Welcome to Keith Knight, Don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute. Today I will be talking with
Doctor Brian Kaplan, economist at George Mason University to
discuss his book Self Help is Like a Vaccine.
Dr. Kaplan, where is the best place for people to purchase
this book? Actually it's an Amazon
exclusive, so the best and only place is Amazon.
Terrific, I highly recommend the book.
I have a number of things I'd like to go over.
Can you please explain the concept of There is no such
thing as a free lunch to me? Like I'm 10 years old and I've
never heard of it before. All right, there's no such thing
as a free lunch. It's a slogan which is not
literally true. But anyway, the idea of is it if
it is in the real world, normally in order to go and get
any additional thing that you want, you've got to give up
something else, right? It's probably made made famous
by Milton Friedman, although I think it actually came from
Einlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress, if I remember the
history correctly, and it's just saying that it seems too good to
be true. It probably is.
If you want to change your life, it's not going to be just
getting more of everything you want, it's going to be having to
make at least some sacrifice. If you're playing your cards
right, of course the sacrifice is less valuable than what
you're getting. The reason that I think this is
so important is maybe in the last week or so I have heard
both Democrats and Republicans say healthcare we that should be
free, childcare should be free, education should be free,
college should be free, housing as well as food stamps should be
free. So when it comes to the concept
of opportunity. Food should be free.
I guess foods be odd if food stamps weren't free.
It's like here's some help now pay me for it.
So if you could just walk the average voter through what they
are actually saying, assuming, well, government can just print
the money, as the modern monetary theorists like to
remind us. Is this an actual like loop in
the matrix that we found this traveling opportunity to Narnia
where we could make it free? You print the money, you
increase the money supply. What is the opportunity cost of
all these free things? Yeah, I think probably the best
way of thinking about it is to, you know, agree and amplify,
say, all right, yeah, you're right.
Your health care should be free. Education should be free, food
should be free. Everything should be free.
Everybody should get everything they want for no money.
And at this point, I think you'd have to be pretty deluded not to
say, well, there could be some problems with that.
Oh, like, what? Like if everybody gets
everything they want for free, then why work?
And if people don't work then what's going to actually be
available for purchase? It really does get to the point
where if everything is free, then you shouldn't expect the
total amount of stuff available to be more than a rounding
error. That's is a nice way of thinking
about it. Also like the reason why people
work is generally to get stuff. That's also the way that stuff
comes to exist. If you make everything free,
then you are basically just going in that opposite direction
to the maximum degree. And then the question is, yeah,
but why couldn't this one thing be free?
It's like, well, why should we make this the exception?
Why does that make sense? Now in terms of deeper
economics, the key point is that when something is free, then
people will consume things that they do not appreciate very
much, right? I always like to give the
example of some elderly relative who gives you like a a Ming vase
for Christmas. You're not allowed to resell it.
It's worth like $1,000,000, but you're five years old.
So it is wasteful to go and give someone something really
expensive that they do not appreciate.
And that is what we standardly see when there are government
giveaways. This is most obvious for
healthcare. A lot of that stuff is crazy
expensive and if it really is free then people will go and use
treatments they do not value all that much and would be willing
to go without without actually feeling all that bad about it.
Is it fair to summarize social desirability bias as when the
truth sounds bad, people lie? Yeah, totally.
It's a good one. Sentence summary.
So I want to give you a genuine statement that I, in the last
week or so since I've been reading the book, have really
wanted to say to people, but it's not professional.
I want to see if you could help me find a way to say this
without lying. I'm going to New York and a
relative said, oh, I'd love for you to come and visit me.
This guy's been disrespecting me for 10 years.
And I said I don't want, I don't want to see you when I'm in
town. Is there a way I could say that
when without sounding terrible? I'd probably go with, oh, we'll
see. Literally true.
Yeah. By the way, when you asked the
first question about the free lunch, I thought you were going
to go in a totally different direction.
I thought it was going to be. We all know there's no such
thing as a free lunch. So how can all of these self
help ideas be actually work? What am I giving up?
And my answer was going to be, you know, normally there's not
such a thing as a free lunch, but actually there's a bunch of
free lunches. There's just a lot of things
that people are doing where they are wasting resources.
And if they would just change the way that they're doing, they
could actually have a better life without have without giving
anything else up. I mean like the simplest example
from the first day of econ is if you're sitting in a bad movie,
just get up and walk out. That's a free lunch.
You get your time back and you avoid watching a movie you don't
even like. So there are in fact free
lunches in the world while economist main job is telling
people that they don't exist. That's an overstatement.
It's poetic license. The real truth is usually people
are not correct to think that are round.
But on the other hand, if you keep your eyes open, you will
find all kinds of opportunities to get a better life without
having to give up anything other than you.
You might say, other than the pride of admitting that up till
that point you've been making a mistake.
That is a big one though. Isn't that a big opportunity
cost and risk to your ego and reputation that you have to
bear? So it's.
Still not the way that I put it is.
Look, do you, don't you want to be the kind of person that
starts being right when you learn something?
And so I consider it very pro ego to to be the kind of person
who says I'm figured out another way to make things better.
I'm just so good at this. Wow, I found another
improvement, another free lunch. Man, I'm great at finding these
free lunches. And what a fool I would be not
to take advantage of everything I'm figuring out because it's
just so awesome. So yes, a lot of people are held
back by their foolish pride. This is actually the real
meaning of Emerson's quote. A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds. He didn't say consistency, he
said a foolish consistency. And by that he meant continuing
to do things the way you did them in the past, even though
you have discovered that you've been making a mistake.
Very nice. OK, I got a few more social
desirability ones for you. Co worker asks you out to dinner
and you just want to say no I don't want to meet you for
dinner. Not because I'm busy, I don't
enjoy your company. What's a nice way to say that?
Let's see. I mean, you're depending upon
you. So of course a lot of times it's
vague and then you can just go, but you know, the timing is
vague and then you say, oh, we'll see.
So there's that one there. There's a oh, not tonight,
right? Which is totally true, yes.
I'm not doing it tonight. And then actually one of the
better parts of lightness norms is after you get a couple, not
tonight. It is considered rude to keep
asking. So I think I would go with that.
Not tonight. Finally, if someone says I did
not like that book you wrote or recommended to me, what is a
polite way to say it without lying?
This is in reference to I'm sorry I didn't say.
There is a chapter where you talk about the importance of
using the word can't with care. Don't say, oh, I can't make it.
You don't have access to a car, your legs are broken, you can't
travel means you have different priorities and that's fine.
But there is it. It is a little annoying when
people say I cannot do something when they do similar things.
So that's why we come up with this.
What do you say when you don't like the book that someone wrote
or recommended to you? Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing
is of course not to say anything at all.
Silence is not a lie. If the person does keep pushing,
then I would probably just say switch from words to noises.
The reason that I didn't once have a colleague who just kept
hassling me. And finally, I did say like, in
particular just to at least try it.
And and I just say, yeah, it's not my cup of tea.
Like, like you still got quite, quite angry.
