Why do liberal democracies feel stuck?

my name is Mark Pennington I'm the director of the center for the study of governance and Society here at Kings we're based in the department of political economy and we are co-hosting the event this evening with Civic future part of the intellectual mission of the center for the study of governance and Society is to look at the relationship between informal and formal rules of governance and the way that those rules contribute to Peaceful prosperous and ecologically secure societies we place a great deal of emphasis on informal rules and by that I mean the importance of values beliefs traditions and Norms as well as formal institutions when we're trying to understand why societies function or not as the case may be I think this distinction between informal and formal institutions and rules is particularly important in the context of contemporary liberal Democratic societies if we look at those societies over the last 20 or 30 years not much seems to have changed in terms of the formal Rules by which we are governed but in the last few years there's nonetheless a profound sense that something has changed within our societies the attitudes beliefs the Norms that people hold and that that change whatever it is is contributing to a sense of cultural and economic paralysis it's in that context that we're delighted to be hosting this event this evening to speak about why liberal democracies feel stuck to examine whether or not there is this cultural and economic paralysis and if there is whether there's anything we can do about it now there are three reasons why I'm delighted to be hosting this event for the csgs this evening the first is that answering these kind of questions is fundamental to our mission so please do go on to our website and look at some of the papers and things that we produce in this area second I'm delighted that we've got three excellent panelists to discuss these questions you may have noticed that it's not quite as was advertised we were supposed to have professor John Gray with us this evening but sadly John has been taken ill and so wasn't able to join us but thanks to the dynamism of Civic future we've managed to get two excellent replacement speakers Stephen Bush and David goodhart the third reason that I'm delighted to be hosting the event this evening Is the participation or the organization actually of Civic future Civic future I think is an inspirational new project focused on bringing a new generation of people a non-partisan organization focused on bringing a new generation of people into public life it's headed up by minirameza as I'm sure many of you will know manira was formerly the executive director of culture at Kings the culture center at Kings and she's played a very significant role in many aspects of public life in this country I think if Civic future fulfills the potential that it's already shown in the first week that it's been going and there's a real chance that we might improve not only the content of public discourse in this country but also the quality of that discourse so without further Ado I'd like to welcome minira Mirza to introduce our speakers and to introduce Civic future please welcome in your emosum um thank you Mark for that really kind introduction and a huge thank you to Kings for hosting uh this inaugural event for civic future as Mark said I have a personal relationship with this University I worked here uh for for a period in 2019 and I know that it's a university with a global reputation for Innovation and research and teaching but it's also a university with a very strong Civic Mission so it's a perfect partner for uh for our first public event and of course Kings has educated many uh political leaders both from within the UK but also from around the world so I'm delighted that we have uh some students from Kings here tonight my name is moniro Mirza I'm the chief executive of Civic future as Mark says we're a new organization we launched publicly last week and our aim is to identify and train talented people to go into public life and to Champion the values of liberal democracy uh I have for those of you who don't know me I've worked in government for uh on and off for around 15 years in National and Regional government and over time I've come to believe that if we want to solve the big problems the big challenges that the UK faces and that liberal democracies face in general we need to do much better as a country to get good people into public life but also we have to prepare them intellectually we have to provide better training and education for people so that they are better informed and better able to grasp the true challenges that we face I'll say a little bit more at the end about what we do and how you can get involved because I don't want to take up more time than necessary uh about uh about the future I want to move on as quickly as I can to the main topic of discussion this evening and uh to introduce our speakers um I'll say before I before I um uh introduce our speakers first of all uh very sorry uh that John Gray can't join us this evening uh he's been taken ill and he sends his apologies uh John is uh uh very uh Irreplaceable uh and uh very sorry that he can't be here hopefully we can reschedule another conversation one day with with him and Tyler but I'm delighted that we have uh two speakers lined up to uh to hopefully cover similar ground uh before I introduce them I just want to say a little bit about why we chose this topic for our conversation this evening and the title question just to remind you and if you uh you can see it on the slide behind me why do liberal democracies feel stuck uh it's a it's a phrase I've had in my head for some time and I think anyone who has worked in government or in public life and I know quite a few I recognize quite a few faces in the in the crowd tonight quite a few of you already have worked in government or currently in government you'll recognize that feeling that that there's something uh there's a sense of paralysis sometimes uh when you work in public life in the UK a sense that when you pull the levers things don't work uh that that promise of progress and dynamism that liberal democracies are supposed to have uh it doesn't always feel uh that way at the moment and I think that's a a sentiment that people not just working in government would feel but but ordinary people people are on the street uh the general public might share that feeling as well and I wanted to use this event to explore why that feeling feels so um uh prevalent today what's going on in our society uh that should make us feel like we're not going forward we're not moving forward if you think about uh the economy obviously we just had a very profound statement from the government today about the budget and the future economy for the UK but for a very very long time we have been experiencing economic stagnation declining productivity rates obviously we've experienced a very profound economic shocks uh uh certainly in the last 15 years and that sense that people's living standards will improve with each generation uh that that the today's generation will have more money more opportunity than than the previous one that that sense I think is uh is uh is less commonly felt today a but also if we look at social problems uh there has been a rise in family breakdown in drug addiction in the UK but also famously in the US there's been a rise in in opiate addiction that's had huge impacts on particular communities in the area of Technology where we're very aware of the impact of the internet but has technology really progressed in the way that we thought that it would if you think about areas like uh green energy we haven't yet found a solution to Limitless energy we're always on the verge of it but it hasn't happened yet that famous piece of teal line you know we wanted flying cars and all we got was 140 characters is it true that technology is really moving forward in a dynamic way or or is that something of an illusion and then finally of course uh the international situation after the Cold War there was a sense and a consensus that liberal democracies would spread almost naturally to the rest of the world and that once Russia and China had opened up to Market forces that they too would join the club and become Democratic societies and sadly that hasn't transpired so the confidence that the West had 30 years ago about its system and the way that people felt about it has changed dramatically in the last few decades and I wanted us to have a conversation about why that might be maybe I'm being too pessimistic maybe actually we're just turning a corner and and it might be okay we might be able to get out of the impasse but I wanted to explore uh what what the trends are and and possibly some of the solutions and I'm delighted that we have three