Bryan Caplan - Nurturing Orphaned Ideas

Okay, we've got a great guest for the inaugural episode of the podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Brian Kaplan.
He's a professor of economics at George Mason University and a New York Times bestselling author. He's written The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, and most recently, Open Borders, The Science and Ethics of Immigration.
Here's Professor Kaplan.

Okay, so from Twitter, Martin asks, what are you criticized most for, being too radical or not radical enough? I would say I'm definitely criticized for being too radical. Most of my

colleagues are less radical than me, especially the ones that are right down the hall. In terms of

people that say I'm not radical enough, that's really pretty rare, actually. I think that

This is the first time I was going to be able to get a new video. the ones that are right down the hall.
In terms of people that say I'm not radical enough, it's really pretty rare, actually. I think that I've got enough controversial statements under my belt that people focus on that.
I mean, there must be a few people who are annoyed at me for not being radical enough, but I hardly ever encounter them, really. Okay, so I think Martin's one of these people because his next question is, he disagrees with you that people wouldn't learn numeracy and literacy if not for school.
He thinks that if it's so useful people would just learn it automatically. Do you disagree? So I don't think I ever said that people wouldn't learn it if not for school.
So is he talking about public school or any school? Yeah he's talking about public like when you say that school should than numeracy and literacy, they're not imparting skills that are broadly useful.

So, I mean, that's a very different thing.

It's one thing to say that school is imparting literacy and numeracy.

It's another thing to say that without those schools, it wouldn't happen in some other

way.

So, I mean, I think what I say in my work is that the data are at least consistent with

people acquiring a decent amount of literacy and numeracy in school.

You might still say that they're in school and they're trying to teach it, but they're

Thank you. in my work is that the data are at least consistent with people acquiring a decent amount of literacy and numeracy in school.
You might still say that they are in school and they're trying to teach it, but they're learning it elsewhere. There's probably some of that going on, but I think the point that if there were a large reduction in public spending on education that people would still learn literacy numeracy, I mean, you know, probably would, although I think it would be somewhat, you know, mildly reduced anyway.
How so? For what reason? Well, at minimum, there are always some parents that just don't pay very much attention to their kids and neglect them. And of course, there are a lot of kids that especially do not like math.
So put that together. I mean, I would say whenever people have asked me, what's my main criticism of homeschooling, I have said, you know, math skills is the big problem.
So of course, some people learn a pile of math in homeschool. But if you do the unschooling option, where you just tell the kids they can do whatever they want, and the kids aren't motivated to learn math, a lot aren't, then they really don't learn very much.
And I have met quite a few very smart adult homeschoolers who are still very weak in math because they were unschooled. Again, I'm not saying, I think that it is a much smaller deficit than public school propaganda would have you expect, but it still is noticeable.
And research does bear this out, if I recall correctly, that the most notable deficit of homeschoolers is math. Okay, that makes sense.
Okay, the next question is, I read an article you wrote in 2004 called The Idea Trap, and it begins rather ominously given our present circumstance. It starts, your country is falling apart, unemployment and inflation are at sky high, world war is on the horizon, and there are riots in the streets.
Maybe not so much that one, but never fear, an election is coming up. Are we in an idea trap? So maybe.
So the main thing I would say about that idea is, or the idea of the idea trap, it makes sense to me. I had some historical examples that seemed consistent with it.
In terms of whether it's actually true, I'm not going to strongly say that. I think it's an interesting idea that I wish more had been done with it, but in terms of confirmation, I just haven't seen that much out there.
But yeah, I would say that when conditions are bad, the pattern that at least I superficially see is that people panic and lose their heads and become very open-minded about ideas that really don't make a lot of sense. And I would consider the current one where, you know, like, so there's a unusually severe virus, so let's lock down entire countries.
That, to me, just seems like a crazy idea. It's one where there's very little precedent for it in history.
And again, once you realize especially that there's heterogeneous vulnerability to disease, it sure seems like it would have been made a lot more sense to have said, let's go and isolate people that are vulnerable and have everybody else continue on about their lives with moderate precaution. But when people were losing their heads two months ago, that idea was not on the table.
So yeah, anyway, so if it seems likely there's going, you know, that we're going to see continuing shortages and possibly a return of inflation, then again, I expect that there'll be renewed control of the calls for price controls and other bad policies, very historically discredited. But nevertheless, that's, I think that's the kind of thing that we're likely to see if inflation does kick up.
Yeah. Did you think that closing the border to China temporarily was a good idea? So, I mean, at the time, I honestly thought that it was just an overreaction.
In hindsight, what I would say is the main problem is that if only one country does it, but you keep your borders open to other kinds of travel, then people can go from China to Italy and then they get over, and then if it spreads from Italy back to the United States, if you have American tourists in Italy. So, I mean, the main thing that I'd say about closing borders is that we already have something like 98% closed borders, if you really actually look at how hard it is for people to travel internationally, especially if you're from a poor country.
And to have really stopped this, you'd have to have gone all the way up to near 100% closed. So again, in hindsight, if you could just do that temporarily, then I think that probably would have been a good idea.
So if we could just have two months of no international travel in or out, and then things go back to normal, great. But again, that's something where if other countries on Earth don't do it and they have big problems, then it's not enough just to shut down for two months.
You really possibly have to shut down indefinitely. In terms of what island nations that have kept the disease out, what is their long-run plan? I don't think they really have a long-run plan.
So they're just going to remain isolated forever. In the countries of the Caribbean, so much of their economy comes from tourism.
Without tourism, I really don't see that they've got much of anything going on. Actually, I was actually on one of the last cruise ships on Earth.
So I was cruising around the Caribbean. My cruise ship actually was, oh, yeah, it was flagged for having coronavirus cases on it.
And then it turned out that no one on my ship really had it. But was just the luck of the draw actually when was this yeah uh this was uh early february okay yeah you just so you know like basically my ship and three others were all flagged and i think all three others actually had coronavirus and mine didn't anyway so like for those caribbean countries to say we're going to permanently have no international know, it would just be a crazy option for them because their whole economy is based on tourism.

