Tyler Cowen

England has a lot of competition from the Dutch Republic, France, happening at the same time that for the first time in human history that I know of,

We have sustained economic growth, according to Greg Clark, starting in the 1620s, of about 1% a year.

And that is compounding again.

Slow numbers, but compounding.

And England is the place that gets the compounding at 1%, starting in the 1620s.

And somehow they go crazy, civil war, kill the king, all these radical ideas.

Libertarianism comes out of that, which I really like.

John Milton, John Locke.

Also this brutal conquest of the new world, like very good and very bad coming together, and I think it should be seen as these set of processes where very good and very bad come together, and we might be in for a dose of that again now, soon.

I mean, you try at the margin to nudge toward the better set of things, but it's possible that all the technical advances that recently have been unleashed, now that the great stagnation is over, which of course include AI, will mean another crazy period.

It's quite possible.

I think the chance of that is reasonably high.

most underrated cult, Progress Studies?

That's right, I was at an EA meeting and I said, you know, hey everyone, this is as good as it gets.

Enjoy this moment.

It's all basically gonna fall apart.

You're still gonna have some really significant influence, but you won't feel like you have continued to exist as a movement.

That's what I said.

And they were shocked.

They thought I was insane.