I mean, my honest reaction was your book is an insult to me
after talking to you about how wrong what you're saying is.
For 10 years you showed no sign that you would ever listen to a
word I had said. It wasn't even like you had some
reply to my criticism. You just acted like I hadn't
even spoken to you. That is a terrible affront to my
personage. That's kind of what I was
feeling, but I just went with not my cup of tea.
Well, the the reason I ask is there is a great Thomas old
quote of if you want to help people, tell them the truth, If
you want to make yourself feel good, tell them what they want
to hear. And sometimes I feel like, you
know, I really wish someone would have told me the truth a
lot earlier in life. We're going to get into my
specific example, but don't you ever feel like, gosh, I could
really help this person, but in your case, you had helped him
for 10 years. Sometimes I feel like it's
better to be the voice of reason to bring a horse to water, so to
speak. Yeah, you totally.
So like as a parent, you are very mindful of I don't want to
crush this child, I don't want to hurt them so much.
And then it's a question of how can I be honest without doing
grave psychological harm to the child?
I think it's almost all in tone. It's almost all in tone.
It's all in tone. Good lesson.
Almost all you know, there's, there's more to it than that.
You know, like another thing is positive framing of saying let's
focus on what you are good at. Since you're not going to be a
mass, you're not going to be a mass * all right.
So like let's, you know, these are the things that you are
really good at. That's another good approach.
But a lot of it is just not saying like you suck at math,
but rather this isn't your strength.
This isn't your strength. That's a good one.
Division of Labor. What did Robin Hanson teach you
about the medical field? One of your citations is an
article from him Cut Medicine in Half, not asking you to remember
the specifics. What is the general lesson you
learned from Robin Hanson about the medical?
Field Before I met Robin, I just took for granted the
conventional view that a large majority of the rise in life
expectancy and human health over the last century is due to
better medical care. What Robin did is showed me that
almost no one who has looked at the data seriously will agree
with that. There's basically debate between
people saying it's a modest effect and people saying it's
hard even to find a modest effect.
It is puzzling as to what's going on.
Like, how could that really be? But just to give you a feel for
what kind of evidence that there is, early on people noticed, you
know, like that richer people live longer.
All right. And once modern medicine started
to be available, the they very quickly said, OK, the reason has
got to be that richer people have better access to modern
medicine. But then there were some early
natural experiments, like for example, I think early on in the
British hill service, the high ranks got medical care provided
as part of their compensation package.
The low ranks didn't. And then they say, OK, while
they're living longer, we know why.
Then they extended this free medical care to everyone in the
British civil service and the gap in life expectancy, if I
recall, did not shrink at all. And they're like, that's
strange. How could it not shrink at all?
Then we have seen very similar things where with the extension
of socialized medicine, universal healthcare in general,
we have not seen much of A shrinkage, if any shrinkage in
the life expectancy gap between rich and poor.
So, you know, it says, well, then what else could it be?
And then you start actually really thinking, right, And
there's things like, well, there's, you know, better access
to food and sanitation. And then it's like, huh.
Yeah. But when did when did access to
food become the, like, cease to become an important difference
in rich and poor? And then when you start pushing
further, it's like, well, let's go into the real socially
undesirable stories, like more responsible behavior.
Oh, yeah, that's a big one. So just taking care of yourself.
So diet and exercise just avoiding violence for males
turns out to be a notable factor.
You know, drug and alcohol consumption.
If I remember correctly, the the gap in life expectancy between
rich and poor and the US has actually risen a lot in recent
years, probably driven by opioids and other deaths to
despair. Kind of stuff that you'll get
from Case and Deaton. On page 19, you discuss your
experiences with doctors. I'm curious, when we're trying
to really develop a hypothesis or a valid intellectual position
on a person or field group of people, how can we differentiate
between anecdotal evidence and solid theories?
Yeah, that's a good question. And what I would say is
literally, it's pretty easy. It's like anecdotes are like
different stories than things that you've seen with your own
eyes. And then we, you know,
systematic evidence is where we've got nationally
representative statistics. But a lot of the thing that I've
been telling people is that in many ways, first hand experience
is a more reliable guide to how the real world works than the
media 'cause the media is really taking the most exaggerated,
unrepresentative, but dramatic incidents and then trying to
make everyone think and talk about them all the time.
So while yes, it is good to check your first hand experience
against nationally representative statistics, and
yet first hand experience is overall quite reliable,
especially compared to the news Things like, so you're worried
about terrorism, right? How many cases of terrorism is
you? Have you ever witnessed with
your own eyes? 0 Right now, if you go to the
data, you'll find that your experience is actually quite
normal because hardly anyone's experienced any of this stuff.
And the reason why the media is talking about it is not because
it is something that a reasonable person would ever
worry about, but rather because they are terrifying people in
order to get clicks. When it comes to doctors, you
had said that doctors specialize in finding a name for the thing
you have and costing tons of money.
This was very shocking to me as well.
I thought, well, doctors, this is a scientific it's not like,
you know, politics where there's opinions.
This is an objective field. Why is it that doctors have
completely succumbed to, I mean, maybe the same exact thing that
everyone else does? What was it about the medical
field that made you start questioning it?
So like, Robin was the one that got me really thinking about it
seriously because he was able to point me to actual research on
what in fact is the share of the rise in human health is
attributable medicine. And at minimum it's grossly
overstated. It's nowhere close to 100%.
But then once he had me thinking, I did start paying
more attention, just realizing a lot of what doctors were saying
was either stuff that was just obvious, like, you should lose
weight. It's like, did you need to go to
medical school to know something like that?
Or just repeating popular nostrums, like you should be
eating more vegetables. Like, well, so do you read
research on the effect of diet on human health?
And do you actually know how hard it would be to even know
that thing, since we can't do experiments on human beings for
both practical and legal reasons, You can't go and
actually make one person have a diet for 30 years and have
another one do a different diet and then compare the two.
So there's a lot of that. Let's see, I'll be in the.
And also, I did have a few unpleasant problems, usually
involving pain. And I noticed that doctors just
didn't really have much of anything for me other than a
name. So my feet hurt.
Wow, that's plantar fasciitis. All right, great.
Now what can we do about it? I did have one Doctor Who went
and gave me a prescription strength painkiller and when I
read the actual chemical formula I realized it was equivalent to
two non prescription pills. So like, yeah, that was quite
sleazy on your part. Now, to be clear, I mean, the
thing about doctors is that the range of what they do is
shocking. So doctors do everything from
the magic of cutting open a woman with twins that are not in
the correct position, opening her up, getting the babies out,
stitching her up, and she's fine.
So I saw that with my own eyes, too.
It's like, all right, there's some doctors who can do amazing
things where it's like, I just don't think that things would
have worked out otherwise. At least it's like really high
risk. But on the other hand, there are
doctors who basically just go and tell you to eat vegetables
and don't be fat, and that's what you're paying for.
And then there's the ones that just give you names for your
problems without having any actual practical remedy for your
problems. Although I think the main point
of that chapter in particular was, well, I found doctors to be
useless for pain. I found paying very careful
attention to my behavior and what I'm doing to aggravate the
pain to be highly helpful. So, and I have had some crazy,
horrible amounts of pain without any obvious cause.
