game of life, accruing the largest slice of the world you possibly can, which is the most stuff, the most prestige, etc. I think a lot of people live their lives that way and then feel quite empty with it.
So, you know, if that's not you--if that's how you feel happy--then by all means, like, live the way you want.
But, for me, it's just to provocatively challenge some people and say, 'Think a little bit about that.' And, if you do have a little bit less control and you aren't able to order off the menu of life everything you're supposed to want, what can you make yourself happy with?
And, for a lot of people, those things are actually free and available. They're with other human beings, they're with other experiences that are free. And, I wrote a lot of this book right after I went on walks with my dog, which was where I started thinking, and that was free. And, it was really enjoyable, and it's something that gave my life a lot of meaning to grapple with these ideas.
So, I don't know--it's funny--this is the only book I've ever written that I think has changed who I am. I'll put it that way. The other books, I felt like I was transmitting knowledge I already had, and this is one I was talking to people and engaging with concepts, the kinds that you talk about on your show all the time, that I just, frankly, as a political scientist who was sort of sheltered, hadn't really read evolutionary biology and physics and all these other things, and some of the deeper questions of philosophy. And, they made me think more critically about some of the things that I thought intuitively were correct about how the world works.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Brian Klaas. His book is Fluke. Brian, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Brian Klaas: Thanks for having me. It was a serious, serious pleasure.
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]]>Intro. [Recording date: December 21, 2023.]
Russ Roberts: Today is December 21st, 2023, and I want to encourage listeners to go to econtalk.org where you'll find a link for our annual poll of your favorite episodes. Please go there and vote. Thanks for voting and for providing feedback about the program.
And now for today's guest, economist Noah Smith. His blog on Substack is Noahpinion. That's Noahpinion: N-O-A-H-P-I-N-I-O-N. This is Noah's third appearance on the program. He was last here in October of 2018, talking about worker compensation and market power. Noah, welcome back to EconTalk.
Noah Smith: Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here.
Russ Roberts: Our topic for today is the wealth of nations--not the book, but the concept. Although we may talk about the book a little bit. We're going to be referring to a recent essay at Noahpinion that you wrote with the title "Nations Don't Get Rich by Plundering Other Nations." So, a lot of people would disagree with that, I think. So let's start with the idea of plunder. What do you think people have in mind when they explain the wealth of nations via plunder? And, what's wrong with it?
Noah Smith: Well, usually plunder talks about natural resources. So, you have some ships, you have some guys with guns. You send the ships and the guys with guns to somewhere else and you say, 'Hey, we're in charge here. Now you're working for us in the mines.' And then you open up some mines, and the local people mine the stuff for starvation wages, or you just enslave them, or whatever. And then, you take the metal, or whatever resources, or the rubber, whatever they've got, right? And then, you cart it away to the metropol of empire where you use it to build monuments to your empire's greatness, and things like that. I think that's the picture people have in their minds when you talk about colonial plunder.
This is--it's a caricature, but it's roughly accurate for the way, say, that the Spanish mined silver in South America you had the encomienda system, which was essentially slavery. You had actual, literal slavery in mining, and a lot of it was just enforced by Spanish military power. You also had--in fact, this has actually been kind of a common thing for a lot of empires for thousands of years--you saw this kind of plunder. And Spain didn't do it too differently.
When the British and French came along, they did it a little bit differently. They usually co-opted local elites and said, 'Hey, local guy, just sell us some stuff.' And, they would send some soldiers in to lay down some railroad tracks or occasionally execute people you don't like, or put down a rebellion or something like that. But then, the local elites would do a lot of the extracting, often with sort of British and French engineering help, and they'd build some--but ultimately it was not that different. Mines would get built, and miners would get paid low wages, and plantations--rubber trees cut down--grown and cut down and all this stuff.
And so, of course some Marxists say, 'Okay, labor is also a resource, so you're extracting labor.' Fine, if you want.
But then, I thought--personally, I thought the idea of extraction itself just deals with the idea that you're also extracting labor. You're making someone do some stuff for you that they wouldn't have done on their own if it was just a perfect free market or whatnot.
And so I think that's kind of the idea of plunder. And, there's absolutely no doubt that a lot of this did happen throughout history and in the period of European colonialism, and you know what? It was a common thing. And so that's--I think--does that answer your question?
Russ Roberts: Well, and then a similar analysis is done with American economic activity in, say, Latin America or South America, where United Fruit would exploit workers in picking bananas and other natural resources. We had an episode related to this, tangentially, at least, in the Belgian Congo, which was a horrific example of European exploitation of the local population and the stealing--which is what plunder is--the theft of both natural resources and to a large extent, often the lives or wellbeing of the people who lived in those places at the time.
So the question is: How important is that? So all that happened--and it's a horrible episode in history, varying in intensity and horrificness--all that happened. The question is--which you deal with in your essay--is: Is that the source of the wealth that Western Europe and, say, the United States have attained? Is that where it came from? Is it basically a form of exploitation?
And, you argue No. As you start with--we'll talk in a minute about maybe the theory behind why No is the wrong answer--but let's start with the evidence. What evidence do you provide for why plunder is not really a good explanation for how nations get wealthy?
Noah Smith: Right. Well so, the first basic thing is just to look at the timing. When you look at when nations got really rich, pretty much all of the enrichment has happened in the last 150 years, since maybe 1870 or so. If you look at 1870, the ancestors of people in the United States and Britain--people in the United States and Britain--were living very meager lives. They were living lives that by modern standards are incredibly poor. Despite all the plunder that they had done, all the military force they had applied, and all the suffering they had inflicted--mass enslavement for centuries, and all kinds of wars, and extraction, and all this stuff--they were still incredibly poor by modern standards. And so, basically, all the plunder that had happened before 1870 or so was essentially one poor person shooting another poor person for a tiny amount of money.
