and some of those deserters did become american citizens legitimately. so it wasn't quite cut and dry as far as that was concerned. i wish i had a audio recording to be able to know the difference. anybody else? >> well, we'd like to thank you very much -- >> thank you. >> it's been really interesting. you all have evaluation forms. if you would fill them out and maybe put them on one of the chairs up front before you leave. jane has her books here, and she'd be happy to sign them for you if you like. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on twitter.

follow us to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. twitter.com/booktv. .. a particularly best known amongst his popular history is his book, taking away the

latter, and "bad samaritans," and 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism. among other things one of the achievements of the works end of the work of ha-joon is that it is a brilliant job of history, the development of knowledge. and how -- [inaudible] and the government in the process and makes days debate on development policy. and what are the historical lessons of development. it's also highly relevant for today and it's great we are bringing together books, history as well as its relevance to policy options today, back along with the lessons of -- two of my favorite pieces of research.

ha-joon teaches at cambridge university, is giving us a book talk as you know and then afterwards we will have the pleasure of -- best known for probably best known for his work on poverty. but like ha-joon is very eclectic and wide-ranging and also shares profoundly the same way -- [inaudible] so thank you very much, ha-joon. without further ado, as i said for the question please raise your hand and to my? no, this end of one. i also want to welcome professor, president of the initiative policy dialogue. also associated with ipd in various capacities.

and thank you for organizing this event. without further ado, thank you so much, ha-joon, for coming in and giving us this talk. >> thank you. thank you, akbar, for the generous introduction. and thank you, everyone, for coming on a very nice evening. it looks like a perfect weather for a stroll, but you chose to come and listen to me so i will try to make it worth your while. while most people agree that economics is very important, after many things that happen in the economy, really important bearings on our life were ever we are whatever we do. i mean, these things affect our wages, our working conditions, pensions, to pay bills and what have you. but despite this there is

widespread perception among non-economists that economics is too complicated and, therefore, better left to the experts. this is quite widely accepted, you know, when economists -- economies like greece and italy got into trouble. these economies were told to a point some economists as the prime minister, to really sort this problem out just by the fact that these were people not elected representatives of the people. but why isn't like that? so when you think about it it's very interesting. people have very strong opinions about all sorts of things. you know, gay marriage, climate

change, nuclear policy decisions. without having any technical expertise in these areas. i have my strong view on american foreign policy, what do we know about this? i took one course in religion back in 1983 when i was an undergraduate student in south korea -- [laughter] and a crusty old professor who taught us is a textbook from the 1960s, yes? so what little did i know come from half a century ago. but then whenever these topics come up, i spout my opinion. i'm sure you always are the same, whatever the topic is. so what is economics a different? it's actually a very complicated thing, but the short answer is that my professional colleagues have been successful in associating the rest of the

world that the stuff is so difficult that you wouldn't understand even if they bothered to explain it to you. [laughter] i happened to strongly disagree with his view. and my previous book that akbar mission, 23 things, i actually wrote a short suicide note by saying that 95% of the economics is commonsense but it's made to look difficult with the use of mathematics, graphs, statistics. and even though remaining 5%, if not in all practical details, someone could explain in a good way which is what i tried to do in this book. this is a cover of the book at actually became not only in the

uk on a different format. this is pocket-sized paperback edition, exact same content, just different publisher, different types of insulin. and, indeed, a note to make this book accessible compared to make economic accessible to non-economists, i really pull all the stuff i can. there's mary poppins, which is start of the chapter on final. the matrix, my fair lady, the simpsons. at least ned flanders, my favorite simpsons character. [laughter] so i really try. i don't know how much i succeed but i really try, but don't get me wrong. being accessible doesn't mean that i'm trying to give you some

baby versions to a dummies guide, you know? seven things that you know about inflation, you know, three things that you didn't know about this and that. [laughter] i do not do that because i take my readers very seriously, and i really do talk about, i mean, i really do talk about all kinds of fundamental nation, what is economics? can it be science? can we get rid of politics from economics? what are the ethical foundations of economics? and many things. so in doing so the book tries to attempt, i tends to offer something completely different ask the british comedy group monty python used to say. let's see how different this is.

well, this is the table of contents, and if you read through them, apart from some kind of fancy titles that i used to draw your attention, you will notice that are actually quite a lot of things that you don't normally see and economic books these days. so as i mentioned earlier in chapter one i discussed the definition of economics. in chapters two and three history about capitalism. number two is a short snapshot version. three is a long narrative. number four, i discussed different ways of doing economics if you like. and then in terms of different topics i touch on topics that are largely if not completely neglected in economic discussion these days like production in chapter seven and worked in chapter 10. i'm going to talk to but these issues in summer detail later,

so let's leave it at that. another thing that makes this book different is that they give my readers a lot of what i call real life numbers. economics is supposed to be numbers subject. and, indeed, if you read, i ask about the economy, economic issues, you will see a lot of numbers. but that's not to say that economists actually know this real life numbers. it is quite common these days for someone with a degree in economics without knowing what the gdp or gross domestic product that is roughly -- [inaudible] during a particular period, what

does the gdp of their own country is. even less how deep the world economy is. how much of that is produced in china or the united states. of course you don't need to know these numbers. you need to know only one thing, hoover. [laughter] but my view is actually you need to know some of these numbers. and lets you know some of them, if you have some fuel about what they are, about whether you should look like and so on, you didn't even know what to look for. and also if you brought ideas about these numbers, you can develop very distorted views of the real world. let me give you one example. in the days of euros on crisis when, especially greece was a

problem, there was this widespread narrative, mainly coming out of germany, which basically argued that greeks are in trouble because they are lazy. they walk like a greeks and they spend like germans. [laughter] this cannot be done. so you need to buckle up and work harder your now these people would not have been able to say that if they went to the oecd website and looked up the annual average working our of the citizens of oecd member countries. and there they would've found that greece actually worked 30% longer than the germans, and 40% longer than the dutch who happened to be the laziest people in the world. [laughter] no, no. i like it, you know? why should you work all the time, you know? you should enjoy your life. i totally approve of the dutch

efforts, but the fact is a very playing. i mean, the greeks work far longer than the supposedly hard-working northern europeans. in this country there's another very interesting misconception about the mexicans. the lazy latinos. always say my and do not work hard. do you know they were 25% longer than the americans? actually mexicans have the longest working hours in the oecd. a few years ago they even beat my fellow south koreans. they are the hardest working people in the oecd, and what are we talking when we say mexicans are lazy? well of course that example shows countries, greece and mexico, have problems but the

problems are not that of work ethic but that of productivity. to fix the greek economy they should talk about things like research into the, worker skills, infrastructure instead they started getting more lectures on why the greeks should work harder. so when you get at some of these basic numbers wrong, you can develop a very strange idea of the world. of course emphasizing the importance of these real life numbers doesn't mean that you should take numbers without any kind of question. because in economics from most numbers have to be --

