Lesson Two: Privatize everything.
This is, of course, related to government as violence. We can trust the government to run the military because the military is violent and “government is an act of force.” Guns and violence, however, do not make for an effective education system so they must be privatized.
Education is consistently pinpointed as the key reason “poor people” are being held back. Brook cites an example of a religious school in Detroit that has much better outcomes than a local government-run institution. We have no slides and there is no reference to a paper so we just have to take his word for it. Privatize it all.
We also have a deep gratitude for pioneering entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. Brook’s life is “so much better now with Amazon” and, while holding his iPhone aloft, declares how these technologies have changed his life more than most people he knows. “How cool is that… I live on the same planet as Jeff Bezos” are words that actually leave his mouth.
In the Q and A, I asked Brook about Mariana Mazzucato’s research showing how many of the innovations contained in a smart-phone — the internet, GPS, touch-screen — all came from government-funded research. Huawei is also a state-owned enterprise in China, I point out.
Brook responds by claiming that China is merely copying the United States and the U.S. government crowded out private capital and monopolized the field of innovation. I’m told to read up on how Chinese farmers came together and declared private property rights and how that led to the boom in China. I genuinely can’t follow what he is saying so I give up.
Lesson Three: We don’t really understand science
Brook continuously rails against Utopian notions of equality. He is vociferously against perfect equality, the idea that everybody should be exactly the same. I’m not sure who he thinks is preaching perfect equality but whoever they are, Brook says “they” don’t know how much equality they want, “they” just know that we are too unequal.
The kick in the teeth is Brook’s assertion that inequality is natural!
“We are all meta-physically different,” he claims. Some of us have “study-hard genes,” and we all have agency and are responsible for our own lives. The racial wealth gap is somehow dismissed by declaring that slavery was ages ago and Brook himself has not benefited from his parents whatsoever.
As we get towards the end of this ordeal, an audience member reminds Brook that there is next to no scientific evidence for the existence of free will. Of course, Brook retorts, this is because science is a relatively new field. We still don’t fully understand gravity either but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
At this point, I’ve lost the will to continue. Dazing in and out of intellectual consciousness, I’m bombarded with more gems: “there’s no economic theory that says inequality is a problem.” (Let’s ignore the fact that Adam Smith himself saw inequality as bad economics). On Brexit, we’re ultimately reminded that pursuing a zero tariff policy is right and “morally just.”
Eventually we run out of time. Finally free, my housemate and I walk past the Houses of Parliament where Brexit protesters – both Leavers and Remainers – are now a constant reminder of the seemingly unbreachable divisions running throughout UK society.
“Has anyone ever seen society?” Brook had asked earlier, with a rhetorical flourish.
Here it is, Dr. Brook – right outside your window, tearing itself apart. Maybe you could try to understand it.