The Rise and Fall of Nations in an Era of Global Transformation

Good morning and welcome to this session on the rise and fall of nations in an era of global transformations. I am Nuen Chang, professor of economics at Indiana University. I have the privilege of moderating today's discussion.

We are honored to have professor James Robinson at University of Chicago who just won the Nobel Prize in economics last year along with his longtime collaborator Darren Asimoglu for their groundbreaking research on the culture relationship between political systems and a country's long-term economic performance. James has had a fascinating intellectual journey. He received his undergraduate degree from the London School of Economics, a master from Warwick and his PhD from Yale University. He was trained as an economist but moved into political science teaching at University of Melbourne, University of Southern California, Berkeley, and Harvard before his current interdisciplinary role at University of Chicago. He's a university professor at Harris School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science. He often described himself as a recovering economist though he just won Nobel Prize in economics. So clearly he retains that economist analytical rigor.

James is the author of two hugely influential books that help us understand our current moment. The first book, *Why Nations Fail*, shows that inclusive institutions lead to prosperity while extractive institutions result in failure and therefore institutions, not culture or geography, determine whether countries prosper. The second book, *The Narrow Corridor*, states societies and the fate of liberty explains how liberty emerges from a delicate balance between state power and societal strength, and that when this balance collapses, societies tend toward authoritarianism or anarchy. Today he will present insights from the second book, *The Narrow Corridor*, telling us how liberty emerges from the delicate balance between state capacity and the power of citizens and how that balance can be lost.

As for me, as I said, I'm the professor of economics at Indiana University. I think I also have an interesting academic journey though not as remarkable as James. I was initially trained as a theoretical econometrician but now mainly focus on applying my methods to practically relevant areas including intergenerational mobility and, with James, started with Steven Dolof, James's colleague at Harris School of Public Policy. I also study income and wealth inequality and monetary and fiscal policy interactions. Actually, I will be presenting my research on the effect of monetary and redistribute policies on income inequality here at the conference tomorrow. This connects directly to James's framework because inequality, as a failure of sharing prosperity, can undermine the very liberal democratic institutions that James studies.

Our session is organized as follows. James will first present his framework for 20 minutes. Then he and I will have a dialogue for 20 minutes exploring how his ideas apply to Korea and to current global challenges we face. Finally, we will open for audience Q&A for the remaining time. James, the floor is yours.