So, imagine that your neighbor has $40 to his name and that you have $40 to your name. Okay? So, you're both really poor. You shoot your neighbor and take your neighbor's $40. Are you richer now that you shot your neighbor? Well, a tiny bit. Did you harm your neighbor? Well, absolutely: You shot him. Did you plunder from your neighbor? Absolutely. You took us $40. Are you rich? No, you have $80 now. You're still a poor person.
So, this understanding relative versus absolute wealth is absolutely key to this idea. The idea that when we look around and we see all the cars, and the medical procedures, and the skyscrapers, and the TVs, and all the cell phones, and everything else we have that makes us rich--all the amazing food and cool furniture and all the other things that make us rich--those things are new. And, people in 1870 did not have those things. They had almost none of those things.
Russ Roberts: And, I've quoted Walter Williams--we probably, when I interviewed him a long time ago, we probably actually talked about this. So, we'll link to that episode.
But, from the way he would summarize it, which I find it's similar to what you just said. But it has an aspect I want to highlight. Through most of human history, you got rich by knocking your neighbor on the head and taking your neighbor's stuff.
Noah Smith: Relatively rich, you wouldn't get--
Russ Roberts: That was how you got richer.
Noah Smith: Slightly richer. Yes.
Russ Roberts: Your point, which is correct, is: That doesn't make you rich. It makes you a little bit richer.
And, the point I want to emphasize is that, that does not make the world richer. It's a zero-sum game, at that level. Plunder is almost by definition, a zero-sum game. It means your neighbor--in this case nationally, which is what we're mainly going to be talking about--your national neighbor has stuff; and now you have it and they don't. So, that does not transform the world. It might help you a little bit--as you point out--not a lot, through most of history.
But, the point I want to emphasize is that it's actually not a zero-sum game. It, certainly at the personal level, it's a negative-sum game. Because the threat of plunder in the personal sphere causes you to spend resources you otherwise would prefer not to spend with better locks, better guns, better fences, whatever it is.
And, even worse than that: if you're weak and you're at risk of being plundered by your neighbor--either personally or internationally--your incentive to grow and expand and innovate and do other things that might lead to actual real wealth is not so high because there's a risk of plunder.
So, all of that points to the fact that plunder, which we think of as a zero-sum game, is probably much more correct to think of it as a negative sum game. And, it was the way of the world for much--almost all--of human history until just recently.
And you quote--it's a wonderful picture. You have a chart from the work of Angus Maddison. Angus Maddison and his colleagues worked diligently to do as best as possible. It's impossible, but they did the best they could in trying to measure, going back in the case of your chart, to 1820: What is the average per capita GDP [Gross Domestic Product] for various parts of the world?
And, what struck me about it is that until about the middle of the 20th century--so forget 1870--until the middle of the 20th century, there was no part of the world that lived on more than $10,000 a year. A very, very low standard living by our modern standards.
Starting around 1930s and 1940s--ironically, in the aftermath of the Great Depression--certainly starting in 1950, there is a remarkable, unparalleled acceleration of economic wellbeing in Western Europe, in Western Europe's similar countries, or whatever you might call them--the United States, Canada, Australia, and so on. And then, eventually even the other parts of the world also accelerate: not nearly as dramatically, not to as nearly as high a level. But there's basically a fivefold--four- or five-fold--improvement of standard of living in Western Europe and the United States, similar countries, since 1950. Certainly since 1900, there's been a steady improvement as well.
So, if you want to understand how economic activity, material wellbeing, can be transformed, you have to explain that. You have to explain two things. One, why it's relatively flat for most of human history, and then why it suddenly accelerates. And, it can't really be plunder, because there are no Martians to plunder. For the whole world, which, the whole world has gotten richer over the last 70 years there's no one to take it from. So, something else really underlying and important has to be going on.
Noah Smith: Right. Yes. We know--you know, basically, we know how countries get rich because we've seen them do it again and again. Basically, we know what industrialization looks like. Right? And we know what the requirements for that are. We know that modern scientific discoveries are absolutely key to industrialization as well as a large accumulated amount of tacit knowledge about how to build industrial things. We can see where production comes from, where you can look at a factory, you can look at supply chains and where that stuff comes from. And, you can see that we had all those natural resources before. Maybe we couldn't extract them, but they were in the ground, they were there. And, we can see exactly the machines and the inventions that allowed us to extract those natural resources--more of them than we could before--but most importantly, to process them into new forms of stuff. Now we can make a refrigerator, before we could not. Now we can make a microphone, before we could not. And we can see very concretely where all this wealth comes from.
What's more, we can look at the historical trajectories of countries that try to get rich mainly through plunder, and we can compare them to the historical trajectories of countries that try to get rich, mainly through making industrial stuff.
So for example, when we look at Spain and Portugal, those countries now are, you know, somewhat rich as countries go. But they weren't always. That's relatively recent, and is based on their integration with the European economy. In their colonial days, they did not get especially wealthy from plunder, even in the relative sense that their people remained desperately poor; and they dug up all this gold and silve, and other resources from Latin America and shipped them back to Europe, but ultimately frittered it away because they didn't really invest it for industrialization. They spent it on wars or, like, you know, gilding the local church or whatever they had. Right? They didn't really industrialize much. And that was why Spain and Portugal stayed poor at the time.
Britain is sort of the intermediate case.
But, before we talk about Britain, I want to talk about Germany. Which, Germany had a couple of overseas colonies for a very short amount of time. Very few, and for a short amount of time, and they weren't ultimately that important. It was more of a vanity project for imperial Germany. Germany became rich by making stuff in Germany, and they became as rich as Britain. Eventually--now they're richer. But they had very little legacy of colonial exploitation.
Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark--these countries did not have a colonial empire.
And now you look in the modern day: you look at Japan, who had an empire. But South Korea did not, right? Singapore, certainly. Taiwan was just this lonely little island. And, a number of countries like this have basically gotten rich without ever having a colonial empire.
And at this point, so we know that countries got rich without having their own colonial empires. We know that countries that had their own colonial empires often did not get rich. So, it was neither necessary nor sufficient to have a colonial empire nor industrialize. But, we see that Britain and France did, and Britain and France did have extensive colonial empires. And, the question is: did that make them industrialize? Did that make them get rich? Was it the fact that they had colonial empires? Right?