excellent speakers who have uh in their own ways explored these questions in their writings and in various lectures and broadcasts I will try and briefly introduce them first starting with Tyler Cohen who is a professor of Economics at George Mason University he is the chairman of the Mercator Center there mikatus meaning markets in Latin he is the co-author of the wildly popular economics blog marginal Revolution which if you're if you're not already signed up to I really recommend I think I get about 10 emails a day from Tyler with more communication than almost anyone else I know with really fascinating bits of information recommendations of papers of films podcasts and it's he he is an extremely well-traveled Economist not because he goes to Davos all the time but because he goes out and meets people and he travels to countries and he's always got very very interesting things to say and I'm delighted that he is here and and and has he's also written a great deal about um stagnation a famously wrote a book called The Great stagnation which was very influential and again which I would recommend um second I would like to introduce Stephen Bush who is an associate editor at the ft and a regular columnist there he's also was previously a columnist at the new Statesman and I think he is one of the most incisive writers about politics today not simply because he has an incredible uh address book of contacts in the world of Westminster but because he has an ability to connect what's going on in this tiny village in sw1 with what's going on around the country and around the world and he has just a very brilliant sense of the way the wind is blowing and so I'm delighted and very grateful to him for stepping in at last minute and then finally I'd like to introduce David goodheart who um has a very long biography but it's probably most known to uh to everyone here as the author of the famous Paradigm anywheres and somewheres a phrase I've heard so many times in the last few years and David is uh uh one of I think one of this country's um uh most interesting intellectuals uh he has uh risen a great deal about the Dynamics of uh or the inter relationship between immigration the economy the labor market uh and and many more things he was the founder editor of prospect magazine and he's now the head of the demographics unit um uh policy exchange I think tank in Westminster um so um without further Ado I'd like to start by asking all of you um how how you respond to the title question uh uh of this evening's discussion do you a do you agree that liberal democracies do feel stuck and how do you how do you explain or describe what you mean by that can you give us some evidence or some thoughts on what you see um I will pick on Tyler first to start if that's okay I think we're emerging into a new and very optimistic period after almost 45 years of stagnation so we in a few years time have anti-covered vaccines which are done in part by democratic governments we have artificial intelligence on the verge of taking off there's Deep Mind from the UK open AI in the United States green energy isn't here but we've seen many years now of cost declines of 10 to 15 percent a year compounding for wind and solar nuclear fusion might work so these phenomenal developments all of which are coming in part from markets in part from democratic governments or on the verge of Transforming Our Lives there's a new sense of excitement and I think most of all if you're tempted to be pessimistic ask yourself the following question does my country the UK or my country the United States have more Talent than ever before 4 in its history and if you answer yes to that question you can pile up the problems most of what you list in this pile it's real it does worry me but the pile here of how much more Talent we have our Civic future you might say that is a bigger pile it's an invisible pile it is not a pile the media reports on there's no article on the front page of whichever newspaper you read more talent in Britain today than ever before right no one will click on that link so think about the two piles here's the pile you worry about here's the pile that really matters I'm going to bet on the pile that really matters and if you want to see particular instantiations we also have vaccines coming for Dengue against malaria possibly against cancer major Innovations in the biomedical space we are actually getting it done and finally emerging from an economic and I would say also political stagnation so I would urge be optimistic that is not the answer I was expecting by the way um because Tyler has written for uh a number of years about how well you said regarding in 1973 the West had a very long period of no major advances I think once the vaccines came and with what will happen in artificial intelligence over the next two or three years one can no longer say there's no new big next thing I think there is progress is Lumpy and uneven when it hits you you feel a lot more uncomfortable life is more volatile it's more nerve-wracking it's going to get much worse in that sense this pile will grow but this file the talent pile is going to grow a lot quicker and you do you did predict I think in the great stagnation that within 20 years exactly we would turn a corner and it would be fine not fine highly volatile and everyone will wish for the great stagnation to come back because they got so used to it Okay so Stephen do you agree that we should have caused to be optimistic yes on today of all days after budget today so I have to admit I thought I was going to sort of be the sort of most optimistic person on the panel um uh maybe I still am but I so I think I understand why liberal democracies feel stuck but in part I would argue that is a problem of success right then if you think about the uh the problems besetting uh countries which are now liberal democracies in 1900 many of them had superficially fairly simple Solutions um you had you know loads of fairly quick wins right whereas now you have a situation where rightly broadly people expect to be uh to earn much more than their parents right we are basically at the end of the first sort of 300 year period where it doesn't take more than a century for one household to be able to afford one more shirt than it could buy at the start of that Century so understandably people have a huge level of expectation about what their state can provide for them and the joy of liberal democracy is is that they are great at error correction but their great vulnerability is they are the only form of government which has to permit the thing which might destroy them to enter into the system at some point so that's why you have some of the various shocks and challenges to Liberal democracy that we are seeing um and so I think yeah I think there are there are you know issues uh that's a big future I think exists to try and combat we I hope we'll get into later about personnel and recruitment that I think have got worse and there are specific reasons for that but I think broadly speaking um you know liberal democracies aren't stuck they have a huge number of wins but they face much bigger challenges and therefore understandably people have a lot you know people get impatient right people don't just go well great I've got you know an iPhone they go well look where you know where is my flying car and that's why liberal democracies feel stuck rather than being stuck so David if I can come to you and I'm going to try and put you in the more personal uh the pessimistic box because I think I feel like it would be uh we're doing a disservice if you all agreed with each other um but you have written quite a lot about what's gone wrong in the economy and for a very large proportion of people you have explained that they they do feel left behind and that despite growth despite technological process progress GDP that famous line that I think Matthew Goodwin quoted in his book about how a politician uh spoke at a town hall and talked about growth and somebody at the back of the room said that's your GDP not mine do you feel that everybody benefits from growth in the same way um no they don't um and I think that is actually one of the reasons why we feel stuck I think there was a period you know that what now seems at least to some people like a kind of golden age that period uh kind of the end of the Cold War from the the early 90s um you know right through perhaps to kind of 2016 you know the year of brexit and Trump uh there was at least you know in my language for the kind of anywheres for the for the you know the the graduates of residential universities you know who who were comfortable with mobility and openness and um uh they were kind of you know they had been sort of Unleashed it was their it was their Golden Age um and uh and It produced lots of good things and you know that was the kind of you know