[inaudible] and sometimes a battlefield because they're so duty as you need to -- [inaudible] take this quote from the famous author, something of a scientist wrote the book on the theory of color and saw. and he wants it, and i really like this quote, that everything factual is already a theory. all \facts/fax actually constructed on the basis of certain u.s. consumption about the world. the way this is clearer is economics. take the case of gdp that i mentioned earlier, gross domestic product.

they do not include unpaid household work that people do, mostly women. this means that, you know, this work in those countries are about 30% of national output is not counted and, therefore, miss contribution to the economic growth. when you say that some people say no, these things are quite difficult to estimate. you can estimate it, domestic worker nurses taking care for sick people. you can, and also the thing is that they are all out on a limb to calculate numbers for other things that are not marketed. if you're living in your old

house, they actually interviewed, the technical word, the value of your house to your income by assuming that you're actually paying rent for yourself. you can say, well, this apartment would have cost $3000 a month. this guy went out in the market and we did it so we added $3000 to his income. when you do that with houses, why do not do that with women's work? you can argue but the point is that these numbers are not as objective as the weight of an elephant or length of a string. although if you ask a scientist they will say even those numbers are not -- [inaudible] i have a brother who lives for science. he will attend to that.

well, i can go on for example, but let's talk about the topics that i raised earlier. first of all, the definition of economics. did you ask people what is economics, most people who are not economists actually answer, well, the study of the economy. chemistry is the study of chemicals. socialism is the study of society. economics must be the study of the economy. unfortunately they are wrong. well, at least according to some of those popular economics books. actually does signs of everything. well, yeah, some people -- [inaudible] think this about almost everything, not really

everything. [laughter] now when i give this do not economists, they say, jesus, the economy must be in a massive megalomania. these are the people who couldn't even do their own show, they couldn't even explain the economy. [laughter] and they think they can explain everything? well, i can tell you, it's not actually a simple case of megalomania. actually it's more commentated than that. economies have come to define economics as the science of everything because they have actually worked with a definition of economics that

ultimately leads to that thinking. and that definition was famously provided by the professor used to teach in london school of economics in the mid-20th century, and he basically defined economics as a science of rational choice. and when you do that, you are defining economics by its analytical ability, rather than its -- [inaudible] that is the economy. and when to think about this, this is something very unique. because in all of the subjects, the subject is defined by the objective. chemistry, chemicals, geology,

sort of origin, the structure. biology, living things. but in economics you're defining it in terms of balance which is very unique. but why should it be like that? is exactly because, when you open a book like "freakonomics" you find that everything that is there really is not about economic issues. it's about japanese sumo wrestlers. it's about chicago drug dealers. it's about british people being horrible to each other, pretty sure. [laughter] is nothing about what other people, no economists think should be and then economic book.

i'm not saying that you shouldn't necessarily discuss ordinary economic things as an economist but there's something very strange here. in contrast to go to biology department, there are people doing research with all kinds of -- there are some people arguing dna analysis, others doing anatomy, others studying bone structure who are almost like structure engineers. people doing nasty experiment with rats. people building motors of animal behavior. and some people go and sit in the jungles of burundi with the mountain gorillas and record what they do. and they are all called biologists because biologists are smart enough to know that living organisms are complex. they cannot be understood only

at one level. no biologists say i study dna, and thereby i study something more fundamental and, therefore, people sitting in the jungles of burgundy are idiots. ass but this is what economists do. -- [laughter] economic profession today, if you're the cleverest you're supposed to do something that is totally unrelated to the real world. you do basically mathematical motors of things that have nothing to do with real world like -- [inaudible] what have you. if you're less clever you become -- [inaudible] if you're even less clever, you do development economics like i do. [laughter] if you're even worse either, economic historian. historian. [laughter] if you are at the bottom of the barrel, you go on factories

serving managers. this is very strange hierarchy. which do not exist, doesn't exist in real science like biology. anyway, so my contention is that economics should be defined not by -- in this weird way, but what objects like all of the subjects. it's definition should be that it is study of the economy, or how we produce good sense services, how we tested the incomes generated in the process and how we exchange those goods and services that have been produced. now, one important consequence of the classical definition of economics is to make them

believe there is only one wide way of doing economics, or actually one best way. for in this book i devote one long chapter, chapter four with at least nine different major school of economics, or a lot more if you include smaller schools, a lot more if you break the bigger schools into smaller schools, but at least nine, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. and the interesting things that fall free market because the longer three different types. the classical come the new classical and the austrian. and day, even though they defend the free market, they do it all in very different ways. so the classical economists like

adam smith, they theorized the economic clearly different from the neoclassical economist but because they have basically class-based theories. there were really no individuals in classical economic theory but for the capitals, the worker and there was the landlord. they basically tried to understand how economies get involved in the interaction between these three different groups. was neoclassical economists put emphasis on individuals. very different theory. one thing that you have to remember is that neoclassical economics is not the same as free market economics. neoclassical economics contains this theory, theory of market failure. if you're applied quite consistently you can actually just by huge range of government

intervention. but there are neoclassical economist who are on the left of the political spectrum who criticize the free market policy. don't miss understand is, but it is true that more neoclassical economists are in favor of free markets and their theory is very different from the classical theory, even more different is the austrian theory represented by people like friedrich von hayek, and they see the world critically different from the neoclassical's. the neoclassical justification of free market is that people are rationale. they know what they're doing so leave them alone. this is a simple vacation, but not too bad. the austrian justification of free market is no one really knows what's going on, so how do you think government knows

better than the people? because austrians believe that the world is full of uncertainty, rationality is very limited, a lot of our behavior is based on blindly following tradition what they call, rather than rational calculation. this is a completely different theory. if you have three different ways of justifying the free market, how can you say it's a science like physics? it's not possible. but not to create division our conflict her i actually can handle hard -- i studied all these schools, to some depth. i mean, some more than others, but i start out to illustrate a

