Podcast appearances and mentions of Bryan Caplan

La Fundación Rafael del Pino, organizó el día 19 de marzo de 2025 la Conferencia Magistral «Voces liberales: democracia y selección de políticas públicas» que impartió Bryan Caplan con motivo de su última obra El mito del votante racional: por qué las democracias eligen malas políticas editado por Deusto.

On March 19, 2025, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organized the Keynote Lecture “Liberal Voices: Democracy and Public Policy Selection” given by Bryan Caplan on the occasion of his latest book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, published by Deusto.

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel' can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.' Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free' parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping). This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education. Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Hello, I'd really like to grow this email list. If you enjoy this newsletter, it would mean the world to Jola and I if you encouraged one friend/fellow immigrant/colleague to subscribe…Very likely, the the only thing you will get in return is warm fuzzy feelings, and if I can attribute it to you, I'd personally send you a thank you email.Join us as we explore the bitter-sweet world of the immigrant.In this episode, I'm speaking with Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times bestselling author. He's the author of Open Borders, one of the best books on immigration in my opinion, The Myth of the Rational Voter, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, and Build, Baby, Build.It is human nature to find someone or something else to blame for our problems. And it's been a well-played hand in the Canadian immigration debate in the past ten months or more.But as Bryan says, 'Shouldn't we be focused on addressing the real problems? If we have a housing problem, focus on deregulating the housing sector and build more housing. If the problem is crime, then improve law enforcement rather than blame the newcomers.'In this conversation, Bryan and I chat about the economic gains from immigration. We also explored:* Scapegoating versus tackling the real problems* Lessons from the Gulf Monarchies approach to immigration* The Canadian immigration conversation* Why Open Borders is back in print, and a lot of other good stuff. Official Links

Immigration experts Alex Nowrasteh and Bryan Caplan make the case for significantly more and easier immigration to the U.S.

Das vorherrschende Narrativ in der öffentlichen Diskussion bewertet Migration als „Mutter aller Probleme“, das es zu kanalisieren und am besten ganz abzuwürgen gilt. Im Gegensatz dazu fordert die „Open Borders“-Bewegung auf Grundlage philosophischer, politischer und ökonomischer Argumente eine absolute Niederlassungsfreiheit für alle Menschen. Till ist über die Open Borders-Leute gestolpert und kratzt sich am Kopf: Ist eine absolute Niederlassungsfreiheit wirklich eine gute Idee? Oder zumindest eine funktionierende Gegenthese zur „Ausländer raus!“-Rhetorik der deutschen Politik? Anhand der Bücher von Bryan Caplan und Joseph Carens stellt er die Argumente der Befürworter vor und geht auf zentrale Einwände ein. Kommentare bitte unter https://manglaubtesnicht.wordpress.com/?p=4875 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:48 - Zwei Bücher 00:04:12 - 1. Buch von Bryan Caplan 00:05:22 - 2. Buch von Joseph Carens 00:08:22 - Warum ist Migration nicht völlig frei? 00:09:12 - Carens I: Eigentumsrechte (nach Nozick) 00:15:24 - Carens II: Egalitarismus und Urzustand (nach Rawls) 00:23:23 - Wir rätseln (I): Was machen wir hier eigentlich? 00:25:14 - Zurück zu Rawls' Theorien 00:26:45 - Carens III: Utilitarismus 00:29:08 - Caplan und Einwände gegen Open Borders wegen ... 00:31:19 - ... Öffentliche Ordnung in Gefahr? 00:35:55 - ... Brain Drain 00:37:24 - ... Sozialsysteme, Wohlfahrt, Armut 00:43:56 - ... Sprache 00:44:56 - ... Kunst und Kultur 00:45:45 - ... Einwanderer errichten neue Unrechtsstaaten? 00:46:14 - Caplans Lösungsvorschläge für ... 00:46:34 - ... Jobs und Gehälter 00:47:13 - ... Sozialstaat 00:47:58 - ... Sprache und Kultur 00:48:19 - ... Kriminalität 00:48:45 - Die Autoren schließen 00:50:19 - Wir rätseln (II): Martina rätselt 00:57:53 - Wir rätseln (III): Oliver rätselt 01:19:32 - Danke fürs Zuhören!

Overview In this special episode of Industry Relations, Rob and Greg welcome economist and author Professor Bryan Caplan to discuss his latest book, Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation. The trio dives into the housing crisis, exploring how deregulation could address affordability, inequality, and other societal issues. Bryan's insights challenge conventional thinking, offering bold solutions for the future of housing.   Key Takeaways • Core Argument: Bryan argues that excessive housing regulations have driven up costs, stifled innovation, and exacerbated inequality, advocating for widespread deregulation. • The 50% Reduction Claim: Deregulation could halve housing prices nationwide by enabling construction and reducing bureaucratic hurdles. • NIMBYism and Local Politics: Local resistance to development, often driven by fear and misinformation, remains a significant barrier to solving the housing crisis. • Economic and Social Benefits: Lower housing costs could address issues like inequality, mobility, and declining birth rates, while also improving quality of life. • Role of Realtors: Real estate professionals and associations could play a pivotal role in advocating for deregulation to increase housing supply and affordability.   Watch Us on YouTube   Check out Bryan's amazing graphic novel: Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation   Connect with Rob and Greg:  Rob's Website Greg's Website   Our Sponsors: CoreLogic Notorious VIP The Giant Steps Job Board   Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

Bryan Caplan extols the virtues of self help.Today's book: Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better

A graphic novel to address housing policies and central planning? Yes. It's named Build, Baby, Build: The Science And Ethics Of Housing Regulation. In this discussion with author and George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, he makes an argument for more homes and less government. From the book's description: "Why are housing prices in America so unbelievably high, especially in the country's most desirable locations? The superficial answer is “supply and demand,” but the deep answer―the reason supply is so low―is a regulatory system that treats developers like criminals." For more information: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Baby-Science-Housing-Regulation/dp/1952223415

In 1997, Bryan Caplan wrote an essay explaining why he was no longer a self-described Austrian. Recently, a reader asked him to comment on that essay. Bob reacts to Bryan's current views, arguing that the history of economic thought is indeed important, and the Misesian approach to praxeology is crucial.Bryan Caplan's Recent Article: Mises.org/HAP476aBryan Caplan's "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist": Mises.org/HAP476bHoppe's Economic Science and the Austrian Method: Mises.org/HAP476cBob's Cambridge University Press Article on Böhm-Bawerk's Critiques: Mises.org/HAP476dA Modern Guide to Austrian Economics: Mises.org/HAP476eBob and David Freidman, "The Chicago Vs. Austrian School Debate": Mises.org/HAP476fThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Murray Rothbard's, What Has Government Done to Our Money? Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

