 Welcome back to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. I'm Richard Lawrence. Today with our wonderful panel of experts and commentators both, we have Anna Jane Perrell, Mary Ann March and our special guest, John Milton Moore, Fee's managing editor. Welcome. Thank you for having me. You arrived on a very difficult week for us in the office because of course on Monday Atlanta City watershed actually announced that we needed to boil our water which created all sorts of tumult in our fair city and in our office. Oh yeah it was, I was unbothered by it in every sense because this happened so I moved here from New Orleans and there because it's a swamp city it happens literally every week. I mean we get a boil water advisory constantly and so it got to the point that we were just like I don't care anymore, I'm going to drink the water or whatever. Really? You drink the water? Yes. Oh yeah I drank the water, bathed in it, brushed my teeth, did all the stuff and again like no reports of anyone ever being affected by it, not saying that it's not smart to avoid it. I'm just saying that it got to the point where it's kind of just wearing on us. I mean I'm specifically mad because here I went to Starbucks in the morning and they were shut down because of the water advisory. It seems impossible. Yeah it was very upsetting. Here's the question, who followed the order like to a tea and drink and all that. Oh I did, I was terrified. I did not either. I have never examined my water so closely and I swear I saw things that I never want to see again. Did you actually see things in the water? There was cloudiness and so I boiled my water and I had a plan. I had a plan for specifically boiling, letting the water cool so I could brush my teeth and then halfway through brushing my teeth I forgot and I used the tap water and then you just wonder all night long whether you have something. So the whole incident was based on a water pumping plant that had low pressure and so they ended up taking some of the water offline and in fact on my street there was some construction happening, the street where I live. There was some construction happening and in fact they forgot to turn the water back on so we were without water at our house for probably about seven hours until like 11 p.m. So we just went to the neighborhood restaurant and had dinner with the neighbors and bottled water from across the street at the grocery. All I had was the kroy and I didn't think that would be good to brush my teeth with. No that's probably not the best idea and so you know in this sort of rush to either drink or boil or you know ponder the veracity of this bottled or boiled water advisory there are also some other advisories that were given from the authorities whoever they may be. In fact we've recently come out of the great romaine lettuce debacle of 2018 where significant amounts of romaine lettuce were found to have E. coli and so that caused so many restaurants to just totally throw out their supplies. I did follow that order we did not buy any romaine lettuce. Well I was kind of forced I didn't even I didn't know anything about it until I went to go get a Caesar salad and that was a huge problem. And I know Caesar salads are near and dear to your heart. Oh they are that's my favorite food my favorite food I love Starbucks and I love Caesar salads and the world's been messing with me this week for sure. So you're the one you're the cause. Yes so they did pull it from stores entirely you could have bought it if you wanted okay. I don't know that's what I was going to ask because I only sad I don't cook so my reality is a restaurant told me I could not have it that is the only way I knew this was going on. I just knew we were eating spinach lettuce with our tacos I'm like what's going on here. Okay so did you buy romaine and no you didn't like you saw it in stores though. No I don't know my wife was shopping and she's like oh we're gonna have tacos and she said well we can't because there's no romaine lettuce I'm like well what about other stuff and she's like spinach I'm like fine. Well I read that the cost of other lettuces was doubling because romaine is obviously the preferred lettuce if you can't have butter lettuce I guess but I did read that some people got sick that something like 43 cases of a coli a coli related illness were reported and that a couple like about a dozen people went to the hospital yeah no deaths from what I read from the CDC but look luckily for all the people listening the lift has been formal the band has been formally lifted as of November 26th so I guess we're free again to eat our romaine and so did anyone at home have romaine that they threw away no I think we did yeah I believe I believe we did I don't cook again so I know a couple people who just kept eating it and so that kind of brings up the question of you know what how seriously do we take these kinds of warnings well I think that it's sometimes just hard to know where your food is coming from and it seems like it was specifically from parts of California maybe even Arizona that the bad lettuce was coming from so I think it's just a question of first of all do we even know where our food comes from if you're buying in a restaurant probably not if you're buying in the grocery store maybe uh so I don't I err on the side of caution you you you reckless devil may care people eating your lettuce and drinking your water I'm on the opposite side I tend to be pretty skeptical of these and I I really don't change my behavior now I will say it takes probably one bad experience and I might might change but you know I really don't pay much attention yeah and I think for me just specifically speaking to like the boil water advisory for example it's like when you when it happens over and over again you start to become immune I think or um you sounded out you know ever you tune it out um so that's how I feel when it comes to warnings so it's not necessarily that I am by my nature skeptical it is um in practice over time I've become skeptical you know as a result of this so when you when you lived in New Orleans and there were boil water advisory practically every week you said what how was that the reaction of your friends oh yeah yeah we're all like whatever like yeah I mean it just wasn't a non-issue and so both of these alerts were issued by government agencies here at Atlanta the