Acclaimed author and professor Francis Fukuyama discusses his seminal works “Trust” and “The End of History” and how they apply today, and to an era of mounting distrust and conspiracy theories in the new Trump era, in this extended conversation with MSNBC’s Ari Melber. Fukuyama also analyzes Elon Musk’s “oligarch” politics, and shares his passions beyond academia - woodworking and drone building. (The Beat's YouTube playlist: https://msnbc.com/ari Ari: / arimelber Beat merch: www.msnbc.com/Beat5)
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NewsTranscript
00:00When big things happen there's usually a rush to find causes or explanations the fall of communism spawned years of debate
00:07Over who in the West might get credit for that and how to explain. What was the greatest geopolitical shift of at least 50 years?
00:14the kovat pandemic stoked urgent questions about its natural or lab causes and
00:20again for many who to blame
00:22Politicos no elections are obsessively explained was Biden's 2020 win a
00:27Rejection of Trump or just recoiling from that same pandemic was Trump's 2024 win a MAGA embrace or more of a revolt
00:36over that era's high prices
00:39Well nowadays there are more sources offering
00:43explanations more quickly than ever before
00:46From the news media to podcast to people posting theories online
00:50There is of course no monopoly on truth, but if we're talking about claims
00:55Regarding why things are happening?
00:57Well, they can be tested
01:00Against facts over time and a lot of quick takes can be proven incomplete or wrong some splashy claims or big ideas in
01:07Print ultimately flame out while other carefully researched books sometimes prove correct
01:14To get specific here are four history books that have advanced knowledge and stood the test of time
01:20Which can be instructive as we now try to make sense of volatile conditions
01:25And one of these books you see on the screen is by the acclaimed
01:29professor
01:30Francis Fukuyama known for several influential nonfiction books including liberalism and its discontents and
01:36trust a now 30 year old exploration of that idea of trust in modern society and economics and
01:43Issues that certainly apply to United States sense of distrust right now
01:48He also wrote the acclaimed and controversial book the end of history in the last man translated in over 20 languages
01:55Influential around the globe required reading in many courses about the Cold War
01:59Fukuyama is an intellectual force who has probed politics culture and economics
02:04Also known for a crisp pretty dispassionate approach to making sense of history as well as challenging orthodoxy
02:11Human history can be understood in a certain sense as a as a form of recognition of contemporary nationalism
02:18Is not driven by any kind of economic motive
02:20It's driven by the nationalist desire that his nation, you know, his group his ethnic group
02:26Whatever be recognized as a nation among others
02:30Fukuyama's ideas continue to drive debate. In fact, I could show you recent headlines
02:35That are still discussing things. He has explored written and proposed decades back
02:39These are all in our current era
02:42He got his PhD at Harvard worked on strategy at the US government's Rand Corporation did policy at the State Department and now serves
02:48As a Stanford professor and fellow and director of Stanford's international policy master's program and joins us
02:55For his debut on the beat. Welcome
02:59Thank you very much for having me. I have a lot less hair than that first picture you put up, but I'm still here
03:04Yeah, well, that's that's seems to happen over time
03:08We gave the extra introduction because while all people should be equal in a Western liberal tradition as you've written about
03:16All all takes and ideas are not and we're in an era right now where there's a lot of different stuff swirling around
03:23And so I wanted to set aside time to have this conversation with you
03:27Let's start with the current and then I plan to delve delve deeper into the history
03:31But you're still at it
03:33Recently you were looking at the Musk controversies in a broader global context and you wrote that there's nothing new about oligarchs threatening democracy
03:41In fact, you called it a basic thing. They exert quote undue influence promote corruption and you argue
03:48It's clear that we have a homegrown American oligarch in Elon Musk
03:53What do you mean by that? And and
03:56What can be gleaned from that?
03:58And and what can be gleaned from challenges like this in other places around the world?
04:05Well, I actually think that the first oligarch in this tradition was Silvio Berlusconi who became the prime minister of Italy
04:13He was a rich business magnate. He acquired a media empire
04:17He used that media empire to get himself elected a prime minister
04:22And then he used his political power to protect his business empire
04:26And it seems to me that that's exactly the pattern that Elon Musk has followed
04:30He acquired Twitter, which didn't seem like a great business proposition, but that's not why he wanted it
04:36He wanted it because it would give him a lot of political influence and sure enough
04:41He becomes Donald Trump's sidekick. And now he's in this great position to take care of his business interests in Starlink and
04:49Tesla and so, you know, he's followed in the footsteps of not just Berlusconi
04:55But a whole bunch of oligarchs, especially in the former communist world that have trod the same path
05:03You mentioned why he wanted Twitter now X
05:08And that cuts against what classical economists or other analysts would say
05:13Rational actors make money
05:16The legal dimension people say you have a fiduciary duty to get the profits
05:20You're identifying something that cuts against all of that. Can you explain?
