Arnold Kling on Knowledge, Power, and Unchecked and Unbalanced

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2010

⏱️ 67 minutes

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Summary

Arnold Kling of EconLog and author of Unchecked and Unbalanced, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the relationship between knowledge and power. In a modern economy, specialization has increased and knowledge is increasingly dispersed. But political power has become more concentrated and fails to exploit the potential for decentralization. Kling discusses these trends and the potential for decentralization of power under different policies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ
0:13.4	Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:18.7	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on
0:24.5	this podcast, and find links to other information related to today's conversation.
0:29.9	Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.3	Today is September 1, 2010, and my guest is Arnold Kling. Arnold blogs at Econ Log, part
0:44.6	of the Library of Economics and Liberty. His latest book is Unchecked and Unbalanced,
0:49.3	how the discrepancy between knowledge and power caused the financial crisis and threatens
0:53.7	democracy. Arnold, welcome back to Econ Talk.
0:56.1	How good to be here, Russ. What is the discrepancy between knowledge and power that is the focus
1:02.0	of your book? The idea is that knowledge has become increasingly specialized and dispersed,
1:10.2	but power is becoming increasingly concentrated. That's the discrepancy.
1:15.1	And why is that important? Well, as we've I'm sure discussed many times
1:20.5	on this program, the markets allow for dispersed knowledge to be aggregated. This is high
1:29.8	X story, so that information flows into prices and markets work that way. So that if knowledge
1:38.7	is becoming increasingly dispersed, that would suggest that you would want to have more
1:43.7	social transactions mediated by markets. And yet, we have this oddity that political
1:51.5	power is becoming more concentrated, and perhaps we're having more transactions mediated
1:57.4	by central planning. And if that's true, then that discrepancy should be causing inefficiency
2:06.6	and just general dissatisfaction.
2:09.4	Well, let's start by talking about the dispersion of knowledge. It's a really fascinating part
2:14.1	of the book and your observations on specialization. So you confess this isn't an easy thing to
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