watershed and CDC I don't CDC was the one that issued on the lettuce right these are both government agencies right so we'll go back to that but I wonder almost if it weren't a warning from a government agency would that prompt each of you to kind of consider the warning more seriously or less seriously yeah when you ask like I feel yes so if it were for example like if um you know a company that that sales produce a private entity set sales produce told everyone told their customers hey this is happening I would I feel like that I would pay more attention certainly because it's like they would they have an incentive to make sure that we're that we want to buy their I guess what I'm saying is there's a bunch of incentives around kind of communicating the negative sides of a product they want to make sure that they maintain our relationship with them so and they want us to be safe they don't want to be associated with sickness so I almost feel like they're motivated in this very specific way like you know like we always talk about motivating by profit matters when it comes to information and things like that so I feel like I would definitely be I would tend to agree like I I'd never thought about it before but yeah if a company told me yeah you might want to not buy our stuff right now yeah I'd be like whoa this is more serious yeah exactly yeah I remember a couple years ago at beginning of 2016 when Chipotle do you remember when Chipotle shut down for a day or a couple of days to dress their equally outbreak and that I think we all took that very seriously although they did get me back in the door a couple days later with the free burrito right and that's the thing yeah exactly that's a great example I think you're right I mean my relationship with Chipotle despite that is yeah it's totally fine um because I think that they were yeah it's interesting they said they gave you a free burrito yes afterwards in 2016 yeah and then I had Chipotle yesterday not not remembering about the romaine lettuce and I had a little scare I ate some romaine and I was like oh no is this okay I was actually walking back from that restaurant the other night with my husband Colin and he mentioned because our water wasn't turned on do you think we're gonna get a refund I said no absolutely not what incentive does the water shed have to provide any kind of concession to us for an inconvenience such as this actually I doing some reading I found that a study commissioned by the city of Atlanta found that a day without water in Atlanta has an economic impact of 250 million dollars what does that mean it means that because of our inability to access um more affordable tap water people are then buying bottled water and and with businesses shutting down and I knew that at the Atlanta public schools were distributing bottles of water and hand sanitizer to the children because they're held captive in their school you're doing 250 million yes wow I mean yeah with all the businesses that shut down as a result of that like I can't imagine how much Starbucks lost to Starbucks Atlanta um because of the because of the boil water so do we believe that statistic you know I mean the statistics that I have are all from the CDC and must be true uh hopefully well I mean that does end up making me wonder it's a larger question you know at what point do we stop believing the authorities right so let's go back to the government warnings now you heard them every week in New Orleans on the water right you just tuned them out they became sort of the government that cried wolf here in Atlanta we don't have it happen all that frequently at least there is not a lettuce recall every month right so we're maybe not as immunized to these warnings but at what point do we start saying that this is real versus just sort of some occasion for a government bureaucrat to cover their butt yeah well I do think that's often what it is is that there's fear of backlash if they don't say anything if there's no warning issued for for the potentially contaminated water for the lettuce and and somebody gets sick then um politicians and um civil servants don't want to be left holding the buck right and so you know is this endemic it seems to me today that when we talk about what we're hearing in the news media what we're hearing from our president's direct twitter feed that it's possible we might be starting to feel a lot like you did in New Orleans I mean this brings up the larger question who do we believe if we can't believe when the president of the United States says he comes out from a meeting with China with a trade agreement with a promise by China to come out and buy a huge amount of American made goods who can we believe well and I think that this speaks to an era we're in where with the internet with things like twitter we all have a voice in a way that we didn't before and so it is harder to navigate what is truth what is fact um I mean and I think that you know our president the president of the United States being on twitter and having the ability he's uncensored he's just out there talking he's his own press secretary yeah not necessarily saying things that are accurate when he was talking about um some of the um the the tear gas situation to you want to he called it safe safe tear gas or something and everybody's just like okay you can just make things up if you're just typing it out on your phone you know see I guess I have a different perception I tend to think of president trump is mostly being honest but honest from his perspective I think that he genuinely thinks that he is honest um I think well I think you're speaking to like the philosophical concept of honesty too if you talk about truth I mean let's you know let's get heady but really like truth is only it's only in here um and your perception is what defines your truth my question is when did we expect politicians to be honest I remember Mark Twain a long time ago you know kind of had a lot of you know funny things to say about you never trust a politician we're kind of we kind of expect them to fit to us a little bit um is it like when you ask the hairdresser if you need a haircut well of course you need a haircut or how does this suit make me look do I look fat in the suit or whatever it is of course you look great in that suit so you know I guess there are some white lies but when you're talking about the president of the United States then you know maybe you want it not to be his personal truth right I mean that's the whole notion behind having an entire group of people working for you in a presidential administration you don't have to worry about expressing my personal truth and in fact there was a piece that our president Larry Reed had on our website fee.org a couple of days ago talking about personal truths you know I'm speaking my truth or she's speaking her truth and he ends up opening the entire essay with a fabulous quotation by Frederick Douglass the great abolitionist and he said mankind are not held together by lies trust is the foundation of society where there is no truth there can be no trust and where there's no trust there can be no society so that's a big statement right there where there's no trust there's no society are we drifting in a direction where if you can't trust who many people regard to be the paragon of trustworthiness the representative of the nation the president of the United States are we in a precarious situation yes no it's one of those things the John to state that had a great article on this I don't remember this earlier this year or last year but it said and it was all about the trust in America that's collapsing in Trump's I'm sure part of the problem on his Twitter he doesn't he's on Twitter you Twitter's not a thoughtful form right yeah you just kind of speak what's on your mind well you're very limited it's only 280 characters 140 I think used to be 140 they doubled it but it's still okay two sentences all right but but yeah I so and so that's part of the problem but I think there's there's the philosophical issue as well moral relativism that says well we do kind of have our own truth which is kind of a preposterous idea I think there you know it it sort of self contradicts itself it reminds me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan he said well may be entitled to our own opinions but we're not all entitled to our own facts but it seems today that the way that we're going that we are beginning to think that we do have our own facts yeah well there is so much conflicting reporting that's going on any pick an issue and you can find something to support yourself online so I think that there's a lot of noise and the way I kind of see it is that we all just have to take responsibility for for ourselves and and for being informed even though that's difficult because there's limited hours in the day and soon we all have jobs and hobbies and things to do well I think and like I said earlier I think that we've got a couple of things that have influenced this I think this era we're in which is the internet and access access information is at an all-time high and being able to express yourself is at an all-time high and having a forum to talk about how you feel and what you think is is the most available had has ever been we all have a lot of voice yes and in civilization in general and I think that it also came to a head when you see what this last election looked like it was no longer it was no longer a battle of facts it was it was it was so polarizing from an emotional standpoint we're talking about 2016 yes yes I'm talking about I feel like ever since then it has become I mean we truly it eroded how we perceive fact so fundamentally and then and kind of in the wake of that we are just kind of left to to gather in tribes very passionately media has changed a lot right we've come a long way from Walter Cronkite you know reading the nightly news the most trustworthy man in America and everyone trusted Walter and you know it was but it was more straight news just the facts yeah and now news is blending into so much opinion it's so emotional now and and there is that war between between the media and Trump where it's very antagonistic and it is hard like you look and it's hard to figure out what to believe today and so if you can't believe the president all the time when he's tweeting can you believe his critics no and I'll read just John with a second no I'll jump in it was a great quote from George Orwell that he wrote in the 40s and it was you know Orwell worked as a reporter during the the Spanish the Spanish war and he was speaking with a friend and here's his quote he said history stopped in 1936 I'll go back I remember saying once to Arthur Kessler history stopped in 1936 at which he nodded in immediate understanding we were both thinking of totalitarian totalitarianism in general but more particularly of the Spanish Civil War early in life I've noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in the newspaper but in Spain for the first time I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie and he goes out to say and I for a long time I tried to understand what he was saying I think he was saying objective truth died and everything became propaganda we're all fighting for our own version of the truth and it was pretty insightful and I think you know 70 years after he said it we're we're seeing we're all fighting for our own version of the truth you know Larry in his essay where he's talking about his truth versus her truth versus their truth he writes also one of the telltale signs of moral decline one that if left unchecked will ultimately portend civilizational collapse so he's not messing around here is a careless cavalier and subjective attitude toward the truth when a people value truth for its own sake and seek to establish and uphold it then other critical values fall into place such as justice trust fairness civility and honor and so he's putting a lot of weight on the importance of an objective truth which it seems today just given everything's happening politically everything that's happening geopolitically around the world everything that's happening with the rapidity of the news cycle which I used to consider myself a news junkie and I don't even know what's happening from minute to minute anymore everything seems to be going that much faster and we're all needing to respond to it that much more quickly and we then respond to it with our own interpretation which doesn't seem to be any less valid than the interpretation of the president of the united states and you know I think it's more important than ever because of that to say am I willing to challenge my own assumptions what I what I believe is true am I willing to test that and I think a lot of us would say yes