05:25Well, first of all, since he owns Twitter outright, he doesn't actually have to report to a board or
05:32Shareholders, but I think that, you know, when you reach that level of wealth
05:37You're actually if you get another hundred billion dollars, it doesn't matter. What you really want is recognition and power
05:45And I think that that was his calculation
05:48In acquiring Twitter is that this gives him an instant audience
05:52What is it up to 200 million followers now who hang on every word of his and I think the
05:59Satisfaction that he gets from that kind of influence has got to be a lot greater than you know
06:05Just acquiring yet another, you know few tens of billions of dollars
06:10You're an analyst not an activist
06:12But are there lessons to be gleaned?
06:15But are there lessons to be gleaned
06:17For countering what you call that Italian Berlusconi style
06:22Political project which sometimes can be corruptive
06:26Well, you know I was always in favor of more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws we kind of
06:33after the 1980s backed away from trying to break up big corporations, although
06:38I think we're now in a different situation. I don't see how it's possible to to
06:43Really push back politically against someone like musk because he's so rich
06:47He's got so much political influence that you know taking him down. I think would be
06:53Really pretty impossible
06:56Uh, and I think that you know, maybe the solution is not to let people get that rich in the first place
07:00But how you do that in you know in our capitalist, uh, uh society. I I don't really have an answer to
07:08Do you think that that then speaks to his sort of potential permanence or endurance
07:14in the second trump term, uh that other people advisors
07:18May come and go but but he's sort of different in that way then and harder for trump to remove
07:24Definitely, uh, I mean first of all, he's much more valuable to trump than any of his, you know
07:29steve bannon or any of the other advisors that
07:32Trump has had but even if trump decided to break with him, it would be hard to
07:39You know have him just fade into obscurity
07:42Uh, I think he's got a political career
07:44actually trump
07:45I think worried about this himself. He gave a talk once where he said
07:49well musk can't be president because he wasn't born in the united states, which is a little bit of a
07:54guarantee against a regicide here, but you know, I don't think he's going to go away even after trump, you know leaves the scene because
08:02He has too much of a following and too much political influence
08:07And not everyone has said that I mean you're an expert on on some of these dynamics, uh around the world
08:12you're saying that once in
08:14to the u.s body politic with a
08:17Tech and money foothold a beachhead if you will and control over the current republican party you're saying
08:24You know administrations can change. Uh, the the gop is not going to just get rid of him
08:29No, that's absolutely right and uh, it's really
08:33Hard to see, you know, he's throwing money behind
08:36you know the threat of primary challenges against any
08:40senator congressman that crosses him and
08:43I I can think of very few people private individuals that could wield that kind of power
08:49Wow, that's really striking coming from you and that's sort of the the current events. I want to go all the way back you
08:56Published this book trust about 30 years ago. Yeah
09:00That's right
09:01And yeah, that seems like a much more innocent era in in retrospect
09:05Yeah, you say innocent and it's interesting. I have
09:08Some passages and so we'll start as we do with the text. That's what you know, antonin scalia would want
09:14Let's start with the original text of your book. Um, but uh nerdy nerdy references aside
09:20You refer to what was then the first information tech revolution, which looks very quaint
09:26Uh compared to x and what we just discussed but at the time was talk of a quote information superhighway
09:32and a desktop
09:33uh in every house
09:35And the idea was that would challenge
09:38Authority and the tech world said that was a good thing and you wrote the information age's most enthusiastic
09:45Apostles celebrate the breakdown of hierarchy and authority
09:48But they neglect one critical factor trust and the shared ethical norms that underlie it communities depend on mutual trust
09:55And will not arise spontaneously
09:58without it
10:00Does that apply as a fisher in today's tech standoff?
