EconBuff #39 with Bryan Caplan
Dr. Bryan Caplan answers the question, “How Evil are Politicians?”. Dr. Caplan walks us through why he views politicians as evil. Dr. Caplan argues that politicians are negligent when evaluating the outcomes of their policies. Dr. Caplan addresses the role of incentives and how it differs between markets and politics, especially in a democracy. Dr. Caplan lays out how politicians are demagogues, desiring power and making decisions accordingly. We discuss whether democracy motivates power-hungry politicians to do a good job despite bad intentions. Dr. Caplan evaluates democracy as a solution to evil politicians. Finally, Dr. Caplan discusses the nature of truth and why he is pessimistic about the future of political decision-making.
Read Bryan's Work:
-Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration (co-authored with SMBC's Zach Weinersmith),
Bryan's Blog:
Transcipt:
Stitzel: Hello, and welcome to the EconBuff Podcast. I'm your host, Lee Stitzel. With me today is Dr. Brian Caplan. Dr. Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include: The Myth of the Rational Voter (named the best political book of the year by the New York Times), Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, Open Borders (co-authored with SMBC’s Zach Weinersmith), Labor Econ Versus the World, [and] How Evil Are Politicians? He's got a forthcoming book, or an upcoming book, titled Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing which will be published by The Cato Institute early in 2023. He also is the Chief Editor and Writer at Bet on It --- a blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He's published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and The Atlantic. He is also published in high-level academic journals including: The American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, Journal of Law & Economics, and Intelligence. He's blogged for a long time at Econ Log. And he's also appeared at on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-Span. Brian, welcome.
Caplan: It’s fantastic to be here Brandli.
Stitzel: So, I’ve had the pleasure of reading about half of these books --- Myth, Case Against Education, and How Evil Are Politicians? --- they're excellent books. I can’t recommend them enough. You're a phenomenal writer --- very, very easy to read, and you make contrarian claims.
Caplan: Brandli, you're a phenomenal reader.
Stitzel: No, we'll see about that. But I haven't I haven't read Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids --- which is silly; because I actually have nine siblings, and I have four kids, with one on the way. So, maybe I just didn't need to read that book. I read How Evil Are Politicians? And in preparation for this --- it's a collection of blog posts that you've curated, and --- I don't know --- lightly edited maybe for the book How Evil Are Politicians? And so, I’m just gonna start with the question that everybody's here to hear answered. Are politicians actually evil?
Caplan: Almost all politicians really are quite evil. And it's not because I disagree with their policy views or their intellectual positions. Even ones who agree with me it really comes down to this --- they wield enormous power, but they spend almost no time wondering whether they’re using it justly. It's all about getting power and getting what they want. And there is the great Spider-Man Principle [which states]: “With great power comes great responsibility.” If all you're doing is waiting tables it isn't all that important for you to sit around saying: well, yeah, but what is the most just economic policy? But if you actually have your hands on the dials of economic policy, [then] you are in a position of great power. And as I say in the book --- basic morality says that you must tread very lightly with great trepidation. Am I doing something really wrong? I have this great power. I can do what I want. It’s hard for people to stop me --- which means that it's up to me to stop me. And I see almost no sign that more than a tiny, tiny fraction of politicians worry about the stuff at all. Instead, it’s about how can I get everything I want, right? Which if all you’re (if what you’re) doing is waiting tables, [then] that's not a big deal. It's like literally don't worry. Well fine. I’ll, like, work really hard waiting the tables. That's how I get what I want. But on the other hand, if you have all that power [and are] just saying: like, what can I get away with is a path for to doing terrible stuff.
Stitzel: So, do you differentiate between, like, the political process is evil versus politicians are evil? Are you just saying this to, kind of, get a rise out of this because you're a contrarian kind of guy?
Caplan: It's true there's a lot of economists who just want to say: oh, you can't judge the individual person [because] they're all part of the process. It's like --- look, come on. Like, the process is just the combination of the results of all the individual behavior. If you say that there's a moral obligation for the system to work better, but no individual has any duty to do anything about it, [then it] really amounts to saying that there's no duty to do anything about the system. So, yeah. When you hear about someone who's working in a concentration camp or something like that, [then] it's like: well, what can I really do? Well, you know, could you quit your job? Could you get away with that? There's this famous book at the time of Hitler’s willing executioners, and it really did get to the key question. What would have happened to the guys working in the Nazi death camps if they had just said no and quit their jobs, right? Because if it was true that they were going to get executed if they failed to go and do it, then you might say: all right. Well, but they're not really evil people. They’re just people that are afraid for their lives. And it's understandable that they would go and kill another person to save their own life. And, like, would you really do any better? Reasonable point. But what if it turns out that actually hardly anyone was even disciplined for quitting? And that's pretty much how it was, right? There really was very little official retaliation against someone who says this violates my conscious. I refuse to be part of it. And that's where I say: yes, under those circumstances, if you can quit and get away with it. And of course, you have a moral responsibility to say: I’m not going to be part of this death camp. Right now, you know, are most actually running death camps? No, they’re not. But they're doing stuff that's still at least possibly terribly bad. You’re putting someone in jail for going and selling marijuana. Well, you might say: well, it's not my decision to figure out whether that's it's morally wrong to go and put someone in jail for 10 years for marijuana. Yeah, who's is it then? Like, you're the person enforcing the laws. You're the person that's going and making the laws. The person that's getting to power saying: we've got to crack down on marijuana use. All right. Well, have you ever thought about the arguments that it's wrong to go and put people in jail for doing this? And it's like, no. I can't be bothered. Or what's that going to do for me? Yeah. Well, it’s not really a point about what's in it for you. It's about one point about what do you need to do to be minimally morally acceptable? And you're not willing to do that. So, yeah. I mean, like, very willing to hold people accountable. Indeed, it's one where when you actually have some distance, [then] the idea that this stuff is O.K., because you're just following orders or whatever. It seems crazy to almost everyone. And when you hear a Nazi saying: I was just following orders. It's like, oh O.K. Well then, that's all right. It's like, no. That's not all right. Or the even more bizarre one as well --- I was paid to do it. It's like O.K. Well then, you have to sure that you should turn the money down or take the money and then not do the job. Not say: I have an obligation to go and murder an innocent person because I accepted a murder for higher contract. But no. Wrong.
Stitzel: So, I happen to know that you're a Sonician fan. I read his article.
Caplan: Solzhenitsyn.
Stitzel: Pardon.
Caplan: Solzhenitsyn or Nitsyn?
