Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues

Bryan Caplan 0:00 There can be a thousand refugees from a country you don't like, you put it on the news and people say, "Oh, we just couldn't possibly absorb them. We're at our absolute breaking point. This is terrible."

Dwarkesh Patel 0:08 Student loan forgiveness.

Bryan Caplan 0:10 Oh. Oy vey.

Dwarkesh Patel 0:11 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 0:12 I mean, this is one where I think it's very hard to find almost any economist, no matter how left wing or progressive, who really wants to stick their necks out and defend this garbage. The amount of time that American feminists spend on female infanticide in China and India, could it even be 1% of the rhetoric? It's just not something that they care about? It's not just, "Oh, I can get to be a billionaire. I'll do this thing and make the money." Like, it is something that actually, I think, fosters a whole culture of entrepreneurship. I mean, again, we've been hanging out in Austin. All over there, there's a whole bunch of people who are never gonna be billionaires, Dwarkesh. But, you know, I've told people, like, "Dwarkesh. Will Dwarkesh ever be a billionaire?" Probably not, but, like, 2%.

Dwarkesh Patel 0:48 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 0:48 Like, you know, li- like, Dwarkesh is just a mover and a shaker.

Dwarkesh Patel 0:52 Okay. Today I have the great honor, for the third time, of interviewing Bryan Caplan again. Bryan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Bryan Caplan 0:59 I've got the great honor of being interviewed by you, Dwarkesh.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:01 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 1:01 You're one of my favorite people in the world.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03 (laughs) Yeah, it's a greater pleasure every time-

Bryan Caplan 1:05 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 1:05 ... um, for me at least. Uh, so le- let's talk about your book, Don't Be a Feminist. Is there any margin of, uh, representation of women in, like, leadership roles at which you think there should be introduced bias to make sure more women get in, even if the original ratio is not because of bias?

Bryan Caplan 1:22 No. I believe in meritocracy. I think it is a good system. It is one that almost everyone sees the intuitive appeal of, and it works. So just looking at a group and saying, "We need to get more members of group X," is just the wrong way to be approaching it. Rather, you need to be focusing on, "Let's try to figure out the best way of getting the top-quality people here."

Dwarkesh Patel 1:45 But if there's a- just an astounding ratio of men in certain positions, could that potentially have an impact on the company's ability to do good business, that the- Like, the company would just care about increasing the ratio for that reason alone?

Bryan Caplan 1:58 Right. I mean, one can imagine that. I mean, I think in our culture it really goes the other way, and I think that people are more likely to be trying to get rid of men despite the fact that the men are delivering value. I mean, if you really push me into starting to think, "Well, suppose that you're running a bar, would you have ladies' night?"

Dwarkesh Patel 2:15 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 2:15 Yeah, I would have ladies' night in a bar, because the- (laughs) that actually works and it's good business. Uh, but if what you're doing is trying to actually get correct answers to things, if you're trying to go and make something run effectively, if you're just trying to make progress, you're trying to learn new things, the thing to focus on is what actually leads to knowledge, and not focusing on just trying to get demographic representation. And even really, I think what we've seen is once you go down that route, it is a slippery slope. So I would actually, besides defending meritocracy on its merits, also say we- the slippery slope argument is not one that should be dismissed lightly. There's a lot of evidence that it really does actually fit the facts, and when you make an exception of that kind, it really does lead you to bad places.

Dwarkesh Patel 3:03 Okay. I- I... But just changing topics a bit, I wonder if this gives you greater sympathy for immigration restrictionists, because their argument is similar, um, that, like, there's no natural schelling point for your keyhole solutions where you let tens of millions of people in, but you don't give them w- welfare or voting rights-

Bryan Caplan 3:18 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 3:18 ... that there's a slippery slope. You let them in-

Bryan Caplan 3:20 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 3:20 ... and then eventually, you know, the civil rights argument is gonna extend to them. There'll be adverse consequences that these keyhole solutions can't solve for.

Bryan Caplan 3:27 So for there, I mean, first of all, I would say maybe. Yeah. So that is one of the best arguments to keyhole solutions. I mean, I'm guessing that a lot of your listeners have no idea what keyhole solutions are, Dwarkesh-

Dwarkesh Patel 3:38 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 3:38 ... so maybe we want to back up and explain that.

Dwarkesh Patel 3:41 Go for it.

Bryan Caplan 3:42 Uh, sure. So I have a totally unrelated book, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. Uh, one of the chapters goes over ways of dealing with complaints about immigration that fall short of stopping people from actually coming or excluding or kicking out people that are already there. So, you know, we'll just- we'll- just to back up a little bit further, so most of the book t- talks about complaints about immigration and say that they're either totally wrong or overstated. But then I have another chapter saying, "All right, fine, maybe you don't agree with that, but isn't there another way that we could deal with this?" So, for example, if you're worried about immigrants voting poorly, you could say, "Fine. We won't extend voting rights to immigrants, or make them wait for a longer time period." I mean, that's one where I would just say that the focal point of citizen versus non-citizen is one of the s- one of the strongest ones-

Dwarkesh Patel 4:30 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Caplan 4:30 ... so I think that it actually is one that has, has a lot st- a lot of stability. The, like, this line of, "Well, you're not a citizen, therefore something," really does have a lot of intuitive appeal. Although, yes, I do think that keyhole solutions would probably not work multi-generationally. Uh, at least, uh, unlikely to work. So to go and say this is a key- this is a keyhole solution where you're not a citizen, your kids are not citizens, their kids after them are not citizens, that's one that I think would be hard to maintain. But again, at the same time, it also does say the problems that people are worrying about, if they ever were severe, are also getting diluted over time, so I wouldn't worry about it so much. But yes, that is one of the very best objections to keyhole solutions that I know of, Dwarkesh. Good for you.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:09 Okay. So going back to feminism-

Bryan Caplan 5:11 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 5:12 ... um, doesn't, over time, feminism naturally become true? So, um, th- one, one of the things you can say that the way that society's unfair to men is that they had to fight in wars-

Bryan Caplan 5:22 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:22 ... or do, uh, difficult and dangerous jobs. But, you know, society, over time, becomes more peaceful, or it at least-

Bryan Caplan 5:28 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:28 ... has in our timeline, and the difficult jobs get automated. Um, at the same time, the gains for the people who are at the very peak of any dis- uh, discipline, they keep going up, maybe fairly-

Bryan Caplan 5:39 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:39 ... but this implication still is that, like, if men are overrepresented there, again even for biological reasons, then the relative gains that they get go up. Right? So over time-

Bryan Caplan 5:48 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:48 ... feminism just becomes more true, not because society necessarily is discriminating against women-

Bryan Caplan 5:52 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 5:52 ... but just because of the, like, the trends in technology.

Bryan Caplan 5:55 Hmm. Uh, once again, I feel like we should just back up a little bit. The what is feminism anyway? Because if we don't know what that is, then it's very hard to talk about whether it's becoming more true over time. Uh, in my book, I begin with some popular dictionary definitions that just say feminism is the theory that women should be the political, social, economic, cultural equals of men. I say that this is a terrible definition which just violates normal usage. Why? Well, we actually have public opinion data on, first of all, whether people are or are not feminists, and second of all, what they believe about the political, social, economic, cultural equality of women. And guess what? A overwhelming majority of people that-... say they are not feminists, still agree with the equality of women on all those mentions, which really makes you realize, well, that really can't be the definition of feminism. That would be like saying feminism is the theory that the sky is blue. Right? Well, feminists do believe the sky is blue, but that isn't what distinguishes feminists from other people, so what does distinguish them? And what I say is that the really distinguishing view of feminism is that s- or is that society treats women less fairly than men. Right? The view that society treats women less fairly than men, or treats men more fairly than women. Uh, this, uh, d- definition I think fits actual usage. It would be very strange for someone to say, "I'm a feminist, but I think that men get terrible treatment in our society and women are treated like goddesses." Like, you say, "Well, th- then you're not really a feminist, are you?" That doesn't make sense. Right? Or, on the other hand, for someone to say that, you know, "I am not a feminist, but God we treat women so terribly. Like, we're awful." Right? That, again, just would not fit. So I'm not saying this is the one true definition, but rather that it is much closer to what people actually mean by feminism than what dictionaries say. Although, to be fair, every now and then there'll be a better definition. Like I think the Wikipedia definition in the second sentence adds on that it also has the view that women are treated very unfairly.

Dwarkesh Patel 7:59 Could it not just be, uh, uh, maybe another way of defining feminism is just that y- we should, like, raise the status of women?

Bryan Caplan 8:05 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:05 And that's different slightly than the fairness issue, because, like, if you think of, like, a feminist historian, right-

Bryan Caplan 8:10 Right.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:10 ... maybe th- their contention is not that, uh-

Bryan Caplan 8:12 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:12 ... uh, women were treated unfairly in the past, maybe they just want to raise the status of, like, women in the past who are underrepresented. Or if you think of somebody today-

Bryan Caplan 8:18 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:18 ... who wants to, um, let's say raise the status of Asians in our society, right? Like, they wanna-

Bryan Caplan 8:23 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:23 ... represent the great, acknowledge the great things that Asians-

Bryan Caplan 8:25 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:25 ... do in our society. Maybe their contention is not even that Asians are treated unfairly, they just want to raise the status. So-

Bryan Caplan 8:30 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 8:30 ... what would you think of that definition?

