Centers of Progress: 40 Cities That Changed the World

[Music] can't [Music] [Music] for all hello and welcome to the Kato Institute my name is Marian tupi I'm a senior fellow at the Kato institute's uh Center for Global liberty and prosperity and I'm the founder and editor of humanprogress.org thank you for joining today's book forum for centers of progress 40 cities that change the world after the presentations we'll have time for questions from the audience if you are reaching if you're watching us online you can join the conversation and submit your questions using the hashtag centers of progress we'll also be taking questions from Facebook uh Twitter or X formerly known as Twitter and all other platforms uh you are able to watch this on including the comments box on K's website feel free to start submitting your questions before the Q&A starts we'll get to as many of them as possible after the q& please stick around to join us for reception uh if you are able to do so now without further delay let me introduce the author uh of this book my colleague Chelsea fet she's the managing editor of humanprogress.org and a policy analyst in K Center for Global liberty and prosperity her writing has appeared in Wall Street Journal USA Today Newsweek Forbes the hill Business Insider and many other outlets she was named forbes's 30 under 30 list in 2018 in the category of Law and policy her first book centes of progress examines diverse group of cities arranging from ancient Athens to S era wanju to post World War II New York City she will note some emerging common themes including that most cities reach their creative Peak during periods of Peace tend to be highly populated and Thrive during times of social intellectual and economic freedom as well as openness to Intercultural exchange noting that change is constant but progress is not she will suggest that studying the past can teach us what studies um of the past can teach us about uh fostering innovation in the present Harvard University Steven Pinker praised the book by saying sometimes and some places seem almost magical in the way they incubate ideas and movements in explaining the Magic in this fascinating book Chelsea F shines a light on the drivers of human progress I also have the great pleasure of introducing Professor Jack Goldstone uh an economic historian and renowned expert on the historical causes of innovation and prosperity he's the author of why Europe the rise of the West in world history 1500 to 1800 and nine other books as well as over 100 research articles on such topics as long-term social change and the cultural origins of modern economic growth he is the Virginia e and John T Hazel Jr chair professor of public policy at George Mason University and a global fellow of the wooder Wilson International Center previously he was on the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of California and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology he holds a PhD from Harvard University Chelsea will present first introducing the book followed by Jack who will provide insights into the various factors that have often helped to bring about new Innovations and economic development historically and that explain um why certain places develop before others in other words why some places have become centers of progress uh with that Chelsea the floor is yours thank you to Marian for that kind introduction and many years of mentorship that have made this book possible through my work at humanprogress.org I have become acutely aware of the Mountain of statistical evidence showing just how far Humanity has come the world is certainly not perfect and never will be but there has been so much measurable progress in so many areas as an increasing number of people live longer healthier easier more prosperous and Freer lives than our ancestors could have ever imagined I'm also very aware of how much the public underestimates long-term progress my colleagues and I at human progress spend a lot of time thinking about how to promote a proper historical perspective as well as intelligence debate about the drivers of human progress and that's where the idea for this book came from a simple question where does progress come from certain places at certain times in history have contributed disproportionately toward making the world a better place examining the places where major advances happened is one way to learn about the conditions that Foster progress and human achievement the origin points of the ideas discoveries and innovations that built the modern world were far from evenly or randomly dispersed throughout the globe instead they tended to emerge from cities even in periods when the vast majority of the human population lived in rural areas in fact even before anything that could be called a city by modern standards existed progress tended to originate from the closest equivalence that did exist at the time why is that and why certain cities and not others change is a constant but progress is not studying the particular cities that have helped to create modern civilization during the moments when they did so and examining what they shared in common at those times May reveal the secret to cultivating innovation in the present and the future as Matt Ridley author of bestselling books such as the rational Optimist the evolution of everything and how Innovation Works says in the forward that he kindly provided this book is like a time travel cruise through the great flash points of human activity to catch innovations that have transformed human lives as they happened Tyler Cowen calls it an intellectual and historical tour of the world with highly accessible yet fact-filled snapshots of different cities that changed history this book should appeal to lovers of travel and history alike in anyone fascinated by human progress and the factors that drive it so where are the centers of progress at the beginning of the book you'll find a map much like this one showing that the book features cities from across the world let's zoom in and go over them quickly the book moves chronologically like most his books from the end of the last ice age and start of permanent settlement the Neolithic Revolution all the way to the modern day and the digital Revolution featuring each City during a particular historical moment