WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today, we're opening 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:06.679 a file on a figure who is, I mean, technically 00:00:06.679 --> 00:00:11.339 classified as an economist, but that label, it 00:00:11.339 --> 00:00:13.919 just feels a little too small, maybe too rigid 00:00:13.919 --> 00:00:16.739 for the ground he covers. It really does. We 00:00:16.739 --> 00:00:19.280 are talking about Amartya Sen. Exactly. And the 00:00:19.280 --> 00:00:21.320 reason we've pulled this, well, this massive 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:24.079 stack of research, we've got his biography, Poverty 00:00:24.079 --> 00:00:26.379 and Famines, Development as Freedom, the idea 00:00:26.379 --> 00:00:29.539 of justice. It's because Sen didn't just, you 00:00:29.539 --> 00:00:32.000 know. add a few formulas to the field, he essentially 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.880 rewired its moral circuitry. That's a really 00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:37.179 good way to put it. Usually when we talk about 00:00:37.179 --> 00:00:39.359 economics, especially the classical kind, we're 00:00:39.359 --> 00:00:41.619 talking about the how. Right. How do we get growth? 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:43.479 How do we move resources around efficiently? 00:00:43.659 --> 00:00:45.579 How do we balance supply and demand? All of that. 00:00:45.859 --> 00:00:48.399 Sen stepped back from the whole machine and asked 00:00:48.399 --> 00:00:51.560 a much simpler but much bigger question. Why? 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:53.640 What's the point? What is the point of all this 00:00:53.640 --> 00:00:55.840 growth? I mean, if a country is rich in terms 00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:58.820 of its GDP, but its people aren't free. or they're 00:00:58.820 --> 00:01:00.880 dying from things we know how to prevent, does 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:03.100 the money actually matter? It feels like the 00:01:03.100 --> 00:01:05.900 difference between being a mechanic, you know, 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:08.540 tinkering with the engine, and being the architect 00:01:08.540 --> 00:01:10.579 who's actually designing the whole vehicle and 00:01:10.579 --> 00:01:12.420 deciding where it's even supposed to go. That's 00:01:12.420 --> 00:01:14.920 a perfect analogy. And to really understand the 00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:17.340 architecture he built, you have to look at the 00:01:17.340 --> 00:01:21.200 ground he stood on. Because his insights on famine, 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:24.060 on gender inequality, on the very definition 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.019 of poverty, they didn't come from a sterile textbook. 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:30.519 No. They came from witnessing the very worst 00:01:30.519 --> 00:01:33.579 of what humanity can do to itself and then deciding 00:01:33.579 --> 00:01:36.299 that, well, that mathematics and rigorous logic 00:01:36.299 --> 00:01:38.760 could actually offer a solution. So that's our 00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:40.540 mission for this deep dive. We're going to trace 00:01:40.540 --> 00:01:42.760 that arc. We're going to look at how a boy raised 00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:45.319 in what was, frankly, a progressive bubble in 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:48.719 Bengal ended up winning a Nobel Prize for proving, 00:01:48.840 --> 00:01:50.859 and I mean mathematically proving, that starvation 00:01:50.859 --> 00:01:53.760 is almost never about a lack of food. And we'll 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:56.620 get into the liberal paradox, which is a real 00:01:56.620 --> 00:01:58.760 brain melter of a logic puzzle that challenges 00:01:58.760 --> 00:02:01.219 our basic ideas of freedom. And we'll also discuss 00:02:01.219 --> 00:02:04.040 why he thinks GDP is just a terrible, terrible 00:02:04.040 --> 00:02:07.640 way to measure a human life. We should probably 00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:10.120 address the nickname he got early on, the one 00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:12.219 you hear a lot in the media. He's often called 00:02:12.219 --> 00:02:15.819 the Mother Teresa of economics. Which, on the 00:02:15.819 --> 00:02:18.639 surface, sounds like this huge compliment. It 00:02:18.639 --> 00:02:21.400 implies, you know, compassion, maybe even sainthood, 00:02:21.460 --> 00:02:24.099 this deep care for the poor. Oh, it's definitely 00:02:24.099 --> 00:02:26.840 meant to be a compliment. It highlights his focus 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:29.500 on poverty and inequality, which, believe me, 00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:32.139 was not the trendy topic in economics when he 00:02:32.139 --> 00:02:35.550 started his career. But Sen himself. He kind 00:02:35.550 --> 00:02:38.389 of chafes at it. He doesn't like it. No. He's 00:02:38.389 --> 00:02:39.990 the first to tell you he doesn't follow a lifestyle 00:02:39.990 --> 00:02:43.569 of dedicated self -sacrifice. He's not an ascetic. 00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:45.889 He enjoys a good glass of wine. He loves a really 00:02:45.889 --> 00:02:48.849 heated debate. He lives a very secular, very 00:02:48.849 --> 00:02:51.229 active life. So he's not a saint. He's a scholar. 00:02:51.810 --> 00:02:54.449 Precisely. And he believes that rigorous thinking, 00:02:54.669 --> 00:02:57.469 clear logic, does more for the poor in the long 00:02:57.469 --> 00:02:59.930 run than charity does. He's also been called 00:02:59.930 --> 00:03:01.710 the conscience of the profession. And I think 00:03:01.710 --> 00:03:04.509 that one fits a lot better. That feels more accurate. 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:07.479 It is. He basically forced the entire profession 00:03:07.479 --> 00:03:09.259 to look up from their graphs and acknowledge 00:03:09.259 --> 00:03:12.060 the human reality behind the curves. OK, so let's 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:14.900 start with that scholar part, because his origin 00:03:14.900 --> 00:03:17.879 story is famously intellectual. He was born in 00:03:17.879 --> 00:03:21.379 1933 in a place called Santiniketan in Bengal, 00:03:21.699 --> 00:03:24.479 which was then British India. And when you say 00:03:24.479 --> 00:03:27.460 born in Santiniketan, that carries a very specific 00:03:27.460 --> 00:03:30.599 weight in Indian history. It's something that 00:03:30.599 --> 00:03:34.439 might be lost on, say, a Western audience. It's 00:03:34.439 --> 00:03:37.439 not just a pin on a map? Not at all. Santiniketan 00:03:37.439 --> 00:03:39.379 wasn't just a town. It was an experiment. It 00:03:39.379 --> 00:03:41.639 was a university town. And it was established 00:03:41.639 --> 00:03:45.400 by Rabindranath Tagore. The poet. The first non 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:47.759 -European to win the Nobel Prize in literature. 00:03:47.879 --> 00:03:50.680 The very same. Tagore was this massive looming 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:54.389 figure in Sen's life. From day one. I mean, literally 00:03:54.389 --> 00:03:56.930 from day one. Tagore actually named him. He named 00:03:56.930 --> 00:03:59.449 him? Yes. He gave him the name Amartya, which 00:03:59.449 --> 00:04:02.689 in Bengali means immortal or heavenly. Wow. That 00:04:02.689 --> 00:04:05.169 is a tremendous amount of pressure to put on 00:04:05.169 --> 00:04:07.349 an infant. Here's your name, kid. Try to live 00:04:07.349 --> 00:04:09.409 up to a mortal. Right. But the pressure there 00:04:09.409 --> 00:04:11.430 wasn't academic in the way we think of it now, 00:04:11.610 --> 00:04:13.949 which is really the key to understanding Sen's 00:04:13.949 --> 00:04:17.250 mind. Sen went to Tagore's school. It was called 00:04:17.250 --> 00:04:22.750 Patha Bhavana. This school was, well... It was 00:04:22.750 --> 00:04:24.990 radically different from the British colonial 00:04:24.990 --> 00:04:27.529 education system that dominated India at the 00:04:27.529 --> 00:04:29.730 time. So the British system was all about being 00:04:29.730 --> 00:04:33.550 rigid, focused on rote memorization, incredibly 00:04:33.550 --> 00:04:35.889 competitive. Standardized testing, memorizing 00:04:35.889 --> 00:04:37.790 dates and names, that sort of thing. Exactly. 00:04:38.370 --> 00:04:41.569 Tagore's school despised all that. They hated 00:04:41.569 --> 00:04:44.449 exams. Aided them. The whole philosophy was that 00:04:44.449 --> 00:04:47.240 competitive testing kills curiosity. It makes 00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:49.379 you learn for the test, not for the love of knowledge. 