point out that the i've read as much frederic von hayek as i've read karl marx. in the end i do not agree with either of them, but these are both profound thinkers. and i really believe that we need all this different schools of economics to enrich our understanding of the economy. as i already illustrated, they theorized, their interest in different things. economics of exchange. whereas the classic goals, they're interested in production. they have different political values. hayek and the austrians think the most important value, the most important political value is to protect the rights of individuals to use the property they own with a maximum degree

of freedom. this is why hayek, -- because for him, the previous regime was undermining the free society by nationalizing access and restricting -- [inaudible] for him, this paramount out you had to be saved by other means, including military coup d'état. so, you know, there's all kinds of different assumption, and different approaches and, therefore, they are doing different things. they may become in one context more than another. so in my view we need all of these theories working together to bridge or understanding of the economy and to illustrate this point i talk about what i

call the singular problem, or life is stranger than fiction. if you read about singapore -- idaho, "the wall street journal," "the economist" magazine, typical textbooks on development economics, you will only hear about singapore's free trade policy and it's welcoming attitude towards foreign investors. which it has. but you will never be told that 90% of land in singapore is owned by the government. 85% of housing is provided by government owned housing corporation, and a staggering 22% of gdp is produced by state-owned enterprises, including the famous singapore airlines. so i often put it to my students, give me one economic

theory but it doesn't matter what it is. keynesian, marxist, neoclassical. giddy when economic theory that a single handily explain singapore, and ideas that there isn't such a degree. so you need to know these different theories because the reality is are far more complex than you imagine from this literature. that you never just singapore would be like this. another great example is sweden. sweden is supposed to be a source of democratic paradise with a high degree of economic equality. but did you know that in sweden there is one family, the wallenberg family, this family owns controlling stakes, that is enough shares, 20, 30% of shares that basically decide what happens in a corporation. they own controlling shares in

companies whose capitalization is between, depending on the year, one-third and one half of the exchange but even america doesn't have that kind of family. do you know one can have basically owns one-third of the economy in this country? no. so how do you explain that? i mean, an example, multiply but you get my point. basically it is really complex. life is stranger than fiction, and you really need to know different theories, different real-life cases to fully understand what is going on. so my condition in this book is that we should let 100 flowers bloom. this is what chairman mao zedong said once in china, because he had an ulterior motive.

he wanted all the flowers to bloom so that he can cut the ones he didn't like. [laughter] i don't have the decision. i don't have that power, so this is a genuine plea. i, for one, go further and say we shouldn't just let them bloom. we should let them cross-fertilize. i can talk about -- but basically my views are different schools can actually benefit a lot from non-information, including schools that think there are mortal enemies. kind of common ground. very quick example. the austrian theory of competition is closer to the marxist one in the neoclassical one. actually friedrich hayek himself in the 1940s wrote in a series

of articles that neoclassical theory competition is not really a theory of competition. it's state of paralysis. no one can do anything because they're so small -- this is not real competition. is real competition is more like that of marx. so i urge my readers not to be -- man or woman with hammer that is saying that he who has a hammer sees everything as a nail. and start banging everything. this is fine if you're actually banging a nail. this is not just about work if your banging a screw, but it would be totally ineffective if your banging jelly. it would be a disaster if you're banging and egg. so readers should -- [inaudible]

which is relevant to the tool world terms, getting a swiss army knife. a range of tools. you have to acquire the sense to judge what to apply which you acquire by studying politics, history, institutions and philosophy. i mentioned earlier that i talk about a number of topics that are not usually discussed in economic books. i am running out of time so let me just talk about one of them. the subject of work. work is a very interesting subject to guess and economics these days, people talk about work only when it's absent. when there's unemployment. we don't talk about work itself. because neoclassic -- neoclassical theory basically conceptualizing people as

instruments. their aim is life is to get satisfaction for utility as they call it from consumption. and work is an inconvenience that they have to put up with so that they can earn some income with which they can buy things whose consumption gives them the ultimate pleasure. of course, i mentioned in our economic behavior, but work when you think about it is very, very important in our lives. most of society, most others of working age spend at least half their waking hours in work. well, unless you are dutch, then you don't work. [laughter] that's however time in work and if you include time that you spend to work, it's much longer.

you have to commute. if you're some unlucky lack guy stuck in one of those townships in south africa which the apartheid regiment build because a nice racist white people did want to see the blacks after the day finish cleaning their houses, these townships are built miles and miles away. there's no public transport, and the road is lousy so if you live in one of those unfortunate agency regime hasn't improved much of this, you put spending up to three hours one way sleeping. so if you spend six hours commuting, working eight, nine hours a day, you don't have time to sleep so work dominates our life so much but we don't talk about it.

work affects us to particularly because it takes up time, not simply because we get tired or we get pressure at work which will affect our well being, but it also differences our sense of self-worth, not that it helps or doesn't help. actually hampers our sense of relaxation. all kinds of things. despite this economists have focused on income. so it's quite common to a lot of people are richer, well, at least in some countries, compared to 20 days ago but they are feeling less happy because their work life might have become more stressful. work intensity might have risen

because the companies are trying to cut all the time and hiring less and less people for the same work. so they might feel miserable so they have to commute a long time but then the economies will come rent as they are. no, you should feel happy or income is 20% higher to i'm not saying it's not like one way or the other. but basically we need to talk about this. we cannot keep ignoring this issue. okay, throughout the book i emphasized that economics is a political subject. off course this goes against the prevailing view among economists, neoclassical economists say this, that what economies do is a value free science. they don't want actually policy. economic should be called

political economy. [inaudible] one of the founding fathers of the neoclassical school did not write books on economics. they wrote books on political economy. economies are very well aware that you can separate policies and economics in the old days. and came this group of economists that said no, economies should become science. .com when you talk to economists, one way they use, the one argument that to convince you that economics is a political subject is to say that all we use this a political, like -- [inaudible] the judge social changes. half italian, half a fresh economies would lift in the late 19th century and the 20th

century in switzerland, and he came up with this thing called criteria which states that you cannot call social change on improvement unless it benefits some people but without hurting anyone. if you're trying to defend individuals against the tyranny of the majority. and if you explain this, i use what i call a one finger problem. which isn't in the book, so this is the benefit you get for coming to my talk last night more consolation -- [laughter] someone tells me doctor, we found this wonderful technology that can solve climate change problem overnight. it's all primed up ready to go, but we need one tiny input which we want you to provide.