In 1997, Bryan Caplan wrote an essay explaining why he was no longer a self-described Austrian. Recently, a reader asked him to comment on that essay. Bob reacts to Bryan's current views, arguing that the history of economic thought is indeed important, and the Misesian approach to praxeology is crucial.Bryan Caplan's Recent Article: Mises.org/HAP476aBryan Caplan's "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist": Mises.org/HAP476bHoppe's Economic Science and the Austrian Method: Mises.org/HAP476cBob's Cambridge University Press Article on Böhm-Bawerk's Critiques: Mises.org/HAP476dA Modern Guide to Austrian Economics: Mises.org/HAP476eBob and David Freidman, "The Chicago Vs. Austrian School Debate": Mises.org/HAP476fThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Murray Rothbard's, What Has Government Done to Our Money? Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Mike Ferguson in the Morning 11-20-24 Bryan Caplan, bestselling author and Professor of Economics at George Mason University (in Fairfax County, VA), talks about housing regulations, his new book "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation," and his perspective on why housing is so expensive in the U.S.    Check out "Build, Baby, Build" here: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Baby-Science-Housing-Regulation/dp/1952223415/ref=sr_1_1   Also more info on "Build, Baby, Build" here: https://www.cato.org/books/build-baby-build   (https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/)   (@bryan_caplan)     NewsTalkSTL website: https://newstalkstl.com/ Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/NewsTalkSTL Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsTalkSTL Livestream 24/7: bit.ly/NEWSTALKSTLSTREAMSSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bryan Caplan, economist and bestselling author, discusses practical wisdom from modern economics and ancient philosophy.He argues against medicalization of human behavior, champions personal agency, and reveals why appeasement often beats confrontation. Caplan shows how lessons from economics can serve as self-help and why creating a "social bubble" – the modern version of an Epicurean garden – might be the smartest way to navigate modern life.The conversation spans Epicurean and Stoic perspectives on death, social obligations, and the thinker Thomas Szasz.Self-Help Is Like a VaccineThe Myth of the Rational VoterCaplan on Szasz***Subscribe to The Stoa Letter for weekly meditations, actions, and links to the best Stoic resources: www.stoaletter.com/subscribeDownload the Stoa app (it's a free download): https://stoameditation.com/podIf you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we'll set you up with a free account.Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/

Send us a textDr. Bryan Caplan is an Economics Professor at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author who often questions social norms. He's the author of Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation & in this episode, we discuss reasonable vs unreasonable approaches to risk, manufactured scarcity, environmental impact & gentrification.If you liked this episode, you'll also like episode 227: IS BEING ORDINARY NOBLE?Guest: Blog https://www.betonit.ai/ | https://x.com/bryan_caplan | https://www.linkedin.com/company/cato-institute/ | https://www.instagram.com/catoinstitute/ | http://www.bcaplan.com/ | Book https://a.co/d/1vtF7e2Host:  https://www.meredithforreal.com/  | https://www.instagram.com/meredithforreal/  | meredith@meredithforreal.com | https://www.youtube.com/meredithforreal  | https://www.facebook.com/meredithforrealthecuriousintrovert Sponsors: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/starterpacks/ | https://uwf.edu/university-advancement/departments/historic-trust/ | https://www.ensec.net/

