Yuval Levin on A Time to Build

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🗓️ 2 March 2020

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

Author and political scientist Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute talks about his book A Time to Build with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Levin argues that institutions in America are less trustworthy than they have been in the past. The cause, in Levin's view, is that the participants in these institutions no longer see the institution they are part of as something that molds them and has norms to which the participants conform. Instead, participants view the institution as a platform to gain attention and notoriety. This in turn means that institutions are increasingly unable to perform their primary function as they once did. The conversation concludes with some ideas for how individuals might change how they see their roles within institutions and life as a way of working together in common purpose.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Are you maladressed? Is MaladyContalk.org? We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is February 4, 2020. My guest is author, political scientist Yvall Levin.
0:38.0	He is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
0:44.0	He is editor of National Affairs. His latest book, which is the subject of today's conversation, is A Time to Build.
0:53.0	This is his third appearance on econ talk. He was last here in July of 2016.
0:57.0	You've all welcomed back to econ talk. Thanks very much for having me.
1:00.0	Your book is really a deep, deep look at what is troubling about America today.
1:09.0	And it's probably the first story I've heard, first narrative of what's wrong that actually spoke deeply to me as a possible explanation for why I feel the way I do about the story.
1:21.0	I do, about the state of America, and we're going to get to that.
1:24.0	I want to let you tell that story yourself first, which is that you suggest we've lost trust in our institutions.
1:31.0	Let's start with what you mean by an institution, and then we'll talk about what evidence we have for that loss of trust.
1:38.0	Yeah, well, obviously the term institution is not a simple thing to define.
1:43.0	Such a fundamental thing is inherently going to be difficult to frame.
1:48.0	And if you look at the academic literature on institutions, there are just a vast number of different definitions.
1:54.0	The political scientist Hugh Hecklo about 20 years ago wrote a book where he actually tried to go through these different definitions.
2:00.0	And he stopped when he reached 100 definitions.
2:04.0	But ultimately, a lot of them do fall into a few groups.
	...

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