Stitzel: Solzhenitsyn. Yeah. Did I say it wrong?
Caplan: Yeah.
Stitzel: Solzhenitsyn.
Caplan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know if that's the according to the Hoyle [Hoyle’s of Oxford lingo cards) Russian pronunciation, but I’ve always heard Solzhenitsyn.
Stitzel: Yeah. This is a definite limitation in my skill is pronouncing Russian names. But so, I had read an article [and] the name is escaping me. It's something like, Don't Say Lies, or something like this. And his premise is, you know, you don't have to go and sacrifice yourself on every little moral hill. Just don't do things that are evil. Just don't do things --- just don't give ascent to things that are evil. I kind of hear some undertones of that and what it is that you’re saying. So, I think for the employee, the everyman, [and] the waiter at the table, there's a lot of sense in this, right, where it's like we're not expected to make the world different by a set of our few choices as just, sort of, average people if you will. One of the themes in How Evil Are Politicians? is, you know, going through and making the calculations about different policies and the cost-benefit trade-offs, and thinking carefully about what sort of philosophical ideas apply. So, comment a little bit on the nature of that. If you're a voter, as we might learn from Myth of the Rational Voter, the impact of me being very well informed or not is pretty low. But you're saying it is very important for politicians themselves to have gone and done that on all the things that they're voting on.
Caplan: Yeah. In the case of voters, I would say that if you haven't had time to go and really think about these issues, you've got a very easy out which is just not participating. This is the point that philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book The Ethics of Voting, where he says that if you are going to actually vote and participate, then you've got a more responsibility to do some due diligence. Maybe not master all of social science and philosophy, but at least to calm down and ponder the basic arguments. But with the proviso that you could always just say: well, this is above my pay grade and I’m not going to participate. I’ll leave this to wiser heads. He has the great hypothetical of being in a surgical room and then someone says: hey, it doesn't matter where you cut. Just cut. No! Quite the opposite. It matters a great deal where you cut. And if you don't know what you're doing, [then] don't pick up a scalpel and start hacking people up. That's what's wrong.
Stitzel: So, are the are the politicians well-intentioned people who fail to do this due diligence? Or do we have people that are looking to be picking up scalpels and then, sort of, willfully not knowing where to cut?
Caplan: Yeah. I mean, I would say that if you're extremely morally negligent, then I’m not gonna give you the praise of saying you're well intentioned. I’ll say: yeah, your intentions are quite poor. You want to go and remake the world without thinking about what you're doing first. That is a very bad thing to do, right? So, that's my basic story there is I don't think that they are really well-intentioned. If you were to say what are their conscious intentions? And probably like one big part of it is [that] I’m gonna do some great good; but just in a very cavalier way, where it's like I’ll just, sort of, take it for granted that the thing that will get me power (the thing that sounds really good) is correct. And again, as I talk about quite a bit in the book --- [and] a lot of what you'll see with politicians is just very hastily accepting that whatever sounds good really is good even though it takes only a few seconds to realize [to] wait a second --- there's a lot of ideas that sound really good on the surface that are actually bad. And it doesn't take a lot of thought to realize this [like the] everything camp --- shouldn't the government just pay for everything? Sounds really nice to a five-year-old, right? But if you are a few years older, [then] you'll say: yeah well, where's the money coming from? And what will there be to buy if everybody receives all the money they want for free? You know, very basic points. And yet, a politician really can be very successful without ever really pondering the stuff, and just saying: hey, you know, here's what I’m prepared to do. Give every American free college. Get every American free health care. Why not free everything? What about that? Like, we’re not talking about that. Yeah, well why? It doesn't seem like you really thought this through. Rather you just latch onto slogans that sound good and are a path to power. I do doubt that many politicians are consciously thinking: well, I’m so evil. Ha ha ha. It’s more along the lines of they are extremely power-hungry individuals who just have a normal human impatience of anything that gets in the way of going full steam ahead with their plan.
Stitzel: Because I’m from a very similar background as you, probably we should overlap on a lot of beliefs. You know, this idea that politicians are fundamentally power hungry and they're --- that's what they're wanting to do. And the way that you and I want to make money, and, you know, study things that we're interested in studying in. And other people want to have money for vacations. These are individuals that want to have power. But this idea of that power hunger is probably a little foreign to other people that would be listening to this that [are] maybe not as well-versed in in public choice theory or econ these kinds of things --- can you lay that case out for our average listener?
Caplan: Here's what I would say. Let's just back up and think about almost all of human history, where basically every human society has a dictatorship, right? Do you think the people got to the top and those systems are power hungry, right? That's one where, I think, almost everyone would say: yeah, I think that if you pack your hack, and kill your way to the top of a big hierarchy of people, then probably you're a power-hungry person. Duh! And then you say: all right, well, and we got a bunch of dictatorships on Earth right now. Seems like the same basic processes work there, right? When you become dictator of Congo, right, how does [or] what kind of person gets that job? It's like, well, a person is willing to go and starve millions of people to death so they can wear the crown, right? Right. And then, the question is, all right, [that] so far, we're in agreement. Now what about people getting on the top of democracies? Do you really think that just when you become a democracy that the desire for power disappears from the human soul? No. Do you really think that people that want power no longer bother with politics and democracies? No, so of course, it's true that you don't go and become the leader of Sweden now by massacring other Swedish politicians or anything like that. But still. It's the same basic personality type that's been ruling every other human society, which it seemed very hard to believe otherwise. Especially remember how self-selected these people are. You know, becoming a major politician is not like being the president of a chess club, where you might actually be pressured by your friends to say: hey, it's your turn. You got to run the club dude, otherwise the club will disappear. O.K., fine. I’ll run the stupid chess club. Right? Something like that. There's not a lot of selection to become the chief. And so, maybe the people running things like that aren't very power hungry. But when it's something (when it's a job) that'll that hundreds or thousands of people want --- even being a city councilman or something like that --- that's where the race is going to go to people who are hungry for that job, plus who have a bunch of other traits that help them (like being able to persuade other people that they ought to have power). So, charisma --- just being able to go and demagogue to the population [and] sound really good. Tell people what they want to hear. So, it's really the same thing like with Olympic athletes. You look at Olympic athletes and you say they're just regular people. Like, no way are they regular people. A regular person wouldn’t go and do everything that it takes to get there. And just remember, you know, to get to the top of the Olympics (or like even to be in the running), you basically have to give up everything else in your life, and get your whole family on board; so they can take you to practice at 4 a.m. every day for 10 years just so you can be, like, the last place on the synchronized swimming team or whatever. So, yeah. Like, you know, like any time that there's a contest --- where there's a lot of people who want to get in and win, and then we look only at the winners --- [then] the idea the winners are not heavily self-selected is pretty crazy. Of course, they're self-selected. And obviously, one of the main kinds of selection you’re getting in politicians is hunger for that kind of power, right? Now there's other words you can use to describe the same thing. You say: oh, they're not power hungry, they're just super ambitious. All right? And they want to go and get, again, have a big say over how society is run, right? That's just like other words. It's just saying like the difference between being cheap and frugal. It's just putting a positive description, on this positive connotation, on exactly the same description.