when it notably contributed to human progress many of the early chapters focus on places around the Fertile Crescent region in the Middle East where civilization began that's the region that gave us agriculture writing and laws readers can learn about medicine in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis and philosophy in classical Athens they can virtually visit the Library of Alexandria meet engineers in ancient Rome and astronomers in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age other chapters explore the first University in medieval bolognia art in Renaissance Florence Public Health in De bravic as the city grappled with the black death pandemic the dissemination of printing techn ology from mines the first circumnavigation of the World by a ship that departed the port of sevil the openness of Amsterdam the birth of modern physics in Cambridge the enlightenment in Paris and the emergence of modern social science in Edinburgh not to mention the music of Vienna industrialization in Manchester the slavery abolition movement centered in London the fall of the Berlin wall and so much more while many of the centers of progress may be familiar to you from taking history of Western Civilization courses this book features cities from many parts of the world no matter how much of a history buff you are I can promise that this book will introduce you to some places that you're not familiar with perhaps including bbim where the indigenous people of Australia were among the first people to practice fish farming moeno daro were the indis valley civiliz ation in what is today Pakistan made impressive Innovations in sanitation Nan madul a stone City built at top a coral wreath in what is today Micronesia that showcases the far reach of Humanity's earliest sea farers the book also profiles Chong an the easternmost stop along the famed Silk Road trade route Kyoto where the novel was invented H Joo during the Song Dynasty when the city almost began an industrial revolution Agra in India home to what many people believe to be the world's most beautiful work of architecture Wellington New Zealand's the first city to Grant a country's women the right to vote Hong Kong during its period of Rapid economic development in the 1960s and70s and Tokyo a world capital of technology in the 1980s centers of progress a bit closer to home might be of particular interest to those of us here in the United States six of the centers of progress featured in the book are in the US and one is in what is now Mexico these chapters discuss the history of sports in pre-colonial mesoamerica Philadelphia's role in the American Revolution and the emergence of liberal democracy Chicago's Railways during the age of steam LA's creation of modern Cinema during the Golden Age of film post-war New York's rise to become a global Center of Finance Houston's contributions to space exploration and the role of San Francisco and the broader San Francisco Bay area in the digital Revolution so this is clearly a very geographically diverse book a global history of progress but as different as these places are some common themes do stand out which brings us back to that question why cities the answer is people whenever more people gathered together that increases their potential to engage in productive exchange discussion debate collaboration and competition with each other to quote Matt Ridley's forward once again progress is a team sport not an individual Pursuit it is a collaborative Collective thing done between brains more than inside them this illustration from the chapter in the book on seaf fairing showing multiple people propelling a boat that none of them could move individually illustrates the point population is sufficient to explain why progress often emerges from cities but of course not all cities progress may be a team sport but why do certain cities seem to provide ideal playing conditions and not others that brings us to the next thing that most centers of progress share relative peace that makes sense because if a city is plagued by violence and Discord then it is hard for the people there to focus on anything other than survival and battle pictured is mohenjodaro which is said to have had the best plumbing in the ancient world surpassing even the sanitation system that the later Roman civilization created while much remains Unknown about the indis valley civilization they have left behind no evidence of a large army and no palaces suggesting that they may have had no king or were at least least far less hierarchical than the Contemporary Sumerians with the largest building left behind in moeno daro being a huge bath house instead of a royal residence if the city's funds were not greatly diverted toward Endeavors of conquest and war or the upkeep of a powerful ruler perhaps that helps explain why the city's people were able to instead focus on funding advances in sanitation and hygiene that were at the time unprecedented there are of course exceptions to every rule Minds is a city featured in the book where violent turmoil actually became a catalyst for positive change despite the odds that was the city where Johannes Gutenberg creator of the Gutenberg printing press lived a chaotic series of violent episodes culminating in a war resulted in a diaspora of printmaking apprentices fleeing the trouble City and spreading out across Europe in different directions disseminating knowledge of print making wherever they went as you can see on this map the rapid dissemination of printing technology then forever changed the world and eventually weakens the power of the nobility and the guilds the very Waring factions that had torn Minds apart the lesson that I took away from the story of Minds is that even when conditions are far from ideal for Progress human ingenuity can sometimes still find a way but when all of the right conditions for Progress are present incredible Innovation is still far more likely and that brings us to the last but by no means least secret ingredients of progress Freedom centers of progress during their creative Peak tend to be relatively free and open for their era that makes sense because Simply Having a large population is not going to lead to progress if that population lacks the freedom to experiment to debate new propositions and to work together for their