TED Talk: How Ideas Trump Crises, Alex Tabarrok

Opening: Alex Tabarrok starts off by pointing to the negative effects of putting up walls. He points to physical walls like the Berlin Wall, to political walls like the Russian Iron Curtain and to technological walls like a world without the internet to show the lack of economic growth during periods when those walls are up. After they were taken down, not only did the economy return to the pre-wall levels but it soared due to the increased collaboration between countries.

Main point: Tabarrok defines globalization as “the extended collaboration across national boundaries.” He says that the more that countries share their ideas, the more innovative the products will become. He uses an example from the pharmaceutical industry to show that increased demand leads to increased incentive to create products and thus to more products that are aimed at solving the world’s problems. As a result, he emphasizes that we, as Americans, should not feel threatened at the rise of developing countries. The more economic growth they experience, the more likely that their citizenry is educated. And, when the citizenry is more educated, there is an inflow of new ideas into the global market.

The Closing: To close, Tabarrok leaves the audience with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

The idea here is that just because developing nations are growing, it doesn’t mean that it is at the expense of the United States. He urges the listeners not to be scared of an improving global environment but to encourage it. Tabarrok takes the idea further by saying that not only does it not darken the United States but it makes the overall environment even brighter because there are now two lights shinning.

My Opinion: I chose to reflect on this TED Talk because it highlights the fact that the tensions that we have created in our world over the past year have been in the making for a while. This TED talk is from February 2009. The issues that we are currently talking about could have potentially been avoided if the world had simply listened to this talk. For example, instead of being afraid of immigrants, the UK could have welcomed them and educated them. Those immigrants would bring new perspectives as a result of their different backgrounds and could look for solutions to the country’s problem in a different way. Instead, they chose fear and voted for Brexit. Other countries, especially in Europe are following suit, while countries in the developing world are seeking ways to become more interconnected. These developing countries will easily surpass the economic position of developed countries if they continue to put up walls and block themselves off from the rest of the world. This idea of walls harming the economy instead of helping it could have also been helpful to spread during the fall of 2016 in the US as well.

Clearly, I am in full agreement with Alex Tabarrok. During the last semester I learned about the invention of the home printer. Its invention directly relates to this idea of increased innovation as a result of increased cooperation. More specifically, when Xerox created the office printer, they wanted to expand the product globally. When they went to Japan, the company realized that the offices were a lot smaller than the offices in the United States. So, they made a smaller version. Then they noticed that there is demand for home printers in the US so they began marketing the office printers of Japan as home printers in the US. This new invention was the result of increased cooperation and mixing of cultures. It’s the result of out of the box thinking.

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