globalism China entered the the um World Trade Organization which had dramatic um of the negative impacts on Old industrial um areas in America Britain and and Europe slightly less so um and I think um I mean that was one of the I think often when people talk now about their not being a sense of progress It's kind of an Envy for some of that period you know the kind of Clinton Blair um uh economic growth was was you know banging along at a pretty high level um but of course we now know that you know there was lots of resentments building up uh through that what appeared to be a kind of golden age you know you know anywheres were creating a society an economy in their own interests um you know the the um you know we'll think about Britain I mean you know we we were building an Economy based around professional and financial services based in London and the southeast um an education system based around Mass higher education neglecting Technical and vocational education and a kind of you know loose Progressive world view that tended to downplay National sovereignty preferred diversity to solidarity and all that that was kind of what was going on and you know since 2016 since brexit Trump in America we've had a kind of pushback against it a perfectly legitimate pushback um you know so we've we've had brexit um we had we had a kind of covid that was very much um sort of somewhere you know with the sort of security impulse of the somewhere as you know trumped what might otherwise have been kind of boris's more libertarian spirit and it's as if you know that the that there's been a there's been a rebalancing which makes this a more Democratic Society by the way you know politics now represents post-brexit a much larger proportion of the public than it did in that golden period but it sort of but it's also created this um this sense of unpass you know as it were you know I mean you know anyways in some ways have to coexist um we haven't thrown up politicians who've been very good um at finding the finding the Common Ground uh between them and that's that's kind of perhaps that's what Civic future is going to do do you think Tyler that with the the kind of technology that you're talking about being on the the verge of uh uh of spreading throughout Society AI vaccines and so on that if they deliver growth they'll deal with some of the social polarization that seems to have opened up in the U.S so interestingly in the US it's no longer just critics from the left who are challenging free markets and and challenging the kind of the the liberal or libertarian world view it's also people from the right there's been this rise of uh the national conservative movement of people who think that globalization hasn't been good for America that these trade deals uh the the you know Clinton uh uh introduced and and the the opening up of China has actually not been to the benefit of of ordinary Americans and do you think that actually a lot of that will just wither away and eventually not be a problem because you've got this technological growth around the corner the left and right to me seem increasingly like each other they feed off each other they need each other they pretend to be Polar Opposites but in some ways they're mirror images I think the real political struggle moving forward is what I would call maybe the Centrist optimists people who actually want to do things who want to mobilize the new stock of talent versus people who want to complain about other people and the left and right has become the people who want to complain about others but I don't think the social problems in America at least are going away I view it this way if you're a person of conscientiousness and drive your opportunities never ever have been better than they are right now if you're a person with low conscientiousness you could even open up a crypto Exchange in the Bahamas right but at higher income levels at lower income levels you will get in trouble more than before one reason not the only reason is just our addictive drugs or quote unquote better or I suppose more fun than they used to be I don't see that reversing I think there's been a fundamental change in the human condition where the returns to conscientiousness are just much higher than they were a number of decades ago oh we will have to live with this I'm not sure what policy can change this unless you think we can cut off the supplies of all Temptations I very seriously doubt that and that I think that will be the number one social issue for the rest of my life and some time to come after that and I think it will it will be very painful and at the same time the people who live well in some broad sense the advantages and advances they will have will just be astonishing and it'll be a question which side of that divide do you want to fall on like crypto Exchange in the Bahamas or upstanding you know life of Bourgeois virtue and you live to 113 and you have a personal assistant that's Ai and it's free and remarkable opportunities to do things and you may not have a flying car but like with some luck you will have congestion pricing and that's actually more valuable I would say you have um written quite a bit though about how the the the sort of Elites in America or there are special interest groups that always try and protect their territory um there's been a an accumulation of regulations small mindedness and uh so I mean you have you complain about people who complain but you you have written quite a few books complaining about the the way in which American government has I mean there's there's one side of the the argument which is American uh free market ideology has spread and there's been too much Freedom it's it's written roughshod over local communities over local Industries it's been bad for civic institutions for the family and then there's the opposite argument which is actually we've had too much regulation not enough Freedom you've got big corporates that dominate you don't have enough competition among smaller new entrants to markets which I think is more in the vein of what you have argued that that we're far too worried about trying to keep things the same what we need is more disruption and freedom I think Western Nations clearly have had too much regulation and all but one or two areas so we should have more regulation on carbon emissions we should have tougher regulations on finance maybe not more regulations but look let's say climate change is an enormous problem of our time we need to build a new energy infrastructure in the United States it takes seven years on average to get a permit for a wind farm you try to build a new nuclear power plant that's essentially impossible so nimbyism has taken over our world not only in my country I know a few other countries like that and when your country is nimbiest your main problems you cannot solve and there's a crack up coming over this issue and it's easier in the United States for a bigger nation we have more regions you know Texas Florida committed to growth even in California the Indie movement is seeing some victories I think over time it will be easier to build new green infrastructure but it's it's obvious to me the American economy is far too regulated again with the exception of one or two areas and that will be an ongoing battle and the economy will stay tolerable not because we win every fight for deregulation but people innovate around previous regulations and there are always these newer less regulated areas well I mean I mean we've got the same problem here haven't we I mean um you know data protection you know money laundering rules public procurement rules um you know huge amount of um you know public sector equality Duty I mean I mean these are of course we need all these things but you know but regulation does have that tendency to kind of to to overrun um and I think um that um you know that makes the economy more stuck but in order to break through these kind of problems and and they obviously are they are soluble you need politicians who are good at Coalition building um you know politics is always about herding cats and we seem particularly bad at herding cats at the moment um I mean perhaps the cats are less herdable than usual um but you know why aren't we building more homes you know why aren't we building more reservoirs why aren't we reforming child care I mean you know a lot of these things when you kind of look at them they seem randomly straightforward and yet we can't we can't create the coalitions to do it do you think Stephen that it's it's just that the public don't know yet how good these things are for them and every time so for example reforming Child Care regulation changing the ratios of how many adults are allowed to look after how many children it's been tried before it was there was a it was a quite a considerate I think it was list trust actually