I was very excited when I first heard about this book months ago. I'm so glad Caplan is back to writing real books, and I'm very glad he's writing THIS one
The cover (not sure it's the final one) looks very Atlas Shrugged-inspired
I'm about 60 pages in — I have an ARC; Den-privileged connections to UCP — and I'm thoroughly surprised at how engaging it is.
His big novel take is that free markets had bad PR
Worse, it's that we (well, "we", but the vast majority of people including, especially, dominant economists, whose views he traces down via, e.g., top research papers and textbooks) don't like markets enough... BECAUSE OF SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS!!
I'm unsure what and how much I'm allowed to share... it's still six months to publication, but preorders are open (of course...)... and I shall have more to say about it once I've read the whole thing.
“human beings’ beliefs about free markets versus government are deeply superficial.” (8)
...and that's the main/overarching argument:
the correlation between what’s popular and what sounds good is near-perfect. The main reason why most people resent markets is precisely that businesses do good stuff that sounds bad. The main reason why most people smile upon government is precisely that governments do bad stuff that sounds good (8)
What we'll get is not just that gov growth is bad and we should stop having govts do so many things, but a radical program for deregulation, privatization and austerity.
It basically boils down to a cool martial arts trick: about democracy, about the classic market "failures" of externalities, imperfect competition/information, public goods... he flips their logic and does public good analysis/externality consideration on those policies and the split between academic result/reasoning and real-world governments
yeah gov can improve on and “make markets work better for society. Point granted. But why would they desire to?” (p. 15)
[my notes:]
..."it" being some recent, captivating disaster (inflation of the 70s, terrorism, GFC, pandemic, inflation of 20s etc).
- perhaps there’s a decent case for subsidizing activities with positive externalities… but govts go HAYWIRE with it… triiiillions of free shit indiscriminately
- perhaps (and it pains me to openly admit this, because honestly, bring back senicide... which we unfortunately never had) maybe there's a good case for a government-mandated (financial) caretaking of the elderly... but then governments go haywire with a burdensome and inefficient society-wide redistribution program to communists
“Love of truth aside, I write this book to steel the resolve of free-marketeers, to re-moralize the demoralized.” (19)
That's good enough for me; let's fucking go, bro.
Or government stuff sounds good to them because they're bad people.
...yeah, or that!
I harp on this all the time in my econ classes.
"Just because there's room for improvement via government intervention, doesn't mean government intervention actually will improve things."
When teaching monopolies and the case for regulation, I always list "do nothing" as one of the regulatory possibilities, explaining that a poorly designed policy, or a corrupt government could be worse than the deadweight loss from monopoly.
That being said, I have a few critiques:
This sounds extremely squishy. How do you even measure what "sounds good" or "sounds bad"? Is it entirely in the minds' eye of the author?
I think the bad PR has more to do with our actual economy (which is called capitalism) is a zombie version of a free market, in which the government has almost free rein to print money and regulate the hell out of anything.
Even that is fucking amazing though and big entitled babies whine all day about living in the most prosperous society in human history.
What I always want to emphasize is that there's a ceiling to how much room for improvement there is. If you can't operate that government program for less than the deadweight loss, then there is no room for improvement via government intervention.
I mean, we were talking about it here: #1599758
not many people are feeling the progress in the last 20 years
sure, the new technology is impressive, but I'm not convinced we're better off
Slightly different things:
...and in that wedge, human progress type peeps lose themselves. When someone says the second one, they hear the first
don't disagree with any of that, indeed.
It feels very underwhelming a take, but if it's anyone who can convince me otherwise, it's Mr. Caplan
The state and capital aren't enemies, they're partners. "Free market" is just the state protecting the banks and calling it freedom
yesyes, I'm aware that's the talking point #1587500, #1588944
It looks quite interesting for those who like economics topics; nice review @denlillaapan