Sunday, February 26, 2012

Audio interview with Robert H. Frank

I have started to review books for the saturday book section of Politiken, the Danish daily newspaper. In todays paper, I’m reviewing ”The Darwin Economy” by Robert H. Frank. The plan is to combine the reviews with a short podcast with an interview with the author.

Here’s the link to my interview with Robert Frank – you need to scroll down a bit to see the player.

The interview lasts 14 minutes and covers the main point of his book: The tension between what is good for the individual, short term and locally – and what is good for the community and in the longer term.

His solution is to tax activities that are harmful for the community in order to encourage individuals to change their behaviour. The taxes are then used to invest in activities that strengthen the community, but which the individual has very little incentive to spend on. In short; Robert H. Frank makes the case for having a state which balances the interests of individuals and society, but doing so very carefully in order not to stifle the dynamics which individual initiative creates.

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