Okay. Uh, marvelous. Thank you very much for that introduction, and I'm I'm I'm super happy to be here. Okay. Right. So, so I'm going to talk for 20 minutes. Let me talk for about 10 minutes about the framework, uh, in in in my book *The Narrow Corridor*, and then, you know, I was tasked to applying it to thinking about the kind of challenges, shall I say, in the world today. What does it say about the situation in the world today? Okay. So, so the way we, so that's what I'm going to try to do. So the way we kind of introduce the book is to talk about liberty. And so here's two kind of claims. Okay, two empirical claims. Uh, one, uh, comes from, uh, the John Locke's second treatise of government, uh, which is a kind of universal claim, uh, which I'll come back to right at the end with the last slide, which is that humans, uh, want to live in liberty. What did John Locke mean by that? Well, you know, you could call this negative liberty. Okay. He called liberty a state of perfect freedom where people are in a state of freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit without asking leave or depending on the will of any other man. So this would be a definition of negative liberty. People aspire to that. You could say that's a kind of empirical claim. You might could argue about it, but we can discuss that. Okay. So, uh, whatever whether or not that's true, I think we can agree with the second claim, probably much less contentious empirically, which is there's an awful lot of variation in the world in the terms of, you know, to what extent do people live in that sort of liberty. Whether you like it or not, you can see there's a lot of variation. So our theory is trying to think about where does that variation come from, okay? So let me sort of jump straight into that and say, okay, there's variation in liberty in in the world. What could create variation in liberty? Okay. And I think the first case that usually jumps into people's minds when you start talking about this is a situation where when the state dominates society, that tends to be a situation where there's ill liberty, according to this definition. Okay. So, you know, when George Orwell wrote his great book, *1984*, he said, "Big Brother is watching you." It wasn't technologically possible for Big Brother to watch you, uh, in 1948 when the book was published. But now it is. Okay. So if you go in Tiananmen Square, Big Brother is watching you. Okay. So this seems to be a situation where there's ill liberty, according to John Locke's definition. Right? But of course, the whole world isn't like that. In fact, I spent most of my time working in countries that are very different from China, in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, where it's almost the opposite. Okay. So, just to take a topical example, Yemen. Okay. So Yemen, in the Arabian Peninsula, Big Brother is definitely not watching you in Yemen. In fact, it's almost the opposite situation. The state is extremely weak, almost non-existent in Yemen, but society is very powerful and very organized. Okay. So you could think of a sort of the polar opposite case, not where the state dominates society like in China, but where society dominates, uh, the state. You know, here's a picture of, uh, northern northern Yemen, uh, uh, you know, where every boy, uh, has a dagger, you know. Uh, the great German sociologist Max Weber said, you know, the state is the entity that has the legitimate monopoly of violence in society. In Yemen, the state doesn't really have a monopoly of violence, legitimate or otherwise, but people have the legitimate right to use, uh, violence. Okay. So, so that's a the polar opposite situation. But of course, that's also a situation where there's not much liberty in the sense that I defined. Okay. That situation, the polar opposite situation, doesn't lead to liberty either. So what, you know, it leads to something more like, you know, what Thomas Hobbes described, uh, in his great book, *Leviathan*, as a state of kind of war. So what does lead to to liberty? Well, now you can see that this looks pretty difficult to achieve. It's not true. You're not going to get liberty when the state dominates society. The polar opposite case where society dominates the state. So what we claim is that in the middle, where there's a kind of balance between the power of the state and power of society, that's where what we call there's a narrow corridor. That's where liberty emerges. Okay. So, so we put this together in a in a diagram. Uh, on the horizontal axis, we have the power of society. On the vertical axis, we have the power of the state. You can have kind of two boundary equilibria. You know, on the vertical axis, you could think of this, I motivated it by China, where the state dominates society. On the other, on the other axis, you could have a boundary equilibrium where society dominates the state. And in between, there's this sort of, there's a, there's a basin of attraction where the state and society balance each other. Okay. And that's the claim that's where liberty emerges and other things too. Okay. So, so that's that's the sort of framework we developed. Okay.