Mutual benefit economic freedom for example the freedom to exchange goods and services has been a central driver of progress several chapters of the book explore Economic Development As Cities such as Amsterdam and Hong Kong Rose from Up urity and relative poverty to Global prominence and Shining Prosperity through policies of economic Liberty it is obvious how Market competition has bettered human lives by bringing about new Innovative companies and useful Technologies in places like Tokyo and San Francisco but I don't think many people appreciate just how many different kinds of progress can flow from economic freedom for example donated friends from a thriving soap business ultimately allowed Isaac Newton to publish the principia and writing itself was originally invented for the purpose of bookkeeping by accountants in ancient Sumeria you can find these examples and more in the book and although there is a popular belief that a true artist should create art only for its own sake and that the profit motive pollutes art in some way in reality many of History's Greatest most beloved art artistic achievements from the classical music of Vienna to the Renaissance paintings of Florence were the result of lavish funding and financial patronage by making the creation of art lucrative each of these cities attracted talent and gave the world some of the most cherished art of all time and new artistic innovations that enriched Humanity meanwhile the Liberty to discuss a diversity of ideas whether in the marketplaces of ancient Athens or the reading societies of Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment has helped Humanity to further our understanding in countless areas from political philosophy to economics and Beyond freedom to debate new ideas including controversial ones has proven particularly important to Bringing about moral progress such as the abolition of slavery and the right to vote vot for women both once very controversial ideas centers of progress tend to be at their creative Peak only briefly the soall Golden Ages of the different cities in the book are incredibly transitory flickering in and out of existence often in only a few decades the blink of an eye in the grand sweep of History the conditions for Progress such as Freedom openness and peace can be very fragile Chong an once among the wealthiest most dazzling and Cosmopolitan cities in the world enriched immeasurably by International Trade through its position as the so-called starting point of the Silk Road became increasingly intolerant resulting in massacres of thousands of Silk Road Merchants from different cultures the City also suffered violence due to political instability rebellions and conquest and further political instability in other areas of the world along the Silk Road trade route made the Silk Road increasingly unsafe and trade declined precipitously ending changan's Golden Age baghdad's openness to knowledge from foreign lands and Scholars of diverse backgrounds allowed Baghdad to build on others work and produce groundbreaking original scholarship in mathematics astronomy and other areas during its Heyday we ought not to be ashamed of appreciating the truth and of acquiring it where wherever it comes from the renowned baghdaddy philosopher alindi wrote even if it comes from races distant and Nations different from us broadminded broadminded sentiments for the time but unfortunately his views lost out eventually the trium of an anti-rationalist and xenophobic faction seized power and the subsequent persecution of liberty-minded local Scholars as well as Scholars from different backgrounds helped bring the Islamic golden age in Baghdad to an end and baghdad's ultimate downfall of for of course came in the form of conquest and it is said that the Tigress River ran black with ink after the Mongol invasion because so many scholarly writings were destroyed both changan and Baghdad show how War and the loss of the values of openness and tolerance can unravel a city's status as a center of progress Hong Kong provides another example of the transitory nature of centers of progress as the book notes from a starving City plagued by War and poverty to a shining Beacon of prosperity and freedom Hong Kong's rise exemplified the potential IAL of limited government rule of law economic freedom and fiscal Proby but sadly the pillars upon which Hong Kong's success was built are now crumbling in the tightening fists of the Chinese Communist party whatever the future may hold for This Island City its transformation reflects how much people can achieve when given the freedom to do so and reminds us that Liberty can be lost and must be treasured I've been telling you about the lessons that I personally took away from researching and writing about the cities in this book and you can find a summary of some of those musings in the book's introduction but the book itself just presents history in a straightforward and non- ideological manner so that readers can draw their own conclusions as a non-politicized and highly accessible easyto read history book it is perfect for young people in classrooms and there are actually pre-made lesson plans for learning about the cities in centers of progress available for free online you can visit K's sphere website and select classroom content followed by human progress or you can also find the lesson plans on human progress.org by selecting projects in our top menu and then scrolling down to classroom resources these detailed free lesson plans were designed by AP World History teacher Sean kard and easily fit into a wide variety of History human geography and social studies courses and while the book's chapters are also being assigned at the University level they're highly accessible and easily appropriate for high schoolers so centers of progress makes a great gift for teachers homeschooling parents and professors alike while it may be of particular use to those in the social sciences no matter what someone teaches chances are some of the chapters could be of use in their classroom and because this book again is not ideological and because it is a light read with easily digestible short vignettes on different cities and covers so many different topics that it really is something that can be enjoyed by a wide variety of people this book also makes a