Gaurav Ahuja interviews me
I very much enjoyed this exchange, print only, here is the link. Excerpt:
Gaurav: Going back to Iceland for a moment. I’ve never truly appreciated how old that parliament is. A thousand years is extraordinary. What is it about Iceland that has allowed that kind of continuity?
Tyler: Iceland was taken over by Denmark for quite a while. But the Icelanders persisted as an autonomous culture with their own language, not simply becoming Danish. They had this tradition of individualism, which you can read in the Icelandic sagas. Their own kind of common law, a good system of incentives built into the legal code, traditions of autonomy based on food supply and how you deal with the cold and the weather. For a long time, they just played defense. Then after World War II, they had a chance to transform it into what I think is one of the world’s most successful countries.
Their total population is around four hundred thousand. To do that with such numbers in a place that is not always hospitable is remarkable. They have almost entirely green energy. They’re super resourceful, very highly educated. Book sales per capita are through the ceiling. There’s something about their interest in poetry, legal codes, reading, what they do with those long winter nights, that has been quite persistent. That’s an informal institution, and it’s been very durable.
Is there anything in US policy that you see drawing us toward a short-term siren call that makes it harder to create a lasting democracy?
Our government fiscal policy is irresponsible. I hope we can survive it. I’m not a doom-and-gloomer, but thirty-eight trillion dollars in debt is not ideal. I don’t think we should try to run a balanced budget. T-bills play a key role in the world economy, and some amount of debt and deficit is good for us, good for the world. But we’re pushing it too far. We underinvest in our young people, underinvest in parts of our education. But look, we’re a pretty successful country.
There’s this interesting tension between wanting a stable environment to build something that lasts and needing to ride a new wave for something to emerge in the first place.
I was recently thinking about how much the bad weather in the United States is functional for some larger purpose. You learn early that you have to deal with things. You need a certain kind of independence, planning, and preparation.
British weather is quite benevolent. Maybe it’s too gray, but it’s not going to kill you. American weather, hurricanes, blizzards, flooding, is very volatile. We don’t always feel it because we’ve become wealthy, but maybe in part we had to become wealthy to deal with that volatility. That might be a blessing in disguise. It’s related to the earlier point about Iceland. It’s tough there. You’d better be pretty adaptive. A perfectly stable environment is not ideal either.
Interesting throughout, and plenty of fresh material. The weather point I owe to conversations with Henry Oliver and Rebecca Lowe.