February 02, 2025

E114: Tyler Cowen on Legacy, Twitter + Harvard, and Fertility Decline [Upstream Archive]

59 minutes

Tyler Cowen discusses his book on the greatest economists of all time, evaluates the contributions of macroeconomics, and touches on topics such as stagnation, AI, fertility, and the future of academia and societal trends.

—

📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess

🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse

—

RECOMMENDED PODCASTS:

🎙️Check out Modern Relationships, where Erik Torenberg interviews tech power couples and leading thinkers to explore how ambitious people actually make partnerships work. This season's guests include: Delian Asparouhov & Nadia Asparouhova, Kristen Berman & Phil Levin, Rob Henderson, and Liv Boeree & Igor Kurganov.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1786227593

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5hJzs0gDg6lRT6r10mdpVg

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ModernRelationshipsPod

—

SPONSORS:

☁️ Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds and offers one consistent price. Oracle is offering to cut your cloud bill in half. See if your company qualifies at oracle.com/turpentine

📝 Notion offers powerful workflow and automation templates, perfect for streamlining processes and laying the groundwork for AI-driven automation. With Notion AI, you can search across thousands of documents from various platforms, generating highly relevant analysis and content tailored just for you - try it for free at notion.com/upstreampod

🎯 Say goodbye to the headaches of out-of-home advertising. AdQuick combines technology, OOH expertise, and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. Visit adquick.com to start reaching your customers in the real world.

💥 Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist.

—

LINKS:

Read Tyler's new book for free: https://econgoat.ai/

Tyler's blog: https://marginalrevolution.com

—

X / TWITTER:

@tylercowen

@eriktorenberg

@turpentinemedia

—

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EPISODE:

Tyler Cowen wrote his book "Greatest Economist of All Time" during the pandemic when he was confined at home and couldn't access libraries.

Tyler believes that while macroeconomics isn't predictive, it helps understand variables that affect economic outcomes, like in Argentina's current situation.

In Tyler’s view, the U.S. economy has become more controlled and statist over recent decades, though personal freedoms have increased in some areas.

Academic economics has shifted significantly to the left, with about five-sixths of economists with party affiliations being Democrats.

Population decline as a serious threat that AI might help address but won't fully solve without maintaining human population.

A large subsidy (around $300,000-400,000 per child) might be needed to effectively address falling birth rates.

On higher education, he believes Harvard and other elite institutions will shift toward the center but won't fundamentally change their nature.

Tyler runs Emergent Ventures, which has over 500 winners, focusing on funding talented individuals rather than specific projects or fields.

He maintains that liberal democracies remain the most successful model, despite criticisms from post-liberal thinkers.

Regarding his own legacy, Tyler believes his main contribution is demonstrating that a certain kind of intellectual life is possible and can be influential.

He argues that his strength lies in integrating theoretical thinking with practical projects while maintaining intellectual curiosity.

Tyler expresses optimism about the University of Austin while acknowledging the challenges of scaling alternative educational institutions.

...more

View all episodes

By Erik Torenberg

4.2

5959 ratings