But I have found that just paying very close attention to
exactly what I'm doing, what makes the pain go up and down,
and then avoiding doing those things to be really helpful.
And you know, I'll say like I've cured 99% of my problems and you
knock on wood. Yes, very nice.
The reason that I have become a little obsessed with this is
this is the first time that you and I ever had a conversation.
Now you will see this is Doctor Kaplan and I discussing open
borders, the science and ethics of immigration.
I weighed this much. At one point I was 290 lbs and I
was listening to doctors very closely, obeying what is
referred to as the USDA food pyramid.
That is what got me to that level, listening to doctors.
I also listened to a Doctor Who was kind enough to give me an
Adderall prescription, which of course turned me into a drug
addict for four years. Again, my fault.
However, they're the ones with the fancy degrees you'd think
might be a little more productive.
So two of the worst things that I've ever had were the result of
listening to people who I'm told I should blindly obey.
That's why I appreciated that section so much.
Didn't. Those food pyramid doctors tell
you to reduce your calories at least.
They said you could eat, you should eat less and exercise.
The problem with this is it is the equivalent of telling drug
addicts and Alcoholics the solution is to stop using drugs,
stop using alcohol, you're a gambler, stop gambling.
Yes, technically it's a a solution.
However, it's not within a foreseeable reach of a person
who's so deep into something that's really difficult to get
out of. It's the.
I would start with all right, cut back your calories 5%. 5%
you know I even I was eating so much bread and pasta not knowing
that bread and pasta made me fat.
I thought it was only soda and sweets or something.
I was working a job at Walmart where I was walking 8 hours a
day so I was getting plenty of exercise.
I'd never really cut back on the food, but when you're always
hungry you don't know what to do.
And then I found the carnivore diet just on YouTube.
YouTube gave me more of a more of a health education then all
the doctors I spoke with and I went.
Hey, you did your own research, Keith.
Literally it was just watching a ton of YouTube videos, taking
notes and saying what are the correlations between all these
video recommendations. Once I heard something about 10
times, then I put a check next to it and that's what what what
I came across. Yeah, the research word that I
think you're looking for is satiation.
Satiation. So basically there are diets
with the same number of calories and yet some of them will just
make you feel a lot more full than the others.
So yeah, my friend Jim Schneider, who is a voracious
reader and has a whole book on health economics called The
Seven Deadly Sins. Anyway, one of the main things
that you that is useful to learn about diet is calories are the
crucial direct variable. But in terms of getting your
calories under control, it is very helpful to go and find out
what calories fill you up and which calories don't, because it
is not the case that 1000 calories of every kind fill you
up equally. And I think that's what's going
on is that meat is actually very satiating.
There's a bunch of other things though also, like a regular
potato with no salt or butter is very satiating for calorie.
It's carbs, but partly it's just so bland that you eat it and
you're like, OK, I'm just don't feel like eating anymore if this
is all I've got. Yes, I totally agree.
Satiation, See, it's something I understood just with pattern
recognition. I didn't really understand it
intellectually, but that's my thing.
OK, You talk about individual solutions versus social
revolutions. In other words, when people look
at a problem, poverty exists. Why is it that people are so
addicted to focusing on social changes they could only
microscopically have a differential effect on, and they
seem almost allergic to solutions which are actually
under their control? For example, whenever I hear
society is racist and sexist and the poor just get poorer.
So until we completely overthrow the system, there's nothing we
can do in the interim. Right.
I mean, fortunately I will say most people are not into
revolution. That's a good news because
revolutions almost always end in a horrifying bloodbath and
things are get much worse still. What the inner psychology is,
you know, a lot of it is the same impulse that you have with
religion where you want to get some big world view and feel
like that makes you important, feel like you got answers to the
big questions. And so anytime someone has a
solution of that kind, it does satisfy this desire to be at one
with the universe in, in some sense, like I'm part of a great
cause. Whereas when you talk about
individual solutions, then that is engaging a very different
mindset. It's one where it is demanding
in a sense a lot more of you 'cause it's saying, look,
repent, repent, you know, change what you're doing, right?
Don't just go and say we need to have society change, which is
pretty much equivalent to nothing's going to happen on
your end. Rather, it puts the ball back in
your court as to why there are so few people that are just
focused primarily on individual solutions.
Yeah, yeah. I think about the concluding
speech of the movie Scent of a Woman, where Al Pacino just
says, you know, like, like I always knew the right way, but
it was too damn hard. It like it is hard in many ways
to go and improve your behavior. And especially a lot of what has
to happen with self help is you have to temporarily make your
problem even worse or make your suffering even worse in order
for it to get to get better. Think about someone who just has
no friends and they're miserable.
All right. And what is the advice?
Like, you've got to go and risk rejection by trying to meet more
people. It's like, I'm already really
sad. I don't want to be really sad
plus get rejected. So yeah, I'm sorry.
There's no other path to something better.
So there is that. Is that like a lot of times when
someone has a big problem, things have to get worse before
they get better? So when it comes to what can
individuals do to increase their income, we can say, well, the
state should be doing AB and C, OK.
I'm sure they're going to get on top of it immediately.
What is it that listeners can do today if they want to have an
increased income? Right.
All right. So I think in the book I've got
a chapter on what's called the First Law of Wing Walking.
This comes from the early days of aeronautics when acrobats
would get on flying planes and do acrobats do acrobatics.
The first law of wing walking is don't let go of what you're
holding on to until you're holding on to something else
first, right? This is a very important piece
of advice for career advancement.
Do not quit your job and try to find a better job.
That is a bad idea. Instead, hold on to whatever
your current job is, almost no matter how unsatisfactory it is,
and then start looking around for something better.
Often you can use the connections that you have on
your job to find something better, but also just keep your
eyes peeled. This isn't just something where
you've got a safety net. It is also true and confirmed in
a number of bodies of evidence, that employers prefer to hire
the currently employed because they are nervous about possible
problems with the unemployed. It's what economists call
adverse selection. So yeah, so quitting your job
and then trying to find something from scratch is just a
bad idea. But also, you know, feeling
sorry for yourself is a bad idea.
Instead, be looking around now important to understand by the
way, that there's a lot of ways to improve your job that don't
mean your income goes up. You're just looking around for
something that is a better match for you.
One of my very favorite books for self help is called Why Men
Earn More. It's a self help book for women
about how to go and get a better job.
What the book has is 25 different sacrifices that men
make to get more money. Things like work the night
shift, go and do a more dangerous job, work alone.
All right. Now when I was reading it,
though, I was realizing, sure, these are these are all good
piece of advice for women about how to make more money, But it's
also just as good advice for men to realize, hey, do you really
want to go and have these jobs that you don't like in order
just to get a bit more money? Maybe you should go and be more
like women and choose jobs based upon satisfaction or personal
satisfaction rather than income alone.
So that is a standard thing for men to do is to heavily
prioritize income. And I'd say that, at least for a
lot of guys, that's a mistake. So more dangerous jobs being
open to more opportunities in dangerous fields that explains
the male female wage gap these. Explains a lot of it.