And if you're there, you really just say, like, without tourism, I don't see that much of anything is going on here.

Right.

Okay.

I want to understand your model of how policies change.

So step one, we have a brilliant economist write a comprehensive book called Open Borders.

Step three, we have radical immigration liberalization what's step two right so i mean i think you know honestly i just don't think that step three is likely to follow from step one alone if you have a thousand things like step one altogether than maybe right so i mean i would say you know i i don't consider myself that persuasive I'm highly persuasive to a very small number of people with a very specific personality type. And for otherwise, I wish I were, but I just don't see much sign that I actually am all that persuasive to people.
So in any case, what is the path from writing to changing people's minds? So if you have a large amount of writing that actually is persuasive to especially elite young people, then over the course of decades, I think that does make a difference. So there are a lot of radical ideas.
We're seeing ideas that seem radical at the time that were aggressively sold to young elites. and then when those young elites actually take over, then those ideas start to be implemented.
So again, things like gay marriage or marijuana legalization, these are ideas that they were sold for a long time. And finally, they did break through and became conventional wisdom among young elites.
And then I think we are seeing a lot of changes in those directions. So that is my main hope.
You know, I mean, I think the main thing I would say just for my work is, you know, like, I'm just one person. So it's not reasonable for me to expect myself to fundamentally change the world, right? All I can do is just try to put a little bit of weight on the scale and try to achieve some meaning that way and get some comfort from the idea if I raise the chance of this by 0.01% compared to the effort required it was actually still a good deal right buddy like honestly you do have to expect to fail yeah I think your impact has been bigger than that but so how do you think these ideas get into the mainstream is it by charismatic politicians or is it by media figures who endorse them yeah so there's a lot of different mechanisms so one of them at least for the kind of thing i do i think that really i have trouble talking to anyone other than elites you know broadly defined not just people that are actually leaders but you know like kinds of kids that go Ivy League schools, that's an audience that I feel like I can effectively communicate with them.
Right. So, you know, you go and change their minds and then they go off and do all the different things that elites do.
So some of them are working in politics, some are in the bureaucracy, some are think tanks, some are working in the media. So the idea that gay marriage, that just television made a big difference for that by showing sympathetic gay characters, that's very plausible to me in terms of social science.
I would be at a loss to actually have any real hard evidence there. But still, it seems very plausible if you live through that time to think that just putting those images in front of people made a difference.
The character of Apu on The Simpsons, who has now been removed, which because people consider him offensive, this is one of the most sympathetic and beloved Indian immigrants in the world. And, you know, he's been removed.
I mean, I think that character actually probably made a difference in terms of making people more pro-immigration. Again, I can't prove it.
I don't have any good APU data or anything like that. But just having lived through that period, it seems very plausible.
Have you heard Eric Weinstein's arguments against more immigration? So I've heard a bunch of people say what his arguments are. I don't know that I've actually listened to him, but do you want to go over that? Yeah, so one of his arguments is that one of the main rights a citizen has is asymmetric access to his or her own labor market.
What do you think of that? Yeah, so I would say that that is then the violation of the right of employers to hire whoever they want. So again, legally of course that is what the system is, that you've got to have permission from the government in order to work.
But the idea that this is a morally defensible policy seems to me to be pretty crazy. Morally, like how is this different from going back 60 years and saying one of the rights of belonging to a race is to have asymmetric access to labor markets based upon race? It's a description of what existed.
But in terms of yes but what so there's a there's a black worker white employer wants to hire him what business does a white competitor have to say no I have asymmetric access mean to me to me this is something where it's really only seems acceptable because it exists it's one where status quo bias does dull our sense of moral objection to it but if we started in a world where everyone had access and then someone suggested let's move to one of asymmetric access people would just think it was crazy but isn't there a difference here in the sense that with discrimination especially when the government allows or conducts it within it like there's a difference between the government distinguishing a certain set of citizens to give special privileges, and then the government not distinguishing between non-citizens and citizens for privileges. Well, what I'd say is, I mean, in a sense, the Jim Crow argument was that blacks living in America, even if they're born there, aren't really full citizens.
And as to what the answer to that is, if someone just said, yes, I agree, all citizens should have access, but I don't think that African Americans should be citizens. Or, in fact, you at that time in the South, you might say they aren't.
They aren't. So they're in, you might say they're in this intermediate zone where they have limited access.
And the only rationale for that, since all citizens should be treated equally, is that they aren't really citizens. And as to what the answer to that would be, I really have trouble understanding it.
So again, of course, you could say, well, look, this is what we as a people have decided. It's like, well, you've decided it and you forced it down the throats of a large number of people that would be very happy to hire immigrants.
And of course, you in no way consulted the would-be immigrants in the first place. So we as a society, it's basically starts off by begging the question and saying, well, we're the ones that get to decide this.
Who's that? Well, the people that agree with this are the ones that get to decide it. Right.
Do you think the government has a special obligation to people born here and who are considered citizens under a conventional definition? Right. I don't, but I consider that a much less unreasonable view than the view that it's okay to prevent foreigners from getting a job.
So in other words, if you were to say, look, citizenship has its privileges, just like being in a family has its privileges. So just as a person in a family is entitled to get special help from his family, so too people that are citizens are entitled to get special help from the country.
You know, that argument, I disagree with it, but that seems reasonable compared to it's okay for us to make it illegal to go and hire someone that isn't a member of the family or that has someone that isn't a citizen. So again, you know, to me, immigration laws are a lot like going and slashing the tires of someone that's competing with your kid for a job.
It's one thing to say that he's my kid so I can give him special presents on his birthday or I can let him live in my house rent free.

Another thing to say it's OK for me to go and do bad things to other people that are competing. Even if something like a sporting event, if the idea that it's OK to go and tip the scales and let your kid win, even though he wasn't the best because he's your kid, almost no one agrees with that.
And, you know, what I have said, in fact, that, you know, there is an interesting analogy between country and family. The difference is that for favoritism of family, we very broadly accept a great many norms about how far you're allowed to go with that.
And it's easy for people to accept that you might, that you can go too far, that people do go too far, right? So slashing a competitor's tires to help your kid get a job is not okay. On the other hand for for nationalism the idea that you might be going too far and helping a fellow citizen is one that where the government policy might be a treat non citizens unfairly for the sake of citizens.
It's one that people barely mention So while there is an analogy, you know, the You know, familial nepotism is just much less dangerous because we do at least accept the general idea very strongly that there are limits and people often go too far. Whereas for nationalism, you really have to get to the level of Nazism before people start saying it's getting out of control here.
I think you and Eric Weinstein have a completely different framework of understanding what a free market and immigration would mean.

So he thinks that when we import labor into the country, that in effect is an interference with the market because we're interfering with the labor market. How do you dispute that framework? Yeah, so you would see, obviously, in a sense, it's semantic, right? So you say, well, if the correct starting point is a system of tight regulation, then not enforcing the regulation is interference.
And I do think this is a semantic argument, whereas ordinary usage is strongly on my side. So if you say that it's interference to allow foreign goods into a market and a free market starts off having zero international products and interferences allowing international products in.

So like, that's just not the way that ordinary usage says. So, and again, like, you know, in ordinary usage, there is a distinction between action and failing to act, which we generally don't have a lot of trouble applying.
Yeah, of course, if you are very determined just to use words in an unconventional way or just to play off the status quo and say, well, since the status quo is this, anything moves the status quo counts, then you're going to end up with his version. But I think that's just a very strange way of looking at it.
I mean, especially, you know, like, so I have known quite a few libertarians who say, well, immigration is like trespass and you don't have the right to be here without a permission. But you say, all right, fine, then how about is international trade like trespass, because you don't have the right to set up a store in my house unless I say so, right? And allowing unpopular religions, that's also not allowed, because you can't set up a satanic church in my house.
So similarly, you need the permission of the American people to set up your satanic church in the country somewhere. So basically what I say is that if you think about countries as being the collective property of their citizens, then all libertarian arguments, so all principle libertarian arguments will just make no sense to you.
I would just say it really does not make sense to think of a country as being the collective property of the citizens. Particularly like how is this club formed? It was formed involuntarily, there is never unanimous consent.
And that really is the heart of any kind of club is when it starts, everyone involved agreed to be there. You can't start a club that includes a bunch of people that are non-consenting.
And that really is what distinguishes from from almost any other organization is that they start without unanimous consent okay and then they they work on the fiction of unanimous consent in order to silence opposition but I see really the obvious rationale for saying that countries can't do whatever they want is that they really are not like other organizations you could also just say also just say, you know, even if they were, they're based, they have such a large market share of the monopolies. And if anything should be regulated like a monopoly, a country should be.
I can say that as well. But going back to this previous question, if countries don't have special obligations to their citizens, then couldn't the president just say, like, listen, we're not going to spend any money on Social Security when we could be buying millions of malaria nets and vaccines for sub-Saharan Africa?

Yeah, I mean, I think that actually would be totally sensible.

If you're going to be redistributing, you should be redistributing towards people in a way that actually gives the largest benefit.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, I mean, like, you know, the Social Security program, of course, is marketed with the idea of we're taking money in exchange for something.

But if you look at it closely, this is a fig leaf.

It is highly redistributive.

And, of course, it's also one where you can't opt out. So it's not really like a real investment program.
And, you know, partly people realize if you can opt out, then the people that are getting ripped off by the system wouldn't want to participate anymore. right so yeah but I would say that you know insofar as you are doing course of redistribution the correct rationale would be that

where system wouldn't want to participate anymore. Right, so yeah, but I would say that insofar as you are doing course of redistribution, the correct rationale would be that there are enormous gains that we can get out of this.
So it's a very tiny loss to the people that are losing, enormous gain to people that are benefiting. Right, but again, as I said, using government to asymmetrically redistribute seems much less indefensible than using it to say that you weren't allowed to get a job from a willing employer.
Yeah, it's funny because you are the straw man that people who aren't completely open borders or for redistribution from the developed to the developing world are charged with, you know, but yeah, it does seem like a Yeah, so again, you know, so I'm not aggressively saying that we should be redistributing a lot to the third world in fact i say it's this whole mentality of redistribution first that i think has caused so much harm in the world you know the right the right question to ask is are we doing anything that is preventing them from taking care of themselves first right so i mean i'm very fond of talking about the scene at the beginning of the first Godfather movie where Sonny Corleone gets mad at a photographer, grabs his camera, smashes it, and then takes some money out of his wallet and toss it on the floor and walks away. Right.
I think this is a nice symbol of the way that both economic policy and foreign aid work in the first world. Step one, you say that people aren't allowed to come to your country to get a job and work their way out of poverty and then step two you go and after they are looking at the ruins of their lives you then go and chuck out a little bit of money and walk away and say hey we're even i think that's all you really really is a very nice image for what goes on in the world so you know like first thing up foreign aid is such a rounding error and it would be far better to focus on, like, could we just open up the conditions so that people in poor countries can both work their way up out of poverty as well as send money home, right? Which is, you know, it's not a solution for people that migrate, it's a solution for anyone that has social ties to anyone who migrates.
Okay, shifting gears a bit to education. I guess it doesn't make sense to me why people would be so much in support of education, if you're right, and they all have been through the system, and they all realize how wasteful it was.
Right, yeah, so just to back up, you know, so what I say in the case against education is that the main reason why education pays the labor market is not that you learn useful job skills, but rather that you get a stamp on your forehead certifying you as a high quality worker. This is in some ways a controversial idea, but I will say out of all the controversial ideas that I defend, this is the only one that normal audiences of Americans agree with when I present it.
All my other ideas, I can tell that normal audiences are just barely on the edge of saying, no, no, no. When I describe education this way, actually, even very ordinary audiences of Americans, like, yes, yes, of course, that's the way it works.
Yes, yes, yes. And normally, the only time in these talks where I suddenly get resistance again is when I say, let's go and cut funding.
And that's where people get very upset and say, yes, yes, you've convinced me this is a wasteful rat race and that we would better off people at less education, but I don't want to spend any less money on it. We want to keep spending all the same money.
All right. So why do you think that is if they realize it's right? So here's the thing, as long as you're just talking about what really what's really going on, then you can get people to reflect upon their own firsthand experience and then I think people do agree with me.
Once you start thinking about policy, this is where people turn off their dial of firsthand experience and turn on all the propaganda they've been hearing their whole lives about how wonderful education is and how every dollar is wonderfully well spent and how nothing's more important than our kids' education. So in my book, I talk a lot about social desirability bias.
It's really a fancy psychological term for the obvious fact that when the truth sounds bad, people lie. And if you tell the lie enough, often you start believing it yourself.
So I think that's really what's going on. I think that descriptively, actually, for once, this is something where there's very broad agreement with my story.
But to actually change policy as a result, this is where it then starts to impinge upon people's political religion, a big part of which is nothing's more important than education and every dollar is well spent. And again, I mean, just the level of cognitive dissonance that you would expect where someone's saying, yeah, yes, it's totally wasteful.
It's been less. No, no, no, we can't do that.
I've seen this many times. So I think you really have to think that there are two very different modes.
There's a mode of firsthand experience where I can get people who walk with me a very long way. But then there is the area policy, which is not based on firsthand