So, here, you know, I have some kind of the usual suspects. You could say in the corridor, we could talk about the emergence of liberty in Western Europe or North America historically. But since we're in Korea, let me talk about Korea because you could put that up there and you could ask the question, well, you know, the book kind of argues that to have for liberty to emerge, you have to sort of get into the corridor. You have to, you have to attain this balance between the state and society. Okay. So then the historical question is, well, why did some countries get into the corridor and other countries not get into the corridor? And how did Korea get into the corridor, for example? Okay. So let me talk about the Korean case. Okay. So in terms of that diagram, well, if I thought about the history of Korea, and you could ask, okay, what about the nature of the state? How did the state relate to society? How was society organized? I think, you know, uh, modulo my ridiculously inadequate understanding of Korean history, you see it's a kind of mixed picture. You know, if you go to the, uh, to the, uh, old Imperial Palace, you know, just just around the corner, you know, there's a whole series of stones. You may have seen those that mark how close could you come to the emperor depending on your social rank. Okay. So, as I, this was pointed out, this was the ninth. So, you know, so, so there's a social ranking that allowed you to get closer or further away from the emperor. So this was a pretty sort of hierarchical, uh, state, you know. Um, uh, some of you may have noticed that I'm extremely interested in, particularly my 10-year-old son, who Adrian, is particularly interested in K-pop demon hunters as a cultural, uh, and kind of social science phenomena. So I have to put up a photograph of that, the hat. You know, there were sanctuary laws. Only elites could wear the hat. So, that that that looks like a state pretty dominant in society. But there's other things about Korea that are interesting, you know, like the Hanmoon. Okay. So, if you watch K-pop Demon Hunters, you know that it's a very sort of collectivist society. You know, people are working together towards a collective goal. You may not have seen the social science aspect of this, but if you think about it, there's a collectivist aspect to Korean society that's very sort of interesting. So that's about the society and the cohesion of the society. You could say social capital. Uh, you know, think of the 1998 gold collecting incidents where Koreans came together and they gave their gold to kind of bail the state out. That's that's a strong society in our vision. Okay. So, so it's historically mixed, I would say. Okay. But I think for me, the pivotal moment in the sort of emergence of modern Korea would be the 1940s, the 1950s agrarian reform. So after the Second World War, there was this very radical agrarian reform. I don't have time to go through the numbers, you know, but you can see here that 50% of land was owned by 4% of the landowners before agrarian reform. So that agrarian reform kind of creates a much broader basis for, I would say, an inclusive society, uh, in, uh, the 1950s. Okay. Uh, it's not just a grand reform. There's educational reform. You can see if I went back to the 1950s, uh, average years of, uh, schooling. This is of course the Barrow and Lee data set. Since we're here in Korea, I should be advertising the Barrow and Lee data set. Very distinguished Korean, uh, economist. You know, back in the 1950s, educational attainment, measured by average years of schooling, was below the world average. Korea rockets up. It just overtook, uh, the United States, you know. So there's an enormous expansion of education, kind of spreading human capital. Uh, so there's a big, I would think about this in terms of strengthening the capacity of society immensely. So if I was thinking about the historical dynamics of Korea, I think I would start in this period and say it's a bit clear where Korea was with respect to the corridor historically. But at least in the 1950s, 1960s, maybe, you see this, I would say, a dramatic increase in the power of, uh, society relative to the state. So Korea sort of gets into the corridor in the 1950s, 1960s, and then in the corridor, these dynamics happen. The dynamics, the interaction of state and society. That's what we call the Red Queen effect. And it's that dynamic that takes Korea up in the corridor, creating the economic miracle, creating the kind of social and cultural miracle as well. Okay. How do I know that? Well, a book that I enjoy very much, uh, by Professor Louu here, sort of exactly is about this. Okay, here's his chapter six. Once in the corridor, he talks about generalized reciprocity between the strong state and the strong society. So that's exactly the dynamic in our book, the strong state and the strong society pushing each pushing each other and getting stronger in that competition. Okay. So that's, you know, the Red Queen effect. That's this interaction between states and society which gets going in the corridor. Okay. I told a kind of historical story. You know, you could think of those conditions in Korea in the 1940s and 1950s. There was a lot of disruption, the end of Japanese colonialism, the Second World War, the Korean War. There was a sort of flux in which modern South Korea sort of emerged as a society. Um, but I think if you look at the other historical accounts, you see that, you know, this may be difficult to attain. It may be difficult to get into the corridor. If I thought about the Chinese case and I went far enough back in history, you could sort of say, well, how how come China didn't go along that road? You know, if you go back far enough back in history, you see, you know, you see all sorts of interesting things. This is, uh, from Hunia, a famous, uh, philosophical tract. And, you know, this this might, you know, here's the translation of the of the characters. "The king is a boat. The common people are the water. The water holds up the boat. The water sinks the boat." So, so there's an image of a kind of kind of interaction between the state and society, the water and the boat, kind of in balance. If the boat gets out of control, you know, the water sinks the boat. Okay. So, so there, if I go back far enough, few thousand years, you know, uh, two and a half thousand years, 3,000 years, there's sort of a balance between state and society. But then what happens in China, of course, is a new model takes over. A new model gets traction. Uh, famously famously associated with the legalist philosophers, uh, his Shang Yang, you know, very different image appears. "When the people are weak, the state is strong. Hence the state that possesses the way strives to weaken the people." Okay. And that's sort of the way it's been in China, uh, for the last two and a half thousand years. You know, currently, the state is weakening people through something called a social, uh, social credit system, micromanaging, uh, everyone, uh, in society. Okay. So, so, and I think when you see the Chinese dynamics, you know, from the perspective of our book, you sort of