he tried to to lead that regulatory change and there was a big pushback from various interest groups and and sort of early years uh Specialists uh obviously in plumbing is similar there's big reaction to uh to government trying to reform planning uh in in this country and it's been tried many many times uh is it that they just don't know that it could be good or they just don't trust government to do it well well I think it's a combination of things we say planning right the let's take the most recent effort to reform planning where there were I would say three reasons why that didn't happen uh the first was you know not to be indelicate about it a culture of making uh enemies unnecessarily within the conservative party which meant that there were MPS who saw destroying that effort as a way to regain a position of power and influence and they had otherwise lost then some people have a semi-rational belief that you know well this thing is some people do benefit from there not being enough hopes right not least existing homeowners um and then the third is then broadly people people mostly don't like the idea of The Upfront costs part of the art of being a successful politician is you make sure that the upfront cost gets paid at the right point in the Electoral cycle uh I think yeah one of the challenges we've had recently of course right is that we've had a period of government where broadly speaking sometimes the reasons of its own fault sometimes the reasons out with its control it's lost its sort of there hasn't been a government that's been able to use its kind of controversial period when it has ages before it meets the electorate in the UK since 2010 really right the 2010 period was the last one where you know the Coalition did a bunch of controversial things 2010 to 2012 and then they wait for those things to bed in and they won re-election whereas of course in 2016 uh the David Cameron's controversial period was swallowed up by the brexit referendum and in 2019 Boris Johnson's controversial period was swallowed up by the pandemic so I think it is partly actually just about the difficulty of electoralizing in the United States right there's a distinct problem that there is a reason why no other democracy has emulated that particular political model right there are too many veto players it does make a lot of things much harder uh whereas I think in the UK context is partly just about bad luck rather than there being a yeah ideal thing is a slight tendency to over claim like changing child care ratios for example to what they are in Scotland and Wales to what they are in England which is the actual proposal fine I think it's a general heuristic we probably shouldn't have tougher regulations in England seeing as the world does not seem to have fallen over in Scotland but I I think understandably when you have uh parts of the political class claiming that England is going to have cheap Child Care once it has the same ratios it does in Scotland people quite rightly go well that seems like nonsense so what do you what what aren't you being straight with me about I think in some cases in that policy area it was people themselves weren't being straight about the difficulty of actually getting growth and there is a huge amount of consensus actually in the in the kind of policy field I mean even you know on you know growth and productivity I mean being really struck at the when last month that the Tory Party Conference I went to a policy exchange event Lord Frost great Liz truss Ally um and I think the guy that came after you at number 10 uh Andrew Gifford was it I mean so you know kind of you know people who were you know seen as kind of right-wing Tories they were talking about things that I exactly the same things I'd heard from left to Center think tanks at the labor the previous week you know what do we need we need we need reform planning we need more investment both public and private we need to sort out skills I mean it being a Tory conference there was a bit more on kind of deregulation stuff than there would have been at the labor conference but it's basically everybody was agreeing but let me just challenge all three of you a bit because you make it sound like government is so easy and I can tell you it ain't um and uh maybe it's maybe it's about the execution maybe it's not about being able to build enough coalitions I think that there is definitely truth to that but the public also have a very if if you read polling data and research dates if you go to focus groups the public have a very strong view that big business is not regulated enough and Developers for example if you give them an inch they take a mile they put up shoddy housing the quality is not very good the regulation the planning restrictions that everyone in Westminster thinks are so pointless and hinder growth are actually the things that allow communities to have some breathing space away from rapacious corporate developers so to put their side of the argument that you know they they might have a reason to be suspicious of big companies and they might think that regulation uh is there to protect them are they being unreasonable when you look at how people actually spend their time they spend more time with big corporations than ever before whether you like it or not I have one of these I suspect most of you do it's from Apple I use Uber I use Amazon most of my money I spend on Amazon or Whole Foods like that's a big Corporation it's a better selection it's a lower price I think often the problem isn't politics but the voters whether the issue is nimbyism or trust the voters want things that are contradictory and their actual Behavior they know the local TV repair person is more likely to rip them off than Amazon or Walmart they prefer to buy from Amazon but when you call them about political issues they'll Express a greater suspicion much greater of big business so it's no wonder politicians can't get the job done we all demand The Impossible from them I would just add one thing to Stephen's comment in contrast to you I think the UK is much more gridlocked than the us at least recently the Biden Administration has passed a lot of legislation I don't agree with it all but it's quite significant a big green Energy bill but most of all we have 50 states and they do a lot and they experiment they often copy each other so what I sort of learned in political science class this is the nation where you can just drool and do what you want but what I see on the front page of the paper is the United States right now is very non-gridlocked and the UK seems rather stuck and I remember the first statements by Rishi suunak about fiscal policy he just wasn't going to say one way or the other what he was going to do because they were in such a tight position there wasn't a great answer and now that the plan is coming out well it's a bunch of tax hikes that if you favor austerity are not big enough if you don't favor austerity which is my view they seem counterproductive as you're heading into a recession and it's also gloomy and constrained so I would say you're the gridlocked country okay well I'm very there will be some time for questions and comments from the floor so you can you can come back and disagree if you wish um can I can I also ask you about um uh another topic which David you have written about uh immigration because that's an area where the public do have and and repeatedly have said they want more control over immigration um and you have yourself argued that the public are right in this regard that and you know we should have uh some restrictions some regulations to to uh to limit the numbers of people coming into the UK I don't wanna hijack the whole conversation end up talking about immigration but I think that is an example perhaps like planning reform where public opinion um but on this occasion you have been quite Pro The public's View and Tyler for example I I think maybe you would argue a slightly different position I mean one could say against what Tyler just said you know we have had to manage this huge thing called brexit we haven't necessarily done it very well we had that three-year Hiatus I mean you know talk about stuck you know we really were pretty stuck for three years but you know it has eventually been done We've Ended up with probably a harder brexit than most people would have wanted um we do have we have created a new immigration system and it is quite noticeable that at least at the moment and I think it'll change but we there has been a liberalization of opinion on immigration probably you know 10 even 15 Point liberalization I mean it used to be the case that 65 70 of people wanted a reduction uh you know either minor or substantial reduction in Immigration uh that number is now probably down to about 50 45 I mean a a large majority or at least another 34 are happy with the current level the number of people that actually wanted to go up is is pretty small although that's been rising um and we do you know and we've we've put in place uh it's you know it's only been going for a year or so uh a a new system the so-called points-based system is actually not actually a point space system um but apparently that phrase is very popular in focus groups um and um we we have an extremely liberal one for I mean a so-called skilled worker that means basically anyone on on 25 Grand or more about two-thirds of all jobs in the UK economy could be taken by by somebody on a work visa it is true you know the the system has though responded to kind of somewhere brexit anxieties and we do now have far greater restrictions on low-skill immigration and you know and you hear people you know you hear business people complaining about it every day on The Today program uh Lord Wilson and so on um um so you know I mean democracy happened you know people voted for brexit one of the reasons they voted for brexit was because people didn't like free movement we have ended free movement um that's you know it's not popular with a lot of people um I want to go and live in France next year for for a few months and I can only go for 90 days um how sad for me um but um so you know that that's part of the kind of rebalancing that we've had um well I think in some ways immigration policy particularly in the in the UK is actually not that deep right broadly speaking right you go back to 1905 maybe 1906 the first time we actually restricted the right to company had a long period before of um you know people like my great great grandparents coming here from Lithuania and then broadly the Restriction comes down you have a period in the 1940s of people coming from uh the new Commonwealth and then restrictions come in you have a period in the 90s and naughties of um of of you know the free movement from uh the European accession States and then we have a and I think in some ways what we saw in brexit is basically just that pattern uh repeating itself I suspect and that will happen again uh and in some ways that's just that voters like all of us right we all at some point say oh yes give me another drink and then the next morning go oh God I wish wish I hadn't had that for that last that last point or that last bottle but broadly speaking the art of successful politics is working out what people's revealed and actual preferences are and this is again where I agree with Tyler right and then broadly speaking if people tell tell us in the polls they want a certain set of things and then they vote for another set of things probably we should assume that they meant it when they actually voted and I think one of the problems we've had in politics is this very sort of oh dear the polls say this or how is this going to pull today and not enough focus on how is this going to pull in four or five years when I'm actually going back to the country again the um the importance of politicians and people in government thinking more long term and thinking about growth as a moral imperative and that sometimes the the short-term decision making that people have to make because of the Electoral cycle can obscure what's really right for the country and and and sometimes our more our moral kind of judgment about what's the right thing to do for a country is is is is is is is only thinking uh just a few months or maybe one or two years ahead and it should be much more long-term than that I'm obsessed with rates of economic growth so if you see the voters this year will grow one percentage Point higher in GDP most people don't get what you're talking about even if they know what the terms mean but just a simple example if you look at the difference between Mexico and the United States had the United States starting in 1890 grown one percentage point less a year by the time of 1980 the U.S and Mexico would have the same standards of living so compound growth rates like compound interest compound returns are remarkably powerful they hardly ever play a role in politics or in voting it's one of the dysfunctionalities of virtually any democracy but countries that manage to grow in a a stable steady way and at higher rates it truly matters uh there are I would argue there might be nothing that matters more than to have a higher and sustainable rate of economic growth so why why sorry to interrupt but why is it that so many um why is there so many people particularly young people are almost you know skeptical about growth they don't feel positive about capitalism they don't think that growth is the biggest priority in their life in fact they would they would say actually I have other values I care about the environment or I want more social justice I want fairness I worry about inequalities and uh amongst people amongst different groups gender race and so on there's a there's a there's almost a kind of people have fallen out of love with the idea that economic growth and profit maximization and you know the the the the making money is a good thing what's what's happened morally do you think in America that that's a problem can it be reversed well I would say first the environment is very important for economic growth in addition to some of the other values you mentioned but if you look at what people do uh the people of High conscientiousness work harder to drive economic growth in the United States uh than I think ever before so the level of ambition in young people and how hard they compete to get into top schools or you know how they perform with startups the dynamism of Silicon Valley that's all individuals choosing to do those things I would readily admit we're having this bifurcation along the dimension of conscientiousness but I think a significant part of many nations has never believed in growth more strongly in their actions but when you poll them in the voting booth much more complicated it's an invisible thing it's an abstraction people respond to stories anecdotes when empathy something is right in front of their eyes that can be a good thing but it also can be a bias okay um I'm gonna ask the audience if they have any questions or comments hi I'm Daniel what do you think of medium and do you think perhaps we should have 10 less democracy or 10 less liberalism or do you think we should have 10 more the median voter theorem which states that politics largely reflects what Ordinary People want is true in most democracies it's true in the United States I think it is broadly true in the United Kingdom overall I view that as a stabilizing Force even though public opinion typically is very confused do we want 10 percent less democracy in the United States maybe we want seven percent less democracy so we'll elect a lot of our district attorneys our dog catchers all kinds of weird positions are up for election I think that's insane it's not our biggest problem but there are many elected offices at the state and local level that I don't feel should be elected to so many states need two legislatures rather than one I tend to doubt that Nebraska does fine with just one so I think the United States has a a bit too much democracy but I don't want to take that point too far I very strongly believe in democracy it's overall a positive it boosts economic growth civil liberties we don't in my opinion want to do Away really with any of the fundamentals of democracy but do we overdo it I I would say for my country yes um David and Stephen do you think we have the median voter Theory applies here in the UK yeah I mean take a recent example right broadly speaking we've had and we see this playing out throughout British political history in the Democratic era we've had a period of um spending restraint uh in order to facilitate admittedly partly because the economic record and the growth record of the last period since final scratch has been so bad we haven't had as many of the promised tax cuts as you would expect broadly speaking in about 2017 the voters went no stop we where we don't want more cuts to public services and you know despite the fact we now have a prime minister who self-identifies as being on the right of the party we broadly do have a budget that as much as possible considering the inheritance he has in the global forces bases has opted to raise taxes and to and to try and protect as much as as possible within the political constraints he faces internally um to protect Public Services I think it does hold up pretty well I think broadly speaking we have um we probably have about the right level of democracy in the United Kingdom but perhaps not necessarily to all of the right role so if you take something I used to be very enthusiastic about police and crime Commissioners uh broadly speaking people who people don't care about them they're one uses they're very helpful if you want to work out what the if