Bryan Caplan 8:32 So first of all, could be, but I don't think so. Here's what I think. There could be a few people like that, but that's not what the word means in normal use. If someone were to say, "Women are treated absolutely fantastically way better than men and I want it to get even higher," right? You'd say, "Hmm. Well, that's not what I think, uh, that, that..." Again, that's, like, somebody might say, "Well, I can still be a feminist and think that." Okay, but that's not what, what, what fem people, that's not what the word actually means. It's not what is the typical view of people who call themselves feminists. The typical view is precisely that women are treated very unfairly, and also they wanna raise that and alleviate that in a way that's almost by definition if you think that someone's being treated unfairly than to say, "I think they're treated really unfairly, but I think that's great that, that it's unfair." It's like, hmm. It's almost self-contradictory.

Dwarkesh Patel 9:17 I guess I was, uh, making a slightly different point, which is, uh, not even that these people who wanna raise the status of women want to raise, like, the actual living standards of women-

Bryan Caplan 9:24 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 9:24 ... in some way. It's just they want to raise the rhetorical sta- uh, status.

Bryan Caplan 9:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, but, uh, again, if, if someone were to say, "I think that women are treated absolutely fantastically in this society, way better than men who we treat like dogs, uh, but I also want women's status to be even higher than it already is," that would be something where you'd say, or you would argue, ar- uh, argue, well, that person maybe is still a feminist but that is not what the word means, because-

Dwarkesh Patel 9:46 Oh, oh yes, uh, so-

Bryan Caplan 9:47 Yes, bec- because hardly anyone who, who c- calls themself a feminist believes that weird thing that you're talking about.

Dwarkesh Patel 9:52 Let me make an analogy. Like, let's say-

Bryan Caplan 9:54 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 9:54 ... uh, uh, you or I are libertarian, right?

Bryan Caplan 9:56 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 9:56 And then we think, uh, we should raise the status of billionaires. Now it's not like we think-

Bryan Caplan 10:00 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 10:00 ... society mistreats billionaires.

Bryan Caplan 10:01 Yes, yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 10:02 Um, like, th- they're, they're-

Bryan Caplan 10:03 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 10:03 ... pretty fine, right? But, we think it should, their status should be even higher, right?

Bryan Caplan 10:07 Yeah. I mean, and this just goes to the definition. In order to find out whether a definition is correct, you just have to think, "Well, how is the word commonly used?" It's not to say that logically speaking it's possible to have a different view, or that two things are compatible. The whole idea of a definition is you're, ideally you're trying to find necessary and sufficient conditions such that everybody who satisfies the conditions falls under the category, and that everybody who doesn't satisfy the conditions doesn't. In ordinary language, of course, it's notoriously hard to really do that. Defining a table, right, is actually quite difficult in a, in a necessary and sufficient condition sense. But we can still say, "Well, look, uh, y- a table is not by definition something that people sit on," right? And if someone said, "Well, you could sit on it," I'd be, "Yeah, I suppose you could sit on a table, but that's not the definition in ordinary use in any language of which I'm aware." Right? So but why don't we actually go to your real question, which we, uh, we got on-

Dwarkesh Patel 10:57 Sure, go for it.

Bryan Caplan 10:57 ... on this, uh, on, on the aggression. So the question was?

Dwarkesh Patel 11:01 O- overall, um-

Bryan Caplan 11:03 Yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 11:03 ... the left tail of society is being compressed-

Bryan Caplan 11:05 Yes. Oh, oh, yes, yeah, yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 11:05 ... and the right tail is being expanded.

Bryan Caplan 11:06 Yes, yes. Does feminism become more true over time?

Dwarkesh Patel 11:08 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 11:09 And the answer is we really need to look at all of the main measures to get an idea of this. So some of the ones that you're talking about, it does make more sense. So as, uh, as jobs become, as jobs become, uh, less physically dangerous, then at least you might say that things are less unfair to men, although in the book what I say is, uh, y- even that is a bit more complicated. Superficially at least, on the surface, the immediate reaction is, uh, it is less, society is less for the m- less fair to men because they do the most dangerous jobs, although and I also said, yeah, but they get monetary compensation for that. So all things considered you probably shouldn't think of it as unfair. It's something where it's reasonable to say, "Hey, wait a second, how come men are the ones that are d- uh, that are enduring 90% of the workplace deaths?" And say, "Well, because they're getting 90% of the combat pay," uh, broadly construed, it's not mostly actual for combat. So that's, you know, so anyway, that's, that's one where you should be careful, but at least, I mean, I can see the plausibility there. Uh, I do have a section in the book where I go over what's happening over time. So what I'll say is, well, one big thing that's happened over time is that people have become very hyper-concerned with the mistreatment of women, which means that feminism is becoming less true as a result, uh, because when people are really hyper-concerned that they might be unfair to someone, they are even less likely to be unfair to them. So I think that's one thi- one thing that where soci- where feminism's become less true over time. Another one that I talk about and which I think really does tip the scales, although again you need, really need to go through the book, 'cause I do try to work through a lot of different margins, but I think the one that really does settle it against feminism in today's age is-... precisely the level of false feminist accusations about unfairness. And so, if, you know, the way, the way that I put it is, when we go over all of the objective measures, then you say, "Well, it's close to a wash, uh, in terms of which gender is treated more or less fairly overall." But then you realize, "Yes, but there's one gender that has to endure a whole lot of grossly exaggerated hyperbolic accusations on unfairness and another gender that gets to make those accusations," right? And the gender that has to endure the unfair accusations is men and the gender that gets to make them is women. Obviously, not all women make them, not all men receive them, but still, if we're talking about the average fairness of the treatment of men and women in our society, I say that this climate of false accusation and intimidation is what really tips it. It didn't have to be this way, Sarkesh. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 13:37 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 13:37 Right? We could, we could've just had change without a whole lot of flinging of, of, uh, wildly inaccurate accusations, but that's not the world we're in.

Dwarkesh Patel 13:47 But w- where would you say was the flipping point? Was there a particular decade that you thought-

Bryan Caplan 13:50 Hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 13:50 ... like, I'm balanced, things are equal now?

Bryan Caplan 13:53 Hmm. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things I say in the book is that while the, uh, you know, there's a bunch of ways where you can say that women were treated less fairly in earlier decades, but I also say there's some that are probably more important overall where women are treated worse. Uh, the main one is paternal support for children where, you know, in 1940, the odds that you could count on the biological father of your children to help you to raise them was maybe 90%. And now it's probably more like 60%, 70%. Right? Uh, so that's one of the main ways that I say that women probably are treated less fairly than men and the unfairness has gotten worse over time. So, um, right? So again, just understand, this is not the kind of book that most people are used to where someone argues like a lawyer and they just say, "Look, I've got 20 arguments for why I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me is stupid and doesn't have a leg to stand on." This is the kind of book that I like to write where I really say, "Let's just calm down and just go through every issue separately, weigh each one on its merits," and yes. So there's a bunch of points where someone could say, "Why do you concede that? That makes your argument weaker." Say, "Yeah. I concede it 'cause it's true."

Dwarkesh Patel 15:04 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 15:05 Right? And then at the end, I have my overall judgment, but, you know, I mean, I will just say that's, uh, you know, the number of books that are written in this terrible modern style of lawyerly reasoning where you basically have a thesis that you just try to defend in every possible way. Like I don't write books like that.

Dwarkesh Patel 15:24 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Caplan 15:24 I try to write books where they are honest and self-reflective, and where if there's some, some weakness in what I'm saying, I don't just acknowledge it if someone points it out. I try to be the first person to reveal it so that, you know, people feel like they can trust me. And, you know, but it's m- you know, my own conscience. Like I don't feel right when I say something if I say, "Well, it's not really quite right. I should say the other thing." So I try to just have to write with candor.

Dwarkesh Patel 15:49 Now would you say that feminism, maybe in the United States is over-corrected, but globally, it's still true-

Bryan Caplan 15:54 Hm.

Dwarkesh Patel 15:54 ... in the sense that over- or like on average across the world-

Bryan Caplan 15:57 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 15:57 ... women are treated more unfairly than men? And then if-

Bryan Caplan 15:59 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 15:59 ... that's the case, then, um, and if you, the US is-

Bryan Caplan 16:02 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 16:02 ... at the center of, uh, global feminism, then, of course, they're gonna over-correct here, but overall, they're making the world a better place.

Bryan Caplan 16:08 Yeah. So that is a w- you know, much better argument. And I would say that if we think about, you know, most of Europe, areas like that, then I think that it's very similar to what's going on in the US. But yeah, in the book, I do go over esp-... You know, so I s- you know, start with Saudi Arabia where it's really obvious what's going on and how poorly women, uh, how poorly women are treated in Saudi Arabia. Uh, but then I go over to India and China and just think about plausible rates of female infanticide, right? So those are ones where, uh, I think it is very likely that overall, the treatment of, you know, of, of women in India and, India and China is way more... is, you know, is more unfair than that of men. Saudi Arabia, I'm almost sure that it is. Uh, in terms of, like, is the US providing a u- a useful corrective for the world while messing up things in the US, hmm, it's possible. Aga- again, I think the problem is that it does discredit a lot of the reasonable points because they just don't focus on the really big issues. So the amount of time that American feminists spend on female infanticide in China and India, could it even be 1% of the rhetoric? It's just not something that they care about. Uh, so I would say that there's more harm being done just by the sheer distraction of putting so much emphasis upon either small or exaggerated or just reverse problems that are c- or that, uh, bother feminists in the first world while ignoring the... You know, and even not just ignoring but while just making, by causing, indirectly causing people to forget or neglect actual serious problems

Bryan Caplan 17:44 in some other countries.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:45 But let me apply the argument you make in Open Borders that-

Bryan Caplan 17:47 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:47 ... you can effect change by shifting the Overton window.