Stitzel: So, we kind of come back to this idea that we touched on a minute ago. You've got individuals that are power hungry, and they get power by telling people what it is that they want to hear. Is that what's made our perspective shift to --- oh, our politicians are civil servants, and they're upstanding people, and they're people we should look up to, right? But a lot of people would look up to politicians and say these are --- maybe heroes is a little bit of a strong word, but --- role models or something like that. Do you see democracy itself is principally, sort of, shifting that point of view for citizens?
Caplan: Say, at least for the past three decades, the level of political polarization is so high that almost no one actually respects politicians in general. Rather, you have people who are saying their side is good and the other side is terrible. You know, honestly, I think a lot of it is just --- I don't want to talk about our side let's just talk about how your side is terrible. That's pretty much how it goes. So, you know, honestly, whenever I talk to someone who says: oh I love democracy, [then] I say: well, do you love it all the time, or only when you're side is in power? All right. Fine. Well, really only when my side’s in power. That's right. So, it's a system that basically half the time works well, and the other half the time is terrible. That’s your position. And how can you be enthusiastic about a system that works well half the time? Now, if McDonald’s half the time gave you food and the other half the time gave you a bag of garbage, [then] would you then say: oh, McDonald’s is great. I don't think so! It's really more like a system, that even according to people who officially love it, is actually very subpar. Half the time it's working terribly. And it is not reasonable to think that that will ever change, right? The odds that people will suddenly go to the world [and say]: well, oh yeah, it's just great all the time. So, I mean, the last time I even read any human being who said that they like both parties --- just imagine anyone in the United States saying I like both parties a lot --- that would be really odd. They're in the 1980s there was a columnist named Andy Rooney. For the 1988 election he said: all these candidates are great except Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jackson was the one person he singled out. But he's like --- Gephardt, Bush, Tsongas, Dukakis, and … Well, they're all great guys every single one of them, right? But like, other than that blast from the past, there's basically no one on Earth who has this view that the system in general is good, or that respects politicians in general. Now, there is (there are) some people that are government employees (they're generally not politicians) that do get some kind of bipartisan respect. People like veterans, teachers, firemen, [and] before George Floyd --- policemen, right? You know, these are ones where even if you understand --- look O.K. I’m a Republican --- teachers are Democrats. But still, they're good people. They teach our kids. Or on the other hand, even if you're a Democrat, still you know that soldiers tend to be Republican. Like, oh wow. But they’re protecting our country. So, there's a bit of that. So that's, sort of, where there is this halo effect of anyone who has that job gets my respect. But the politicians themselves, I think that there is this polarization --- which on the one hand is pretty crazy to think that there's this enormous difference between the parties, but on the other hand to at least acknowledge that half the time the system is working poorly.
Stitzel: I think that's a big step forward. At least that’s a nice segue to what I think was probably my favorite part of the book. When I get an opportunity to teach principles classes, I always find a way to make the point that, you know, democracy does not replace markets. And I think we have, kind of, markets are good. Democracies are good in general kind of idea. And so, that's why I think people think you can provide things through democracy and will get market type outcomes. And you --- what I think is probably the best point in the book is where you --- go through and make the point that, you know, it's not that greed is good. It's that you, that self-interest, when you're given the right set of incentives can lead to good outcomes. So, talk to us a little bit about the difference between market outcomes and political outcomes.
Caplan: Right. So, there's this famous slogan --- “greed is good” [is] often attributed to free market economists. And when I say well, that's a pretty crazy view in a lot of situations, [because] if you're in the middle of the jungle, and you beat a bunch of guys with guns, and you're carrying a bag of gold, and you say O.K. well, greed is good. That's going to protect me. It's like, no. Their greed is what's going to lead them to rob you and maybe murder you so you can't go and get revenge on them or tell anybody. In many circumstances, greed is actually a terrible thing. What is good about markets is that it is able to take this motive of greed, and then combine it with some other things, and then the whole package gives you good results. So most notably, there is competition. And so, that the consumer has a choice between different options, in which case the way to make money is to make the consumer happy. And I think I also mentioned reputation is another important one --- where the fact that someone doesn't deal with you, well, if there's no reputation, [and] if you don't worry about the future ---[and] then again, greed is likely to lead them just to try to get your money and then give you the worst possible thing, or give you something that looks really good but then falls apart the next day. Reputation is again something that focuses not just on making the consumer happy temporarily, but on making the consumer happy durably, so that the person spreads the word and wants to come back, right? So, I started off by saying that this “greed is good” slogan is a great overstatement, and it is only true in certain special circumstances. And then similarly I say: well, how about power hunger? Well, if greed is not good except in certain situations, then power hunger you can also expect to be bad in a wide range of situations. And the question comes down to how about power hunger with democracy? Is that similar to greed plus markets plus reputation with competition? And in that thing, the piece, I say: no, not really. Because the person that goes and votes for a politician who has very bad policies --- well, the same thing happens to them as if they voted for the other guy --- which means that democracy is really a deeply dysfunctional system. The amazing thing is that it works as well as it does, which I would say is not very well at all, but I’m just considering, like, let's see. It’s like, at least most democracies are not permanently on fire, which is kind of what you might expect, given how awful the incentives actually are.
Stitzel: There's a couple follow up to that that I’d like to ask. One is --- I think a listener at this point could grant a lot of the things that you've said at this point, and then just ask --- well but, doesn't democracy motivate power hungry politicians to do a good job despite their bad intentions? Which is another way to, sort of, ask what you were just talking about.