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:51.920 So they focused on cultural diversity. They held 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:54.379 classes outdoors under the trees. And they taught 00:04:54.379 --> 00:04:57.120 students to see India not as an isolated colony, 00:04:57.180 --> 00:04:59.800 but as part of this larger global tapestry. So 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:02.310 it's that foundation that gave him the. the flexibility 00:05:02.310 --> 00:05:04.949 to think outside the box later on. Sen credits 00:05:04.949 --> 00:05:07.009 it directly. He wasn't trained to just tick boxes. 00:05:07.310 --> 00:05:09.790 He was trained to ask if the boxes were even 00:05:09.790 --> 00:05:11.449 the right shape to begin with. He was taught 00:05:11.449 --> 00:05:13.269 to question the premise. It sounds like a liberal 00:05:13.269 --> 00:05:15.709 arts dream. But he did eventually pivot pretty 00:05:15.709 --> 00:05:18.050 hard into, you know, the hard sciences, math, 00:05:18.230 --> 00:05:21.529 economics. He did. But he carried that foundational 00:05:21.529 --> 00:05:24.550 flexibility with him. He was taught from a young 00:05:24.550 --> 00:05:27.149 age to look for the connections between disciplines, 00:05:27.449 --> 00:05:30.970 between math and philosophy, between ethics and 00:05:30.970 --> 00:05:33.769 history. Rather than just staying in one single 00:05:33.769 --> 00:05:37.230 silo. So he has this almost idyllic free -thinking 00:05:37.230 --> 00:05:39.889 foundation. But then, as it always does, the 00:05:39.889 --> 00:05:42.670 real world intrudes. And it intrudes in a pretty 00:05:42.670 --> 00:05:45.889 violent way. Two specific traumas seem to define 00:05:45.889 --> 00:05:48.389 his early life and really set him on his path. 00:05:48.569 --> 00:05:51.769 The first one is intensely personal. His health. 00:05:51.949 --> 00:05:54.170 Yes. This is when he's about 18 years old. He's 00:05:54.170 --> 00:05:56.029 a student at Presidency College in Calcutta. 00:05:56.350 --> 00:05:58.329 He's brilliant. He's young. He has a whole world 00:05:58.329 --> 00:06:00.129 ahead of him. And then he finds a lump in his 00:06:00.129 --> 00:06:03.500 mouth. And it wasn't just nothing. No, it was 00:06:03.500 --> 00:06:05.120 oral cancer. And you have to remember, this is 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:07.839 the early 1950s. Cancer treatment wasn't anything 00:06:07.839 --> 00:06:10.399 like what it is today. The doctors gave him a 00:06:10.399 --> 00:06:13.439 truly grim prognosis. What were the odds? A 15 00:06:13.439 --> 00:06:16.519 % chance of living another five years. 15 %? 00:06:16.579 --> 00:06:18.399 I mean, that's essentially a death sentence for 00:06:18.399 --> 00:06:20.600 a teenager. How did he even handle that? I think 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:22.620 most people, regardless of how smart they are, 00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:25.939 would just shut down or panic. Sin went to the 00:06:25.939 --> 00:06:28.120 library. Of course he did. It's a recurring thing 00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:30.939 with him. He didn't just passively accept what 00:06:30.939 --> 00:06:33.600 the doctors told him. He read up on the pathology 00:06:33.600 --> 00:06:36.959 of his specific carcinoma. He went through the 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:40.220 medical texts himself. And he realized that the 00:06:40.220 --> 00:06:42.500 radiation treatment the doctors were kind of 00:06:42.500 --> 00:06:45.920 hesitant about was actually his only statistical 00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:49.500 shot at survival. So he advocated for his own 00:06:49.500 --> 00:06:51.759 treatment based on his own research to his own 00:06:51.759 --> 00:06:54.139 doctors as a teenager. He did. And you have to 00:06:54.139 --> 00:06:56.480 remember. Radiation back then was a very blunt 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.579 instrument. It was risky. It was damaging. But 00:06:59.579 --> 00:07:01.800 he calculated the odds. He looked at it rationally. 00:07:01.879 --> 00:07:04.060 He realized that doing nothing was a guarantee 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:07.120 of death and the radiation was a gamble. He took 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:09.379 the gamble. That's just incredible agency for 00:07:09.379 --> 00:07:10.980 an 18 -year -old. It's almost like he treated 00:07:10.980 --> 00:07:13.540 his own life as an economic problem to be solved, 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:16.160 weighing risks and probabilities and outcomes. 00:07:16.500 --> 00:07:18.860 It really shows his temperament, rationality 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:21.860 over fear. And he survived, obviously. But that 00:07:21.860 --> 00:07:25.519 experience, that ticking clock. It just lit a 00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:27.259 fire under him. He went to Cambridge Trinity 00:07:27.259 --> 00:07:30.000 College and just tore through the curriculum. 00:07:30.220 --> 00:07:32.899 He was a prodigy. Absolutely. He finished his 00:07:32.899 --> 00:07:35.500 Ph .D. work so quickly that he was offered a 00:07:35.500 --> 00:07:37.800 department chairmanship back in India before 00:07:37.800 --> 00:07:40.079 he'd even technically graduated. This is the 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:43.000 stat that always, always blows my mind. He was 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:44.860 appointed to head the new economics department 00:07:44.860 --> 00:07:48.399 at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. How old was 00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:51.120 he at this point? He was 23. 23 years old. He 00:07:51.120 --> 00:07:53.120 was probably teaching students who were older 00:07:53.120 --> 00:07:55.339 than him. Almost certainly. And he was managing 00:07:55.339 --> 00:07:58.339 professors who were his seniors by decades. But 00:07:58.339 --> 00:08:00.560 there was this undeniable brilliance that people 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:02.579 just recognized. He wasn't just reciting what 00:08:02.579 --> 00:08:04.959 was in the textbook. He was already pushing the 00:08:04.959 --> 00:08:07.319 boundaries of the entire field. Okay, so that's 00:08:07.319 --> 00:08:10.139 the first trauma. The brush with death. The prodigy. 00:08:10.199 --> 00:08:12.879 But then there's the second trauma. And this 00:08:12.879 --> 00:08:15.519 one seems to be the absolute key that unlocks 00:08:15.519 --> 00:08:18.610 his work on famine. It's the story of a man named 00:08:18.610 --> 00:08:22.430 Kedar Mia. This is. This is the rosebud moment 00:08:22.430 --> 00:08:25.629 for Amartya Sen. It happened a bit earlier, during 00:08:25.629 --> 00:08:28.930 the partition of India in 1947. Sen was just 00:08:28.930 --> 00:08:31.290 a boy, maybe 10 or 11, playing in the garden 00:08:31.290 --> 00:08:34.210 of his family home in Dhaka. And just for context, 00:08:34.470 --> 00:08:37.570 partition was the chaotic, incredibly bloody 00:08:37.570 --> 00:08:40.629 division of British India into India and Pakistan. 00:08:41.070 --> 00:08:44.590 It was a bloodbath. Communal violence between 00:08:44.590 --> 00:08:47.769 Hindus and Muslims was just... Rampant. I mean, 00:08:47.789 --> 00:08:50.269 people who had lived side by side for generations 00:08:50.269 --> 00:08:52.289 as neighbors were suddenly killing each other 00:08:52.289 --> 00:08:54.629 in the streets. A truly horrific time. Horrific. 00:08:55.169 --> 00:08:57.970 Sin's family was Hindu, living in a largely Inju 00:08:57.970 --> 00:09:00.610 neighborhood. So inside their compound walls, 00:09:00.950 --> 00:09:03.750 it was relatively safe. Relative being the key 00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:06.470 word there. Very much so. Suddenly the garden 00:09:06.470 --> 00:09:09.169 gate bursts open and a man stumbles in. He's 00:09:09.169 --> 00:09:11.210 bleeding profusely. He has been stabbed in the 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:13.690 back with a knife. Oh my God. man was Kudair 00:09:13.690 --> 00:09:16.289 Mia, a Muslim day laborer. He had come into this 00:09:16.289 --> 00:09:18.350 hostile Hindu neighborhood knowing the risk. 00:09:18.629 --> 00:09:21.309 He had to. Sin's father rushed the man to the 00:09:21.309 --> 00:09:23.809 hospital, and the young Amartya Sen sat with 00:09:23.809 --> 00:09:27.029 him, gave him water. And even as a child, Sin 00:09:27.029 --> 00:09:29.769 had the presence of mind to ask him, why? Why 00:09:29.769 --> 00:09:31.690 did you come here? You knew the riots were happening. 