This episode of Books for Men features an edition of “From the Vault”—a segment where I share an episode from my previous podcast, It's Not What It Seems. This is a great chat I had with Tyler Cowen, author of Stubborn Attachments, The Complacent Class, Talent, and many more. Listen for more! (Original publish date: 11/11/18.) 

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Tyler Cowen and Kelsey Piper cover a range of topics in this fireside chat session.

Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

The last time economist Tyler Cowen was on Honestly about a year ago, inflation was the highest it had been in 40 years, gas prices were nearly $7 a gallon in many parts of the country, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine was leading to a lot of fears about breadlines and nuclear war. A lot has changed since then. Especially in the last two weeks.

Today, Cowen is back on the show to once again explain: what the heck is going on with the economy!? We talk about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the psychology of bank runs, whether or not we’re seeing a larger banking crisis, recession anxiety, persistent inflation, a beleaguered tech industry, the seduction of crypto in this moment and the potential salvation of AI. Plus, how many hours Tyler spends on ChatGPT each day, what he thinks of his interview with Sam Bankman-Fried, how altruism is a form of power and why Silicon Valley is a scapegoat.

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✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the Episode: https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/tyler-cowen-debrief 

------ Tyler Cowen is an American economist, columnist, and blogger. He’s also a professor at George Mason University, where he also produces the Conversations with Tyler podcast with guests like Vitalik Buterin. Marc Andreessen, and Ray Dalio.

In today’s episode, Tyler shares why he thinks regulators should pause and wait before passing crypto regulation in the wake of FTX, how FTX and Enron are similar, why he calls himself a crypto-hopeful (even though he thinks Balaji’s Network State idea is utterly wrong). And finally, we play Tyler's favorite game—Overrated vs. Underrated—about everything relevant in 2023: Crypto AI, Inflation, America, China, Social Media, Wealth Inequality, and more.

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https://bankless.cc/CTCpodcast 

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------ Topics Covered

0:00 Intro 6:10 Tyler’s 2023 Crypto Thoughts 6:50 Why Crypto is Confusing 9:04 Is Crypto Overrated? 10:25 Is Crypto Worth it? 12:19 Regulation 19:33 On-Chain Privacy, Taxes, Surveillance 24:00 FTX vs. Enron 27:35 Wealth Inequality 32:05 Crypto Regulation vs. Innovation 34:48 Can the U.S. Choke Crypto? 36:24 Crypto vs. the Internet 37:56 Whose at Fault for FTX? 40:00 Crypto Self-Regulation 45:16 A.I. Regulation 46:46 A.I.’s SBF Moment? 48:05 Is the Future Closer than it Appears? 50:31 Human Self-Regulation 51:16 Economists & Crypto 53:20 Vitalik 54:16 Free Markets & Greed 55:21 Overrated vs. Underrated 1:00:24 Balaji’s Network State 1:01:47 Banks 1:02:15 Closing & Disclaimers

------ Resources:

Tyler on Twitter https://twitter.com/tylercowen 

Tyler’s Blog https://marginalrevolution.com/ 

Tyler’s Podcast https://conversationswithtyler.com/ 

Beware the Dangers of Crypto Regulation https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/beware-the-dangers-of-crypto-regulation/2023/01/03/27f6f31a-8b63-11ed-b86a-2e3a77336b8e_story.html 

----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA should help Tyler Cowen publish his drafted book in China, published by Matt Brooks on January 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Tyler Cowen was on the Jan 9th episode of ChinaTalk, a podcast hosted by Jordan Schneider.
Podcast:
China Talk Substack:
At 39:45 Tyler mentions writing a book to improve US relations with China that will likely never be published. We should help him publish it!Edit: Tyler is interested although worried about censorship
I transcribed this part of the podcast with Whisper, so there may be mistakes. Go listen to the entire episode anyway, it’s worth a listen.
Transcription
JordanSo shortly, millions of Chinese nationals who've been playing World of Warcraft their entire lives will no longer be able to. I'm curious, how important shared cultural touchstones, like video games, the NBA and Marvel movies are to keeping the peace?
Tyler
I don't know, we had plenty such touchstones with, say, Germany before World War I, World War II, it didn't matter. But certainly worth trying, you know, I had my own project to improve relations with China, which failed, by the way. I wrote a manuscript for a book, and my plan was to publish it only in China. And it was a book designed to explain America to the Chinese, and make it more explicable, more understandable. So I wrote the book, I submitted it to Xinhua, which gave me a contract, even paid me in advance. But then a number of events came along, most specifically the Trump trade wars, and the book never came out. They're still sitting on it. I don't think it will ever come out. That was my, you know, you could call it, misguided project, to just do a very small amount to help the two countries get along better.
Jordan
Wow, what were your, what were your themes?
Tyler
Well, if you think of Tokvill, he wrote democracy in America, so that Europeans would understand America better, right? So I thought, well, if we're trying to explain America to Chinese people, it's a really very different set of questions, especially in the 21st century. Though I covered a lot of basic differences across the economies, the policies, why are the economies different?
Why is there so little state ownership in America?
Why are so many parts of America so bad at infrastructure?
Why do Americans save less?
How is religion different in America?
That was, I think, an especially sensitive topic. And just try to make sense of America for Chinese readers, but not defending it. Just some kind of, all of branch of understanding. Here's how we are. And I don't know. I don't think they'll ever put the book out. And of course, by now, it's out of date.
Jordan
Yeah, but there's, I mean, there's plenty of other people. Other like countries on the planet who could use a little, you know, a civics 101.
Tyler
They could. I mean, this is a book written for Chinese people with the contrasts and data comparisons to China. So to sort of send the same book to, you know, Senegal, I don't think would really make sense.
Jordan
Yeah, but if you publish it in the US, it will like, you know, Osmos out. I don't think it needs to be published by Xinhua for Chinese people to read it, Tyler.
Tyler
I've thought of having it translated into Chinese distributed Somersault in some way. Haven't ruled that out. No downside for me, but you want to do things right. And I kept on waiting for Xinhua. And now I've really completely given up. The book is out of date with facts. That's not a big problem. Facts you can update, but it's very out of date with respect to tone. So right now, everyone feels you need to be tough with China. You can't sort of say nice things to China about China, you're pandering. You look like LeBron James or you're afraid to speak up. And the book would have made a lot of sense, say in 2015 that its current tone doesn't make sense in ...

Release date: 2023-01-13

Notes from The Valmy:

Source: YouTube https://youtu.be/ZzV7ty1DW_c
Release date: 2022-12-15