The free-market century is over

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sean Illing talks with economic historian Brad DeLong about his new book Slouching Towards Utopia. In it, DeLong claims that the "long twentieth century" was the most consequential period in human history, during which the institutions of rapid technological growth and globalization were created, setting humanity on a path towards improving life, defeating scarcity, and enabling real freedom. But... this ran into some problems. Sean and Brad talk about the power of markets, how the New Deal led to something approaching real social democracy, and why the Great Recession of 2008 and its aftermath signified the end of this momentous era. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: J. Bradford DeLong (@delong), author; professor of economics, U.C. Berkeley References: Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong (Basic; 2022) The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek (1944) The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (1944) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1942) "A Short History of Enclosure in Britain" by Simon Fairlie (This Land Magazine; 2009) "China's Great Leap Forward" by Clayton D. Brown (Association for Asian Studies; 2012) What Is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1840) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary Gerstle (Oxford University Press; 2022) Apple's "1984" ad (YouTube) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes (1936) "The spectacular ongoing implosion of crypto's biggest star, explained" by Emily Stewart (Vox; Nov. 18) "Did Greenspan Add to Subprime Woes? Gramlich Says Ex-Colleague Blocked Crackdown" by Greg Ip (Wall Street Journal; June 9, 2007) "Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same," from President Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address (Jan. 27, 2010) "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" by Karl Marx (1852) Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein (Simon & Schuster; 2020) The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing (U. Chicago; 2022) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by: Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If I asked you, what was the most consequential period of time in human history?
0:06.0	What would you say?
0:08.0	Maybe you'd go back to when we first developed tools, or discovered fire,
0:14.0	or maybe you'd look to the agricultural revolution, or even later to the advent of the printing press.
0:20.0	Obviously, lots of events in human history have had massive consequences in shaping the future.
0:27.6	But in terms of the most change, packed into the smallest amount of time,
0:32.6	what if I told you that there was no period more consequential than the period between 1870 and 2010?
0:43.5	I'm Sean Elling, and this is the gray area.
0:50.8	My guest today is Brad DeLong.
0:57.9	He's an economic historian at UC Berkeley.
1:01.2	He also served as assistant treasury secretary during the Clinton administration.
1:05.9	And he's written a wildly ambitious new book called Slouching Towards Utopia.
1:13.9	In it, DeLong calls the period from 1870 to 2010, the long 20th century. And he argues that during that time, almost every aspect of
1:22.2	economic life in the global North totally changed. That kind of complete turnover in a relatively short span of time has no other precedent
1:32.0	in history.
1:33.8	So to start this thing off, I wanted to know what was the world and its economy like
1:38.1	in 1870, a world right before everything was about to change.
1:53.6	Before 1870, there's an awful lot of patriarchy, which means that if you're 50, especially if you're female in 50, and if you don't have surviving sons, you have no social power at all.
1:59.6	So enormous incentives to have surviving sons,
2:03.8	and yet back before 1870,
2:05.9	about a third of humans wind up without them.
2:09.2	What that means is that there are enormous pressures
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.