Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism

Tyler Cowen interviews Daron Acemoglu: 

COWEN: Today, it seems we’re not evolving toward greater agreement, right?

ACEMOGLU: We’re not. Absolutely not. I think you can blame that on reactions to globalization, reactions to technology, better authoritarian challenges. This is the most uncomfortable part because I see myself firmly within the left liberal tradition. I think it’s partly because of the failure of left liberalism. In some sense, if you think of why did Rome fail or collapse, we can tell a story about the barbarians were really too strong. No, really, Rome collapsed because internally it had problems that opened up weaknesses against outside invaders as well as some inside problems.

It’s the same with left liberalism. I think it became quite influential throughout much of the Western world and some of the emerging economies as well over the last 70, 80 years. It did not use that establishment power in the right way, creating its own weaknesses that made it much more vulnerable to outside attacks. That’s why I think we are now going back because we are at an interregnum period in which ideas are battling again. In some sense, it’s just like the early 19th century where you had all these very different ideas and they were trying to get a toehold in the imagination of people. I think we are going through a period like that, except that there are really many more confusing ideas out there.

Later Cowen asks why the educated shouldn't just make all the decisions. 

ACEMOGLU: Liberalism's crisis is related to the rise of a post-industrial economy in which what you just called the educated elite has become both much more powerful and more numerous, and a philosophical shift that gave more and more priority and power to the educated elite. Whether you approach that from the left liberal point of view or from more of a right liberal point of view, that’s problematic in my mind.

We cannot have true freedom and true flourishing of a population when there is a clear hierarchy, whether it is by education, it is by race, it is by income. Just empowering the elite in that way is not going to cut it. . . . One challenge, which I mentioned in passing, and perhaps I should have done more in the book on this, is how do you utilize and respect expertise without creating the wrong kind of technocracy that is insular and too self-confident and, frankly, looking down upon the rest? Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve created in the United States and Europe, and that’s what working-class liberalism has to avoid.

Acemoglu also makes an interesting point reconciling his belief in free speech with his advocacy for the regulation of social media:

In my opinion, again, we shouldn’t limit free speech, but we should still regulate social media. The way that I think about this is the following. We should let individuals say whatever they want. Once social media can build very complex algorithms that human nature could not have anticipated, and we are evolutionarily not very well prepared, and they can almost weaponize certain types of statements, I think that’s no longer free speech.

I would comment that finding a balance betweeh democracy and reliance on elite expertise has proved to be one of our hardest problems.