Are You An Ideological Robot? – The Ideological Turing Test
24 Dec 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture Tags: Bryan Caplan, political correctness, regressive left
Bryan Caplan & Charles Murray on “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”
10 Oct 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of information, economics of love and marriage, health economics Tags: Bryan Caplan, Charles Murray
Bryan Caplan – Forsyth Lecture: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think
24 Jul 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of education, health economics Tags: Bryan Caplan
Resolved: The Government Should Cut Off All Funding to Colleges and Universities
27 Jun 2018 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics Tags: Bryan Caplan
Is education worth it?
25 Mar 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: Bryan Caplan, signalling
The case against education (Part 1) – interview with Bryan Caplan
17 Mar 2018 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, economics of information, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: Bryan Caplan, signalling
“College is a MASSIVE Waste!!” Tucker’s Interview with Bryan Caplan
27 Dec 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, human capital, occupational choice Tags: Bryan Caplan, signaling
Basic Income: Better Than Welfare?
06 May 2017 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, welfare reform Tags: Bryan Caplan, universal basic income
Do Parents Matter? Q&A with Bryan Caplan, Author of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
15 Mar 2017 Leave a comment
Caplan Hanson Debate: Robots will eventually dominate the world
02 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply Tags: automaton, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, skill biased technological change
@NZGreens @nzlabour @uklabour @berniesanders bite a gift horse in the mouth when complaining about the ignorance of the average voter
23 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of information, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: anti-foreign bias, anti-market bias, Bryan Caplan, Deirdre McCloskey, make-work bias, New Zealand Greens, New Zealand Labour, pessimism bias, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, votor demographics
Fascinating. Yawning chasm between why Labour members think they lost and why voters think they did. From @thetimes http://t.co/MvhZYI2CTr—
Joe Watts (@JoeWatts_) July 23, 2015
Left-wingers do whinge about voters not understanding; about how if only the voters understood better their arguments than they do now. The Left thinks voters just keep getting it wrong.
They do not know how lucky they are. Rational ignorance and rational irrationality are a rich harvest for the policies of Labour and the Greens.
Most of the policies of Labour and the Greens are premised on cultivating the rational irrationalities of voters. These lead to Bryan Caplan’s pessimism bias, an anti-market bias, an anti-foreign bias and make-work bias:
The evidence—most notably, the results of the 1996 Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy—shows that the general public’s views on economics not only are different from those of professional economists but are less accurate, and in predictable ways.
The public really does generally hold, for starters, that prices are not governed by supply and demand, that protectionism helps the economy, that saving labour is a bad idea, and that living standards are falling.
Politicians mindful of re-election must pander to these four biases.
Fortunately, for the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, voters have no rational reason to correct these four biases. Voters are rationally irrational. As each individual counts so little, why spend any time correcting biased political beliefs?
Anti-market bias: The tendency to underestimate the benefits of the market mechanism. The typical voter equates market phenomena such as profitability and interest as examples of unbridled monetary confiscations by ‘greedy’ businesses. This biased against the market, despite all its successes, is a rich field to till for both Labour and the Greens
Anti-foreign bias: The tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of interaction with foreigners. This antagonism towards such trends as outsourcing employment overseas, or selling raw materials to faraway traders, is reminiscent of the mercantilism Adam Smith so brilliantly demolished but it still lives on today in the hearts of the voting citizenry. Labour and the Greens play to that bias shamelessly.
Make-work bias: The tendency to underestimate the economic benefits from conserving labour. Those who look to the visible face of job losses overlook the job gains (often by those who lost their jobs) to be made tomorrow in emerging industries. The Greens and Labour are sure-fire enemies of creative destruction.
Pessimistic bias: The tendency to overestimate the severity of economic problems, and to underestimate the recent past, present and future performance of the economy. In The Progress Paradox (2003), Gregg Easterbrook ridicules abundance denial:
Our forebears, who worked and sacrificed tirelessly in the hopes their descendants would someday be free, comfortable, healthy, and educated, might be dismayed to observe how acidly we deny we now are these things.
Many average voters seem to feel that Malthus was correct in diagnosing the allegedly poor prospects for the market economy.
Where would the voting base of the Greens be without a pessimism bias? They are professional pessimists and doomsday prophets from their earliest days. Labour assumes working class Tories are dupes of what is left of fading media barons such as Rupert Murdoch.
Bryan Caplan on why H.L. Mencken was right
22 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of information, Public Choice Tags: Bryan Caplan, H.L Mencken, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, voter demographics
Make Progress, Not Work! Bryan Caplan’s best single video
21 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, economics of information, economics of media and culture, growth miracles, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: Bryan Caplan, capitalism and freedom, makework bias, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy
18 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, economics of information, economics of media and culture, growth disasters, growth miracles, liberalism Tags: antimarket bias, Bryan Caplan, capitalism and freedom, life expectancies, living standards, pessimism bias, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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