Bryan Caplan 17:50 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:50 Right?

Bryan Caplan 17:50 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:51 So that advocating for open borders ma- it just, like, shifts, um-

Bryan Caplan 17:53 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:54 ... shifts the immigration policy a li- slightly towards the open end.

Bryan Caplan 17:57 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 17:57 Couldn't the American feminists make the same point that by making the crazy arguments-

Bryan Caplan 18:00 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 18:00 ... they make in America-

Bryan Caplan 18:01 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 18:01 ... they're making Saudi Arabia more liberal-

Bryan Caplan 18:03 Hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 18:03 ... for women?

Bryan Caplan 18:04 I would say that when the arguments are crazy, then it's not clear that shifting the Overton window actually happens. Uh, that may be where you d- where you discredit it, uh, discredit the other view. In particular, I think what I say in that part of the book is that people generally confuse being radical with being unfriendly. And most of the harm that is done to radical causes is due to the unfriendliness rather than the radicalism. Also, in that, in that case, I would say, yeah, well, feminism has a definite friendliness problem. Uh, they, uh, it is not a movement that goes out of its way to go and make other people feel like they are respected, and, "Even if you disagree with me, I wanna be your friend and listen to what you have to say, and maybe we could go and come to some understanding." Uh, I think it is a movement where the main emotional tenor of the elites is, "We are totally right and anyone who disagrees had better watch out."Uh, so I don't... So I think that there is a discrediting of it. The other thing is just that I think there's, there's, uh, too much cultural separation between the fem- the feminist movement as we know it and places like China and India, where I just don't see that being really angry about exaggerated or false complaints about unfairness, unfair treatment of women in the United States is going to do anything for infanticide in India. Uh, correct-

Dwarkesh Patel 19:15 Uh-

Bryan Caplan 19:15 Correct me if I'm wrong, Dwarkesh.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:16 Well, uh-

Bryan Caplan 19:16 Uh, do you... Like, do you see much, uh, much influence of-

Dwarkesh Patel 19:19 Oh, yeah.

Bryan Caplan 19:19 ... Western feminism on infanticide in India?

Dwarkesh Patel 19:21 Well, I don't know of, of inten-

Bryan Caplan 19:23 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:23 Actually, maybe yes-

Bryan Caplan 19:24 All right.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:24 ... even on that subject as well.

Bryan Caplan 19:25 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:25 But, um, more generally, like, one, one of the common arguments that, say, libertarians make about, um, India and its elites is, "Oh, you know, all these, um, all of India's elites go to, to go study in Oxford or something-"

Bryan Caplan 19:35 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:35 "... and they learn about- " Mm-hmm. "... uh, the regulations-"

Bryan Caplan 19:38 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:38 "... the West is adopting-"

Bryan Caplan 19:39 Right.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:39 "... that make no sense for a country with, like, $2,000 GDP per capita."

Bryan Caplan 19:41 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:42 I feel like a similar thing could be true of feminism, where all these, uh, American elites go to America... Sorry, Indian elites go to American universities and UK universities-

Bryan Caplan 19:50 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 19:50 ... where they learn about radical feminism, and they go back and they adopt some of these things, right?

Bryan Caplan 19:54 Hmm. Yes. Although, you might remember what Alex Tabarrok says about these very things, which is that you can go to India, have people pushing paper straws on you, and yet the streets are still totally covered in trash.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:04 Yes.

Bryan Caplan 20:05 And the pushing the paper straws probably actually distracts people from the much more-

Dwarkesh Patel 20:08 Right.

Bryan Caplan 20:08 ... serious problem of horrible trash. Right? And again, I'm, I don't know enough about India to speak with any confidence here, but if you go and learn radical feminism in Western universities, come back to India, and start complaining about how we need to have more female CEOs, in a country where you have millions of female infanticides per year, I think it probably is like the paper straws problem, where you are so focused on a trivial problem that maybe is not onl- is, is not even a problem at all.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:37 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 20:37 At the same time, you are... You know, that anger li- blinds you to an actual really serious problem that, that's going on.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:44 Right.

Bryan Caplan 20:45 Again, like, but, uh, you know India better than me, I could be wrong.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:47 I believe it's still legal in India, uh, or-

Bryan Caplan 20:50 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:50 ... rape within a marriage is still not recognized?

Bryan Caplan 20:52 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:52 Or maybe it was, like, just-

Bryan Caplan 20:53 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:53 ... recently changed to, uh-

Bryan Caplan 20:54 Yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 20:54 Um, like, let's say a feminist, uh, let's just say in an interview, and they

Dwarkesh Patel 20:58 say, "Oh my gosh, okay, Bryan, maybe you're right, that society as a whole-"

Bryan Caplan 21:01 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 21:01 "... doesn't mistreat women, but maybe the cosmos mistreat women. But all of these things combined make women's lives worse on average than men's lives-"

Bryan Caplan 21:08 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 21:08 "... and it's not because maybe society mistreats them-"

Bryan Caplan 21:10 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 21:10 "... but in some sense, there's still unfairness geared towards women."

Bryan Caplan 21:13 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 21:14 What do you make of this argument?

Bryan Caplan 21:15 Yeah. So an unfairness where there's no human being that does it, that seems like a very strange idea to me just at the, just at the get-go. It's like, well, so who was unfair to you? The universe is unfair? It's like, well, I mean, I think the correct term there is unfortunate, not unfair. Although, then I... You know, so that aside, I would say, like, you know, it's a really interesting question. Like, who actually has better lives, uh, just as a matter of biological endowments, men or women? In terms of demonstrator preference, I think the overwhelming result is that most people just want to remain in whatever gender they're born in. Right? So this, this is not actually... You know, transgenderism, this is like a genie wish, if you could change your gender just with a wish, costlessly, perfectly. I think still a very large majority of people just want to stay with whatever they have because it's part of their identity, it's some kind of endowment effect, status quo bias, whatever. Right? But then if you say, "Okay, yeah. Right, fine." Like, you, like, you just want to stay whatever you were because that's your identity, but still, like, if you could put that aside, what would you want to be? It's a tough question. So you can say, well, wo- women, women have a harder personality to, uh... A harder personality because of higher neuroticism. Uh, they've also got higher agreeableness, so that gives them some other advantages in terms of getting along with other people. You know, like, for example, you know, men's dre- disagreeableness makes it hard for men to just bite their tongues and shut up when someone's saying something they don't like. I think that is easier for women to do. Right? And, and yeah. And you may, as you may have noticed, having to shut up and bite your tongue while someone around you says something stupid you don't like is actually a big part of life. That is... So that's one thing. Now, in terms of things that I feel that I would get out of being a woman, just being able to have as many kids as I wanted. That would matter a lot to me. Right? So I only have four kids right now. If it were totally up to me, yeah, I would have had more kids. And I think as a woman, it would have been easy to do. Right? (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 23:05 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 23:05 Right? Uh, so again, like, you know, there is the issue, well, how are you going to find a guy that wants to have a lot of kids? Uh, this is one where I've looked at the data on family size and what determines it, and it seems like, you know, while both men and women have a... You know, see... Like, in the data, seem to have a say on family size, but it just looks like women's traits have a much larger effects. Men are more likely to just say, "Okay, fine, whatever. We'll do what you want to do on family size." Whereas women seem to have much more pronounced, uh, preferences, which they then tend to get. So yeah, I think that if I were a woman, I could have had more kids and it would have been easy for me to do, you know, easier for me to do it. Uh, so that would be something that matters to me. Uh, it's not something that matters to everybody, but, uh, that's, that's something there. Um, again, you know, there, there is just the nice fact of people caring about your suffering. I... In the book, I do talk about the ethos of women and children first, uh, which is, you know, very pronounced. It's not just modern society, but, uh, it is in modern society that we can simultaneously have women and children first, but also have a lot of rhetoric about how people don't care about women.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:09 Um-

Bryan Caplan 24:09 And it's like, hmm, that's not-

Dwarkesh Patel 24:11 What, what do you, what do you think of this theory that-

Bryan Caplan 24:12 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 24:12 ... maybe society cares a lot more about women's suffering-

Bryan Caplan 24:15 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:16 ... but it sympathizes a lot more with men's success? So if you think of-

Bryan Caplan 24:18 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:18 ... like, a default character-

Bryan Caplan 24:19 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:19 ... in a movie or a novel-

Bryan Caplan 24:22 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:22 Um-

Bryan Caplan 24:22 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:23 At least for me, that's like-

Bryan Caplan 24:23 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:23 The default is a man-

Bryan Caplan 24:24 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:24 ... who's like... And then maybe it's like there's some-

Bryan Caplan 24:26 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:26 ... victim, the default is a woman.

Bryan Caplan 24:27 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:28 But I would rather be the-

Bryan Caplan 24:29 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:29 ... sympathy of, uh-

Bryan Caplan 24:30 Hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:30 ... some sort of success than, uh, you know, get-

Bryan Caplan 24:33 Hm, that's, that's interesting.

