84 | Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2020

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nations generally want their economies to be rich, robust, and growing. But it’s also important to person to ensure that wealth doesn’t flow only to a few people, but rather that as many people as possible can enjoy the benefits of a healthy economy. As is well known, the best way to balance these interests is a contentious subject. On one side we might find free-market fundamentalists who want to let supply and demand set prices and keep government interference to a minimum, while on the other we might find enthusiasts for very strong government control over all aspects of the economy. Suresh Naidu is an economist who has delved deeply into how economic performance affects and is affected by other notable social factors, from democracy to revolution to slavery. We talk about these, as well as how concentrations of economic power in just a few hands — monopoly and its cousin, monopsony — can distort the best intentions of the free market.

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Suresh Naidu received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently professor of economics and international affairs at Columbia University as well as a fellow at Roosevelt Institute, external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and a research fellow at National Bureau of Economic Research. His awards include a Sloan Research Fellowship and the “Best Ph.D. Advisor Award” from the Columbia Association of Graduate Economics Students.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.
0:02.9	I'm your host Sean Carroll and today we're talking about economics.
0:07.3	Economics has always seemed like a funny field to me.
0:09.3	I mean the one hand, it can be extremely mathematical, precise, rigorous theorems are proven.
0:14.7	On the other hand, it's extraordinarily relevant to the messiness of everyday life.
0:19.2	And there's this ongoing tension between the pristine mathematics and the messiness of
0:24.6	reality.
0:26.1	Furthermore, in the United States at least right now, people are wondering about what
0:30.3	kind of economics we should have.
0:33.0	Of course capitalism, I don't think it's possible to deny that capitalism has done good things.
0:39.0	We have had enormous growth over the last several hundred years.
0:42.6	On the other hand, it's also impossible to deny that unchecked capitalism can be extremely
0:47.4	deleterious.
0:48.8	We need a social safety net, etc.
0:51.3	Some people even here in the US are looking at controlled economies like they have in China
0:56.2	with a little bit of envy.
0:58.4	There's a lot to be skeptical about in the economic performance of the US right now.
1:03.5	On the one hand, the stock market and GDP is growing.
1:06.6	On the other hand, we have more inequality than we've had in a long time.
1:11.3	On the one hand, unemployment is low, but on the other hand, there's a lack of really
1:15.7	good jobs.
1:16.7	It's easy to get a job, but not one that really earns you a living wage.
	...

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