HYETERT – Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Daron Acemoglu talked about his last book on the The Mishal Husain Show.
The polarized political climate has gone global. US midterms are days away, following closely on fraught elections in Brazil, Serbia and Israel, while in the UK, Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government just unveiled its first budget. For MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, co-winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, the stakes go beyond individual governments or countries to the state of democracy itself.
In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Acemoglu talks about his latest book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity.”
In the book, he offers a prescription for the center-left of politics, the political tradition with which he is aligned, and one which he argues needs a new focus in the age of artificial intelligence and algorithmic social media.
00:00 Introduction from Mishal Husain
03:08 A dedication in the book
04:04 Growing up in Turkey
08:00 “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”
09:09 The center-left should be better
13:28 Objecting to DEI initiatives
17:15 Acemoglu’s prescription for politics
20:36 Wealth taxes
22:48 Mamdani “a creation of New York’s politics”
24:48 AI and Big Tech
30:00 Media should cover Musk less
32:50 Controlling algorithmic social media
35:32 Political donations
37:17 Any knights in shining armor?