Caplan: What I say is it totally depends on voters. So, if voters are reasonable people with a long-time horizon, then yeah. The way to get power is to go and offer reasonable policies with good effects, in not only the short run, but also the long run. Then the question is --- all right, how many such voters have you ever encountered in your whole life, right? Actual voters are highly emotional. They are not interested in cost-benefit analysis. They're not interested in measuring what policies work in the short run or the long run. Rather, it's highly impulsive, right? You just hear something. Oh yeah. Free college. Oh, that sounds really great. I love that guy. It's the normal reaction. It's not like: hmm, well how much is this going to cost? What were some alternative uses of the money? These are not questions that any normal person would ever even think to ask, much less ask. So, yeah. Politicians in this environment --- they’re just looking for the political version of a quick buck. I’m looking for a quick vote. I want to go and say something that gets people on my side, so I can get my job and get power. And then, I can go and do what I want. Probably you want to at least deliver some of what you promise, or else in the next election people will say you're a liar. But in terms of demonstrating effectiveness, this is almost the last thing that politicians really care about. One story, [and] I don't think this made it in the book. But I heard that, I believe it was Banerjee and Duflo ---so, two, you know, economic Nobelists who got their Nobel for doing randomized controlled trials --- I heard they got a meeting with Modi. And after this meeting he just said: I never want to talk to anyone like that again. What a waste of my time. But a waste of time to go and talk to people who try to actually get very accurate measures of the actual effects of policy. Who needs that? Like, I’ve been able to become the ruler of over a billion people without knowing this stuff. What difference does it make, right? I think that really does capture the wisdom of people that actually hold power which is: I don't need to understand what really works. I don't need to measure anything. I just need to be able to package it in a way that sounds good for the election.
Stitzel: So, let's let me run around and take it from the other side then. So maybe yeah, the politicians are power hungry. But maybe the voters are the real problem. And if we just wanted better policies, they would be forced to give it (to give us) those kinds of policies. So, what's your take on that as, sort of, a basis for democracy?
Caplan: Yeah. There's something to it, of course. So, yeah. If the voters were totally different, [then] the politicians, even if just as power hungry as now, would act in a totally different way. Because they say: the only way to get power is to become a quant. The only way to get power is to offer only policies to pass cost benefit tests. The way to get power is actually by getting rid of a lot of wasteful government programs, which diminishes my power; except if I don't do that, then the other guy is going to get the job instead. So, I guess I’d better go and settle for half a loaf and do that do this. Main thing I would say there is that while it is true that if the voters were very different, then politicians would be very different. Even so, the actual effect of any one voter on this system is quite small; whereas individual politicians really do have a lot of legal room to do better things, right? I mean, honestly. Like, every politician could go and tell the voters what they want to hear, get elected, and then go and do the best thing possible, and then lose. And just say: yeah, well, I lied my way into office, but it was for a good cause. I then ruled for a single term doing the very best that I could, and then I lost power for life, and that's what I’m gonna do, right? So, I’d say that's still totally open to them. So, again. It's not like they would have been torn apart by the mob if they had backed off on their promises. So, again. It really does go back to [the questions of] do you actually have the opportunity to do something much better than what you're doing? And what is the consequence to you of doing that? And the consequence is: well, I wanted to rule for life. And now, I can only rule for one term. Yeah. That's a pretty minor consequence. You can just get another job and do the right thing. So, why don't you? And I don't think more than a tiny fraction of politicians really have even a halfway decent answer to that.
Stitzel: So, you talk about instances, where in non-democratic country we have dictatorships and people rise to power, and they do so under a guise of --- I forget the exact phrase that you use, but using rhetoric that's very hopeful and, you know --- [being] there for the little guy kind of rhetoric. And then, they end up in power, and then all sudden they turn into bloodthirsty tyrants. So, maybe score one for democracy that we don't have that happening, or am I overly optimistic there?
Caplan: Well, here's the thing. It's quite common actually, that a bloodthirsty tyrant started off getting elected more or less democratically, and then gradually use the democratic process in order to become a tyrant. Not always the case, of course. But if you look at, say, Venezuela, right? Started off getting reasonable marks by international external servants. And then, one thing led to another, and now they’ve got a bloodthirsty tyranny. You know, Daniel Ortega got democratically elected in Nicaragua again, and then now has turned it into a dictatorship. So, of course, there is the classic path dictatorship of the civil war (murder all your enemies) and then put a crown on your own head. But I mean, I will say that the stable democracies --- this doesn't happen. But again, that's just, kind of, building it into the definition the idea of the democracy has some, kind of, really strong safeguard against someone becoming a tyrant. Doesn't really seem true. it just doesn't seem to be all that hard. You know, Putin again seems like a much more famous case. Initially he seemed to come in quite democratically, and then one thing led to another, and now he's clearly a dictator. But the system did not really stop him from doing that by any means. You know, it's, sort of, like the real point of that piece was just to first of all realize that it is very normal for a bloodthirsty tyrant to have gained power by promising to be Mr. Nice Guy. That's very normal, right? Which means --- first of all, that anytime you see someone trying to get power by promising to be Mr. Nice Guy, you should at least be worried and say: hey, maybe this guy's actually a bloodthirsty tyrant in Mr. Nice Guy clothing. And this is not paranoid, because it is a very normal thing to happen. It's not like onetime in a million [that] someone who says I’m Mr. Nice Guy becomes a bloodthirsty tyrant once they have power. Instead, it’s at least like one time in two. And in fact, the people that claim to be the extra super-duper nice guy, are the ones who say they're gonna go and save all humanity, are precisely the ones that have the highest risk of becoming horrible bloodthirsty tyrants, right? So, that's one thing to realize is just don't take politicians at face value. When they say this kind of thing, you should be thinking maybe this person is going to become a bloodthirsty tyrant. Then also, just give raise the question of how does this happen psychologically? Does the person who is a bloodthirsty tyrant now --- were they really just sincerely a really nice guy at the beginning, and then somehow they get horribly corrupted, right? And I say that's just not a plausible story. I ask readers --- think about the very nicest people on Earth that you know. Can you imagine them actually becoming mass murderers if they got power? I mean, I think about the wife of my best friend from Princeton. Like, it’s just like no way she would go and hurt (to start hurting) lots of people if she had power. She could get shoved out of power by someone that did want to hurt people. But she was not to be someone that would go and order soldiers to fire in a crowd. She's totally not that kind of person. Doesn't matter how circumstances changed. She's not going to give orders like that. So then, you realize that it’s not that they (that these) are, that they start off being really nice people and then they get changed (then they change). Rather, these are probably people who are pretty sociopathic from the very beginning, right? Which just puts a very different spin on what the world --- what's really going on in the world of politics, and --- is to realize this [fact that there is] probably a whole lot of people who go around loudly announcing their good intentions, who don’t actually get the opportunity to go and spill a river of blood. But yeah. Very plausible that a lot of them would. Not every single one. But just enough of them to go and creep, and at least properly creep you out and say: this person was like a 50% chance of being a serial killer, like, a wannabe serial killer. So, I don't in my eye. It's hard to admire a person you think that's a 50% risk.