10:05Oh, absolutely. I think that the the single thing that has really changed in that 30 35 year period
10:13Uh is the breakdown of trust and it has several different dimensions, I mean
10:18Americans never trusted government, but I think that the degree of distrust that is animating doge and the efforts to dismantle the federal
10:27bureaucracy
10:28Are just a kind of pathological
10:31extension of this classical anti-state
10:34uh
10:35aspect of american culture, but you know, the the the more difficult thing is the
10:40Trust between citizens we were always
10:44Had political differences, but as everybody's noted the polarization between red and blue
10:51republicans and democrats has grown steadily since the 1990s
10:55and this has
10:57led us to a world in which
11:00You know in a way, especially on the right. Nobody takes seriously the stated motives of anybody. There's always a
11:06Deeper darker conspiracy that's actually motivating people to do what they do
11:11Attacks are not attacks against policies and positions
11:15They are attacks against the character and the motives of you know
11:19people that you don't like and I I think that that means that
11:23The country as a whole simply cannot, uh, you know act in a in a coherent way as a nation
11:29Because we are this divided
11:31Yeah, you say that and it's really interesting because your scholarship on this was pushing back against the idea
11:38Of uh, I guess what I would call
11:41A traditionalist, uh business or economic model that says sort of well, you you know
11:46You have a contract and you have a system
11:48when in fact what you were pointing out and you compared different countries and society to
11:53Traditions that how trust fits into that which makes intuitive sense when you think about what it's like when you walk into
12:00the the town hall in a small town
12:02Where everyone in the room knows a few other people in the room
12:05That's very different than madison square garden where you literally might not know anyone
12:11Other than the new yorker you walk in with and you can run that test in many ways
12:16but you talk about the
12:18Perils of lower trust societies and you'll explain in more detail. But as I read that book you weren't at the time
12:25Suggesting that the united states and some of these other prosperous western countries were at the low end of that comparison
12:32Now you're saying that's where we're headed
12:35And here's how you describe low trust societies in general
12:38they are
12:39A system that quote must fence in and isolate their workers with bureaucratic rules
12:45People find their workplaces more satisfying if they're treated like adults who can be trusted
12:50To contribute to their community rather than like small cogs in a large industrial machine
12:55How does that apply to declining trust in the u.s?
12:59Well, I have always regarded trust as a kind of lubricant
13:04We have a formal structure of hierarchies corporations organizations the government
13:10Itself and you can get people to cooperate
13:13using those formal rules
13:15But if people trust one another that if they have something that I labeled social capital
13:22Which is the ability to work spontaneously with other people everything goes better
13:27You don't have to have lawyers. You don't have to have lengthy contracts
13:32you can
13:33Take somebody's word if on a handshake you can do a business deal and it makes things go a lot faster
13:39Obviously in politics, uh, if you know in a in a liberal democracy, we assume that people don't agree with one another
13:47but if they actually
13:49Share a common belief in the fundamental
13:53Values and institutions within which they're operating then they can resolve those conflicts, you know
13:59I mean, that's the whole reason you have a political system. You don't want to have to
14:03an ak-47 in order to settle a conflict you can actually debate the thing in the
14:08legislature and in the courts and you know come to a resolution and I think that that's really the thing that has
14:15Slipped away from us
14:17I used to in fact in that book. I described the united states as a high trust society, right?
14:24You know alexis de toqueville the great french observer of american democracy said that americans
14:30Really trust one another they form associations much more readily than in his native france
14:35And unfortunately, you know, it's true on one level. I mean people do join organizations. They get online and they
14:42uh, they cling to one another but between
14:45uh groups, uh, the level of trust has has deteriorated enormously and so what you don't have is a is a larger
14:54Framework by which you know americans can understand and communicate with one another
15:00Right, and I think what's enduring about the work is that the lens persists even as country situations may jostle the fact that
15:07By this lens we've fallen into low trust for some of the reasons you mentioned including
15:12Which populist movements are appealing to not a skepticism, but a type of cynicism, um is on point
15:18um
15:19now it's interesting to me because i've been thinking about all these things and uh,
15:22I could tell viewers, you know, I was first reading you like millions of other undergrads in college and comparing you to
15:28Huntington and and other scholarship may try to make sense of these these shifts. Um, chris. Hayes is our colleague here
15:35You know chris is on msnbc. You might have seen him
15:37um, he like you writes books and does
15:41Work on the news. Um, but he had this book the twilight of the elites that
15:45Runs across some of the the same ground
15:48Uh and looking at trust and we recently caught up with him about that and as he was talking
15:53um
15:54I just thought I get this is like he's going full fukuyama
15:58because he was talking about how
16:01We're now in this negative experiment this problem
16:05Of democracy against the low trust, um, so I actually want to play for you in some extended form what he said
16:13America is running an experiment in running a low trust democracy
16:19And that's a dangerous and difficult thing to do, um
16:23Trust is is kind of a glue that holds democratic self-governance together