experience. It's based upon what people are supposed to say.
You don't have to tell us too,

but has there ever been a prominent politician you've convinced of the case against education

or open borders? So prominent politician. As far as I know, no.
So for the education stuff, I've had contact from a number of lower level politicians. I actually did get to be in the same room talking to Betsy DeVos.
Although the very same day that I talked to her, she said something on Twitter that directly contradicted what I was saying in my talk to her. So as to what's going on, possibly I just was totally unconvincing to her.
Possibly she wasn't thinking it through. Possibly she was completely convinced, but knew that that was not good for business.
Who knows? Yeah. I mean, I think what I have succeeded in doing with education is at least tipping some people a little bit with influence a little bit more in the direction of not having say free college for all so i again this even this may be wishful thinking but i think i may have tipped the scales like 0.1 percentage points to against free college for all so you may i mean of course i can't can't even really measure that.
But, you know, like that seems plausible to me that I've just put a little bit of extra weight on the scales of let's at least not make this wasteful thing free. But again, wouldn't it all surprise me if, say, Biden wins and then they throw free college for all in as a temporary coronavirus measure and then it gets made permanent later on.
Yeah. Speaking of which, which of the 2020 candidates in the primaries did you prefer the most? Okay, so limited to major party candidates.
Yeah. Let me ask you about that.
Do you vote third party generally, given how much you probably disagree?

No, I don't participate in the system. It's not an absolute principle.
So if it actually were totally up to me or if there were only 10 voters, then I would vote. right but just you know like the combination of knowing how

how objectively unlikely i am to change the outcome

with just what a corrupt and disgusting system it is. You know, those two things to me are enough to keep me from not participating.

participating. I definitely don't condemn anyone who participates.
I think that Jason Brennan worked it out, worked out the ethics of this very well and

spoke the ethics of voting. I say is there's no obligation to vote but if you

do vote you have an obligation to do so in a well you know based upon common sense and common decency um yeah but if I had to choose between the candidates that were available let's see so let's see so if you were to you know there really there you know, again, like they never really got off the ground, but probably I would have chosen someone like, you know, like, you know, Justin Amash or William Weld out of possible Republican nominees out of Democrats. I mean, Biden is actually close to my first choice just because he's so old and confused.

I don't think he inspires anyone. And I do not like inspirational leaders.

I like boring troglodytes, right? They are the least. just because he's so old and confused.
I don't think he inspires anyone. And I do not like inspirational leaders.

I like boring troglodytes, right?

They are the least bad people.

But if you want a libertarian candidate

who's going to radically change the Overton window

on what the ideas we're considering are,

wouldn't you want a sort of charismatic libertarian

to come along?

Yes, well, if there actually were a charismatic person supporting something good, then yes, I think that would be great. I just don't see any sign of that.
So, you know, I mean, I would say that, you know, like overwhelming number of cases that there is a charismatic young leader around, that's right. Oh God, this is terrible.
Or even a charismatic old leader like Trump. When he went, like when he's first there, like, oh no, this is terrible.
People like him. is terrible people like him right you know not everybody of course in fact most people don't like him but there is a core of there's a large core of people who love him and that's dangerous right you know just in the same way that anytime there's a religious revival in a highly religious society it's just dangerous it's better people are Okay, this is going to come out of nowhere, but I was curious what you were like when you were 19.
Ah, much worse than you. Much worse.
When I was 19, I was still just a big intellectual chip on my shoulder. There was only the beginning of the internet.
So if you want to talk about ideas, you basically define people in real life and get them to talk to you about it. I talked to you about ideas, and it was hard to find people like that.
So I basically just took anyone who didn't immediately say, I refuse to talk to you about this stuff, and just try to make them talk to me about ideas, and not in a friendly way along the lines of, you probably think this terrible popular thing, right? Right. You probably think that a way is a good idea, right? Well, you're wrong.
Here's why. So that's basically what I was like.
By the time I was 19, I was already simmering down. I was at my absolute worst when I was 17.
So when I was 17, I was basically attempting to hijack every class conversation and say, and now, first of all, let me say the terrible things you all believe, and why you're all terrible for believing them. And now, obviously, you're going to admit you're all wrong and agree with me or else you're scum.

