Economists get impatient with philosophy. They are often trained as skilled mathematicians. They don't like going back to ordinary language and first principles.

Radio was, in a way, a very philosophical medium. You could make an argument on the radio, and people listened to it. Television is already harder because people's attention span becomes shorter with television. Cut to a commercial and all that.

With the rise of capitalism, it became more obvious that people pursue individual self-interest. The great nationalist in Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, a wonderful philosopher, said that we need the nation. We need something that people can lean on, from which they can then reach out to the whole world. The idea of all humanity is too vague. It can't motivate human aspiration in a reliable way.

Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.

The EU might have become a large federal nation. But they would have had to do things differently. Number one, they would've had to make people feel like participants in a common project of autonomous law-giving. Much more political accountability, much more participation. That didn't happen, I think, because the movers and shakers were more concerned with economic union than political union.

Singapore and China, which don't want to encourage democratic citizenship, are expanding their humanities curricula. These reforms are all about developing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.