Dwarkesh Patel 24:34 ... get empathy for suffering.

Bryan Caplan 24:34 I mean, do you need sympathy for success? (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 24:36 Well, not sympathy but just like, uh-

Bryan Caplan 24:38 Admiration?

Dwarkesh Patel 24:39 Admiration, yeah.

Bryan Caplan 24:40 Yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is that everybody's got suffering and only (laughs) , only a small share of people have any notable success. So like, if you did... If all that you knew was you're going to be a man or woman, I would say, "Well, gee, if I'm a woman, then people will sympathize with my suffering," which is almost definitely coming because that's the human condition. Whereas to have admiration for your success, that's something where it just affects a much smaller number of people. I mean, I know that hanging out in Austin among hyper-successful people, uh, this may be biasing your sample a bit- (laughs) But, but yeah, like the, I, I, I do think it's believable that men get more unmitigated admiration for their success, and of course there's also differences in the mating opportunities that you get for being a successful man versus a successful woman, so that is there too. But again, this is something that really is only relevant for a very small share of the population, so.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:34 Right.

Bryan Caplan 25:34 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:34 But then the argument is well, does that small share of the population matter so much in terms of the story-

Bryan Caplan 25:39 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:39 ... we tell ourselves about our civilization-

Bryan Caplan 25:40 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:40 ... or just in terms of, like-

Bryan Caplan 25:41 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:41 ... who controls more resources, um, overall, right?

Bryan Caplan 25:44 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:44 So if being-

Bryan Caplan 25:46 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:46 ... a, you know-

Bryan Caplan 25:47 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:47 ... being a woman billionaire is harder, maybe for biological reasons, maybe for the-

Bryan Caplan 25:50 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 25:50 ... reasons of our society, you could say, "Well, that only affects a small percentage of women in our society."

Bryan Caplan 25:54 Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 25:54 But on the other hand, billionaires matter a lot.

Bryan Caplan 25:57 Yeah. I mean, in terms of what life is like for most people, like, the main way they matter is billionaires just provide awesome stuff. Um, in terms of the story that p- stories that people tell-

Dwarkesh Patel 26:08 Like, you know, like-

Bryan Caplan 26:09 It's true that st- that, that you, if you just go and look at most classic movies or novels, the main characters are male, right? Even in cartoons actually, the main characters traditionally have been male. Uh, but on the other hand, that is just fi- that's fiction. In terms of daily life, I'd rather have people be really concerned about me in real life, but have my perspective underrepresented in stories than the other way around. Um, so...

Dwarkesh Patel 26:35 Well, would, would you make the argument that, uh, employers hold defects in women's personalities much more against them than they hold, uh, defects in men's personalities? So-

Bryan Caplan 26:45 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 26:45 ... I think, um, uh, uh, Tyler cited some of this research-

Bryan Caplan 26:48 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 26:48 ... in his new book on talent-

Bryan Caplan 26:49 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 26:49 ... that, like, um, being too agreeable or being too aggressive-

Bryan Caplan 26:52 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 26:52 ... that harms women more than it harms men.

Bryan Caplan 26:55 Hmm. And yet I would say that it's complicated. In terms of willingness to fire, I think employers are much more willing to fire men, right? And for defects, for insubordination, like, you know, just, just, you know, just on the, on the list. I mean, this, this is a small one, but I think that it is indicative of broader trend, so when, you know, people working at workplaces with dress codes, men are much more likely to be dinged on dress code violations than women because for men there's a definite thing men are supposed to do. If you're not doing it, you are in violation. Women on the other hand, it's like, "Well gee, I mean, it seems kind of like that's not what you should be wearing, but I don't want to be the person that says anything about it, and who knows? Who am I to judge what a woman ought to be wearing on the job?" But a man on the other hand has to be a, needs to be wearing a suit in 110 degree weather. Let's see, what was the, the high this summer over in Austin (laughs) to wear, to wear cash?

Dwarkesh Patel 27:43 (laughs) I don't even want to think about it.

Bryan Caplan 27:45 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 27:46 But why do you think that women have gotten less happy since the '60s, in the America at least?

Bryan Caplan 27:50 Right. So, uh, I mean, uh, the main thing I know about this is the Stevenson and Wolfers' research on this. The main thing to remember is the magnitude. So if I remember correctly, I think they find that in the '60s, women had about a two percentage point advantage relative to men in terms of their odds of saying they're very happy. So if the, uh, if men are, you know, if something like 25% of men said they were very happy, then, like, 27% of women in the '60s said that they were very happy. Whereas now it seems like women have something like a two percentage point deficit relative to men, so now if 25% of men say they're very happy, then 23% of women say they're very happy. It's always important in these papers to look at those magnitudes, because the media coverage is just going to say, "Oh, women are miserable now!" And it's like, it's not that women are miserable now. We're talking, like, a two percentage point (laughs) difference. Uh, it's a data set large enough for this to actually be meaningful, but, uh, w- we do want to keep it in perspective. In terms of what's really going on, I mean, this is one where the paper probably actually goes over a bunch of stories and says the obvious ones are all wrong. That would be what, uh, especially Justin Wolfers would normally do, and I think he's usually right, that simple stories about something like this are wrong. Uh, in terms of what I would pursue if, uh, you know, if I were... if I read through the paper and reminded myself what they found and then said, "Okay, well, what will work?" I think I would, you know, on one end focus on single moms who have become much more common and their lives really are hard, right? So rise of single motherhood. So I would guess that that is fa- that is one important part of it, and then I would also be wondering how much of it is actual feminism telling women that you should be unhappy 'cause the world is unfair and then causes unhappiness. Again, I'm not saying that these are right. I don't know. Uh, it's plausible to me. I mean, the main thing I would say about feminism causing unhappiness in the adherents is that it probably doesn't matter most for most self-identified feminists because most people just are not that intellectual and they don't think about their ideas very often, right? So it's one thing to say, "Look, if you believe you're going to hell, that you'll be unhappy." And it's like, well, if you believe it once a year, does it make you unhappy? (laughs) If you remember, "Oh yeah, once a year I think of going to hell," but the rest of the time you don't think it? On the other hand, the person that is all the time thinking "I'm going to hell, I'm going to hell," that person probably will be unhappy. So I think that feminism is very likely to reduce the happiness of people who are feminist elites who take it really seriously, where they're talking about it all the time. That will, is likely to cause unhappiness. I'd be amazed if it didn't. But on the other hand, for the vast majority of people who say, "Yeah, yeah, I'm a feminist. Moving on," I don't think it's too likely to be messing up their lives.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:28 Yeah. That raises the interesting possibility, um... And this is not my theory, but let's-

Bryan Caplan 30:32 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:32 ... let's run with this.

Bryan Caplan 30:32 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:33 So feminism has actually gotten more true over time, but it's precisely because of feminism.

Bryan Caplan 30:37 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:38 So maybe it's made-

Bryan Caplan 30:39 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:39 ... elite women more unhappy. As you said earlier, um, the amount of single mothers has gone up.

Bryan Caplan 30:43 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:44 Maybe part of that is the reason...

Bryan Caplan 30:45 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:45 Uh, part of that is because of, like, feminist trends in terms of family formation.

Bryan Caplan 30:48 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:49 And maybe women prefer to be at home caring for children on average more, but then feminism encourages them to have careers which makes them less happy. Uh, so if you add all these things up, and again-

Bryan Caplan 30:58 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:58 ... mentorship-

Bryan Caplan 30:59 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 30:59 ... men are less likely-

Bryan Caplan 31:00 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 31:00 ... to give it because of Me Too.

Bryan Caplan 31:00 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 31:01 So add all these things up, maybe they're the result of feminism, but they still make feminism more right. Would you agree with that?

Bryan Caplan 31:07 Again, if we go back to this definition of feminism as the theory that our society treats women less fairly than men, if the story is that w-... women have made a lot of false accusations against men and then men have responded by changing their behavior. That would seem to be a strange example of saying that society is treating women less fairly than men. It would seem to be a case of society is treating w- men unfairly, and this is having some negative side effects for women as well. Uh, but you know, it's, it's one where like if you really were trying to draw the line and say, "Well..." You know, like, I mean like, like here's actually like, like you know, one of the weaknesses of the definition that I proposed, right? So foot binding in China. From my understanding, the main drivers of foot binding in China were women. So women are binding feet and they're also telling their daughters they have to have their feet bound. Uh, men seemed to be probably to care less actually. It was more of an intra female abuse, right? This is one where you could say, "Well, but still you might say that, uh, in China, women are treated less fairly than men, even though the perpetrators are women." Right? And I think that does actually make sense, and I would just say that the definition that we use in our society isn't really calibrated to deal with that kind of thing, and in terms of what the right way to describe it would be is just a bit confusing. Uh, so it's one where it's useful just to say, all right, well if women are mistreating women and that's what's making women's lives hard, how do we count that? Right? And I think I would just say we don't have any really good way of counting it, and might be useful just come up with a new word to describe this kind of thing. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 32:42 What do you make of Hanania's argument that women's tears win in the marketplace of ideas?