So that really was my attitude when I was 17.

And the fact that all my friends didn't just purge me, I'm very grateful to them.

So thank you, friends, for not completely getting rid of me and all the people that I alienated completely needlessly.

And I'll also say I had no really good excuse because around that same time, I did read Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

and we're going to I knew it was true. I just didn't care.
I wasn't ready to listen. So, you know, on the other hand, you probably would have liked me because anyone who wanted to talk about ideas and was at least sympathetic to what I was saying, then you my immediate best friend and you're like oh this person's great I love this person why because the person talks to me about what I want to talk about yeah that was basically my cutoff for whether any person was worthy of my time or not yeah but isn't there a case to be made for disagreeable people and disagreeable kids because not for them, we wouldn't have books that just change the dialogue on the issues you've written about.
Or if not for you. Here's what I would say.
The case for them is very weak because there's no reason you can't have very controversial views and defend them in a very friendly way. And such people are generally much more effective.
Every now and then there is just a very strangely charismatic disagreeable person who manages to have a lot of influence by being themselves. So I think of Ayn Rand as being a really obvious case.
Well even there the reason her ideas have had an influence is because she influenced some friendly people. So a very unfriendly person persuades some friendly people then go and take the ideas to a broader audience.
That can work, and there are some prominent examples of it. But still, I have to say that's such an extreme long shot that it's just much better to present your ideas in an excruciatingly friendly way.
And so, I mean, like, it is very hard to come up with other examples of people like, like I ran, you know, especially for something good. So if you want to do something awful, then the highly disagreeable method is somewhat more effective.
So for example, if you want to have a violent revolution, then you might basically say, here's the strategy. I'm going to find one or two percent of the population that are sociopaths.
I'm going to get them on board with me with my violence radicalism. We're going to form an iron fisted unit, something like putting together a lot of reads, which lends strong, you know, one snaps, that idea.
And then we are going to seize power and we're going to start massacring everyone who disagrees with us so for that uh you know i think the disagreeable approach is somewhat more effective right i mean but only for the purpose of gaining power and creating a tyranny right it's not effective for the purpose of actually making the world better right and you know by way, so even Hitler, a notoriously disagreeable fellow, and you can definitely, you can see this in his speeches where he just seems to be a violent fanatic or in his writings, he seems to be a violent fanatic. And yet when people personally met him, they often described him as friendly and charming.
So I think like Neville Chamberlain said, oh, well, you know, I thought he was just gonna be this lunatic and he actually had great social graces and so on. It's a good sense of humor, right? So even there you know I would say Hitler knew when to turn on the charm and that probably was actually important for gaining power.
Although yeah he did do very well just by being a horrible monster as well. But yeah so what what I'd say is, you know, being a horrible monster might be a good approach for creating an awful tyranny, but for doing good things in the world, I think it is a very bad approach.
Almost always, but with a few exceptions. Yeah, even Trump, who I'm not comparing to Hitler, but he's frequently known as being a disagreeable person, but often people who meet him say that, you know, he's completely charming and in person.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I've heard that for other people, I mean, like me, I mean, on the other hand, of course, there's people, you know, that, you know, like most people consider to be very charming overall, like Bill Clinton, who to me just seemed like a sleaze, but, you know, that's why he's president, and I.
A guy like him, to me, I just want to take a bath or just get away from him. I just couldn't stand listening to anything he said.
So I want to ask you what you think the biggest sort of single decision, failure was in human history. So the one decision that just had the biggest biggest negative impact, if you had to put that up, what would you nominate? So in terms of ones where I think we can trace the effects with most confidence, I would say any one of the major decisions at the beginning of right before World War I, I think were of tremendous importance.
I mean, really, if any one of those major countries had just backed down, I think that it's likely that subsequent human history would have been much improved. So I am very firmly against the view that World War I was inevitable.
So I think that rather there was a window of danger during which if two countries on opposite sides were to fight, then things could have spiraled out of control. But nevertheless, I think there was a good chance they could have just gotten through that window of danger period to a higher level of wealth and comfort and satisfaction with life.
And I think that generally does give you peace. Basically, when my general story about peace is that once people don't no longer remember what it was like to be anything other than fat and happy, you get peace.
All right, so there is this window when people have modern technology and modern economies, but the people there still remember when life was very hard and don't mind or are somewhat accustomed to it. So that's the really dangerous period.
So anyway, my view is basically if you would have kept peace in Europe for 20 or 30 more years, then I think we could have avoided both world wars. And I don't think that it would have been that hard.
I think it just would have required one of the major actors on either side to espalow their pride. So either for the Russians to espalow their pride and say, yeah, you can have Serbia, or for the Austrians or Germans to espal their pride and said, well, we're not going to go and fight a world war over this.
Or even for the French to have said, yeah, sorry, Russia, we're not going to have your back here. We don't agree with this.
So any one of those would have been enough to have prevented World War I. And again, I think that the simple story without World War I, you wouldn't have had communism or Nazism or fascism.
I think that's very plausible. And without those, you don't get World War II.
And so without those, we avoid most of the horrors of the 20th century. But under that model where peace begets peace, how do you explain the fact that after World War II, just war just went drastically down.
After the worst war, we had the longest

