Tyler Cowen

There's not a bestselling book complaining about the community banks.

And they are like ruthless and powerful and get their way.

And I'm not gonna tangle with them.

And you all here are so far from that.

In part because you're dynamic and you're clustered.

Well, our main concern always should be war.

And I don't have any grand theory of what causes war or if such a theory ever is possible.

But I do observe in history that when new technologies come along, they are turned into instruments of war.

And some terrible things happen.

You saw this in 17th century England.

You saw this with electricity and the machine gun.

Nuclear weapons is a story and process.

And I'm not sure that's ever going away.

So my main concern with progress is progress and war interact.

And it can be in good ways, like the world, a la Steven Pinker, has had relative peace.

That's fraying at the edges in the data.

The numbers are now moving the wrong way.

But it's still way better than most past time periods.

And we'll have to see where that goes.

But there might be a ratchet effect where wars become more destructive.