And, the answer is: we don't actually know. Because, so there are hypotheses that say--there is a hypothesis that says, 'The reason Britain industrialized was because it had cheap capital and expensive labor.' That, you need to substitute capital for labor. In other words, if workers' wages are really, really high, but yet the price of physical stuff--machinery and commodities--is very low, you need to use the machines instead of the humans. And then, once they started using the machines, then they're, like, 'Oh, wow, these machines are really great.' And they started tinkering and improving and investing. So, you then got this--industrial corporations got this virtuous cycle of investing in better machinery and technology.
And so, that is an argument for why the industrial revolution was sparked. And, a key part of that argument is the idea that cheap resources from extraction from colonies made capital cheap and prompted business people in Britain to use machines instead of workers--and to get used to using machines instead of workers--to expand. Of course, the workers' wages were eventually raised, too.
So, that is an argument. And, if you look at the work of, say, Robert Allen, it doesn't explicitly mention the flood of resources. Well, I guess he does briefly, but that's implicit in his ideas. If you look at Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, he talks about this as well. He doesn't put it in quite the same terms as Allen.
So, it is possible, it is possible that all you needed to start industrialization--that the reason that Sung Dynasty China or the Roman Empire or the early modern Netherlands never industrialized, or India--the reason these people never industrialized is because they had cheap labor; and, business people would always do the short-term thing of using more and more cheap labor instead of doing the difficult long-term thing of investing in machines.
And that all it took was for one country to have this massive influx of cheap stuff from the colonies in order for the price of switching to machinery to go way down. And, that was the magic spark that started the Industrial Revolution.
Now, this is a theory. I will say that I've looked at some of the evidence for the theory, and it's highly inconclusive. But it might be true. It might be that, had Britain not had a colonial empire, it would not have industrialized. And, if Britain hadn't industrialized, maybe no one would have industrialized. And then, maybe we wouldn't have an industrial society today, and we would still be all desperately poor in the world.
And so, according to this theory, the British Empire's resource exploitation of the world is what saved the human race from desperate poverty. And, that all of our vast wealth now can be owed to the perhaps butterfly effect. It's a chain--this lengthy chain of causation from Britain goes and conquers some people and extract the resources all the way to: 'Now we're rich. Yay.' And, the world doesn't have to starve and have bedbugs anymore.
And so, there is that argument; and I've looked, and I'm not sure, I think we don't really know. But that's what the argument is saying.
Russ Roberts: I don't want to find that persuasive for a lot of reasons, but I want to dig deeper into the economic ideas behind it. I just would mention that, of course, many places that have cheap labor today have industrialized, have added a lot of capital, have added machinery, have raised the standard of living of their workers dramatically through the use of capital. So, this has a certain psychological aspect to it, at least the way you've portrayed it, I find a little bit strange, which is like, 'Oh, we didn't like that. We couldn't look forward far enough.'
But, I think the more interesting question is just the theoretical one, which is the role of resources and their price in both our wellbeing and the opportunities to grow.
Let's talk about the United States for a minute. A lot of people say, 'Well, of course the United States is rich.' And, why? 'Well, they have these oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, protecting them from attack.' Of course, not from the north and south. But fine: in general, the United States has been blessed with lots of security at relatively low cost. 'And it has so many natural resources.' Yes, it does. It's a big place; it has a lot of different things. They're not easy to extract, as you alluded to at one point. Oil, for example: was it thought of as a resource? It became one when people were clever enough to figure out how to refine it and use it to create energy. But, the idea that your colony is at an economic advantage because you can steal their stuff--and let's call it that, not--let's talk about pure plunder. Not buying things cheaply, not paying workers very little: Stealing. Just, taking. You send your army, they grab the stuff. Well, that's an advantage.
The army, of course is not free and it's not as cheap as it looks. But, yes, it's nice to have stuff that you don't have to pay for.
That does not make you wealthy. It is a--it goes back to your example of you bang your neighbor on the head and take $40 bucks from him. You now have $80 bucks--this year. When that money is gone, you have to find another neighbor. If you want to get wealthier and stay wealthy--and by wealthy I mean have a higher standard of living, materially--if you want to do that, you have to find more and more neighbors to bang over the head. And, that's not a very realistic description of how the world works through most of its history.
And so, part of what I'm trying to allude to here is that some of the confusion here is about what we might call, what is called in economics, stocks versus flows--things at a point in time versus things that persist over time: growth, material wellbeing, persistent material wellbeing, persistent material wellbeing that's widespread across vast swaths of the population. That requires growth, not just more stuff today. It means more stuff today, tomorrow, the day after.
That requires a change in the underlying process of how stuff is created. And you focused on industrialization. But, more generally, it means: you have to find ways to get more from less. You have to find ways that--what we would call productivity, innovation.
And, lastly, I just want to emphasize the point you made about Portugal and Spain, very much in line with The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith. Adam Smith made the point that gold and silver--they are things, and they are good for gilding churches and filling cavities for some of human history. So, they're not useless. But they are not the source of true wealth. And Smith was a radical voice in 1776 when he said: You don't get wealthy by taking a bunch of raw metals--that you now have more of those things than you have some dollar, or pound, or peso number associated with them--that does not transform the standard of living of your people. It means you have more stuff in your warehouse that's not actually making life richer in any material sense.
And so, I think that insight of economics--that growth requires a transformation in how stuff is produced--as you point out--but it's not just industrial. It's all kinds of aspects of modern life. That's the source of material wellbeing, not just getting some things cheaply. Getting things cheaply helps. That's pleasant. It improves you; as you say, through most human history, not so much. But, to have a transformation that is ongoing requires a whole process of how things get improved over time.
Noah Smith: Exactly. Right. That's right.