Bryan Caplan 32:47 Yeah. Uh, so you know, we might want to back up a little bit and explain what the argument is. Yeah. So, uh, Rich- Richard Hanania on his Substack

Bryan Caplan 32:56 has a very famous essay where he points out that in fiction when there is a mob of angry college students, it's very demographically diverse. But when you look at actual footage, it seems like women are highly overrepresented, right? And you know, and then he generalizes this to saying a lot of what's going on in terms of cancel culture and related problems is that women are the main ones that get angry about these things, and people don't know what to do about it. Right? So he, you know, if I remember correctly, he just says, you know, like, like, you know, like a ma- a man can, in a way, actually enjoy a, a, an argument with another man. And you know, even if you lose or even it's, even if, even if it's a, a, a physical fight, he says, "Well, like you sort of feel invigorated by it. We got, we got through this. We like, we, we resolved something." He says, "Whereas like no guy feels this way about an argument with his wife." Right? And that just like, I, what do I need to do in order for this argument to end as soon as possible would be a more normal reaction. And he says this sort of generalizes to a lot of, you know, not all social, not all social arguments, but ones basically involving someone being offended or angry or hurt. Where he says, you know, a lot of what's going on is that it is mainly women that are presenting these complaints, and that it's hard to deal with it because men don't want to argue with angry women. It just makes them feel bad and then it's sort of a no win situation. Uh, so anyway, that is Hanania's argument. Uh, overall it seemed pretty plausible to me. I haven't thought about it that much more, but it's one that does seem to make a fair bit of sense in terms of just what I'm writing about feminism. You know, one really striking thing is just how one-sided this conversation is, right? It is a conversation where women have complaints and men mostly just listen in silence, right? Or of course, men will sometimes complain amongst each other when women aren't around. It's not a real dialogue where women have complaints about men and then men are very eager to say, "Oh, but I have something I would like to say in rebuttal to that." Right? And a lot of it is this, uh, you know, what, what, uh, he calls women's tears, or you could also just think about the, it's, it's sadness but m- but mingled with or, or supported by a, you know, by, by intimidation of like, "If you don't give me what I want, if you don't pretend that you agree with me, I will be very angry and I will be fairly sad. And so you should be afraid." Right? That is, I think a lot of what's probably going on with the rhetorical dominance of feminism, which is that people are just afraid to argue about it, uh, to, to argue against it, uh, because you are... You know, like in a way it does sort of violate the women and children first ethos, which is if women complain about something, you aren't supposed to go and say, "I disagree. Your complaints are unjustified." You're supposed to say like, "What can I do to make it better?"

Dwarkesh Patel 35:45 But that, that seems like a good description of like race issues and class issues as well.

Bryan Caplan 35:48 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 35:48 I don't know if it's, uh, particular to-

Bryan Caplan 35:50 I mean-

Dwarkesh Patel 35:51 ... uh, feminism.

Bryan Caplan 35:51 ... so sort of the main difference there is that it, you know, there's, people have a lot more firsthand experience of inter-gender relations and they spend a lot more time in inter-gender relations than they spend in all of the other ones. So I mean the, the dynamic is probably pretty similar, but in terms of the really negative firsthand experience that one, that uh, that men have, probably, uh, Hanania is right about that and that generalizes to bigger issues.

Dwarkesh Patel 36:16 You have an essay about endogenous, uh, sexism.

Bryan Caplan 36:19 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 36:20 Um, could this just not be the cause of, uh, uh, society being unfair to a woman that we start off with men being in power, they get sexist just because they're around other men and they like them more. Um, and then-

Bryan Caplan 36:32 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 36:32 ... like over... So th- then the starting position matters a lot-

Bryan Caplan 36:34 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 36:34 ... even if, uh-

Bryan Caplan 36:35 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 36:35 ... like men aren't trying to be sexist.

Bryan Caplan 36:37 Hmm. So let me just, uh, back up and explain the argument. So the argument says this. Imagine that in reality men and women are equally good in absolutely every way, but people are more likely to have close friends with their own gender, which is totally true. So if I remember the essay, I think that for men close friends, the male female ratio is like four to one, and for women... Or no, I think it's like... Let's see. No, I think it's the other way around. I think it's for men, it's like six to one. For women, it's like four to one. Right? So most people's close friends are the same gender, right? So you meet these people and they're your close friends, you know them really well. And because you have handpicked them, you're gonna think well of them, right?And then the question is, all right, so then what about people of the opposite gender and what's your interaction with them going to be like? And what I point out is that a lot of the people of the opposite gender that you hang out with will be the spouses of your friends, partners of your friends. And on average, you're going to think worse of them because you didn't pick them. Basically, there's two filters there. I like you because you're my friend. And now I put up with your partner because that person is your partner. Right? So this means is that the women that men are around are going to be the partners of their friends. They're going to like them less and think less of them than they think of their friends. And on the other hand, the partners of women's friends will be men, and women will get to know them and say, "Wow, they're not that great." They're at least kind of disappointing relative to my female friends." So anyway, this is an argument about how the illusion of your own gender being superior could arise. Right? Now, as to whether this is actually the right story, uh, I leave, leave that open. The, this was just more of a thought experiment to understand what, you know, what could happen here. In terms of, you know, how much, you know, like, like could this actually explain the unfair treatment of women in society, or could it lead in this way? Especially we start off with men having, being the gatekeepers for most of the business world, for example. Uh, the answer is it's totally plausible that it could. That's why we really want to go to the data and see what we actually find. And again, like in the data that I know of, actually the evidence of women earning less money than men while doing, wha- wha- while do, actually doing the same job is actually quite low, right? So there's very little gender disparity in earnings once you make the obvious statistical adjustments for being in the same occupation, right? And, uh, so again, like the, like the main one that probably is, like this, this one actually has gotten worse for women is mentoring, right? So mentoring, partly it's based upon friendship. I like this person, I like working with them, so I will go and help them to go and acquire more human capital on the job, right? Th- this is one that feminism has visibly messed up and many feminists will, in a se- in a strange way admit that they have done it while not taking responsibility for the harm. Because, so yeah, so I've got an essay on that, uh, in the book as well. So, you know, this is one where, you know, first of all, just looking at the evidence, it is totally standard now for male managers just to admit that they are reluctant to f- to mentor female employees because they're so worried. And then I go and track down a bunch of feminist reaction to this where they basically just say, "I can't believe how horrible these guys are." Right? It's like, look, you know, you're asking them for a favor to get mentorship. They're scared. If someone's scared, do you really want to yell at them more and offer more mostly empty threats because it's really hard in something that, uh, that is this informal to actually scare someone into doing it. You really do need to win them over.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:06 Tactically that might be correct, but it seems like just as a matter of like is their argument justified-

Bryan Caplan 40:11 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:12 ... like I, I can see why they'd be frustrated. Like-

Bryan Caplan 40:14 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 40:14 ... obviously you want to be, uh, point out when there's like-

Bryan Caplan 40:17 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:17 ... uh, a sexual harassment allegation.

Bryan Caplan 40:19 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:19 And they may-

Bryan Caplan 40:20 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:20 That may have the effect of less mentorship.

Bryan Caplan 40:22 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 40:22 But, um, like-

Bryan Caplan 40:24 Well, so I mean, is it obvious that you want to point that out? I mean, part of what I say is that, you know, there are, there are different perceptions here, there are differences of opinion, and if you want to get along with people, a lot of it is saying, well, how does it seem from the other, from the other person's point of view? So most obviously do not assume that the most hypersensitive person is correct. That is, I think a, like what so much of the problem with mentorship comes down to, is hypersensitivity. Uh, so I've got another piece in the book where I talk about misunderstandings and how we have so much lost sight of this very possibility. So there's a conflict between two people. Who's right and who's wrong? Well, could of course be that one person is the conscious malefactor going buh ha ha, and the other person is an obvious victim that no one could deny, and that does happen sometimes, but I say much more often in the real world there's a misunderstanding where each person, because of the imperfection of the human mind and the inability to go and get inside another person's head, to each person it seems like they're in the right and the other person is in the wrong. And one of the most helpful ways for people to, to get along with each other is to realize that this is the norm. Most conflicts are caused by misunderstandings, not by deliberate wrongdoing. This is the way that people who keep their friends keep their friends, right? If any time there's a conflict with a friend you assume that you're right and your friend is in the wrong and demand an im- and demand an immediate abject apology, you're going to be losing friends left and right. Right? And this is what an, uh, uh, that, and, uh, it is a foolish person who does that, if you will. Uh, you know, the friendship is more important than any particular issue. This is the way, this is not only my personal view, it is the advice that I give to everyone listening. Keep your friends. Bend over backwards in order to keep your friends. Realize that, for, that, uh, that most conflicts are caused by misunderstandings. It's not the other person is going out of their way to hurt you, probably they just don't see it that way. And if you just insist, I'm right, I demand a full apology and admission of your wrongdoing, you're probably gonna be losing friends and it's a bad idea. And the same thing I think is going on in workplaces where there is an ideology saying that we should take the side of the most hypersensitive person, and this is not a good approach for human beings to get along with each other.

Dwarkesh Patel 42:38 Yeah. Yeah. That's very wise. What do you make the argument that a lot of these professions that are dominated by men are not intrinsically things that must appeal to men-

Bryan Caplan 42:48 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 42:48 ... but the way that they are taught or advertised-

Bryan Caplan 42:50 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 42:51 ... is very conducive to what males find interesting? So take computer science for example-

Bryan Caplan 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 42:55 ... there's claims that you could teach that or economics-

Bryan Caplan 42:57 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 42:58 ... in a way that focuses on the implications on people from those practices rather than just focusing on the abstractions or like the thing focus stuff-

Bryan Caplan 43:06 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 43:06 ... right? So the argument is like these things are not inherently, shouldn't be inherently interesting to men, they're just the way they are taught.

