I think people nominally have never been more attached to self-transformation, but the actual

willingness to take the risks it entails probably is lower. We want to be able to control

everything, and we want self-transformation but on our own terms. And that's a somewhat dubious

prospect.

That was Tyler Cowan, an economist, a best-selling author, a podcaster, a prolific blogger,

and a professor at George Mason University.

And I probably could have actually made that rather imposing list even longer.

One wonders how he finds the time to excel at all

of these things, but remarkably he does. I originally came to Tyler's work through his

2013 book, Average is Over, an incredibly insightful book about the future of work and careers,

and why being good enough at your job just isn't, well, good enough anymore.

From there, I started reading his excellent blog, Marginal Revolution, where he posts daily

on everything from economic theories to what he's reading, to why George Orwell is overrated.

But the focus of this conversation will be his latest work, the complacent class,

a book that completely changed the way that I think about risk-taking

and what it means to be an American.

In a nutshell, the book argues that due to trends in technology, job prospects, and gentrification,

Americans are being lulled into complacency, that as a culture and as individuals,

we are less dynamic, less restless, and most important, less risky than we used to be.

And the most worrisome part is we don't even know it.

To articulate why this aversion to risk is emerging and begin

to understand how we might push back against it, Tyler and I get into how matching technologies,

...