bryan caplan

Should Helicopter Parents Stop Hovering Over Their Kids?

by Ryan Young on April 12, 2011

in Culture

Helicopter parents — constantly hovering over their children — have their heart in the right place. But that style of parenting has always struck me as… unnecessary.

My former professor Bryan Caplan agrees. He has a new book out that’s based on his research on identical twins. As it turns out, a lot of how kids will turn out as adults is based on nature, not nurture. The implication: parents can ease up on the high-maintenance parenting style that is so fashionable today.

In The Wall Street Journal, Caplan writes, “With a few exceptions, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes ranges from small to zero.”

He continues:

Once I became a dad, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture. I saw them turning parenthood into a chore—shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn’t enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents’ main rationale is that their effort is an investment in their children’s future; they’re sacrificing now to turn their kids into healthy, smart, successful, well-adjusted adults.  But according to decades of twin research, their rationale is just, well, wrong.

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Regulation of the Day 134: Not Voting

by Ryan Young on April 27, 2010

in Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

The lede to this Denver Post article says it all:

RIDGWAY — Residents of this Old West- meets-New Age town can be fined if their fences are too high, they have too many chickens, their dogs aren’t on leashes or their weeds are out of control.

Tom Hennessy would like to add not voting to that list.

There are three things wrong with Mr. Hennessy’s proposed regulation. One is that mandatory voting is a violation of personal freedom. To vote or not is an important choice that people make for themselves. It is not Mr. Hennessy’s place to make that decision for others. Many countries have tried mandatory voting over the years, most notably the Soviet Union.

The second thing wrong with mandatory voting is that it violates freedom of speech. Mr. Hennessy is aware that compelled speech is just as unconstitutional as censored speech. That’s why he proposes a “none of the above” option on ballots. But some people are sending a deliberate message when they choose not to vote. Mr. Hennessy would fine them for sending that message.

The third point is that, maybe, some people shouldn’t vote. If I step into a voting booth not knowing a thing about the candidates or the issues, I am essentially choosing at random. And choosing wrong means voting against everything I stand for.

Even worse, human beings have built-in cognitive biases that affect their voting habits. Economist Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter identifies anti-foreign bias, anti-market bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias, for starters.

Even relatively informed voters fall prey to these biases. They vote accordingly. The difference of opinion between economists and the general public on economic issues is startling. Nobody argues relativity with a physicist thinking they’ll win. But voters from both parties argue against the laws of economics every election, often in error but never in doubt.

Despite its flaws, democracy has worked tolerably well in this country for a long time. Perhaps the best part of our particular democracy is that people are free to choose their level of engagement with it. That should be your choice. Not Tom Hennessy’s.

(Full disclosure: CEI takes no stance on whether to vote, or for whom. Neither do I. I personally have not voted since 2002, but seriously consider it every year.)

Economics 101: Where Do Monopolies Come From?

by Ryan Young on September 1, 2009 · 1 comment

in Economy, Regulation

Bryan Caplan says there are only two ways for a monopoly to form: government protection, or being the best.

“If the firm has a monopoly because the government made competition illegal, the solution isn’t antitrust; it’s legalizing competition. If the firm has a monopoly because it’s the best, the solution isn’t antitrust; it’s a little freakin’ appreciation.”

Read the whole thing.