you ask people in any part of the United Kingdom which parties refer labor all the Tories they're very good at sort of bench strengths but in terms of actually having police accountability they haven't worked anywhere near as well as Metro mares so you know maybe we've got to have more Mayors and fewer police and crime Commissioners but you know democracy Works partly because it is the only system that we found that when we make mistakes which we often do it's much easier for democracies to back out of them than for any other form of government to back out of them very briefly then I'll take a few more questions I mean I think um you know as we were saying earlier we are we're more democratic and that is one of the reasons why we are stuck there are more vetoes in the system and and we haven't perhaps developed a new generation of politicians who are who are good at Coalition building and actually one of the interesting points here I think is whether um whether proportional whether it's time for proportional representation here I mean that we we've got all these coalitions within parties that are that are breaking down um which is contributing to stuckness too it might be better after coalitions between parties and actually one way one thing that Europe with its mainly PR based systems has done better than us I think is kind of absorbing populism absorbing the kind of somewhere complaints about that long period of of liberalism globalism so you know we've got um their their systems you know that there have been populist parties have got substantial votes of being in government all over Europe now for the last 20 years and they've kind of domesticated it whereas the two countries that had the most dramatic sort of populist effects were the US and the UK Trump and brexit our systems weren't sort of flexible enough I suppose the one the one sign that that things aren't healthy is that that turnout generally has been declining so it might be that the people who are still voting are broadly happy but all the people who stopped voting are deeply deeply unhappy we just don't know they're there um so I think you had a question oh yeah so Michael I'm a venture capitalist Michael Bautista and my profession maybe makes me want to oversimplify things but I I'm hearing uh from Tyler that he's very happy with um at least how a part of society goes Stephen's happy about the Democratic institutions and and the fact that people got to exercise um their vote and and uh but it's kind of a very mixed picture nobody really is explaining how things are going to get better for most people and so I just like to tell you a story and ask if you if this is what the composite view is so I I as long as it's a short story it's very short I was listening to to Mark Andreessen a few years ago and the discussion was is AR going to be bigger than VR augmented reality and most of Silicon Valley was betting on augmented reality use it in medicine use it in transport and Mark's view was actually going to be virtual reality because life for most people in most places is not really bearable and virtual reality will be escape from them for them and whereas people in London and Paris and New York will be you know enjoying unprecedented opportunities and the benefits of all the technologies that Tyler talked about in other words bread and circuses for the 21st century is that really what you guys are talking about okay um just in the interest of time because I can see lots of hands up I'll take a couple more questions and then people can respond as they wish there was a gentleman at the back who's had his hand up for a while he's waving there and and then there's a lady in France uh in the middle thank you um my name's Simon um yeah uh Tyler you said um you seem to suggest that it was not on the question why do liberal democracies feel stuck you said um it's the it's you suggested that it was the people's fault that people were nimbiest um they demanded The Impossible from his politicians um Stephen you said um that people don't know what they want so is your answer to the question why do liberal democracies feel stuck is it because we've got the wrong kind of Voters thank you uh and then the lady had a hand up thank you aren't liberal democracies partly stuck because they've become completely mired in identity politics and the problems of the culture War thanks manure um and thanks to the panelists uh so first of all I mean I I thought I'd just say that the are not liberal democracy stuck by Design I mean the point of the liberal democracy isn't really devote someone in is to vote someone out its power is by negation uh it's not just about balances but also checks so that's all one thought the second one is um you know we're seeing when we're talking about them being stuck now I think the context quite clearly is within the anglosphere at least we've seen a lot of political polarity in recent years but a lot of this polarity seems to be a case of one side seeing the other as the disease and themselves as the Cure and vice versa and I wonder when we look at the left I mean um we've you know you've got the progressive left and you've got the sort of new nationalist right the Puritans the nationalists you call them both sides seem to me to be sort of symmetrical symptoms of maybe a shared pathology that is a need of a cure rather than seeing themselves as a disease in the care and so I'm wondering what do you think of that do you think do you think there's uh do you think maybe as a society in general we are misdiagnosing our problems we're thinking each other are the problem maybe we're all symptoms of a deeper problem that is indeed in need of curing thank you okay um I will let the panel come back on the all very good questions um and I'll come back to the audience shortly virtual reality it hasn't taken off people still want real life travel has taken off to actual places with real people another way in which democracies are not stuck if you look at the effort and resources we have put into defending Ukraine whatever your opinion of those policies might be it is a major undertaking of enormous significance and it is happening supported by my country and by yours another piece of data for us not being stuck we've also more or less moved Beyond covid in both of our countries identity politics I'm really not at all a fan of and anyone who knows me would tell you that but it's not our main problem American voters have been moving toward the center it's a kind of stupidity it's very bad in Academia but at the end of the day the main reason democracies are stuck to the extent they are is simply fiscal is not enough money voters don't like taxes being raised and you could say you know it's the fault of the voters all that is true but at the end of the day I don't know any other historical electorate where I'd want to trade in the current electorates for those like the voters historically speaking are pretty good and the partisanship hating each other like that's most of American History it's bad it's terrible you know we moved away from it for 20 25 years we're back to the American historical Norm it's bad whatever let's get on we're actually doing amazing things you seem quite relaxed about universities not not I mean I think when we we spoke the other day you said um you use this phrase workers Peaks which I know that you got a bit of pushbacks yes but not in universities through so little accountability in universities are you worried that universities which are traditionally played a very important role in shaping the future Elites political leaders if universities are uh uh captured by a worldview that you don't agree with does that concern you or do you think that that will also wash through once you get economic growth universities are being out competed by the internet as a source of ideas and the most woke most poorly run majors are all declining in enrollment I don't like the way things are now but it's not going to bring American higher education or British to an end we'll get through it yeah I mean I think look the number of conversations I feel I have with policy makers about identity issues can broadly be counted on the fingers of one hand as tireless as the underlying issue is that we have had sluggish growth things cost money it's difficult to do things if you don't have as much money as you'd like to have I don't think it's only have the wrong voters but look I mean so to take a personal example right I would like it if um we didn't have uh on my way home from home from work every day a visible and mounting problem of rough sleeping I accept that that problem is only going to be tackled by my taxes going up but you know I feel like I'm probably not going to thank the government when I open my tax slip on April of next year yeah like that's kind of the job as that yeah excellent point about how ultimately