In dozens of provocative essays published on his Substack and cross-posted here, Brink Lindsey has explored what John Maynard Keynes called humanity’s “permanen...
Symbolic Capitalists and "Awokenings", with Musa al-Gharbi
The rightward shift in public opinion that carried Donald Trump back into the White House is being widely interpreted as a backlash against the "Great Awokening" of the past decade -- a surge in radical progressive activism around social justice issues that featured a number of extreme and unpopular positions ("defund the police," "abolish ICE," support for Hamas after the October 7 attacks, etc.). In his new book We Have Never Been Woke, Stony Brook University sociologist and Niskanen Center senior fellow Musa al-Gharbi argues that this is only the latest in a series of "awokenings" over the past century. In each case, he contends, the focus was more on competition within the growing ranks of "social capitalists" (i.e., knowledge workers) than on the plight of the poor and marginalized -- and the net impact consisted more in stoking backlash than in actually driving progress. On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, host Brink Lindsey sits down with al-Gharbi to discuss his new book, reviewing the rise of "symbolic capitalists" to economic and cultural dominance and analyzing the dynamics that have led to the poisonous politics of the present day.
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Abundance and collapse, with Eli Dourado
A new movement is taking shape around the idea of restoring "abundance." Uniting thinkers from across the political spectrum -- including "supply-side progressives," "conservative futurists," and "state capacity libertarians" -- the movement aims to jump-start technological and economic progress by removing artificial constraints on supply and improving the quality of government. On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, Brink Lindsey interviews a leading analyst and advocate of abundance: Eli Dourado, chief economist at the new Abundance Institute and an expert on policy barriers to the emergence of new technologies. Discussing the "great stagnation" in productivity growth, Lindsey and Dourado focus on how most of productivity growth occurs outside the R&D lab, and how therefore broad institutional and cultural factors weigh heavily in determining an economy's overall vitality. Sharing an interest in the work of anthropologist Joseph Tainter, a leading theorist of civilizational collapse, the two also discuss our modern technological civilization's vulnerability to decline and cataclysm -- and how an abundance agenda can reduce that vulnerability.
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Decoding the birth rate decline, with Tim Carney
Birth rates are plummeting around the globe, as half the world's population now lives in countries with sub-replacement fertility rates. Total population is already falling in Japan, Italy, and China, and global population decline looks likely to begin within a few decades. Yet as American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Tim Carney points out in his new book Family Unfriendly, the United States bucked these worldwide trends until relatively recently. As of 2007, the U.S. was above replacement fertility and even trending upwards, but since then births have fallen off sharply. On this episode of the Permanent Problem podcast, Tim Carney joins host Brink Lindsey to discuss why low fertility and population decline are problems worth worrying about, examine the social and cultural trends that are pushing us away from parenthood and family, and take a look at the exceptional places that continue to embrace big families for clues as to how things might turn around.
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Giving gender equality a modern context, with Richard Reeves
Over the past half-century, societies around the world have made great strides in elevating the status of women and expanding their educational and employment opportunities. Much work remains to be done, but now an unexpected complication confronts us on the path toward greater gender equality: at the same time that girls and women have been advancing and making progress, men and boys -- especially those outside the socioeconomic elite -- have started to fall behind. In the U.S., the gender gap in college degrees is wider today than in 1972 when Title IX was passed to promote gender equality on campus -- except now the gap favors women. Men without college degrees have seen slower-rising incomes than any other group, and more and more are dropping out of the work force altogether. Meanwhile, family formation and childbearing are down, in part due to the dwindling supply of "marriageable" men.
On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, Richard Reeves, author of the widely discussed new book Of Boys and Men, joins Brink Lindsey to discuss the contemporary struggles of boys and men and place them in wider context. As Reeves notes, social progress always creates new and unanticipated problems, and facing them constructively is the great ongoing challenge and privilege of life in a free society.
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Rethinking our vision for the future, with Virginia Postrel
What determines our visions of the future, and how those visions change over time? How is politics shaped by conflicting visions of the future? What did the old mid-century vision of a Jetsons-style future get wrong -- and what did it get right that we are now struggling to rediscover? What are the roots of technological pessimism, and how can we encourage the growth of a culture that valorizes scientific and technological advance? On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, author Virginia Postrel (The Future and Its Enemies, The Fabric of Civilization, and more) joins the Niskanen Center's Brink Lindsey to discuss the ongoing and ever-changing struggle between the forces and champions of dynamism and progress and those that favor the status quo or an imagined past.
In dozens of provocative essays published on his Substack and cross-posted here, Brink Lindsey has explored what John Maynard Keynes called humanity’s “permanent problem:” the quest to “live wisely and agreeably and well” with the vast resources and powers that capitalist prosperity has bestowed upon us. That quest, unfortunately, has gone awry in the 21st century.
In Lindsey’s analysis, capitalism is now experiencing a “triple crisis”: a crisis of dynamism, as economic and technological progress had slowed; a crisis of inclusion, as a deep new class divide has opened up along educational lines; and a crisis of politics, our best hope for addressing the other two crises, as the values, norms, and institutions of liberal democracy are now embattled around the world.
Beginning in January 2024, Lindsey started the Permanent Problem podcast to supplement his ongoing essay series. The podcast focuses on capitalism’s triple crisis – and especially on the prospects for defusing the crisis and revitalizing social progress.
Brink Lindsey, the podcast host, is a senior vice president at the Niskanen Center. You can access his essays on “The Permanent Problem” on his Substack and here.
You can find all episodes of the podcast on his Substack, here, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Listen to The Permanent Problem, Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app
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