00:09:31.730 --> 00:09:33.990 You knew this was a death trap for a Muslim man. 00:09:34.269 --> 00:09:36.570 And what did Kudair Mia say? As he was dying, 00:09:36.629 --> 00:09:39.169 he told the boy, I had no choice. My children 00:09:39.169 --> 00:09:41.879 had no food. That's haunting. It changed Sin's 00:09:41.879 --> 00:09:45.080 life forever. In that moment, he realized that 00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:47.480 Katermia didn't die simply because of religious 00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:50.580 hatred. That was the weapon, yes. The thug who 00:09:50.580 --> 00:09:52.480 stabbed him was driven by communal violence. 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:56.200 But the cause, the fundamental reason Katermia 00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:58.960 was in that specific street at that specific 00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:01.799 moment was poverty. Because if he had had money, 00:10:01.840 --> 00:10:03.340 he could have stayed home where it was safe. 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:06.419 Exactly. If Katermia had had a savings account, 00:10:06.720 --> 00:10:08.799 or even just a few days' worth of food in the 00:10:08.799 --> 00:10:10.960 pantry for his family, he could have stayed indoors. 00:10:11.259 --> 00:10:13.700 He would have been safe. Sen later gave this 00:10:13.700 --> 00:10:16.399 a name. He called it economic unfreedom. Economic 00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:19.279 unfreedom. That's a powerful phrase. The lack 00:10:19.279 --> 00:10:21.360 of economic freedom, that extreme poverty. Yeah. 00:10:21.399 --> 00:10:23.559 It forced him to trade his physical safety for 00:10:23.559 --> 00:10:25.360 the mere chance of earning a wage to feed his 00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:29.299 kids. And Sen realized right then that you cannot 00:10:29.299 --> 00:10:31.980 separate economics from ethics or from sociology 00:10:31.980 --> 00:10:35.399 or from basic human safety. Poverty isn't just 00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:37.919 a lack of money. It's a lack of freedom to survive. 00:10:38.279 --> 00:10:40.820 It strips you of the agency to make safe choices. 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:45.190 Which leads us directly to 1981. This is the 00:10:45.190 --> 00:10:48.629 year Sen publishes Poverty and Famines, an essay 00:10:48.629 --> 00:10:52.090 on entitlement and deprivation. This is where 00:10:52.090 --> 00:10:54.330 he takes that gut -wrenching childhood realization 00:10:54.330 --> 00:10:57.750 and turns it into a rigorous mathematical economic 00:10:57.750 --> 00:11:00.809 proof. And he targets a very specific, very common 00:11:00.809 --> 00:11:03.389 sense idea. It's called the Food Availability 00:11:03.389 --> 00:11:07.330 Decline Hypothesis, or FAD for short. The FAD 00:11:07.330 --> 00:11:09.750 hypothesis, it sounds fancy, but as you said, 00:11:09.789 --> 00:11:11.970 it's just a common sense assumption most of us 00:11:11.970 --> 00:11:14.250 have. People are starving, therefore there must 00:11:14.250 --> 00:11:16.450 not be enough food. Seems logical, right? If 00:11:16.450 --> 00:11:18.190 I open my fridge and it's empty, I go hungry. 00:11:18.350 --> 00:11:20.470 So if a country's pantry is empty, the whole 00:11:20.470 --> 00:11:22.570 country goes hungry. Makes perfect sense. But 00:11:22.570 --> 00:11:25.049 Sen says it's wrong. He says it's dangerously 00:11:25.049 --> 00:11:28.070 simplistic. A country isn't a fridge. He went 00:11:28.070 --> 00:11:29.929 back and looked at the data from the Great Bengal 00:11:29.929 --> 00:11:32.809 Famine of 1943, a famine that killed between 00:11:32.809 --> 00:11:35.330 two and three million people. He had witnessed 00:11:35.330 --> 00:11:37.929 this as a child. He saw people dying on the roads 00:11:37.929 --> 00:11:40.129 of Calcutta. So he went back to the archives, 00:11:40.250 --> 00:11:42.250 to the records. He looked at the crop yields. 00:11:42.570 --> 00:11:45.490 He looked at the numbers. And what he found was 00:11:45.490 --> 00:11:49.529 stunning. He found that in 1943, the year of 00:11:49.529 --> 00:11:52.409 the famine, the total food supply in Bengal was 00:11:52.409 --> 00:11:55.330 only about 5 % lower than the previous five -year 00:11:55.330 --> 00:11:57.710 average. Only 5 %? That doesn't sound like enough 00:11:57.710 --> 00:12:00.990 to cause millions of deaths. It's not. But here 00:12:00.990 --> 00:12:04.230 is the real kicker. The food supply in 1943 was 00:12:04.230 --> 00:12:06.769 actually higher than it was in 1941. Wait, say 00:12:06.769 --> 00:12:09.210 that again? There was more food available in 00:12:09.210 --> 00:12:11.710 total during the famine year than there was two 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.649 years prior in 1941. And there was no famine 00:12:14.649 --> 00:12:18.990 in 1941. So how is that possible? There was more 00:12:18.990 --> 00:12:21.710 food, but millions of people starved to death. 00:12:21.789 --> 00:12:24.230 That breaks the simple supply and demand logic. 00:12:24.470 --> 00:12:27.149 It shatters it. It proves that the problem wasn't 00:12:27.149 --> 00:12:29.289 a lack of supply. The food was physically there. 00:12:29.710 --> 00:12:32.549 So Sen introduced a new concept to explain why 00:12:32.549 --> 00:12:35.110 people couldn't get to it. He called it the entitlement 00:12:35.110 --> 00:12:37.269 approach. OK, we need to define that carefully 00:12:37.269 --> 00:12:39.669 because entitlement means something very different 00:12:39.669 --> 00:12:42.669 in modern political discourse. Very different. 00:12:42.809 --> 00:12:47.250 In Sen's economic terms, your entitlement is 00:12:47.250 --> 00:12:49.289 the set of all the different combinations of 00:12:49.289 --> 00:12:52.149 goods and services you can legally acquire. It's 00:12:52.149 --> 00:12:55.759 based on two things. What you own. He calls this 00:12:55.759 --> 00:12:58.860 your endowment, like your land or more likely 00:12:58.860 --> 00:13:01.159 just your ability to work and what the market 00:13:01.159 --> 00:13:03.600 will give you in exchange for that. So my labor 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:05.740 is my endowment and my wage is what the market 00:13:05.740 --> 00:13:08.620 gives me for it. Exactly. And he says starvation 00:13:08.620 --> 00:13:10.559 happens when your entitlement set collapses. 00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:13.240 It's when you can no longer legally acquire enough 00:13:13.240 --> 00:13:15.860 food to live, regardless of how much food is 00:13:15.860 --> 00:13:17.960 actually sitting in the warehouses of the country. 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:20.080 So how did that play out in the Bengal famine? 00:13:20.220 --> 00:13:22.639 If the rice was there, why couldn't people get 00:13:22.639 --> 00:13:26.740 it? It was what Sen called a boom famine. This 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:28.879 is counterintuitive. World War II was raging. 00:13:29.139 --> 00:13:31.139 The British government was pouring money into 00:13:31.139 --> 00:13:33.519 Calcutta to fund the war effort. There was this 00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:36.000 massive industrial boom to support the military. 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:38.419 So factories are humming. There's a lot of money 00:13:38.419 --> 00:13:40.580 in the city. A ton of money. Urban wages shot 00:13:40.580 --> 00:13:43.000 up. People in the city, factory workers, soldiers, 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:45.419 government clerks, they had money. And they started 00:13:45.419 --> 00:13:48.200 buying rice, hoarding rice. So the demand in 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:51.039 the city skyrocketed, driving prices way up. 00:13:51.240 --> 00:13:54.590 Exactly. But the rural landless laborers, the 00:13:54.590 --> 00:13:56.809 people like Catermia, the people who didn't own 00:13:56.809 --> 00:13:59.889 farms but just worked for a daily wage, their 00:13:59.889 --> 00:14:02.590 wages were fixed. They didn't get a raise. They 00:14:02.590 --> 00:14:04.850 were completely disconnected from this urban 00:14:04.850 --> 00:14:07.529 boom. So the price of their staple food goes 00:14:07.529 --> 00:14:10.190 up, but their income stays completely flat. And 00:14:10.190 --> 00:14:12.610 not just a little. The price of rice doubled, 00:14:12.750 --> 00:14:15.669 then tripled, then quadrupled in a very short 00:14:15.669 --> 00:14:18.809 time. Suddenly, a full day's labor, which used 00:14:18.809 --> 00:14:21.210 to buy your family two bowls of rice, now bought 00:14:21.210 --> 00:14:24.289 you a handful. Their purchasing power just evaporated. 00:14:24.370 --> 00:14:26.269 They didn't starve because the rest disappeared. 