Free trade gives you too much monoculture, i take it seriously at an intellectual level. The amount by which you would need to cut off trade to really create separately, existing, independent parts of the world that would give us greater protection against existential risk is not feasible. But we have to be careful also, not to just be fooling ourselves. And so is conactivity the worst thing that ever happened to global culture? You need con activity. To day's world has a much longer life expectancy. People are happy, or they're better off. We produce more things. But there's a danger in con activity. An the extreme acceleration of con activity through tech, i would say
A few months ago, Tyler asked Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, to be on the show. Patrick agreed, but only under the condition that the be the one to do the interviewing. Thus, what follows is the conversation Patrick wanted to have with Tyler, not the one you wanted to have.
Happily Patrick stayed true to the spirit of Conversations with Tyler, and their dialogue covers a wide range of topics including the the benefits of diverse monocultures, the state of macroeconomics, Donald Trump, the amazing economics faculty at GMU, Peter Thiel, Brian Eno, Thomas Schelling, why Twitter is underrated, and — most pressing of all — why Marginal Revolution is so strange looking.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded January 25th, 2017 Other ways to connect
Photo credit: JD Lasica