Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 26

Drissel on the Normative Core

I received the following email from Bill Drissel about my “Public Choice: The Normative Core.”  Reprinted with his permission.

Dr. Caplan

The data you seek for your “normative core” is readily available in one arena: public transportation.  I follow the Anti-Planner, Randal O’Toole.  The planned benefit is number of riders.  The planned cost is usually available in dollars(of a given vintage).  The subsequent cost-overruns and consequent ridership are also available.  So every cost/benefit rati...

It’s Complicated: Grasping the Syllogism

A few weeks ago, I presented the following syllogism:

 

Issue X is complicated.

Perspective Y’s position on X is not complicated.

Therefore, Perspective Y is wrong about X.

 

Almost all of the comments were critical.  Some notable examples:

Dan:

As someone who used to live in San Francisco and was involved in YIMBY activism, this argument was used frustratingly often by NIMBYs: “The housing crisis is complicated and you can’t simplify it to econ 101, therefore just building more won’t help”. The...

The Great Reconciliation?

What is the best way to reconcile the results for these three polls?

How good is the following heuristic?

The resources you spend mitigating a problem should be directly proportional to its overall severity.

— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) August 18, 2020

Medically speaking, how bad is coronavirus compared to flu?

— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) August 17, 2020

How much time, inconvenience, and resources should we spend fighting coronavirus compared to flu?

— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) Augu...

Public Choice: The Normative Core

The economic analysis of politics goes by many names: political economy, rational choice theory, formal political theory, social choice, economics of governance, endogenous policy theory, and public choice.  Each of these labels picks out a subtly different intellectual tradition.  Each tradition expands our understanding of the world.  My favorite, though, remains public choice.

As a GMU professor, you may attribute this to home-team favoritism.  Yet before I was a professor at GMU, I was a stu...

Loyalty Oaths Compared: An Orwellian Exercise

A key tenet of American’s civic religion is that the McCarthy-era persecution of Communists and Communist sympathizers was both paranoid and immoral.  Academics are especially strident in their commitment to this tenet.  And since they are academics, they’re especially dismayed by academia‘s persecution of Communists and Communist sympathizers.  The most infamous form of this persecution: the loyalty oaths many universities imposed on their employees.  Sign the oath, or lose your job.

What exact...

Escaping Paternalism Book Club Round-up

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Escaping Paternalism Book Club, and special thanks to authors Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman for joining the discussion.  In case you missed any of the installments, here’s the full list.

Book Club Announcement

Book Club, Part 1

Book Club, Part 2

Book Club, Part 3

Book Club, Part 4

Book Club, Part 5

My Response to Questions

My Final Response to Questions

Jubal Harshaw’s Reaction

Rizzo and Whitman Response #1

Rizzo and Whitman Response #2

Rizzo and Whitman...

Implicit and Structural Witchery

You’re back in Salem during the 1690s.  After an exhaustive hunt for witches, the Lord High Witch Hunter files a bombshell report: Despite his best efforts, he’s failed to find any witches in Salem.  Don’t imagine, though, that the fight against witchery is over.  During his investigation, the Lord High Witch Hunter uncovered an enormous volume of “implicit witchery” and “structural witchery.”  For example, residents of Salem occasionally skip church, or lose interest during the sermon.  That’s ...

The Risks of Friendship: A Socratic Dialogue

The scene: Ancient Athens.  Glaucon is standing in the Parthenon, wearing a face mask.  Socrates enters with his face fully visible.

Socrates: Greetings, Glaucon!  How fare you during this awful plague?

Glaucon: [jumps 5 feet]  What the hell are you doing?  Are you trying to kill me?

Socrates: No, why would you think so?

Glaucon: We’re indoors and you’re not wearing your mask!

Socrates: I’m 20 feet away from you.  And the Parthenon is cavernous.

Glaucon: You should be wearing a mask.

Socrates...

Escaping Paternalism Book Club: Rizzo and Whitman’s Final Response

This is the final response by Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman, authors of Escaping Paternalism, for my Book Club on their treatise.  Don’t forget to review the book on Amazon!

We want to thank Bryan one more time for hosting this book club, which has been entertaining and enlightening for both of us.  Although the discussion has naturally gravitated toward points of disagreement, in truth we and Bryan are largely on the same page.  It’s worth enumerating some of our many points of agreement, most ...

Personal Immunity and Herd Immunity

When I first heard friends getting excited about T-cell immunity to COVID-19, I was non-plussed.

“This means the disease is less contagious than we thought!,” they said.

And I replied, “You’re double-counting!  I If some people are immune, that will already be reflected in existing estimates of R0.”

As it turns out, however, my friends were right for the wrong reason.  While immunity doesn’t matter for initial estimates of R0, it is crucial for estimating the path of R0.  This in turn is crucial...