00:14:26.350 --> 00:14:29.029 They starved because the market mechanism literally 00:14:29.029 --> 00:14:31.350 priced them out of existence. That's it. Their 00:14:31.350 --> 00:14:33.309 entitlement to the food that was right there 00:14:33.309 --> 00:14:36.049 in their own country collapsed. That is a chilling, 00:14:36.149 --> 00:14:38.769 chilling realization. The market, in a sense, 00:14:38.909 --> 00:14:41.750 worked perfectly. It allocated the scarce resource 00:14:41.750 --> 00:14:44.370 rice to those with the most money. It just so 00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:46.769 happened that the result of that perfect allocation 00:14:46.769 --> 00:14:49.970 was mass death. And that is Sen's fundamental 00:14:49.970 --> 00:14:53.220 critique. You cannot just look at the total pile 00:14:53.220 --> 00:14:55.960 of food, the aggregate supply. You have to look 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:58.559 at the mechanisms of distribution. Who has the 00:14:58.559 --> 00:15:01.360 entitlement to eat? Who has the economic power 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:04.519 to command food in the market? That's the only 00:15:04.519 --> 00:15:06.759 question that matters. He took this a step further, 00:15:06.799 --> 00:15:09.580 though. He moved from pure economics to politics 00:15:09.580 --> 00:15:12.539 with a statement that is probably his most famous 00:15:12.539 --> 00:15:14.500 quote. I mean, I have seen this cited everywhere. 00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:17.240 Oh, yeah, this is the big one. No famine has 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:19.080 ever taken place in the history of the world 00:15:19.080 --> 00:15:21.649 in a functioning democracy. It's an incredibly 00:15:21.649 --> 00:15:24.730 bold claim. The word never is a very strong word 00:15:24.730 --> 00:15:27.490 for a historian or an economist to use. It is. 00:15:27.570 --> 00:15:30.129 He's essentially daring historians to find a 00:15:30.129 --> 00:15:32.610 counterexample. Yeah. And so far it holds up 00:15:32.610 --> 00:15:35.429 remarkably well. He points to India before independence, 00:15:35.649 --> 00:15:37.909 regular devastating famines under British colonial 00:15:37.909 --> 00:15:40.909 rule. After India became a democracy in 1947, 00:15:41.289 --> 00:15:44.320 not one major famine. But why? Is there something 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:46.399 magical about putting a ballot in a box that 00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:49.600 makes corn grow? It's not magic. It's about incentives 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:53.740 and information. Sin argues that famines, technically 00:15:53.740 --> 00:15:55.740 speaking, are actually very easy to prevent. 00:15:56.100 --> 00:15:58.580 We know how to move food from one place to another. 00:15:58.759 --> 00:16:01.080 We know how to set up public works programs to 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:03.759 give people cash to buy food. The problem is 00:16:03.759 --> 00:16:06.460 never technical. It's always a lack of political 00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:09.179 will. The government has to want to stop it. 00:16:09.259 --> 00:16:12.139 It has to be forced to want to stop it. In a 00:16:12.139 --> 00:16:14.279 democracy, you have an opposition party, you 00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:16.679 have newspapers, you have a free press. If people 00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:19.559 start dying in the streets from starvation, what's 00:16:19.559 --> 00:16:21.039 going to happen? It's going to be front page 00:16:21.039 --> 00:16:23.539 news. The opposition is going to scream about 00:16:23.539 --> 00:16:25.860 it in Parliament. The newspapers will run photos 00:16:25.860 --> 00:16:28.179 of starving children. The government will be 00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:30.440 hammered in the press and they will be summarily 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:32.600 voted out in the next election. It's political 00:16:32.600 --> 00:16:34.940 suicide to ignore a famine. So the government 00:16:34.940 --> 00:16:37.820 has a selfish institutional survival instinct 00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:40.200 to stop the famine. They don't want to lose their 00:16:40.200 --> 00:16:43.230 jobs. Precisely. The fear of losing power forces 00:16:43.230 --> 00:16:46.269 them to act. Now, contrast that with an authoritarian 00:16:46.269 --> 00:16:49.289 regime. Take Mao's China during the Great Leap 00:16:49.289 --> 00:16:51.490 Forward. Where tens of millions of people died 00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:54.669 of starvation. Estimates go from 30 to 45 million. 00:16:54.909 --> 00:16:57.029 It's one of the worst famines in human history. 00:16:57.830 --> 00:17:00.029 Sen points out that the Chinese government didn't 00:17:00.029 --> 00:17:02.710 change its disastrous agricultural policies for 00:17:02.710 --> 00:17:05.589 three full years while people were dying. Why? 00:17:06.069 --> 00:17:08.210 Because they didn't have to. They didn't have 00:17:08.210 --> 00:17:11.309 to. Mao didn't face elections. There was no free 00:17:11.309 --> 00:17:14.089 press to report on the starvation. In fact, it 00:17:14.089 --> 00:17:17.170 was the opposite. Local officials were so terrified 00:17:17.170 --> 00:17:19.369 of the central government that they lied and 00:17:19.369 --> 00:17:21.730 reported record harvests to please the party. 00:17:21.849 --> 00:17:24.329 So there was no feedback loop, no truth telling 00:17:24.329 --> 00:17:26.829 mechanism. Mao could let 30 million of his own 00:17:26.829 --> 00:17:28.890 people die and still wake up the next morning 00:17:28.890 --> 00:17:31.150 as chairman of the Communist Party. He was completely 00:17:31.150 --> 00:17:33.630 insulated from the consequences of his own catastrophic 00:17:33.630 --> 00:17:36.640 failure. So things like free speech and a free 00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:39.539 press, they aren't just abstract civil liberties 00:17:39.539 --> 00:17:42.059 or, you know, nice things to have for political 00:17:42.059 --> 00:17:44.599 scientists to talk about. In Sen's view, they 00:17:44.599 --> 00:17:47.779 are literal insurance policies against mass starvation. 00:17:48.099 --> 00:17:50.420 That is the absolute core of his philosophy. 00:17:51.079 --> 00:17:54.099 Political rights are economic rights. You cannot 00:17:54.099 --> 00:17:56.500 separate them. You can't follow the model that 00:17:56.500 --> 00:17:59.220 says, let's fix the economy first and then we'll 00:17:59.220 --> 00:18:02.210 worry about democracy later. The democracy is 00:18:02.210 --> 00:18:04.569 the tool that fixes the economy when it breaks 00:18:04.569 --> 00:18:07.670 for the poorest people. This brings us perfectly 00:18:07.670 --> 00:18:11.009 to what he calls the capability approach. This 00:18:11.009 --> 00:18:13.930 is the intellectual framework he built to replace, 00:18:14.009 --> 00:18:16.630 or at the very least, to supplement GDP as our 00:18:16.630 --> 00:18:19.750 main measure of progress. Right. Because if you 00:18:19.750 --> 00:18:21.390 accept that you can have a rich country with 00:18:21.390 --> 00:18:23.630 a famine if the distribution is bad, then it 00:18:23.630 --> 00:18:26.430 immediately follows that GDP is a terrible, terrible 00:18:26.430 --> 00:18:29.660 scoreboard for human success. So standard economics 00:18:29.660 --> 00:18:33.400 looks at things like utility or income. Do you 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:35.359 have a dollar in your pocket? Does it make you 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:37.299 happy? Those are the traditional questions. Sen 00:18:37.299 --> 00:18:39.039 says those are the wrong questions. We shouldn't 00:18:39.039 --> 00:18:40.640 be asking what people have. We should be asking 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:43.539 what are people capable of doing and being. Okay, 00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:46.240 so he makes this key distinction between functionings 00:18:46.240 --> 00:18:49.279 and capabilities. These sound like academic jargon, 00:18:49.279 --> 00:18:51.200 so let's really break them down into plain English. 00:18:51.420 --> 00:18:54.369 Let's do it. Think of functionings as the outcomes, 00:18:54.630 --> 00:18:56.470 the things you actually achieve in your life. 00:18:56.589 --> 00:18:59.309 Are you well -fed? Are you literate? Do you participate 00:18:59.309 --> 00:19:01.690 in your community? Are you healthy? Those are 00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:04.130 all functionings. They are states of being and 00:19:04.130 --> 00:19:06.609 doing. Okay. The end result, what you actually 00:19:06.609 --> 00:19:09.309 are. Right. Capabilities, on the other hand, 00:19:09.390 --> 00:19:11.730 are the freedoms you have to achieve those outcomes. 