And so, the unsophisticated sort of argument that you see--pushed by pseudonymous doofuses on social media who may or may not be, you know, teenagers living in, like, Pakistan or something--the unsophisticated argument is that basically America's wealth and the wealth of, like, Europe and Japan, whatever, is right now based on an ongoing transfer of resources from poor nations: That is obviously silly. There are two more-sophisticated versions of the argument that people who just have thought about it for more than five seconds and come up with.
Russ Roberts: I do just want to point out that the phrase, "pseudonymous doofuses" I think has never been uttered on EconTalk before. So, that's very nice. Continue, carry on now. What are the slightly more sophisticated versions?
Noah Smith: Right. The slightly--the real name doofuses.
Russ Roberts: Shame on you.
Noah Smith: Shame on me, or the doofuses? All of us.
Russ Roberts: We'll see.
Noah Smith: All of us. Because we're all just addicted to social media, which is to all of our shame.
But, anyway, so the--one more sophisticated argument is the one I just said: the idea that all this stuff jump-started economic development. There's also a popular argument that even made it into the New York Times in the 1619 Project: that slavery was responsible for the Industrial Revolution. That has been pretty much debunked by now.
Russ Roberts: But it's a widely-held belief. And I think we should spend a little bit of time on it. I was going to ask you about it. I think--
Noah Smith: Yeah.--
Russ Roberts: It is a widely-held belief that the opportunity to enslave people is the source not of the wellbeing of southern plantation holders in 1833, but of America's wellbeing today. That the legacy of slavery is--and of course this leads to arguments for the justice of reparations and other issues--but let's take that on its face. What's wrong with that argument?
Noah Smith: Well, so the first thing is that the research underlying this idea is of poor quality and has been essentially debunked. The historical scholarship, basically--so Ed Baptist is an historian, and he--Ed Baptist--claimed after looking through some archival sources, that at some point in the history of the American South, American slave owners discovered new methods of horrific torture--which he never specified but posited must exist--discovered new methods of horrific torture by which they could force slaves to work far longer and faster. Basically, torturing them much worse and increasing their output. And that this led to massive--multiples--of increase in the cotton production. And, that, that cheap cotton was what caused the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
There's no evidence for such a torture system at all. No one knows what it was. He just made up the idea that some sort of thing like that must have existed. And, when you look at the evidence, it turns out it's very clear that increases in cotton production came from the introduction of better types of cotton. Like, we know what they are, we know when it happened.
So, essentially, this historical scholarship, which is based on long chains of supposition backed by, kind of, well, ideology, is wrong. That's not what happened. The idea that the slavery system made cotton cheaper at all is highly questionable because Indian cotton was extremely cheap as well. And, now of course you could say, 'Well, Indian workers were exploited as well.' Well, that may be true. But, there doesn't seem to have been anything particularly unique about slavery and its ability to make cotton cheap. It primarily enriched slave owners at the expense of other people.
And, now we've got some new research by Hornbeck and Logan--that's Richard Hornbeck and Trevon Logan--who have done: basically, they show, they theorize and show evidence consistent with the idea that slavery made regions poorer. When you extracted wealth from people by enslaving them, you distorted your economy in all sorts of ways.
Now, this should be music to sort of an old libertarian's ears such as yourself, but the idea is basically: When you enslave people, they can't develop human capital. They can't--basically, there's massive wedges, efficiency wedges, that--essentially, you're having a huge percent of your population that you're just not actually exploiting. You're exploiting in the sense of robbing them of their labor and freedom. You're not exploiting them in the sense of actually--the society isn't getting their full potential.
Russ Roberts: I'm going to emphasize two things. First, that none of this is to minimize the horror of slavery--
Noah Smith: Of course--
Russ Roberts: It's evil or it's human depravity. The fundamental issue here, which is very hard to talk about, I think in--it is just hard to talk about and be respectful of those issues. The question, though, is: Does it enrich the nation that has slaves?
So, I want to take a step back and look at the underlying economics, again.
It is an enormous advantage to have a form of inexpensive labor, especially if they don't live where you live or if you treat them as if they're not part of your group. Low prices are good for economic wellbeing, whether it's labor, inputs that we've been talking about that you might steal, those are all an advantage--
Noah Smith: Not necessarily, Russ--
Russ Roberts: Well, it depends what costs you get them--
Noah Smith: Not necessarily. Prices should equal marginal costs. If prices are below marginal costs, it's not an advantage.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough. Because they would encourage you to maybe overuse them.
Noah Smith: Divert too many resources toward this and take the resources away from where you go.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough.
Noah Smith: So, you introduce a distortion. So, you don't want prices that are too low, you know.
Russ Roberts: No, no. But I just meant if you think about your capabilities as a nation--or as a human being, as an individual--in general, it's nice to have access to stuff that is cheaper rather than more expensive. Yes, it can change your choices in ways that might not be good for you in all kinds of complex social, and moral, and emotional ways. But in general, the way you get richer is by expanding your opportunities--as an nation or as an individual--which comes from effectively lowering the prices of stuff and having thereby more access to that stuff.
Russ Roberts: The point I want to make is that the ultimate cheap labor is a machine, because a machine is a form of labor that doesn't get tired. Generally. It gets a little tired: it has to be maintained. But it's different than a human being. But, fundamentally, they are somewhat interchangeable in the economic process.
The advantage of a machine is that you can make it more productive. You can make--the examples I used to use, which I used to know off the top of my head; I don't know them anymore--but if you have a group of people sitting in a room with knitting needles, they can make a certain number of sweaters a year. If you give them a loom, they can make more sweaters per year or they can make the same number with many fewer workers. If you give them a modern technological weaving process, the numbers go through the roof. And, this is really the fundamental idea in The Wealth of Nations. When you think about the division of labor, what Smith [Adam Smith] points out at the very beginning in his example of the pin factory is that once you have processes in place where you've substituted some machinery for some human labor, you can innovate. Which is ironic because in 1776 there wasn't that much innovation. But he saw it coming--
Noah Smith: It's kind of amazing that Adam Smith got this right before it happened.
Russ Roberts: Exactly.