but but but do we really yeah and it's a challenge to do that well I think yes and everyone I mean when you talk about when you talk about value based conflict it's absolutely one of the hardest things to do is to let go of how you perceive something and like they say intelligence this intelligence is being able to hold two opposite ends of an argument in your head at the same time which I very very much agree with so I think that part of that is being able to accept that perhaps you are wrong the seed of doubt should remain in in all observations in fact yeah I just think it's hard to to think critically because for me I think I need to start from a foundation of understanding of having knowledge of the facts and and from multiple sources and it's just difficult it's difficult to push to push myself to to check out different sources and and then to question my beliefs I don't know if you guys have any strategies well I mean so we're now away from an age of fact and now in an age of emotionalism right we're all feeling what our own personal truth is and I guess to Marianne's question sort of whose responsibility is it to actually navigate this is it on us is it on Facebook to develop the most miraculous algorithm ever devised by the mind of mankind to figure out how to separate fact from fiction how is a computer gonna know yeah yeah anything algorithm based kind of creeps me out a little bit when when things get flagged by an algorithm and says no we're not that one doesn't doesn't pass it has the wrong photo and in general I think this idea of suppressing speech is very dangerous it of course it's the most dangerous when it's the government doing it but even the social media channels you know there's the great idea by John Stuart Mill where he talks about free speech is how we get to truth you you have okay you don't you disagree you challenge one another you discuss and that's why I think there is a danger in in trying to label things as fake news and flag them and suppress not just that but the entire site the people who are a news site or a or a brand because they're saying things that that you say are untrue or that violate your standards what's the danger of a society that has this notion so embedded as it seems to be in hours of fake news what does that lead to it becomes a scapegoat that we can all use to say that to continue to maintain our beliefs is that that's fake news that's that's incorrect just shut out contradictory opinion yeah or facts yeah yeah yeah I mean I look at some of the things that certainly the Russian government did not originate they didn't invent but some things like their newspaper their main newspaper is called Pravda which in Russian means truth and so many articles in that are pure propaganda from the Kremlin which is the the seat of power in the Russian government and so Russians just kind of accept everything as fake news and they just sort of shrug and they wonder if nothing's real why should I care about it right so it removes not only a trust in the media not only a trust in the ability to get to the truth but also agency from people where they can't actually plan a way to improve their own life and the lives of those people in their country I mean are we teetering on that sort of fake news sort of ambivalence that it seems to be is in other places in the world what would that mean for us well I think we'll always have I mean I think we will have the problem of too many voices all the time now I don't know how that's going to stop just a filtering problem yeah yeah I think that we are going to have to get better at that at the filtering component but I but I fear that when I say that I think like you said find multiple sources find multiple sources hear multiple sides of an argument that you you want to know about and then continue to build relationships with the sources you trust because trust is critical but I I fear that when when I say that to some people they hear well there are there are certain outlets that I just like because they're saying it how I like it and then that's trust that's the trust they build so I don't know how to combat that it's an important question do humans want truth yeah there's a great quote um humans can't handle very much reality which is saying like humans can't handle the truth very well um and a lot of people that what do they do they go to the media that kind of confirms their biases exactly they want to think yeah and you can't make people want to want the truth yeah well generally speaking I think people prefer entertainment to actual truth and that's why we have the kind of news media we have today is that what if it bleeds it leads we're going for the the stuff that keeps people watching I do really like Kylie Jenner so yeah that's correct entertainment so where do we go from here we have a situation wherein trust seems to be eroded Facebook and YouTube and Google are all trying their own approach eventually there will be legislation on this whether we like it or not uh what's what's the prognosis as we end 2018 and go into 2019 for truth in this country I don't think that's you guys because my answer will be too pessimistic oh that's a tall order it really is just us three that's a tough that's a tough question I don't know well so help us out what do you got um well I guess I'll just share my my tactic that I use to to try to stay informed and hopefully parse out some truth from entertainment and that is I make it a point every morning to listen to NPR and Fox news I seek out the young Turks and Ben Shapiro just so I feel like I'm getting a somewhat a somewhat thorough range of of information and opinions and and I and I do feel like that's almost the best I can do because there are a limited number of hours in the day and I I have things that I need to do like work and and avoid lettuce I guess so um so your your advice in 2019 huh yeah your advice is to seek out I guess the range of these different sources to see what they're saying about yeah the same subject and I guess different subjects and I really would encourage everyone to do that because I think that the alternative is there's maybe two alternatives you either try to get a broad range of of information or you listen to a couple a couple of sources or you try not to consume any news whatsoever and I think that last strategy is the worst because stuff is filtering through because