peace. Yeah.
So there I am a big believer in nuclear weapons made a big difference, right? So mutually disturbed destruction. But with the proviso that nuclear weapons are ultra risky.
So it increases the chance of peace, but it gives you a much larger chance of annihilation civilization. So I mean, yeah, so I am definitely of the view that the Cold War could have easily ended in World War Three and we got lucky.
Right. So anyway, like the question, so what I would say is we have enough documented close calls where nuclear weapons almost got launched and it was a fairly minor person who prevented the launch, that I think it's very hard to say that mutually destroyed destruction was reliable.
It worked and it has some effectiveness, but the idea there wasn't a 5% or 10% chance of a full nuclear exchange during the Cold War, I think, is very naive and dogmatic. But anyway, that is my story for why any other, any large further war was avoided between the major powers.
But even, even, even there, I think that there's, there's always an element of randomness. So there are a lot of people who talk like Hitler who don't actually launch world wars.
It's really true. There are a lot of people who just seem like they're foaming at the mouth, but when they're actually in power, they dial it down and just do some minimal stuff.
So, I mean, the other thing about Putin versus Hitler. So, I mean, Putin has gone and grabbed a bunch of tiny slivers of territory, and that's it, right? And I remember when he grabbed Crimea and a little bit of eastern Ukraine, there were people saying, ah, well, he's going to attack Ukraine.
Hitler would have taken the whole thing and possibly precipitated World War II. Putin is someone who just grabs a little sliver of territory that's almost worthless just to go and show that he can do it, just to really, you know, to basically to build hatred between the countries of the world and just to be, you know, to be defiant and say, you be defiant and say, you're not the boss of me.

If I wanna grab a few cities in Eastern Ukraine,

Eastern Ukraine, that's just what I'm gonna do.

Tough luck.

Whereas Hitler would grab a few stuff

and then he'd grab some more stuff and some more stuff

and it was just impossible to placate as it turned out.

But there are a lot of people that you can placate.

So I've written several defenses of appeasement. And when people always say, well, it didn't work on Hitler.
And I say, you know what else didn't work on Hitler? Everything. There was nothing that worked on Hitler.
He was just an impossible human being to deal with. Like, there's no way that you could get it.
That you could, like, being nice to him didn't work. Being mean to him didn't work.
Nothing worked with Hitler. He was just an impossible person.
So. Okay.
So in that case, then the argument would be, well, given that we're really trying to avert Hitler's, right? Cause they have the most impact. Then we really want to tailor our policy towards what we would do for the next Hitler.
And in that case, we should just do, um, just, you know, we should just have stairs to death in every case, in case the next person happens to be Hitler. We should do what? We should just go all the way to threats and to war in every case when somebody what i would say is that was basically the attitude world war one which then led to hitler yeah that's true so so the problem is that there are there really it really is a case where there are multiple dangers and saying that we are they were ready to go to the hill for in any situation does actually lead to, does create a lot of new risks.

Which, again, I think that's the case of the Iraq war.

So you call Saddam Hussein the next Hitler. Turns out that ISIS is really the next Nazi movement, which probably would never happen but for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
So, you know, I mean, it really is one where I think it is like the best approach is not to plan for the worst case scenario, but to look at the general patterns and see how often different situations occur and then plan for that. So now a lot of people are revising their opinions on China and saying that the free trade approach was wrong, that we shouldn't have integrated our supply chains.
You know, it's kind of like giving, putting your armories in with your enemy, or inside your enemy's countries. If you're, if you're depending on your enemy for bullets, that's kind of what we've done with our supply chains with China.
What do you think of that? I think that's pretty crazy. Of course, they're, they're intertwined with us, and we're intertwined with them.
There's been a fair amount of social science on whether economic integration leads to peace. And I think almost everyone says that it does.
So, you know, the fact that it doesn't lead to give you everything that you want doesn't mean that it doesn't lead to something better. And again, I mean, I think most people say this, they just have no notion of what was going on in China before they were integrated.
You know, again, it was a totalitarian health state, like just one step short of the Khmer Rouge. Right.
So, and, integration into the global economy has done not just economic wonders for China, but I think it has actually greatly improved the lives that the freedoms of regular Chinese citizens. There's been this unfortunate backsliding, but just like with Putin, it's easy to go and talk about the backsliding and to say that things are back to the way they be, back to as bad they were before.
You don't know how things were before. You know how things were before, you know it's crazy to say that things have gone back to how they were before.
They're still, we will, we've still saved 80, 90 percent of the improvement. It's unfortunate that we've lost 10 or 20 percent of the improvement, but still the idea that things aren't much better is just ridiculous, right it would just be based upon not knowing what occurred in Soviet times and in Malice, China.
What's your opinion on universal basic income? Yes. So I think this is one of the worst ideas that is getting traction.
I mean, it comes down to we have a finite budget for government support of people in need, and let's go and waste almost all of it on people who don't need it. Because that's the whole universal part.
The whole universal part is that we give everyone regardless of need. So Bill Gates gets the money too, right? This is just insane.
No private philanthropist would do this. If you had a billion dollars to give to charity, it would never occur to you to give,

what would it be?

To give like 13 cents to every person on earth, right? That would just be an idiotic way to spend the resources.

You want to say, well,

where can we do the most good with this money?

And the universal basic income is basically saying

we are not going to worry about the best way

to spend the money.

We're just going to throw it around to everybody.

Now, once you do this, of course, so if you make the amount very small, then it doesn't break the bank. But if you put it at a level that is anywhere near acceptable to most Americans, then it would be an astronomical burden upon the country and would in fact break the bank.
So again, like the basic math on this is something like this. You first ask people, So if you have no money, no income at all, how much money should you get for free from the government? And people usually give a number of something like $15,000 a person.
All right. And they say, OK, fine.
All right. So then family of four gets $60,000.
Right. Right.
All right. Now, how much money should this government start taking away from you when you start earning money?

All right. And there are people who usually say like 25 cents for every dollar.

All right. So now let's do the math.
So if a family of four gets $60,000 when they have no income and you lose 25 cents for every dollar of income that you earn, when do you actually start paying taxes?