Housing in the United States has come to be known as a panacea problem. Gone are the days when tossing the graduation cap meant picking up the keys to a front door, and the ripple effects of unaffordable housing stretch across society: poor social mobility, smaller families, worse retirement-readiness, just to name a few.Today on Faster, Please — The Podcast, I talk to Bryan Caplan about the seemingly obvious culprit, government regulation, and the growing movement to combat it.Caplan is a professor of economics atGeorge Mason University. His essays have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and TIME Magazine. He is editor and chief writer of theBet On It Substack, and is the author of several books, including Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.In This Episode* America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)* The impact of regulation (3:53)* Different regulations for different folks (8:47)* The YIMBY movement (11:01)* Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)* Generating momentum (17:15)* Building new cities (23:10)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. (Note: This was recorded just before the presidential election.)America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Pethokoukis: What was going on with housing prices and housing affordability from the war to the 1970s? Was it kind of flattish? People were recovering from the Great Depression; what was going on then?Caplan: Yeah, it was quite flat, so there were decades where we had rapidly expanding population, the Baby Boom, and markets were working the way that markets normally do: You get demand going up, raises prices in the short run, but then that means the prices are above the cost of production, and so you get entry, and you build more until prices come back down to the cost of production. That's the way markets are supposed to work!I don't know how people thought about their homes in the late '40s, '50s, and '60s, but did they view them as, “This is our primary investment,” or did they view them more as a place to live? Were there any expectations that this was their retirement plan?I honestly don't know. I don't remember reading anything about that. I grew up in Los Angeles where in the '70s and '80s people already had some sense of, “Your home is an important retirement vessel,” but it is plausible that when you are going back to earlier decades, people did have a different view.I've often heard Americans say that Japanese don't think about their homes as retirement vessels, but I've never talked to anyone in Japan to assure me this is so, so I don't know.But that scenario changed.It did.How did it change and are we confident we know why it changed?The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Depending upon what series you're looking at, the runup might be starting in the early '70s or the early '80s, but in any case, there was what economists would call a structural break where a series that was generally flat over the long term started rising over the long term. There have been a few times when prices fell back down, like after the Great Recession, but now, inflation adjusted, we are higher than the peak right before the Great Recession.Now, is that the same as affordability? Because I assume incomes could be going up, so has it outpaced median income over that period?Probably not, although it's in the right ballpark, and maybe.One thing you can say is, well, there's regulation before, there's regulation after, so how can you go and blame the rise on the regulation?The impact of regulation (3:53)I would like to blame regulation. Intuitively, that makes sense to me, but I suppose we need more than intuition here.. . . there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live.I would say that we do have very good evidence that regulation is indeed to blame. If you look at it very quickly, you might say, “Well, there was regulation before; it didn't seem to matter that much.” The answer to this really was death by a thousand cuts, where we just piled regulation on regulation, but also where regulations that have been interpreted mildly before started being interpreted strictly afterwards.How do we know that it really is regulation? The easiest thing to do is just to look at the strictness of regulation in different parts of the country, and you can see that there are some places that are crazy strict and the prices are crazy high. There's other places where the regulation is a lot lighter and even though they're getting plenty of population increase, they nevertheless do not have these long-run rises.So the contrast between the Bay Area and the Texas Triangle is very strong. So these are both areas that, in some sense, they are growth areas, a lot of tech there, but the Bay Area has seen very little rise in the amount of housing and massive increase in prices, whereas Texas has, in contrast, seen a large rise in the number of houses and very low rises in the price of housing.The main method that economists have used in order to disentangle all this is it really starts with trying to figure out: What is land that you are not allowed to build anything on worth? So just think about whatever your excess land is in a single-family area, you're not allowed to put another structure there, you can put a volleyball court or something like that. So you just find out, well, what is land where you can't build anything worth? And usually, even in a good area, that land is not worth much. If you can't build on it, it's like, I guess we can put some grass, but that's not that good. Then the next step is to just go to a construction manual and to see what the cost of construction is in a given area and then compare it to the price. This is a quite reasonable approach and it has gotten better over time because data has gotten better.The main thing is that Joe Gyourko, who's been working on this for about 20 years, in his last big paper, he got data on actual vacant lots, and so you can see, this is a vacant lot, usually because you just can't build anything on it, can't get the permission, and as a result of this, he's also able to find out, how bad does the regulation get as you move away from the city center. We've got details like Los Angeles looks like it's regulated out to the horizon. You've got 50 miles away from downtown LA and it's still pretty bad regulation. On the other end, a city like Chicago is very regulated in the downtown, but 30 miles out, then there's not that much effect anymore.The punchline of all this work is that there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live. If you want to go and build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, you could probably do it, but you wouldn't want to build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, that defeats the whole purpose of building a skyscraper.That leads to two questions: The first question is, just to be clear, when we're talking about regulation, is it single-family homes versus multifamily? Is it also the coding, what the home has to be made out of? Do the walls have to be so thick, or the windows? What are we talking about?The honest answer is that most economists' estimates are just giving you an estimate of all regulation combined with a considerable agnosticism about what actually are the specific regulations that matter. There are other papers that look at specific kinds of regulation and come up with at least very credible claims that this is a big part of the puzzle.The main things that matter a lot in the US: We've got height restrictions — those matter in your biggest, most expensive cities; you can just look at a place like Central Park or get a helicopter shot of San Francisco and say, don't tell me you can't build more stuff here. There's endless room to build more stuff here as long as you can go vertically.It's also very standard to say that you are only allowed to have single-family homes in most residential land in the US, it's just zoned single family only, so you just are not legally allowed to squeeze in a larger number of dwellings.Then you've got, even with single-family regulation, it's very standard to have minimum lot sizes, which just says that you've got to have at least like an acre of land per house, which, whenever I'm speaking in metric countries, I'm always telling, what is that . . .? It's a lot. It's a lot of land, and the amount of land that's normally required has gone up a lot. One-acre zoning in the past would've seemed crazy. Now plenty of places have five-acre zoning. You could obviously just squeeze way more houses in that space. And what is clear is that builders normally build the absolute maximum number they're allowed to build. Anytime someone is going up to the very border of a rule, that is a strong sign the rule is changing behavior.Different regulations for different folks (8:47)Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.”Why are these rules different in different places? That may be a dumb question. Obviously San Francisco is very different from Texas. Is the answer just: different places, different people, different preferences? Do we have any idea why that is?Matt Kahn, who is based in Los Angeles, he's been I think at UCLA and USC, he's got a very good paper showing, at least in California, it's the most progressive left-wing places that have the worst regulation, and it just seemed to be very philosophical. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time during Covid in Texas. Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.” It's not so much that they are opposed to what's going on in California, it just doesn't occur to them they could be California.In a way, you might actually get them to be proud about what they're doing if you could remind them, “Oh, it's really different in California,” and just take them on a tour, then they might come back and say, “God bless Texas.” But it's more of, there's the places where people have an ideological commitment to regulation, and then the rest of the country is more pragmatic and so builders are able to get a lot more done because there just aren't fanatics that are trying to stop them from providing the second most basic necessity for human beings.Now, this is all striking because the YIMBY [Yes In My Backyard] movement, and my book Build, Baby, Build — I definitely think of that as a YIMBY book. My goal is to make it the Bible of YIMBY, and it's in comic book form, so it's a Bible that can be read by people starting at age five.In any case, the YIMBY movement is definitely left-coded. People that are in that movement, they think of themselves as progressives, usually, and yet they are just a small piece of a much broader progressive coalition that is generally totally hostile to what they're doing. They are punching above weight and I want to give them a lot of credit for what they've been able to accomplish, and yet, the idea that YIMBYs tend to be left-wing and therefore they are the main people that are responsible for allowing housing is just not true. Most places in the country basically don't have a lot of pro- or anti-housing activism. They just have apathy combined with a construction industry that tries to go and build stuff, and if no one stops them, they do their job.The YIMBY movement (11:01)Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land?I want to talk a bit more about the economic harms and benefits of deregulation, but if I was a center-left YIMBY, I would think, “Oh, I have all kinds of potential allies on the right. Conservatives, they hate regulation.” I wonder how true that is, at least recently, it seems to me that when I hear a lot of conservatives talking about this issue of density, they don't like density either. It sounds like they're very worried that someone's going to put up an apartment building next to their suburban home, YIMBY people want every place to look [the same] — What's the home planet in Star Wars?Coruscant.Yeah Coruscant, that that's what the YIMBYs want, they want an entire planet to look like a city where there's hundreds of levels, and I'm not sure there's the level of potential allyship on the right that center-left YIMBYs would want. Is that a phenomenon that you've noticed?I actually I have a whole chapter in Build, Baby, Build where I try to go and say we can sell these policies to very different people in their own language, and if they actually believe their official philosophy, then they should all be coming down to very similar conclusions.I think the main issue of center-left YIMBYs talking to people who are right wing or conservative, it's much more about polarization and mutual antipathy than it is about the people on the right would actually object to what they're hearing. What I say there is there are certain kinds of housing regulation that I think the conservatives are going to be sympathetic to. In particular, not liking multifamily housing in suburbs, but I don't really think there is any conservative objection to just allowing a lot more skyscrapers in cities where they don't even go. There's not going to be much objection there and it's like, “Yeah, why don't we go and allow lots of multifamily in the left-wing parts of the country?”But I think the other thing is I don't think it's really that hard to convince conservatives that you shouldn't need to have an acre of land to go and have a house. That one, I think, is just so crazy, and just unfair, and anti-family, you just go and list all the negative adjectives about it. Did you grow up in a house on a one-acre lot? I didn't! Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land? Wouldn't you like your kids to be able to walk to their friends' houses?A lot of it seems to be that government is just preventing the development of something that people would actually want to live in. I remember when my daughter finally made a friend within walking distance, I wanted to light a candle, hallelujah! A child can walk to be friends with a child! This has not happened in all my years! But that was the normal way things were when you'd be on a quarter-acre or a third of acre when I was growing up.Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)People generally favor government policies because they believe . . . the policies are good for society.If someone owns a house, they like when that price goes up, and they might see what you're saying as lowering the price of homes. If we were to have sort of nationwide deregulation, maybe deregulation where the whole country kind of looks like wherever the lightest-regulated place is. People are going to say, “That's bad for me! I own a home. Why would I want that?”Lots of people think this, and especially economists like this idea of, of course we have all this regulation because it's great for homeowners; homeowners are the main wants to participate in local government. Sounds likely, but when we actually look at public opinion, we see that tenants are strong advocates regulation too, and it's like, gee, that really doesn't make any sense at all. They're the ones that are paying for all this stuff.But it does make sense if you switch to a much simpler theory of what's going on, which fits the facts, and that is: People generally favor government policies because they believe —underscore believe — the policies are good for society. So many people from the earlier decades say, “Oh, all those Republicans, they just want tax cuts.” Now we're finally at the level where Republicans are poorer than Democrats. It's like, “Yeah, I guess it's getting a little bit hard to say that people become Republicans to get tax cuts when they're the ones paying lower taxes.” How about there's an actual disagreement about what policies are good for society, which explains why people belong to different parties, support different policies.So most of what I'm doing in Build, Baby, Build is trying to convince people, look, I'm not impugning your motives, I don't think that you're just favoring whatever policies are selfishly best for you. I think that whatever policies you're into are ones that you think are genuinely good for your community, or your area, or your country, but we are not thinking very well about everything that's going on.So part of it is that a lot of the complaints are just overblown or wrong, but another thing is that generally we base a regulation purely on complaints without any thought of any good thing that we might be losing. I make a big deal in the book about how, if you don't want to have noise, and traffic, and pollution, it's really easy — just move to some remote part of the country and you solve all those problems; yet hardly anybody wants to do that.Why are people staying in congested areas with all these problems and paying a lot of extra money for them? Many of these people now have telework jobs, they don't even have a job reason to stay there. And the answer's got to be, there's just a bunch of really good things about living near other people that we hardly ever talk about and which have no political voice. There's almost no one's going to show up in a meeting and [say], “I favor this because I want there to be more commercial opportunities. I favor this because I want there to be more social opportunities, more cultural opportunities, more economic opportunities,” and yet these are all the reasons why people want to live near other people. So we have a set of regulation just based upon complaints: complaints which are generally out of context, not quantified. So we just see that people are willing to pay a lot of money for the package of living in an area with a bunch of other people, so that's got to mean that the good of other people exceeds the bad of the other people; otherwise, why aren't you living out in the middle of nowhere?Generating momentum (17:15)The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country.When I read the book, and I read a really good New York Times essay —Would that be my essay, Jim?I think it is your essay! In fact, it was, I should have been clearer on the author of that essay. The brilliant Bryan Caplan was the author of that essay.If you look at the potential benefits on inequality, there's environmental impact, maybe people are really worried about birth rates, it really seems like housing really is sort of the “everything problem.”Panacea problem, or the “housing theory of everything.”It really does. I think the current election season, it's probably the most I've heard it talked about, and not really talked about very much.And thoughtlessly. Spoken of thoughtlessly.To me there seems to be a lot more — I'll use a nice think tank word — there's been a lot more ideation about the issue in recent years, and maybe it's only now kind of breaking through that filter where politicians start talking about it, but boy, when you look through what you've written about it, it seems like it should be a top three issue that politicians talk about.The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country. It's the difference between: Are you going to keep living with your parents until you're 30, or are you going to be able to afford to get your own place, start your own family? And again, it's one where older people remember how things used to be, and the idea of, well, why can't things just be like that? Why can't it be that a person who gets out of college can go and immediately afford to get a pretty good house?At AEI, Mark Perry, for example, who is one of your colleagues, I think probably a remote colleague, he has done stuff on how new houses are better and so on, and that's also true, so I don't want to go and act like there's been no progress at all. But still, of course a lot of people are not moving into those new houses, they're moving into old houses, which are the same as they were in the past, but just way more expensive if you want to go and live in that areaThe other thing that is worth pointing out is that it's really temping to say, well, of course housing naturally gets more expensive as population rises. The period after World War II that we were mentioning, that's the Baby Boom era, population was rising at a much faster rate then than it did now, even counting immigration, and yet prices were much flatter because we were able to just go and legally build way more stuff.I feel like you feel like you need to drive home the point about demand not being met by supply for this artificial reason: regulation. Even though, to me, it seems utterly natural and a classic case, people struggle to come up with alternative reasons that it's really not that. That it's because of . . . there's private equity firms buying up all the homes, or the reason apartment rents go up is because there's a cabal of apartment owners . . . They look for these other reasons, and I don't quite get that when there seems to be a pretty obvious reason that we theoretically know how to fix.Some of these other stories, they are half-truths, but they're not helpful. So the thing of, “Gee, if we just shut down tourism and letting foreign buyers buy stuff here, then demand will be lower, and prices will be lower, and we won't need to build anything new.” And it's like, do you realize what you're saying? You're basically saying that you want to destroy one of your best export industries.If people around the world want to go and buy houses in your area, why do you want to turn them away instead of saying, cha-ching, let's capitalize on this by building a ton of housing for them? If there's a lot of tourists that want to go and rent a place in your area, why is it you want to go and strangle the market, which obviously it's a great industry — Build stuff and rent it to people, and it's not like there's some fixed amount unless the law says it must be fixed.One benefit I didn't mention was social mobility where we need people, if they want to be able to move towards high-wage, high-productivity cities, to find good jobs, and then not have the wages of those good jobs mostly gobbled up by housing costs. That kind of circulation system, if that's the right phrase.Certainly in some parts of the country, that has just been stopped and that has been a traditional way people move up the ladder.We've got very good data on this. In earlier periods of US history, there was basically a foolproof way for someone in a low-income part of the country to get a big raise, and that was just to move. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath not withstanding, this almost always works. It wasn't normally the case that you starve to death on your way to California from Oklahoma. Instead, normally, it's just a simple thing: You move from a low-wage area to a high-wage area and you get a lot more money, and you get a much higher take-home salary. But then in those days, there was not much difference in housing prices between different areas of the country, and therefore you would actually have a rise in not just your paycheck, but your standard living.Now it's still true that you can get a rise in your paycheck by moving to the Bay Area. The problem is your standard of living, if you're coming from Mississippi, will generally crash because the housing cost eats up much more than 100 percent of the raise.I remember I had a colleague who had a son who was an investment banker in the Bay Area. He and his wife were sharing a small apartment with two roommates, and it's like investment bankers can't afford apartments! Things have gotten out of hand, I think we can say with great confidence now.Building new cities (23:10). . . politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Should we be building new cities somewhere? I think former President Trump has talked about this idea that we, is that something you've thought about at all?Yes. I didn't put it into the book, but when I was writing up some follow-up posts on things that I wished I would've talked about, or just more speculative things, I do have some friends who are involved in that project to go and build a new city in the Bay Area. I hope it works.There is always the problem of there's almost always going to be some existing people where you want to build your new city, and then what do you do about them? You can try buying them out. There is this holdout problem, a few people are going to stay there and say, “I'm not going to sell.” Or you could just go and do what happened in the movie Up: We'll buy everybody around you, and if you don't like it, too bad.But on the other hand, it may be that activists will put a stop to your plan before you can get it off the ground. So in that case, it was going and selling off empty federal or state land, which we have in abundance. If I remember, I think that 23 percent of the land of the United States is owned by the federal government. Another 10 percent is owned by state governments. And even if you subtract out Alaska, there's still a ton. If you look at the map, it's really cool because you might think, “Oh, it's just that the government owns land no one in the right mind would want.” Not true.Desert land in Nevada next to Area 51 or something.Virtually all of Texas, even those western deserts, are privately owned. I've driven through them. Have you ever driven through West Texas?I have.Alright, so you're there and you're like, “Who wants to own this stuff?” And it's like, well, somebody at whatever the market price is considers this worth owning, and as to whether it's for mineral extraction, or for speculation on one day it'll be worth something when the population of Texas is greater, or they're going to do ranching there, I don't know. But it is at a price someone is willing to go and own almost every piece of land.What the map really shows is it was ideology that led all this land to be held by the government. It's basically the ideology of conservation that we hear about. You get John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, and as a result, they didn't just wind up protecting a few really beautiful national parks, they wind up putting millions of square miles of land off-limits for most human use.Again, when the population of the country is lower, maybe it didn't even matter that much, but now it's like, “Hey, how about you go and sell me a hundred square miles so I can put a new city here?” The idea that an Elon or Zuckerberg couldn't go and just say, “I'm putting a pile of money into this. I'm going to build a new city and have a decent chance of it working.” Maybe it would be just a disaster and they waste their money. Then more likely I think it's going to be like Seward's Folly where it's like, “What's the point of buying Alaska?” Oh, actually it was fantastic. We got a great bargain on Alaska and now it is an incredible, in hindsight, investment.As we were talking, I started thinking about Andrew Yang who ran for president, I think that was in 2020, and he had one issue, really: Universal Basic Income. He thought that he had found an issue that was going to take him to the White House. It did not.I kind of think if you were going to have a candidate focus a lot on one issue, this would not be a bad issue, given how it touches all these concerns of modern American society.As an economist, I always hesitate to say that anyone who is a specialist in an area and is putting all their resources into it is just royally screwing up. At the same time, politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Just to give Trump credit where credit is due, there's just a lot of things that he said that you would think would've just destroyed his candidacy, and instead it seemed like he came out and he was more popular than ever. Maybe he just saw that there were some ideas that are popular that other people didn't realize would be popular.Now I'm not optimistic about what he's going to do about housing, although anytime he says one good thing, it's like, I don't know, maybe he'll just get fixated on that, but more likely ADHD will kick in, unfortunately.But just to go and allow one new laissez-faire city to be built on federal land in some non-crummy area of the country — just as a demonstration project, the value of that would be enormous, just to see, hey, there's no reason why you can't have spacious, cheap homes in a really nice area that is not that remote from the rest of the country. Just imagine the airport you could build there, too — before all the noise complaints. You probably know about the noise complaints against Reagan Airport and how one single guy filed over half the complaints. It's like, how are we going to build anything? 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Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times Bestselling author.In this episode, we talked about:Genesis of “Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation” Book with Edy BranzeiWhy Housing Regulations?Gino's View on Financial IntelligenceHousing Shortages Despite Ample Land for DevelopmentUrbanisationAffordibilityRent ControlUseful links:First episode - https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/education-economics-and-real-estate-with-bryan/id1505750263?i=1000624154266Books - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Bryan-Caplan/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3ABryan+Caplan