These are 25 things that are characteristics of jobs that men
do relative to women, and all of them do predict higher income
for pretty obvious reasons. And what explains the Asian
white income gap where Asians are at the top of the incomes?
I think since 1969 Japanese Americans surpassed white
Americans. Right.
So in the data, we'll definitely see that just higher Asian
education explains a lot of it. I, I'm not sure if it's actually
been done, but it is that's related.
Research has been done anyway, so a lot of it is also probably
the Asians are more likely to do high earning majors like STEM.
As to what else is going on, or alternately you could say yes,
but what explains why they're getting more education or why
they're focusing on STEM? Then I'd say there's two things.
So one is there is good, though not bulletproof evidence that E
Asians have moderately higher Iqs than whites.
So that'll give them some boost. And then secondly, there is very
hard to deny observational evidence, although I don't know
of any good data that confirms that, just that Asians have
markedly higher conscientiousness.
They just have better worth that work ethics more focused.
They're just willing to put up with more boredom.
So I mean, I get like, I guess I would say that, you know, the
kind of evidence that I would focus on just to show that
Asians do do in fact have higher conscientiousness would just be
behavioral saying things like Asians are a lot less likely to
have non marital births. Asians are a lot less likely
lesion males are a lot less likely to be out of the labor
force. Asians are less likely to go and
have serious substance abuse problems.
So I mean, those are all in a sense, you could say, well,
that's kind of circular. Like I don't think it's that
circular. It's just saying that these are
things where it's very easy to do it or not do it based upon
just what your internal preferences are.
So I mean, I say it's no more circular than saying that if you
want to see whether it will like what people's preferences and
food are, look at what they eat at a buffet, right?
Because that's where all options are equal of the same price.
And then say, what did you put on your plate and how high did
you stack the food on that plate?
Yeah, I went to three colleges in Arizona and Arizona.
Maybe in the at the college level there's a little more,
maybe 15% of the students are Asian, but 95% of the library
was Asian. So it's definitely behavioral.
OK, two more things. What I've noticed, but I have
very limited knowledge in this area, is the two things that
I've seen people do to increase their income without having to
get a new job is show up on time.
Because people not showing up was the biggest issue in my last
two jobs #1 cause of getting fired and requesting training.
There are people who don't know that if you request training,
there are opportunities for you to get more income at your
current job. Is that just racist patriarchy
of me to think that those two possibilities are within our
reach? Or is that really something we
can do? Seems extremely sensible and I
would add make friends with the boss.
Make friends with the boss. Which you might say, so it's
just trying to appeal. Nepotism was like, no, because
the a crucial part of making friends with the boss is to be a
good employee, to try to help them do their job.
Because the life of a boss is actually not easy.
They are balancing a lot of complaints and back talk and
just difficulty with figuring out where to place people.
And if you have a can do attitude and clearly indicate
you were there to help, that almost instantly makes you their
friend. Yeah, I remember my first job
when I was 14. I was a landscaper, and my
friend and I started our own business.
And I said, finally, we're our own boss.
We just call the shots. All the power is ours.
Well, every customer had competing interests, and the
customers were the bosses. It was even worse.
I do not envy my boss at all. You say that kids are a
consumer. Good.
What does that mean? Means is that the key reason
that people do have kids and that it makes sense to and then
why you would want to have kids is that they're fun, they're
companions, you do stuff with them right There is this long
standing idea that maybe that's true now, but for most of human
history people had kids to get help on their farms.
This argument really makes very little sense.
Just imagine being a farmer in the year 1000 AD and it's like
Gee, I really want to get some help on my farm.
Plan A is to take some money and hire a competent adult to assist
me. Plan B is to have a baby with my
wife, which incapacitates her for a couple of years, and then
go and feed and care for this baby for a bunch of more years
when he is totally incapable of working.
Then put all the effort into training the kid and then hope
that when he gets old enough to actually do a good job, he
doesn't just go off on his own. Obviously the first strategy is
a way better way to get a worker.
And it's like, so then why were people having kids?
It's like the same reason why lions have kids, right?
Evolution, evolution. They have kids because of
evolution. Animals that just say of what
use is this pauper to me? They don't have kids and then
their genes die out. So human beings are evolved to,
of course, want sex, but also in addition to want kids.
Some people don't like kids very much, but a lot of other people
do get great meaning and joy from their children.
And my advice to people is if you're thinking about having
kids, well, actually how it tried babysitting a kid and meet
some kids. I mean, I don't mean I am amazed
by people say, Oh, I want to have six kids.
Like, do you know any kids? And like, no, well, I think you
should meet some kids first. That would actually be a good
idea. Now there is the old saying,
which is completely true. It's different and better when
they're your kids, but still I would say that first see how
much you like taking care of somebody else's kids and then
think, OK, my kids, I will enjoy them.
Three out of throw on a scale of one to 10, like 3 better.
So it's not like if you don't like other people's kids, you
love your own. It's more like if you like other
people's kids, you'll really like yours.
There is an author, David Benatar, who says in a book
better never to have been sentient beings are harmed when
they are brought into existence and it is therefore wrong to
procreate. This is his anti natalism
philosophy. What do you have to say to this
worldview? That people should not reproduce
because human beings, while being terrible parasites to the
environment, also experience pain and it's not worth bringing
people into existence. Yeah, Benatar is an extremely
smart, yet crazy and dogmatic philosopher, right?
Just to understand where he's coming from, he actually does
have the position that you should not consider net
happiness. You should not go and say, I had
some pain, but I also had some good stuff.
The good stuff exceeded the bad stuff, therefore it's good to be
alive. Instead, he wants to only look
at gross suffering and say, if gross suffering is greater than
0, then you're better off never existing.
All right, there's a bit more to it than that, but that is a fund
his fundamental premise. And I'll just say like, that is
absolute madness to say, like, well, I stubbed my toe today,
therefore it would have been better if the day hadn't
happened. What the is wrong with you?
Like, a lot of great stuff happened and the package is not
good enough for you. Oh, no, you shouldn't judge the
package. You should just judge the
negative part of the package. It was like, yeah, that's
absurd, Absolutely ridiculous. There's also an argument that
Benatar has that. Well, look, you when you create
a life, you are causing them to have some suffering and you
never got their consent. All right.
And again, this is part of the story about why you shouldn't do
the net. It's like, look, I can't go up
to you and then step on your foot and then give you $1000 and
then and then walk away and say I'm I've done the right thing,
right? So, and even though you value
$1000 more, the story goes like I needed your consent to go and
step in your foot. It's not enough to give you a
package that is good. I also have to say, Keith, may I
step on your foot in exchange for $1000?
Obviously with a baby you can't get that consent.
And therefore, again, the story is you are doing something that
is morally wrong to hear. I am very happy to invoke the
concept of hypothetical consent, Right?
And it's like, well, but would you have consented?
Now, there are important limits on hypothetical consent.