And the answer, if you do the math, you start paying taxes once your income exceeds $240,000 a year in family income. All right.
So essentially what this means is that you would be putting an enormous tax burden on almost on a very tiny fraction of the country. So it's just totally enumerate and unreasonable.
Then, you know, there was one guy that I debated on this who just said, oh, well, all you need is a 70% tax rate and everything will be fine. And it just didn't seem to occur to them that most people think 70% was high.
But yeah, 70% was high. And of course, remember, this is just funding this program alone.
It's ignoring all the other government programs that exist, which also are in need of funding. So it's ignoring national defense, it's ignoring roads, it's ignoring disease prevention.
So yeah, it's a, so anyway, I would say it is a crazy and enumerate idea. And on top of it, I'd also add that it's just morally awful because it's one thing to say that we're going to go and take your money without your consent to feed starving orphans.
It's the only thing we're going to say we're going to take your money without your consent just to help everybody. So like that is a really lame excuse for going and putting a gun to somebody's head.
Right, so if you're going to go and make people contribute whether they like it or not, at least think very hard about what you're spending the money on and don't spend it like a drunken sailor and really the slogan of UBI should be spending taxpayer money like drunken sailors. That's what it comes down to.
Yeah. Do you think it's going to be a good thing that many people, do you think it's a good thing that many mid-tier colleges might go bankrupt because of coronavirus? What I would say is I don't think that it makes much difference.
The students are just going to go to other places and then you know to basically go to larger public universities at taxpayer expense. I think it will actually probably raise the burden on taxpayers marginally.
Of course private schools actually do already get a fair amount of government support but nevertheless probably so that probably kids in private school are less of a burden on taxpayers than kids in public school and but in terms of what will happen I think it's really just shifting the students around so I don't think it's gonna make too much difference overall I mean I also say I don't think it's the mid-tier schools that are gonna go to business it's going to be small let us small unselected private schools okay right which are I also need the schools where I honestly just say I don't understand why they ever ever existed Why would you go and pay private school tuition to go to a small undistinguished school? Right and the only answer that makes sense is well because your parents went there all right We have a why do your parents go there? So I mean it's to me there is something weird about it It just just means that people's loyalty to a brand that really doesn't have much to offer is surprisingly strong, but there it is. And can you give us a little preview on the next book you're writing? So the new book that I'm writing and working on is called Poverty, Who to Blame? And the book does a few different things.
So first of all, it starts with a different perspective on poverty. It says that there's this old and unpopular, now unpopular distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
And I say it's actually been discarded for no good reason. And in fact, I say that we still use it, we just don't admit it.
So we look at the ways that governments spend money. They usually try to focus on children, on the handicapped, on the sick, people that otherwise unable to help themselves.
Philanthropists do this. But what's happened is that the distinction has fallen into such disrepute that people use it by stealth.
They use it covertly. And so part of what I really want to do is say there was never any reason to get rid of this idea.
It's a very good idea. The idea that some people are in poverty through no fault of their own and are especially deserving of help and should be at the front of the line for getting help makes perfect sense.
And the idea that other people have caused their own problem and at least should be at the back of the line, that idea makes perfect sense too. And then furthermore, once you start looking at it this way, another big question you start asking is, well, what's stopping people from solving their own problem? Are there people that are actually being held in poverty by someone, even though the people themselves could work their way out if they would just be left alone? So these are the moral questions that I start with in the book.
And again, it's striking because most people work on poverty really hate the idea of distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving poor. And say, look, like it really does not make sense to be focused on this.
It's not, or to be so upset about it. Right.
The fact that you're making the distinction does not mean that you don't care. It just means that you have a principle of prioritization.
And again, like in a world of scarce resources, of course,

you're going to prioritize. So why not do it well instead of doing it in the sloppy and covert way? Anyway, so there is that general moral point.
But then I say that once we take this point seriously, then we actually get a lot of useful ideas for policy. So first of all, once you start taking the idea seriously that people might be wrongfully held in poverty because someone is stopping them from solving their own problem, then we wind up taking a harder look at bad government policies that retard economic growth.
So and especially, of course, in the third world. So then I wind up using this deserving versus undeserving poor to say that a lot of the deserving poor are held in poverty because they're stuck in a country with eight awful governments like Venezuela.
And in the book I'm going to talk about the many policies the governments use that actually foment poverty. I mean we usually have a picture of either governments are spending money to help the poor or they're not.
And I say, you know what, the governments do something else. They also cause poverty directly by preventing the creation of, by preventing new investment, by preventing the building of new homes, which is very common all over the world for government to bury, to really strangle the housing market.
And again, who is it that is going to suffer when you strangle the housing market? It's gonna be people that are not able to afford to live at home because of that. So anyway, so I have a chapter, especially on bad policy in the third world where really could just go on all day because third world countries really do have awful economic policy, right? And part of that is going to be just a defense of what people call neoliberalism or the Washington census, which I say actually has been highly effective.
And really, people have been complained a lot about it really just for being anything less than perfect. And that's not not the reasonable standard.
Then the book is going to have a section on how First World governments cause horrible poverty around the world, not through the more popular accusations of imperialism or neoliberalism or colonialism, but just by preventing immigration. Right.
So this is where I tie in my work on immigration and say that there are a great many people on earth who are totally capable of solving their own problem of poverty. If First World governments just get out of the way and let them come here and get a job., and then finally the part of the book that'll be most controversial even though I'm saving for last is talking about individuals, you know, responsibilities to cause poverty.
Where I say, you know, there is just an enormous amount of evidence that personal irresponsibility causes poverty. Right, and this means there are a lot of people that really are to blame for their own problem.
Right. And I think that should be said as well.
This part of the book actually draws very heavily on a lot of left-wing sociologists who work on poverty. Right.
And what's striking about their work is that they have a chapter at the beginning and the end of the book saying anyone who says the poor in any way to blame for their own problems is a dogmatic, horrible, right-winged e-log. And then all the chapters from 2 to N-1 carefully study the poor and describe a long list of obviously irresponsible behavior that's causing poverty.

Everything from just having unprotected sex when you are having trouble supporting yourself.