16:27We have to trust each other at a certain amount
16:29There's a certain degree that you have to trust institutions and the leadership in them
16:33And we've seen this country become a low trust country. We've seen politics in a really interesting way polarize around trust
16:41professor
16:43He's absolutely right, uh, I think that uh, you know, what's
16:47Really defined, uh modern american conservatism is distrust
16:52it is really a belief in various conspiracy theories that
16:56uh, you know, if you take the red pill you realize that nothing is what it seems to be that
17:01Uh, you know the established institutions whether they're corporations the government
17:06Uh, the other party are actually not ostensibly what they say. They are they're really there's somebody
17:13There's an elite pulling strings behind
17:15everyone's backs
17:17Uh, and I think that uh, you know, the the worst thing in a way it extends to just what we believe about reality
17:25where facts are not sufficient to
17:28Convince people that they're
17:30Wrong or that they need to change their views on something because they'll say well
17:34That's just fake news and I don't trust the sources of information that you are
17:39Using and i've got my own and i'll follow that and so, you know
17:44you don't really have a common basis for any kind of community or
17:49You know ability to deliberate under those low trust conditions
17:54How unusual is that as compared to other
17:58recent
18:00democratic democracy
18:02societies
18:04well, um
18:06You know, there are many societies that are highly polarized today
18:09South korea is a case of another democracy that is really divided against itself
18:14I described a situation that's very prevalent in southern italy or in latin america where people only trust
18:21Others in their immediate families and everybody on the outside is a kind of
18:26Uh enemy and so there are different forms of distrust
18:30I think that the kind we are experiencing now, however is a little bit different because
18:36It's not deeply cultural americans used to trust each other. I would say 50 years ago. The levels of overall trust were much higher
18:44this
18:45Current situation seems to be driven a lot by technology
18:49Uh, you know you you quoted that uh something i'd written earlier, you know when the internet was first privatized in the 1990s
18:57I and many other people thought this would be great for democracy because
19:02Basically information is power. Everybody had access to information
19:06And that would spread power out
19:09It's done that but it's also had this very unanticipated consequence of walling people off
19:15Because all of a sudden, you know
19:18we had alternative sources of information that could then erode the credibility of
19:23The sources that we took as a society in common to be trustworthy
19:28Uh, and so now everybody's got their you know, anyone with a large enough following on the internet
19:34Is believable because they've got enough likes and you know, that's the whole economy of influencers and that's something I think genuinely new in
19:42You know modern democracies and it really is the result of this technological
19:47Revolution that's happened over the last 20 years
19:50Does that mean that in the course of your work you've become more of a technological determinist?
19:56Well, it's it's not uh, you know, it's not determinism
20:01Technology creates the conditions that people then interact with
20:06and so for example
20:08Most european countries are not as polarized as we are. They've got the same technology. They have the internet. They've got social media
20:16Um, but they're not you know, they're not in this crazy situation of disbelieving everything that you know their opponents
20:23say
20:24so
20:25The technology facilitates this breakdown of trust, but I don't think that it um
20:31Really explains the depth
20:33You know of the of some of the divisions
20:36Yeah, that's interesting because you're drawing our attention to what we can learn americans sometimes are very much in our own parochial space but
20:43There are real-time comparisons to how it's playing out elsewhere
20:46The other thing that i've seen and you know as a as a journalist who talks to people across the spectrum both parties
20:53I feel indexed or you might say uh over indexed in what the different folks are saying and one thing I hear a lot is
21:00there are
21:01Reasons there is a basis a foundation for this skepticism or cynicism
21:07Um, and you've seen that the pandemic was this at times horrific real world experiment where people said but wait a minute
21:12We've been lied to before and you say oh trust the government. Well, which which decade in which group has been?
21:18uh
21:20Has been hurt by trusting the government. Um, I wanted to get at least one lyric into this interview. So are you ready?
21:27Okay
21:28You write about trust jay-z speaking about how he had to armor himself growing up said trust
21:35That's a word you seldom hear from us
21:38We don't rest we sleep one eye up
21:41And he's not saying he likes being distrusting. He's saying he grew up in an environment
21:46Where you could barely close your eyes to the dangers around and so one thing I noticed that collapsed
21:52And I want your breakdown of it and if you can give us a way out
21:55um
21:56One of the things that I saw sort of collapsed in a transpartisan or or or bipartisan way
22:02During pandemic was different groups saying you're telling us that's the facts or you're telling us the government doctor said that
22:09um
22:09But on the left these marginalized communities were historically hurt and we could list off the examples
22:14There are many um and on the right
22:15There's of course a very strong and long-running libertarian streak you referred to some of that earlier some of it again
22:20American history at large and so
22:23You had folks saying not that they had the evidence for a given conspiracy theory about
22:29about covid but rather they had the history and lived experience of
22:34skepticism or more
22:37Is valid
22:39What do you say to that and how do you as someone you're a empiricist?
