Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite

**Tyler Cowen** (0:04)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm honored to be sitting here with Daron Acemoglu. He is, of course, Nobel laureate in economics, arguably the best published and by some measures the best cited economist in the world. But most importantly, he has a new book out, What Happened to Liberal Democracy. This is a major work. I think of it as an attempt to redefine and revitalize liberalism for our current times. Daron, welcome.

**Daron Acemoglu** (0:56)
Thank you, Tyler. It's my pleasure. And thanks for that wonderful introduction, which gets to the heart of the matter. That's exactly what my ambition is with the book. Whether it will succeed, that's much more questionable.

**Tyler Cowen** (1:08)
I like to start with an oblique question. So what is your main objection to social contract theories and contractarianism?

**Daron Acemoglu** (1:15)
Okay. So that's like jumping into the book, but that's part of how I try to think of an alternative to the current conceptualization of liberalism, which I believe relies too much on social contract theories. And in my mind, social contract theories try to circumvent a key question, which is that we need to build consensus around shared moral values and shared priorities.
And in their place, contractarian ideas put in some sort of absolute truths that we are supposed to agree on philosophical grounds. That's a too extreme a view or too extreme way of putting it, but I think it fits the sort of the Rousseau end of it, and then the other ones are adjacent to it, not exactly as strict as the Rousseau end, but the Rousseau's general will, for example, overrides any kind of consensus that a community, for example, could have, because the general will is defined to have precedence over any kinds of agreements or share moral values or share priorities. And I think by doing that, liberalism avoids asking some of the hard questions, for example, how to deal with intolerance or how to deal with different views than its own, especially those that challenge it.

**Tyler Cowen** (2:35)
The Richard Rorty had a consensus-based defense of liberal democracy. Is your view the same as his? Are there some metric along which it's different? Are you more objectivist in some way?

**Daron Acemoglu** (2:45)
I wouldn't say it's more objectivist. I think my commitment in my mind has always been that it's impossible for us at any point in time, not just to know what's really the absolute truth, but also to have a clear map of what is the right stance. In the same way that I think many people would agree, science makes gradual and sometimes uncertain progress towards some better understanding. I think morally, philosophically, we also have to have gradual, uncertain evolution towards what we agree on. Objectivism in some sense is too strict.

**Tyler Cowen** (3:26)
But say we're not evolving toward greater agreement.

**Daron Acemoglu** (3:29)
No, sometimes you go back.

**Tyler Cowen** (3:31)
But today, it seems we're not evolving toward greater agreement.

**Daron Acemoglu** (3:34)
We're not, absolutely not.
I think you can blame that on reactions to globalization, reactions to technology, better authoritarian challenges. But I think, and this is the most uncomfortable part because I see myself firmly within the left liberal tradition. But 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. But 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. But it did not use that establishment power just 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 a sort of an interregnum period in which ideas are battling against. 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're going through a period like that, except that I think there are really many more confusing ideas out there.

**Tyler Cowen** (4:58)
But say when we're not evolving toward greater consensus, what's the external standard you introduce to judge which are the correct ideas and which not? Because, Rorty, you need one though. I don't have one.