Noah Smith: Like, he didn't really understand scientific blah, blah, blah, sort of like industrial labs and machinery and stuff, but he understood that, like, productivity improvements of some sort could exist.
Russ Roberts: And so, my point about the work of Ed Baptist, whose work I don't know--and I'm only talking about it through your lens and taking it on space[?faith?], so it's not a criticism of him: it's a criticism of your summary of him, which could be accurate, and I'm going to assume for now it is--is that you can't torture people more and more to get ever greater output from them. But, you can do that to a machine. Not because the machine doesn't feel pain, but because the machine has opportunities for human creativity and improvements in productivity that human beings are limited, because we're physical in a different way than machines are.
And, again, this has nothing to say about the cruelty of driving human beings to produce without pay or horrible standards of living and the exploitation of human beings and the limiting of their freedom. It's grotesque. It's not what we're talking about.
What we're talking about is just the opportunity to use that technique to get richer and richer--to have growth, not just a one-time transfer of the kind of wealth we're talking about via plunder.
And, it just isn't there. It's not the way that the world got wealthy.
All these explanations are basically having to argue this jump-starting idea: that somehow we had to kick it off with some of these processes. I'm much happier saying it was the steam engine and the innovation of the ability to substitute mechanical labor through machines and capital and thereby surpass wildly the limits of human physical limitation.
Another way to think about this is: A person can walk. They can walk quickly. They can run. They can't outrun a horse over any--most--distances, and they'll never outrun a car unless the car has no fuel. The ability of human beings to create ever faster and more effective forms of transportation is an extraordinary thing. And, it's about surpassing our physical limitations. Those limitations are unavoidable, and our ability to surpass them with our brains is the reason we're fundamentally wealthier today than we were 50 and 100 years ago.
Noah Smith: Correct. This is obviously true from anyone who knows how machines work or who traces the inputs of a modern production process. Which of course the pseudonymous doofuses on Twitter do not.
Yes. So, that's exactly right. And, we found a better way of making people rich. In the Industrial Revolution--I am agnostic on whether machines are paying[?], maybe ChatGPT [Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer] just is really pissed about being asked to do the same homework set yet one more time, but, general who cares? 'Do the problem set, ChatGPT.' But then, but yeah.
So we use machines instead of humans. But it took people a really, really long time to understand this. And, I would argue that it's not until relatively--like, just the last few decades--that this lesson has really started to sink in. Because you still saw people trying to conquer their neighbors and take their resources.
In fact, some people still think about doing this. You see Venezuela proposing to invade and conquer part of Guyana over this oil-rich territory that lies between them. So, because Venezuela is this economic basket case and thinks, 'Hmmm. Maybe we could make a buck by invading, conquering our neighbor.' Hmmm. They can't. Brazil will probably stop them because the only way for their troops to actually get there because of the mountainous or whatever--mountainous, it is a very difficult-to-pass region, is to go through Brazil. And, Brazil will not let them do that. So, they won't be able to do it. But, the fact they're thinking about it is an indication that this particular form of stupidity has not vanished from the earth. And, the idea that you can get rich by simply knocking over your neighbor and taking some of their rocks.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. The other thing I want to emphasize and encourage listeners to go back--we'll link to them, at least one if not more conversations we've had with Paul Romer a long time ago. We're talking about substituting machines for people. And, again, I think it's very common for people to think: 'Well, that will be hard on the people because the machines will get all the work.'
That is not the way the last 75 years of industrialization and growth have turned out. The people got the benefits. The word 'capitalist' is--we don't think about it very much--but it comes from capital, meaning the owners of the machines, the owners of the factory.
So, the substitution of capital and machinery for human beings certainly can make the capitalist--the owner of the machine--wealthy.
But it did something else unexpected. It made, perhaps, it made the workers who worked with the machines and who lived alongside the machines wealthy as well, because it made them wealthier--excuse me--made them more productive.
Machinery--which is a human creativity embodied in the physical world--machinery makes our standard of living higher. And, it's not just the people who own the machines. It's most of the people in the countries that have chosen that path.
And that's not intuitive, I think. And, it's one of the great gifts of economics to understand that.
Noah Smith: Right. And, really that starts with The Wealth of Nations, but it is a consistent strain.
What I'm saying is nothing new. There's nothing new in what I'm saying. I have no new insight on this topic. I'm simply using new words to restate an idea that's been around for a very, very long time. And, it's still correct. But it's important to say. It bears saying over, and over, and over.
And, the reason is because--the reason we need to say it now--is because we are entering a very scary time in world geopolitics. The reason being that America's longstanding hegemony has ended. We are no longer a hegemon in the world. We are still a powerful country. There's lots of stuff we can do; but we are no longer a global hegemon or even the hegemon of half the world as we were in the Cold War. Because, other countries grew. Other countries got more powerful. Our power became less relatively overwhelming.
It's not because we got worse or weaker. We got weaker in some ways. But mostly it is because countries like China grew. In particular, China grew. And, weapons changed, so that small militias like the Houthis can now get drones and missiles and create outsized amounts of power, projection, and chaos.
And so, because of various changes in technology and in globalization and in economic development and all these things, the United States can no longer really be the hegemon it was in the 20th century.
And, because of this, conflicts are starting to break out. And, the kind of quasi-enforcement of national borders that the United States provided in the years after World War II is now breaking down. You see Venezuela threatening Guyana. You see as Azerbaijan threatening to invade Armenia. You see Putin actually invading Ukraine. You see China threatening to invade Taiwan and grab little pieces of India, etc.
And so, you see a number of these cases where, essentially, the idea of 'We could take over our neighbor; we could march our army in and take over part of our neighbor' are starting to appear again. And it is important.
Now, I don't think simply pointing out that this is not a good strategy for getting rich will deter anyone. I don't think that this will work--because China doesn't want Taiwan because they think they can capture TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] and make some nice semiconductors. They can't. TSMC will wipe the servers, blow up the plants, and just leave.