22:43How do you acknowledge the reality of that that lived reality?
22:47while also offering
22:49a strong counter argument to being cynical against everything equally as if that's a protective mechanism because that's not going to
22:55In a pandemic that's not going to keep your family safe
23:00Well, I think it's a matter of having some sense of proportion
23:04Uh, no, so you're right that
23:06Distrust in government was driven by real things. By the way. It's not simply something that conservatives have promoted
23:13uh, if you think about a lot of the
23:16Progressive
23:19Causes going all the way back to the 60s ralph nader unsafe at any speed
23:24A lot of people on the left were saying the government has been captured by big business
23:28The auto industry is in cahoots with the regulators
23:32The polluters are allowing, you know
23:35Terrible levels of pollution because they've captured
23:39The government and so there's a left-wing version of this as well
23:43All of this
23:44Has a basis in fact, uh, we did make mistakes during the pandemic in terms of evaluating, you know
23:50the efficacy of masks or the
23:52lab leak theory and so forth
23:55I guess the thing that's missing is
23:58an awareness that sometimes
24:01The those mistakes can be made and the government can screw up but that on the whole
24:07Uh, it is performing, you know, a really critical
24:12Function and if you don't have a certain basic level of trust in what it's saying, uh, you're
24:20What are you going to replace it with?
24:21you know, are you going to replace it with any notion that you simply pull off of the internet because uh, you know, some influencer
24:29Uh said it and so I think that we have to go back to try to re-establish the credibility
24:35Of certain institutions i'll tell you one thing i'm worried about right now
24:40Um people by and large trust, uh economic statistics, you know gdp growth rates unemployment rates
24:47These are produced by something called the bureau of labor statistics
24:51Uh, which is a it's a federal agency run by a whole bunch of eggheads. They're all statisticians
24:58Uh, and it's been regarded as a as an apolitical
25:02office
25:03one of the things that's happened is that the current administration is trying to replace all of the
25:09heads, uh
25:10They're they're protected by what's called for cause removal. So you can't just yep
25:16Fire them because it's a new administration because they are regarded as sources of credible non-partisan information
25:23Uh, and if you start politicizing those kinds of functions, you know, no other weather
25:29That produces all the weather forecasts and hurricane forecasts and warnings about heat waves
25:35Uh, you're gonna we're going to be in even deeper trouble than than we are now
25:40and this has happened in other countries, uh in the
25:442000s
25:45You had a populist regime a left-wing populist regime in argentina
25:50That was stoking very high levels of inflation
25:53And what was their solution? Well, they can the head of the statistics agency and made the statistics agency report
26:01You know better numbers that made them look better
26:03And you don't want this to happen because there are some still credible
26:07sources of information, you know in this society
26:11Um, but you know, it's something that we got to hold on to and and and bolster rather than you know disparage
26:17Right, and I I think our viewers and listeners are very aware of how how many efforts there are on the career civil service
26:23Front and the facts front or the gulf of mexico
26:26Uh all of that. Um, I want to turn now
26:29Um to what you memorably called the end of history
26:33uh
26:34There's a short answer and then we'll go along again. Would you use the exact same term if you could do it over?
26:42Yeah, i've been asked that question quite a few times in my career yes, the answer is yes, yes, all right
26:48So let me bring people up to speed
26:51It's hard today
26:53I think to fully
26:55Absorb what a profound shift it was to have
26:59the cold war
27:01Which was lived as a existential threat to humanity
27:06across both sides of the divide for decades, um
27:10Rather abruptly come to an end. Uh, so because we have tv you you have scholarship and words and research
27:16Uh, but you know, we have the archives so I just want to briefly remind everyone of that moment
27:22Mr. Gorbachev
27:24Teared down this wall
27:28Tens of thousands of people crossing into west berlin pouring through the berlin wall which opened today such an astonishing
27:35Moment in history we stand at the threshold of a brand new era that confrontation is now over
27:43The nuclear threat while far from gone is receding
27:47Eastern europe is free
27:50Is free the soviet union itself is no more
27:56This is an area of your uh most known and controversial scholarship
28:01Can't think of a bigger human topic for that era
28:05starting there
28:07What happened and what was your argument?