the point of liberal democracy is they are about they are about managing differences without violence and if you consider that if you consider how well we manage differences without violence in 2022 and think about 1922 or 1822 or 1722 I'm not saying we don't have real problems uh and I think you know it's if I were trying to get elected it's a bad look whenever a politician goes like you think it was bad it's bad now it was worse in the 70s but it is nonetheless true when we're having this kind of conversation to remember than actually one of the reasons why things feel stuck is people quite rightly have higher expectations but the Democratic experiment is doing so much better than any other way we have found of resolving our differences thus far uh and we should you know we should be honest about its problems but we should also have a realistic uh answer about its successes hmm yeah we haven't had a 2022 or grieve have we um I mean I mean I think the identity politics question is is a is an important one I mean I think it's partly a symptom of the of the loss of religion it's a kind of secular replacement for liberalism I think you see that in a lot of perhaps particularly on the left because the left tends to be all secular than the right um You have uh kind of you know quasi-religious attitude in in lots of you know that will there's kind of there's a a you know there's sort of civil rights envies in there um the kind of you know a wish somehow that we were we were still back in the 60s and 70s and we had these sort of great Devils to beat environmentalism is often a sort of kind of um replacement for religion um but I think it's not just Academia where you have um where you have problems I mean it's you know as you know it's also in the you know the higher reaches of the Civil Service I mean quite a lot of you know the blob I mean the blob which was about both mechanistic Civil Service you know rule following but also about a kind of mechanistic liberalism um which is why you know which is why we need Civic future to produce you know better better leaders in the bureaucracy as well great um thanks very much um a bit of an existential crisis that I have um I suppose I'm a kind of a financial services professional um but you could say the same about law Civil Service um you the claim that you made Tyler was that um if you're a kind of conscientious um talented professional within um you should be more optimistic than you ever have been with the rise of AI um there's a and certainly that seems to be hitting the analytical side of things so gpt3 Etc it feels to me like I maybe should be even more pessimistic than ever before because it made me my job will go and so with the rest of stuff what are your thoughts on this broadly I'm an interest in others hi everybody um my name is Eric we started um with this idea that the democracies felt much more confident about their system sort of 30 years ago do you think that maybe something to do with the fact that 30 years ago most of the wealth most of the advanced economies were essentially in Europe and North America and today we have a lot of wealth generated by societies that are either illiberal democracies or straight out authoritarian and so is there essentially an alternative brochure that looks credible to people and how would you think about how the democracies would the liberal democracies would contract that that's a good question and not just on that point uh there's a a US writer uh quite controversial I think Curtis yarvin who suggested that the the the the state infrastructure in the US is so bad the blob is so bad that let's just get rid of everyone and put loads of CEOs from Silicon Valley in charge and the country would be just in a much better place [Laughter] um you can't have hours um we used to um but do you I mean there does seem to be a kind of I mean it might be a marginal movement but it seems to be quite influential on the internet lots of people are saying well you know the thing about democracy is it's impossible you can't get bills through Congress and you know there's all this polarization why don't we just have some really smart people in charge who've run billion pound billion dollar businesses in Silicon Valley yeah I think we do have really smart people in charge whatever that word means I'm not sure anyone is in charge but the quality of the bureaucracy in Washington DC I think is actually pretty good quality of the American Military it's imperfect senators are generally impressive I don't think it's the major problem now on AI I would strongly suggest you learn how to work with it this will be necessary it's probably AI that will teach you how to do that it'll be a big change it'll be very disruptive you might not like it but society as a whole will get through it as we did the internal combustion engine and many other major changes and in terms of you know monarchy and all that I think we need to get used to the idea in a world with the internet every single idea will be expressed will be out there and will have its followers awful ideas terrible ideas great ideas everything there's a group or movement for everything it bugs people because so many of them are terrible but at the end of the day when you look at governance and things we're doing advance of science it looks pretty good to me if you look at Talent if you look at you know the Civic future of your country of my country uh it could be much worse if I think would I rather have the problems of today or the problems of 1960 I do not have to hesitate before answering that question I would much rather have the problems of today but AI is coming for the for the kind of middle and lower ranks of the cognitive class I mean so it's the professionals who should be worried you should see this stuff yeah is that the thing that's change that that's what's changed people have always been poor in Liberal democracies but for the first time the middle classes are feeling poor partly automation China forthcoming AI they're very real issues I don't mean to trivialize them but at the end of it all I as with the Industrial Revolution we will be much better off I I do think maybe are a bit optimistic I mean I feel a little bit pessimistic I don't not in principle but I've spent a bit of time in their Health Service which didn't make me feel very optimistic it made me feel like I was living in the Soviet Union um uh working there in guys Hospital you it's astonishing at the ability for effort to did be dissipated for money to be spent with diminishing returns uh for a service to provide less even though it consumes more and I'm conceived you know maybe the the health service has always been a problem uh it might be atypical but the low growth rates that were all sort of tossing out as if they were incidental those are telling you about a kind of on WE that's occurring where um uh in good ideas are not being put into application where um uh uh bright ideas about what might be is very different from uh delivering those things and at that point it seems to me that we We There is a considerable problem of a a depletion of energy uh a dissipation of decision making uh and a failure of um uh purpose which breeds cynicism which breeds disengagement which breeds dishonesty in in the way that people behave one to another I am I'm well my question is about uh what the impact of the Aging Society is on the way we feel stuck on whether it is the fact that the Baby Boomers have all retired they cost more in healthcare social care pensions and young people other the ones who are getting squeezed in what we do about this aging Society in the UK in America yeah I don't I don't know if this is a similar concern in the US but certainly here there's a very strong sense that young people are paying for all people and it's not fair yeah I know we question I would leave to the British people amongst us I mean in some ways it's a lovely problem to have right yeah I I I've seen other people having heart attacks and I hope it doesn't happen to me right it's you know broadly speaking right and this is why I say it's important to acknowledge and lots of these are problems of success right it was easier to run a health health care System when people keeled over of Heart of heart attacks in their 50s and 60s it's harder when most of us die of overlapping comorbidities and it takes takes a lot the good thing in some ways in the UK is one of the things we do badly is we really don't rate management very highly in fact we're really proud of how few administrators there are in the NHS which seems to me slightly strange that we actively go oh it's great we have these very talented graduates who are effectively doing admin roles and we see this in politics right the last industry where people think that professional development is some kind of thing that we ought to avoid right you