i ask, what is it? they said, well, we need one live human finger to start the machine. will you do the honor of donating your finger? yeah, yeah, before they finish the sentence, one to my kitchen, cut my finger and give it to you. i'm saving the world, you know? [laughter] but what is one form of? i should do it. what if it is my life? my families life. what if it's the life of the south koreans ask where does it stop? this is a very important principle defending individual against -- [inaudible] however the other side of this coin is that it is a terribly conservative doctrine big because suppose there's a country where one guy owns everything and other people are just about to starve to death,

and if you ask this guy, would you give us 5% of your assets so that we can feed everyone else, and -- [inaudible] say no. a lot of people find it absurd. but this is which of two except. i'm not saying this is mr. right or wrong. it's a very difficult christian, but the point is this is a political position. it's not a political. let me give you another more concrete example, although it isn't quite used this concept of parental criterion. in the late 1990s, paul krugman got into fight with some american ngo activist who was campaigning against american companies paying low wages and poor countries like bangladesh. krugman said, look, you people,

you may have good hard but your misguided. because you're talking as if the bangladesh workers have a choice between a low-wage job and the high wage job. but the choice they face is between a low-wage job and no job. so these people actually are better off by working the low-wage job in these factories. well absolutely correct, but what if bangladesh can institute a land reform so that the wage pressure in the urban areas diminished because fewer people migrate from countries to cities. what if you can abolish child labor so other wages are less and? what if bangladesh can use some policy to create high wage jobs in new industries?

then maybe bangladesh workers have choice between low-wage job and high wage jobs. of course, if i say this you may say, that's pipedream, you know? but this is actually what happened in south korea between 1950-1970s. and then i'm sure if you put it to paul krugman, of course you can do those things, but by choosing not to talk about those possibilities he was taking a political stand, which is that the current distribution of income wealth and power in bangladesh should be accepted. you may agree or disagree, but you cannot deny that this is a political decision. it's not an objective value free economy analysis, no. and, indeed, in this book, especially in the earlier book,

"23 things they don't tell you about capitalism," i greatly emphasized that the political nature of the economy schools is even deeper than that because the very boundary of the economy is coming through politics. egregious example is child labor. in the 19th century when some social reformers trying to agitate for regulating child labor, a lot of free market economies -- [inaudible] by god, this is undermining its very foundation of a free economy that is freedom of contracts. go on to work, these people want to employ them, what is your problem? it's not like these people kidnapped these children. slave labor. so i shall in the 19th century a lot of respectable people were in favor of child labor.

today, i do not know any person who says we need to bring child labor to make america a truly free market economy. actually one person almost said this, newt gingrich. yes. 2012, remember him saying that they should work as you did in their schools. but he's the only one i know las.[laughter] but that changed position came about because of political change, changes in our ethical standard. not because someone in economic theory saying we should not have child labor. the very boundary of market is political -- 200 years ago you could buy and sell people, by and jolt -- buy and sell

children later, drugs and what have you. today you can't. and these changes have come about because of political and ethical changes. so when the very boundary of the subject is political, you cannot say that we can get rid of politics. okay, i should try to wind up. my book is not just on the explanation of economic theories. it's also about the role of economics in public life. and in this regard i have three observations to make. the first one is that you should never trust an economist, and that includes me. it creates the kind of paradox that all greek philosophers used

to love. that god is an economist. if he says their trust an economist we should not trust them, therefore should we trust economist or not? i will let others worry about that. they do not have a monopoly over the truth. it is entirely impossible for people who are not -- to have sound judgment on economic issues. sometimes their judgment may even be better because they are more rooted in reality and less narrowly focused. and when you think about this, actually the willingness on the part of ordinary citizens to challenge professional economists and other experts is the very foundation of democracy. all you have to do is to listen to wise people, listen, that people with ph.d in economics

from mit. let them decide for you. actually visited very important thing. in order to be a respectable citizen you all need to learn some economics. because unless you challenge these people, you're not doing your duty. in a way, the most difficult job in the world used to be a responsible citizen of a democracy. it was in our usual job only do one thing. but as a resourceful citizen we have so many things to worry about. health care reform, global warming, you know, gay marriage, mexico, you know? [laughter] so it is tough job but we have to do it. the second is, well, i'm not

even going to pretend that i can read latin. this is something that was written on the wall, a city hall, the dutch city famous for its cheese. i don't know how they found time to come up with this kind of wisdom by the middle of all their cheesemaking but -- [laughter] they somehow managed. of course, you know, this doesn't mean that you should not have your own opinion. listening to other sites doesn't mean that you shouldn't have an opinion, that you should always have the -- admit that world is complex, my theory only partial. i could be wrong.

finally throughout the book the fun -- proposals, i emphasize how difficult it is to change the economic relative. sometimes the difficulty is due to the active attempts of those who benefit from the status quo to defend their positions. through various means, lobbying, bribing, media propaganda, violence. but the status quo often gets defended even without some people actually being evil. you don't need dr. evil seeping into our to make the world evil because the world is structured in such a way that there will always be evil. there are two main reasons. one is the $1.1 vote rule of the market drastically constrains odyssey those with less money to refuse and desirable options given to them.

so a lot of workers in poor developing countries choose to work in a dangerous factory because the alternative is starvation. so in this context you have to remember that president bishop -- [inaudible] one of the leaders of the left wing catholic -- in the 1950s and '60s, and he once said, editing o should all remember ts where he said when i give food to the poor people, people call me a saint. but if i ask why you people do not have enough eat, they call me a communist. in that sense we should all become a bit of a communist, you know? we should always question why these people are choosing voluntarily something that i would not have chosen and

usually the answer lies on the line economic and social order. okay, having looked at it you might conclude that the same way they conclude about bangladesh, you really can't change, especially in the short run and you have to accept it. that's fine. that's your opinion, but don't you ever think that these people are making completely free choice? they are constrained by the structure to on top of that, people are susceptible to believes that go against their own interest. marxists used to call this false consciousness, after 1999. we call it the matrix. yeah, and this country has even a beautiful example. in the days following the debate of the so-called obamacare, i saw this shocking seen on news

or there were all these pensioners demonstrating against obamacare with placards like government, hands off my medicare. hello, medicare is a government program. [laughter] but they are so brainwashed by the insurance industry that they cannot imagine that is nice program that benefits them daley called medicare could possibly be a government program because they are convinced that government program never works. so when you have that kind of false consciousness, how do you can begin to change the world? now, having said all those, all the difficulties in both and change the economic status quo should not make us give up the fight to create a better economy and ultimate a better society. yes, changes are difficult but in the long run when enough

