MIT Professor Daron Acemoglu Talks Liberal Democracy

**Carol Massar** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. All right, I'm just going to say it. Settle into a chair if you're in a car. I say this often when we've got somebody spectacular, and we do have somebody spectacular on, because this is going to be a conversation we have been talking about in the newsroom with our team. Everybody's been reading this book, highlighting different things, and so we're delighted to have a very special guest. I want to start there with a quote from his new book just out this week. In the opening of it, the author, I will do the reveal in a moment, community, self-government, economic security, and other concerns relevant to the working class are thus central to the kind of liberal democracy he is advocating.
These notions capture the essence of what the famous English poet and Republican thinker John Milton had in mind when he wrote, They who are greatest are not elevated above their brethren, live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, be spoken to freely, familiarly, familiarly, sorry, friendly without adoration. This is in the introduction, page 28 of a new book out is entitled, What Happened to Liberal Democracy, Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity. It's written by Daron Acemoglu, his economic science noble laureate.
And he is also Institute Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I could go on about his accolades. I have to say, I said this earlier, you were the first person that, my daughter who's now 23, studied economics, I've been doing this for years. When I mentioned that I was reading your book and talking, she was starstruck. And she said from freshman year, she has been reading your research, citing it, citations in all of the work she's doing. And she said, can you please get his autograph? So we are delighted to have you with us.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:51)
You've never said anything, truly you've never said, I've never heard you say anything like that in the six years we've been doing this together.

**Carol Massar** (1:56)
No.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:58)
This is big.

**Daron Acemoglu** (1:59)
With this introduction, I'll come every week.

**Carol Massar** (2:01)
I apologize for kind of rushing and stumbling through, but I just, we are delighted. Thank you.

**Daron Acemoglu** (2:06)
So am I.

**Carol Massar** (2:07)
You've sparked a conversation for us, which is I think part of it. But let's get to, why did you write this book? You write a lot, you do a lot of research. Why this book?

**Daron Acemoglu** (2:15)
Because I think liberal democracy is one of the greatest achievements we've had.
From our ape beginnings and lives in very unequal circumstances, in very uncertain existence, mired by violence. Today, we live in very complex societies, open to ideas with lots of individual freedom. People participate in politics peacefully, reach compromise, sometimes consensus. Moreover, we get lots of things from the government, including our ability to express our voice. That is an amazing achievement. We are, I think, at the cusp of losing it. Liberal democracy, which still, in my mind, is the best framework, definitely something we very much need for the future, is in crisis after decades and decades of actually serving us quite well. We have to understand that crisis and we have to rebuild liberal democracy unless we want to risk losing it.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:15)
We're going to talk about how you think we can rebuild it, I want to just get some parameters set here and do some definitions. Because early on in your book, you talk about the definition of liberalism and how it means different things to different people depending on where you live. The European view versus the American view. Just straighten that out for us right now before we dive into this conversation.

**Daron Acemoglu** (3:35)
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. That's very important. Liberalism has had many meanings over the ages and today it's a big tent. But at the core of it is a commitment to protect individual liberties, also protect the weaker members of society, and also a commitment to progress from which we all benefit.
Those are the defining features of liberal ideas, and they have acted as a rallying cry for people to build a better society. The way that I define it, liberal democracy, is the institutionalization of these ideas. It's carrying them to the actual practice of our lives. And it's been brilliantly successful in the grand scheme of things. We've had decades of very rapid growth under liberal democracy for about four decades following World War II. Those were not just high growth periods, but they were periods in which inequality was remaining stable, or sometimes even declining, every demographic group. Men, women, bi-race, different education groups, they saw their earnings grow very rapidly.