Stitzel: My estimation of people is that most people are extremely bad liars. Like, we just can't manage to put up this facade that would present us as one thing when we're really and truly another thing. We might be good at lying in a moment or what but not weaving together an entire, like, persona. And so, that, kind of, was what terrifies me when I’m reading that part of the book. And you're thinking about that going --- these are people that somehow got everybody to buy in on this and then just flip the switch. So, you want to believe [that] oh it's the system that made them that way.
Caplan: They move a dial. They move a dial. You know, they keep, they just over the course of 20 years move the dial from I’m Mr. Nice Guy up to fear me. Oh yeah, here, like, here I come. Tremble before me.
Stitzel: So, my I want to get your take then on, like, where current American politics are a little bit, if you're comfortable commenting on that, which, you know, I’m sure you are. My impression is that the level of acting has gotten really bad in the last two presidential turns. Like, sometimes I, sort of, feel like I’m being gaslighted. I look around and say these are our two pres. I didn't vote for either of them. I don’t like either of them. You know, our sophisticated statesman or, sort of, you know, good old Texas boy. Those are our two main models over the recent decades --- just gone overnight. What's your estimation of that? Are we just dropping the façade? Or what?
Caplan: It’s so easy to get caught up in current events and think that now is uniquely terrible. When I go back to watch video footage of politicians in earlier decades, they don't overall seem to be to be noticeably more egregious than or less egregious than they are today. In the case of Bill Clinton, what's always stuck with me is this famous footage of him at the funeral for his commerce secretary who died in a helicopter crash. And what's famous about it is that it captures both Clinton when he thinks that he's off camera, and he seems to be having a great time, and then suddenly he realizes that he's on camera, and then but he does and then he changes. But this footage caught before and after. So, you can actually see him going and putting the mask back on in this footage, right? So, I mean, that's like one thing that just stuck with me. And I mean, I know, you know, Clinton --- obviously tons of people loved him. To me, he always just seemed like a sleazy used car salesman and I could never understand the appeal, right? So, yeah. You know, like, I mean, Trump. I would say he does stand out, just in terms of just the sheer piggishness of the man. In a way, I’ll say yeah. Like, there’s not that much of a facade with Trump.
Stitzel: Yeah.
Caplan: I mean, you know, like often, you know, like you, like, doubt his sincerity. I don't think he really had even the slightest idea that he was going to go and disarm North Korea or anything like that. But on the other hand --- like, the anti-force stuff, the protectionism, [and] the anti-immigration stuff --- that stuff goes way back to the 1980s. I just know enough people of his generation who are totally sincere in believing the same stuff. So, I think he probably --- that's probably his most sincere stuff, actually, is just being very xenophobic. Yeah, and then, you know, especially in the last couple of years the rise of the, well, The Woke Movement [coined by Lead Belly and Erykah Badu to discuss topics relating to marginalized groups] and its dominance in the Democratic Party also seems, you know, very plain. This is one where it does seem clear that there's a fairly large number of (relatively large number) of true fanatics, who really are actually frothing in the mouth over the strangest of issues; like, things that 10 years ago no one even understood what the jargon was, and now this is the most important thing in their lives. So, yeah. So, immediately even then, if you go back to, like, the late 60s [and] early 70s --- that was back when Marxism had a much larger influence in the Democratic Party most notably. So, yeah. The idea that this is, like, the low point for Democrats --- I think pretty crazy. They could just go back to the 1930s, “The Red Decade,” a lot of influence of the American Communist Party on especially the Democrats. Yeah, so again. This doesn't mean that there hasn't been some change, but still I would go and put it into perspective of this is really pretty normal. Right now, I’m actually in Palermo in Italy, and they're in the middle of an election. And I do say that when you are in a foreign country, and you see their electoral propaganda --- this is where just the sheer anti-intellectualism of the whole system is most obvious. Then you just see, like, you know, these stupid slogans, you know, like, “Italy First” [conservative political party in Italy] and that kind of thing. And then you see some picture, like a carefully chosen professional photograph, and some colors and design and looks. Like so, this is how you’re supposed to decide who runs the society is based upon these ridiculous posters. And yet, you know, if you go to any country in an election, you can see it. And what do you think your own country is the only one that isn't a great farce? No. They're all farces.
Stitzel: It’s a good transition. I wanted to talk about this. You make the point early in the book that it's important for politicians because of their great responsibility to question conventional societal moral standards. Talk to us about that why is that important? And how should politicians go about that?
Caplan: The easiest thing for a politician to do is to say: well, I’m going to take care of all my moral responsibility by just doing whatever is popular in my society. So, if most, you know, I’m, like, not going to pursue my own individual personal views of what's right or wrong. I’m going to find out what most people in my society think is right or wrong and I’ll go by that, all right? When I say: look, that's obviously not a reasonable position. Because if you just step back and look at most human societies around the world throughout history, almost everyone will look at almost all the other ones and say: wow, they’re so evil. They're so terrible. I mean, we don't have to go and talk about Nazism or Marxism or Leninism. You just go back to like a medieval monarch going and butchering people based upon their religion, or because they were inconvenient, or just saying: well like, just seemed like a threat to my throne, so I figured I’d go and murder all of them. But these are normal things throughout history. This is not just some particularly odd thing that happened at one time or another. Most people throughout human history have thought that it was O.K. for government to force the religion on everybody [and] murder anyone that didn’t go along with that. And so, once you accept that most human societies look like they're really evil, then you've got to say: huh, is mine the one that isn't? And again, I would say you know it's a matter of stepping back and saying: hmm, it's probably not the case that my society is uniquely perfect. There's got to be some vantage point against which I can judge it. At this point, many people feel like --- no there isn't really one. They say there is actually. And it comes down to this old moral principle of it would it be all right if somebody did that to you, right? If the answer is no, then all right, well, I guess it's not all right for me to do that to them. Would it be all right for someone else to control the government to murder you because of your religion? No. All right, well then, I guess it wouldn't be right for you to go and murder other people for their religion if you were to control of the state. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. This is the kind of moral principle that we teach to little kids. It's not that hard to understand, right? So, like, why did you go and kick that boy in the face? Well, he made me angry. Yeah, well would it be O.K. for other people that you made angry to kick you in the face? No. All right, well, then, it's not all right for you to go and do that to other people. So, saying, you know, there really is actually a common sense moral standard vantage point against which you can judge any society, right? And yeah, I mean I’d say, really, everybody has a more responsibility to wonder. Look, is there something horrible that my society is doing that I just believe is O.K. because I just go with the flow and accept it? But again, your responsibility is greatly multiplied when you are in charge because you've got the power to do great stuff for good or evil. So, moral trepidation at all times when you have that kind of power.
Stitzel: You mentioned earlier we wouldn't accept a lot of excuses as it was, you know, the general’s order or, you know, I was told to do it. I’d lose my job if I didn't. What do you make of a similar argument, in terms of, it's not acceptable for our leaders to do that just because it's the majority opinion? The people told me to do it if you will.
Caplan: Of course. So, like there's every sign that Hitler was extremely popular during the 1930s early 1940s, like just to take one obvious case. There’s every sign that Putin remains popular in Russia, maybe going down a bit. But still, right? So, yeah. The fact that most people think something is a good idea. Like, it's not hard to come up with very simple moral hypotheticals. I suppose most people in a society thought that murdering redheads was O.K. --- would that make it O.K.? Like, of course not. All right, well then. So, yeah. How does the fact that something has majority support justify anything really? Like, the only case where it would be plausible would be --- step one is you actually assign a unanimous contract saying you're going to be governed by majority rule. Even there, of course, there’s still a lot of limitations on that. Like, you join a club and say: this club will resolve all issues by majority rule. And then the club votes to go and burn down the clubhouse of a rival club. It's like, well no, I still can't do it even though I said I would obey the majority; because there's a prior moral responsibility not to go burning down the clubhouses of other clubs, which is a much stronger moral obligation than following this agreement. You probably should have thought about a little harder actually. But if given that you didn't, it's time to say: O.K. look, I made a mistake, but I’m not going to go and compound the mistake by actually following through on this travesty.
Stitzel: I wanted to get you to, kind of, lay out what this idea of the social desirability bias was and how it works. We've, sort of, mentioned it in passing a couple times. And we mentioned it from the perspective of, you know, the politician as a path to getting power, because they're power hungry. But obviously in your other work --- in your blogs and in Myth of the Rational Voter --- you talk about it obviously from the other perspective as well (from the voter or from the citizen from the average person, if you will). So, what is social desirability bias?
Caplan: Social desirability bias is the most important psychological bias hardly anyone has heard of. It's very simple. It just says that when the truth when the truth is ugly, [then] people lie. And often if the lies become ubiquitous enough, [then] people just forget that it is a lie, and they very enthusiastically embrace total absurdity. You know, like the standard textbook examples are things like --- more people claim to go to church than actually go to church. More people claim to vote than actually vote. You know, large majority of people claim to be above average and or above the median in kindness and compassion indecency and honesty and courage, all right? So, there's this long list of ways that people claim things that we just know can't really be true. And the direction is the same in all these cases, namely people are, say, telling pretty lies, right, which, you know, they may not be very consciously lying all the time. It may just be that they forget that there is such a thing as truth, and that you need to double check your statements against the facts before you actually speak. But anyway, what's really neat about the psychological literature is --- first of all, this is actually the empirical evidence that economists have been looking for when they say that we want to focus on actual behavior rather than just words. Social desirability bias is the actual science of the disparity between words and actions. Another fantastic example of social desirability bias is that if you asked people would you abort a down syndrome fetus? Only a small minority people say they would. And yet, we actually have data on what do people who are in fact in that situation do. An overwhelming majority of people choose to abort, right? What's the difference? Well, the difference, most obviously, is it sounds really bad to say that you’re going to abort a down syndrome fetus. So, hardly anyone will get to it. And yet, when push comes to shove most people will in fact do it, because that's actually what they would rather do despite all of the words otherwise, right? So anyway, economists for a long time been talking about there's this difference between actions and words. But economists usually haven't given any real backing for this other than just: well obviously, you can't trust what people say. The social desirability bias tells us is --- well, there are some areas where you can trust people to say the truth. Like, you know, which way do I turn for this? Left, or right? All right, neither answer sounds especially good. So, then then you can probably trust someone just give you the answer, right? But when there is an --- when the truth just sounds bad, [then] this is where you really can no longer believe people's words. So, this is the empirical evidence that really delimits when we can and when we cannot trust mere words. Now, a lot of what I do in how Evil are Politicians? is I actually apply this concept to a lot of what would otherwise be puzzling features of politics. For example, it is very common in politics to put a lot of a lot of emphasis on sheer hypocrisy of your opponents, right? You just want to make them look bad. Like, if there's someone that's really into mask wearing, you just get some video footage of them not wearing a mask in a circumstance where they said they were supposed to wear a mask. And then you go: like, look at that vile hypocrite. Look at how despicable he is. Now logically, this isn't much of an argument at all. It just says [that] all right, yeah, well, the policy that is best for society --- the person didn't feel like doing for himself because he was selfish. But this is one of the best ways to get political leverage, especially against a sanctimonious person, it is to say: oh well, he holds himself up as being so great, but look at what he’s really like. The hypocritical themes. And this is actually one of the best ways to go and undermine a loudmouth do-gooder --- is just to not actually attack the ideas but to attack the person. Another example --- there's an essay in the book called “Monopolize the Pretty Lies,” where I just talk about what is the purpose of censorship. Normally, we think of the purpose of censorship is to prevent people from speaking the truth. They say: look, the truth is often so ugly that hardly anyone even wants to hear the truth. It's not really a path to power in a lot of cases. If the current government says our people are the greatest people in the world, you don't get power by saying: no, we're actually 87th, right? That's not a path to power. So, what is a path of power? Path to power is more like saying: our country has been ruined by this monster, even despite our incredible greatness. But if only if we were in power, then we would be the greatest power in the world. Better similarly, if the ruling power says: were ordained by God, you don't usually get power by saying: who even knows that there is a god? Instead in religious society, you say: no, he is damned by God, [and] we are ordained by God. As I say, the love of the point of censorship --- it's not really to crush the truth. It's more to tell a lot of ridiculous lies with impunity --- and to make sure that there's no competing lies that anyone is getting away with voicing, so that you and you alone are able to go and say things that sound good, that are ridiculous --- and your opponents keep their heads down and their mouths shut. That's what I say is the actual center in the heart of censorship. And that's why when you see a dictatorship toppling, it's usually pretty naive to think: oh, everything's gonna be great now. It's like more likely it's just gonna be an even worse group that's gonna take over this country. So, you know, this is something you can see pretty clearly in the Syrian Civil War. You say: well, we've got the Assad regime. They're pretty bad. Like, what are all these other guys like? I mean, they're probably gonna, like, most plausible contender. If there had been no Western intervention is that ISIS would have won, then just started hacking off heads. So, shoving people off roofs. That's (that was) their system, right? And you can see the censorship of the Syrian government. They're way more worried about making people like ISIS shut up and not claim that they're ordained by “god,” then they are setting up like a Syrian version of me. Syrian version of me isn't going to get any power. Who wants to? Like, I’m just going to go and tell you a bunch of things that are (that will) upset people and they'll make them angry. That's not my path to power. But someone says: I’m ordained by “god.” Allah wants me to be in charge and to go and execute the following people. Now that's the way you can get power.