In PX123 our guest is Bryan Caplan. Bryan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. We interview him about his ground breaking graphic novel ‘Build, Baby, Build - The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation'. The book is so described: 'In Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, economist Bryan Caplan makes the economic and philosophical case for radical deregulation of this massive market―freeing property owners to build as tall and dense as they wish. Not only would the average price of housing be cut in half, but the building boom unleashed by deregulation would simultaneously reduce inequality, increase social mobility, promote economic growth, reduce homelessness, increase birth rates, help the environment, cut crime, and more. Combining stunning homage to classic animation with careful interdisciplinary research, Build, Baby, Build takes readers on a grand tour of a bona fide “panacea policy.” We can start realizing these missed opportunities as soon as we abandon the widespread misconception that housing regulation solves more problems than it causes.' The book is a must read for planning undergraduates and all policy makers involved in the housing sector. Other books he has written 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, How Evil Are Politicians?, Don't Be a Feminist, Voters As Mad Scientists, You Will Not Stampede Me, and Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine. He is now writing Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets.  In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner Bryan recommends ‘The problem with political authority' by Michael Huemer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority). He also recommends the Youtube series 'Ride with Gabi'  https://www.youtube.com/@ridewithgabi  Jess has gone back to duolingo, learning Italian (https://www.duolingo.com). Pete recommends the Netflix K Rom - com ‘Business Proposal'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Proposal) Audio produced by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 12 November 2024.