understand the Yemeni dynamics, like how come Yemen created a society like that? Or how many, how why is it that so many parts of the world, the society dominates the state? Well, you can see that, and this is the argument in the book. It's somehow the anticipation of the type of mechanisms that set in in China is what traps you into this other equilibrium where the society dominates the state. It's very hard to create a state and control it. That, the kind of the genius of the dynamics in the corridor is you gradually build a kind of more effective state, a more powerful state, but you do it in a way that it can be controlled in the interests of society. Okay. All right. Economic implications. I'm not going to talk too much about that. As the professor was saying, I describe myself as a recovering economist. But for those of you who've read *Why Nations Fail*, it's in the corridor, in some sense, that these, what we call inclusive economic institutions and economic prosperity emerges. And perhaps we'll talk about that in the Korean case in the discussion. Okay. Let me put the theory to work, you know, in these times of crisis. Okay. I don't need to elaborate for Koreans, uh, that expression. Okay. And we do that a bit in the book in chapter 13, which I call "Red Queen Out of Control." Okay. So what do I mean? What do we mean by "Red Queen Out of Control"? Well, you know, if you look at history, it's clear that there were societies that were in the corridor for quite long periods of time that jumped out of the corridor. All right? So we tried to understand in that chapter what was going on in those, uh, what was going on in those cases. Okay? And we make a few sort of generalizations about what circumstances lead the Red Queen to get out of control. Meaning, you're in the corridor, you're moving forward, states and society are getting more powerful together, but then something happens and you jump out of the corridor. All right? So the first, uh, generalization that you can see from these historical cases we could look at is society becomes very polarized. Okay. So social polarization, this is what something we call the zero-sum Red Queen emerges. Okay. So, so, uh, you'll forgive me if I talk about US data, but we have a lot of polarization in the United States at the moment. So this is some data from the Pew Research Center about, uh, the attitudes of Republicans to Democrats and Democrats to Republicans. And it's mostly about, uh, Republicans say Democrats are more what? Close-minded, dishonest, immoral, unintelligent, lazy. And the other way around. So what you see in this picture is there's enormous polarization in the sense of stereotypes spreading about your political opponents. So Democrats are more and more having negative opinions about Republicans and vice versa. And this has got enormously worse over the last 10 years. Okay. So one could look at polarization in many other ways. You know, this is from, uh, also from the Pew, uh, research, just, uh, kind of, you know, doing, uh, a word count of just, you know, asking people how they would discuss US politics, how they think of US politics, and you can see what are the most common words that people use in the United States now to talk about politics: divisive, corrupt, messy, polarized, there's polarized, bad. Okay. So this is just unprompted how people talk about the political situation. Okay. So there's polarization for you. What we also observe in these cases is that institutions become really incapable of solving problems and resolving conflicts. Okay. So, could that apply in this case? Absolutely. So, here's more data from the Pew Research, uh, uh, which is just a survey where they asked people about, you know, do you think that most elected officials care about a person like you? And the, what the data says on average, and this is true across genders, age, race, whatever, about 85% of people say that elected politicians don't care about somebody like me. Okay. So that's absolutely breathtaking. Uh, 85% of people say that elected politicians don't care about them. Okay. So, so the inst, it's hard for institutions to manage, uh, conflicts in this when there's so little trust, uh, so little trust in them. That's only one of many institutions, of course, but, you know, uh, and the third thing we point out in the, the thing, third thing we point out is that, uh, this is then a crisis comes, a shock comes. Okay. So you have these three, this is just very, kind of inductive, there are three things that seem to happen. Okay. I don't think there's a crisis in the world, uh, at the moment. There certainly not an economic crisis, but there are long-run structural problems. So the most obvious thing one could talk about from the economic perspective is just the failure of, uh, real wages of non-college-educated workers to increase for the last 50 years. So this is just data from David Autor, the MIT labor economist, and, you know, the big fact here is that if you don't have a college education, your real wages are lower than in the United States. Your, your real wages are lower than they were 50 years ago. Okay. So there's been a lot of growth over that period, a lot of technological change, everything else, but non-college-educated people have not benefited. So there have been slow-moving underlying economic problems that have somehow associated with the problem here. But I don't think this is just about economics. You know, it's also about an ideological crisis. For me, the crisis is ideological, not economic. And you can see that in lots of ways, you know, since we were educated at Yale, uh, I'm not sure if you ever read this book, but in 1951, William Buckley, Jr., who was one of the sort of founders of modern American conservatism, studied at Yale. And afterwards, he wrote this book called *God and Man at Yale* about how Yale professors were a bunch of kind of communist atheist communists, you know. So this antagonism towards the liberal establishment. So for me, it's a kind of ideological crisis about the whole kind of modern liberal society. Okay. So last slide. So I would say, you know, where are we now? Uh, the the good news is that at least what's happened in the United States in some sense is a kind of democratic backlash against many of these problems. The bad news is it's a very uninstitutionalized backlash because the institutions don't inspire confidence. And when the institutions don't inspire confidence, then there's a lot of scope for a non-institutional solution to problems. Okay. So I would say, you know, just to conclude, you know, there's a lot to talk about. It's a very perilous moment in world history. For someone like me, whose work has been about the role of institutions and the importance of institutions in prosperity and promoting liberty, I think my role is to keep on reminding people of the overwhelming evidence about how important institutions are. But I think we also have to do that in a case where we're kind of we can be honest and think hard about what the problems with the current system, the current global equilibrium, what the problems are. Okay, great. Thank you. Where do I go here?