Nor does Russia really think they can get rich from the wheat fields of Ukraine. Maybe Venezuela is desperate enough that they think that knocking over[?] Guyana would make them a little extra bucks. But, I don't think really. So, there's nothing economically strategic between China and India really, nothing major. So, I don't think these people really believe that conquest will make them rich.
But it's important to remind people that getting rich is a thing you can do; and you can focus on peaceful development. You can focus on improving your citizens' standard of living without beating up anyone. Without buying a big army full of giant missiles and marching into a neighbor's territory and telling them what to do, and saying, 'We rule you now. Ha ha ha.' You know, like: you don't really need to do that. Economic development is more important than that stuff.
And not everyone agrees. Some people think, 'Oh, our honor demands that we attack.' Some people have ethnic motivations, like, 'Oh, you speak the same language as us, and therefore we should rule you.' Or historical, 'We're so mad that, like, this piece of our country broke off.' Like, Ukraine broke off from Russia. 'We're so mad about how this diminished our greatness.' [?Brrdrrdrr?] And then, there's many reasons to fight.
But, it's important to remind people that none of these things will make you rich.
These things won't really benefit your people except in some sort of intangible benefit of blood thirst, if you think that that's real: Blood thirst and national greatness and historical revenge. And then they're, like, 'Shut up. Just do something. Just develop your country and make people happy, and live a rich and happy life. Just do that.'
And, I think that reminding people that national wealth doesn't come from plunder is an important thing in this new jungle-like geopolitical environment we find ourselves in, to remind people that there is a better, more peaceful way.
Russ Roberts: So, I want to take that transformation of the role that nationalism is playing in modern psychology, at least in many places, and I want to tie it to what we've been talking about in a different way. So, we've been talking most of this time about plunder, colonialism, exploitation of resources, or slavery. There's a more sophisticated version of this argument that we've not really talked about, which is globalization. Globalization, which is the uniting of the disparate peoples of the world through trade, and through the reduction in transportation costs--the miraculous and glorious ability to move stuff around the world much more cheaply than we did before, which is part of the industrial transformation we did already discuss. But, what that has led to is enormous changes in where things are made and their price and so on.
And also, those things take place in a over-time way. They don't just mean that things are cheaper today relative to yesterday. They get ever cheaper. We find ever-cheaper ways to transport things. The whole idea of a cargo container and the way modern shipping is done was a huge, huge change, that I think is underappreciated.
But, a lot of people believe that globalization is a form of exploitation. They believe that the increased trade among the nations of the world--which is enormously larger today than it was, say, 50 years ago--is a form of exploitation that certain nations benefit from it and other nations are harmed.
Now, what is true is that within a country, certain people may not be helped by globalization in the short run. They may have skills that are now less competitive and rewarded at lower rates, and they will have a harder time. And that fuels resentment and it fuels a form of economic nationalism that is widely out there right now in the United States and elsewhere.
But I think it's important to point out that, in the long run--and I don't mean a thousand years from now--I mean, part of the reason that fewer human beings starve to death around the world and why many human beings have higher standards of material wellbeing is because they can trade with their neighbors more cheaply than they could in the past. So, I want to hear your thoughts on that aspect of this argument.
Noah Smith: Well, so obviously, that's really important. The question is: Is that now under threat?
And, I'd say that most people when they talk about threats to trade, talk about protectionism. I don't think that's nearly as big a threat to trade as people think, because protectionism is a lot easier said than done. If you put tariffs on a country, exchange rates will just appreciate and depreciate until it cancels out much of the tariff you put.
I think that the biggest threat is from the breakdown of global order. Because freedom of the seas--freedom of trade and freedom of the seas--has been guaranteed by the United States Navy and Allied Navies. And that could really break down. Most of the trade in the world is by sea. You know: we put stuff on a boat, the boat floats so it's low friction, and then you just give it a little nudge and it goes across the sea, and then you can move really heavy stuff from place to place very cheaply.
And so, those giant container ships we always see, or the oil tankers, whatnot, that is not under threat from breakdown of freedom of the sea. So, right now we're seeing the Houthis, which are--you know, what's Houthi? It's a militia in Yemen. Yemen is not a rich state at all. It's not a very powerful state. But, you have a very war-like militia located at this strategic point where the Red Sea empties into the Indian Ocean and that carries a ton of commerce. A ton of ships go through the Suez Canal and then get out into the Indian Ocean, go to Asia. So, massive trade between Asia and Europe happens through the Suez Canal and through the Red Sea. That is now being interdicted by the Houthis, this ragtag militia with a few missiles.
That's just a taste, that's a preview of what's to come.
China claims the entire waters of the South China Sea and will be perfectly happy to interdict trade by anyone other than China if they feel like it. They want power and dominance over people. And, restricting maritime trade is an easy way to get that if you control the sea around your region.
So, we can see threats to seaborne trade happening. Obviously threats to digital trade, although, that's much smaller. And then, threats to landborne trade from an airborne trade that's also pretty small, but threats to landborne trade from basically land wars like the Ukraine War. I am worried about that more than I'm worried about tariffs or something like that.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, there's a related issue of free movement of peoples across borders. Trade is generally thought of as movement of goods across borders, but immigration is an example of a more complicated trade flow that brings other things with it. And, of course, we've had many, many episodes on this. We'll link to some of them.
But, what's interesting to me is that the standard economic forces that economists like us have been talking about for decades are suddenly seen as less important. They're being dwarfed by national and tribal impulses, which is much more understandable in the case of immigration and emigration. It's much more--I think the impulse to economic nationalism is a very destructive one. Immigration, I think, is more complicated, but the idea of tariffs and quotas, and the idea of preserving your country's wellbeing, is, I think, just a total misreading of the economic tea leaves. While conceding that, for certain groups, that economic trade can be harmful or challenging in the short run. And, that the political implications of that I think are not small.
So, I disagree with you a little bit. I think the risks of economic nationalism motivated by groups that feel harmed, correctly or not, by trade and who do not easily reintegrate into a different part into the economy because they don't have the educational training that they could have had, that is a serious force that I think is really unhealthy for wellbeing and economic policy.
