Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 16

What I Did in My 40s

Today I turn 50, which makes little sense to me.  I can’t be 50, because that’s how old my dad is, right?

Anyway, ten years ago I shared 40 things I learned in my first 40 years.  Today I’m just going to look back over the last ten.  What did I do with my decade?

1. Most importantly, I had my fourth child.  Sweetness and light, a daily joy.  I can tell that many parents’ appreciation for their children is heavily laden with Social Desirability Bias.  But not mine.

2. I published Selfish Reasons ...

Build, Baby, Build: Now Under Construction

I’m now about halfway done with the storyboards for my new non-fiction graphic novel, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing.  This time around, I’ll be published by the Cato Institute, a think tank I’ve been working with since the summer of 1991.  If all goes well, this will be the first volume in an entire Cato library of books modelled after my Open Borders – works that combine high scholarly standards with compelling sequential art to explore underrated policy ideas.  While fa...

Immigration and Housing: The Meaning of Hsieh-Moretti

Now that we correctly understand Hsieh-Moretti’s results, let’s put them in context.

1. Immigration researchers have focused heavily on the economic effects of full deregulation of immigration.  Hsieh-Moretti (henceforth HM), in contrast, focus on the economic effects of moderate housing deregulation.   Their chief hypothetical is not, “What would happen if there were zero housing regulation?” but “What would happen if the Bay Area and NYC only had as much housing regulation as the rest of the U...

Hsieh-Moretti on Housing Regulation: A Gracious Admission of Error

Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti‘s “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation” (American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics) is arguably the single most influential article ever published on housing regulation.  It also contains a few large miscalculations.

I noticed them a couple weeks ago, and Hsieh and Moretti have graciously confirmed the mistakes via email.  Since the gracious admission of error was always a rare bird, and practically went extinct circa 2016, I hope readers won’t judge ...

Businesspeople Deserve Every Penny: A Businessman Reacts

Yesterday self-described “mid-level manager” Ben White sent me this reaction to “Businesspeople Deserve Every Penny.”  Reprinted with his permission.

Bryan,

I read your post about the 12 Labors you’ve been subjected to shortly after I wrapped up a call with the VP in Supply Chain at the company where I work.  We spent most of the call basically reflecting on the idea that everything is a mess in the world right now and this mess is replicating across multiple industries at the same time and the...

The Great Political Stagnation

Last month, I posed the following challenge on Twitter:

The last 25 years have delivered amazing economic and technological progress for humanity.

*Political* progress, in contrast, is hard even to detect during this period.

What political change on Earth since 1996 has been even 2% as wonderful as the collapse of Communism?

— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) February 10, 2021

The responses mostly confirmed my political pessimism.  After all, the collapse of Communism did not merely greatly incre...

Businesspeople Earn Every Penny

Back in February, I got the idea to create a COVID vaccination t-shirt (now on sale!).  Reflecting on my past experience, I figured it would be easy.

Step 1: Run an illustration contest on Freelancer.com, something I’ve successfully done several times before.

Step 2: Take the winning entries to Zazzle.com, design some shirts, and sell them using the same interface, another thing I’ve done several times before (albeit on a small scale).

 

My thinking: The whole process would be pretty fun, so I’d...

Moral Relativism and Moral Fanaticism

In high school, Ayn Rand’s writings convinced me that moral relativism was a grave social problem.  Not in the weak sense that, “If everyone were moral relativists, there would be bad consequences,” but in the strong sense that, “Moral relativism has terrible consequences already.”  Soon afterwards, I read Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, and he reinforced my Randian belief.  In Johnson’s words:

At the beginning of the 1920s the belief began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level, that ...

Repealing Political Discrimination

Most skilled American workers are now at least somewhat afraid to criticize fashionable left-wing views.  They feel quite fearful to do so on the job, and fairly fearful to do so on social media.  One tempting way to quell this high anxiety is to pass new laws against political discrimination.  Washington, DC already has such a law:

[T]he District of Columbia Human Rights Act prohibits all employers in the District from refusing to hire, terminating, or otherwise discriminating against any indiv...

A Precommitment

Academia has been good to me so far.  For as long as I’ve been a professor, I have tried to speak politely, thoughtfully, and candidly –  privately as well publicly.  From where I’m sitting, the system treats me quite well.

Perhaps, however, I’ve simply been lucky.  Or perhaps the system is swiftly decaying right before my unperceiving eyes.

In case either of these pessimistic scenarios turn out to be correct, I am now making a precommitment.  Namely:

I will never apologize for politely saying o...