In PX123 our guest is Bryan Caplan. Bryan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. We interview him about his ground breaking graphic novel ‘Build, Baby, Build - The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation'. The book is described: 'In Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, economist Bryan Caplan makes the economic and philosophical case for radical deregulation of this massive market―freeing property owners to build as tall and dense as they wish. Not only would the average price of housing be cut in half, but the building boom unleashed by deregulation would simultaneously reduce inequality, increase social mobility, promote economic growth, reduce homelessness, increase birth rates, help the environment, cut crime, and more. Combining stunning homage to classic animation with careful interdisciplinary research, Build, Baby, Build takes readers on a grand tour of a bona fide “panacea policy.” We can start realizing these missed opportunities as soon as we abandon the widespread misconception that housing regulation solves more problems than it causes.' The book should be a must read for planning undergraduates and all policy makers involved in the housing sector. Other books he has written 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, How Evil Are Politicians?, Don't Be a Feminist, Voters As Mad Scientists, You Will Not Stampede Me, and Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine. He is now writing Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets. In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner Bryan recommends 

‘The problem with political authority' by Michael Huemer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority). He also recommends the Youtube series 'Ride with Gabi' https://www.youtube.com/@ridewithgabi Jess has gone back to duolingo, learning Italian (https://www.duolingo.com). Pete recommends Netflix K drama ‘Business Proposal'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Proposal) Audio produced by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 12 November 2024.
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With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to them. Links to learn more and full transcript.After hearing 8 former guests' insights, Luisa and Rob chat about:Which of these resonate the most with Rob, now that he's been a dad for six months (plus an update at nine months).What have been the biggest surprises for Rob in becoming a parent.How Rob's dealt with work and parenting tradeoffs, and his advice for other would-be parents.Rob's list of recommended purchases for new or upcoming parents.This bonus episode includes excerpts from:Ezra Klein on parenting yourself as well as your children (from episode #157)Holden Karnofsky on freezing embryos and being surprised by how fun it is to have a kid (#110 and #158)Parenting expert Emily Oster on how having kids affect relationships, careers and kids, and what actually makes a difference in young kids' lives (#178)Russ Roberts on empirical research when deciding whether to have kids (#87)Spencer Greenberg on his surveys of parents (#183)Elie Hassenfeld on how having children reframes his relationship to solving pressing global problems (#153)Bryan Caplan on homeschooling (#172)Nita Farahany on thinking about life and the world differently with kids (#174)Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob & Luisa's intro (00:00:19)Ezra Klein on parenting yourself as well as your children (00:03:34)Holden Karnofsky on preparing for a kid and freezing embryos (00:07:41)Emily Oster on the impact of kids on relationships (00:09:22)Russ Roberts on empirical research when deciding whether to have kids (00:14:44)Spencer Greenberg on parent surveys (00:23:58)Elie Hassenfeld on how having children reframes his relationship to solving pressing problems (00:27:40)Emily Oster on careers and kids (00:31:44)Holden Karnofsky on the experience of having kids (00:38:44)Bryan Caplan on homeschooling (00:40:30)Emily Oster on what actually makes a difference in young kids' lives (00:46:02)Nita Farahany on thinking about life and the world differently (00:51:16)Rob's first impressions of parenthood (00:52:59)How Rob has changed his views about parenthood (00:58:04)Can the pros and cons of parenthood be studied? (01:01:49)Do people have skewed impressions of what parenthood is like? (01:09:24)Work and parenting tradeoffs (01:15:26)Tough decisions about screen time (01:25:11)Rob's advice to future parents (01:30:04)Coda: Rob's updated experience at nine months (01:32:09)Emily Oster on her amazing nanny (01:35:01)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Housing is artificially expensive. Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and the author of Build, Baby, Build talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the causes behind high housing prices and what can be done to bring prices down.

Economist and author Bryan Caplan joins us to discuss how higher education has become a bastion of extreme leftist thought - so much so that professors that self-identify as Democrat outnumber professors that self-identify as Republican by 20-to-1. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers Quick Hits https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/lifestyle/revealed-the-staggering-amount-of-time-gen-z-spends-watching-tv-during-the-workday/ https://www.mediaite.com/politics/they-can-control-the-weather-claims-marjorie-taylor-greene-after-deadly-hurricane-helene-kills-more-than-200/ Foolishness of the Week https://heartlandsignal.com/2024/10/04/minnesota-gop-senate-candidate-the-bad-guys-won-in-wwii/ Topic of the Week https://www.betonit.ai/p/what-i-told-the-chronicle-about-gmu?fbclid=IwY2xjawFtLVxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHUmRw4ov0NZ5pN2JTzgrac2GElz4Jlq726SyjO4IssKsGQVIuTmizkIwiw_aem_hum-GOp4PSfnPFs2owHXgg Words & Numbers Backstage https://www.facebook.com/groups/130029457649243/ More James at Smoke & Stories https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjILow4-ZJpBV-NnmSusZJ_vCuzKUJ4Ig More Ant on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/antonydavies Let Us Know What You Think mailto:wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com Antony Davies on Twitter https://twitter.com/antonydavies James R. Harrigan on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamesRHarrigan #AntonyDavies #JamesRHarrigan #WordsAndNumbers #economics #government #politics #policy #libertarian #classicalliberal #podcast #educational

Host Patrick Nelson sits down with economist and blogger Bryan Caplan to discuss the economics and ethics of housing deregulating, immigration, and adjacent topics.

https://youtu.be/XWGl_VvbF5E The leading source of happiness is pleasant social interaction. - Dr. Bryan Caplan, Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better Book discussed: Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better: https://a.co/d/iEhSSMw As a Professor of Economics, Bryan Caplan has published in the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Public Economics, the Southern Economic Journal, Public Choice, and numerous other outlets. His book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (2007), was published by Princeton University Press and named "the best political book this year" by the New York Times. Watch on Odysee Watch on BitChute

/// GUEST /// Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better: https://a.co/d/iEhSSMw As a Professor of Economics, Bryan Caplan has published in the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Public Economics, the Southern Economic Journal, Public Choice, and numerous other outlets. His book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (2007), was published by Princeton University Press and named "the best political book this year" by the New York Times. /// Keith Knight - Don't Tread on Anyone /// Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism: https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/domestic-imperialism-nine-reasons-i-left-progressivism/ The Voluntaryist Handbook: https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/voluntaryist-handbook/ Support the show, PayPal: KeithKnight590@gmail.com or Venmo: @Keith-Knight-34 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@KeithKnightDontTreadOnAnyone:b BitChute: KeithKnightDontTreadOnAnyone https://www.bitchute.com/channel/keithknightdonttreadonanyone/

We've overlooked some of the key reasons housing is so expensive. If we took these head on, argues Bryan Caplan, we could well see a 50% reduction in house prices. Sponsors: : Code: WOODS50 & Book Discussed: Guest's Website:  

Finalist #9 in the Book Review Contest You are a serious person with serious interests. The last comic book you read was more likely by Bryan Caplan than Jonathan Hickman. You would prefer to be reading high quality book reviews on AstralCodexTen. You believe ACX book reviews are usually more insightful than the books themselves, and a far more efficient use of your time. But even book reviews take time to process, and there are a lot of book reviews to read. Why spend your valuable time reading an 11,000 word review of superhero comic books? That is the first question I aim to answer in this review. If I am successful, maybe you will invest a little more time to discover the answer to the next four questions. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-silver-age-marvel 

Bryan Caplan on using graphic novels to change housing policy

Bryan is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He's also the author of a number of bestselling books, including The Case Against Education, The Myth of the Rational Voter, and recently Build Baby Build.    In this episode of World of DaaS, Bryan and Auren discuss: Education signaling and ROIThe myth of involved parentingImmigration & diaspora theorySocial science data accessLooking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.  You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Bryan Caplan on X at @bryan_caplan.Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

America's top colleges are facing record demand. So why don't they increase supply? (Part 2 of our series from 2022, “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”) SOURCES:Peter Blair, professor of education at Harvard University and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.Zachary Bleemer, assistant professor of economics at Princeton University and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.Amalia Miller, professor of economics at the University of Virginia.Morton Schapiro, professor of economics and former president of Northwestern University.Miguel Urquiola, professor of economics at Columbia University. RESOURCES:“Elite Schools and Opting In: Effects of College Selectivity on Career and Family Outcomes,” by Suqin Ge, Elliott Isaac, and Amalia Miller (Journal of Labor Economics, 2022).“Why Don't Elite Colleges Expand Supply?” by Peter Q. Blair & Kent Smetters (NBER Working Paper, 2021).“Lori Loughlin Pleads Guilty via Zoom in College Admissions Case,” by Kate Taylor (The New York Times, 2020).Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the World in University Research, by Miguel Urquiola (2020).“To Cheat and Lie in L.A.: How the College-Admissions Scandal Ensnared the Richest Families in Southern California,” by Evgenia Peretz (Vanity Fair, 2019).The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan (2018).“The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone,” by Bryan Caplan (The Atlantic, 2018).“Are Tenure Track Professors Better Teachers?” by David N. Figlio, Morton O. Schapiro, and Kevin B. Soter (NBER Working Paper, 2013).“Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables,” by Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger (NBER Working Paper, 1999)."Report on the University's Role in Political and Social Action," by the Kalven Committee (1967). EXTRAS:"What Exactly Is College For? (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).

