WEBVTT

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Do you feel trapped

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in a broken economic model?

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A model that's trashing the living world

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and threatens the lives
of our descendants?

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A model that excludes billions of people

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while making a handful unimaginably rich?

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That sorts us into winners and loser,

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and then blames the losers
for their misfortune?

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Welcome to neoliberalism,

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the zombie doctrine
that never seems to die,

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however comprehensively it is discredited.

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Now, you might have imagined
that the Financial Crisis of 2008

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would have led to the collapse
of neoliberalism.

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After all, it exposed
its central features,

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which were deregulating,
business and finance,

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tearing down public protections,

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throwing us into extreme
competition with each other,

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as, well, just a little bit flawed.

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And intellectually, it did collapse.

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But still, it dominates our lives.

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Why?

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Well, I believe the answer
is that we have not yet produced

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a new story with which to replace it.

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Stories are the means by which
we navigate the world.

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They allow us to interpret its complex
and contradictory signals.

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When we want to make sense of something,

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the sense we seek is not scientific sense

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but narrative fidelity.

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Does what we are hearing reflect the way

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that we expect humans
and the world to behave?

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Does it hang together?

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Does it progress

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as a story should progress?

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Now, we are creatures of narrative,

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and a string of facts and figures,
however important facts and figures are --

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and, you know, I'm an empiricist,
I believe in facts and figures --

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but those facts and figures have no power
to displace a persuasive story.

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The only thing that can replace a story

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is a story.

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You cannot take away someone's story

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without giving them a new one.

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And it's not just stories in general
that we are attuned to,

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but particular narrative structures.

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There are a number of basic plots
that we use again and again,

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and in politics there is one basic plot

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which turns out to be
tremendously powerful,

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and I call this "the restoration story."

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It goes as follows.

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Disorder afflicts the land,

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caused by powerful and nefarious forces

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working against the interests of humanity.

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but the hero will revolt
against this disorder,

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fight those powerful forces,

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against the odds overthrow them,

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and restore harmony to the land.

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You've heard this story before.

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It's the Bible story.

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It's the Harry Potter story.

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It's the Lord of the Rings story.

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It's the Narnia story.

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But it's also the story

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that has accompanied almost every
political and religious transformation

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going back millennia.

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In fact, we could go as far as to say

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that without a powerful
new restoration story,

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a political and religious transformation

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might not be able to happen.

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It's that important.

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After laissez-faire economics
triggered the Great Depression,

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John Maynard Keynes sat down
to write a new economics,

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and what he did was to tell
a restoration story,

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and it went something like this.

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Disorder afflicts the land!

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(Laughter)

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Caused by the powerful and nefarious
forces of the economic elite,

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which have captured the world's wealth.

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But the hero of the story,

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the enabling state, supported
by working class and middle class people,

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will contest that disorder,

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will fight those powerful forces
by redistributing wealth,

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and through spending
public money on public goods

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will generate income and jobs,

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restoring harmony to the land.

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Now, like all good restoration stories,

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this one resonated
across the political spectrum.

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Democrats and Republicans,
labor and conservatives,

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left and right all became,
broadly, Keynesian.

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Then, when Keynesian ran intro trouble

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in the 1970s,

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the neoliberals, people like
Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman

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came forward with
their new restoration story,

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and it went something like this.

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You'll never guess what's coming.

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(Laughter)

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Disorder afflicts the land!

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Caused by the powerful
and nefarious forces

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of the over-mighty state,

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whose collectivizing tendencies
crush freedom and individiualism

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and opportunity.

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But the hero of the story,
the entrepreneur,

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will fight those powerful forces,

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roll back the state,

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and through creating
wealth and opportunity,

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restore harmony to the land.

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And that story also resonated
across the political spectrum.

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Republicans and Democrats,
conservatives and labor,

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they all became, broadly, neoliberal.

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Opposite stories

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with an identical narrative structure.

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Then, in 2008,

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the neoliberal story fell apart,

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and its opponents came forward with...

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nothing.

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No new restoration story!

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The best they had to offer
was a watered-down neoliberalism

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or a microwaved Keynesianism.

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And that is why we're stuck.

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Without that new story,

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we are stuck with the old failed story

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that keeps on failing.

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Despair is the state we fall into

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when our imagination fails.

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When we have no story
that explains the present

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and describes the future,

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hope evaporates.

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Political failure is at heart

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a failure of imagination.

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Without a restoration story

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that can tell us where we need to go,

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nothing is going to change,

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but with such a restoration story,

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almost everything can change.

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The story we need to tell

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is a story which will appeal
to as wide a range of people as possible,

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crossing political fault lines.

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It should resonate
with deep needs and desires.

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It should be simple and intelligible,

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and it should be grounded in reality.

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Now, I admit that all of this sounds
like a bit of a tall order.

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But I believe that in Western nations,

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there is actually a story like this

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waiting to be told.

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Over the past few years,

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there's been a fascinating
convergence of findings

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in several different sciences,