Summary of Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen

Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen is a great book – short, sweet, and dense. Cowen presents what I believe is fundamentally the "right" answer to personal ethics and political science. His framework, which I will call "Liberty + Sustainable Growth", is grounded in the intuitions of common-sense morality.

The core idea is that sustainable economic growth is a moral imperative. We have a ethical obligation to realize the highest rate of sustainable economic growth without violating the basic individual rights. This follows from the fact that long-term economic growth is the most significant factor in lifting people out of poverty. Over sufficiently long time scales, the benefits of even small increases in growth will far outweigh those of any other actions, including redistribution at current economic levels. Trickle-down economics works on long time scales. We therefore have a moral duty to take personal actions and pursue political policies that promote sustainable growth.

A key piece of Cowen's argument is that it is intuitively wrong and ethically indefensible to discount the value of the future over long time horizons. For example, at a standard 5% discount rate, one death today is worth 30 billion deaths in 500 years; one death in 200 years is worth 100 deaths in 300 years. Clearly, this does not make moral sense. While it is rational to discount the future for risk, the intrinsic value of life and well-being does not decrease simply because of the passage of time. We therefore have a significant moral obligation to future generations, not just those alive today.

A direct consequence of this argument is that civilizational collapse is among the worst possible outcomes. Preserving and strengthening civilization should be a priority. We have an obligation to prevent “tragedies of the commons” that threaten societal or environmental stability—whether through economic mismanagement, climate change, or institutional decay. Ensuring that growth is not just rapid but resilient is crucial.

This political framework cuts across conventional conservative-liberal lines. The key questions under Liberty + Sustainable Growth are:

• How do we boost economic growth?
• How can we make civilization more stable?
• How do we avoid environmental and institutional collapse?

The first two questions are often considered conservative priorities, while the last is generally viewed as a liberal concern. Cowen’s framework unifies them under a broader ethical imperative.

The Liberty + Sustainable Growth system also offers a clear solution to the seemingly absurd conclusions of naive utilitarianism. Wealth transfers are not the most effective way to reduce poverty – growth is. Redistribution should occur only to the extent that it maximizes sustainable growth. This principle limits both the amount and type of redistribution: wealth should be redistributed in ways that function as an investment rather than a mere handout. The extreme levels of personal sacrifice that utilitarianism seems to demand go too far – giving away too much wealth in the short term can harm the very poor if it suppresses long-term growth.

An interesting implication of this framework is the role of faith in ethical and political reasoning. To make the right decisions today, we need to passionately believe in the long-term benefits of our choices – despite that fact that we will never see them. There are two ways to get there, 1) faith and 2) abstract reasoning about the far future. Because humans have an evolutionary bias toward the present, most people struggle to think clearly about very long time scales. Faith, on the other hand, is the psychological technology that we have developed to get people to care deeply about something they will never see. It is probably a necessary tool to get us to make the very best decisions.

Again, I highly recommend this book. I believe it is the correct way to organize our thinking about what should be done.