SYLVIE DOUGLIS, BYLINE: NPR.
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CARDIFF GARCIA, HOST:
Hey, everyone. Stacey and Cardiff here. This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY.
Back in 2011, economist Tyler Cowen published a book called "The Great Stagnation." The book was about productivity growth, which is an indicator that measures economic progress, innovation, efficiency. And what Tyler argued in that book was kind of a bummer.
TYLER COWEN: I argued the rate of progress is slowing down, productivity growth had been much slower. In the early 20th century, everything changed, right? Radio comes, cars come, airplanes come, antibiotics, clean water. In the last 50 years, well, things have gotten better. Cars are safer. They have better sound systems. But it's basically still a car. So our society has not been advancing as quickly as it had been, say, for my grandmother.
STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST:
But that was back in 2011. Tyler is now becoming more hopeful that the great stagnation - this period of slow progress - is ending - maybe.
GARCIA: Tyler is cautiously hopeful because we are increasingly finding new ways to apply technologies that scientists and businesses have been working on for decades. And as an example, he points to the fact that we got a COVID vaccine in just nine months - a record for the development of a vaccine.
COWEN: And furthermore, it turns out in Moderna, the vaccine itself was designed within two days due to advanced computational techniques. It is a sign that progress has been brewing in a way that we, ourselves, are just starting to become aware of.
GARCIA: And Tyler is also known here on THE INDICATOR as the inventor of a game we like to play sometimes with our guests - a game called Overrated Or Underrated. This is where we pretty much throw anything at our guests, like a book, an idea, a trend, anything. And our guest, then, just tells us if that thing is overrated or underrated.
VANEK SMITH: And given Tyler's newfound optimism, we have decided to play a game of Overrated Versus Underrated with Tyler Cowen himself, but with a futuristic twist. So we are going to assume that Tyler's hunch is right, that the great stagnation is ending and that the economy is about to start a period of awesome innovation, more efficiency, fast productivity growth and lots of progress. And in this hypothetical new world, we wanted to ask Tyler, what are the things that would suddenly be underrated, and what are the things that might suddenly become overrated?
GARCIA: Yep. And we are just going to go rapid-fire here. Let's do this. First up, we asked Tyler about economics itself.
COWEN: I think economics actually becomes overrated. Economists are not that great at thinking about technology. They're better for static settings. Normal cost-benefit analysis will be overwhelmed by these dynamic considerations. So overrated.
VANEK SMITH: Dynamic considerations like things are just - there's too much stuff changing too fast, so economists just, like, can't keep track?
GARCIA: Yeah, so many variables all at once. Things moving in directions you can anticipate. There was a point of optimism here, though, Stacey. Economics podcasts - overrated or underrated?
COWEN: Economic podcasts with a broad variety of guests will be very underrated. Indeed, highly excellent.
VANEK SMITH: Well, of course, you know, it's all about the co-hosts, I would argue. It's all about the co-hosts.
GARCIA: I agree.
VANEK SMITH: Seriously, though, what Tyler is predicting is that the so-called hard sciences - chemistry, math, physics - will become underrated, at least relative to economics or sociology or the other social sciences. We may have to start dusting off our high school science textbooks. Speaking of which, Cardiff, in a fast productivity growth world, here is what Tyler thinks about books.
COWEN: Most books will be overrated in this world. Books are static, which is fine. They can communicate enduring truths. But what you ought to care about is figuring out what the heck is going on. So I'm recommending that people consume more YouTube videos because those are updated much more frequently than our books.
VANEK SMITH: Done.
GARCIA: (Laughter).
VANEK SMITH: New 2021 resolution - fewer books, more YouTube videos.
GARCIA: Yeah. I'm guessing it depends on the YouTube clips, right? Like, going to YouTube to find out a tutorial on something scientific or the cosmos or whatever is different than finding the, you know, YouTube clip where a wolf is friends with a kangaroo or whatever.
VANEK SMITH: Yes, because the wolf being friends with the kangaroo is about an enduring truth that friendship transcends physical form.
GARCIA: Indeed. Oh, that was lovely.