Namely, if you can easily get real explicit consent, then get
it. However, if for some reason it
is just not doable, or the cost is enormous, then hypothetical
consent makes a lot of sense. For example, if you see someone
is passed out from a heart attack, you can't get their
consent explicitly. And this is where it is totally
reasonable to say it is super likely they would consent to
being revived. Now if the person had a giant
shirt on or you know, his shirt on with giant letter saying if I
get a heart attack, absolutely do not revive me, then I would
say all right, maybe there's an issue here.
But otherwise, or if they had actually told you, if I ever get
a heart attack I don't want to be revived, I refuse consent to
revival, then there's a moral issue.
But otherwise, no. And the same obviously goes for
having babies. We can't get their consent
before it happens, but we do know that almost everyone would
get would give consent if they could.
And that's plenty of moral justification for creating a
life. I love the chapter that people
should check out. Doctor Kaplan says, all right,
giving someone $100 Beth seen as a nice thing to do.
Giving someone life, is that a nice thing?
Well, that's actually really complex.
I just love this book so much. You discuss merit good, such as
the opera or education. What is a merit good?
All right, this is a concept that economists came up with
really kind of reinventing the wheel of what ideas that are
already in velocity. But anyway, it's basically it's
a good where even if the person receiving it doesn't appreciate
it, it still is wonderful that it exists.
All right, so philosophers might talk about intrinsic value or
something like that. Economists had to multiply
vocabulary, so we call it a merit.
Good. This is an explanation that
economists will give like, well, so we subsidized opera.
Sure, people could pay for it if they wanted it, but opera is
just so freakishly awesome, even if people don't appreciate it,
that we should do it and hope that maybe it's free.
People will come to their senses and realize how great it is.
You recommend frugal living as opposed to financial assistance
when it comes to monetary well-being?
This is in opposition to quite a bit of what I hear.
It's that, well, people need more money.
People need more financial assistance.
The vice president came out and said, I'm going to start funding
more small businesses. I'm going to start giving people
a $25,000 tax credit on buying a house.
Why is it people should focus more on frugal living as opposed
to financial assistance? Well, from a self help point of
view, the main point obviously is you can't change the amount
of money the government hands out.
I guess you'd go and apply for more programs, but basically
that's set by somebody else. So then the question is, what
should you be doing in order to go and help yourself?
What I say is that if in particular you, you have a
philosophy saying that material goods aren't that important and
quality of life is what counts. I said, look, you don't have to
wait for government. You don't have to wait for a
revolution. Just start doing it right now.
You can indeed go and just consume less and then use the
savings to either allow you to get a easier job or a job that's
more pleasant, right? Or you can even just go and
start saving. So eventually you don't need to
work. Really the point of that piece
was to say anyone who sort of glorifies the simple life, it's
like you, this is something you don't have to wait for.
Now, I would also add, I think they know there are a lot of
people who work really hard and they spend a lot of money on
stuff that they don't enjoy very much.
And I would tell them just as a friend, like, I think you should
really think more about what you're spending money on.
And if you don't actually get joy out of it, then stop doing
it. You can then take that money and
save it. You can use that either in the
short run or maybe over the longer run to actually have a
better life in terms of what kind of work you do.
I think that is so true. I have gotten more joy out of
low cost spending money on travel and just I've stopped
going out to dinner just because it's just not worth it.
I just invite people over to my place.
I mean the bills that you rack up between drinks and all the
food, I think going out to eat is just a huge 1 for me.
Yeah, yeah, sort of. My rule is I only go to
restaurants that cook food that I am not good at making myself.
Yeah. And of course it also has to be
good, right? So, but like, but just to go and
spend money for an average mediocre restaurant?
No way. Like it's got to be great.
Oh, and and especially drinks 'cause they're almost pouring
the same bottle that I could get at Winco or Total Wine.
What is rent seeking? And seeking is a name that
economists have given to something that almost everybody
knew about before. It's basically spending
resources in order to get RE, in order to get a a larger share of
a fixed pie of resources, right? So the classic example is
lobbying the government. You aren't going and creating
value. Instead, you go and lobby the
government and you try to get a bigger piece of the government's
giveaways for yourself. The key inside of the idea is,
selfishly speaking, rent seeking often really pays off.
You say, hey, why don't I go and just try to go and grab a bigger
share of that fixed pie. But from a social point of view,
rent seeking is a bad thing because if all resources were
going into trying to get a larger share of a fixed pie,
then the amount of pie available would be quite small.
Or really, principal could just go down to 0.
This is kind of what the worst civil wars look like is you have
people murdering each other over a can of corn.
On page 39 you discuss preferences versus meta
preferences. What is the difference between
these two? All right, so this is a concept
that philosophers invented and economists went and borrowed
very eagerly. The idea is like, you could have
a preference for eating a big plate of pasta, but you could
also have a higher level preference to not do that,
right? There's the internal struggle.
Like on the one hand, I really want to drink, On the other
hand, I don't want to be an alcoholic.
Their intention, all right? Now, this has been a big part,
especially of behavioral economics saying that, look, a
lot of government regulation, especially paternalistic
regulation, it actually is really very sensible because
it's just government helping people to realize their true
preferences, their meta preferences.
I have a lot of things to say about this.
I don't have a fundamental logical objection to it.
I'll just say that I think the concept is grossly over applied
in many ways. Most obviously, look, if you
really have this conflicting preference and meta preference,
and if the meta preference is really stronger, there is a nice
website calledstick.com that will allow you to solve your own
problem without any government at all.
This is a website where you make a contract with someone else
where you have to pay money if you don't follow through on your
own plan. A classic example.
I think the founders of the website, they were both
overweight and they both did a a deal with each other where they
said we will go and both be losing weight.
And whoever loses more weight will receive $1.00 or $10 per
pound of extra weight loss compared to the other.
And so it's like a bet, like I'm betting I can lose more weight
than you and I my winnings will be $10 times the the difference
between the amount of weight that the two of us have lost.
What's striking is let's see. Have you heard of stick.com,
Keith? You said STICK.
There's an extra K, so it's stick with an extra K at the
end. That's why it says something
totally. Different.
You never heard of it, right? No, no.
So, you know, like it's a reasonably successful minor
website, but what's notable is that it is not Google, it's not
Facebook, it's not a big website, nor are there any other
websites that are similar that are super successful, which I
say shows that in fact, most of what are supposed to be meta
preferences that people are just struggling to realize.
But somehow freedom doesn't let them.
Freedom does let you go and realize your matter preferences.
The real story is that most people do not want to change.
They what it what they call their meta preferences are
rather primarily a smokescreen or defense mechanism where you
go and say, look, I mean, I, I really love my family so much.
I just feel terrible about how my drinking is affecting you,
but I just can't stop. Oh, poor me.
It's like, or you value your drinking more than you value the
welfare of your family. Actions speak louder than words
and that is my main take. So if you really did have a meta
preference, you could solve the problem without without any help
from government. The fact that hardly anybody
does, I say, shows that mostly this concept does not apply in
the real world. There is a great contradiction
between most of what we hear with both Democrats and
Republicans. They say if there is something
you disagree with about the federal government, you think
they're violating your freedoms, you talk it over, you engage in
deliberative democracy, you vote.
And this is how you really sort of reorganize things.
But if there is a potential foreign threat from China or
Russia or Iraq or Yemen or Afghanistan, we need to declare
war and justify mass violence, especially against civilians.
It's totally fine if Kaiser Wilhelm ends up living in the
Netherlands for the rest of his life, so long as we get those
Germans you have. This is the blatant appeasement
contradiction. When our domestic government
violates our freedoms, you got to talk it over.
Don't get aroused when it comes to foreign governments.
If there's even a potential we might have to nuke Beijing if
they go into Taiwan. You discussed this in the Weekly
Dominant Strategy section along with the benefits of
appeasement. What is your thesis on the
Weekly Dominant strategy and benefits of appeasement?
I mean just to back up. So I think you are exaggerating
how opposed to appeasement most governments are.
They usually just use a different word which is de
escalation. So appeasement is terrible, but
de escalation that's good. It's like it's just different
words for the same thing. But anyway, I do have this essay
called My Life of Appeasement, where start off with this idea
that appeasement never works. Appeasement never works.
As soon as you appease, they just ratchet up their demands
and it just gets worse and worse.
And you never should have given them to the 1st place.
And I say like, yeah, open your eyes.
Think about what you did today. Were you ever treated unfairly
by any human being? Today?
Most people say, yeah, OK, yeah. Or what did you do about it?
Yeah, like, nothing. All right.
Why not? And is it just because you were
an idiot, or is it because if you had escalated until you got
what you wanted, you didn't think it would actually work
out, right? And that's the truth is that
escalation is playing with fire. And usually when there's a
conflict, it is better just to go and humor people and give in.
I'm not saying never go and assert yourself, but I'm saying
that appeasement is really underrated and often contrary to
the story that as soon as you appease, once people ratchet up
their demands, like in the real world, what you usually see is
someone makes some demand, which seems unreasonable to you, you
give it to them and that settles the issue.
If someone bumps into you and they seem annoyed and you say
you're sorry and they'll say, oh, OK, no problem.
That's the that's what usually what happens.
It's very rare that they then pull their grocery cart back and
shove it back into you again and say apologize again, sucker.
That's not the way that things actually often work.
And in particular, the more you think about it, the more you
realize, look, is it possible that what I'm thinking of as
unfair didn't seem unfair to that other person?
What would a neutral observer think?
Maybe I'm the one that's being hypersensitive rather than them
being insensitive. These are all good questions to
ask. And I say that in real life, in
general, most people would be better off with more
appeasement. You just think about people that
do not practice appeasements. Where are they?
Heavily overrepresented? And I'll say, yeah, jail,
they're not Easers are heavily represented.
These are people who went pushed, pushed back.
Sometimes it gets them what they want.
But in the long run, they're doing 10 years in prison, right?
They would have been way better off if they had been a lot less
macho and it just went and said, oh, sorry, my mistake.
Even if it were you, even if you might really think, well, it's
not really my mistake, but yes. And then yes, the same thing of
course holds true for countries and in actual international
relations, of course, countries again, appease each other all
the time. Appeasement is basically the
word that you throw out when you are determined not to appease
and you want to pretend like it's always a good idea, rather
than something where you've got to go and think hard about the
facts. On page 62, you say money has
little effect on happiness, mentioning that you could have a
great thing happen to you yet. Before long, however, hedonic
adaptation kicks in. All right, so money has little
effect on happiness. What does have a big effect on
happiness? What can I do to increase the
likelihood that I will experience happiness in my life?
Yeah, the number one by far is spending more time with people
whose company you enjoy, right? So that means getting a romantic
partner that works for you, getting friends that work for
you, getting a job that works for you.
Most people like their jobs, but the main thing they like about
it is getting to work with the other people.
There's some great stuff on what a what a big ticket lottery
winners do. Most of them go back to their
jobs after they go and have a spending spree.
And the main reason that they don't is just that their Co
workers don't treat them the same anymore.
Yes. So overwhelming importance is
good human relations. That is the very top score.
Something that it requires work but it's totally doable.
Also I would start there again since I am an economist and I do
think a lot about material wealth.
A lot of the reason why money doesn't actually in the data
have have very much effect on happiness that people are not
spending it in very good ways. There's a lot of people who go
and put money down on things like a new car or granite
countertop where we've got very good evidence that people very
quickly get used to these things and stop enjoying them.
On the other hand, they spend, they are a lot more a lot more a
lot more reluctant to go and spend on things where they
clearly do make people happier. Things like paying for tolls to
get out of congestion, paying ASL cleaning lady to go and do
and clean your house so you don't have to, you know, so, you
know, get avoiding drudgery, right?
But also going back to human beings going and spending money
doing things that you enjoy with the people's company you enjoy.
So, I mean, I do know a few people actually like traveling
alone, but that is unusual. Most of the joy travel is you
get to do it with a person whose company you enjoy.
On page 66, you talk about the importance not of betting, but
especially a person's betting record being an indication of
their reputation when it comes to market actors and consumer
well-being and employee well-being.
What do you think is in the driver's seat for consumer
well-being and employee well-being?
Market reputation or state regulators?
Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question, Keith.
So there's basically 2 theories that I have seen.
The free market advocates say the reason that we have good
products and services, the reason we don't see 100% of
people earning minimum wage is competition, reputation.
Other people say it's OSHA and it's the New Deal policies.
What is in the driver's seat when it comes to the wealth and
great things we see today? Is it reputation?
Something else? I get it.
All right. Yeah.
So business reputation is overwhelmingly more important
than anything that government does, obviously.
And you don't have to be an ideologue, you don't have to
have any philosophy. You don't have to go and study
economics. Just look at your own first hand
experience. How often in your entire life
have you ever had a bad experience with a business and
contacted a regular regulator about it?
I don't care how progressive you are, the answer is probably 0.
How often have you ever filed a lawsuit again?
Zero. How often have you, on the other
hand, just gone and returned a product you didn't like?
Yeah, everybody does that. How often have you gone and just
complained to the business and said that it wasn't
satisfactory? Yeah, everybody does that.
And why does everybody do these things?
Because they totally demonstrably work.
And on the other hand, why not contact regulators and file
lawsuits? Because that is a total Hail
Mary pass. It would be amazing if that got
you anywhere, right? The truth is that businesses are
hyper concerned about what their customers think and feel.
And really all you need to do most of the time in order to get
better treatment is to speak up. Does not mean that it is always
great. The we all like we've all been
on the consumer service, our customer support line for
Verizon or something like that, like oh this is terrible.
The reason why it registers as terrible is that the system
almost always works. And then every now and then
there's some screwed up part where you are totally
frustrated, right. So, but on the other hand,
imagine if every time something went wrong, you called up the
regulator. Then it wouldn't just be that
you'd be frustrated two or three times a year, Then you'd be
frustrated every time you had a problem because calling up
regulators or filing lawsuits is just a terrible approach.
Normally I would say that in markets, if there is one part of
the free market that isn't actually giving you good
service, the solution is just to find a different pressure point
and push there, right? So this summer I had a horrible
hacking experience on Expedia. Expedia wasn't helpful.
The airlines involved weren't helpful.
But guess who was helpful? Can you guess, Keith?
Yeah, gosh, I can't remember the name.
I worked with these people. Would it have been Webroot?
No, no, no, no, no. So something much simpler.
It was my credit card company. Oh, credit card company solved
the problem for me. So Expedia wouldn't wouldn't go
and refund my money. They wouldn't go and fix the
horrible problem. The but I just we just went to,
we didn't even have to call the credit card company actually
just go to the website. We go and dispute the dispute,
the relevant charges and we and the problem was just solved
itself. That was it.
Very good. Thinking, and by the way, this
is actually another way the reputation works.
You probably know, but maybe you don't actually.
So going and disputing a charge on your credit card is highly
effective. Credit card companies almost
always take your side even against a very large business.
So like, that is your last line of defense, and it totally
works. Anytime you're worried, maybe
you'll be taken advantage of. So for example, I remember like
27 years ago when I was moving down to Virginia, I was kind of
concerned because I'd heard some horror stories about movers
going and giving you a low price.
And then once all the stuff is in the truck, they go and say,
yeah, well, before we can actually bring it to your house,
you're going to have to pay us another $700.00 or something
anyway, but pay with credit card.
And then if that happens, what you should do is say, fine, I'll
pay it. And then as soon as you got
yourself back, then you instantly call the credit or
contact the credit card company, go to the website and dispute
the charge and say what they did and you almost certainly get
your money back. Free market regulation.
I love it. On page 99 you say you love
education, yet you are very critical of the schooling
system. Why is that?
Let me just back up. So I'm the kind of person who
has just loved reading and ideas from the earliest age.
I am a professor. The stuff gives great meaning to
my life. And yet when school say that's
what we do, that's why we're so great.
That's why we deserve all kinds of support from government and
philanthropists. This is where I really do have
to roll my eyes, because like, what you are giving is just a
hollow shell of actual curiosity, of actual love of
learning. What really goes on in almost
all education is you've got a bunch of conscripts, the
students who don't want to be there, who find it boring,
listening to a teacher that is not actually exciting or
motivating. And then often the material
itself, it's like, all right, we're going to learn all the
state capitals or whatever. It's like that's not something
that's really important to learn.
It's not something that would enrich my understanding of the
human experience. So what I say is education is
great if it has all the right ingredients, if you got students
that want to be there, professors who are masters of
and passionate about their subject, and if the subject is
actually something that really matters.
I do add, of course, that there can be something that's very
boring and the students are bored and the press are not
exciting and it's worth teaching it because it's a saves lives or
it gets buildings built. There's a lot of stuff that's
just practical and it's not very fun.
Like, you know, like if I met someone who just said like, I'm
just fascinated by plastics, like really all right.
But like most people work in those industries or not, it's
they provide a useful service and then the education is self
justifying because it teaches people how to do a useful thing.
But if you're doing it for its own sake, that's where I'd say
we need to have high quality. And regular school just has rock
bottom quality. Even very top schools usually
just suck. The only clear exception I know
is the University of Chicago, where the students there I have
seen with my own eyes. They are just crazy motivated
and the faculty not perfect, but still unusually good.
And yeah, they do focus on bigger questions, but other than
University of Chicago, I don't know of any real institution
where they just have this great love of learning and curiosity.
On page 68, you discuss the concept that there are widely
accepted views today which were seen as insane a short time ago,
and this could give us some optimism with regard to terrible
things that are happening today. If we'd like to radically change
public opinion, what are some of the best examples you could
think of of views that are widely accepted today, which in
previous generations would have seen absolutely insane?
Start with religious toleration. You can't have two religions in
one country. They'll all kill each other, all
right? And you got that one.
You got general free speech. You can't just let people say
what they want to say. It'll destroy society, right?
And then you obviously slavery, like, you can't just let them be
free. Like, think about what will
happen. So yeah, those are obvious ones.
Could you imagine being in America in 1860 or something
like and it's like 3.9 million people.
Yeah, definitely freedom's better than slavery.
Well, none of them have an education.
What's going to happen? We have this wolf by the ears,
so to speak. It would be a little scary.
I'm not justifying slavery or Jim Crow or anything that
violates a non aggression principle, but you can see that
there really are costs as well as benefits to these things.
Yeah, I mean, someone who was really confident, workout great.
I would say. It's like, why are you so
confident? And someone who knew history
would even say, yeah, you know what happened when the when when
slavery was ended in Haiti, Genocide of the white
population, right. With the exception of like a few
Poles, there were some Polish soldiers who fought with the
Haitian revolutionary, so they got spared.
But it really was a giant genocide.
So like, doesn't it like not always does it work out, but
still like it worked out way better than definitely.
And for for the Haitian population, it didn't exactly
turn into Singapore for the people.
Who got their freedom? As well.
Yes. On page 72 you talk about
examples of the masses today being verifiably wrong even
though they have access to the Internet.
You use an example with a gentleman who had a bet with his
friend on the Wall Street Journal supporting open borders.
Yes, thank you. What are some examples today of
the masses are verifiably wrong about something?
Wow. I mean, where do you even start?
I mean, you could just do like, you know, crime rates.
What's happening with crime rates?
Or you could do racial differences in crime rates.
That's one where I think people would realize the direction, but
just not the magnitude. So you'll have something like
murder rates for blacks would be 7 or 8 times the white
population. So that's just, you know, one
random thing, you know, like, so you know, bigger issues like how
much have living standards risen over the last century?
How much richer have poor countries gotten in the last 30
years? So these are really obvious
things that's and yet people are quite shocked by.
Here's another one inspired by Alex Epstein's fossil Fossil
future. Total number of deaths from
adverse climate events over the last century.
It's gone from being really high to basically 0 fact.
On page one O 5 you discuss make work bias.
What is that? Make work bias is evaluating the
performance of an economy based upon employment rather than
production. Very understandable during a
period of high employment. And yet if you step back, it's
like, well, we could just create a bunch of jobs by having people
dig ditches and fill them up again.
That won't make us rich. And yes, make work bias is a
standard argument for locking obsolete technologies and
business models into place. You can see it definitely with
protectionism where there's another country that just gotten
better at doing something than your country.
Well, let's go and save those jobs anyway.
Bunch of people who are producing little value.
Let's just protect their jobs and make the rest of society go
and pay so that they don't need to go and find something else to
do. It's it is a very tempting idea
and yet, when you think about it, a terrible one.
What is the iron law of? I've only read this word, I've
never said it out loud. What is the iron law of
pedagogy? Yeah, Good.
Yeah. So pedagogy or pedagogy?
I think. I think I've heard it both ways,
as they say. OK, Yeah.
So the iron law is a pedagogy, right?
So iron law is a pedagogy. All right, first of all,
students learn only a small fraction of what you teach.
Anyone who's ever taught students knows this to be true.
Like I've said this 10 times. How come you still don't know
it? A lot of students don't know it.
You know, next iron law of pedagogy, Students retain only a
small fraction what they learn. You go and look at what the
students knew on the day of the exam and it's like, all right, I
guess it's something. Come and ask them the same
questions again in a few months, like they've forgotten it all.
What the hell, right? And then the Third Point,
students apply only a very small fraction of what they remember.
Even if a student learns it, even if they remember it when
the rubber meets the road and they have an opportunity to
apply it in the real world, they usually don't.
You could use the Pythagorean theorem when you are figuring
out measurements for your house, but most people will just go and
do the measurements and will not use the Pythagorean theorem.
And you say, wait, what's that Pythagorean theorem again?
Oh, yeah, it's the C is equal to sqrt a ^2 + b ^2.
Well, you realize you were just doing a diagonal of a right
angle, so you could have done that.
And yeah, most people don't. And then I think you can add a
fourth iron law to pedagogy, which is that most people are
very, most people are very bad at applying, transferring the
way, whatever knowledge that they can apply in a narrow case
to any broader case. Right.
And this is all just the way the world works.
If you teach students in MIT then you might not have to
experience the bitterness of this so often, but if you just
get down one step from the very best students in the world, then
you will see it is really hard to teach anybody anything of any
value. So if I just want to be the
greatest economist of all time and I want to learn and then
maybe teach myself, how would I go about learning such a thing?
And what advice would you want to give my teacher to make sure
that I become the greatest economist of all time?
Yeah, I mean, depending on where you are, but honestly, I always
tell people start with textbooks they've got.
There's a lot of screwed up stuff in textbooks, but still,
it gives you a quick overview of the field and will get you
thinking, if you have a critical mind at all, about what parts of
the textbook are more and less compelling in terms of how the
teacher can go and help you. I mean, most of it is
motivational. We're all to say, look, you've
got to make it fun. Make it funny.
Don't take yourself so seriously.
Sell your field. Sell your field.
Be like always be telling your students this is what economics
illuminates in the real world. This is something from real
life, something from your own experience that you will
understand better as a result. Of course, most students,
there's just no way of reaching them at all.
So hard truth. But this is how you do the best
that you can. On page 111 I'm keeping an eye
on the time. I know you got to go in 5
minutes. Page 111 you have an objection
to egalitarianism focusing on grade merit verse income merit.
Can you walk us through what egalitarianism is?
Because I think it is straw manned a lot and what your
objection is to egalitarianism? Yeah, well, simple version of
egalitarianism is if you're going to eat that candy, you
have to share it equally with everyone.
You bring it up for everyone. Everyone can get 130th of your
chocolate bar or something like that.
All right, so that's the simplest version.
I would say. It's not a straw man to say that
a lot of people just think that the more equal things are, the
better, no matter what. Right now, if you are something
that is handing out grades and the question is, so should I
just give the average grade to every student regardless of
their work? You might say, well, this will
give bad incentives or whatever. All right, so I suppose there
are new incentives and just a matter of I could either give BS
to everyone or I could give ACE to the students that know the
material and CS to the ones that don't really know the material.
All right, what should I do then?
And I say, look, I would just think it's wrong to go and give
the same grades to people who know different amounts of stuff.
I'd say the people that have learned the material have done
well and they just, they have earned their As and they're
entitled to them and it doesn't really matter what the
consequences are. And on the other hand, the
people that don't know the material, like they deserve
those low grades, like they didn't learn it and so they do
not merit those higher grades. I'd say a lot of people are
comfortable with this, but then it like even very left wing
professors are not comfortable giving A's to students that
never showed up. And then it's like, well, why
don't we think about the economy in the same way?
Like, it's just not right that someone that really produced a
lot of value got would get paid the same amount of someone that
didn't. And never mind the incentive
effect, which is also important, but even without the incentive
effect, shouldn't someone that did better actually get the
rewards? You can also think about this as
like at the Olympics, should everybody get a medal, right?
And you know, and furthermore, to say, well, you don't really
deserve your gold medal cause your parents really helped you.
It's like, you know, it's true. My parents helped me and I
couldn't have gotten here without my parents, but I'm
still the fastest runner on earth.
Give me my gold medal. I deserve it.
Oh please don't give the world gold medal inflation.
How can I differentiate between a good economist and a bad
economist? Well, there is the classic line
from Henry Hazlett saying that a bad economist only thinks about
the effects in the short run and only the immediate facts,
whereas a good of an economist thinks about the more distant
effects and the effects in the long run.
I think that's a pretty good way to start, although actually I
think I would probably say it differently and rather say,
look, a a good economist is one that scrupulously avoids social
desirability bias, that makes a strong effort not to go and
sugarcoat the truth, doesn't try to figure out a way to make the
results socially acceptable, and instead just describes the world
really bluntly as it is. You know, my view is most of the
value additive economics is that it is the one social science
where there is a strong tradition of just speaking very
candidly, no matter how offensive what we're saying is
to the rest of the world. And that's why we make a lot
more progress in understanding the human condition than other
fields where they've got tools that are good, but they're just
handcuffed by their own fear of offending other people.
So I have heard the line so many times since the debate that
Americans are as divided as ever, as if there wasn't a civil
war or the Kent State shootings of OK.
So the point is, people think this is a really bad situation.
We got on our hands. What is something you would say
if you were the Martin Luther King Junior of today?
What is a message you would give to Americans in hopes of
unifying them in a positive way? That's common, that would lead
to peace? Because I'm afraid the only way
they can unify us is war against China or war against Russia.
Seems like the only thing we have in common is we fought
those National Socialists together.
So what is a message you would give to the masses to unify
blacks, whites, men, women, Americans?
This is going to sound crazy, but I'm just going to go back to
the book before the one we're talking about.
Build, BB, build. Finally, here's the message that
all that we need to talk about Let's deregulate housing.
Housing is crazy expensive. Government strangled it, and if
we would just go and deregulate housing, it would lead to
massive economic growth, rising living standards, lower
inequality, lower poverty, lower crime, more babies.
Let's just put aside all these other arguments and just get
together and take a flamethrower to the building code and the
land use regulation. That is what IA message that is
totally constructive. And as I argue in Bill baby
build, both liberals and conservatives, people of all
ideological views who are at least a little reasonable should
be able to agree on this. And it's a big project to go and
get rid of height restrictions, multi family restrictions,
minimum lot size, parking regulations, historic
reservation regulations, just to get rid of all this stuff.
It's a massive project, would take a lot of time, and
something that we could all do together for our own reasons,
which from our own philosophical views makes sense.
I don't think I could actually sell this, but in terms of an
idea that deserves to be a common goal that we can agree on
and without agreeing on the rationale, agree on the
destination, I think housing deregulation is a great one.
Thank you to everyone for watching the Libertarian
Institute and Keith Knight Don't tread on anyone.
The book is self help is like a vaccine essays on better living.
Find it exclusively at Amazon. Doctor Kaplan, thank you so much
for your time. Thank you very much and $12.00
for the paperback and 999 for the ebook.
Despite tons of abide inflation, I have not raised the price.
Worth every penny.