Bryan Caplan returns for a third conversation covering his book Don’t Be a Feminism, immigration, education, revolutions, billionaires, and more. The discussion ranges across his characteristic style of honest, self-reflective argumentation where he acknowledges weaknesses in his own positions rather than arguing like a lawyer.
Don’t Be a Feminism
Caplan argues the standard dictionary definition of feminism — that women should be the political, social, economic, and cultural equals of men — is nearly useless because almost everyone, including most non-feminists, already agrees with it.
He proposes a better definition: feminism is the belief that society treats women less fairly than men. This fits actual usage, since feminists typically believe women are treated very unfairly, and it would be strange for someone to call themselves a feminist while thinking women are treated like goddesses.
On whether feminism becomes more true over time: some trends (like dangerous jobs being automated) might superficially support it, but Caplan argues the opposite is happening. Society has become hyper-concerned about mistreating women, making actual unfairness less likely. What tips the scales is the climate of false and exaggerated accusations against men — a form of unfairness that men must endure while women get to make the accusations.
He acknowledges areas where women are genuinely treated worse, notably paternal support for children: in 1940 roughly 90% of biological fathers helped raise their children, now it’s closer to 60-70%.
On global feminism: American feminists spend negligible time on issues like female infanticide in India and Saudi Arabia. Caplan argues Western feminism’s focus on exaggerated or trivial problems in rich countries distracts from far more serious abuses elsewhere and discredits reasonable feminist points.
On “women’s tears” (Richard Hanania’s argument): Caplan finds it plausible that women’s complaints carry outsized rhetorical power because men are socialized not to argue back against women’s anger and sadness, creating a one-sided dialogue where women complain and men stay silent.
On endogenous sexism: Caplan explores a thought experiment where people mostly befriend their own gender, leading them to think less of the opposite gender’s partners and associates — potentially creating an illusion of one’s own gender being superior even without deliberate discrimination.
On why women have gotten less happy since the 1960s: the Stevenson and Wolfers research shows women went from a ~2 percentage point happiness advantage to a ~2 point deficit. Caplan suggests single motherhood and feminism itself (telling women the world is unfair) as possible causes, though he notes the magnitude is small and the story is complicated.
Immigration and Open Borders
On Keyhole Solutions (policies that address immigration complaints without restricting immigration itself, like denying voting rights to immigrants): Caplan acknowledges the slippery slope objection is strong — it’s hard to maintain a permanent non-citizen class across generations — but notes the problems dilute over time.
On student loan forgiveness: Caplan calls it a regressive transfer from the general population (including non-college-goers) to elites who ran up the debt. It doesn’t even increase education since the education has already happened. It may encourage future debt accumulation and further inflate tuition.
On education and free markets: Caplan’s earlier claim that education makes people more free market is best explained by peer effects — college students are surrounded by peers who are less anti-market than the general population. But this is a double-edged sword: segregating pro-market people at college means they’re not influencing non-college people, who may influence each other in the opposite direction.
On whether college is mostly signaling: Caplan pushes back on Tyler Cowen’s argument that talent can be spotted with a 1500-word essay and a Zoom call. He argues most employers can’t assess talent that quickly, that work product samples aren’t very predictive, and that the “hire and watch for a few months” strategy is expensive and rarely used because firing is emotionally, socially, and legally difficult. The signaling value of credentials is partly a solution to the “diamonds in the rough” problem.
On educational austerity: Caplan’s policy prescription from The Case Against Education is to spend less on education and make it less accessible, reversing credential inflation. He’s skeptical politicians will do this because state university systems (especially their football teams) are too popular to challenge.
On the ultra-long-term case for open borders: moving a poor worker to a rich country can multiply their productivity and wages many times over. Even if the world is getting richer on its own, the present value of rescuing billions from poverty now — and not losing potential breakthrough talents trapped in poor countries — is enormous. If we’re going to beat death, shaving five or ten years off that timeline matters.
Poland’s Refugee Response
Caplan traveled to Eastern Europe after the Ukraine war to give talks on Open Borders, which had been translated into Polish, Hungarian, Czech, and Slovakian.
Poland increased its population by 10% in a month with Ukrainian refugees and the country looked fine. Refugees were allowed to work the day they arrived. The warm public welcome made a visible difference in how refugees were coping.
This dramatically expanded Caplan’s sense of what’s doable. The US frets over 10,000 refugees while Poland absorbed millions happily. The difference is attitude and policy: “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Decolonization and Revolutions
On how decolonization should have been done: Caplan argues for a long-term pre-commitment (e.g., 20 years) with clear goals of a peaceful, free society, gradual transition to reasonable local leaders, and zero tolerance for those inciting violence. The partition of India was botched because the British left too quickly, leading to millions dead in pogroms.
Successful examples: post-WWII occupations of Germany and Japan worked because the old regimes were completely crushed first, human rights were prioritized over democracy, and power was devolved slowly only to those with no sympathies for the old order.
On the best revolutions: Caplan is skeptical of the American Revolution. He points to the collapse of Eastern European communism (though it was peaceful enough that he hesitates to call it a revolution), the Korean War (saving two-thirds of the country), and the Glorious Revolution as better examples. He argues that without Lenin, the Bolshevik Revolution almost certainly wouldn’t have happened — the rest of the Bolshevik party was planning to participate in the provisional government until Lenin browbeat them into revolution.
On contingency in history: Caplan is a strong believer in contingency for most political events, though he thinks the Industrial Revolution was probably inevitable given the convergence of scientific breakthroughs and commercial interest across multiple countries.
Billionaires and Tournament Theory
On whether Jeff Bezos deserves his wealth: Caplan invokes tournament theory — extremely large rewards for top performers incentivize not just the winner but all potential winners. Billionaires inspire a whole culture of entrepreneurship. Even people who will never be billionaires (like Dwarkesh) are motivated by the possibility. Taxing billionaires heavily would reduce this motivational effect.
He also argues business history is less contingent than political history — the quality of entrepreneurship and management varies enormously by country, and it’s not obvious that someone else would have built something as good as Amazon.
Anarcho-Capitalism
Caplan’s ideal long-term government is anarcho-capitalism: competing police forces, competing legal systems, competing court systems. He doesn’t think you can just press a button and abolish government (that would be a disaster), but he believes there’s a stable equilibrium with privatized governance that would solve many root causes of war, nationalism, and demagoguery. Demagogues would still exist but would lose their main lever of power — control of government.
Miscellaneous
On why society is relatively free and prosperous despite irrational voters: Caplan notes that the norm throughout human history is poverty and violence, so the current peace of wealthy societies is already exceptional. Fanatical sociopathic bloodthirstiness is genuinely rarer in better-functioning societies. Public opinion matters enormously even under dictatorships. Constructive interest groups (like developers lobbying to build housing) also play an underappreciated positive role.
On interest groups vs. public opinion: Contrary to Mancur Olson’s theory, Caplan argues public opinion is far more important for policy than interest groups. Interest groups mostly work in the fine print; the broad policies that exist generally have public support.
On Caplan’s stand-up comedy debut at the Comedy Cellar in New York: He performed alongside nine professional comedians and didn’t think he was obviously the worst. The key differences from regular public speaking were the need to memorize exact wording (since synonym substitution kills jokes), precise timing, and reading audience reactions — which was hard during COVID when he couldn’t see faces clearly.
On why young people are getting more anxious: Caplan’s first pass is always measurement artifact — medicalization of society, destigmatization of mental health treatment, and stigmatization of traditional coping mechanisms like religion. Suicide rates fell from 1970 to 2000 and have rebounded, making the story complicated and not fitting any simple narrative.