Bryan Caplan 43:12 Right. The word inherently is so overused (laughs) and it's, I mean, it, it's one where you say, "Well, are you saying that inherently X?" It's like, well, not inherently X, just-... you'd have to bend over backwards, move heaven and earth for it not to be so, but I guess it's not really-

Dwarkesh Patel 43:28 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 43:28 ... inherent. So that is a lot of what is worth point, you know, worth pointing out is so, like, you know, if you're gonna ra- put the standard to tha- uh, to that level, then it's gonna be hard to find differences. You could say like, there's absolutely no way under the sun where there, we could, the, the, to go and teach math in a less male way. Right? On the other hand to say, well, is it reasonable to expect the whole world to revolve around making every subject equally appealing to men and women? And that's where I say like, that is just an unreasonable demand. Right? Uh, if there's a subject like math that is male dominated, right, s- the, the reasonable thing is to say, well, like, if you wanna get in on that, you're gonna need to go and become simpatico with the mindset of the people that are already there and then push the margin. Right? You can say that it's just so unfair that male ways of doing math are dominant. Like, well, you know, or maybe you could say that it's unfair for someone who's just shown up to demand that an entire discipline change its way of doing things to make you feel better about it. Obviously there are large areas that are very female dominated and again, there's no pressure on women to go and change the way that flower arranging is done or cooking, right, so in order to make it more welcoming to men. So, you know, this is one where, you know, if you had a really high bar for like, things were unfair unless the following ex- rigorous conditions are met, then you're gonna see a lot of unfairness in the world. Although even then that, you know, as long as you have an equally high bar for both men and women, I don't think it's going to make feminism any more true in my definition. Right? But I also just say I think these really high bars are unreasonable. Right? I mean, if you just had a, if a, if there was a friend who had these kind of bars saying, "Look," you know, like, "Why is it that when we meet for the, the, when we meet for food, we have to go and meet at the like standard hours of breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Like, I actually like meeting in the middle of the night. Why can't, why can't we have half of the time be my way?" It's like, well, like, yeah, but like you're only one person and like why should anyone have to change?

Dwarkesh Patel 45:27 I mean, but these are like half the people, right?

Bryan Caplan 45:28 Yeah, yeah, yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 45:28 More than half the people.

Bryan Caplan 45:29 Well, I mean, like, like, you know, it depends upon what, what subfield you're in as well, right? So, you know, you know, and like, like there, there are actually groups of people who really like hanging out in the middle of the night and to say, "Why does it we always have to meet in the middle of the night? Why can't we do it my way?" It's like, well, like, you are entering into a subculture that works this way. You could demand that we totally change our way of doing to accommodate you, but it just seems like it is a, an unreasonable imposition on people who are already here. Uh, now, when you sort of go through the list of different things that people think of as making something a male or a not male field, sometimes people ask things, uh, well, we'll, we'll treat things like just acting like there's an objectively correct answer, that's a male trait, right? If, you know, if that's, if that's a male trait, then we need to keep that trait because that is vital to a v- to really any field where there are right and wrong answers. Right? I mean, that's one where I am very tempted rhetorically to say, "It's just so sexist to say that it's male to think that things are right and wrong. I think that is a trait of both g- both genders." Right? And in a way, I do end the essay saying yes, like, you know, these are not, you know, these are not male mono- uh, not only are they not a male monopoly, they are not uniquely male virtues. They are virtues that can and should be enjoyed by all human beings. Right? Uh, at the same time you might say, like, "Well, but are the virtues equally represented by both genders?" And say, "Well, that's an empirical question. We gotta look at that."

Dwarkesh Patel 46:52 All right. Shifting subjects, um, you recently performed at The Comedy Cellar.

Bryan Caplan 46:56 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 46:57 How was that experience?

Bryan Caplan 46:58 Yeah, that was super fun and a big challenge. The, you know, so I am a professional public speaker. Standup comedy is professional public speaking. I was curious about how much transfer of learning there would be, how many of the things that I know as a regular public speaker can I take with me to do standup comedy. Uh, I'm also just a big fan of standup comedy. Like if you know me personally, like I just find life constantly funny.

Dwarkesh Patel 47:24 Yes, I can confirm that.

Bryan Caplan 47:25 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 47:25 Yeah, yeah, you're a very pleasant person to be around.

Bryan Caplan 47:27 Yes. Right. The things that life, life is funny to me. I like pointing out funny things. I like just, you know, using my imagination. A lot of comedy is also just imagination saying, "Look, imagine if it was the opposite way, what would that be like?" Uh, so anyway, I did get this chance... Well, actually just to back up again. So during COVID, I did, so I created a wiki of comedy ideas, just on the idea maybe one day I'll go and do standup comedy. And then The Comedy Cellar actually has a podcast where we're, kind of like Joe Rogan, where comedians go and talk about serious issues. I was invited on that, and as a result, I was able to talk my way into getting to perform on the actual live stage of the biggest comedy club in New York, uh, so maybe the world.

Dwarkesh Patel 48:09 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 48:09 Um, it was, the main thing I could say even about my performance is it was me and like nine professional comedians, and I don't think I was obviously the worst person.

Dwarkesh Patel 48:18 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 48:19 So that felt pretty good.

Dwarkesh Patel 48:21 It was a pretty good performance, actually.

Bryan Caplan 48:22 Yeah, yeah, uh-

Dwarkesh Patel 48:23 I enjoyed it.

Bryan Caplan 48:23 ... I felt, I felt, felt good about it. You know, like the main, so like, like the main differences that I realized between the kind of public speaking I was used to doing and what I actually did there, so one is importance of memorizing the script. It just looks, looks a lot worse if you're-

Dwarkesh Patel 48:38 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 48:38 ... reading, reading off of notes. So that's normally I w- I have some basic notes and then I ad lib. I don't memorize. The only time I have a script is if I have a very time constrained debate, then I will normally write an opening statement, but otherwise I don't. And again, the thing with comedy is it depends so heavily upon exact word choice.

Dwarkesh Patel 48:57 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Caplan 48:58 You could s- you could go and put the same sentence into Google Translate and then back translate it and get another sentence that is synonymous but isn't funny at all. So that was something that I was very mindful of. And then obviously, you know, there's things like timing and just being able to read an audience. Being able to read an audience, that's one that I'm more used to. Uh, that was what was so hard during COVID is not being able to look at the faces even of a live audience. It's like, okay, well-... I can see their eyes, but I don't, can't tell their emotions or the reactions from their eyes. I don't know whether I should talk more or less about something. Don't know whether they're angry or annoyed or curious or bored. Uh, so these are all things that I would normally be adjusting my talk for in normal public speaking. Again, with comedy, it's a bit hard to do. What successful comedians actually do is they try it about a bunch of different ways and then they remember which ways work and which ones don't, and they just keep tweaking it. And then finally, when they do the Netflix, Netflix special, they have basically done A/B testing on 100 different audiences, and then it sounds great. But first time, not that funny.

Dwarkesh Patel 49:58 Yeah. It didn't occur to me until you mentioned it, but that makes a lot of sense that the, the transfer of learning there.

Bryan Caplan 50:02 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:02 You, in both disciplines-

Bryan Caplan 50:04 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:04 ... you, there's a lot of hypotheticals.

Bryan Caplan 50:05 Yeah, yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:05 Thought experiments, putting things in strange situations-

Bryan Caplan 50:08 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:08 ... to see what the result is.

Bryan Caplan 50:09 Yep.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:10 It, yeah. That makes sense why that would occur.

Bryan Caplan 50:11 Yeah, yeah. So like, like, you know, a lot of it is just not having stage fright.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:15 Right.

Bryan Caplan 50:16 Right. Uh, so I probably had just a tiny bit of stage fright, uh, at the Comedy Cellar, which normally I would have basically zero. But there it was a little bit different because it's like, well, I mean, honestly most of my anxiety was, am I gonna forget something? Right? So like I'm not gonna, like everyone's looking at me and I actually have a joke in, in the set about how, you know, nothing, and nothing is scarier than staying silent while thousands of people stare at you (laughs) .

Dwarkesh Patel 50:46 (laughs) .

Bryan Caplan 50:46 So that was a self-referential joke that I worked in there.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:49 I can't remember if it was Robin who said this, but didn't he have a theory about like, the reason we have stage fright-

Bryan Caplan 50:54 Hm. Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:54 ... is because in some way you're like showing, uh, dominance or status and then-

Bryan Caplan 50:59 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 50:59 ... you don't wanna do that if you're not the most confident being on stage.

Bryan Caplan 51:01 Yeah. You're make-, you're making a bid, you're making a bid for status.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:03 Right. Exactly.

Bryan Caplan 51:04 And if you ma- And, and, you know, just remembering in the ancestral environment or in these small groups of 20 to 40 people, if you go and wanna speak, you're saying, "I'm one of the most important people in this band here." And if y- And if you're not, or if it, if, if there's a lot of people say, "That, that guy is not important," then who knows? They might shove you off the cliff the next time they get a chance.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:23 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 51:23 So yeah. Watch out.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:24 Yeah. I wonder if this explains the cringe emotion, hey, just that somebody makes a bid for status that's not deserved.

