Developed nations like the United Kingdom and the United States are experiencing growing radical oppositions and deep divisions between rural communities and bustling urban centers. A severe lack of opportunities plagues poorer communities. Young people have little to look forward to except a bleak job market, while older workers are marginalized as their skills lose value. One of the world's most influential development economists, Paul Collier, tackles these issues in his recent book, The Future Of Capitalism.

In this episode, Paul and Greg talk nationalism vs. patriotism, how personal and national identities have evolved and delve into Paul’s diagnosis of capitalism's failures and ideas for how we can reform it.

Episode Quotes:

What motivated you to shift the focus of your work to the problems of developed countries like Britain and U.S.?

Both the geographic divide of living in this hyper prosperous place of Oxford, and seeing this catastrophe in my town, but also being on this rising ladder of fancy education and then off you go, versus all my relatives who invested in manual skills, the skills of steelworkers. And all their skills evaporated. The pride that they took in their work disappeared. Work disappeared. One of my relatives ended up earning a living cleaning toilets. And so, this astonishing divergence in my life—brought me around to realizing that something needed to be done about that. And it wasn't that it was just happening to a few people/. In both Britain and America, those divergences, the spatial divergence between booming metropolises and broken provincial towns and cities. And that divergence between a hyper educators' success with fancy skills on top, versus manual skills that became worthless. That divide became true of our entire societies in America and Britain. And not just America and Britain, but especially America and Britain.

How can we have more inclusive economic policies and avoid faulty economic models?

We can have mutual respect. It can be a threshold level. Here is the behavior, that is, as long as you're over that threshold of behavior, everybody in the group can respect everybody else. Here is what we're trying to achieve, some common purpose. In order to achieve that common purpose, here's the action we need to do. And those of us who do that action, went over the threshold. We've earned the respect of the community. And being able to do that at grand scale, is at its best what a patriotic society does.

What do people in poor areas really need?

What people in poor places want is not just consumption. They want the dignity of the opportunities to be productive. And for that, we need to transfer not just money, but the opportunities for productivity. And that is good jobs and skills. That is the agenda that actually levels the country spatially.

Time Code Guide:

00:01:00 What motivated you to shift the focus of your work to the problems of developed countries like Britain and U.S.?

00:05:26 Thoughts on the gap between the urban elite and rural residents

00:07:24 Is the breakdown of national identity driving the underinvestment in public goods that we see in our countries?

00:09:47 How the Danes saved the country from being hit dramatically by Covid-19

00:12:05 Do you think people's attitudes towards Covid-19 were really more about signaling self-expression than concerned for the public good?

00:15:01 Why and how is it that economists are often blamed for leading us into this impasse where we need to argue for more inclusive economics?

00:20:00 How come the Marxist model that aims to be positive have had negative effect on the people?

00:28:11 ICI, how their mission shifted from being about chemicals to shareholder gains

00:30:05 How the monitored incentive structure changed the way we work

00:32:23 Why can't ethnicity be a foundation for building a community with mutual obligations and sense of belongingness?

00:36:33 John Rawls and his views on human rights and individual rights

00:40:33 The common purpose that most Britons agree on: drastically narrowing down the differences of opportunities in the society

00:43:04 How can the system create more opportunities and better access in the rural areas?

00:46:23 How can you utilize the insights that you've learned from the failures of development policy to design a workable policy for these poor areas within our developed economy?

00:52:10 Lessons learned from Pittsburgh

Show Links:

Guest Profile

Paul Collier on LinkedIn
Academic Profile on University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government

His Work

The Future of Capitalism: The Growing Gaps and Social Anxieties in Developed Nations feat. Paul Collier

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc