Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and co-author of The Simon Project. He specializes in globalization and global well-being, and politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. His articles were published in the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Newsweek, The U.K. Spectator, Foreign Policy and various other outlets both in the United States and overseas. He appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News, FOX Business and other channels. Tupy received his BA in international relations and classics from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his PhD in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Great Britain. He is the co-author of an upcoming book, Ten Global Trends that Every Smart Person Needs to Know: And Many Other Trends You Will Find Interesting.

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

I have heard you interviewed a number of times on Cato Events, but I’ve never heard you talk about your story. You grew up in South Africa and made your way to the States? Give us the biography and journey of Marian Tupy.
I didn’t realize that your parents were both medical doctors, so that gives you another insight on the whole COVID-19 situation. I trust you and yours have fared well with regard to that?
I wanted to ask you about an article that appeared in National Review entitled “COVID-19 Should Make Us Grateful for Technology,” would it be correct to say that without the extraordinary world that largely capitalism has provided us, there would be no such things as lockdowns since, quite frankly, we couldn’t afford it?
As you point out in that article, there are four main things, and we might be able to touch on a couple of them. First, you talk about healthcare, you mentioned that it took 3,296 years to develop a treatment for smallpox, polio over 3,000 years, cholera over 2,000 years, measles 1,500 years, rubella 350 years, but then you get down to where we are today, AIDS 15 years, Ebola only 5 years until the vaccine. It’s really just amazing.]
Ron and I are big fans of Russ Robert’s podcast, EconTalk, and he’s alluded to a couple of times on his show that what we’re going to see as a result of COVID-19 it’s really glorious. He’s predicting that it’s going to amazing the technologies that grow out of this, even if they aren’t directly related to COVID.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

Marian I’ve been reading some of your blog posts at Humanprogress.org site, which are fantastic, and one that really hit me was “Are We Really Poorer Than Our Parents,” November 3, 2018. You point out that Prosperity can be measured by personal income or wealth. But it can also be measured by falling prices. And before we get into your Time Prices and the Simon Index, I wanted to ask you a broader question. I remember reading Nicholas Eberstadt—I know he’s at another think tank—he said that if you measured the poverty rate by consumption, rather than income, it would be 2-4%.
You wrote another article “No, Americans Are Not Worse Off Today Than They Were in the 1970s,” FEE, July 9, 2019. You quoted someone who repeated the conventional wisdom that wages have stagnated since 1977 at $34,000. This is pure nonsense. Then you mentioned your Time Price calculations. Can you explain that and how it weaves into the standard of living?
I think you give the example of a blue collar worker throwing a Thanksgiving dinner, and the price of that has dropped dramatically.
In the article, you compared items from the Sears catalog in 1979 to Walmart in 2019, and the time price declined, on average, by 72%. That’s massive.
And just one clarification. We teach pricing and discuss the labor theory of value vs. the subjective theory of value. Your time prices are not based on the labor theory of value. You’re using time as a denominator, as a constraint. It has nothing to do with value, right?
The first time I was exposed to time prices it was in one of Matt Ridley’s books where he talked about [William D.] Nordhaus’s study on how much electricity used to cost and what we spend on it now in terms of labor, it’s a dramatic example. Once your head gets around this idea, it alters your worldview.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

Marian, before we get to your book, perhaps has a setup even, I just want to finish off the conversation on the National Review article. This notion that you bring up called “sociality,” defined as the tendency to associate in, or form, social groups. I think this is one of the big things that has been completely missed, and I don’t see much of it talked about it in society today. We are really suffering a dearth of social capital because of what’s happening with COVID. And I don’t think we will ever be able to measure what we’ve lost because of that.
I do want to get to your new book, due out at the end of August, the title is Ten Global Trends that Every Smart Person Needs to Know: And Many Other Trends You Will Find Interesting. Let’s start with population. The myth that we have a population problem. I think it was 1798 that the essay on principle of population, known as the Malthusian trap, the increases in the nation’s population would outstrip the production of the food supply. He was kind of right at the time, wasn’t he? But since he’s been proven wrong?
Is population growth one of the myths in the new book?
I already have the book on order and I’m looking forward to reading it. We hope to have Ronald Bailey on, your coauthor, after it’s published.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

Marian, I know you specialize in globalization and global well-being, and I just wanted to ask you: What did you think of Brexit?
Ed and I are big believers in Brexit; we called it Brexit 2.0, because we already did 1.0 in the 1770s.
Taxation with representation, we have learned, is much more expensive than taxation without representation.
You wrote “Is This Goodbye for Hong Kong,” June 9, 2020. We’ve been watching with a saddened heart everything going on in Hong Kong. We’re big fans of Jimmy Lai. What can we do about this situation, if anything, about this Marian?
It was heart-warming to see Boris Johnson say he was going to allow Hong Kong citizens to become UK citizens, and I think Australia’s Prime Minister said that, and I hope we do that here in the States. You also pointed out something else in your Hong Kong article and I have to ask you about this. You got to meet Sir John Cowperthwaite [HK Financial Secretary,1961-1971]. Tell us about that, wow!
Thank you for that Marian. This has been a treat to have you on, good luck with the book when it comes out, we’ll be the first to read it. Thank you for coming on The Soul of Enterprise.

Bonus Content is Available As Well

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Bonus Episode 104 — “Hong Kong, C-19, and a Member” — features conversations on several articles including: