The Secret To Finding Great Talent - Tyler Cowen

There is much more talent to tap into than ever before, but in most parts of the world, we are screwing it up. So we require too much seniority for too many different jobs. There is too much credentialism. Our school feeder systems rely too much on homework, and this discriminates against rebellious people. And just in general, we're too slothful and bureaucratized when it comes to choosing talent. (airplane wind noise)

Tyler Cowen, welcome to the show.

Happy to be here.

I've just read a blog post from Mike Solana at PirateWires talking about population collapse. Have you read this one yet?

Uh, no, I have not, but I- I think I've heard that kind of argument before.

So he's got this great, uh, idea. I'm big into existential risk, have been for a long time, and he makes a really interesting argument about the great filter, Robin Hanson's thing, he says, "From this perspective, Elon's efforts are an obvious attempt to eliminate potential filters that threaten a blossoming civilization, like runaway climate change, nefarious artificial intelligence, or being stuck on Earth during a cataclysmic event. But among our greatest existential threats, population collapse is unique in that it lacks a noticeable immediate pain for us to rally against. There are no wildfires or smog-filled skies to capture the imagination of our journalists or filmmakers, thus inspiring no individual action. It is precisely because of this attention void that I believe we encounter the true great filter." What do you think about that?

I'm much more optimistic than Mike is. We have at least two countries, France and, and England, if you consider that a country, where fertility has returned to replacement levels. Now, that may or may not last, but I find that very encouraging, that it's possible. I think also we will have new technologies that lower the costs of raising children, and just theoretically, there are gains from trade from having more kids. Now the question is, can people selfishly capture the gains from more children? But I'm convinced that over time, especially if nation-states truly start to shrink, become vulnerable to foreign exploitation and capture, that we will find ways to get population numbers back up again. So people freaked out about this in the 1920s. It turned out they were wrong. Eventually, they'll be wrong again.

Well-

Maybe not in Singapore, but for the world as a whole.

(laughs) What do you think has caused that at least population slow?

There are things to do that are more fun than having kids. And then you have a number of cultures, uh, South Korea and Italy would be two examples, where the men just don't help out that much on raising the children. So women think, "Well, I would like to have a child. One is enough," and they stop. It's a real problem, I agree. But ultimately, we know the technology, unlike with some of these other problems, right? The technology is fun, and we will fix it.