Tertulia entre Bryan Caplan, Gonzalo Melián y Juan Ramón Rallo sobre el problema de acceso a la vivienda en la mayoría de sociedades y sobre las diversas soluciones que existen.La charla está organizada por la Universidad de las Hespérides: https://hesperides.edu.es/Aquí puedes adquirir el libro de Bryan Caplan, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation: https://amzn.to/3YdLnhx Hazte miembro en: https://plus.acast.com/s/juanrallo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.louiseperry.co.ukMy guest today is Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of many books, including his new book 'You Will Not Stampede Me: Essays on Non-Conformism.'We spoke about the advantages of being a non-conformist, whether or not I – personally – am a non-conformist, and why Bryan thinks that education is overrated. In the …

In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, about his latest book "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation." They discuss reducing housing regulations to address the housing shortage, the broader impacts of housing policy on urban development and affordability, how to talk about public policy, and more. Order the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Baby-Science-Housing-Regulation/dp/1952223415 Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

There's been renewed debate around Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education recently, so I want to discuss one way I think about this question. Education isn't just about facts. But it's partly about facts. Facts are easy to measure, and they're a useful signpost for deeper understanding. If someone has never heard of Chaucer, Dickens, Melville, Twain, or Joyce, they probably haven't learned to appreciate great literature. If someone can't identify Washington, Lincoln, or either Roosevelt, they probably don't understand the ebb and flow of American history. So what facts does the average American know? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-theoretical-case-against-education 

Show Notes: In this discussion, Professor Brian Kaplan discusses the science and ethics of housing regulations and the argument for housing deregulation, which he believes benefits everyone across the political spectrum, including lower costs and more equity.  Barriers to Radical Housing Deregulation Bryan believes that to achieve radical housing deregulation, it would require convincing a large audience of people that it is a good idea. He explains that most people don't see the connection between letting people build and low prices, and there is a hypersensitivity to the harms a building can cause. The conversation also explores issues of environmental regulations and renewable power, and opposing forces lobbying to keep current housing regulations in place, such as community activists and the construction industry.  Housing Developers and Zoning Laws The discussion turns to various types of regulation and barriers faced by developers, including zoning laws, which are often used to separate industry from commercial and residential areas. He talks about the expression “the zoning tax”, used by economists. Bryan believes that abolishing these regulations would be the best solution, and that, unfortunately,  there is a slippery slope in allowing owners to preemptively stop someone from using their property as they want, it stymies action of any kind, and it can lead to laws that are overreaching and, most often, unnecessary. He talks about the law of nuisance and the burden of making a lawful complaint should be the responsibility of the complainer and not of the court to mitigate potential complaints in advance.  Historical Preservation and Housing Regulations  He discusses the issue of  historical preservation regulations, which may not necessarily lead to the demolition of historic buildings. Market forces play a role in preserving historic buildings, as people often value them and don't want to tear them down. However, if there is a significant difference between the value of renting office space in historic buildings and the extra value from turning them into residential spaces, the market is spoken. He mentions that every historic building was built on the rubble of a previous, more historic building. Bryan states what he believes is the best, most easy solution to this problem. He also offers an example of why the motivation to preserve many historic buildings is quite ironic.  Environmental Building Regulations Bryan addresses the environmental regulations that new builders face when building new buildings. He believes that current environmental protection laws are counterproductive, as they prevent developers from building in areas with favorable climates and reducing carbon emissions. Instead, he suggests making it easier to build in areas with good conditions, such as Southern California, where the weather is good and housing units can be built for millions of people. He talks about the importance of privatizing government land, particularly in the US, and suggests that developers should focus on what people want to pay for rather than environmental philosophy. He also discusses the lack of research on building codes and standards, which are often focused on land use regulations and safety regulations. He believes that the free market can ensure quality products, and explains how licensing, certification, and insurance companies play a role.  Accessibility Requirements in Housing Regulations The conversation turns to accessibility requirements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Bryan suggests a voluntary system where developers can target specific markets for ADA accessible buildings. He also discusses the challenges of building skyscrapers and density regulations in the United States. He argues that while technology has allowed for the construction of tall buildings, getting government permissions to build them is difficult, especially in desirable areas. He suggests that if skyscrapers could be built closer to desirable locations, it would make living in these areas more affordable. Density regulations are another issue, as 80% of residential land is zoned for single-family homes. This makes it difficult for builders to build multi family homes, which is often expensive due to the paperwork involved. However, if housing is cheap enough, it is possible to have spacious apartments and entire floors of skyscrapers at a reasonable cost. Bryan also discusses the difference in cost per apartment or per square foot between single-family and multifamily housing.  Building Costs and Economies of Scale Building costs can be influenced by economies of scale, with skyscrapers being more expensive per square foot. Research shows that, averaging over the United States, regulations roughly doubles the cost of housing, with San Francisco and Manhattan having the worst regulation costs. Deregulating a small part of New York City could lead to skyscraper development almost immediately due to high prices in surrounding areas. However, if all the land was deregulated, then building skyscrapers of a certain height would no longer be profitable if there were many skyscrapers in the area and housing costs had been lowered. Overall, the cost of housing per square foot in a neighborhood depends on factors such as land, labor, structure, and regulation. Community Engagement and Developers Community engagement and public hearings are crucial for developers to build a building, as they must negotiate with the community to determine the benefits they will provide. However, many complaints are unmet, leading to delays and potential financial losses. A book called Neighborhood Defenders provides transcripts of land use meetings in Massachusetts, revealing that the complaints are often from paranoid homeowners, not wealthy homeowners, who fear disturbance or the neighborhood's character. The democratic process, while effective, puts the power to veto progress in the hands of paranoid people who don't speak for anyone but themselves. Local Politicians and Housing Developments Local politicians often claim to focus on increasing the tax base and lowering housing costs, but they often face criticism for their actions. The most simple-minded emotional arguments often prevail, as politicians are not there for the long term and may prioritize re-election over long-term goals. The antipathy for the housing industry is rooted in the fact that it is a big business, and housing is the second most vital necessity after food. Despite this, housing is often maligned, as it is the second most vital necessity after food.  Affordable Housing Regulations  Bryan discusses the concept of affordable housing requirements and their various versions. He identifies three common approaches: subsidizing demand and strangling supply, rent control, and public housing. The most common approach involves government subsidies for poor people to buy housing while restricting the supply. The least common approach is taxing the housing industry to produce different types of housing, which can make unsubsidized homes even more expensive while making affordable ones less expensive. Public housing, on the other hand, addresses the issue of not having enough housing and produces more housing. However, this approach generally faces issues such as high costs, lower quality, and poor maintenance by nonprofit sectors.  Noise and Nuisance Regulations When it comes to noise and nuisance regulations, Brian compares the old system to the new system. Bryan suggests that there was a better system during the period without regulation, where complainers could take recourse to the courts. He also mentions the homeowner association (HOA) as an intermediate market system for handling complaints. HOAs are flexible and limited to one area, allowing residents to be aware of the rules in place and decide whether they want to buy in or not. Bryan closes the conversation with a brief discussion on the ratcheting of regulations, economists, embedded interests, and political psychology. Timestamps: 00:23: Housing deregulation, with insights on opposition forces.  04:42: Regulations and their impact on development, with a focus on zoning laws, historical preservation, and the role of the government in decision-making  12:29: Preserving historical buildings and environmental regulations 16:19: Government regulations and building codes, with a focus on the free market and insurance companies setting standards 21:05: Regulations and their impact on affordable housing 27:35: Housing costs in New York City, with a focus on Astoria 32:21: Skyscraper construction costs and community engagement challenges 37:44: Affordable housing requirements and their impact on development 43:02: Housing regulations and their impact on affordability 48:12: Regulations and their challenges in society 52:54: Housing regulation and special interests   Links: Website: http://www.bcaplan.com/  Email: bcaplan@gmu.edu  Substack: http://betonit.substack.com/ Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.  