Noah Smith: And so, if we're talking about immigration restriction, I think we need to be fairly--we need to put that in a bit of perspective because immigration is much more common now than it was even just a few years ago. If immigration gets restricted, it will be restricted from an incredibly high base, historically speaking. You go back to 1990 or 2005 or whatever, and immigration, all the world over, was much, much, much, much less than it is now. And, part of that is because of some wars like the war in Syria that caused refugee flows, but most of it is simply due to growth.
So, if you read the migration and the income and migration literature--Michael Clemens has a good survey paper on it--you'll see a hump-shaped pattern where, in a poor country, people can't move. In a rich country people don't want to move. But in a middle income country, they both want to and can move.
And so, there's a peak of out-migration pressure. Net peak is somewhere around $10,000 a person per capita.
Now, if you look, a lot of the world is less than that. But a lot of the world has just reached that very recently. And, that is giving them the ability to move.
Now, this is not the only factor. There's a lot of other factors like fertility rates have just dropped and continue to drop pretty much everywhere.
But, what we've seen--the current waves of migration are not being driven by climate refugees, as many people have predicted. A little bit of it is being driven by war. Some of it's being driven by war. But most of it is being driven by income. People are able to move in a way that they were previously not able at all to move. And so, they're moving.
And so, when you talk about immigration restriction, you're talking about: it went up, up, up, up, up. And, now restriction threatens to do that to it. But still, it will be way up from where it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago--way up. And so, I'm concerned about this for sure, but I'm not panicking yet simply because immigration continues to go up. So far.
Russ Roberts: Let's close and talk about what is one of the most extraordinary achievements in economic wellbeing in human history, which is the transformation of the standard of living in the two largest countries of the world, China and India. In many ways, if you look at, say, Asian data--and even world data--about, say, the proportion of the world that lives on less than $1 a day or $2 a day, or if you look at average standard of living, or in the world, which has been steadily improving over the last 50 to 100 years, a lot of it is driven by two data points. China and India, the rest of the world, is growing; but they're growing so much faster than most other places. What do you think we should learn from that?
Noah Smith: I would issue a small caveat there.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, go ahead.
Noah Smith: I would say Southeast Asia has also experienced extremely substantial growth.
Russ Roberts: True.
Noah Smith: I'm talking about Indonesia, Vietnam--these countries are not supergiants on their own, but they add up to quite a lot across the region.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough.
Noah Smith: But so, I would say China, India, and Southeast Asia: it's basically Asia that is growing.
Russ Roberts: So, what did we learn from that? What should we learn from it?
Noah Smith: Well, a couple things. Obviously, China and India experienced big spurts of growth when they liberalized their economies. China in the 1980s, and then later with a big wave of privatizations in the 1990s and 2000s. And India, primarily in the 1990s, also a little bit in the 1980s, but primarily in the 1990s. Liberalization really helped these countries a lot.
Russ Roberts: Explain what you mean by liberalization, Noah?
Noah Smith: So, liberalization took a number of forms. In China, the original wave of liberalization under Deng [Deng Xiaoping] basically meant allowing people to buy and sell stuff. Just allowing markets. The later waves of liberalization under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were primarily privatization. Essentially SOEs [State-Owned Enterprises] were privatized and a bit some--
Russ Roberts: State-owned enterprises?
Noah Smith: That's right. State-owned enterprises. Government-owned companies were privatized.
That has been--that is starting to reverse. under Xi Jinping. We are seeing state-owned enterprises grow at the expense of, at least nominally, private enterprise now in China.
But, for a long time we saw the exact opposite. And, there was just relentless campaigns--under Jiang especially, but also somewhat Hu Jintao--to privatize, privatize, privatize. And, it was very successful. That didn't mean that the government no longer controlled these companies because the Chinese government, if they want you to do something, you're going to do it. You could even say the same about the American government.
But, in terms of the initiative of what to produce and when to produce it, and you know, etc., all that stuff: the decisions on a day-to-day basis were now being made by independent people with a lot of financial incentives to grow their businesses.
And so, that--there were some other things, too. For example, China established a lot of SEZs--Special Economic Zones--that had really low taxes. By the way, if you like low taxes--if you're a low tax person--you should love China. China has been a low-tax country since Imperial days, since for at least 1,000 years. They have been a notoriously low-tax country. And this has sometimes come back to bite them. But, if you like low taxes--in fact, one reason China is in trouble now from its economic slowdown is--we could talk about this another time--is because real estate sales were used in lieu of taxes to fund government services. And, now that real estate is going down in price and no one wants to buy the land from the local government, they can't fund their stuff. So, they're low tax: the fact that they don't do property taxes coming back to bite them.
But, anyway, so that was what it was in China.
In India, the main liberalization under Finance Minister Manmohan Singh was to dismantle what they called the License Raj, which is basically just a bunch of red tape for starting businesses. Basically, India made it easier to start businesses. They never really had a communist-like price control central planning system, but they had a massive thicket of regulations of this and that. And they just slashed through a lot of them. So, it's primarily deregulation. India has made some special economic zones, but it's just not nearly as extensive as China. So, it's not really low taxes.
Russ Roberts: I just want to put a footnote on the China discussion and let you respond to it. Part of the problem is we don't really have a good understanding of the Chinese data. They may not be 100% accurate. Underlying a lot of these changes was a massive--hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people--leaving the countryside and coming to the cities in search of better economic opportunity, that started. And that transformation certainly improved the material wellbeing of the people who migrated.
But, it's a little deceptive because they went from non-market activity that wasn't probably well measured at all to economic activity that was better measured. So, the size of the change was probably overstated.
And then, finally, they're not exactly a market economy. There is some more privatization, but there's still, as you say, a lot of top-down control. And defenders of that will say that's the real reason that they have had a higher standard of living. And, I would suggest that, that's the real reason they may struggle to maintain it. I'm very--
Noah Smith: I agree.
Russ Roberts: No, go ahead.