people fight for them, many impossible things happen. and they have happen. 200 years ago, especially in this country, if anyone argued for the abolition of slavery, the best response they could expect was you are unrealistic. yes, at a time the u.s. economist only depend on the export -- produced in the slates using plantations in the south. and if you just double the slavery, it will have huge economic impact. but it has been abolished. 100 years ago they put in britain, and other countries they put women in prison for asking for boat. and action at the time a lot of women said, why do we need both? we have our husbands and brothers and fathers to represent our views. we don't need votes. despite that, now all women have

votes and, well, least countries to pretend to be democratic. 50, 60 years ago most of the founding fathers of today of munitions opposed -- including israel were hunted down as terrorists by the british and the french. because they were terrorists, you know? according to the rules of britain and france at the time. and only 25 years ago margaret thatcher famously said that anyone who thinks that they would be a black room and south africa is living in a cloud, cuckooland, which is where she was living, so she should know. [laughter] so, you know, if enough people fight against something, what may look impossible may happen. and they have happened. this is why i often call on the

italian marxist political thinker who said that we need to have pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. and let me conclude with my favorite quote from nelson mandela to use to say that it always seems impossible until it is done. thank you. [applause] ..

>> partly because they're not bouno some orthodoxy and don't view economics in the narrow sense of a science and don't pretend it's a science, and apart from ha-joon himself -- [inaudible] now very kindly will make some brief comments. thank you. sanjay. >> what a great pleasure it is to comment briefly on ha-joon chang's presentation. i know that many of you will have questions for him, so i don't want to speak at any length at all. but i do want to thank the initiative for policy dialogue for organizing this and jose antonio campo because this is a

very unusual sort of event or would be a very unusual sort of event in this building were it not for the ipd. i don't know if any of you here are from the economics department upstairs. is anyone? please raise your hand, if so. i don't see a single hand go up. [laughter] how interesting. well, the economics department did not invite ha-joon chang to speak here, and i don't mean to make invidious comparisons, but just to note that it's part of our institutional reality and disciplinary reality that the kind of critical questioning which professor chang is engaged in and has been engaged in for quite some time as an honest insurgent intellectual which i think he has been much before it became fashionable to be that, in particular after the crisis of 2008, is not very welcome within the disciplinary confines of economics. and one of the reasons for that, of course, is the self-protection which the discipline engages in.

and, indeed, even after 2008 the room for that, although it has increased a little bit, has not increased greatly. there is something upstairs in the economics department called the impossible trinity or the tridilemma. some of you who have studied international economics have come across this idea, three things that can't be reconciled. i would say that ha-joon chang has shown that there are -- well, he's shown that it is possible to overcome what some of us earlier might have thought of as such a impossible trinity or trilemma, mainly the possibility of being sound economics, accessible economics and stand-up comedy. [laughter] quite seriously, he's one of the funniest economists around, people discussing economic issues. i think he has one possible competitor in the form of mark blythe who is also very funny. i won't say he's as funny. but what motivates them both, i

would say, what underlies the irrepressible human is a righteous anger, and that, i think, is very palpable, and they have it for good reason. because they perceived, he perceives the discipline of economics as having been complicit in many of the things that have gone wrong and continue to go wrong. in the world. i won't go on in this vein and say -- well, liken him to the stars and talk about korean soft power and how he's at the vanguard of that. i could do that. [laughter] at any rate, this particular book i would sagos for the jugular in a certain sense by addressing the conflict between technocracy and democracy and inviting its readers to

participate in a democratic conversation about economics and insisting that they have not only a right, but an ability to do that. and bringing out the ways in which the discipline has obscured that fact rather deliberately and, again, in a rather self-promoting manner. i think, however, we should not be naive about the conditions for bringing about a truly democratic debate. one of the ways in which i think about this -- and i would be very interested to hear professor chang's views on this question -- he did speak about this a little bit toward the end of his remarks. there is a kind of force field which operates in the discipline of economics continually to distort the debates. and that's because there are real stakes which certain people have or certain sections of society have.

and this is not to -- in how those debates turn out. and this is not to suggest that there's any kind of straight line which goes from interests to ideas, what is sometimes called ideology. and certainly there was an earlier discussion about that in the field of economics. but that this force field -- and i like this metaphor because it suggests that there's a lot of unintentionality around it as well as intentionality in the way in which interests have effects in the field of ideas -- continually distorts not only who has the large bullhorn and which ideas get heard the most, but also how it is that we come to determine that a particular economic question has been resolved in one direction or another. and, of course, if one looks around, one sees that in the discipline of economics, the debates are, in fact, never resolved or hardly ever resolved. this is one of our problems,

that there can be temporarily dominant, and the temporary can go on for a long time, of course, or hegemonic positions. but many of the debates seem, in some respect, to continue over decades, indeed, centuries. one can go back to the early 19th century and see some of the debates taking place today perhaps with slightly different language on the questions of welfare for the poor and so on or austerity versus stimulus. these debates were, in some sense, going on 200 years ago even if the specific methodology of argumentation has changed. the kind of econometric argumentation used today in the seminar rooms would have been entirely foreign in earlier episodes or occurrences of this debate, but in some respect, it's the same debate. and this is, obviously, very unlike many of the other real sciences, shall we say, in which there is a kind of progress.

and this is not to disagree with professor chang's philosopher of science brother or, indeed, other philosophers who would point out the continuities as well as the differences. but it's been a long time since the catholic church or, indeed, any other church in had a stake in the laws of physics being interpreted in one way or another, and that's the reason we have been able to make a kind of progress even if that progress is still not complete. there are live questions at the frontiers of physics, of course, as at the frontiers of any real discipline. but i think we have more of a problem than we tend to acknowledge in the discipline with a sort of permanent condition of unresolved debates, debates in which at some level the arguments become more sophisticated. and i use that in quotation marks, in a sense more sophisticated. but i never fully resolve because of the failure to acknowledge the fact that there are, that the differences in the

debates are connected to interests and to perspectives, to social positions which we, as participants in the debate, have which reflect in part the heterogeneity of society which is not bad thing. can be a good thing. but if we're not honest about that, then i think we're not going to make very much progress at all in the debates that we have. but i may have already run out of my time, have i? >> for you, sanjay, as always an extra minute or two. [laughter] >> so i just, i suppose, want to appreciate what professor chang has done and to, to suggest that we all take this forward. and i think that one of the ways that we have to do that is very much to demand that economists speak in plain language whenever

