Bryan Caplan

Is Austrian economics anti-empirical? (Horwitz, Caplan, Selgin, and Boettke)

Leave a Comment / Economics, Epistemology /

[I’m re-posting this good discussion from 2012 at Cato Unbound.] An instructive trio of essays by economists at Cato Unbound about Austrian economics’ reputation — especially Mises’s praxeological version — for being strongly a priori rationalist: Is Austrian economics anti-empiricist? Steve Horwitz says no. Bryan Caplan says yes. George Selgin also says yes. To Selgin’s […]

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Two libertarians debate the welfare state, pro and con

2 Comments / Politics /

Bryan Caplan says No: I’m a hard-core libertarian who defines libertarianism broadly. If you think voluntarism is seriously underrated and government is seriously overrated, you’re a libertarian in my book.” But, “when libertarians start describing Danish ‘flexicurity’ with deep admiration, however, I don’t just doubt their libertarian commitment. More importantly, I wonder why they changed

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Are Austrian economists anti-empirical?

1 Comment / Economics, Epistemology, Philosophy /

An instructive trio of essays by economists at Cato Unbound about Austrian economics’ reputation — especially Mises’s praxeological version — for being strongly a priori rationalist: Is Austrian economics anti-empiricist? Steve Horwitz says no. Bryan Caplan says yes. George Selgin also says yes. To Selgin’s series of quotations from Mises, I’d add this one from

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Bleeding-heart libertarianism?

16 Comments / Economics, Ethics /

Jumping into the debate about “bleeding-heart libertarianism” (Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, Bryan Caplan and again, David Friedman, David Henderson, and others), which seeks to integrate libertarianism with social justice. “Social justice” is one of those vaguely-specified, usually suspect phrases, defined by one defender of BHL as the position that “the moral justification of our

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Do conservatives value economic liberty?

4 Comments / Philosophy, Politics /

The question matters because many smart libertarians and conservatives, Bryan Caplan included, are wondering whether the two groups can overcome their differences, either for short-term coalitions on particular issues and elections or to create a longer-term movement. My view is that the philosophical differences between the two militate against long-term compatibility, though there are prospects

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Talk at Liberty Fund on art and free markets

Leave a Comment / Art, Economics, Philosophy /

Earlier this week I gave a talk in Indianapolis at the excellent Liberty Fund on whether free-market capitalism is good or bad for art. The question matters in today’s intellectual context because thinkers on both left and right argue regularly that art suffers under free market systems. Traditional conservatives such as Robert Bork and neo-conservatives

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