Bryan Caplan famous quotes

03-17-2025

In daily life, reality gives us material incentives to restrain our irrationality. But what incentive do we have to think rationally about politics?
-- Bryan Caplan

#Reality #Thinking #Giving
There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else. ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Winning #Thinking #Views
Let us designate anarchism1 anarchism as you define it. Let us desiginate anarchism2 anarchism as I and the American Heritage College Dictionary define it.
-- Bryan Caplan

#College #Heritage #Anarchy
In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Democracy #Libertarian #Modern
The best social insurance is to make more progress, not to make more work
-- Bryan Caplan

#Progress #Social
Sociotropic voters with biased economic beliefs are more likely to produce severe political failures than are selfish voters with rational expectations.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Selfish #Expectations #Political
There are two sources of error: Either you lack sufficient data, or you fail to take advantage of the data that you have.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Errors #Data #Two
Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world
-- Bryan Caplan

#Effort #World #Serious
The use of force is easy to rationalize in terms of basic economics. 'We should make them PAY for what they've done!' It's just the law of demand: raise the price of crossing us, and fewer people will cross us. Make the price another Hiroshima, and perhaps the quantity demanded will fall to zero.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Zero #Fall #Law
If you can't feel secure - and teach your children to feel secure - about 1-in-610,000 nightmare scenarios - the problem isn't the world. It's you.
-- Bryan Caplan

#Children #World #Nightmare

You may also like:

Alex Tabarrok
Economist
Amy Chua
Professor
Arnold Kling
Economist
Ayn Rand
Novelist
Donald J. Boudreaux
Economist
Gordon Tullock
Economist
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Economist
Israel Kirzner
Economist
Joseph Stiglitz
Economist
Julian Simon
Professor
Ludwig von Mises
Philosopher
Milton Friedman
Economist
Murray Rothbard
Economist
Peter Boettke
Economist
Russ Roberts
Economist
Tyler Cowen
Economist
Walter E. Williams
Economist
David D. Friedman
Economist
Jason Brennan