Stitzel: I was very interested in that section where you were talking about that. But one of the things that occurred to me, right, is there is an idea in a lot of political philosophy where I’ve run across it is Jon Stewart Mill’s work. And one of the things he says: truth doesn't have any power except in that it's always there to be rediscovered. And you actually mention the Protestant Reformation a couple times in the book. And that's the example that he uses in that case is, you know, this can always --- and he's not a Protestant or Reformer by the way, but just as an example of that --- if there's truth there it's always there to be rediscovered. Are you pessimistic about that? Because there's a lot of durability of the kind of biases and you illiteracies that you talk about in the book.
Caplan: The only sense in which I can really be optimistic is just to say: I’m looking outside my window. The world's not on fire, right? I can walk a couple hundred feet and there's a bunch of great Italian restaurants here in Palermo. So, the world still contains a lot of great stuff. And to any person, especially young person, I would say: like, focus on the positive and think not about all the bad things that you have to live with, but all the great things that you're able to do in this world. So, that's the sense in which I’m an optimist is just saying: stay focused on the positive. But in terms of my forecast, yeah. I’m very pessimistic. I would say: I don't see any sign that things are going to improve much. Honestly, I think this didn't make this particular book, probably a different book. But I’m just surveying world politics and saying what is it, what are the, what is the best thing that's happened in world politics since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc? It's very hard to come up with much of anything really good that's happened in world politics, right? You know, so, you know, again. But it's very different from, you know, there's plenty of great economic news, plenty of great technological news, [or] maybe even great cultural social news. But in terms of great political news, I really struggle to find much of anything to go and say: oh, isn't it great that this happened, right? You know, the landscape has really been extremely disappointing. I mean, I started off, like in my youth, that communism just collapsed, and it did set my expectations way too high. I said: wow, like, this horrible system of international tyranny came crumbling down peacefully. What other good stuff will happen? And it's like, well, there's going to be a lot of economic growth and technological progress. Politically though, don't accept like nothing very much good has happened since then on Earth. So, yeah. Pretty disappointing. So.
Stitzel: I want to circle around to what I think is probably the best arguments. If you think how evil are politicians? And the answer is pretty %&#@ evil. I think the portion of the book on pacifism is probably a nail in the coffin for me. I find war to be reprehensible and pretty much indefensible in almost every situation. Lay out your pacifism argument there and tell me why did you even need to write the rest of the book? Jump straight to these people or war mongers and it’s a shorter read.
Caplan: Yeah. So, just to start. I recognize that pacifism sounds like one of those really great sounding ideas that works terrible in practice. I’m totally familiar with all the standard complaints about pacifism. I’ve heard many times appeasement never works. So on. So on. What I say --- first of all, what I mean by pacifism [is] it's not absolute pacifism. It's just a strong moral presumption against going and murdering or manslaughtering innocent people, all right? So, I want to first of all specify what I’m talking about. So, that's what I mean. So, I’m talking about war as currently practice, not talking about defending yourself against a mugger or something like that, which I think is perfectly fine. What's the difference? Well, the difference is that in modern warfare you almost always wind up doing one of two things. One --- deliberately murder/murdering innocent people. That’s one. The other one --- negligently killing innocent people. There's the difference between murder and manslaughter, right? So, murder is when you do it on purpose. Manslaughter is just when you are so careless with your actions that it's foreseeable that bad stuff is going to happen, even if it was not your intent, right? So, if you think about wars that many people think of as totally justified like World War II ---- all sides including the United States went and deliberately murdered large numbers of innocent civilians, right? And this is where people start really trying to lower the bar and say: well, like, anyone who supported the German government was actually guilty so they deserved to die, all right? How about the people that were against it? Well, they should have done more, because if they had really fought harder, then Hitler couldn't have stayed in power. So, they deserve to die too, all right? How about the babies? What should the babies have done, right? This is where it's like: look, come on. Like, when you go and firebomb an entire city, [then] obviously you are deliberately murdering a whole bunch of innocent people. And then, even when you use better weapons, less indiscriminate weapons, like we’re going to go and use targeted missiles on a city block, [then] it's like: well, like, according to our intelligence seems like it’s just terrorists there. Do you think you want to double check that a little bit more before you launch? No, then the terrorists might run away. So, no. Let's just blow it and hope there isn't anybody there, right? This really is at the level of --- the police throw grenade into a room because they think the murderer might be in there, and they don't check to see whether other people are there or not. Or they say: well, you know, what are you gonna do, all right? So, anyway. While people like to think of a lot of the wars that they, like, anyways being defensive, there really are almost no actual defensive wars that are fought with modern weapons, because the weapons that really work are just too indiscriminate. They're just too effective to actually limit their application to people that are actually in any plausible sense aggressing against anybody else. Now, you could go and be an absolutist about this and just say: it's never morally permissible to murder an innocent person. Never, like, morally miscible to go and commit manslaughter. I say that’s probably just too strong, because it's like what if you have to do it in order to save the entire world, all right? So, it's like, all right, that’s plausible that if it really were the case that you knew with great confidence that doing some horrible deeds were the only way to go and save mankind or something like that. But even this does not mean that anytime that you guess that you're going to do more harm than good or more good than harm by going and attacking somebody that’s O.K. That is a ridiculously low bar. There is a famous thought experiment in philosophy that, well, some people call the “forced organ donation hypothetical.” And it's this --- you’re a doctor. You got five patients. Each patient needs a different organ in order to survive. One needs a heart transplant. One needs a lung transplant. One needs two kidneys. So on. And then, a perfectly healthy stranger walks by. Is it morally permissible to murder him and then harvest his organs and save five lives by murdering that one person, right? Almost everybody says: no, that's not good enough. If I was to murder that one person to save a million people, [then] maybe. But five --- not good enough, right? So, what I say in the case of war is: look, if it really is the case that you can confidently say that the good long-run effects of this war will greatly exceed the short run costs, right --- and especially the short run costs for innocent life --- then I’ll say: all right, fine. Maybe we’re justified, but otherwise not. Now, the last key premise this argument, where I’m heavily inspired by political psychologist Phil Tetlock, is