This is extremely common among the poor around the world. And it doesn't take any kind of genius to figure out how this is going to lead to poverty.
Also, there are very basic things like not being in the labor force. So especially in rich countries, it's very common for the poor to just have very low rates of labor participation.
So you're not being unemployed, but just not even trying to work. And then you've got you know drug and alcohol abuse.
You know there's some dispute about whether the poor actually drink a larger average quantity but there is very good evidence that they are more prone to severe alcohol abuse. Right so you know the words you know you could have a you could have a lower average but still out of the people who do drink they're drinking to excess in a way which is much more destructive of your life than just having two glasses of wine every day, right? So you've got that.
And then there's other things, just like a lack of savings, which again, of course, being poor does not mean that you can't save because the point of saving is to smooth your income, right? So even when you're poor, you might very well want to save because there's something worse that could happen to you and want to be prepared for it. So Michael Hanna- Anyway, there's been a lot.
There's been a lot of very good work on this done by people that I would say just don't want to draw the obvious implication of it. Michael Hanna- Right.
So anyway, so like the main thrust of the book is going to be that we should focus on getting rid of government policies that prevent people from working the way out of poverty.

And these policies are not just some obscure small problems. These are widespread, ubiquitous,

and very dangerous policies. And then at the end say, but that isn't the only thing that's going on.
Of course, there's also personal responsibility matters too. And again,

partly that ties in with the beginning of the book because many people say, all right, fine. All right, personal responsibility costs a lot of poverty.
What can government do about that?

And a lot of my answer is, well, if that's the answer, then government shouldn't do something about it. If a person is poor through their own fault, then they should, you know, the person that should do something is the person is poor and they should get their lives in order.
and it really does it really is quite point to say, this is not my problem. This is your problem.
You should solve it. So that's the book.
It's still, the book is still changing as I write it. I was working on it right before we had this podcast.
So anyway, that's what I'm doing. Oh yeah.
And by the way, there is actually another book I've started, too. This is another graphic novel, but this time on housing regulation.
And so the tentative title is Build, Baby, Build, the Science and Ethics of Housing. And this is one where I'm trying to take a lot of research that's gone on the last 15 years on just how horrible housing regulation is.
It doesn't just raise the price of housing. It actually is a massive drag on economic growth because in earlier periods, people would migrate from poor areas of the country to rich areas of the country and then raise their own productivity by becoming part of the higher productivity parts of the United States.
And nowadays, this happens in reverse. People now are moving from high productivity areas to low productivity areas because the housing cost is so high in the high productivity areas, you actually are richer working at a job where you produce less.
This is a new situation, right? But when people have estimated how much is this impoverishing the United States, there are estimates saying the U.S. would be 10 or 20 percent richer if only the housing regulation in rich parts of the country were similar to what it is in the average parts of the US.
So this is another thing that I'm working on. And again, in terms of regulation that people hardly ever think about that is causing astronomical harm, this is way up there.
I'd say it's probably second right after immigration restriction. And in both cases, you know, we've got policies that people just take for granted.
How can you not have them? And yet we know there was a period when they didn't exist and where we saw very large gains of a free market. And there really is no good reason not to return the free market that we could have had.
So that's what I'm going to be pushing for in that book. And again, this is one where I'm trying to take some research which is high quality and important, but super boring to almost everyone.
And then by putting it in a graphic novel format, I want to get people that otherwise would just fall asleep reading the research or hearing about the topic say, oh, this is fascinating. Partly, I just want to go in this book and the goal is to draw the cities that we could could have, but don't have just to give people a feel for what, how much we really are missing and how awesome it would look.
The idea that it would be bad to go and develop the California central coast. And it would look ugly.
To me, this is just crazy. When you go and look at say, San Diego, it looks great to develop the coast.
So it's not like people want to go and put an ugly tenement in the San California coast. They want to go and put beautiful places there.
So why stop them? It would look better, not worse. Yeah.
But by the way, I can completely endorse the graphic novel format. Open Borders was not just an interesting read like other books, but it was just like a binge-worthy read like a Netflix show is.
Yeah. Awesome.
Awesome. Yeah.
That's it. Yeah.
Binge-worthy. Yeah.
So, if you could go write it out, write a review on Amazon where you say binge worthy. Oh yeah.
I'll be super pleased. I don't have to, but it's well advised.
I like the word. Well, I want to be mindful of your time.
This seems like a good place to stop again. Thank you so much for giving me your time.
It's really nice of you. My pleasure.
And all these books, you can still get on Amazon. There's no problem getting hard copies delivered, I think, in the usual Amazon Prime time window of two days.
Of course, you can get the Kindle versions instantly, I think, of all my books. And the price is right.
So for Open Borders, my latest book is only $13.39 for the paperback and $9.99 for the Kindle. And by the way, also Open Borders is a great book for

kids. So if you're doing an emergency homeschool and you can't find anything your kids want to

read and you want them to read something of substance, let me throw my hat into the ring and say Open Borders could be the book for you. Excellent.
Thank you so much. My pleasure.
Thanks lot.

Hi, everyone.

I want to try something new today.

I want to

start something like a book club where

I'll read a book from now and then and I will discuss it.

Today, we're talking about Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen.

He's an economist at George Mason, and he's written a book, Making the Case for Economic Growth, that within the constraints of a rules-based system, growth is just incredibly fundamental. I think his concern for economic growth comes from taking future people seriously.
He disregards the idea that their lives should be discounted or that the consequences that occur in the distant future somehow don't matter as much as the ones that are going to occur soon. And he makes this argument by saying, listen, if we take any sort of discounting rate, year by year, let's say consequences 10 years from now count 3% less and an additional 3% less another decade from now, eventually we're going to get to a point where a billion lives in some future year are worth one life now.
And these lives are no less real than the ones we have now. So it makes no sense not to think clearly about the consequences our actions have on people that will live far away from now.
And if we're going to take them seriously, we got to take economic growth seriously. Anyone who's looked at compound growth knows the power of a steady compounding return on your investment or on any sort of

principal amount. And in this case, the principal amount here we're talking about is the wealth of

a society. We're talking about the resources a civilization has, the knowledge it has,

the technology it has, and what the civilization is able to do.