Though I’m not a big fan of Hayek, the UK-based Institute of Economic Affairs asked me to deliver the 2019 Hayek Memorial Lecture. It’s a preview of my book-in-progress, Poverty: Who To Blame. It’s also an attempt to get people to pay comparable attention to all three parts of my book. At least until my IEA talk, almost all critics focused entirely on book’s final third, when I explore the extent to which the poor are to blame for their own poverty. So I rewrote the presentation to preemptively tip the balance, devoting more time to bad economic policy in the Third World and bad immigration policies in the First World.
Here’s the whole talk.
READER COMMENTS
E. Harding
Dec 25 2019 at 2:02pm
Not true that shock therapy worked; Ukraine, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Georgia are still poorer than they were in 1990. The most reformed post-Communist countries (Baltics, Slovenia, etc.) did the best, and those with modest reforms did the worst. Least-reformed post-Communist countries like Uzbekistan and Belarus did in between, about as well as countries which reformed to a degree between the modestly reformed and the most reformed (e.g., Hungary). Aslund is not, in any sense, a reliable source; his writings are filled with contradictions and repeatedly bad prognostications.
mark
Dec 29 2019 at 6:30pm
Prof. Caplan says little more than one sentence about the “shock therapy” of the formerly central-planned economies – Albania, Yugoslavia, ALL Warsaw-pact and Russia herself. NONE (except maybe Turkmenistan) are without a market-economy today and more integrated in the global economy. And all are better off, due to this ( Since 1990 I visit often). And some are partly worse of, often because of Putin (Georgia, Moldavia, Ukraine – Russia itself – compared to the potential) or other autocrats (the -stans), because of corruption of a once all-powerful and still very strong state (from the DAI through the courts to the Presidential office). Which would all prove his point, if he were making it, but that is not really what the speech is about. – What I want to see is the Q&A of what his speech IS about. Who is to blame for poverty. – I miss the mentioning of persons, that CAN not make themself to “saddle up”, yeah, “blame” it to their LACK of conscientiousness – but if they are not able to keep their impulses under control well enough to function in modern society, then I see not much point in blaming. (Being able to get up at gunpoint does not qualify for burger-flipping!) . Whether more likely 10% or 80% of present “first-world-poor-able-bodied-adults” are just not “able-minded”? / how to “re-educate” most?/how to deal with the remaining? (once sterilisation was suggested …) – what are the consequences Caplan would advocate beyond preaching the “big three”?
Comments are closed.