00:19:12.029 --> 00:19:14.970 It is the set of real, genuine opportunities 00:19:14.970 --> 00:19:18.089 you have to choose from. It's about choice. The 00:19:18.089 --> 00:19:20.670 classic example he uses to explain this is the 00:19:20.670 --> 00:19:23.109 difference between fasting and starving. Yes. 00:19:23.269 --> 00:19:25.490 And it's the perfect illustration. It's so clear. 00:19:26.089 --> 00:19:30.190 Imagine two people. Person A is a wealthy person 00:19:30.190 --> 00:19:33.210 who is fasting for religious reasons or maybe 00:19:33.210 --> 00:19:35.049 they're on a hunger strike for a political cause. 00:19:35.250 --> 00:19:38.369 OK. Person B is a destitute person who is starving 00:19:38.369 --> 00:19:41.049 because they have no money to buy food. Now, 00:19:41.190 --> 00:19:43.109 if we just look at them from a purely nutritional 00:19:43.109 --> 00:19:45.230 standpoint, if we measure their functioning of 00:19:45.230 --> 00:19:47.829 being nourished. They are identical. Both are 00:19:47.829 --> 00:19:50.769 hungry. Both are consuming zero calories. If 00:19:50.769 --> 00:19:52.950 your doctor just looks at the chart, it's the 00:19:52.950 --> 00:19:55.750 same. Their functioning is identical, but their 00:19:55.750 --> 00:19:58.430 capability is totally different. The person who 00:19:58.430 --> 00:20:01.150 was fasting chose not to eat. They had the option. 00:20:01.269 --> 00:20:03.029 They had the capability to eat. The food was 00:20:03.029 --> 00:20:05.390 available. They had the money. But they freely 00:20:05.390 --> 00:20:09.230 chose not to exercise that capability. The starving 00:20:09.230 --> 00:20:12.890 person had no such choice. Their capability set 00:20:12.890 --> 00:20:16.900 with respect to food was empty. So true freedom, 00:20:16.940 --> 00:20:18.980 true development isn't just about the outcome. 00:20:19.079 --> 00:20:21.980 It's about having the choice. Exactly. And for 00:20:21.980 --> 00:20:24.589 Sen. Development is the process of expanding 00:20:24.589 --> 00:20:27.109 those choices. It's not just about raising the 00:20:27.109 --> 00:20:30.089 average income. It's about removing the unfreedoms 00:20:30.089 --> 00:20:32.670 that restrict our choices. Things like illiteracy, 00:20:32.750 --> 00:20:34.789 lack of health care, lack of public transportation 00:20:34.789 --> 00:20:37.890 or a lack of basic civil rights. And it's interesting 00:20:37.890 --> 00:20:40.150 how he applies this to the so -called first world, 00:20:40.210 --> 00:20:42.549 too. It's not just a theory about poor countries. 00:20:42.769 --> 00:20:45.710 You can be rich in terms of income, but very 00:20:45.710 --> 00:20:49.170 poor in capabilities. Absolutely. He famously 00:20:49.170 --> 00:20:51.869 did this comparison of mortality rates. He looked 00:20:51.869 --> 00:20:53.950 at. African -American men in certain inner city 00:20:53.950 --> 00:20:56.329 areas in the U .S., like Harlem, and compared 00:20:56.329 --> 00:20:59.549 them to men in, say, Kerala, India, or in Bangladesh. 00:20:59.849 --> 00:21:02.109 And what did he find? He found that the men in 00:21:02.109 --> 00:21:05.309 Harlem, despite having a much, much higher income 00:21:05.309 --> 00:21:08.589 per capita than a peasant in Bangladesh, actually 00:21:08.589 --> 00:21:10.950 had lower life expectancies at certain ages. 00:21:11.190 --> 00:21:14.349 They were less likely to survive to age 40 or 00:21:14.349 --> 00:21:16.990 50. So they had more cash in their pockets, but 00:21:16.990 --> 00:21:20.490 less actual life. Less capability to live a long 00:21:20.490 --> 00:21:22.529 and healthy life. Because of the high risk of 00:21:22.529 --> 00:21:24.789 violence, the lack of access to quality health 00:21:24.789 --> 00:21:27.150 care, the chronic stress of systemic racism, 00:21:27.309 --> 00:21:29.750 all these things restricted their real freedom 00:21:29.750 --> 00:21:32.369 to flourish. So in terms of that specific capability, 00:21:32.650 --> 00:21:34.630 the ability to live a long, healthy life, the 00:21:34.630 --> 00:21:36.670 man in Kerala who was monetarily much poorer 00:21:36.670 --> 00:21:39.910 was actually richer. That completely reframes 00:21:39.910 --> 00:21:42.970 the whole developed versus developing world narrative. 00:21:43.049 --> 00:21:45.470 It stops being just about who has the most factories 00:21:45.470 --> 00:21:48.299 or the highest stock market. It completely changes 00:21:48.299 --> 00:21:50.740 the game. And it's why he was so instrumental 00:21:50.740 --> 00:21:53.460 in helping to create the Human Development Index, 00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:56.720 the HDI, for the United Nations. Right. That 00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:59.539 was with Mahbub Halek. Yes, the Pakistani economist 00:21:59.539 --> 00:22:01.700 who really spearheaded the HDI. He was a close 00:22:01.700 --> 00:22:05.380 friend of Sen. And Haque famously told Sen, we 00:22:05.380 --> 00:22:07.759 need a number that is just as vulgar as GDP, 00:22:07.980 --> 00:22:10.900 but stands for something better. As vulgar as 00:22:10.900 --> 00:22:14.309 GDP? I love that. He wanted a single, simple 00:22:14.309 --> 00:22:16.970 number that would force politicians to look at 00:22:16.970 --> 00:22:19.490 health and education, not just industrial output. 00:22:19.710 --> 00:22:22.410 And that's what the HDI does. It combines income 00:22:22.410 --> 00:22:25.690 with life expectancy and literacy rates. It's 00:22:25.690 --> 00:22:27.670 a direct application of the capability approach. 00:22:28.069 --> 00:22:30.029 OK, I want to pivot here to something of a bit. 00:22:30.509 --> 00:22:32.730 Well, a bit naughtier. We've talked about famine 00:22:32.730 --> 00:22:35.730 and freedom, which are big, tangible, gut -level 00:22:35.730 --> 00:22:38.970 concepts. But Sen is also a philosopher and a 00:22:38.970 --> 00:22:41.190 logician. He spent a lot of his career deep in 00:22:41.190 --> 00:22:43.109 the weeds of something called social choice theory. 00:22:43.349 --> 00:22:45.490 This is the stuff that gives economics graduate 00:22:45.490 --> 00:22:47.829 students nightmares. It really goes back to his 00:22:47.829 --> 00:22:50.230 time at Cambridge and his deep engagement with 00:22:50.230 --> 00:22:52.450 the work of people like Kenneth Arrow. So the 00:22:52.450 --> 00:22:54.930 basic question of social choice theory is what? 00:22:55.269 --> 00:22:58.490 How do we decide what society wants? I mean, 00:22:58.490 --> 00:23:00.049 we know what you want and we know what I want. 00:23:00.210 --> 00:23:02.430 But how do we aggregate all those individual 00:23:02.430 --> 00:23:06.109 preferences into a single coherent social choice? 00:23:06.369 --> 00:23:08.890 It sounds simple on the surface, right? Just 00:23:08.890 --> 00:23:11.109 take a vote. Majority rules. What's the problem? 00:23:11.849 --> 00:23:14.210 But Kenneth Arrow, in his famous impossibility 00:23:14.210 --> 00:23:16.609 theorem, proved that it's mathematically impossible 00:23:16.609 --> 00:23:19.150 to create a perfect voting system that satisfies 00:23:19.150 --> 00:23:23.240 just a few very basic common sense. fairness 00:23:23.240 --> 00:23:25.259 conditions. So you can't have a perfect system. 00:23:25.400 --> 00:23:28.480 I can't. And Sen took this already mind -bending 00:23:28.480 --> 00:23:30.700 idea and broke it even further with something 00:23:30.700 --> 00:23:32.940 called the liberal paradox, or sometimes just 00:23:32.940 --> 00:23:34.839 Sen's paradox. Okay, walk us through this slowly, 00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:37.220 the liberal paradox. All right. Sen proved mathematically 00:23:37.220 --> 00:23:39.559 that you cannot have a society that simultaneously 00:23:39.559 --> 00:23:42.559 respects two things we all think are good, minimal 00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:46.259 liberalism and Pareto efficiency. They are, in 00:23:46.259 --> 00:23:48.240 some cases, fundamentally incompatible. That 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:50.500 sounds bad. Because we want both of those things. 00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:52.680 We want individual rights and we want socially 00:23:52.680 --> 00:23:55.420 efficient outcomes. We absolutely do. So let's 00:23:55.420 --> 00:23:58.440 define them clearly. Minimal liberalism just 00:23:58.440 --> 00:24:00.799 means that there is a personal sphere where an 00:24:00.799 --> 00:24:03.640 individual should get to decide, period. I get 00:24:03.640 --> 00:24:05.880 to decide what color shirt I wear. You get to 00:24:05.880 --> 00:24:07.880 decide what book you want to read in the privacy 00:24:07.880 --> 00:24:10.160 of your own home. Society shouldn't get a vote 00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:12.660 on my private matters. Seems completely reasonable. 00:24:12.980 --> 00:24:15.869 A basic right. And Pareto efficiency is also 00:24:15.869 --> 00:24:18.450 very simple. It just means that if everyone in 00:24:18.450 --> 00:24:22.549 society prefers option A to option B, then society 00:24:22.549 --> 00:24:25.299 as a whole should choose option A. Also seems 00:24:25.299 --> 00:24:27.779 totally reasonable. If every single person likes 00:24:27.779 --> 00:24:30.440 ice cream better than eating broken glass, society 00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:32.779 should definitely choose ice cream. Hard to argue 00:24:32.779 --> 00:24:34.980 with that. So these two principles both seem 00:24:34.980 --> 00:24:37.660 obviously good. Where does it all break down? 00:24:37.880 --> 00:24:39.980 This is where the example comes in. Right. Setney 00:24:39.980 --> 00:24:42.079 uses this brilliant little story. It's called 00:24:42.079 --> 00:24:45.039 the Luden Prude example. Imagine there's a single 00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:47.619 copy of a controversial book. Let's use the classic 00:24:47.619 --> 00:24:50.480 example. Lady Chatterley's Lover. And we have 00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:52.880 just two people in our society. Mr. Prude and 00:24:52.880 --> 00:24:55.380 Mr. Lude. Okay. Mr. Prude, I'm guessing, hates 00:24:55.380 --> 00:24:58.519 the book. He thinks it's filth. It's morally 00:24:58.519 --> 00:25:02.200 corrupting. His number one absolute first choice 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:05.299 is that no one reads it. But, and this is the 00:25:05.299 --> 00:25:07.799 key, he thinks that if someone has to read it, 00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:10.299 he would rather read it himself. Why? To save 00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:13.319 Mr. Lude's soul from corruption. He sees it as 00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:15.579 a noble sacrifice. He doesn't want Lude to be 00:25:15.579 --> 00:25:18.259 exposed to this filth and enjoy it. So Prude's 00:25:18.259 --> 00:25:20.180 personal ranking of the three possible outcomes 00:25:20.180 --> 00:25:24.000 is, first, no one reads the book second prude 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:26.920 reads the book third and worst of all lewd reads 00:25:26.920 --> 00:25:29.059 the book okay i follow that logic now what about 00:25:29.059 --> 00:25:31.599 mr lewd mr lewd as his name suggests is very 00:25:31.599 --> 00:25:34.200 keen to read the book but he's also a bit of 00:25:34.200 --> 00:25:37.000 a troll he thinks the idea of the uptight mr 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:39.240 prude being forced to read this book is absolutely 00:25:39.240 --> 00:25:41.460 hilarious the thought of shocking him is just 00:25:41.460 --> 00:25:43.660 too delicious so lewd's personal ranking is first 00:25:43.660 --> 00:25:45.519 prude reads the book second lewd reads the book 00:25:45.519 --> 00:25:48.059 and third No one reads the book. All right, we 00:25:48.059 --> 00:25:50.000 have the rankings. Now let's apply our principles. 00:25:50.140 --> 00:25:52.859 Let's start with minimal liberalism. Minimal 00:25:52.859 --> 00:25:55.859 liberalism says there's a private sphere. So 00:25:55.859 --> 00:25:57.779 whether or not Mr. Lewd reads the book should 00:25:57.779 --> 00:26:00.319 be up to him. Let's compare the options Lewd 00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:04.829 reads and no one reads. Which does lewd prefer? 00:26:05.130 --> 00:26:08.069 He prefers to read it. So liberalism says society 00:26:08.069 --> 00:26:11.410 should prefer lewd reads over no one reads. Correct. 00:26:11.509 --> 00:26:13.950 Now let's look at Mr. Prude. Whether he reads 00:26:13.950 --> 00:26:16.329 it or not should be his business. Let's compare 00:26:16.329 --> 00:26:19.589 prude reads and no one reads. Which does prude 00:26:19.589 --> 00:26:21.829 prefer? He prefers that no one reads it. That's 00:26:21.829 --> 00:26:25.009 his number one choice. So liberalism says society 00:26:25.009 --> 00:26:27.920 should prefer no one reads. over prude reads. 00:26:28.099 --> 00:26:29.779 Exactly. So we have two liberal preferences. 00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:32.420 Lewd reads is better than no one, and no one 00:26:32.420 --> 00:26:34.839 is better than prude reads. Okay, but now comes 00:26:34.839 --> 00:26:37.519 Pareto efficiency, the if everyone agrees rule. 00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:39.960 Right. Let's look at the rankings again, and 00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:42.339 let's compare two specific outcomes, prude reads 00:26:42.339 --> 00:26:45.779 versus lewd reads. Okay. Mr. Prude prefers prude 00:26:45.779 --> 00:26:48.039 reads over lewd reads. That's his second choice 00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:50.859 versus his third. And what about Mr. Lewd? He 00:26:50.859 --> 00:26:54.420 also prefers prude reads over lewd reads. It's 00:26:54.420 --> 00:26:56.349 his first choice versus his second. They both 00:26:56.349 --> 00:26:58.430 agree. They both want prude to read the book 00:26:58.430 --> 00:27:00.410 more than they want lewd to read it. Everyone 00:27:00.410 --> 00:27:02.809 agrees. So our principle of Pareto efficiency 00:27:02.809 --> 00:27:06.170 says that society must choose prude reads over 00:27:06.170 --> 00:27:09.849 lewd reads. But wait, we're trapped. You see 00:27:09.849 --> 00:27:13.529 it. We have a logical loop. Liberalism says lewd 00:27:13.529 --> 00:27:16.490 reads is better than no one reads. And no one 00:27:16.490 --> 00:27:19.789 reads is better than prude reads. So by logic, 00:27:19.970 --> 00:27:22.910 lewd reads must be better than prude reads. But 00:27:22.910 --> 00:27:25.269 Pareto says prude reads is better than lewd reads. 00:27:25.509 --> 00:27:28.390 It's a contradiction, a paradox. It's a perfect 00:27:28.390 --> 00:27:30.730 mathematical proof that mind your own business 00:27:30.730 --> 00:27:33.170 and do what's best for the group can sometimes 00:27:33.170 --> 00:27:36.569 be direct enemies. It shattered this utopian 00:27:36.569 --> 00:27:39.109 idea that we can design a perfect social system 00:27:39.109 --> 00:27:41.690 that satisfies all our ethical intuitions at 00:27:41.690 --> 00:27:43.730 once. So what's the takeaway? That freedom is 00:27:43.730 --> 00:27:46.490 bad? No, not at all. Senster's point is that 00:27:46.490 --> 00:27:48.730 we have to make value judgments. We have to choose 00:27:48.730 --> 00:27:50.730 which rights and principles matter more in which 00:27:50.730 --> 00:27:53.210 context. Math won't save us from making hard 00:27:53.210 --> 00:27:55.529 ethical choices. It forces us to have a public 00:27:55.529 --> 00:27:57.849 debate and admit that we can't have it all, all 00:27:57.849 --> 00:28:00.390 the time. Speaking of ethics and hard numbers, 00:28:00.650 --> 00:28:02.630 let's talk about his work on gender inequality. 00:28:03.670 --> 00:28:07.950 In 1990, he dropped an absolute bomb on the academic 00:28:07.950 --> 00:28:10.289 and policy world with an article in the New York 00:28:10.289 --> 00:28:13.089 Review of Books. The title alone was a shock. 00:28:13.670 --> 00:28:16.490 It was called More Than 100 Million Women Are 00:28:16.490 --> 00:28:18.990 Missing. This was a seismic shift in how we talked 00:28:18.990 --> 00:28:21.549 about this issue. Before this article, gender 00:28:21.549 --> 00:28:23.890 inequality was usually discussed in terms of 00:28:23.890 --> 00:28:27.190 the wage gap or education levels or the glass 00:28:27.190 --> 00:28:30.170 ceiling in corporations. Sen made it about life 00:28:30.170 --> 00:28:32.390 and death. How did he even arrive at that number, 00:28:32.509 --> 00:28:34.589 100 million? It was actually a pretty straightforward 00:28:34.589 --> 00:28:37.049 but brilliant piece of demographic analysis. 