Last month Edmund Santurri of St. Olaf College’s Institute for Freedom and Community interviewed me on “Freedom, Populism, and Big Tech.” The format was highly unconventional, and I liked it. There was no lecture. Instead, Santurri and St. Olaf students asked me a bunch of questions about a bunch of blog posts, especially this one. Santurri kicked off the conversation by asking me a few broad questions. Then he aired pre-recorded video questions from students, and relayed questions people sent him during the live event. I was on this “hot seat” for 90 minutes straight, and most of the questions were novel. Overall, a great experience.
Watch the full video.
Update: Organizer Ed Santurri sent me the following comments, reprinted with his permission:
Bryan,
Just saw this.
https://www.econlib.org/a-conversation-on-freedom-populism-and-big-tech/
For the record, I was asking devil’s advocate questions. The remark about my being a fan of the New York Times is a real stitch. I have some reservations about the turn the Times has taken lately.
But my role is to put questions that any number might put.
Anyway, thanks for posting.
Ed
READER COMMENTS
Max Räuker
May 10 2021 at 1:46pm
Really enjoy your interviews!
I understood your argument against breaking up bigger news corporations as:
1) the demand won’t change, we’ll just see smaller corporations doing a slightly worse job, and
2) the same people with the same biases will work for the new corporations.
I suspect a few factors that spontaneously lead me to expect more news diversity:
– “protecting the brand” gets more resources in bigger orgs
– more firms -> dividing up the audience in more niches
– anecdotes of Substack freeing writers from the reign of the editors (e.g. Matt Yglesias from Vox)
Ethan
May 10 2021 at 4:33pm
I am glad you are out there espousing this view Bryan.
Couple thoughts I had:
The interviewer mentioned the need for discourse in a democracy. I assume this means that he preferred a world where the NY Times was the most powerful newspaper in the world, and only the gatekeepers at large media organizations got to decide the discourse? Strange that we live in a time when I can attend a college lecture series from a university, that am not even sure where it is located, and yet there is problem with media freedom.
Not only can one avoid the website that does not have your views by leaving social media, but there are also other social media options. Many many other options. Essentially every website now has a comments section. The barriers to entry are so low to create a website, so start a blog.
The questions about surveillance capitalism are striking to me. If you are using an Alexa, or Siri, you know that they are tracking you. There is no more hiding it. You just choose the convenience of the tracking. I have gotten rid of all devices. While I am far from anonymous, I have rid myself of many of these devices, and websites that only provide you a service so they can use your data. Consumers know what the trade-off is and they make it in droves. If you did not want to make that trade-off, you could do one days research on a new phone and apps, and be free. But people won’t do it. So what world do people imagine where all of sudden, big tech will move away from that model as long as consumers still want it.
David Henderson
May 10 2021 at 5:57pm
Great, great interview. I watched the whole thing, something that is rare for me when the conversation exceeds 20 minutes.
My favorite two parts:
About 39:00. I was attached on Twitter and I didn’t even know. I had something similar. Justin Wolfers, whom I got to like when we debated lockdowns in April 2020, attacked me about a year or so earlier, but did so without using my middle initial. So I didn’t even know about it. I’m glad about that because I might not have been as nice to him in our debate had I known.
1:26:20: Actually inspiring. The world is your oyster, young man. Go out and enjoy it.
Jerry Brown
May 10 2021 at 6:58pm
That was very interesting. Thank you for making that Question and Answer session available.
Several times you dismiss concerns about businesses as fairly trivial problems and question whether the students should be wasting their time worrying about relatively small issues since there is a chance that there could be a nuclear war and maybe they should worry about that instead. Well, I think you are right that a nuclear war would really be a large issue. The only other nuclear war was a gigantic issue all things considered. Even though the nuclear part of it happened only at the very end of it and was quite limited in that only two atomic bombs existed at the time.
But I disagree with the idea that people should dismiss concerns about business just because there are also other really terrible things that could and can and do happen. Just because the worst thing that happened to you was that your account was hacked does not mean there haven’t been worse things that have happened to many others as a result of business trying to turn a profit while neglecting the safety of others.
There have been plenty of industrial ‘accidents’ that have killed and injured people who have no connection to the company involved. I think of Bhopal and Union Carbide Corporation. There is also plenty of history of companies denying their products caused harm to their customers or employees, such as cigarette companies and asbestos product manufacturers, even after there was clear evidence they knew quite well they caused harm. Plenty of companies that just plain polluted the environment as a matter of course because not doing so would mean lower profits. Harms and deaths due to this type of thing might well be larger than what the US government has managed to cause through wars and such.
But I would agree with you that Facebook and Twitter and such are relatively minor problems in the scheme of things.
mark
May 30 2021 at 4:12pm
Right. Though one has to be our age (I presume) to remember Bhopal. Older to remember cigarettes/ads without any kind of health warnings. What these kids (+ my daughter) ramble on about … actually there are substantial positive externalities to the higher CO2-level we have today and the higher temperatures ( Matt Ridley The greening of the planet / or just think “homeless in winter”) .
Bhopal: yes. On the other hand China, CCCP, GDR are/were much “better” on putting poison in air/water/earth/bodies by design than UCD did by accident. I have been in Bitterfeld. And in Chelyabinsk. Drunk vodka. Did not smoke Belomorkanal-papirossy.
btw: Bryan, all”geo-engineering” is anathema for the green folks. It would pause climate-change, even cheaply? May be. But it would keep that evil CO2 in the air, that would still “acidify the oceans” “bleach and kill coral reefs”. Probably true. But much worse: it might keep evil consumerism/capitalism alive. And better not suggest “nuclear power” to a German audience. Ever! We need to ban short-haul-flights and gas-driven cars. Now! How dare you …. disagree?! omg
Henri Hein
May 13 2021 at 2:04am
I got a chance to watch this today. I agree with David, great interview.
I was curious why so many of the students recording questions on video were wearing masks. It seems it should be fairly easy to create distance around a short recording like that. The mask only degrades the quality of sound, and not being able to watch the mouth of the speaker makes it worse.
About global warming, another government policy we could reform are subsidies for the oil and coal industries. That seems like a no-brainer first order of business, yet I never hear it suggested.
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