great gift for birthdays holidays and so on and someone who broadly agrees with me on the causes of progress recently told me I did something subversive with your book I gave a copy to a friend who very passionately disagrees with me and with whom I have agreed to completely stop talking about politics and policy for the sake of our friendship and while the friend hasn't finished the book yet reportedly so far he's enjoying it so with the holidays not that far off and many of you having statistically speaking already begun your holiday shopping know that this book can make a great gift for so many people in your life regardless of where they stands politically or ideologically this is a book that everyone can read and enjoy and learn learn from and that hopefully Sparks many intelligent discussions and debates about the causes of progress centers of progress is also available as an ebook and an audiobook and soon will be available in translation in Spanish as well so however you read it I hope that you will consider taking a journey through the book's pages to some of History's Greatest centers of progress now over to jack for further insights into the causes of prosperity and [Applause] progress and I would urge everyone to get the book I'm simply going to elaborate on some of the themes that Chelsea raises I was asked to talk about the causes of progress in history and I should have uh lit up my talk with pictures of windmills and rocket ships but I'll ask you to put those pictures in your head my slides are text that's for two reasons one is this comes from a book that that I'm writing but also it makes it easy if any of you want to get a copy of my remarks you can just write to K or myself and the slides will give you all that you need if you so desire so let's get started in trying to figure out progress um as Chelsea points out you can get very excited about progress reading her book because we find it in so many locations throughout history and yet those centers of progress do not form a continuous chain uh rather brief periods of progress are unfortunately usually followed by long eras of stagnation until another city starts out with its own flare of excitement and progress often in a New Direction and new technology now what causes human progress um I don't think there is a Formula we don't have a simple if you do XYZ economic growth will always follow if we had that we probably could do a better job of promoting development in countries around the world or in sustaining growth even within our own but I do think we know what halts human progress and that is uh kind of Conformity suppression of innovation um strict enforcement of Orthodox thinking and unfortunately for most of history that hals progress pattern has prevailed it's been very difficult for cities to create the conditions that Chelsea rightfully highlights as the conditions that promote progress peace openness tolerance why is that so well my my view of this and I'll simply say this is mine is I don't want to this is not part of Chelsea Chelsea highlights the positive um but my concern is that throughout history we see religious authorities and political authorities uh binding themselves in a kind of crushing Embrace where the relig religious leaders agree to protect the authority of the political leaders the political authorities agree to protect the Monopoly of the prevailing religion and together they form a team determined to root out um heterodoxy Innovation pluralism in favor of loyalty to the prevailing government and loyalty and even dedication to the prevailing religion now it wasn't Perfect all right so churches and Kings would embrace the kiffs and the mulas the Chinese Emperors and the mandarins but it broke down periodically uh states make mistakes uh plagues come Wars come Conquest comes so heterodoxies would sometimes Prevail States could be conquered or overthrown and it was usually in the wake of that kind of change um that opportunities arose for more open pluralist and heterodox type of government um one of the cities that Chelsea talks about is Athens during the classical age there the war leader Pericles gave a famous oration at a funeral for Athenian soldiers in which he proclaimed that what made Athens special was its character as the school of tell us that Athens had taught the Greeks how to think how to make art how to prosper he spoke of Athens as exceptionally creative because it was an open Society he pointed to the willingness of Athens to takeen people from all over to accept trades people from all over to engage in trade uh I mentioned the plays of Aristophanes ureides the philosophies which were not congruent but philosophies that compete competed with each other in competing schools that of Plato Aristotle and diynes but they were rooted in a Cosmopolitan Society with extensive International Trade colonies and that was also an Innovative Society it innovated in mining in the oil trade I say olive oil not petroleum but that was a center of economic wealth in Classical Greece U and of course in Naval tactics allowing Athens to build an Empire another Rome and Alexandria another of Chelsea cities uh an international Crossroads blending Roman Greek and Egyptian influences the Baghdad calate was open to Greek Persian Indian and Roman Byzantine ideas the early song Empire had toist legalist Confucian and Buddhist Notions before it gave into Orthodoxy the cities that Chelsea takes us on this wonderful stimulating tour of uh she visits during their time of flourishing and openness marked by peace and pluralism um but those are the good times progress required confidence and peace so that different ideas would be tolerated Toleration was actually most common in societies that had recently won their freedom from a larger Empire or had won a victory over a major foe so that the leaders felt confident and they could take take their chance with new people and new ideas unfortunately overconfidence and arrogance would gradually set in over time governments would become less tolerant non-mainstream ideas would be disdained foreign cultures would be vilified and marginalized and the flip side of overconfidence is anxiety and paranoia leaders would become fearful foreign and innovative ideas were branded a threat books would be burned uh people with novel ideas would be