This is the first half of our conversation. The full episode and the complete archive of Subversive episodes, including exclusive episodes and my writing, are available on Substack. You can also subscribe to the podcast sans writing on Patreon for a bit less. This is how the show is financed and grows, so I appreciate every contribution! Please subscribe at: https://www.alexkaschuta.com/ https://www.patreon.com/aksubversive Our conversation explores the topic of housing and its influence on people's lives, the supply and demand dynamics of the housing market, the problem of expanding housing supply and preserving cultural values, the impact of immigration on housing demand, the effect of open borders on non-college educated workers, negativity bias in the news, the role of the internet in shaping cultural conversations, the impact of screens and technology on children and more. Bryan Caplan is an economist and author. A professor of economics at George Mason University, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He publishes his own blog on Substack, which I highly recommend, Bet on It. Bet On It Chapters 00:00 The Exorbitant Cost of Housing 02:01 Government Regulation and Housing Prices 04:14 Expanding Housing Supply and Cultural Values 06:39 Deregulation and Open Borders 10:55 The Internet and the Negativity Bias 45:05 Nature vs. Nurture and Parenting 48:26 The Impact of Screens and Technology on Children 54:39 Choosing Coping Strategies and Individual Responsibility 01:06:09 Underrated Thinkers --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aksubversive/message

Bryan Caplan explains why housing costs are so high.Today's book: Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation

https://youtu.be/ABZFsPh5I28 I know this is hard to believe, but builders try to maximize profits by cutting prices. - Bryan Caplan, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times Bestselling author. Watch on BitChute

https://youtu.be/ABZFsPh5I28 I know this is hard to believe, but builders try to maximize profits by cutting prices. - Bryan Caplan, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times Bestselling author. Watch on BitChute

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times Bestselling author. Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation: https://a.co/d/0Pmd8ev /// Don't Tread on Anyone /// Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism: https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/domestic-imperialism-nine-reasons-i-left-progressivism/ The Voluntaryist Handbook: https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/voluntaryist-handbook/ Support the show, PayPal: KeithKnight590@gmail.com or Venmo: @Keith-Knight-34 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@KeithKnightDontTreadOnAnyone:b

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the New York Times Bestselling author of *The Myth of the Rational Voter*, *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids*, *The Case Against Education*, *Open Borders*, and *Build, Baby, Build*.Show is Sponsored by The Ayn Rand Institute https://www.aynrand.org/starthereEnergy Talking Points, featuring AlexAI, by Alex Epstein alexepstein.substack.comExpress VPN https://www.expressvpn.com/yaronJoin this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/@YaronBrook/joinLike what you hear? Like, share, and subscribe to stay updated on new videos and help promote the Yaron Brook Show: https://bit.ly/3ztPxTxSupport the Show and become a sponsor: / yaronbrookshow or https://yaronbrookshow.com/membershipOr make a one-time donation: https://bit.ly/2RZOyJJContinue the discussion by following Yaron on Twitter (https://bit.ly/3iMGl6z) and Facebook (https://bit.ly/3vvWDDC )Want to learn more about Ayn Rand and Objectivism? Visit the Ayn Rand Institute: https://bit.ly/35qoEC3#housing #supplyanddemand #immigration #ethics #selfishness #egoism #capitalism #philosophy #Morality ​ ​#Objectivism​ #AynRand #politicsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/yaron-brook-show--3276901/support.

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. A bestselling author, his books include The Case Against Education, Open Borders, and Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Deregulation. Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/bryan-caplan-155See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 We embark on a journey through the lenses of Hume, Smith, and Coase, piecing together the roles of observation and empirical study in shaping our understanding of societal conventions and moral philosophy. David Schmidtz recounts a defining moment from his academic path, sparking a robust discussion on the fusion of economics with moral considerations in the realm of ownership and resource distribution.The discussion with David delves into the essence of property ownership, dissecting what it means to hold rights over something as abstract as an idea or as concrete as land. We grapple with the notion that property is not just a "bundle of sticks" but a set of societal constructs, born from necessity and shaped by our collective desire for harmony. Through examples of conflict resolution and the negotiation of public and private interests, such as eminent domain and navigation easements, we confront the delicate dance between individual autonomy and the greater good. The philosophical undercurrents of property law are laid bare, revealing the liberal heart beating at its core.The "Desert Town" source:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/elements-of-justice/desert/268B6C7A9B17949572933A4DAA0CAB09Wall Street Journal article on Costco gold purchases: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/selling-costco-gold-bars-f14e966f Biden DOT rule on airline refunds:  https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-administration-announces-final-rule-requiring-automatic-refunds-airlineLynne Kiesling on The Essential Ronald Coase, Fraser Institute. Books:C. Johnson, R. Lusch, Schmidtz, Commercial Society: A Primer on Ethics & Economics (Rowman & Littlefield).  Bryan Caplan and Ady Branzei. Build, Baby, Build. Graphic novel just published by the Cato Institute  If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com ! You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

In this travel episode our intrepid hosts journeys to McAllen, TX on the US-border to see the river, the wall, and to interview employers who hire immigrants as well as US Border agents.   Guests: Former Border Patrol chief Clem Clemson, and Lee Wicker, Deputy Director for the North Carolina Growers Association.   Support the Show! www.patreon.com/andrewheaton   Relevant Links:   Bryan Caplan on Open Borders https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/bryan-caplan   Anna Gorisch: Sucks to Legally Immigrate https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/if-i-want-to-naturalize-my-foreign-bastard-foreign