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Bryan Caplan is a name I've heard off and on in rationalist adjacent spaces and with Scott's recent review of one of Caplan’s books, I decided to actually take a look at his blog.
I was very surprised to see that he is an anarcho-capitalist: something that is very much unexpected in an academic economist. He acknowledges this in his blog, where he bemoans the left-wing focus on market failures rather than on market achievement. I probably agree with him on 90-95% of his positions, though I would have a different relative rank in the importance of those positions.
Of course, this being the internet, I won't spend any time on our many agreements but will instead focus on what I perceive to be his biggest shortcoming. Despite his expertise in a social science, he seems to think of society in abstractions: certainly a requirement for good economic modeling, but one that should always be grounded in reality. While possibly tongue in cheek, his statement that "it is humanity, not my arguments, that is flawed" does seem to reflect his mentality.
Exhibit A: Immigration and UAE
Caplan extols the virtues of the UAE, calling their mass-immigration a model for Western nations. And indeed, millions of Indians and billions of oil dollars have created a gleaming technical paradise. But as Caplan notes, UAE "immigration" is not the same as Western immigration. Only native Arabs have citizenship and enjoy the (extensive) welfare that oil money can afford.
The UAE understands that you can have mass immigration or a welfare state, but you cannot have both. They also are not squeamish about transactional relationships with imported labor, which makes the UAE's approach a complete non-starter in the West. No Western nation could import hundreds of millions of (mostly brown) labor, pay them "market wages", and refuse to provide citizenship and a social safety net. Even hard-core anarcho-libertarians would find the parallels with slavery uncomfortable.
The irony is that while the UAE does not have the human capital in either its native or foreign population as most Western countries, the West wastes its superior human capital on regulations, bureaucracy, and virtue signaling while the UAE just builds. Perhaps it is not "humanity" that is flawed, but just Western elites.
Regardless, the UAE's path is not sustainable. The native elite live off natural resources and imported labor rather than their own ingenuity and effort. There is no improvement in human capital, only a descent (slowed perhaps by the prohibitions of Islam) into hedonism. Copying their approach will neuter the unique ambition of the American spirit and accelerate our destruction.
Exhibit B: Immigration and Culture
Caplan implicitly downplays the negative aspect of migration on culture and social cohesion. Most immigrants will look, smell, act, and often vote differently than the "native" population. At scale, assimilation simply won't happen. Even with current immigration in the US there are sufficient numbers of Indians and Chinese to create clannish sub-cultures within the US. Caplan clearly thinks that we can still retain (and even improve) our high standard of living despite mass immigration, but this begs the question why high living standards don't already exist in India or China. Is it lack of physical capital? Is it human capital? Or could it be culture? (Obviously, all three have some impact). Given that capital is attracted towards the highest returns, it seems likely that a lack of human capital or a culture not conducive towards economic flourishing has to be a major cause for the lower living standard. If this is the case, there would be a decrease in the quality of life for the typical resident if third-worlders are imported en-masse.
At one point Caplan hints that indeed that may be the case when he points out that the fictional dystopia of Blade Runner is actually an improvement on modern-day India. This may not be the rock-solid argument he thinks it is. I want my children to enjoy a better life than I have today, not a better life than what a typical Indian has today.
In a guest post (which does not imply Caplan's endorsement), the "worst" neighborhood in Japan is visited. It is still safe and relatively clean. The writer implies that the US can model urban policy off Japan’s success. But again, this ignores the cultural aspect. Japan has a culture of order and cleanliness (and xenophobia). If Japan imported even 5 million Brazilians the "worst" neighborhood in Japan would look quite different.
Again, Caplan misses the "human" aspect of economics.
Exhibit C: Trade Deficit and Geopolitics
Caplan is either ambivalent or in favor of a trade deficit. Caplan posits the idea that the trade deficit could be the result, not the cause, of financial inflows. Rather than a trade deficit resulting in foreign nations having excess dollars that they then spend on US investment, US securities are in such high demand that foreign nations raise the value of the dollar, causing foreign goods to be relatively cheap and leading to a trade deficit. If this argument is correct, then one would expect any economically vibrant and pro-growth country to have a trade deficit. The trade deficit indicates that the US economy and regulatory regime is more conducive to growth.
Yet much like with the UAE, Caplan doesn't seem to grasp the human side of this equation. He assumes economic output is "value free". A service-oriented economy begets a pampered paper-pusher bureaucracy, while the relocation of former blue-collar work to "higher-value" labor hasn't happened at scale. The service economy erodes the will and ability to actually build in the physical world, while the dearth of blue-collar work has led to zombie communities addicted to handouts and opiates. A country should choose to focus industrial policy on broad outcomes including domestic production. Any economy needs direction lest it degenerate. The invisible hand of the market finds local maxima, but it takes vision to push the hand towards a global maxima.