Noah Smith: I agree with you. I think you're right that the increasing liberalization and privatization was the biggest driver of China's growth in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. And, that Xi's reversal of this will not go well--especially because Xi I think is sort of a bumbler. He's not incredibly competent. He's very, very good at sort of controlling China and riding herd on the Communist Party--in getting everyone to study Xi Jinping thought, and blah, blah, blah. He's great at domination, internal domination. He's bad at doing anything with that domination to actually help the people of China. Belt and Road has been a flop. The crackdown on IT [Information Technology] companies was a giant flop and was reversed. Real estate is an absolute disaster. And he's just made various other errors as well, economically.
And so, he has his worshipers: like, 'Xi has made China stronger,' but they're wrong. China was made strong by the efforts of Deng Xiaoping and his handpicked successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. They're the ones who made China strong. Xi Jinping then came and basically appropriated their success--rose to dominance in the system they created and has been eroding a lot of the fundamental strengths of the system he was bequeathed by Deng and his successors. Deng is the great man of Chinese history.
Russ Roberts: Let's close with how optimistic or pessimistic you are. I always find it extraordinary that the worst economic times--which in the 20th century and in America was the Great Depression, and in the 21st century in America it was the Financial Crisis of 2008--they tend to look like blips as you pull back farther and farther from the canvas. And, that's amazing. And, I think it tends to lead us to believe that there's something natural about economic growth.
Economists like to, often--at least the ones I know--often will point out: No, no, no, poverty is natural. Growth is unusual. Growth is what's to be exploited, not poverty. Because poverty is--that's easy. That's what you just sit around and don't do anything differently.
So, given the somewhat cheering picture of when you stand back from the canvas, even the worst of times seem to be overcome. Are you optimistic about the future of economic wellbeing in the United States and elsewhere, and its ability to continue to grow?
Noah Smith: I am. I am optimistic. I think that the long upward trend is not universal. I think Japan's living standards have stagnated. Italy's have stagnated. Britain's are starting to stagnate as well. So, I do not think that this is a universal tendency.
In terms of natural, I won't hazard to say what is natural and what is unnatural because I am not sure what that means. And, it would take a long time to think carefully about all the things that might mean. But, I'm very optimistic.
I'm optimistic for a number of reasons. Number one, technology seems to be going strong. We are still investing in--you know, research and development costs a lot more than it used to, but we're still making those investments, by and large. And, you know, there's just any number of fields in which innovation is proceeding apace: like the dramatic decline in the cost of solar power and batteries is an absolute victory for research and technological progress and is going to give us cheap energy--and for the batteries, portable energy--in a way that we've never really had before.
And, of course, if fusion works out then that will be just magnified even more. And so, that's incredible.
Biotech is advancing in ways that are so multifarious and cool and complex that it's difficult for me to even describe it, but we're about to have vaccines for cancer. That's just one little piece of what's happening in biotech. Humans are being genetically re-engineered. That's pretty cool. We have antibodies for, like, inflammatory bowel disease now? And migraines? You can take an antibody for migraines? I did take it. I took it. It worked. It's great. That's amazing.
And, AI [artificial intelligence] is pretty cool. We have computers that can at least seem like they think.
And so that's all just amazing stuff. So, that's one reason.
The second reason is that I think globalization isn't done. I think there's a huge wave of globalization coming, and it's South- and Southeast-Asia. It is 2 billion people, which is bigger than China. It is India, yes. Also, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and a few other countries. But, it's primarily those countries. That is huge. Together, that's like about 2 billion people. India is now the most populous country in the world. It has surpassed China, which is now shrinking.
And, now you may be worried that decoupling and de-risking our distorting our trade by: Oh no, we're having a trade war with China. But, really, decoupling and de-risking are all private initiatives so far, because countries are realizing the real risks of doing business in China. Companies are realizing the real risks of doing business in China. And countries, too, of course. And so, people are getting out.
And where they're going: they're going to South- and Southeast Asia. They're going to the rest of Asia. And, that is going to spur a massive wave of globalization. Foreign investors will be replaced in China by Chinese companies that may be a bit less efficient, but they'll be replaced.
But, the foreign investment that pours into India, and Indonesia, and Vietnam, and Philippines, and Bangladesh and these countries, that is going to teach them so much technology about how to make stuff.
And, it is going to influence the progress of institutions in those countries, because those countries are going to realize, 'Hey, if we change our institutions in this, and this, and that way to be favorable to these foreign businesses, then we'll make more money. Because this is how we make money now.'
And, we've seen this example happen time and time again. We've seen countries like Poland and Malaysia not just get vaulted into the ranks of developed nations primarily by FDI [Foreign Direct Investment]. We've seen their institutions improve--
Russ Roberts: Foreign direct investment--
Noah Smith: Foreign direct investment. Yes. We've seen institutions improve along with it. Especially, like, Poland, which just now has effectively Western European institutions.
And so, I'm incredibly optimistic about this wave of globalization. So, technology and globalization. And, I also believe that the same innovation will save us not from any negative environmental impacts from climate change, but from the worst impacts.
I think that there's a lot of people who are doomers about climate, and if you look at the evidence, that's not warranted. The doomerism is just absolutely not warranted.
So, that's not going to derail us.
The thing I worry about is war. The thing I worry about is great power war, especially nuclear war. War between China and the United States would be the absolute most catastrophic. But, Russia, you can't count them out.
And so, I'm worried about that disrupting global trade, disrupting global investment, redirecting the progress of technology toward things that kill people. Although, in World War II, we did that, and then we built civilian industries after the war using some of those advances.
But, still, I'm worried about what war could do to our world. I think we became a little complacent after World War II because the end of World War II was favorable to global growth and really supercharged global growth. But, war doesn't have to end like that. War can end in a bad way that hurts global growth.
And so, I'm worried about it, especially if the nukes come out. So that's, I think, the big risk. But other than that, I'm really optimistic.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Noah Smith. Noah, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Noah Smith: Thanks so much for having me back.