161: Tyler Cowen on Stubborn Attachments – A Vision for a Society of Free and Prosperous Individuals

Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

He is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.

His latest book ‘Stubborn Attachments’ is part of our discussion in this episode.

“This is a book I’ve been working on for 20 years. You can think of it as an account of my stubborn attachments which are to the ideas of economic growth and liberty and human rights and also sustainability. So if you go back and you look at say Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, John Rawls, Robert Nozick and John Stewart Mill, they’re all trying to justify their vision of a free society. And in my opinion actually all of those attempts failed. So I’m trying to reconstruct the case for freedom and economic growth and also economics as a way of approaching human phenomena using philosophical argument. So in a way it’s my most personal book. It’s my most direct book. It’s the kinda final bottom-line analysis ‘here’s what Tyler really thinks’ and for 20 years I would spend maybe a month a year working on the book, maybe two months a year. Always returning to it trying to improve it, changing my mind on things and this is the final result of that.” – Tyler Cowen on writing Stubborn Attachments

People Mentioned in this Episode:

Arjo Klamer, Kenneth Rogoff, Patrick Wolf (Hedge Funds), Paul Krugman, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedmand, F. A. Hayek, Patrick Collison, Margaret Atwood, Daniel Kahnemann, Aristotle, Socrates, Ayn Rand, Spencer McCallum, William Boumal (was a wood sculptor), John Rawls, Robert Nozick, N. N. Taleb, Paul Ehrlich, Julien Simon, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Beetles, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Jasper Jones, Roy Fox Lichtenstein and Banksy.

Podcast:

• Conversations with Tyler

Writing Tips:

“Write every single day. Make it a routine. Even if it’s a small amount, I assure you if you write every day it will pile up and you’ll get things done.” – Tyler Cowen

Links:

• www.tylercowen.com
• Marginal Revolution
• The Freeman by Foundation for Economic Education
• Twitter: @tylercowen

Books:

• Stubborn Attachments : A vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible individuals by Tyler Cowen
• In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen
• Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World’s Cultures by Tyler Cowen
• The Dialogues of Plato
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Odyssey by Homer
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith,

Patreon

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