Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 24

2020 Election Bets

Virtually any serious intellectual writing will be drowned out during Election Week, so I’m pausing until next Monday.  Instead, I’ll just remind you of some bets.

In the 2016 election, I had three outstanding bets.  I won all three. This year, I only made one election bet, which I’ve already won.  I do however have one outstanding election-related bet: That Trump does not leave office early. Specifically:

If Donald Trump dies in office, resigns, is removed  by the Senate after impeachment, or o...

Redeeming Tenure

Tenure is terrible.  Well, it’s awesome for those of us who have it.  The tenure system, however, is nonsense on stilts.  Economists’ rationalizations for tenure are flimsy indeed.  Just consider: Virtually all semi-prestigious professors have tenure, yet virtually no one in the for-profit sector has anything close.  I know, we can construct fanciful scenarios where this chasm makes sublime economic sense, such as: “Professors are willing to sacrifice vastly more in salary than normal humans to ...

Iskander’s Challenge: What Took Hong Kong So Long?

Iskander, a devoted EconLog reader, sent me a fascinating question.  With his permission, I reprint his original email and a followup.

Original Email

Dear Professor Caplan,

I was reading through some old Econlog posts, and I saw one about Hong Kong (“Statist at Heart”) where you attribute rapid post war growth to the free market policies of the British. I tend to agree with this, however I do wonder about why growth was only rapid after 1950. There was next to no institutional/political change ...

Unschooling + Math

One popular variant on homeschooling is called “unschooling.”  The practice varies, as practices always do.  The essence, however, is that the student does what he wants.  He studies what he wants.  He studies for as long as he wants.  If he asks you to teach him something, you teach him.  Yet if he decides to play videogames all day, the principled unschooling response is: “Let him.”

Almost every parent is horrified by the idea of unschooling.  Even most homeschoolers shake their heads.  Advoca...

Viral Silence

This semester I volunteered to teach both of my classes in-person.  I’ve also given four public talks in Texas, and one at GMU.  All of these venues had mask mandates.  And in each case, I noticed an eerie pattern: Almost no one talks to each other anymore!  In the past, I had to ask classes to quiet down so I could start class.  Now I usually face dead silence.  Public lecture halls used to overflow with the chatter of the crowd.  Now you can practically hear a pin drop.

From what I’m told, I’m...

The Non-Linear Loophole?

Last month, I asked readers for a “Great Reconciliation” of three popular beliefs:

1. Risk mitigation should be directly proportional to risk severity.

2. Medically speaking, COVID is 2-5x as bad as flu.

3. Our COVID mitigation efforts should be much more than 5x our flu mitigation efforts.

 

The most theoretically compelling resolution I’ve encountered maintains that contra (1), our response to risk should be strongly non-linear.

On the surface, this is a plausible story.  Consider: How much mo...

Reflections on My Illustration Contest

You might not realize from EconLog or my academic work, but I love crafting and sharing stories.  Some are true, at least as far as memory serves.  I’ve told my kids hundreds of stories over the dinner table, most revolving around absurd events of my childhood.  I’ve also written a pile of fiction, mostly for my artisanal role-playing games.  I’ve explored almost every genre that’s game-worthy: high fantasy, superheroes, crime, dystopian, absurdist comedy, conspiracy, war, westerns, and even Bol...

Don’t Pickpocket Your Students

Imagine you’re a professor somewhere.  You hear rumors of the creation of a new Office of Student Property Security.  “Whatever,” you think.

Yet before long, you’re summoned to a brand-new mandatory training session run by certified officers of Student Property Security.  At this session (in-person back in the old days; now Zoom of course), they give you a tortoise-paced 90-minute Powerpoint presentation on the student property crisis and the appropriate faculty response.  And the whole spiel ca...

The Wrong Pieces on the Chessboard

Inspired by a few recent posts, several friends have asked me if I’ve finally “woken up” to the great political threat of wokism.  In particular, they’re hoping that I’m ready to at least back the American right as the clear lesser of two evils.

I fear my response is: It’s complicated.

From a global point of view, I continue to see the American left and right as moral approximates.  No doubt one is even worse than the other, but they’re both so vicious that I see little reason to precisely weigh...

Reflections on One Billion Americans

Matt Yglesias’ new One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger is a delightful book.  But should you take my word for it?  Since I’ve published book-length defenses of both natalism and immigration deregulation, I’m obviously going to smile upon a book that reaches the same conclusions, right?

Truth be told, though, I often dislike books whose conclusions I endorse.  You can’t just be right; you have to be right for the right reasons.  By this demanding standard, One Billion Americans d...