Bryan Caplan 51:29 Right. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:30 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 51:30 Makes a lot of sense.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:31 Um, okay. Uh, I wanna talk about discrimination.

Bryan Caplan 51:34 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:34 So r- as you know, there was a court case, uh, it was a Supreme Court case-

Bryan Caplan 51:38 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:38 ... about Harvard-

Bryan Caplan 51:38 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:39 ... and affirmative action.

Bryan Caplan 51:40 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:40 And you might also know that, um, a lot of companies have filed a brief in favor of Harvard-

Bryan Caplan 51:45 (laughs) .

Dwarkesh Patel 51:45 ... saying that the, uh, this affirmative action is necessary for them to hire a diverse workforce. Uh, included Apple, Lyft-

Bryan Caplan 51:51 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:52 ... General Motors. So what is the explanation for corporations, uh, wanting to extend affirmative action?

Bryan Caplan 51:58 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 51:58 Or is it, is it, are they just saying this but don't want it?

Bryan Caplan 52:01 Right. I mean, if those individual corporations could press a button that would immunize them to all employment lawsuits, I think they would press it. Right? When you look at their behavior, they don't just give in whenever they get sued. They have a normal team of lawyers that tries to minimize the har- minimize the damage to the company and pay as little as possible and make the problem go away. So I think really what's going on is public relations, right? They are trying to be on that team. As to whether it's public relations vis-a-vis their consumers or public relations vis-a-vis other people in the executive board room is an interesting question. I think these days it probably is more of the latter. Although even under Reagan actually, there were a bunch of major corporations that did make a similar statement saying that we want to, we want affirmative action to continue. I think that the real story is that they want to get the status of saying that we are really in favor of this, we love this stuff. But at the same time, if it just went away, they wouldn't voluntarily adopt a policy-

Dwarkesh Patel 52:59 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Caplan 52:59 ... where we give you a right to go and sue us for mistreatment. Uh, I think there would still be a lot of propaganda. I mean, I mean, here's the general thing. It's, you know, the thing about this is, uh, it's a species of corporate philanthropy, sticking your neck out in favor of a broad social cause, right? I mean, like some people might say, "No, it's self-interest for some reason." It's like, look, the odds that even Apple is gonna change the Supreme Court's mind is super low, so I don't think it's that. Basically what they're doing is a kind of philanthropy, and what's the deal with corporate philanthropy? The deal with corporate philanthropy is you are trying to go and first of all make, you know, make the public like you, but also you're trying to look good and jockey for influence within your own company, right? And one really striking thing about corporate philanthropy, when you look closer, normally they spend way more resources marketing the philanthropy and letting everyone know, "Oh, we did all this philanthropy" than they actually spend on the philanthropy.

Dwarkesh Patel 53:47 (laughs) .

Bryan Caplan 53:48 Right? So I had a friend who was a marketing person in charge of publicizing her company's philanthropy. They gave away like $1,000 a year to the Girl Scouts or something like that, and she had $100,000 salary-

Dwarkesh Patel 53:58 (laughs) .

Bryan Caplan 53:58 (laughs) of telling everyone about how great they were for giving this money to the Girl Scouts. So I think that's the real story. Like, get maximally cynical. Al- you know, with- without, without denying the fact that there are true believers now in corporate board rooms who are pushing it past the point of profitability.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:14 Right. The, the, the, the, the cost of the philanthropy is just the production budget of the-

Bryan Caplan 54:18 Yeah. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:18 ... of the TV commercial (laughs) .

Bryan Caplan 54:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah (laughs) . Yes. Yeah. You know, it's a rounding error. The, the donations are, is, uh, is the rounding error and the, "Hey, everyone. Look at us. We're so

Bryan Caplan 54:26 freaking philanthropic."

Dwarkesh Patel 54:27 Yeah. Okay, so this question was one that actually Tyler suggested I ask you.

Bryan Caplan 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:32 So I, in The Myth of the Rational Voter-

Bryan Caplan 54:34 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:34 ... you say that, um, education makes you more free market.

Bryan Caplan 54:37 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:37 Um, now this may have changed in the meantime-

Bryan Caplan 54:39 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:39 ... but let's just say that's still true.

Bryan Caplan 54:40 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 54:40 If you're not learning anything, (laughs) why is education making you more free market?

Bryan Caplan 54:44 Right. Well, you know, it's particularly striking that even people who don't seem to take any economics classes, who aren't, aren't involved, I think that the best story is peer effects. So when you go to college, you're around other peers who, though not pro-market, are less anti-market than the general population. The thing about peer effects though is that they really are a double-edged sword from a social point of view. Think about this. Right now, if you are one of the 1% of non-Mormons that goes to Brigham Young University, what do you think the odds are that you'll convert to Mormonism?

Dwarkesh Patel 55:14 Higher than normal.

Bryan Caplan 55:15 Yeah, yeah. I don't know the numbers, but I think it's pretty high. But suppose that Brigham Young let in all the non-Mormons, uh, then what would Brigham Young do for conversion to Mormonism? Probably very little, right? So... And then furthermore, you realize, huh, well, what if those Mormons at Brigham Young were dispersed among a bunch of other schools where they were th- were a minority? Seems quite plausible they'd be making a lot more converts over there.Right, so basically, the thing about pure effects is that if you achieve your pure effects by segregation, when, again, that's just, of course, literally what college does, it takes, uh, one part of society and segregates it from another part of society. Physically, when you're in school and then there's social segregation just caused by the fact that people want to hang out with other people in their own social cir- uh, uh, of your own education levels, that kind of thing. So in that case, in terms of whether or not education actually makes society overall more free market, I think it's totally unclear because basically the people go to college, they make each other more free market. Same time they remove from influencing people of other social classes who don't go to college, who probably then s- influence each other and make each other less free market. I think that's the most plausible story.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:22 But what about the argument that the people who are going to, let's say, elite universities-

Bryan Caplan 56:26 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:26 ... these are, you know, people who are gonna, like, control things?

Bryan Caplan 56:28 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:29 Right? And so if you can engineer a situation in which the-

Bryan Caplan 56:32 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:32 ... pure effects in some particular direction-

Bryan Caplan 56:34 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:34 ... are very strong at Harvard-

Bryan Caplan 56:35 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:35 ... maybe because the upper class is like-

Bryan Caplan 56:36 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:37 ... very liberal or woke, they make the underclass even more woke. And then just like a reinforcing cycle after every generation-

Bryan Caplan 56:42 Hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:42 ... of people come into college, then that still matters a lot, even though, like-

Bryan Caplan 56:46 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:46 ... uh, presumably somebody becomes more right wing once they didn't go to Harvard-

Bryan Caplan 56:49 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 56:49 ... because there's no peers there. It doesn't matter, they're not gonna be an elite, right? Or it doesn't matter as much.

Bryan Caplan 56:53 Hmm. Could be, although what we've seen is that we now just have very big gaps between elite opinion and mass opinion. And of course, you know, it is a democracy, so if you want to run for office, that is a reason to go and say, "Yeah, well, what is the actual common view here, not just the view that is common among elites?" Um, so I mean, but I, I will say that this is a topic that deserves m- you know, a lot more study, right? Um, you know, now the other thing to remember is, like, wouldn't there be pure effects even without college? So if people, if elites didn't go to college and instead they went and did elite apprenticeships at top corporations instead, think you'd still wind up getting a very similar elite subculture. I think that this kind of social segregation is ver- is very natural in every human society. Of course, you can see it under communism very strongly.

Dwarkesh Patel 57:40 Yeah. Well-

Bryan Caplan 57:40 Where it's like, "I don't want my kid going and playing with a kid who is, whose parents aren't in the Communist Party." So, you know, like every society has this kind of thing. Uh, now yeah, again, like you, like if you go and push the dynamics enough, but I mean, l- let me, let's put it this way, like if you were at the, you know, if you were the prophet of the Mormon religion, they have a prophet, uh, like what would be the very best thing for you to do to maximize the spread of Mormonism? It is not at all clear to me that, uh, trying to get all Mormons to go to Brigham Young is a good strategy.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:08 I wonder

Dwarkesh Patel 58:09 if there are, like, non-linear dynamics to this where if you-

Bryan Caplan 58:11 Yeah. And they, well, and like, yeah, if you wonder, like there's gotta be, right?

Dwarkesh Patel 58:13 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 58:14 But, but as to what the... But as soon as you're talking about non-linear dynamics, hm, those are hard to understand, right? Yeah. They're hard to understand.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:20 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 58:21 (laughs) So I would just say, like, you know, keep a much more open mind about this. Um, and if anyone is listening and wants to do research on this, that sounds cool, I'll read it.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:28 Right. I mean, one of... Uh, uh, I remember you saying that one of, like, the things you're trying to do with your books is influence elite opinion-

Bryan Caplan 58:34 Yes, yes, yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:34 ... because elite opinion circulates down to-

Bryan Caplan 58:35 Right.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:36 ... the common view, right?

Bryan Caplan 58:37 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:37 And then, so in that sense, if you can set up-

Bryan Caplan 58:39 Yes. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:39 Like everybody... There are elite subcultures-

Bryan Caplan 58:41 Yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:41 ... in every society.

Bryan Caplan 58:42 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:42 But they're not the same elite subcultures, right?

