In this Reason TV interview, host Matt Welch talks with economist Tyler Cowen about his new book Create Your Own Economy. Cowen argues that the internet has shifted economic power to individuals, turning attention into a scarce resource and allowing people to craft personal “streams of meaning” that generate value outside traditional market transactions. He contends that material wealth is less tied to happiness than before, as abundant goods reduce the need to earn money. A major sub‑theme of the book is neurodiversity: Cowen re‑frames autism, ADD and dyslexia as cognitive strengths that thrive in the information‑rich, attention‑driven economy. He then critiques the Obama administration’s fiscal policy, warning that excessive spending and a politicized stimulus process risk long‑term economic decline. Cowen reflects on his interactions with liberal bloggers, noting a growing marginalization of market‑oriented ideas among progressives post‑inauguration. Finally, he emphasizes the web as a bulwark against tyranny, arguing that an unregulated information economy offers a protective space for individual freedom and entrepreneurial spirit.
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Hi, I'm Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, and I'm tickled to be joined today by Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, well-known blogger at The Marginal Revolution, contributor to The New York Times, among other things, and proud papa this week of a brand spankin' new book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. Tyler, thanks for joining Reason TV.
Happy to be here.
Tell us a bit about the basic thesis of Create Your Own Economy. Who should be creating their own economy and why?
In broadest terms, I view this as a book about the power of the individual, the importance of individual liberty, and how we can all create our own liberties essentially by using the web in the information economy. To create streams of meaning. We draw disparate bits from YouTube, from blogs, from news websites, and to the outsider, it doesn't really look like very much noble is going on, but it's full of suspense, it's full of narrative, it keeps us interested, and it's a lot more fun than a lot of the culture of the past. And part of what my book does is explains and celebrates what I see as a new world order.
And you're drawing a distinction here between sort of purely economically measured activity and commerce and more of people's personal experience that might not necessarily have a transaction associated with it.
It's a very different kind of economic problem. It's one about filtering. In some ways, scarcity is gone. You're potentially overwhelmed by how much there is to draw from. It's an economy of attention, not just an economy of spending money.
And you, uh, say that there's some kind of difference, the connection between material wealth and happiness now, partially through the internet or partially through, I presume, economic gains, is less than ever before. Can you tease that out a little bit?
Well, due mostly to the prosperity of capitalism, people like you and I can be just fantastically happy. Like I said to you—
Speak for yourself, pal.
—before this session, it's quite plausible that you are happier than Bill Gates. Yeah. You have penicillin, you ride on jet planes, you have your own car— maybe not living in Washington— but you could. And life for you can be extraordinarily fun. And all this free stuff there now also means the need to earn money is in some ways weaker than it was even just 10 years ago.
Um, talk a little bit about the concept of neurodiversity and the celebration of that. I take it that's a major sort of sub-theme in the book.
Explain that a little bit. By neurodiversity, we simply mean the notion that people are born with different neurological wiring. One of the key themes in the book is to focus on autism and the notion that autistics tend to be what I call "infowars." They love to gather, process, order information. And one of the points I make in the book is that we in a society are becoming more like this ourselves. So I'm saying in some ways we are mimicking autistics, and I'm saying this is a good thing. So part of the book is this radical reinterpretation of autism, not seeing it just as disorder but that there are a lot of positive cognitive strengths in people who are autistic.
Is this semi-related to, you know, everyone says that we're a much more ADD kind of culture now, and attention spans are very difficult. Is that something that we should embrace or sort of be more aware of?
Well, ADD is another example of a phenomenon that's usually called just a disorder, but there's actually growing evidence that a lot of people with what might be ADD or something like ADD do extraordinarily well. There was one study that found that entrepreneurs were especially likely to have dyslexia. Having dyslexia makes you very good at delegating responsibility. And it's possible that a lot of people with ADD, they use what is supposedly a disorder— they use it as a way of channeling their attention to actually consume information faster and more efficiently. So I'm not saying that everything about ADD is necessarily desirable, or that people don't have various problems, but that the neurodiversity of the human race is very much an underappreciated asset. And that's part of the theme of the book, tying back to the power of the individual and our right and privilege to be different.
Shifting gears just a little bit, since you're a professor of economics and a frequent commentator on matters of economics, you engage a lot, especially I think with people on the left side of the spectrum, liberal bloggers and other types of people. How do you assess, and what are your sort of hopes and fears right now of the Obama administration's approach towards economic policy and the kind of overall climate in the country for receiving or talking about economic policy? I'm terrified about the budget.
I think we're spending far too much money. We can't afford it. I think the downturn will last quite some time. And what concerns me most is this way of doing business where interest groups, companies are expected to be on board with the program or they are cut out from the negotiating table. To me, this is an extremely worrying development, and even the left will come to regret this sooner or later. And I think it's a terrible, crushing development in our political culture. It's hardly new, it goes back a long time, but we're seeing more of it today than ever before. And a lot of people on the left who otherwise advocate for free speech or accountability in government They're pretty much silent. So to me, there are, there were some disturbing trends. There are many things I like about President Obama. I think he's a smart guy. I think he wants to do a good job. I think he's very sensible on a lot of matters, but on fiscal policy, we are absolutely headed off a cliff and we're not doing anything to stop it.
You interact, as I said before, with a lot of liberal bloggers and engage in dialogues. My very crude impression of some of that conversation is that libertarians and free market advocates were certainly interesting and useful for a lot of those people during the Bush administration, and that there's been some intents and effects when discussing especially Obama's economic policy to suddenly marginalize the same people that they were engaging with before. Is that just me being defensive? What would you see as sort of the relationship between those camps in post-inauguration, let's say?
Well, the people I know personally are still as nice to me as they ever were, so I don't have any complaint. Is the world out there as a whole marginalizing market-oriented economics? I think so. There's a sense of the Democrats rule Congress and hold the presidency, they can just do what they want, but everyone's waking up and like, hey, this isn't true. Those new Democrats who were just elected are still coming from conservative districts And what I see very coming is this massive angst amongst progressives, like, "We have power, what do we do with it now? We can't make it work, heaven forbid. We need more stimulus, we need more everything. We can't blame it all on the Republicans now." And I think this is their intellectual crisis in a way, just like for a lot of us the financial crisis was hard for us to explain or deal with.
What's your biggest hope going forward about the individual being able to create their own economy and how that might change society and, and, uh, and, you know, international economics, for lack of a better word.
Well, I think the web and the new information economy, it's one potential very strong protection against tyranny. Because tyranny can control your education, can control your healthcare, can take away a lot of your tax money. But for the most part, tyranny finds it hard to control what you visit on the web and what you say on the web. China tries. To some extent they succeed. There's still plenty of shadow websites and other ways to get to places where people want to go. So it's one of our bulwarks of freedom today, and I think it ought to be appreciated as such. It's a largely unregulated economy. It has some problems, it has some excesses, but it's somewhere you can go where truly the competitive capitalistic spirit reigns.
Well, in a nod to the YouTube economy, we're gonna cut this off before the 10-minute mark, but thank you very much, Tyler Cowen. And for Reason TV, I am Matt Welch.