00:28:37.430 --> 00:28:39.910 He looked at the ratio of women to men in different 00:28:39.910 --> 00:28:42.319 parts of the world. In Europe and North America, 00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:44.640 there are typically more women than men. The 00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:48.140 ratio is about 1 .05 women for every man. Why 00:28:48.140 --> 00:28:50.799 is that? Women just tend to be biologically hardier, 00:28:50.920 --> 00:28:53.480 they have survival advantage, they survive infancy 00:28:53.480 --> 00:28:55.819 at higher rates, and on average live longer than 00:28:55.819 --> 00:28:59.460 men. So that 1 .05 to 1 ratio is kind of the 00:28:59.460 --> 00:29:01.680 biological baseline in a neutral environment 00:29:01.680 --> 00:29:04.619 where both sexes get equal care. Okay, so that's 00:29:04.619 --> 00:29:06.900 what should happen. That's the biological norm. 00:29:07.559 --> 00:29:09.619 But when Sen looked at the population data for 00:29:09.619 --> 00:29:11.960 China, India and large parts of West Asia and 00:29:11.960 --> 00:29:14.839 North Africa, the ratio was inverted. There were 00:29:14.839 --> 00:29:17.539 significantly fewer women than men. In some places, 00:29:17.640 --> 00:29:20.759 it was as low as 0 .94 to 1. So he just calculated 00:29:20.759 --> 00:29:23.099 the difference. He calculated the gap between 00:29:23.099 --> 00:29:25.539 the expected number of women in those populations 00:29:25.539 --> 00:29:28.500 based on the Western ratio and the actual number 00:29:28.500 --> 00:29:31.359 of women that the census recorded. The shortfall 00:29:31.359 --> 00:29:34.380 was over 100 million. That is the combined population 00:29:34.380 --> 00:29:38.119 of the U .K. and France. Gone. Missing. Gone. 00:29:38.279 --> 00:29:40.380 He argued that these women were missing due to 00:29:40.380 --> 00:29:42.539 what he called the mortality impact of unequal 00:29:42.539 --> 00:29:45.099 rights. It wasn't just about birth rates, though 00:29:45.099 --> 00:29:47.200 that was part of it. It was about selective abortion 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:49.680 of female fetuses, which was becoming possible 00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:52.079 with ultrasound technology. It was about female 00:29:52.079 --> 00:29:54.740 infanticide in some areas, but mostly it was 00:29:54.740 --> 00:29:57.279 about simple, grinding neglect. Neglect in what 00:29:57.279 --> 00:30:00.059 way? It's the accumulation of thousands of small, 00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:02.880 devastating decisions. Feeding the son first 00:30:02.880 --> 00:30:05.539 when food is scarce, taking the boy to the doctor 00:30:05.539 --> 00:30:08.299 right away when he has a fever, but waiting a 00:30:08.299 --> 00:30:10.299 day or two with the girl to see if she gets better 00:30:10.299 --> 00:30:13.700 on her own. Those small biases, multiplied over 00:30:13.700 --> 00:30:16.160 millions and millions of families, added up to 00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:18.970 a massive silent death toll. Now, this theory 00:30:18.970 --> 00:30:21.130 was challenged, right? Because that's how science 00:30:21.130 --> 00:30:23.490 works. I remember an economist, Emily Oster, 00:30:23.690 --> 00:30:26.230 offered a biological rebuttal some years later. 00:30:26.410 --> 00:30:29.349 Yes, and it was a very serious challenge. Emily 00:30:29.349 --> 00:30:31.750 Oster, who is a fantastic economist, published 00:30:31.750 --> 00:30:33.829 research arguing that high rates of hepatitis 00:30:33.829 --> 00:30:36.869 B in these same regions could explain the skewed 00:30:36.869 --> 00:30:39.789 sex ratio. Her argument was that women who carry 00:30:39.789 --> 00:30:43.430 hepatitis B are, for biological reasons, statistically 00:30:43.430 --> 00:30:46.130 more likely to give birth to boys. So for a while, 00:30:46.130 --> 00:30:48.210 it looked like Sen might have been wrong. That 00:30:48.210 --> 00:30:50.369 it was a virus, not sexism. It did. It was a 00:30:50.369 --> 00:30:52.990 major debate. But the story didn't end there. 00:30:53.130 --> 00:30:55.529 And this is a great example of science working 00:30:55.529 --> 00:30:58.549 as it should. To her immense credit, Oster continued 00:30:58.549 --> 00:31:01.329 her research. She gathered new and better data 00:31:01.329 --> 00:31:03.569 from China and other places. And she eventually 00:31:03.569 --> 00:31:06.490 realized that the prevalence of hepatitis B just 00:31:06.490 --> 00:31:08.750 wasn't high enough to explain the sheer magnitude 00:31:08.750 --> 00:31:12.190 of the gender gap. So she changed her mind. She 00:31:12.190 --> 00:31:15.579 publicly recanted her original conclusion. She 00:31:15.579 --> 00:31:17.200 wrote a follow -up explaining that her initial 00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:19.740 theory was wrong and that Sen's original point 00:31:19.740 --> 00:31:22.680 about social inequality and neglect was, in fact, 00:31:22.759 --> 00:31:25.440 largely correct. That takes a lot of intellectual 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:28.920 integrity. It does. And in the end, it just reinforced 00:31:28.920 --> 00:31:31.519 the tragedy of Sen's finding. The women were 00:31:31.519 --> 00:31:34.519 missing because of how society valued them. or 00:31:34.519 --> 00:31:36.400 rather didn't value them. It goes right back 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:38.460 to that capability idea we were talking about. 00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.880 If you are born a girl in some of these regions, 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:43.740 your fundamental capability to simply exist is 00:31:43.740 --> 00:31:46.400 compromised from day one just because of your 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:48.990 gender. And Sen is always quick to emphasize 00:31:48.990 --> 00:31:51.470 that this hurts everyone. It's not just a women's 00:31:51.470 --> 00:31:54.369 issue. It creates bride shortages. It fuels human 00:31:54.369 --> 00:31:56.609 trafficking. It distorts the labor market. It 00:31:56.609 --> 00:32:00.150 destabilizes society in profound ways. His point 00:32:00.150 --> 00:32:02.490 is always that freedom is interconnected. You 00:32:02.490 --> 00:32:04.990 can't suppress the rights and the very existence 00:32:04.990 --> 00:32:07.529 of half the population and expect the country 00:32:07.529 --> 00:32:10.099 as a whole to flourish. Let's zoom out a bit 00:32:10.099 --> 00:32:13.200 to his broader worldview on justice itself. In 00:32:13.200 --> 00:32:16.720 2009, he published a huge book called The Idea 00:32:16.720 --> 00:32:19.339 of Justice. And in it, he sort of picks a fight 00:32:19.339 --> 00:32:21.859 with another giant of 20th century political 00:32:21.859 --> 00:32:25.259 philosophy, John Rawls. He does. And taking on 00:32:25.259 --> 00:32:27.859 Rawls is no small thing. John Rawls is the veil 00:32:27.859 --> 00:32:30.279 of ignorance guy. His idea was a thought experiment. 00:32:30.950 --> 00:32:33.190 If you wanted to design a perfectly fair and 00:32:33.190 --> 00:32:35.170 just society, you should imagine that you're 00:32:35.170 --> 00:32:37.410 behind a veil of ignorance. You don't know where 00:32:37.410 --> 00:32:39.410 you'll land in that society. You don't know if 00:32:39.410 --> 00:32:41.970 you'll be rich or poor, male or female, smart 00:32:41.970 --> 00:32:44.190 or not so smart, healthy or sick. And because 00:32:44.190 --> 00:32:46.170 you don't know your own position, you'll design 00:32:46.170 --> 00:32:48.410 rules that are fair for everyone because you 00:32:48.410 --> 00:32:50.230 might end up at the very bottom of the pile. 00:32:50.529 --> 00:32:52.789 Exactly. It's a search for the perfect setup. 00:32:53.170 --> 00:32:57.150 The ideally just institutions. Sen has a name 00:32:57.150 --> 00:33:00.000 for this approach. He calls it... Transcendental 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:03.059 institutionalism. And he thinks it's basically 00:33:03.059 --> 00:33:05.579 a waste of time. Waste of time. Who doesn't want 00:33:05.579 --> 00:33:08.579 perfection? Because, he argues, we can never 00:33:08.579 --> 00:33:11.599 actually agree on what perfect is. Is a perfect 00:33:11.599 --> 00:33:14.859 society libertarian? Is it socialist? Is it something 00:33:14.859 --> 00:33:16.940 else? We'll argue about it forever. And more 00:33:16.940 --> 00:33:18.619 importantly, we don't live in a philosophical 00:33:18.619 --> 00:33:20.900 classroom. We live in the real world with real 00:33:20.900 --> 00:33:23.180 injustices happening right now. So what's his 00:33:23.180 --> 00:33:26.170 alternative? He argues for what he calls a comparative 00:33:26.170 --> 00:33:28.410 approach. He says we shouldn't be asking what 00:33:28.410 --> 00:33:30.569 is the perfect society. We should be asking a 00:33:30.569 --> 00:33:32.950 much more practical question. Is this policy 00:33:32.950 --> 00:33:35.470 better than that policy? Does this action reduce 00:33:35.470 --> 00:33:38.309 injustice or does it increase it? So don't worry 00:33:38.309 --> 00:33:40.509 about designing utopia from scratch. Worry about 00:33:40.509 --> 00:33:43.150 whether raising the minimum wage or eliminating 00:33:43.150 --> 00:33:45.569 a specific discriminatory law makes our current 00:33:45.569 --> 00:33:48.150 society more just today than it was yesterday. 00:33:48.509 --> 00:33:51.390 Precisely. He borrows a concept from Adam Smith, 00:33:51.650 --> 00:33:54.490 the impartial spectator. It's about standing 00:33:54.490 --> 00:33:57.289 outside a specific situation and judging its 00:33:57.289 --> 00:34:00.170 fairness in a specific context, not trying to 00:34:00.170 --> 00:34:03.130 design a perfect machine from scratch. It's radical 00:34:03.130 --> 00:34:06.410 pragmatism. Sin wants to reduce injustice now, 00:34:06.690 --> 00:34:09.210 not wait for some theoretical consensus on the 00:34:09.210 --> 00:34:11.659 ultimate nature of the good. This pragmatism 00:34:11.659 --> 00:34:13.780 and his willingness to engage in very public 00:34:13.780 --> 00:34:16.559 debate seems to get him into hot water in the 00:34:16.559 --> 00:34:19.239 real world of politics. We can't really ignore 00:34:19.239 --> 00:34:21.860 his current standing in his home country of India. 