28:11About why it happened and where we were headed through the decline and the end of that cold war
28:17Uh
28:18well the word history, uh did not refer to just the
28:22Occurrence of events one after another
28:25I was using history with a capital h
28:29The idea that there is a progressive
28:32narrative that you can
28:34Elaborate about the development of human institutions
28:39over long periods of time
28:41And in my view, uh, we had progressed from primitive
28:45hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian ones to feudalism
28:50to modern capitalism and democracy
28:53in the
28:541980s
28:55There was another big group of people that believed in history in that sense and they were called marxists
29:01And the marxists also believed that there was progress in history. That was what karl marx really wrote about
29:07But they believed that there would be a higher stage of history
29:11Other than capitalist democracy, it would be a communist utopia
29:16And a lot of the fighting in the 20th century was over them trying to push things forward
29:22To replace what they called bourgeois capitalism
29:26With with communism, so maybe it was dismissing an adverb the end of marxist history
29:33well, yeah, and I think that uh, but but it does apply more broadly because
29:39Really the question that I wanted to get at is the question of history itself. Is there progress?
29:45You know our society's really changing in fundamental ways
29:49Over time or we just doomed to repeat the same, you know political forms over and over in my view
29:55It is impossible to deny that there is history with a capital h in that sense
30:01I think that the people that live in rich societies like the united states or europe
30:06um
30:07Need to travel to you know parts of the developing world
30:11Which are at a different stage of history where you can't assure your children surviving
30:17You know into adulthood in which you have, you know, incredibly high levels of misgovernment
30:24Corruption you have political violence. You don't have
30:27stable institutions
30:30you know these people are suffering from a lack of modern institutions and
30:35You know for anybody to say that, you know, and there's certain advantages obviously to living in
30:41Other than a you know, high-tech modern society. I think people did have deeper
30:45Uh, you know personal relationships in many respects in that kind of a society. Yeah, you're not playing fair
30:52Let me jump in to read how you put it then this was 1989
30:55Uh witnessing you said not just the end of the cold war but the passing of a period of post-war history
31:00The end of history as such the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization
31:07Of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government
31:12um
31:13the concern now is that
31:16a certain type of market capitalism, uh may have
31:20overtaken most of the earth with
31:23Most of the human production being subservient to it, but not the liberal democracy part. Is that a fair concern?
31:31Uh, well, it's a concern because I think the biggest challenger to my
31:35thesis is really china, which is an authoritarian country that
31:40employs, you know
31:42market economics to some extent
31:45But in defense of the original
31:47assertion
31:48I would say that what is not so easily reversible
31:53is the basic concept that was embodied both in the american and french revolutions which
31:59Had to do with the equality of dignity or the equality of rights that all human beings regardless of their national origins race
32:07You know so forth
32:09were entitled to
32:11Protection of the laws and the respect of their rights now, obviously the united states did not live up to that
32:18You know remotely
32:20in 1789 at the founding of the country
32:23But progressively there's been this expansion of rights to
32:27Broader and broader groups of people and they've been included in the definition of who's a human being
32:33Whose rights need to be respected and what I don't really see
32:37Is a challenge to that principle that would say no. No, that's wrong
32:41Actually, there are hierarchies. There's a certain class of people that you know should rule by by by nature
32:48Communist china doesn't say that the russians don't say that, you know
32:52There are many people that deny rights to their citizens, but the principle
32:57Is one that I think is actually pretty durable and I don't see it being replaced by an alternative principle right now
33:05Does that have to be delivered by what we?
33:08define as a
33:10democracy
33:13Well, I think that there's not a sharp break between by the way, it's not just a democracy
33:18It's a liberal democracy. It's popular choice governed by
33:23rules by checks and balances, uh,
33:26And so forth and I don't think that there's a clear dividing line where you say this is a democracy and this is not
33:33uh, you can have mixtures so for example, singapore is
33:37oftentimes thought of as a
33:39As a liberal autocracy, you don't have free and fair elections, but you've got a pretty strong
33:45Uh rule of law what we're seeing in hungary and other places are illiberal democracies where they have elections
33:52But they've got a very weak
33:54rule of law
33:56And so, you know, you've got these different
33:58Variants and there's no question that there's been backsliding
34:02Over the past more than 20 years at this point where especially the liberal part of liberal democracy has been under
34:10a severe challenge
34:12Uh, but again, you know in principle, I don't think that anybody has articulated
34:17Uh, you know a different form of government that would actually be superior to you know, a liberal democracy based on those principles
34:26Right. And so when you go through the macro histories, which some of them have become more popular lately what you're really
34:32Reminding people even amidst the current challenges of which we've discussed at some length today
34:37uh is that
34:38If you go back several thousands of years
34:41You have savagery
34:43you have
34:44religious or or appeals to god-based ruling systems that were negative
34:50Or inhumane for the the vast majority of people
34:54Then you have this experiment with countries
34:57But the first country systems were coming out of monarchies and and we're not this democracy model liberal democracy
35:04And then you have this model
35:06Which not only joined with capitalism to counter?