they and not be put off by their technocratic pretensions. one of the most important consequences of the technocratic conceit is, of course, to depoliticize, to create boundaries around the economic debate determining who can participate and who cannot, and i think the only way to have a different kind of debate to is to throw stones at those boundaries, at those walls or to take them apart stone by stone, whatever metaphor you would like, and that has to begin here and now. thank you. [applause] >> before opening it to general questions to the assembled masses, i would like to invite

professor jose antonio campo up here, please. >> well, thank you really for coming here to present this, you know, this new book of yours. i really appreciate some of the things i have heard. i till have to read -- i still have to read the book, but i will say, actually, in sympathy with -- [inaudible] so let me actually express that. i actually found, i guess, the

book -- [inaudible] >> i'm not sure. >> okay. i found, i found missing that term. because i really think one of the basic issues in economics that divides different school of thought is really ideology more than, you know, even equally to interests but, you know, but interests are generally recognized, for example, by mainstream economics. but somehow ideologies are considered to be alien to economics. and i think what divides us deeply in the schools of thought is really ideology. so we are all -- [inaudible] to paraphrase -- [inaudible] we economists are all, you know, in a sense victims of a dead ideology. you know? and i think this is, and that's why, actually, going back to i

think ideology is very good to, you know -- and then i say even as a practitioner, you know, of -- [inaudible] politics in one of the largest stage of my life, to say that, you know, one of the things that you learn is that, you know, why i really don't think tech knock rah is city -- technocracy should rule the world is, essentially, because, you know, different schools of thought are really, you know, deeply affected by ideology. and i think the ideological debates should be resolved by politics, not by technocracy. so democracy is the way. i mean, you have to, you know, present it to people the different alternatives, and it's the people and, in a sense, politicians represent them who should be in charge of resoing

the political -- resolving the political debate. so the first two points at the end that, you know, led different schools of thought express -- let different schools of thought express themselves and let, finally, politics in a sense resolve the debates, not economies because of this deep influence of ideology. now, the second and my main disagreement is with your classifications of schools of thought. and i think this is probably expresses one point that is in your book, for sure, which is the fact that, you know, we are so deeply formed by, you know, one school of thought that there is not even a clarity about what are the alternatives. so should you classify the school i would say i belong to, i'm on the minor schools --

[laughter] i deeply disagree with your classification. i actually think that, first of all, many of those major schools are not major. i mean, i know major schools -- and one basic problem is they don't, you know, even though the major schools don't relate to the same thing, let's say keynesian bism which, you know, i guess that's a major school to which i will argue i'm a member of, you know, i'm also a member of that, one of the minor schools which you call structuralism. but the, you know, neoclassical economics, for example, relates to one arm of economics, i mean -- [inaudible] for example a consumer's choice, you know, in particular. but, you know, keynesian thinking doesn't quite deal with

the same issue. really it deals with the dynamics of the economy as a whole. so they, you know, instead they belong in a sense to different realms. but aside from that, nobody will probably debate that neoclassical economics, classical economics and keynesianism are really major schools of thought. i will not say -- [inaudible] it's really a minor school. very interesting, you know, school, but it's really minor. but you are really missing what, you know, one -- i mean, officialism. you can say many of the branches of institutionalism that you hear today are really neoclassical. they're not really institutionalist in the old sense of the term. but what you're missing, you know, as a major school is socialism because i really

think -- [inaudible] it's actually, you know, it's really minor school. but it really belongs to a broader family of structuralist thinking which is behind many, many different views in economics. so, so my -- i don't, behavioral, behaviorallism, for example, is a major school. first of all, a very new school. >> it's not that new, i mean -- >> no, no. okay, but that's, again, we can debate what is the contents of the different schools. in many cases what you are, you know, many of these forms that you see today are really branches of neoclassical economics more than the traditional way of thinking. in any case, i think, you know,

your classification of schools, you know, i mean, the lack of any agreement of what are the schools of thought in economics is something that, you know, your book brings up, you know? and i would say that, you know, at least i will classify something that we'll call structuralism as one of the major branches of economics. and should the thinking be part of that as well as, you know, the sort of structuralism that i have written about. by the way, one of the things that happened is, you know, and your point is quite well, you know, made that people belong to different schools. you know, for example, i have had long debates with others -- not with him -- about where, for example, joseph stick --

stigless, where does he belong to. many people say neoclassical economies, and i think that's probably correct. not a keynesian, for example, which i believe i am a keynesian. but, you know, and the -- anyway, you know, i think what your book by letting the household flowers bloom, i think you have also opened that debate of, you know, what are the different schools of thought in economics. >> sure, thank you. [applause] >> would you like to respond to some of these comments before -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> sanjay, jose antonio, thank you very much for those very enlightening comments. yeah, of course, that this is, i mean, i regard that this book is a work in progress, so i'm very

happy to be corrected, and i will, yeah, probe these things. but, yes, i mean, i, you know, did talk about the power of the status quo and, yeah, in ways it is more difficult to break down than in the academia, you know? it's not just economics, you know? the famous german physicist of late 19th century once said that science's progress is one funeral at a time. in academia, well, for good reason. we have tenure, so people tend to be removed rather quickly, and also economics, i mean, ideas are at the center of the identity, yeah? it is very difficult to say that, well, what i've been writing about, teaching about

for the last 25 years is wrong. there are some brave individuals who do that, you know, and i really respect them. but it's quite difficult to change. there is some difficulty in changing the academia, and, you know, it's not, as sanjay correctly pointed out, it's not always intentional. there is a lot of unintentionality, and in that sense i think i characterize it as a force field is very apt. now, to jose antonio's, yes, i mean, i do not claim that this classification is necessarily the right one. all i wanted was to show that there are distinctive ways of theorizing about the economy, and i, yeah, that greatly emphasized that these classifications have fuzzy boundaries.

someone like frank knight could be neoclassical, could be a bit of keynesian, could be institutionalist, could be a bit of austrian. as you rightfully pointed out, what passes as -- [inaudible] and institutional economics today is very neoclassical compared to the behavioral economics of the institutional economics of -- [inaudible] and other people. yes, i mean, these are all kind of at tentative concern. [inaudible] but i think that, you know, the point that i was trying to make was that i come up with this classification not to divide people, but to show that there are different ways of theorizing about the economy, and no single way has absolute advantage.

so, please, don't think that i'm, you know, i don't even academically work on economic methodologies, so this is way too kind of -- this is a way to kind of relate to the general audience that there are many different opinions rather than to say that, you know, this is how you have to classify them, and these are the boxes, and we will neatly file everyone there. so please accept my apologies for not having explained it in full. no, no, it's very easy to get that impression when you have -- [inaudible] and i even have a kind of table at the end of the chapter, and, you know, so you can get that impression unless you actually read through the chapter where, i hope -- [laughter] no, seriously, i hope that you can see what i'm trying to do. okay, fine.