see lots of people there very talented but that's how they become selected as MPS but they're maybe they're very bad at managing their parliamentary office and they never get better or they're very bad at asking questions to let committees and they never get better uh and and yeah and you kind of see this like most acutely in the labor party which is built around this idea of having a hundred small unions which find all of their talent for them and when you move to a situation where you have an economy or you basically have 25 large unions oh well suddenly you've got a pipeline problem and I think actually in general one of the things we could do that would make things a lot better in the UK is respect the art of management a bit more and not say it as something that you know no one is born good at managing people right that is a thing that people learn it's a thing that businesses put a lot of energy into getting better at and the stay and the political class in general in the UK spends basically no time at all getting better at we may have a bit of democratic self-correction I think on the I I heard West streeting talking about how we just cannot go on pouring more money into an uh a completely unreformed NHS I mean you know it may be I mean I think there's a huge amount of of of policy consensus actually between the two main parties but having a bit of Nixon to China I mean it may be that labor is actually the only party that can really properly reform the NHS I mean on the Aging Society thing I I think that does contribute to that sense of stuckness I mean you know the fact that we have such small families um it makes us more anxious and narcissistic I'm on a seven um um and I think we should you know narcissist yourself exactly um you know pronatalism you know let's have more babies if we want to feel unstuck should we not focus most of our efforts on technology isn't that the thing that matters most we can bring the cost of energy down to zero robots will become feasible and do all the work we don't want to do biotech will help us live forever AI will play a part in all of that the costs will come down there'll be deflation we can all have loads of kids and everything will be cheap should we not focus most of our efforts on technology I believe some less exaggerated version of that scenario will come about I think it will come first to the anglosphere which is well represented in this room aging is a real issue but if you're asking which or two societies that have shown an ability to take in younger immigrants and Revitalize themselves it's the United States and the United Kingdom and again whether it's technology whatever your concerns may be there have been 30 40 different concerns raised just compare in your mind the two piles the pile of my concerns and the pile of how much talent we have to deal with them the talent pile is winning Civic future is one example of that not the only but a very important example and I'll just tell you all again that on the talent pile okay Stephen I think so history I basically would agree with a less exaggerated version of that as well but history teaches us that the thing we're really bad at is predicting the future history also teaches us that broadly speaking we are better now at most things like it's true than if you know in 1992 people would have been much more confident about liberal democracy but you know in 1982 they were two years away from a nuclear exchange which almost ended the world so you know let's let's let's remember them we have uh you know we've come through difficult times before broadly speaking it is a model that works a lot better than anything we've devised yet maybe one of you is going to invent something better but but until the point where someone invent something which is better at managing conflicts and error Corrections than liberal democracy let's not get too pessimistic about it let's um yeah it's broadly uh and invest in you know getting getting better at things yeah I mean um I mean I think um on the technology front one of the really interesting questions is can we get more technology into elder care one of those you know the sort of Cinderella service of the Care economy we just can't get enough people working in the sector because we pay such you know Dreadful money for it and if we've got you know if we got more technology in that also might bring more men into the sector I mean the care economy is overwhelmingly 85 female um we need more men to to to work in the care sector uh and indeed in in the in the in the private realm um but I think you know we I mean I think a final pessimistic Point um is that the kind of more democratic we get um yet we have these that that creates various forms of stuckness but what it also the more democratic we get the more the greater people's expectations of equality are um and you you know the reality is that we're not all equal the economy requires um you know requires different skills that some are awarded much more than others we have a huge you know in our populations a huge variety of of talents and as the expectation the Democratic expectation of equality Rises and Rises and Rises so does um that the the resentment against the reality of of inequality the unavoidable reality of inequality I'm very conscious that obviously we're having this event in the heart of London if we had this event in a different part of the country the audience may have a very different feeling about how optimistic they should be and um it's great that there's a consensus breaking out here on the stage about the possibility of consensus maybe maybe we will have resolved some of those um those those big debates but I'm uh I have to say having having worked in government having worked on Election campaigns I'm I'm I worried that the public don't share our enthusiasm or our optimism in quite the same way but can I can I just finish a Chairman's chair women's prerogative um to ask um everyone on the panel in Civic future um we are very keen to educate and train people who go into public Life by giving them the kind of the skills and the knowledge and areas like economy and and politics and sociology and so on but we also think that it's important to have a a kind of understanding of the culture that people live in and and our times and I wanted to finish by asking everybody and you've already you've already been told that I'm going to ask you this question so this is not a a difficult thing I hope um but if there's one film or book or piece of art or music that you would recommend uh to a person today who's trying to understand the world that we live in what would it be the William kendridge show at the Royal Society the pulse is on show at the Tate modern and the Lucian Freud show at the National Gallery I've seen them all in the last week they're phenomenal so I'm going to recommend the city of London Stephen something that you that will help help people understand what's going on probably going to recommend this because I'm very embittered at how badly this film did in cinemas and it's on Netflix um so Ali and Ava right it's it's Set uh in in modern Bradford it's beautifully shot but it is also a a rare modern film in the UK made about the North and doesn't pathologize it as this kind of terrible hellscape that everyone wants to escape uh and you know actually shows that Bradley's not like that um yeah yeah it's I think actually if you wanted to capture if you want to understand the diversity and breadth of urban life in all its views uh it is a a rare film that does that in a way that is actually sort of non-you know kind of not sort of very dreary uh it's very good it looks wonderful everyone should see it and yeah again I'm very embittered at how badly it did in cinemas I think because it was marketed as one of those very Twee British films but it's over there again Ali and Ava Ali and Ava okay David um I would recommend as a way of appreciating um the fact that we live in a pretty well functioning democracy watching a brilliant German TV drama called weissen say which was about the transition within East Germany um and um um it's it's a it's got a kind of Romeo and Julia aspect to it um um but it's an absolutely brilliant and it gives such a good insight into um the you know what a foul regime the old um Deutsche Democratic Republic was um and I mean if you have to learn German to watch it that's even better um because you know nothing like learning another language to see the world through you can say that to Nick Gibb who's been encouraging everyone to learn German this week um okay well thank you um a huge thank you to our speakers um I think we can give them a round of applause today

Channel: Civic Future

Views: 8,893

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Id: XJv60Ra388k

Length: 74min 34sec (4474 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2022