Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals

162 Pages·2016·1.43 MB·English

by  Tyler Cowen

Ideas for progress
San Francisco, California
press.stripe.com
Stubborn
Attachments
A vision for a society of free, prosperous, and
responsible individuals
Summary
Growth is good. Through history, economic growth in particular has alleviated
human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened
human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards,
produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and
more sources of fun. If we want to sustain our trends of growth, and the
overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it, every
individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us.
So, how do we proceed? Tyler Cowen, in a culmination of twenty years of
thinking and research, provides a roadmap for moving forward. In this new
book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and
Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can
help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society.
Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for
economic growth, and in doing so delivers a great dose of inspiration and
optimism about our future possibilities.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Agnes Callard, Bryan Caplan, Patrick Collison,
David Gordon, Robin Hanson, Daniel Jacobson, Kevin McCabe, Sarah Oh, Meg
Patrick, Derek Parfit, Hollis Robbins, Tom Round, Amni Rusli, David Schmidtz,
Alex Tabarrok, Larry Temkin, University of Pennsylvania seminar participants,
Kevin Vallier, and numerous commentators on earlier papers related to this work
for useful comments and discussions. The Mercatus Center supplied useful
research assistance. Special thanks go to my agent, Teresa Hartnett, to Brianna
Wolfson for her work on the publishing side, to Tyler Thompson and Kevin
Wong for the design of the book, to Rebecca Hiscott for editing, and to Patrick
Collison for his interest in publishing this book with Stripe.
Biography
Tyler Cowen is a Holbert L. Harris Professor at George Mason University and
Director of the Mercatus Center. He received his PhD in economics from
Harvard University in 1987. His book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate
the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel
Better was a New York Times best seller. He was recently named in an Economist
poll as one of the most influential economists of the last decade, and several
years ago Bloomberg Businessweek dubbed him “America’s Hottest Economist.”
Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of its “Top 100 Global Thinkers” of
2011. He also cowrites a blog at marginalrevolution.com, runs a podcast series
called “Conversations with Tyler,” and has cofounded an online economics
education project, mruniversity.com. His most recently published book was The
Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.
Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals © 2018
Tyler Cowen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by Stripe Press / Stripe Matter Inc.
Stripe Press
Ideas for progress
San Francisco, California press.stripe.com
Printed by Hemlock in Canada ISBN: 978-1-7322651-3-4
Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca) First Edition
Table of Contents
1—Introduction
2—Wealth makes the world go round
3—Overcoming disagreement
4—Is time a moral illusion?
5—What about redistribution?
6—Must uncertainty paralyze us?
Conclusion—where have we landed?
Appendix A
Appendix B
References