leave it there. >> thank you very much, ha-joon and the commentators. now, questions. please, there is a mic going around. we need you to speak into the mic. there's one back there and one in front. and please do just identify yourself if you don't mind before you speak. >> roger -- [inaudible] from the school of economics. this is a kind of economist question. data and policy. so how would you explain the dominance of neoclassical economics? how did we get here? and then what would you, what would be your policies for getting, moving things forward? you've touched on it, but -- >> [inaudible] then you move back here and then maybe there.

three, four -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> as long as people know who i am. >> thank you so much. my name's pearl, i'm from korea and -- [inaudible] specializing in isp, international security policy. i want to talk about, i want to ask you about the question, topic on which you already mentioned, you mentioned that we talk about only and we don't have it which is the unemployment. i guess i have to bring it up because i am a very strong advocate of the u.s. unemployment, we need to reduce it, but it's been going on quite for a while. it hasn't been resolved in many parts of the world, some worse in areas it's nearly 50% in my own country, korea, it's almost like 25%. it's not getting any better. and as a student myself, all we talk about is even -- [inaudible] i'm a little saddened by the

fact, the amount of time that we put into talk about jobs is actually the time we talk about academics. so i want to ask what's your view on unemployment, and what do you think is causing such prolonged period of unemployment all around the world, especially for youth? because, as you said, work is a crucial part of our lives, and the young people who are very talented want to work but can't find the job. and is there any sort of policies that you want to suggest and going further, is there any sort of school of thought that you want to create yourself to make the world better? thank you. >> thank you. >> [inaudible] >> one more. i hope you remember who the third person was, i don't. but anyway, you were the third person, yes. please speak up, and then you can go back, back to -- [inaudible] after wards. so the third question and then

ha-joon will respond to those first. thanks. >> thank you. my name is raul soto, i'm from the npa and development practice program here, and i wanted to ask regarding maybe minor schools of thought in economics, trying to bridge the gap between economics and physical sciences is such as the use of measurements of energy as in jules in economics. and on the other side, maybe more subjective, economics like the economics of well being, measurements of happiness, subjective perceptions that have been recently been developed. if this is going to be something that's coming more prominent in economics, or is it something that maybe will get cut off. >> >> yeah. thank you. no, thank you for all of

those -- yeah. thank you for those important questions. well, first question, how did neoclassical economics win? well, you need a ph.d. dissertation on sociological knowledge to really pick this apart, but i have a few ideas. first is that what some people call physics envy -- [laughter] so, basically, economists wanted to become scientists, and the closer you look like physics, the better you are. and then in order to do that, you should get rid of concepts like uncertainty and psychology and so on so that you can quantify and make it look like mechanics, right? so there's one. also during the cold war, talking about economic systems and institutions became rather dangerous, yeah? so a lot of people who even though when they were politically socialist like ken

arrow delved into math metizing things so they don't have to talk about political things. also some people point out that the influx of non-english-speaking european economists after the takeover of nazis and the second world war encouraged math metyization because those people couldn't write very well, so they started doing mathematics. and also that, you know, neoto classical economics -- neoclassical economics in many varieties is, basically, in favor of the status quo, and that gets a lot of political brownie points from people who benefit from the status quo. don't get me wrong, not all neoclassical economics defends status quo, but unless you really try, it's very easy the slip into that given the nature of the theory. so there are these things which

we can talk about, but, you know, i don't think i have enough expertise to tell you exactly how it happened, yeah? on the unemployment question, you know, i think that basically what we have to, you know, realize is that job creation is something that we can change if we adopt different policies, different institutionings. it's not like natural phenomenon, it's not like earthquake, you know? there are so many things in economic world that no economist think is inevitable. yeah, economists have been saying, oh, increasing equality in the united states is all because of globalization. is it? you know, the u.s. is one of the most closed economies in the world in terms of trade. 15% of u.s. gdp. how do you then explain in

switzerland where international trade -- [inaudible] nearly 60% of gdp, income inequality actually fell during the 1990s? you know, people say, ah, you know, inequalities are inevitable because of the rise of new technologies, blah, blah, blah. yeah. despite that, you know, european countries have a lot higher inequalities than the united states. actually, many of those countries including sweden, germany, belgium and so on in many years -- once again, you can look this up in the oecd statistics -- in many years, not all the time, before tax and welfare transfer have higher inequality than the united states. so you can do so much to change this. unemployment is the same, you know? governments can actually create jobs in public services, yeah? or they can create, say, particular jobs as in childcare

so a lot more women can go into the labor market and work. and so on. so these are all subject to, you know, policy interventions and institutional changes. so don't ever believe when people say, oh, these things are inevitable, it's globalization, it's the bloody chinese, you know? [laughter] you have to -- [inaudible] inequality and folding wages and, yeah? no, don't believe them. well, the last point, you know, i say all of those things are welcome, you know? once again, i mean, reality is complex, yeah? in the same way that biologists sometimes look at a bone structure but also sometimes dna, sometimes animal behavior, we should look at the economy, yeah, sometimes in terms of aggregate kind of quantifiable categories like energy consumption and entropy and what have you. other times you actually have to

ask people why are you doing this, yeah? why do you like this more than the other? why are you voting for this policy. and i think all of these are different methodologies that should be welcome. >> thanks. [applause] >> hi. >> [inaudible] >> i'm a student from cipa. you mentioned that you can't separate the politics from economy -- >> [inaudible] >> you mentioned that you can't separate politics from the economics, so i'm just curious to find out what then is your own political leanings, or to put it another way, what political approach do you think is actually the most superior or

effective in solving the the world's problems right now from, i don't know, income equality to poverty. and i have a second question. i'm interested in your thoughts on having a minimum wage, because you know economists always are two minds about this, and some say it disrupts market equilibrium, but it does give the -- [inaudible] a leg up. so, yeah. >> now we go -- the gentleman there in the gray shirt. and then this lady in the blue blazer and after that in the next round the gentleman with the new york yankees -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> hi. i'm from, originally from south africa, so i appreciate your insights on my country. and i'm from the new school, i've studied international affairs there. i think you might have given a talk there a few days ago. i come from -- i studied

journalism, even though i've studied international affairs and economics, i come from a journalistic background, and my experience of economics is a little bit like most people. i've touched on it through the media and what we consume in the media and the rhetoric we're encountering in the media landscape. so since you're someone who's written a book that is quite nicely sort of titled a user's guide, do you think that the kind of rhetoric that we encounter through the media has a valid space to serve an important purpose, or do you find that more often than not it's counterproductive in our understanding of often -- even though we instinctively understand some of the concepts we encounter in the economy, do you find that sometimes the way they are condensed in the media can be counterproductive rather than useful?

