Tyler Cowen: Default state through history is confusion about what is money

Tyler Cowen was recently interviewed by Lex Fridman and the conversation was great since Tyler’s usually asking the questions. This time we got to hear all his answers in their full glory and they were glorious. All notes below are paraphrased:

What matters more than the type of capitalism is how good is your legal system / rule of law

He expects a global catastrophe in the next 700-800 years, something the scale of a nuclear war, simply a function of probabilities (there will be more Hitlers)

Default state thru history is confusion about what is money / moneyness

Fiat currency already works really well

Bitcoin could be worth $1M as long as people agree. But it’s unlikely to be money. More a collectible / gold. Ethereum has a better but still low chance

WSB (and retail yolo in investing) is a new brand of esports

Diversity talk has become a new mechanism for enforcing conformity