Galle Literary Festival day 1

In the interests of these not becoming a chore but instead serving their purpose as an aide memoire, entries in short form (and idiosyncratic according to what caught my attention), my editorialising in italics:

Welcome to The Age of Anger - Pankaj Mishra

• Democracy promises equality, capitalism promotes inequality. The conflict between them has ushered in the age of anger that we are now living through. An unavoidable consequence of the 'radical project of modernity' which has followed Enlightenment (broadly defined) and industrialisation since the late 18th C. Brexit, Trump, Modi.
• People 'seceding' to the transnational elite, leaving others behind. People like Trump thrive on the ambiguity of 'elite' (cultural, financial).
• Industrialisation --> men as breadwinners --> crisis of masculinity (including construction of white masculinity in opposition to everything else)
• Absurd to look for roots of terrorism in any particular religion (militant Buddhists, popular association of terrorism with Islam yet it was LTTE who first used suicide bomber tactics).
• Need a new social order, a renewed sense of collective welfare (i.e. going beyond conventional liberalism I think), a reassertion of values such as compassion. Equality, fraternity and solidarity. (not liberty!)

Impressive; I liked him. Maybe even worth reading the book. Somewhat hand-wavey about 'equality' but core idea convincing. 

The Story of the Fish Ladder - Katharine Norbury

• Fish ladder = pretty much a literal ladder constructed to enable salmon and other upstream fish to swim upstream where an obstacle now exists ('a man-made solution to a man-made problem') - dangerous for salmon because if they fall through rungs they die, but alternative is to not make the journey at all (metaphor is about journeys back to origins etc)
• In Celtic mythology salmon equivalent to the apple in Christian mythology
• KN adoption, Catholic hospital, earliest memories of Sister Mary-Therese, cancer, mother rejection, memoir/'outdoor genre'

Behavioural Economics and State Capitalism in Transition Economies - Kiryl Rudy

• KR = former economic advisor to Belarus president
• Belarus reform program seeking econ dev not econ growth (cut inflation etc)
• Reforms didn't work - mistake was assuming that people would act rationally within economic system but actually people had other targets than just economic ones
• Come to view that 'economic DNA' is passed down socially. Information is the key. Whatever info people receive creates its own logic and then traps us in our old circles.
• Need to change people's behaviour by changing information they receive and therefore changing culture and values. Use tools like education, rule of law, social nudges and foreign investment. (!! quite an array of tools of different types and rather different from the usual BE/BI toolkit ...  but that may be the relevance of the 'state capitalism' and 'transition economies' as well as a neo-liberal ideology and austerity-by-another-name reform program)
• Belarus culture, three key things: (1) common sense and sceptical attitude; (2) paternalism; (3) orientation to Soviet past (when things were smoother and less complex).
• 'Both economists and writers, we are dreamers' ... the economist's dream about human nature is one of freedom through rationality.

My eyes lit up when I saw behavioural economics on the program! But his 'insight' about information is not so remarkable given 'perfect information' is the fundamental of mainstream textbook economics and as became evident in the Q&A KR does hew to a neo-liberal economic worldview (e.g. article of faith that direct foreign investment is in everyone's utility-maximising best interests)