35:10communism and and autocrats but also is
35:14You're arguing still
35:15the best thing on the block
35:17Over what tens of thousands of years of humans living in some sort of group settings?
35:23That's absolutely right. I think that people don't understand the historical background of our
35:29institution, so for example
35:31Why do you have?
35:33This doctrine of liberalism. This is not liberalism in the american liberal versus conservative sense. It's a
35:39It's a doctrine that basically says that human beings deserve equal protection of the laws
35:45The reason that it arose was that after the protestant reformation europe spent 150 years
35:51150 years
35:52of bloody warfare
35:54Protestants killing catholics and vice versa and at a certain point, uh, they got tired of it and they said look
36:02Let's not fight over religion. Let's uh
36:05Relegate religion to private life. Uh, the state can be secular
36:09what we need to do is come up with rules by which we
36:12Can live with each other in peace and I think that that is a innovation that remains absolutely
36:20critical today
36:22We couldn't conceivably go back to religiously based polity the way some conservatives
36:27Want because we don't agree on those fundamental religious
36:32truths
36:33And therefore, you know, we need to have a system whereby we can live peacefully with each other
36:38but the point of all of this is that
36:40There's an evolutionary process that has been going on
36:44Where there's social learning we go through these very difficult periods and we realize that actually
36:50there are better forms of government in the
36:5319th and 20th century religion was replaced by
36:56Aggressive nationalism and europe was involved in two horrendous world wars and at the end of that
37:02Uh, they said okay, maybe that's not such a great idea to have this kind of uh national
37:09uh identity
37:11Maybe we ought to substitute something like the european union where we can
37:15All have rules by which we can live peacefully next to each other
37:19and that's why I think that you know, um, although you have setbacks you do also have progress as
37:26People learn from you know, their earlier periods of history
37:31Really fascinating, um before before I let you go since we set aside time here for you to join us on the beat
37:37Uh, I wanted to just turn to the slightly more personal or fun stuff
37:41um, which best I can tell is not like
37:45Your go-to kind of kind of serious person professionally
37:48Um, but i'm curious i'm going to ask you
37:51um in closing on a couple points, uh, you've become sort of a nerdy star if you take that as a compliment, um,
38:00From what I can tell from reading your work
38:02You didn't seek that out
38:05You had ideas that the way they were presented timing maybe some luck early publications
38:10Uh ended up blowing up in a way for nerds not for everyone. Um, did that surprise you?
38:16Did you have to adjust to that? Uh, do you like it?
38:21Uh, well
38:23Yeah, I um
38:25It's funny. I do have this. I have a lot of hobbies. I like to build things
38:30And uh what i've been building has changed over time so
38:34I started out, you know with furniture. I made the beds for all my kids our kitchen table this sort of thing
38:39I got tired of that
38:41I moved on I learned how to put drones together how to fly an fpv drone
38:47That's been one of my more recent ones and I love building computers. And so I build my own computers and I write my own software
38:54uh, this is probably the nerdiest part of my
38:57You know my my persona, but it's a lot of fun because
39:02You know
39:02What I do like talking to you. It's all very abstract. It's all in the plane of these big ideas
39:08And I find it really satisfying to build
39:12Your table that your kid. Yeah, you're your kid. I guess i'm pushing you to ask. Do you like that following that acclaim?
39:18I mean some professors say I write my stuff. I go home some some like the big classroom
39:23Well, you've had a big global classroom following if you will do you like that or you try not to think about it too much
39:31Um
39:33Well, it's uh, yeah, it's satisfying in a way that uh, people will listen to me
39:37Although I find that the smaller and less significant the country the more i'm acclaimed
39:43So i'm a big fish in the smaller ponds
39:46But you know, it's it's okay. I mean it's better than not being efficient
39:50Did you ever see uh in the west village of manhattan that they have a like a furniture antique store called the end of history
39:57I've never been to that store. But uh, many people have sent me pictures of it. So yes, i'm aware of that
40:03I mean again most people who write about it international longitudinal, you know geopolitics don't have that so it's just it's just funny to me
40:10It's just interesting. Um, do you have out of your work?
