Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 19

Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID

When bioethicists want to justify their own existence, they routinely point to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  It’s a gripping story.  Back in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service started a study of 399 black men with latent syphilis, plus a control group of 201 black men without syphilis.  Contrary to what I’ve sometimes heard, the researchers never injected anyone with syphilis.  However, they grossly violated the principle of informed consent, with disastrous consequences:

As an incent...

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Book Club, Part 5

Today our Book Club continues with Chapter 3, “War Is Peace.” Please leave your thoughts and questions in the comments and I’ll do an omnibus reply later this week.

All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods. But above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the co...

Collective Guilt for Everyone for Everything

Here’s an excerpt from my book-in-progress, Poverty: Who To Blame.

After “Don’t blame the victim,” the second-most obvious maxim for blame is, “Only blame the perpetrators.”  Precisely who, though, are the “perpetrators”?  Another deep criticism of my approach is that I blame too narrowly.  Instead of concentrating blame on specific wrong-doers, we should blame large swaths of society – or even whole countries.  To my ears, this echoes a blood-curdling passage from Deuteronomy:

If you hear it s...

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Book Club Commentary, Part 4

We’ve now moved on to “War Is Peace.”  Here are my thoughts on your latest comments.

LEB:

I know you were speaking to the specific Huxley quote, but on the whole I wouldn’t dismiss “Brave New World” so quickly.  Americans have willingly ceded a great deal of their freedom to the government in recent decades…

I agree that Americans ceded a great deal of freedom to the government over the last century.  I don’t see that there’s been a net loss of freedom in American policy from 1980 or 1990 to the...

Revolution is the Hell of It: Algerian Edition

In 1968, Abbie Hoffman famously wrote a book called Revolution for the Hell of It.

In 1973, this negatively inspired David Friedman to write a chapter called “Revolution is the Hell of It.”

Last month, I watched The Battle of Algiers, probably the most famous pro-terrorist (or at least anti-anti-terrorist) movie in history.  If you don’t know the sordid history of the “liberation” of Algeria, you should.  The whole movie is gripping, but this little speech by terrorist Ben M’Hidi stayed with me....

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Book Club, Part 4

Now our ongoing Book Club turns to Chapter 3 of Orwell’s book-within-a-book, famously entitled “War is Peace.”  I continue to refer to Orwell as the author of the book even though he’s playing a role and may not have fully agreed with his own words.

Please leave your thoughts and questions in the comments and I’ll do an omnibus reply later this week.

The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth ...

A Burkean Beautiful Bubble

From my co-author‘s brother Greg Weiner:

[I]n addition to being treacherous and menacing, the insurrectionists are also, strictly speaking, pathetic. These are grown men and women whose lives are apparently so devoid of other sources of meaning that their self-worth depends on who occupies the White House. No one should care about presidential elections so intimately or intensely. If single elections are sincerely perceived to threaten personal identity or civilizational survival, too much is at...

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Book Club Commentary, Part 3

You’ve got reactions to Orwell; I’ve got reactions to your reactions.  Here goes:

robc:

How close are your 5 steps to what Pinochet did in Chile?

I think he at least followed steps 1 and 2.

I was offering for steps for reforming a socialist dictatorship from within.  While Pinochet did step down and allow a return to democracy, the dictatorship he built was mild enough (and non-socialist enough) that he didn’t need a master plan to unravel it.

Thomas DeMaio:

I can’t help but to notice that the a...

Ronald Coase and Reciprocal Externalities: A Refresher

A key insight of the Coase Theorem is that externalities are reciprocal.  Yes, a polluter imposes a negative externality on his neighbor.  But if the neighbor insists on clean air, he imposes a negative externality on the polluter.  While common-sense morality may urge you to take the side of the neighbor, economic efficiency urges you to keep an open mind.  If the polluter’s cost of reducing pollution greatly exceeds the neighbor’s cost of enduring pollution, the Coase Theorem tells you to tell...

Reciprocal Externalities: A Refresher

A key insight of the Coase Theorem is that externalities are reciprocal.  Yes, a polluter imposes a negative externality on his neighbor.  But if the neighbor insists on clean air, he imposes a negative externality on the polluter.  While common-sense morality may urge you to take the side of the neighbor, economic efficiency urges you to keep an open mind.  If the polluter’s cost of reducing pollution greatly exceeds the neighbor’s cost of enduring pollution, the Coase Theorem tells you to tell...