VANEK SMITH: OK. After a quick break, a few more Overrated And Underrated categories with Tyler Cowen, including - we do not back away from the hard stuff - religion, working from home, and a surprise pick from the man himself, from Tyler Cowen.
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VANEK SMITH: OK, picking up where we left off. In a world of fast productivity growth, we asked economist Tyler Cowen if religion would be overrated or underrated.
COWEN: Religion already is underrated. America is becoming more secular. I believe this is part of our social breakdown. And as conditions become more volatile, we will need some kinds of religion more than in the last 10 or 20 years.
GARCIA: Why is that?
COWEN: It gives you community. It gives you comfort. It hedges risk. It gives you a faith in the future. You believe in something greater and more glorious than yourself. The more volatile our times, the more useful that is.
VANEK SMITH: Next up, we were curious about a trend that accelerated during the pandemic, which is, of course, people working from home, working remotely. Would that become overrated or underrated in a world in which progress is also accelerating?
COWEN: Well, I think a lot of distance work is here to stay. The value of meetings we grossly overrated. The value of business travel we grossly overrated. And just having the highest productivity individuals in a company be free to do what they want, to have a Zoom call with the people they want - that's going to drive a lot of innovation and productivity growth as we keep a lot of the current practices for the next decade or two.
GARCIA: And of course, there is a personality trait that can make it easier to happily work alone remotely from your house.
VANEK SMITH: Misanthropy?
GARCIA: Introversion.
VANEK SMITH: Oh.
GARCIA: Introversion, though there are some misanthropic introverts, I suppose. But introversion, Tyler says, will also be underrated in this new world.
COWEN: Absolutely. Because if you think of distance work as valuable, people who can be at home a lot of the time and have that periodic Zoom call but work at their own pace and they don't always need to be out and about, like, shouting and back-slapping - those people become more valuable. And the extroverts who feel deprived - life is tougher for them because they thrive on being in the office all day. And that's not how everything is going to be in five years' time.
VANEK SMITH: Rise of the introverts.
GARCIA: (Laughter).
VANEK SMITH: Yes, our time has finally come. All of the, like - the quiet, library-frequenting, public radio-listening folk will rise up and, like, thrive in their lonely, isolated worlds. Finally.
GARCIA: The vindication is sweet, I've got to tell you. It has been an extrovert's world my entire life.
VANEK SMITH: It is true. I know. I mean, I do miss the shouting and back-slapping a little bit, but just a little bit (laughter).
GARCIA: And finally, we asked Tyler to surprise us, to offer us just one thing that we have not asked about that will become overrated or underrated in this new world that he is hoping is upon us.
COWEN: Having bad personal health habits will be much worse. And here's the thing. If you take good care of yourself, there'll be a chance you'll live for the next great medical innovation. That will give you another 20 years of life. So the return to just good habits was always underrated. Now it's grossly underrated. Like, just hang on. There's more life waiting for you out there if you hang on for long enough.
GARCIA: I happen to know, by the way, that you and I both need to eat less bacon (laughter) because, like, that's not a good habit that's going to get us...
VANEK SMITH: What?
GARCIA: It's going to let us hang on until that great medical innovation. And maybe it'll be worth it.
VANEK SMITH: I feel like bacon's got - like, the health benefits of bacon are TBD. I feel like in 2021, one of the things that's going to happen that's going to make it better than 2020 is that doctors are going to realize that a high-bacon diet actually has benefits they didn't even know about, to be able to see X-ray vision, you know, like, extra-long life, low cholesterol, above-average dancer.
GARCIA: Or one of these computational techniques will actually design a healthy bacon. And then we'll just be having bacon three times a day.
VANEK SMITH: See, there are just so many ways that 2021 is going to be great.
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GARCIA: And I think that is a good place to close the show. Thanks again to Tyler Cowen for playing Underrated Versus Overrated with us. This episode of THE INDICATOR was produced by Jamila Huxtable and fact-checked by Sean Saldana. Our editor is Paddy Hirsch. And THE INDICATOR is a production of NPR.
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