Bryan Caplan 58:44 Yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 58:44 So you might care very much about which particular subculture is dominating America.

Bryan Caplan 58:47 Right. I mean, a- again, although- although notice that that's one where I'm taking it as a given that we have the current segregation and then I'm gonna try to go and take advantage of it. But if it were a question of if I could change the dial of what kind of segregation that we have, then it's much less clear.

Dwarkesh Patel 59:00 Yeah. Student loan forgiveness.

Bryan Caplan 59:02 (laughs) Oh.

Dwarkesh Patel 59:03 What is your reaction?

Bryan Caplan 59:04 Oh. Oy vey.

Dwarkesh Patel 59:06 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 59:06 Give me a freaking break. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 59:09 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 59:09 I mean, this is one where I think it's very hard to find almost any economist, no matter how left wing and progressive, who really wants to stick their necks out and defend this garbage. Look, it's a regressive transfer, right? So why then, why is it that someone who is left wing or progressive would go and favor it? It's like, well, 'cause people who have a lot of education and, and, and colleges are on our team and we just want to go and help our team or something like that. I mean, it really is one where, look, the, obviously what the forgiveness really means, is we're gonna go and transfer the cost of this debt from the elites that actually got, that actually ran up the bill to the general population, right? Incl- which includes, of course, a whole lot of people that did not go to college and did not get whatever premium that you got out of it. So there's that. In terms of efficiency, like, you know, since the people have already done what, uh, they've already gotten the education, you're not even going and increasing the amount of education if you really think that's good. The only margin that is really increasing education is it's making people think, "Well, maybe there'll be another round of debt forgiveness later on, so I'll rack up more debt." The actual true price of, of education is less than it seems to be, although even there you have to say, "Huh, well, but could people knowing this and the, and the great willingness to borrow actually wind up increasing demand for college and raising tuition further?" There's good evidence on that, that it does. So, you know, not at 100%, but still to a substantial degree. Again, you, you know, like for me, just again, just to back up, that can be my catchphrase. So I have a book called The Case Against Education. My view is much more extreme than that of almost any normal economist who opposes student lo- student loan debt forgiveness, and that is to say, I think that the real problem with education is that we have way too much of it, most of it is very socially wasteful, and what we're doing with student loan forgiveness is we're basically going and transferring to people who wasted a lot of re- a lot of social resources. And yeah, like that story that you are, that it is on the slippery slope to free college for all, in a way that's the best argument in favor of it, right? If you really thought that free college for all was a good idea, then this is putting us on that slippery slope. I, I would say, yeah, and that's terrible because the real problem with education is that we just spend way too many years in school. It is generally not socially useful, right? Rather, the main reason why it's going on is that it's a way of stamping people's foreheads saying that they are better than oth- than their competitors, don't throw their application in the trash. And the more education we get, the more you need to not have your application thrown in the trash, credential inflation. Since we're talking a lot about inflation these days, the central organizing idea of what's so wasteful about education in my book is credential inflation. Saying that really when everyone has a college degree, nobody does, right? And again, the analogy is very good, right? So can you make a country rich just by giving everybody a trillion dollars?... you cannot. Like, all that happens is you wind up raising prices and you cause a lot of harm in the process. And I say the same thing is going on with the multiplication of credentials.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:12 So let me ask you about that, right, because I think for the last 10 years, the proportion of, um, Americans who are getting college degrees has not gone up. Right? Doesn't-

Bryan Caplan 1:02:19 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:19 ... signaling theory imply that it should be going up as the credential gets diluted?

Bryan Caplan 1:02:23 Right. So actually, if it doesn't go up, then it's not getting diluted. (laughs) But, uh, so here's the actual story. Uh, what's been going on during the last 10 years... So I ha- I have a bunch of bets on this actually and I just won the first one. When you see that the share that's going to college is going down, that's counting community college.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:40 Hmm.

Bryan Caplan 1:02:41 Right? It's community college that has fallen a bit, which makes sense because the signal sent by community college is almost better... is a- barely better than nothing, right? Except in a few disciplines like nursing, a few occupations like that. But for four-year college attendance, it's actually continued to rise.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:54 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Caplan 1:02:55 Uh, the bets that I have are all along the lines of, uh, you know, attendance in traditional four-year brick-and-mortar colleges will fall no more than 10%. So I have a whole series of these bets, each with 10-year maturities. So I just won the first one, and yeah, I think I'm just gonna win a whole bunch of other ones.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:10 D- does your undefeated bet record make you more hesitant to take bets? Because the getting the first one-

Bryan Caplan 1:03:15 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:15 ... uh, is z- you know, of-

Bryan Caplan 1:03:16 Yes.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:16 ... 52 to one will just be a huge, uh (laughs) -

Bryan Caplan 1:03:19 Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:19 ... huge, uh-

Bryan Caplan 1:03:20 It'll- it'll- it'll- it'll... Like, I would be lying if I said it didn't change my emotions. Yeah.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:24 Yeah.

Bryan Caplan 1:03:24 So I do have a record of 23 wins for 23 bets that have resolved. Uh, it- it is fun to be able to go and say that. To say, "I've got, you know, 29 out of 30 bets won" wouldn't sound as good. Um, at the same time, I still am totally willing to make bets. The thing about bets is that it's not like they just come fall into your lap. You really have to aggressively seek them out because hardly anyone wants to bet.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:47 Oh.

Bryan Caplan 1:03:48 Um, at this point, you might think that some people who wanna bet me just basically saying, "Well, if I beat him, I'll be the guy that beat him. And if I lose, then who's ever heard of me anyway? Who cares?" But even that doesn't really do very much. Uh, the bet that I'm likely to lose is I do have a global warming bet with, uh, the stand-up co- stand-up economist, Jorm Bauman. Yeah, so that's one where he gave me three to one odds initially, so I was expecting to lose. Uh, so he- he- a l- very much enjoys g- having- uh, running- running, uh, annual victory laps on Twitter without ever mentioning, "Yeah, well, I- we did- you did give me odds," because I wasn't saying that I was convinced. I was saying that I thought that other people were overconfident. Uh, but, uh, yeah, w- that's his- that's his right to go and run his victory laps.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bryan Caplan 1:04:31 Uh...

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:31 You're like a UFC fighter who's like (laughs) -

Bryan Caplan 1:04:33 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:33 ... who hasn't lost yet and he- I don't know if you knew. Like, um, who was the... Khabib? Um, and then he just retired before he lost a single fight-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:40 Ah.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:40 ... I believe.

Bryan Caplan 1:04:40 Ah. (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:41 Um, which is... I think he said to g- his reason was like, "Oh, my mother doesn't want me to fight anymore."

Bryan Caplan 1:04:45 (laughs)

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:45 But one wonders. Um, are you, uh, uh, the- are- are- are you hopeful that maybe right-wing governments seeing the-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:53 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:53 ... education polarization-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:54 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:54 ... um, and also seeing the-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:56 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:56 ... loan forgiveness as, like-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:57 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:57 ... uh, transfer of wealth towards, like-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:59 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:59 ... left-wing elites-

Bryan Caplan 1:04:59 Mm-hmm.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:05:00 Um, are you hopeful that maybe they will implement education austerity?

Bryan Caplan 1:05:04 Barely. So yes, uh, just to back up, uh, the big policy reform that I push in The Case Against Education is education austerity, just spending less on education, making education less accessible. That's right, making it less accessible, which if I am correct, will, uh, be socially desirable because it'll basically mean that credential inflation will be reversed and people will be able to get the jobs they're going to get anyway while spending fewer years of their lives in school learning stuff that is not very useful. Um, the main reason that I'm skeptical about this is even in states where the state government is very right-wing, it seems that the prestige of the state university systems is sufficiently high that politicians generally don't wanna challenge it. So in Texas, uh, you know, so we both, uh, were hanging out arou- on the University of Texas campus, Rakesh, and the State Capitol of Texas is just 20 minutes walk away. And it seems like the governor of Texas does not want to have a throwdown with the president of the University of Texas and say, "Hey, we, like, we're- we're sick of this stuff." Uh, so I OBI- and- and why not? Probably 'cause the governor of Texas thinks that UT with its great football team is really popular-

Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:12 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 1:06:12 ... and that he can't beat them and to go... And- and- and again, while you might think, "Look," they'll say, "Look, you know, we're gonna pass a bill saying that all the athletics of UT are fully funded, but we are getting rid of... w- w- we are gonna go and, uh, get rid of the following departments." Uh, it's just hard to go and make that and esp-... You know, like probably the president of UT could get the football coach to say, "We stand arm and, uh, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with our Fat Studies Department or whatever."

Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:37 (laughs)

Bryan Caplan 1:06:38 So that is the concern. Florida is a little bit different. It does seem like DeSantis is trying to go and at le- at least make some symbolic efforts against overwhelming left-wing bias at the University of Florida. But as far as I know, he isn't doing anything about their budgets, which is, I think, what they really care about. I mean, you know, like, you can pass all the laws you want t- uh, but if you don't actually mess with their money, then I don't think they're gonna care that much.

Dwarkesh Patel 1:07:01 Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Caplan 1:07:02 Yeah, the- the main change that I could least plausibly see is precisely defunding the least popular departments while saying we're gonna keep the total budget of the school the same. So to say we are going to... Like l- in the state budget, we are slashing the budgets of the