Thank you so much for your great presentation. And you clearly talk about both, you know, promise and the fragility of, um, this liberty through the narrow, uh, corridor. So, just to understand the framework, so basically, we are starting from the assumption that we all want to have liberty, right? And then the, the liberty can be maximally achieved if we're in that narrow corridor. Yeah, you explain nicely. But it's hard to get in, and it's even harder to stay in that corridor. So then, for us to be there, as you said, that we have to be both the state and the society have to get stronger. Then, for us to achieve that, we need to have a good mobilization of society, and for that, we need, uh, also, uh, good democratic liberal democracy and institutions. And as a consequence, we're going to have prosperity, right? The economic prosperity. So, um, how to get into the corridor is, uh, really important. And, uh, for that, democratic institutions, we have to have those institutions. And for that, we need the people's support. And then, for people will be, you know, if they want to support this democratic system, we have to deliver what they want, for instance, economic growth, and good public goods like good healthcare and education, and also good law and regulation so that we can watch out for dictators and mega-rich people. Yeah. But then, uh, also gave us a lot of useful facts about incredible amount of distrust in government right now, which really undermines how likely do you think is that the US, the most exemplary nation in the, the corridor, can exit out of this corridor? How likely do you think it is?

I I don't have probabilities on that, you know. I think...

Then, what kind of warning signs do you care?

Well, I, you know, I think I think it is a warning, you know. I think it's a wakeup call. You know, I think what we've seen in the United States in the last decade is that there's an enormous amount of discontent in society which has been kind of papered over for years. You know, many of these processes have been going on for decades and decades, and the political class was either unaware of them or just incapable of doing anything to address them. So I think I can't really speak to that, but I I do think, you know, it's a big wakeup call and, you know, and I think that's a possibility for reorganizing many things and rebalancing relations and recognizing that, you know, other people's opinions are maybe legitimate and worth discussing instead of dismissing. And so I think it's a moment where, of course, it's very, there's a lot of conflict and and uncertainty at the moment. But the optimistic, the optimistic side is, you know, it's a moment where there's an opportunity to kind of reboot a lot of things, and they needed rebooting. Many things needed rebooting in the United States.

I think, uh, one of the reasons why people are questioning democracy in the US is they think that you probably don't need democracy for economic growth. I guess they're thinking about China, for instance, under this authoritarian government, they're doing extremely well. So, so they people might think that, you know, democracy is not tackling the economic challenges they face. So that could be. But then, the, we know, and you, you and Darren studied that, it's really the democracy is actually doing pretty well, right?

So economic growth achieved without this, uh, social, um, democratic institutions may not last.

Exactly.

Right? Because they don't invest in the public goods, education, and healthcare. So from very simple economic reasoning, the, we don't have good labor, good educated labor, so the economy cannot thrive. So, um, I think it's relevant for us, like in Korea, we are in the middle of China and the US, and we are in the, fortunately, we are in the narrow corridor. But how, how should we navigate in this very difficult situation between China and the US?