because news is entertainment and you can't scroll through Facebook or Twitter without coming across something so even even friends I have who are not political and do not stay abreast of current events they they still stuff gets through and then they're at the mercy of whoever it's nothing else you won't be able to understand the saturday night live cold opens that's the the only reason I watch the news I mean yeah I think we need a a free speech renaissance it really and if you look support for free speech is declining and that's concerning but if we can you know look at free speech and realize how important it is we let these ideas do battle and we challenge ourselves and and and don't be afraid to expose ourselves to ideas that challenge our own and I truly believe that we do let the ideas contest we are going to get closer to truth you have a lot of people now on college campuses who think that it's important to insulate people from different opinion that it's important to establish a bubble that can protect folks from contradictory opinion and that's one approach right the other approach is what you're saying which is allowing those ideas to battle an open forum and to have at each other which has always been sort of the classical liberal approach to the problem of difference of opinion difference of experience in a society and and in this case it seems to me like there's an institutional crisis right not only is the government no longer seem to be credible at least as it used to be by most people not only is the new news media not as credible as it used to be but everyone's sort of again tries to go back to their own premises tries to reaffirm their own biases and the only way to really combat that is to allow those biases to come out and open open debate you know that one of the major networks has the lean in as their catchphrase that's what we need to do we need to lean in but do it respectfully and not be afraid of anyone's ideas and say we're we're all mature adults we can talk about these things um in a rational way I think it's a little easier said than done especially the rational adult part well that I'm not saying it's easy but yeah yeah well yeah I mean maybe just for our part celebrate stories of that of that um of including both sides who an opinion are coming to the table with people you disagree with um what's that video we have on fee um you know the uh David oh what's his name you know the man who interacted with the African-American man who interacted with the Klansman yeah that's what's his name I don't remember but that video is so amazing because we'll put it in the comments just because yeah that's such a good to me that's a good example of we need to tell the stories of people who who do shed their their biases and their their value system informed identities um to make change and that's really important and so this gentleman you're talking about engages he's a black or an African-American man he engages with people who are KKK members and he actually sits down and and talks to them right so with the purpose of understanding where are they coming from right don't try to go in and change their mind immediately that'll happen and that's what's happened with many Klansmen who he's engaged with he's actually persuaded them that you know there's actually a lot of value in in talking with people who are of different experiences different backgrounds ethnicity as ethnicities and whatnot yeah I think it's an important message I mean the Christian tradition does call for us to love our enemy we don't we don't ostracize them we we we don't always have to agree on things but we engage each other even if our ideas are different and I think um that message is a little bit lost today and we need to to bring that back and so what happens in 2019 if you were to put on your prognostication hat and imagine what exactly the state of truth and the age of emotionalism is as we go into the new year in just a couple of weeks here are we in a better shape are we going to have a mass exodus from you know cable news and and social media for people who are all upset with the lack of truth and clarity on those media or is it more of the same I suspect that it gets worse before it gets better a short term I think it is going to be that because we're kind of in the silly season we already have presidential politics that's getting ramped up long term I think the outlook is a little bit brighter so what happens how do we is it just the pendulum swinging back what makes it better I think so I think that eventually we will see so like you said I think it's going to get worse and then something's got to give I don't think that this is a sustainable way that we all talk about fact right now we remember the core principles you know to your question I think we remember the principles that that helped us get where we are and remember that those are important the the classical liberal ideas that we've kind of you know they're we kind it was a pendulum and we swung a little too far we need to settle back in and I think that can that can happen yeah and I think that long term you're right I think long term it does it does get better because I think the baby in the bathwater here is the fact that we are getting opinions and information from people who who have been silent just by virtue of maybe not having a platform and now and now they do with the internet so long term I'm hopeful short term I'm not buying any stock in newspapers I'll tell you that so we just need to ride it out and and hope that it gets better and work ourselves to make it better to the 60s probably look pretty rough at the time yeah and you know things settled down after that and somebody in the office actually mentioned boy you think today's bad the 60s were worse and I was a little surprised to hear that but I was encouraged to hear that we can lose sight of the past too and it's important for us to remember that we've recovered from from sometimes worse things so we'll have to leave it here for now and hope everyone has a great weekend we'll see you next week on the feedcast and be sure to find us on Spotify on Google and on Apple because you don't have to be looking at our beautiful smiling faces all the time you can listen to all of our commentary on audio only as you're in the car on a jog whatever check us out on those platforms we'll see you next week on the feedcast