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:24.280 He has been very, very vocal about the current 00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:26.659 government. Yes, and we should report this carefully, 00:34:26.780 --> 00:34:29.380 just laying out the facts of the dispute. But 00:34:29.380 --> 00:34:32.519 the friction is undeniable. Sen has been a consistent 00:34:32.519 --> 00:34:35.239 and vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:37.300 government. He has argued that the government 00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:39.239 has encouraged what he calls fear -mongering. 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:41.400 And he brings it back to that core idea of his 00:34:41.400 --> 00:34:44.940 government by discussion. He always does. He 00:34:44.940 --> 00:34:47.539 says democracy isn't just about casting a vote 00:34:47.539 --> 00:34:49.599 every five years. That's just one small part 00:34:49.599 --> 00:34:53.139 of it. True democracy is the ability to discuss, 00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:56.519 to argue, to dissent without fear every single 00:34:56.519 --> 00:34:59.260 day. And he argues that if people are afraid 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:01.619 to speak their minds or if the government labels 00:35:01.619 --> 00:35:04.960 any form of dissent as anti -national, then you 00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:06.679 don't really have a democracy anymore. You just 00:35:06.679 --> 00:35:08.679 have an election machine. He was also highly 00:35:08.679 --> 00:35:10.880 critical of the government's decision to revoke 00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:13.619 the special autonomous status of Kashmir. He 00:35:13.619 --> 00:35:15.619 was. He called the detention of local political 00:35:15.619 --> 00:35:19.679 leaders there a classic colonial excuse. His 00:35:19.679 --> 00:35:22.159 argument is that you cannot impose development 00:35:22.159 --> 00:35:25.420 or integration on a people at gunpoint. It has 00:35:25.420 --> 00:35:27.900 to be a democratic process that involves their 00:35:27.900 --> 00:35:30.440 consent and their participation. And the government 00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:32.539 and its supporters have pushed back pretty hard. 00:35:32.599 --> 00:35:34.460 There was the whole controversy surrounding the 00:35:34.460 --> 00:35:37.510 Lund University. Nalanda was a real passion project 00:35:37.510 --> 00:35:40.670 for Sen. The goal was to revive an ancient Indian 00:35:40.670 --> 00:35:42.809 center of learning, one of the world's first 00:35:42.809 --> 00:35:45.070 true universities, which had been destroyed centuries 00:35:45.070 --> 00:35:48.070 ago. Sen was appointed the first chancellor of 00:35:48.070 --> 00:35:50.179 the revived institution. But he didn't serve 00:35:50.179 --> 00:35:53.039 a second term. No. He withdrew his candidacy 00:35:53.039 --> 00:35:56.099 for a second term in 2015. He wrote a public 00:35:56.099 --> 00:35:58.199 letter to the board saying it was clear that 00:35:58.199 --> 00:36:00.119 the government wasn't enthusiastic about him 00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:02.260 continuing in the role. He felt the political 00:36:02.260 --> 00:36:04.679 pressure was making his position untenable. It's 00:36:04.679 --> 00:36:07.159 a sad irony, really. The man who wrote the book 00:36:07.159 --> 00:36:09.420 on the argumentative Indian finds himself being 00:36:09.420 --> 00:36:11.780 pushed out of the argument by the state. It's 00:36:11.780 --> 00:36:14.639 a profound irony, yes. So let's close by humanizing 00:36:14.639 --> 00:36:16.860 the man a little. We've talked about the brain, 00:36:17.079 --> 00:36:20.159 the theories, the Nobel Prize. But what about 00:36:20.159 --> 00:36:24.139 the person? He's in his 90s now and still going. 00:36:24.179 --> 00:36:26.880 And still working, still writing. He's a fascinating 00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:29.639 character. He's an explicit atheist, but one 00:36:29.639 --> 00:36:32.820 who deeply identifies with these skeptical, argumentative 00:36:32.820 --> 00:36:35.239 traditions within Hinduism. He's been married 00:36:35.239 --> 00:36:38.199 three times. His first wife was a very famous 00:36:38.199 --> 00:36:41.559 Bengali writer, Nabini Tadev Sen. His second 00:36:41.559 --> 00:36:44.139 wife was Eva Colorni, an Italian economist who 00:36:44.139 --> 00:36:46.860 tragically died of cancer at a young age. And 00:36:46.860 --> 00:36:49.179 he's currently married to Emma Rothschild, who 00:36:49.179 --> 00:36:51.519 is herself a very distinguished historian. And 00:36:51.519 --> 00:36:53.480 isn't one of his daughters a Bollywood actress? 00:36:53.880 --> 00:36:57.760 Yes, Nandana Sen. He's a man who has always lived 00:36:57.760 --> 00:36:59.780 in the world, not just in an academic library. 00:37:00.300 --> 00:37:03.219 He used to be famous for just cycling all around 00:37:03.219 --> 00:37:05.400 the town of Santa Nicotan, just peddling through 00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:07.780 the village, talking to people. His hobbies, 00:37:07.900 --> 00:37:11.300 he once said, were I read a lot and I like arguing 00:37:11.300 --> 00:37:14.500 with people. That sounds about right. So as we 00:37:14.500 --> 00:37:16.980 wrap up this deep dive, what is the one single 00:37:16.980 --> 00:37:19.039 idea that the listener should carry with them? 00:37:19.159 --> 00:37:22.559 We've covered so much ground from Bengal to Cambridge, 00:37:22.659 --> 00:37:26.559 from starvation to the liberal paradox. I think 00:37:26.559 --> 00:37:29.460 it's the redefinition of success. Sen's entire 00:37:29.460 --> 00:37:32.059 life's work teaches us that a successful life 00:37:32.059 --> 00:37:34.579 or a successful country isn't about the pile 00:37:34.579 --> 00:37:36.980 of stuff you possess. It's not about your income. 00:37:37.159 --> 00:37:39.599 It's about what you can do. It's about what you 00:37:39.599 --> 00:37:42.139 are free to be. Freedom is the ultimate metric. 00:37:42.219 --> 00:37:44.139 If you have money but you have no voice, you 00:37:44.139 --> 00:37:46.000 aren't developed. If you have plenty of food 00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:47.780 in the country but no security that you'll be 00:37:47.780 --> 00:37:50.139 able to access it, you aren't safe. Everything 00:37:50.139 --> 00:37:52.760 is connected. The interconnectedness of freedoms, 00:37:53.000 --> 00:37:55.840 political freedom, economic facilities, social 00:37:55.840 --> 00:37:58.039 opportunities, they aren't separate items on 00:37:58.039 --> 00:38:00.079 a checklist. They're all one single knot. And 00:38:00.079 --> 00:38:02.719 if you pull too hard on one string, if you decide 00:38:02.719 --> 00:38:04.619 to suppress free speech, for example, in the 00:38:04.619 --> 00:38:07.440 name of economic growth, the whole knot tightens, 00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:09.900 the circulation gets cut off, and eventually 00:38:09.900 --> 00:38:12.480 the entire system fails. That brings me to our 00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:15.239 final provocative thought for everyone to mull 00:38:15.239 --> 00:38:19.519 over. Sen defines democracy not as voting, but 00:38:19.519 --> 00:38:23.110 as... Government by discussion. And we are living 00:38:23.110 --> 00:38:25.809 in the noisiest, most information saturated era 00:38:25.809 --> 00:38:29.449 in human history. We have social media, 24 hour 00:38:29.449 --> 00:38:31.289 news, comment sections everywhere. We have more 00:38:31.289 --> 00:38:34.829 speech than ever. But are we discussing? That 00:38:34.829 --> 00:38:37.699 is the question, isn't it? Are we using our capability 00:38:37.699 --> 00:38:40.239 to reason with each other, to persuade, to listen? 00:38:40.599 --> 00:38:43.059 Or are we just shouting into our own echo chambers? 00:38:43.579 --> 00:38:46.239 Because if Sen is right, the moment we stop listening 00:38:46.239 --> 00:38:48.300 to the other side, the moment we lose the ability 00:38:48.300 --> 00:38:51.340 to argue, we aren't just being rude, we are actively 00:38:51.340 --> 00:38:53.579 dismantling the safety net that keeps us all 00:38:53.579 --> 00:38:55.440 alive. Something to think about the next time 00:38:55.440 --> 00:38:57.360 you're doom -scrolling. Thanks for joining us 00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:59.219 on the Deep Dive. Thank you. Keep arguing.