Well, I, I think I, I suspect Korea is very good at navigating. That's what you've been doing ever since. You've been doing, you've been doing that for 70 years. You know, I remember the first time I came to Korea, I was here with, with my friend Dual Kim, you know, who pointed out, we, he took me to the Imperial Palace and he pointed out, oh, there's a Starbucks, you know, that that sign means there's a bomb shelter. There's a bomb shelter underneath the Starbucks. Like, oh, we don't have that. We don't have that in Chicago, you know. So, so I think, you know, South Korea's flourished in this immensely, uh, kind of challenging geopolitical context. Maybe it's partly a stimulant, but you know, you have to live up, you have to, you know, you have to kind of face up to that. So I, I'm, you know, I think that's, that's not news to you. You know, the world is a challenging place, that's not news to you. You know, in fact, you know, historically, it was probably even more challenging. So, so I, I, you know, I think that, you know, I think on democracy, you know, the, the, the research that we've done, you know, the evidence is overwhelming that democracies invest more in public goods, there's more educational attainment, there's less conflict and violence, there's higher rates of economic growth. But of course, there's a lot of heterogeneity between non-democracies. There are many different sorts of non-democracies. But my view, you know, on China, which, which, you know, which you express very well, is, um, you know, and this again, you could say this is a, you know, I started by talking about liberty and whether there are sort of universals of human society. Of course, that's why South Korea is so nice, you know, because you did create this very vibrant democracy. You did create a lot of liberty here, and you see all the economic benefits from that. But you could say, is that really a, you know, a human universal? You know, my view on China is power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think maybe China's different, and there are other mechanisms, but that's, that's, I don't see any evidence to make me change my mind on that.

Yeah, I guess, um, always the challenge is an opportunity for us to be creative. And I think, uh, one of the reason, you know, the reason I think it, one of the reason why democracy is struggling these days is the inequality. I think because we always, the fruit of this liberty and democracy is the prosperity, right? Yeah. And inequality means we are not really sharing the, the fruits. So I think, uh, in, in some ways, we really have to do, I mean, in Korea too, we have a lot of inequalities. I mean, I mean, I mean, I think the Koreans will know there are a lot of resentment about those, and especially the housing is a big issue. So I think, uh, to really navigate, so I think I'm asking you for, for you to focus on this inequalities in some way. In what ways may we be creative in this situation?

No, I mean, you know, so I mean, that that's the, the inequality story is sort of implicit in that data on wages I put up there. I think, you know, the problem, you know, in in many democracies is that is that, you know, they've been immensely successful, but the world changes, you know, technology changes, computers diffuse, the world becomes far more globalized, you know, there's structural changes, and you have to adapt to that, and democracies have not adapted to that. You know, they haven't adapted to changes in the labor market or many of these things that have changed the wage structure and have been associated with enormous increases in inequality, and they haven't, they haven't adapted to that. Of course, there's a lot of heterogeneity. You know, Sweden adapted better than Britain or the United States did, you know, but I think that's so, you know, institutions are never kind of set once and then never, you know, you always have to adapt, you have to change. And I think that's why when I'm talking about rebooting, that's a lot of what I, what I mean. You know, we need new ideas for how to reinstitutionalize this liberal democratic system to try to deal with some of these problems. I think, you know, the Korean case, it depends on what data you look at. You know, it's interesting that if you look at many measures of inequality, like the Gini coefficient, for example, or even the share of national income accruing to the richest 10%, then Korea has managed to implement this transformation with very little change in inequality. It's dramatically different from China, for example. Of course, China started with socialism or whatever, so the initial conditions were different. But, but the, you know, there's, but, but what you do see in Korea in the last couple of decades is the very top, top, top, like the 1% or the 0.1%, have got a lot richer in Korea in the last 20 years. So you don't see it in many measures of inequality, which is, which is kind of extremely interesting. But now you do see it right at the top. You know, I think that's obviously that's got something to do with globalization. It's got to do with many of these mechanisms like CEO pay. You're competing, you know, in this global market for talent. You know, in the business world, you know, if you want to attract people or keep people, then, you know, then you have to pay these enormous, sort of salaries. So Korea can't isolate itself from that. But, but I think, you know, if I, if I stood back and asked, how has Korea managed this transition, you know, in this inequality space, I'd say actually it's done much better than most societies.

Yeah, I think as you said, it's very heterogeneous. I think the situation in Korea is very uniquely different from other countries, especially we heard a lot about this housing situation and a lot of wealth is concentrated. Therefore, all the monetary policy and fiscal policy that affects, you know, you know, capital gains taxes or the tax on wealth, it's all very delicate and it has potentially, uh, you know, aggravate already, um, you know, those populistic movements. So the civil movements may not be really in the interest of the nation. It might be in the interest of those groups they are representing. So that's why I was, you know, this, the very, the most important movements, right? We need the social mobilization. But that mobilization may, in this kind of situation, may turn into something that could destabilize instead of.

If you thought about the recent history of Korea, there's been, you know, social mobilization that protected the democracy against the declaration of martial law. So, you know, that's a pretty functional type of social mobilization, I would say.