just to point out this --- even highly knowledgeable people have great difficulty accurately forecasting the actual effects of war. This is an empirical premise. It just says: it is simply not true that in the real world that we can just look at a situation and say: ah, this is a clear-cut situation where though we go and murder innocent people, it's going to save 50,000 lives. It’s like you might think that, but based upon past experience, it is actually very difficult to forecast the long-run act of war. So, really when you do fight a war, normally you are choosing to go and murder and manslaughter a whole bunch of people, right here right now; all on the basis of some wishful thinking that the war is going to work out in the long run, even though, even wars that sound the best, well, like, it is very easy for them to spiral out of control and become a terrible bloodbath. You know, World War I --- the war to keep the world safe for democracy, like any historian will now tell you --- yeah, led straight to World War II. Sorry, yeah. Many millions of people died and for less than nothing. For less than nothing, World War I led to something even worse, right? Now, the last thing to realize about all this is that the fact that we can identify some wars after the fact, that did pass this test, does not actually mean that the war is morally permissible. Rather right now that is morally permissible to do one that looks similar, again because of that high uncertainty. Until after the fact, it's one thing to say: by fighting the Korean War and by murdering an enormous number of people (well, over a million Koreans get killed), then probably would have at least survived the war if you just surrendered. Right now, we can look back and say: oh well, North Korea has been so terrible. South Korea's turned out so great. In hindsight, that was one that plausibly passed the test. The problem is when you're in a situation like that, again, can you recently forecast that the result is going to be what happened in Korea? They say: no, actually you can't recently forecast that. So, we are, like, a very good chance it ends up being like World War I where you just lay the foundation for an even worse war, right? And, like, and often actually, when you look at what's really going on with wars --- the people that are involved are so negligent they don't even think about what's going to happen afterwards. This to me is the most striking thing to come out of declassified documents (about the Iraq War, the Afghan War, [and] the Libya War) is that people in the U.S. government basically put a fair amount of planning into winning, and near zero effort into figuring out what they're going to do after they win, which is a fantastic example of total moral negligence. It's one thing for a person to say with great reluctance: I have considered all the possible other ways of going and righting these wrongs and I just can't find one. And by killing a few innocent people --- I’m really sorry, it’s a tragic decision. But by killing a few innocents, I’m gonna be able to go and spare the world untold horror. Like, if you could actually hit leaders that really could credibly say that [then] that's something. I’ll say: like, I can morally respect that. But to go and say: let's fight a war. Let's kick their %&#$, and then we'll go, and we'll figure out what's going to happen afterwards after we win. That's someone we're all to say: like, you are a terrible human being, right? Really? All, like, what matters to you is winning, [and] not what you are winning, and not whether all this bloodshed is going to be worth anything in the end, right? So, not surprising that in all three of those wars, I’m always telling my kids: if you fail to plan, [then] you plan to fail, right? And here's a case where they're failing to plan, even though they're playing with the lives of millions of people. Shame on them.
Stitzel: So, we're coming up on an hour now. So, I want to bring this in for a landing. I think you've done a great job here laying this case out. I think people would want, like, alternatives. So, what kind of changes can help mitigate these kind of problems if our politicians really are evil?
Caplan: Just to start --- really, all of my work at the very beginning, when someone would ask me that question, [then] I’m saying: look, at minimum it's like Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step is admitting you have a problem. And just to get everyone on that same page saying: look, this is a terrible system. There's something really wrong. Let's all agree to that. Let's stop going and praising something that's disgraceful. See, there's a lot of value just in that, just to get people on that page to admit there's something really amiss. Right now, after that point of course, there is the really hard line of saying: well, you have to become an expert in moral political philosophy. You have to learn some natural social science, all right? So, that's the really high bar. I’ll say: it's not a reasonable thing to ask a typical person of. It is reasonable to say: look, how about you no longer vote on the basis of stuff that you really can’t properly explain, right? And furthermore, like, don't feel like, what if like, if you're very emotional about a topic, [then] take that as a reason to distrust what you think. I care about this very intensely --- that's a reason to take that out of the running for something that is responsible for you to vote on the basis of; because quite plausibly you're too emotional to really actually think about this clearly, right? So, you know, just calm down. This is another really simple thing to do. It's like --- stop being so agitated. Stop being so angry. Stop, yeah, stop lusting for revenge. Stop going and focusing on everything wrong that the other side did. Turn your gaze inward. Are your own hands clean, right? These are quite --- these are the kinds of questions that I would/people [should] start asking. And then, the more general point of --- well look, if politicians really are these morally reprehensible people, you know, [then] that alone is a good reason to reduce the amount of power they have --- and say: look, again, there's this old line from PJ O’Rourke, where he says: giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. Very wise thing, right? So, just when you realize that politicians are morally reprehensible people, [then] by and large this is reason to say: well, people like that, I mean, like, first of all, I want them to have a lot less power. And second of all, whatever politicians asking for more power is the one that I’m going to like less. I’m going to support people who say [and] who are asking for the least. The ones that without, like, just in terms of the contest listing. One guy promises the moon and the other one promises the stars, saying: all right, well, the moon guy is asking for less power, so he seems like the lesser evil. I guess, maybe, him, like if anyone.
Stitzel: My guest today has been Brian Caplan. Brian, thanks for joining us on the EconBuff.
Caplan: Thanks for having me very much. And yes, this book you can get it for $12 in the paperback with a really cool cover off of Amazon. And you can also get the ebook for $9.99. This is actually the second in a series of eight books of my essays. I’ve spent 17 years blogging for Econ Log, and basically this is about the top 5% of the stuff that I wrote. So, I went through every one of about 3,000 pieces that I wrote and tried to pick out the best organized by topic. So, this is How Evil Are Politicians? Essays on Demagoguery, if demagoguery sticks in your craw or piques your interest, [then] I encourage you to buy the book.
Stitzel: We'll put the links in the show notes to all of Brian’s work including his blog and his previous books. And How Evil Are Politicians? will be the very top link. Bryan, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the EconBuff. You can find all previous episodes on YouTube at EconBuff Podcast. You can check out our website at www.econbuffpodcast.wixsite.com. You can contact us at econbuffpodcast@yahoo.com.
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