Tyler Cowen Quotes

“Once you're using sides and sauces you're on the right track and you're also following the general principles about how to eat well in the United States.”

— Tyler Cowen

Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe ... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them.
Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the ... public.

— Tyler Cowen

“The lesson about food is that the most predictable and the most orderly outcomes are always not the best. They are just easier to describe. Fads are orderly. Food carts and fires aren't. Feeding the world could be a delicious mess, full of diverse flavors and sometimes good old-fashioned smoke.”

— Tyler Cowen

“And to be blunt-while I know I can't prove this-I wonder how much of the middle class consists of people in government or protected service-sector jobs who don't actually produce nearly as much as their pay.”

— Tyler Cowen

“It's becoming increasingly clear that mechanized intelligence can solve a rapidly expanding repertoire of problems.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Firms and employers and monitors will be able to measure economic value with a sometimes oppressive precision.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Social systems proceed by (usually) covering up the brutalities upon which they are based. The doctor doesn't let you get to his door and then turn you away, rather his home address is hard to find. The government handcuffs you so they don't have to shoot you trying to escape. And so on.”

— Tyler Cowen

“The world-not to mention the American Medical Association-is pretty far from accepting this fact, but the person working with the computer doesn't have to be a doctor or even a medical expert. She has to be good at understanding and correcting the computer's mistakes, which is a very different skill. This will involve some knowledge of medicine, brain scans, or whatever, but it is a less comprehensive medical knowledge than what a prestigious MD would have. It may well involve more knowledge of smart machines, how they work, and what their failings are likely to be.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Let's say that you could carry around a perfect copy of a three-dimensional realization of a Caravaggio painting (or if your tastes are more modern make it a Picasso). You would carry a small box in your pocket, and whenever you wanted, you could press a button and the box would open up into life-sized glory and show you the picture. You would bring it to all the parties you attended. The peak of the culture of the seventeenth century (or say the 1920s if you prefer Picasso) would be at your disposal. Alternatively, let's say you could carry around in your pocket an iPhone. That gives you thousands of songs, a cell phone, access to personal photographs, YouTube, email, and web access, among many other services, not to mention all the applications that have not yet been written. You will have a strong connection to the contemporary culture of small bits.”

— Tyler Cowen

“If you have an unusual ability to spot, recruit, and direct those who work well with computers, even if you don't work well with computers yourself, the contemporary world will make you rich.”

— Tyler Cowen

“You might like either the Republicans or the Democrats more than I do, but still something is wrong in today's politics, even if we don't always agree”

— Tyler Cowen

“The Christian right, which trumpets the theme of family values, damns contemporary culture for undermining older traditions. Yet many individuals from this camp are not concerned first and foremost about family values per se. Family is a codeword for constraint; families and family values place constraints on individuals more effectively than any other institution, including government. The Christian right seeks a society in which all are constrained; they reject big government for failing at constraint, and for undermining those institutions, like the family, that have a chance at succeeding.”

— Tyler Cowen

In most of the world, breakfast is an important meal.

— Tyler Cowen

Economics is everywhere, and understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life.

— Tyler Cowen

“The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Sports is remarkably cognitive. I think it's underrated just how smart it is. Actually, if I had more time, I would spend more time with sports. Watching it, reading about it, I think it's oddly underrated.”

— Tyler Cowen

“The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements.”

— Tyler Cowen

“When you look at the actual data on technological innovation, one thing you see is that what I call the 'low-hanging fruit' has been exhausted. So radio, flush toilets, electricity, and automobiles - a lot of very basic inventions - have spread to almost all households.”

— Tyler Cowen

“I think higher ed in the U.S. is fairly healthy, and by global standards it dominates, and it makes people more productive. But a lot of our K-12 is a disaster. And the single most important reform would just be to fire the worst ten or 15 percent of teachers in the lot, and we would have massive improvements.”

— Tyler Cowen

“We're seeing an enormous amount of global upward mobility that's quite rapid and quite sudden, and undiscovered individuals have a chance - using the Internet, using computers - to prove themselves very quickly. So I think the mobility story will be a quite complicated one.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Most of us are not pure self-starters; most people need role models, they need coaches, they need exemplars, they maybe need some discipline or some rewards. We need to be motivated.”