Since Caplan has a tendency to see everything through the lens of economics, he minimizes the geopolitical implications of US policy. We are in the middle of a great geopolitical reset in which protectionist policy plays a key part. The Trump administration has given up Europe as lost. The US is now competing for influence in areas where China has traditionally dominated (including the Arab states that Caplan extols). The remnants of the Bretton-woods post-war international order is being shattered. This is the main takeaway from tariff and trade policy, not the myopic economic impact.
A recommendation
Despite my criticisms, I'm glad that there is an anarcho-capitalist whose ideas have purchase in the rationalist community. A very positive change I've observed over the last decade is the steady increase in liberals acknowledging the benefit of the market and the harm of overregulation, and Caplan’s work has contributed to this change. I would like to see Caplan have even more impact.
Caplan correctly notes that the market forces good policy even where that policy has bad optics, while politicians pursue bad policy that has good optics. This provides a potential key to seeing his (good) economic ideas actually gain purchase: fight the battles that you can actually win. There is much political will to create energy abundance (natural gas and nuclear in particular) and to address NIMBYist red tape; once we are allowed to build, other "good" policies (such as mass labor importation) may become more politically viable. Indeed, even in the UAE plentiful energy preceded plentiful immigration.
I must again remond everyone that UAE is a hellhole full of snakes. Their system selects for third worldsrs who are in it for the money, meaning they will scam and cheat as much as possible for a quick buck. They are only held back by draconian rules and a police state that will see them in the least charitable light. But rest assured any loophole in the rules will be exploited.
Unlike even some shitty counties, where travel influencers will say the locals are kind, polite, helpful, and generous, they people in UAE are nothing of the sort. Nobody will go even a millimeter past what they're paid to do to help you. Good luck even getting directions if there isn't someone whos job it is to give them standing around.
This is far from my experience of the place and I used to live there and do business locally for many years. But I believe you saw what you saw and I can explain it.
The UAE is a two tier system (well three if we count Emiratis, but i mean for guests).
You have the pleasant world of premium stuff for rich people, where you get your money's worth and then some and the people are nice, competent and helpful to the highest standards in the world.
And then you have the world of discount or cheap anything which operates on margins so thin that you're borderline getting scammed if not actually getting scammed all the time.
One good example that set the tone for me was getting a visa. When I did the discount one for poor people, I had to wait a long time, weeks longer than advertised, drive around a whole lot and pay people some money to enter information into a website that's purposely designed so I can't do it myself to maintain their racket. When I did the rich people option, it took a day and I was immediately done with it, and spent more time getting free refreshments in the air conditioned waiting room than doing the whole process.
And everything's like this. Want to get around? Either you take the official taxis where everything is regulated and the credit card machine always works, or you take a chance on the apps and the guy will try to scam you out of some cash and may or may not take you to your destination.
The one thing that is true for both sides and not compromised on is violence. You won't see much of it or of the related crimes because people are immediately kicked out or severely punished for that sort of thing. So petty crime is non-violent and takes the form of scams.
But this is all to say that there are plenty of generous, kind and helpful people in that country. but as befits an aristocratic society, they just don't hang around with the help.
You get what you pay for, nothing more, nothing less. Paying for five star service is possible in UAE, but it's also possible inost every country in the world.
When I went half the official taxis tried to scam me by pretending their credit card reader was broken. I had to threaten to call the cops and suddenly it was working again.
You're better off just taking uber
Sure, if you count the other rich foreigners. But when it comes to the actual people living there and not vacationing, there are none.
Not when there's a quality cliff. In a developed country, your quality of life per dollars spent is a mostly convex function. Yes, there might be significant bumps in experience, like going from first class to chartering a business jet, but they are exceptions. It sounds like it's a steep sigmoid function in UAE instead, you can't get a four-star service for half the money.
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I guess it must depend on what kind of business you're doing, I thought quite well of some of the industry people I dealt with and they were infinitely more accommodating than some of their Chinese or Central European counterparts I usually deal with. And yet somehow even more openly racist, which is pretty amazing if you've dealt with some Chinese folks.
I take it you didn't notice the large mandatory RTA sticker that says the ride is free if the machine is broken? Or maybe they tried to get one over on you as a tourist or something.
A significant amount of the people who live there are rich foreigners though, especially in Dubai. There's entire neighborhoods worth of these in major cities, I've seen them. I swear you could never speak a word of English or Arabic in that country if you're Russian or Ukrainian. But yeah you're not going to get free courtesy out of the Asian foreign workers unless you're a coethnic, they're there for business and nothing else.
Yeah I noticed it in the fine print so I didn't end up getting scammed. But the fact is that the notice is there precisely because the scam is so common.
I suppose that's true, but from where I stand I've had American cabbies try to pull that scam on me and they didn't have a notice in there, whilst nobody I know fell prey to it in the UAE. Anecdotes and all that.
One thing you're certainly right about is that, the UAE way of solving those problems is the stick: to increase control and surveillance to a degree that Westerners wouldn't necessarily be happy with.
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