Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality by Bryan Caplan

Author:Bryan Caplan [Caplan, Bryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2023-04-19T21:00:00+00:00

July 4, 2019

Notes

Caplan, Bryan. “Why Are The Neurotic Anti-Market?” EconLog, July 8, 2009. Caplan, Bryan. “Pro-Market AND Pro-Business.” EconLog, August 2, 2018.

Triple Standards: The Dollar, the Throne, and the Altar

The last chapter of Tyler’s Big Business is called “If Business Is So Good, Why Is It So Disliked?” At risk of seeming narcissistic, this passage put a big grin on my face:

Perhaps in part because we cannot do without business, so many people hate or resent business, and they love to criticize it, mock it, and lower its status. Business just bugs them. After I explained the premise of this book to one of my colleagues, Bryan Caplan, he shrieked to me: “But, but . . . how can people be ungrateful toward corporations? Corporations give us everything! Corporations do everything for us!” Of course, he was joking, as he understood full well that people are often pretty critical of corporations. And they are critical precisely because corporations do so much for us. And do so much to us.

Does my colleague’s outburst remind you of anything? Well, immediately he followed up with this: “Hating corporations is like hating your parents.”

Hmm. Your parents too (usually) have done lots and lots for you, but—especially in America—large numbers of people are unhappy with how that all turned out, or at least some parts of it. For all of their gratefulness, they resent what their parents have done to them.1

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