— Tyler Cowen

“In the early stages of negotiation software, on your smartphone, there may be programs that listen to the pitch of a voice, or that test for stress. You'll just ask the program, 'Was he lying? Was he eager to do business with me?' Maybe the computer will be right sixty per cent of the time.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Most restaurants in most cities, including Washington, are at a sort of mid-level. They're somewhat trendy, or they have some sort of gimmick, or they're somewhat expensive. And they make a lot of money off drinks. I tell people don't go to most of them, unless your goal is just to socialize.”

— Tyler Cowen

“A bad or mediocre meal is more than just an unpleasant taste, it is an unnecessary negation of one of life's pleasures - a wasted chance to refine our palates, learn about the world, and share a rewarding experience.”

— Tyler Cowen

“I think a lot of people will be liberated from a lot of oppressive manufacturing jobs, or a lot of service jobs, because they'll be done by computers. There'll be the world's best education available online and free.”

— Tyler Cowen

“In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.”

— Tyler Cowen

“For the very top earners, vision and inspiration are essential. You need those to become the next Steve Jobs, but perhaps not to be the highest paid dentist in Beverly Hills.”

— Tyler Cowen

After aircraft production, the entertainment industry is America's largest source of trade surplus.

— Tyler Cowen

“Look at electricity in human history - it took a few decades for electricity to really revolutionize the American economy. And the Internet will be the same. At some point in the future, we will arrive at a new era of low-hanging fruit.”

— Tyler Cowen

“We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We'll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won't be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up.”

— Tyler Cowen

“At fancy and expensive restaurants (say, $50 and up for a dinner), you can follow a simple procedure to choose the best meal. Look at the menu and ask yourself: 'Which of these items do I least want to order?' Or: 'Which one sounds the least appetizing?' Then order that item.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism.”

— Tyler Cowen

“There's so much free material on the Internet you can learn from, and some people are pure self-starters: they pick up computers and teach themselves everything. Certainly there are millions of people like that. But at the same time, I think it's a pretty small percentage of the population.”

— Tyler Cowen

“I don't really watch TV.”

— Tyler Cowen

“I'm not a vegetarian. But I think people who are vegetarians, they are actually more virtuous than the rest of us. I think they should be admired.”

— Tyler Cowen

“I think people who are not rich can be extremely happy. And I think the chances to be happy in this new world - with many more opportunities to be creative, to be online, to educate yourself - there'll be a lot more chances to be happy. It's not to say everyone will take them, but there will be a lot of new paths to opportunity.”

— Tyler Cowen

What the banking system needs is creditors who monitor risk and cut their exposure when that risk is too high. Unlike regulators, creditors and counterparties know the details of a deal and have their own money on the line.

— Tyler Cowen

“I sometimes say I am a 'happiness optimist' but a 'revenue pessimist.'”

— Tyler Cowen

“Throwing more science at things isn't always the answer.”

— Tyler Cowen

“To get anything done, Obama has to be seen as having winning economy - which isn't easy.”

— Tyler Cowen

I'm a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave - Italy might be the first to go - and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don't see greater fiscal union as the answer.

— Tyler Cowen

“If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That's why 'average is over.'”

— Tyler Cowen

“I've been a foodie most of my life. I started when I lived for a year in Germany in my early 20s, and here was this new food environment, and I decided I needed to make sense of it. And I found it was the rules of economics that do the best job. Food is a capitalist product of supply and demand.”

— Tyler Cowen

The hours from 7 to 12 are your time to build for the future before the world descends on you.

— Tyler Cowen

“Marcel Proust shut out visitors from his cork-lined room, where he wrote, but he probably expected to be immortalized in the literary canon. Even the most introverted drives and motives are set in a social context and amplified by the potential for achieving fame.”

— Tyler Cowen

“For many artists fame complements the value of creative self-expression. Ludwig van Beethoven loved composing music, but he probably would have enjoyed it less if no one ever listened to the product.”

— Tyler Cowen

“Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader.”

— Tyler Cowen