expelled uh they could even set up a formal structure like the Inquisition famous for southern Catholic Europe but there were uh analogues of inquisitions throughout history whose job was to root out and eliminate uh dissident ideas and enforce the prevailing heterodoxy now what I call these efflorescences the periods that Chelsea takes us on the marvelous uh World Tour to visit um they tended to be followed by long periods of Conformity and stagnation uh whether you look at Renaissance Italy uh Classical Greece uh the age of the cathedrals and Medieval Europe you see great achievements in architecture art and outpouring of ideas and then gradually uh governments and religious leaders seek to limit change preserve their power power and enforce Conformity leading to long periods of repetition and stagnation and War pandemic and military conquest could deliver fatal blows that would sometimes wipe out a flourishing Center uh almost overnight cities were the centers of pluralism and Innovation par excellance so when Chelsea presents these centers of progress um uh read her book it's exactly right she captures exactly where the motors and energies of human progress have taken route and flourished it's really been the great cities of History uh we see in the great cities trade travel printing libraries and courts andies that were full of enterprising people because when they were flourishing cities attracted talent and innovators from all over and the great cities critically were large enough to host a diversity of ethnic groups multiple religious centers and they facilitated communication across all of these groups challenging Orthodoxy and giving rise to a flourishing uh competitive sphere of ideas as long as the government permitted it or even encouraged it and the problem is these flourishing cities became targets of conquest or if the government decided to crack down because cities concentrated resources and people it was relatively easy for the Inquisition to root out the opposition and send them into jail or Exile cities like progress could rise and fall and unfortunately if you visit some of the physical sites that Chelsea takes you to tenos tan chichin uh I just came back from a trip to Cambodia to samam Reep to see the Great temple there you see how enormous the constructions of the past could be how much effort and capital went into it and yet what's left behind are often uh impressive but empty ruins most important it was true then and it's true now as Chelsea pointed out with Hong Kong um it's possible for growth even today to come under loss of freedom and the growth of conformist control modern economic growth which is kind of a special case required not only cities and Innovation but certain changes in values that our KO colleague de mclusky has written about uh certain jumps in science but still was rooted in exactly the same pluralism and protection for minorities and novelties that was characteristic of progress throughout history first in London then in these new cities such as Manchester in our own time China's economy took off and became one of the fastest growing in the world precisely when the rigid ideological Orthodoxy of Mao zong was cast off followed by a more pragmatic and open Society under dong Xiao ping yes it was still a dictatorship yes it was still under communist rule but if you talk to people who lived through the change the degree of openness to travel to foreign investment to foreign ideas under dong shaing was night and day different from what was occurring under mauo and yet it has not lasted despite the enormous benefits of growth that lifted a billion people out of poverty we see xiin ping turn back toward a demand for ideological Conformity and loyalty to the government's Creed above all else do not know how this will end but history suggests that it will not end well and even the USA which has historically been one of the most favored Society in terms of openness to immigrants openness to ideas whether it was bringing in rocket scientists from Germany at the end of World War II or bringing in Asian merchants in the 19th century or even bringing in migrants from South Africa like Elon musk and giving them an opportunity to transform our transportation systems and turn Twitter into X Innovations have been a way of life in the United States and yet even here we are seeing calls to sharply curtail immigration we have a president who has threatened the diversity of our media calling out mainstream media as something he would attack if reelected I was recently on the West Coast and in San Francisco and Los Angeles you really see what happens if you have a society that goes through decade after decade after decade of increasing inequality you have on the one hand uh lovely homes up in the hillside that are unaffordable for all that those who did not purchase them years ago and you have large numbers of homeless people in the low lands in the flats making cities increasingly unpleasant and in fact driving people away from what should be attractive centers of Enterprise so if our cities Decay even we will lose some of that openness communication that the concentration of people in cities during times of peace and prosperity usually brings I close with this question maybe we're moving into a new world maybe cities won't matter as much if the internet can take their place creating virtual cities uh but I don't think so I really believe that virtual interaction is not the same as the type of bringing diverse groups together in constant communication and interaction exchange that cities facilitate in fact social media sites often don't bring different people in cultural practices together at all they concentrate people in silos who are drawn to that site because they share a single interest and to the extent that our society is divided by social media into ideologically and culturally distinct groups we lose precisely the character of the great cities of history that Chelsea has spotlighted and told us about so well and the same thing I think is also true if cities turn into enclaves of kind of gated domains for the rich and uh ghettos for the poor um that doesn't bring people together in constructive ways either it's us usually been Traders uh professionals Scholars business people Merchants Artisans a broad middle class that's both been the market for ideas and the kind of Base uh fertile ground for ideas to arise if you only have the rich defending their Gates and the poor who don't have the means to accumulate ideas and opportunities and start businesses then also productivity and Innovation slow down so I think Chelsea is really pointing us in a critically important Direction her book shows us the right kinds of conditions for progress as well as the right places and I think progress still depends on the right kind of cities open diverse Multicultural pluralist with a large middle class with the resources and autonomy to challenge the status quo and that kind of City I think Chelsea has taught me is worth protecting and Still Remains vital to our progress thank [Applause] you well thank you very much to both of you for your remarks we will now turn to questions so again if you're watching online you can submit your questions using hashtag centers of progress uh when asking a question in person uh I think we'll have a mic um uh please stay your name and affiliation and please try to keep your questions um as brief as possible and also in a form of a question very important so let's see we have a question right here in front hi Bruce Guthrie uh retired your comment about peace kind of intrigues me because I usually think that war tends to be a thing that accelerates progress so I mean Aviation took off because of World War I obviously atomic energy World War II uh and the space race of response to the Cold War so it seems that that the threat against peace seems to be kickoff Innovation could you comment on that absolutely I think that there is a common belief that the competition spurred by War can create progress and while I do agree that competition can spur progress we can't run the counterfactual we can't run history again and see how much faster we would have developed the Internet if scholars in places that were not getting along had been able to work together we can't see whether that would have actually LED through greater collaboration to faster progress as Jack was saying when you have a diversity of people from different backgrounds able to work together rather than separating people into different countries that are at War and not allowed to talk to each other really or engage scientifically with one another I think having that greater number of Minds working on the problems of the day can spur faster progress do you want to add to that well I'll simply say we know that war is not sufficient to Spur progress because the kingdoms of Southeast Asia in the Champa Vietnam and the Thai and Burmese kingdoms were at war against each other for tens of centuries without notable progress um same thing for Rome and Persia Byzantium and Persia uh it was really when war was on the peripheries that you got some stimulus but a lot of the initial inventions arose in peace the Baghdad caliphate was involved in wars on its distant borders but the progress was in a domain of peace that was carved out centrally Great Britain in the years before the Industrial Revolution fought Naval Wars but there was no war on the territory of Great Britain uh except the 1688 uh Glorious Revolution which was glorious because it was seen as peaceful and it was an invitation for William to come and uh take the throne uh most of the countries that were engaged in constant Warfare in the Baltic and uh in the Southeast region with the Ottoman Empire uh did not exhibit the kind of progress we see in the Northwest so it really took special conditions not just War but rather the preservation of a safe space in which Artisans Scholars Traders Merchants um had the time to experiment and spend the time uh testing out their ideas if you're under constant stress you may you know develop some weapons in a hurry which is good but most of the great inventions that led to our progress were much more diverse than simply offensive or defensive weapons question from Anonymous uh building on what you said in your in your presentation what do we do about the increasing number of Great American cities that are in Decline and as you are getting ready to answer that question let me um let me ask about the economic inequality the the as as I understand it the middle class is shrinking because the number of people in the who are getting rich is actually expanding so it's not that Americans are becoming poorer it's just that both the middle class and the working or or rather the poor are decreasing and the number of Rich are increasing so would that not be a a good thing um there is inequality but a lot more people have a lot more money therefore maybe possibly the potential of creating more value and innovating it's true that a lot more people have a lot more money it's true that the poor have had greater gains than other groups in recent years and all of that is to be applauded at the same time if you ask people across America do you have confidence in the future an overwhelming majority say no and that's bad for progress in order for Progress to occur people have to have faith in the future so that willing to invest and take the time to get an education or start a business so the very deterioration of faith in the Pro in progress is a problem it's it's true that um more people are entering what you would say higher income levels but a lot of that is simply driving up the cost of things that used to be more available to people with lower income so it doesn't help if you have more people of higher income if people can't work their way through college anymore because the cost of college tuition has risen so much faster than um minimum wage or entry level wages I mean I talk to people all the time of my age and they say oh yeah I put myself through Berkeley or I put myself through Ohio State by working in the summer you just can't do that because these costs have grown disproportionately um same thing with real estate and transportation I joke to a friend the other day that um these narrow uh super apartments that not Apartments condominiums that are building in New York you know these uh narrow skyscrapers they beautiful art and people from all over the world billionaires and millionaires come to invest in them um but they're like the castles of aristocrats in bygone days just like the super Yachts are like the Gilded carriages that I