hard right in a case i've been in touch with you and you have this is the book i want to we have some time maybe you could share a little your own background your academic or personal background and then we can get into the book that was published you know some years ago and it's become a standard work in the in the plus i did i did five of them biology yes all muslim biology it's all in i did history i love history i didn't know any economics in my nd year i got going for the st time with a wonderful  socially minded and think i will have to trust jesus out of one of the things they could do before the war really broke was to rescue some of the professors who were sure as hell going to be caught on the wheel of the fascists of hitler and he went abroad with a few i don't know how many thousands of dollars and pick up this professor that professor the professor rep and put together a faculty with with called the university in exile for them that's what a grown  that i can write a piece about monroe i thought they meant president reagan struck me as very odd for cover and it was a question marilyn monroe told me anyway i wrote a piece about the right monroe and then i went back to him for my professor and i said to and fifty four dollars x i something like that and you took it and you and you had a piece in the preface that which is rather kind of funny and everything of that sort of thing where you the title of the book was sort of interest and you've got if you're going to write about economics in the great economic thinkers and you took it to somebody who was in the publishing world and yes and then you're certainly have i may say so and and i want this woman to make clear the people who would have been frightened away economics everybody that was terrifying to recognize this is going to be a book in which people talk went yeah and it did and it went and it's gone into seven editions and i think it's sold probably four or five million copies around the world and dozens of languages been translated it's a basic primmer that all people are interested in this important subject would go to well to refer to and have asked the right of us tough enough where in your chair previous yesterday and i wouldn't say that some of the didn't even do better and you've done it and you've taken you've got you've got into japanese and you begin with in a certain sense you've heard of a survey of the human condition you point out that throughout if i may you can feel it in and ninety nine percent of the human experience we've probably had nothing that could be called economics until the time of out of that seven hundred and seventy six and that there was you know a command economy and that sort of thing in the day of her only by the that's interesting right but no they put a is what it's about how do people in hunting gathering societies which we had in the example of this country american indians and i mean the original was didn't didn't have any money that i stock exchange didn't have any they had what know and that believe it or not this business of running a society by doing it the way grandfather did it is a current of economics really you know it's the economics of i mean economics i mean the way of the way  yeah well but anyway that's what happened it happened then and at that at that age in time between five thousand b c and three thousand b c over those two thousand years you have a little a new kind of way of making society more traditional way but the society work in those societies created what you would call empire yes indeed so politically militarily that an enormous change and economically a big change but nothing like what we w the elements that make up the marketplace some some of the elements that make up the idea that you a perfectly plain ordinary professor in the special no no or links with the man alone with a lowered you know a lot of the man have a right to make money  thing but the story of the for the modern type of it picks up on that it begins that and smith and then it go through and we say it doesn't you get some major think you have a critique of the it came to called capitalism one of the term capital and come to be characteristic of  the twenty elusive were and he had his explanations by no means the only one in the world but it was very powerful and he also at three things explained that you know that's a technical thing he stood for socialism th socialism deeply believe that capitalism very bad for very many reasons and a tremendous deep seated distrust of the institution of private property by private ownership everything in capitalism out you know but when the socialist took over one day it would be perfect so marketplace and then there's also the idea of there being two factors are going to insect or this network or you've got a private sector and then you have a governmental nd record and if you do away with private property or the intrusion of private property and individual hands then you've got a one no good we've learned something about all private economy it's no government i don't think of life of the sense of place and you need we need we we have learned i think and i think at us with all of us already you need an economy in which you have government to do certain kinds of things we've society needs with which don't pay money home profitable like building roads and profit or providing medical care and things like that there's a real need for governmental sector has a real need for private sector he was very clear clear about trick if you don't have the market to where you can bargain for your labor input to production like you don't have a way that you can do that then it comes down to where you're going to distribute according to some general notion of what the need is distribute it out and is the is the profit motive or the idea of the problem motive in advance from an able to be contained with continued continued and the advantages of that done within a socialist particular do you tend to lose that do you socially of never really consider the problem seriously if they are important question of are they not now adays nowadays people who still would like to have a more socialistic right yes  certainly think they're going to be marcus they don't want distribution just by tradition of the old days they don't want distribution just by some guy saying you get this month and you get that like that that they want markets you know and that is the that is the distribution of income in a  market work ok if you don't like the fact of the market make some people too rich that system are i mean there's no saying that absolutely too rich just too rich to make you feel comfortable they have a tax law and when you make over a one million of the area pay a certain amount of we didn't do a very well in this country in a market economy to people that say the math to be other than those who own the wealth or own capital assets is something which is usually been over the long haul relatively few relative the great bond well yes most of the people have been able to gain income for buying food and cloth ing from their labor input and they're being able to bargain their labor or i get a better return on their labor because that's an important principle and we have in the united states of i make this idea of market for the surplus value of labor or in general the idea the labor theory of value would could