Yeah.

Yes. Well, given the time, I will ask you the last question. I know even though you got the Nobel Prize, I, I understand that you don't have answers for everything. But there is a big elephant in the room for Koreans, right? North Korea. So, uh, we, obviously, he's not in the North Korea is not in the corridor. In what ways do you think, I mean, whether it's possible, and if yes, how, what's the path to for North Korea to get into Korea? Or do you think?

Yeah, well, you know, this, this I guess this comes back to my claim about, you know, human universals in the sense that, you know, my view, you know, at least wherever I've worked anywhere in the world is, you know, people are, you know, humans, we, we, we, you know, we share this deep kind of ancestral, uh, history, and, you know, so my view is that people value liberty wherever they are, you know, and the problem in North Korea is that the regime, you know, won't give people liberty. So I think, you know, uh, I think what's fascinating about North Korea is, you know, you see what's happened in China, for example, you see what's happened in Vietnam. They made these sort of transitions. They created enormous amount of wealth. The North Koreans know that's happening and they don't do it. They still don't do it. So why is that? Because the regime is much more personalized. It's not institutionalized in the way the Vietnamese regime or the Chinese. So they're too worried about losing power if they change. So, so I don't think the North Korean regime is going to change, you know. The only way it's going to change is if people rise up and overthrow it, you know, or it engages in some ludicrous, uh, interstate warfare and is defeated. You know, many regimes like that lose power, you know, as a consequence of warfare. But I think that's why they're actually, they sound a lot, they talk a lot, but actually they don't do anything because they actually understand that's one of the things that could really imperil the regime. So I think it's a very difficult situation. It's absolutely devastating for the ordinary person in North Korea, uh, to live, you know, in that world. Um, but I, you know, I think that's, you know, I think there, you know, and I, what's the chance that such an event will happen? I have, I have no idea, you know, but, but, but the world is full of surprising events. You know, nobody, I was a student when the Soviet Union collapsed, and nobody predicted that. You know, I had friends who were training to be Sovietologists, and they didn't know it was going to happen. So, so maybe, you know, something exciting will happen in North Korea.

Yeah, we'll see. But thank you for trying to give an answer to this hard question. Um, so with that, James, your framework, I think it's fascinating, really giving us, you know, a way to understand what's going on here, what's happening, why we are facing, you know, what what's happening now, and, uh, the way forward. The nar, I think the especially the nar narrow corridor framework is really fitting in this, uh, circumstances of challenging, um, you know, especially the the times where this democracy is getting a lot of, uh, challenges left and right. So I think, uh, we should really keep going and should try to keep a balance between the state and society power, and so that we keep, um, constant vigilance and balance. So now, with that, we can close our discussion and open the floor for the audience questions. So please, if you have questions, let us know.

Thank you. Um, curious, you, uh, presented the data about real wage change and also, um, this picture of growing distrust in educational institutions. And, you know, one might think that if you see that wages will only grow for folks who are more educated, there would be a drive towards education. What do you think creates that sort of, uh, unconventional response, or or how do we address the tension between education as a solution, potential solution, and this clear driver that is antagonistic towards the institutions of education?

Well, it's more about access to education and, you know, that and or or attitudes towards education. You know, I think also, you know, Michael Sandel, if you've read the political philosopher Michael Sandel's book on *The Tyranny of Meritocracy*. You know, Michael has this idea of, you know, people talk a lot about redistributive justice in the United States. But, you know, what you really need is something like contributive justice. You know, like I have a very good friend who I went to college with in London, you know, many years ago, who's a truck driver. Okay? So, so, and he loves it, you know, he loves being a truck driver. And so, so, you know, he could have gone, he could have got a different job. He could have got a job in a bank. He could have become whatever, but he, he didn't, he, he wanted some space to do his own thing and whatever. And, you know, Michael Sandel's point is that's that's a contribution to society. You know, we should respect that. We should, let's start, you know, before we start thinking about how we, you know, solve this problem through education or whatever, let's stop thinking of the truck driver as the Harvard dropout and just respect their contribution to society. So I think that Michael's book is a very good place to start on that.

Well, thank you so much. With this, our time is up, so we'll conclude this session. Thank you very much for your participation. Thank you, James, particularly. Okay.

Thank you.