recently saw at Buckingham Palace and you know they're great to look at and you can say yeah you know more more people can afford multi-million dollar Apartments the the luxury and real estate market has gone very well but ask people who are trying to buy their first home in San Francisco Los Angeles or New York they're not able to do that and that's actually where progress comes from progress really comes from uh people who are just starting to get a foothold and have an exciting idea to do something new um in this country the rate of founding new new companies has gone down and historically jobs have come more from small new companies expanding than from dominant companies growing uh but we're in a situation now where we're not seeing as much of that we're not seeing as much Social Mobility so different parts of the data tell different stories but I'd like to see people in Cleveland in Youngstown excited about the future of their cities right now they're not how do we save them um we have to allow the kind of openness that we're not seeing we need to change zoning so that housing becomes cheaper and people can move right now people can't sell their homes and move to a new city if they're in a low-income area and want to move to a high income area so that hurts um I think we need more security uh you know make sure that people have access to basic Medical Care even just raising the minimum income so that people can say well I'm going to move Mo uh to this exciting City where there's a lot going on and I want to just be able to survive for a few months until I meet the right people or get an idea or get a toe hold and that needs to be made a lot easier and it's happening Detroit is Reviving because the cost of property is low and entrepreneurs are buying up uh downtown property to open new companies Cleveland is seeing a little bit of that it'll come but the bottom line I think is freedom affordability opportunity Mobility those are the things that have made cities is great thank youness we have quite a few excellent over there in the back uh Matt quaring snapstream Chelsea you remarked that uh during the cycle um you know the the peak is often very shortlived and I'm wondering which of the 40 cities had the longest run at the top the Golden Ages of the Cities in the book have that I featured actually have been getting shorter now that's because we've been making progress faster the initial Innovations featured in the book such as agriculture in the first chapter that was developed gradually over many generations there weren't very many people around in the world back then and so progress was a much slower process we eventually were able to make some Innovations but they were very gradual uh writing in Uruk is another example where writing was not invented overnight it was invented very gradually as we shifted from pictures to simplified pictures to simplified pictures that had been rotated thus becoming more abstract eventually we got to writing these forms of progress were extremely slow extremely gradual and people were not able to reap the fruits of that progress for a long time so those early chapters of the book actually span longer periods of time and more and more uh cities appear in the book as we get into the more recent periods when progress has been much faster in more recent history there have been more people who are able to work together and compete and collaborate to create more Innovations and so you see more and more progress recently but also these bushfires of innovation uh that appear tend to disappear quite quickly in recent years and so the uh shortest periods of time are the most recent chapters and the longest stretches of time featured for any city are the earliest ones which very conveniently leads to this question again from Anonymous um where is the next Austin Texas what do you think is the next emergent Center of innovation do you have any candidates either of you uh well Austin my understanding is that they're unofficial motto is Keep Austin Weird uh which I think means that they are doing something right in terms of openness a culture of allowing people to discuss and debate ideas that might seem a little bit wacky that are new that are different and when you allow people to discuss a great diversity of ideas you might hit upon something that changes the world in a positive way the the whole nature of progress is it's impossible to say which will be next uh you look for areas that are exciting and free I would have said Shenzhen a decade ago the city in southern China That Grew From a fishing Village to 10 million people in 30 years and was attracting Talent from all over uh today um frankly freedom is under assault in a lot of places we're seeing a kind of stress of xenophobia um I'm hoping the US that one of our Midwestern cities a place like Cleveland if become a center of electric vehicles or uh Alternative Energy uh or maybe um someplace in Africa uh perhaps Nairobi or Addis Ababa will become a Pioneer in geothermal energy um but I do believe that if freedom and Mobility are encouraged new centers will emerge that's easier to say than pinpointing where three cheers for eccentricity which we very much believe in here at the Kato Institute uh gentleman in the middle I wonder if you Eddie Beck are a documentarian I was wondering if you could contrast uh your Direction with that of Jared Diamond who writes about collapse and about I guess what he sees is an environmental ecological uh disregard for the future and as a result of that society's collapse and I guess that has to do with the concentration of political and economic power so that those who have that power are able to dictate the democracy all right so um Jared diamond gun Guns Germs and Steel has a slightly different Focus he focuses more on the geographical constraints for example whereas centers of progress uh while again it just presents what happened in different cities and doesn't within the chapters themselves push a particular narrative uh it focuses is more on institutions and policies but your question is about the future so Jared Diamond's views of the future uh the book that would be very different from this book because this book really doesn't make any predictions about the future it's backwards looking it asks what lessons we can learn from the past and does not make any Grand assumptions I'm not sure I'd even go so far as Jack and saying that I have any confidence that cities will continue to be necessary as centers of progress it could be that virtual reality does advance to such an incredible degree that uh we don't need the same level of in-person interaction to get the same level of productivity but it could be that doesn't happen anytime in the near future I hesitate to try to make predictions because you see again and again in history just how difficult it is to tell which city will become the next great Center of progress so many of these places arose from complete obscurity or from disasters to suddenly take the World by storm so the fature is very very difficult to predict and with some hyan humility I'm not going to attempt it yeah I mean people in London would never have thought that Edinburgh would be the birthplace of modern social science for example but you're talking about Jared Diamond's book collapse and in in that book he raises what I refer to as kind of the Easter Island pattern which frightens me that basically looks at Easter Island where Kings competed to put up bigger and bigger stone statues using local Timber and stone until they'd cut down so much Timber that the microclimate failed agriculture disappeared and the island had to be evacuated and it's it's a morality story of getting so caught up in Pursuit of short-term goals without attention to the impact you're having on the longer term environment that makes it important that you critically damage your society and while Diamond was talking about physical resources I think the same thing is true of Institutions we almost had a government shut down for no good reason because people were so focused on fighting over short-term issues that they lost sight of the importance of keeping the credibility of our government and meeting our commitments to those who depend on it so I I worry that diamond has something um to warn us about that if we focus too much on short-term competition we will Overlook these bigger principles that have made for progress and we need to keep those principles alive here is one again from Anonymous are there cases he's very inquisitive this Anonymous they are afraid to put their names down are they cases where cities deliberately were set up or or cities set up deliberately conditions needed for creativity and prosperity um or were they mostly unintentional if they were deliberate what measures did they take it sort of reminds me a little bit of Dubai the idea was we build it and they will come now I don't know if you would consider UAE and Dubai to be on the frontier of innovation maybe not it's still exciting place to be but but anyway is it possible to build and they will come uh Innovation will happen or is just going to emerge spontaneously can you centrally plan and a center of progress great question well I can answer from personal experience if you like and that is um Dubai is an innovator in stuffing things into shopping malls that we've never seen there like ski runs um but it's an artificial construction it depends on the ability to afford inexpensive air conditioning otherwise it will all be evacuated and we have no idea if it will still be profitable under coming climate change or not what Dubai did however offer was far more freedom than any other city in the region and it was set up specifically to be a place that would attract tourists and Outsiders who were repelled by the strict religious Orthodoxy of um Saudi Arabia Iran and other big centers so to the extent that it has worked it has worked because it was not only designed to be architecturally exciting and new but it was designed to be free the opposite of that is something that the Russian Federation was doing while I was visiting there and that was setting up a new uh Technology city called skulla outside of Moscow That was supposed to have a tech Institute a business school and become kind of a Silicon Valley for Russia but they set up the educational and the housing and the training and it's beautiful Parkland wonderful environment but there's no Venture cap Capital Market there to take any good idea and translate it the people who go to SK skulla don't have the freedom to move to other parts of Russia and try out their ideas and one of The Observers said of this uh those Russians you know they they want the cow without paying for the milk I'm sorry they want the milk without paying for the cow you know they want the product they want the progress but they're not willing to create the free market and the freedom that's foundational for it so if you set up a City and get the right conditions you can get some but if you just set up a a city as a place where people can come together and live if it doesn't have all the other freedoms that make cities flourish it becomes an ornament not not a center of progress and to build on that I think that just as there are exceptions like Minds in the book where you have all of the wrong conditions for Progress somehow though you still do end up with Humanity pushing through and making progress you can have all the right ingredients and it's still not work out but it becomes far more likely and probably the closest thing to a city profiled in the book that intentionally tried to design an environment for Progress would be Hong Kong with its policy of non-interventionism that allowed the people of that City to rebuild after the devastation of war and from an environment of almost unimaginable poverty into an incredible shining Beacon with modern living standards and again unfortunately the book shows that that is also being lost now and how fragile those conditions while you can set them into motion if you're an urban leader uh or mayor or so forth it's very difficult to maintain those conditions once you have them well that's all we have time for today so uh thank you for your questions and thank you for joining us uh for today's Forum uh please consider purchasing a copy of Chelsea's book she will be uh out there uh available to sign uh the books and please join us for the reception up in the Winter Garden uh thank you very [Applause] much

Channel: The Cato Institute

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Length: 63min 26sec (3806 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023