40:14uh
40:15A project or a book. I mean out of the intellectual work that you feel
40:19Uh did effectively reach people as you know, a lot of writers feel like they're writing and it's not doing anything
40:25Um, I mentioned some of your influence already. Do you have one that's a favorite where you feel like you broke through?
40:32Well, you know the the book trust that you referred to actually
40:37sold very well in very many countries, uh, especially the ones that I labeled low trust countries because
40:44no society believes that they have enough trust and
40:47It was really fascinating to be invited, uh to different places to
40:52Talk about you know where trust comes from and how it can be enhanced. There's also
40:58A corporate angle to this because I do a certain amount of speaking to you know
41:03To business groups and they also love the idea of trust
41:07And I think that a lot of the successes
41:10in um
41:12business actually depend on
41:14Uh organizations understanding the importance of trust. So for example just in time manufacturing
41:20you know in japan this started at toyota where every
41:23Worker has a cord and if they pull the cord they stop the entire production line
41:28In order to get at defects underlying defects
41:32And if you think about that, that's a system that completely relies on trust
41:37If you don't trust your workers, they're going to be pulling the cord all the time just to screw the bosses
41:42right
41:42Uh, and so, uh, it turns out in silicon valley, uh, at least up until recently it used to be a pretty high trust place
41:50there were actually studies that showed that contracts written in silicon valley were
41:54Thinner than those written in the east coast because you didn't have to protect yourself against, you know, so much misbehavior
42:02Yeah, people could do things on handshakes that that sort of thing
42:05uh, so I think that um, it was very
42:08Interesting to see this concept that for me started out as a very abstract one actually
42:15Play out in front of me
42:17I mean even things like domestic architecture, you know in a low trust society like many in latin america or in china
42:24If you're a rich person you build your house all the way out to the street and you have an interior courtyard
42:30which is just for your family because you don't want to attract the tax collector or the
42:35Envious neighbors whereas in a more high trust society you build your mcmansion, you know
42:41In the middle of you know where everybody can see and admire you and it it really does have to do with
42:46You know whether people seeing a wealthy person feel more envy and hatred or whether they feel admiration and emulation
42:55And these are little things, you know that that I think are quite interesting to observe, you know as you travel around the world to
43:01Different kinds of societies that's really is interesting. I know what you mean because i've seen those comparisons
43:06Um, the final question is for someone who wants to traffic it ideas and at whatever level
43:11Um, do you have a view of whether your approach which I think is fair to say was somewhat untraditional
43:17Um was a better path for you
43:20Uh, and I know you write about this in a forthcoming memoir, but basically you didn't do the exact traditional harvard path
43:26You got that phd you got the credentials
43:29But you spent years at rand as I mentioned you went into government. Uh, you published books that were scholarly but had a following
43:36do you view that as a lane that is
43:39Uh somehow better for people than going right into the muck of academia or or it depends
43:45You know, I usually advise students that are asking that kind of question not to take that path
43:52Because it's a very tricky one
43:54Uh, and not everybody can actually write for these broader audiences in a in an accessible way
44:01um, so, you know, uh, it's one that I just stumbled on I didn't really intend to do it and I got very lucky
44:07I mean you just have to
44:10You know, this is a trouble with a lot of conservatives. They think that everything is due to your individual effort
44:15And they don't understand that luck plays a big role in how successful your life is
44:21I had a number of very important mentors that other people didn't have access to alan bloom samuel huntington
44:29Seymour martin lipset, you know, uh were very important in my life
44:33Uh, and then I was lucky because I published the end of history right, you know, six months before the berlin wall fell
44:40Because you knew it was gonna fall
44:42Clearly, yeah, of course, right. Yeah
44:45No, I I so yeah, go ahead
44:47No, so I I just think that it's
44:50Uh given how important just blind luck is it's it's hard to
44:56Advise young people to say well just you know, let's hope you get lucky
45:01Right. That's not exactly advice. Um, although it is good fortune to wish, uh on everyone
45:06Um, I really appreciate uh, professor fukuyama you being generous with your ideas and time. Thanks for joining us
45:13Thank you very much for talking to me
45:19You