>> hello. i'm -- [inaudible] i'm from korea, and i'm a first-year student at cipa. i'm not from upstairs, but i did, like, study economist for my undergrad and master's, and as a student, like, i was always, like, thinking which school do i fit into. and now you're telling me not to do that -- [laughter] and, like, i'm, like, i'm kind of curious. why is it, like, wrong to be, like, part of a school, and why is it wrong to, like, have a political stand, like, similar to what -- [inaudible] asked? is i think, like, economics is very subjective, and it's, like, actually right to, like, have a -- [inaudible] my own identity. and, you know, i'm wondering, yeah. and also i am curious, like, how do you define yourself? do you think you're part of, like, a particular economic school, or do you have, like, a different way of describing yourself as an economist?

>> excellent questions. we can stop now. thank you very much. >> yeah, thank you. well, which political approach, you know, i don't think in the same way that no economic approach is superior to others, it's the same with politics. i don't think there's any single way about approaching politics. yeah, except probably one thing that we want democracy, yeah? i think that's a given. yeah, once again this kind of creates that paradox, dilemma, yeah? so if you're a democrat, what do you do to people who want to abolish democracy? so if you're a pluralist in economics, what do you do to people who say we can only allow one school?

asia, you know, a lot of people have done very careful work showing quite, up to quite a high level minimum wages that do not actually destroy jobs. and also today, you know, you are seeing in the phenomenon that by not paying minimum wage, corporations are actually getting subsidized by the government because when you have so many so-called working poor, people who have a job but still do not get enough to survive, they have to be supported by the government, so that's an implicit subsidy that they are getting from the government while they are criticizing poor people for getting subsidies, actually those corporations are also getting subsidized. well, you know, media because i have to present these things in a particular way, you know? i have written for news media -- [inaudible] you have a bit more space than

just straight reporting, but, you know, you have to, you know, exaggerate, you have to, you know, kind of give a finder point, and you have to shock -- a finer point, and you have to shock people. so it's inevitable. and as herbert simon once famously said, that -- [inaudible] so how do you grab attention? and in that process, yes, unfortunately things get --? -- simplified, yeah? you begin to develop very particular way of speech, and then you always try to conform to the conventional view because that's easier, you know? so, yes, there are downside to it, but i'm not going to say, well, you know, media people -- [inaudible] what the economist say, yeah? some economists say that, but if they think so, they should

actually try to rethink whether they have explained things wrongly, yeah? if media people are constantly getting you wrong, if politics are consistently misunderstanding your idea, maybe you have a problem, huh? [laughter] of course, economists are never wrong, so it must be the reporters -- [laughter] it must be the senator, you know? others, yeah? well, as i said earlier even when i quoted that thing from buddha, you know, i think you should have your own opinion. i mean, be you want, i belong to one school or i belong to two schools or three schools or whatever. no, you need that, some kind of anchor. all i'm asking for is to have an open mind. you know, evenyou're, i don't know -- even if you're, i don't know, neoclassical economist, why not raze keynes or marx? when some -- why not read keynes or marx?

when some students are asking for -- [inaudible] in the u.k. wrote that, demanded from their faculty that we want to learn about marx, one of the professors very stupidly posted a blog on the student web site saying if you want to learn about marx, go to north korea, you know? [laughter] that kind of attitude is what really drives me up the wall, you know? of course, he got totally destroyed by his students, you know? shame on you, yeah in. [laughter] a, north korea has nothing to do with marxism. [laughter] and, b, you know, that kind of narrow attitude is exactly what students are want to get rid of, yeah? anyway, for me i, you know, i don't know where i belong, you know? i mean, i have told you, i have studied all these schools, and i have used their insights, i mean, many places. >> you belong to a category of

economists who can be trusted. >> oh, no. [laughter] not like that. but, you know, yeah, you know, if you want to strongly believe in one school, believe it. but have an open mind. if you want to be omnivorous like i am, why not, you know? there's nothing wrong with either. the important thing is to have an open mind. i think that's the minimum you have to have. i mean, if you begin to say things like if you want to learn marxism go to north korea, then you disqualify yourself as an academic, yeah? >> thank you very much. we have running out of time, and i know that professor chang has to take a train to washington, d.c. very soon. but i did acknowledge one gentleman with the baseball hat who will get a chance to ask the last question. i think we need to, we need to stop now. thank you.

>> all right, thank you. i'm studying statistics at columbia, and i have one question regarding regulation. and i say you also mentioned finance and regulation on your book, and i'm wondering if there is any -- well, currently there are issues in the regulations such as volcker rule or basel iii, and is there any relationship with these regulations and politics? and also i'm wondering that do you believe that these kind of regulations will ultimately impact positively on our economics? >> right, thank you. well, i mean, of course regulation is decided upon and implemented by the political class, so, yes. after the financial crisis,

there have been some additional regulations, but the financial industry has lobbied very heavily to water it down. so there is that worry. but, you know, i'm not an expert on finance, so let me just say two things. i mean, one important principle that we have to bear in mind which i, you know, unfortunately didn't have time to emphasize enough in the book is what jose antonio has always emphasized; you have to make these regulations countercyclical, yeah? unfortunately, many of these regulations are procyclical. they encourage -- you know, basel is standard. when asset prices rise, banks have more capital and, therefore, they can leonard more which mag magnifies -- they cand more. my own principle is that we need to simplify the system. we have created this vastly

complex system that no one understands. of course, that is exactly why people like greenspan say, yeah, no you cannot regulate this. this is too complex. my argument is if it's too complex, simplify it, yeah? no, because you sound like, i don't know, car which can do 300 miles an hour with so many different switches and buttons and gears and to -- and so on, and you don't know how to control it. in order to encourage faster driving, we need to abolish traffic lights and, yeah, the seat belts are too expensive, aren't they? let's get rid of them. the air bag takes the thrill out of driving, so let's remove it. [laughter] and no wonder we have car crash and casualties, yeah? >> thank you very, very much, ha-joon. a stimulating talk and the commentators and, indeed, the audience also.