you address yourself to that end is there something else that's needed beyond that or is that are systems based essentially on that because most income is distributed according to labor or job criteria are they not from the very beginning and one of the things that people try to explain whether there was some way of explaining how incomes derived from you know income  like a job i say like a job where you say i want to the pacer and i've since an hour i said i said zero dollars five cents an hour and and you say think yes so on it's off a little but you think yourself twice if i don't say yes i'm going to get nothing somehow the i think we've learned the very hard way through history that you can have a society that works pretty well with markets that pay wages with markets in which  a little bit of that and tradition as this certainly there's some power a few places i mean that could be gentle power as well i mean i mean the government of power and the man in charge of the police forces yes you if you take that test and so on pretty well but here's the thing what i find very puzzling it's that you have countries many countries that have these basic institutions but they differ french capitalism is not like german capitalism american yes with those institutions you've you've blocked out a kind of economic machinery but the same machine can produce different societies the difference is a subtle but you know it's different when you cross the line you know economics which takes out of account the more comprehensive sociology anthropology go on the larger intuitive kind of sensing that you thought was more characteristic of the traditional economists there's a couple of them that we might be able to talk about one is one that you had great admiration for vision a vision of the economy the picture we've been talking about in the vision of the temper of explain picture of the thing the picture of the economy as a whole people making money and creating them the markets and to think this was a picture in which price it kept changing and there were mechanisms at work the harder claim which markets interact and the whole while and large with exceptions market economies adjusted themselves and most of the so the picture of economics that was written about from the time of adam smith really down to the great depression was a picture of how society home together when that's when the structure was essentially markets and send the market out of oil all reach what it used to begin to understand and then can the great depression just threw everything into it and the market system us wasn't working right and it wasn't working because prices were one of adjusting of speaking again to exaggerate john buy ninety nine percent of the commas but there's a one percent of economists that doesn't and accepted by eighty five percent of congress people but while he rejected by fifteen percent namely it's all right for the government to spend namely the government should five billion dollars in a couple of years it's amazing you know that there's this entrepreneurialism he had a great thing for the creative destruction as it were of entrepreneurialism put in so he seems to have a great favorite status among great number of people who are trying to understand what the world's going on  thing is certain a sense derided it but you talk about and he talked about the vision thing and he said all from at least it is the vision that we're going to be interested in and what about the role of the vision or a larger comprehensive understanding of what's going on economics is so important now is we double eyes we are our international institutions you're not there we're globalizing we don't have international institutions comparable to those of the nation state level we have these tremendous from and do you think and particularly maybe bring it around we only got a few minutes i'm afraid that final chapter they've added to the th edition which is coming on one thousand nine hundred and ninety addresses that thing and if i address that issue and if i may it seems to me you're saying that some of the economists now are taking too narrow a view of what the economics are and we shouldn't do that because it's too important to be obfuscated by having a narrow view and that we may be heading for trouble we should have a a wider vision or maybe you could just address just so good to know you have twenty seven seconds ok ok ok that's a that's a h that you are at peace with it and yes the government's going to spend money yes they're going to borrow money yes they're going to do medical research and know the naca and so that's one thing that's that's for business people who i was with people like maybe like myself to try to put for the idea that science you know that economics is not just another branch of science or like genetic again or like this yeah yeah that indeed you can do very important  happens there but when you're all done what you do in the economy is not dictated by what science has told you to do in genetics to narrow it's to now it's what you know plus feelings plus  do indeed increase productivity and that isn't his whoever he who indeed increased wealth a very great people but a man who whole life is confined to one or a few simple operations will become into his words as reality of the scene with webb i mean that hindus are told that it is you know there's a larger context within which all of these things should be taken into account political and so forth as well in a vision thing do you do you do you i don't want to say are you are you i do i lack the that sort of thing and there's a thing that comes out of cybernetics where you have information overload some people think but it allows for pattern recognition of systems systems of a systems kind of thinking we might be able to get a broad kind of overreading of what's going the end of the world leaves a lot of that has both the beating of it we're coming to the end of that of coming time for something new and it also means what's the purpose of it all right you've got it and that's what we're obviously didn't what's it all about alfie a film at one time but it's true that we want to get to that and we need that and  that's what we're looking for well i would just like to say at the outset that anybody who's interested in this and that seems to me the perhaps the one criteria by which you could measure what human purpose and questing is if they if they have that idea of looking for visionary leadership or vision of leadership in terms of fulfilling human purpose it would be wanting to improve the worldly philosopher and they cannot possibly do better than repairing to the worldly philosophers in order to get a grounding they can give honest any of that and i thank you and congratulate you overwhelmingly on be the th edition of this absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to try and understand these questions that have so much to do with the important questions that confront mankind the worldly philosophers and as we say the th edition is coming up with a brand new chapter that should be yes i think you did i mean the only problem being is that there's so much we could talk about it's we should make a series of what you have you done of good you've done a great deal you should be on television and you should be streamed on to the internet and your perception should be put out