You Scare Bryan Caplan:

So he'll sting you just in case

Sorry guys, I recently had the opportunity to remember just how much I hate Bryan Caplan and decided to sperg… Here I stand… help me, amen.

In a 2015 post Bryan Caplan reminisces about how cool Mormons are, and how positively they’ve impacted his life.

In 3rd-grade, my best friend was Mormon.  As a result, I joined a Mormon cub scout troop.  Since then, I’ve often interacted with Mormons, and I though I’ve never become one, I have to say: They are the nicest bunch I’ve ever met.  A few years ago, Mormons impressed me even more with their uber-cool reaction to The Book of Mormon musical:

[Excerpt on how the church bought ads in the show to promote itself]

There’s just one problem. Mormons really are cool right now. But what if they… weren’t? :

Occasionally, though, I wonder: What would happen if Mormons were a solid majority of the U.S. population?  Maybe they’d be as wonderful as ever, but I readily picture a sinister metamorphosis.  Given enough power, even Mormons might embrace a brutal fundamentalism. 

Despite my lovely experiences with Mormons, they scare me.

Lest you think that Bryan Caplan only fears people who are nice to him, he’s happy to clarify that he fears everyone.

You know who else scares me?  Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and atheists.  Sunnis, Shiites, Catholics, and Protestants.  Whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians.  Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, Marxists, and reactionaries. 

Now, you might be wondering… What about me? ‘I’m a libertarian’, surely Bryan couldn’t be afraid of me too? But sadly for you:

Even libertarians scare me a bit.

Why? Because given enough power, there’s a serious chance they’ll do terrible things. Different terrible things, no doubt.  But terrible nonetheless.

What to do if you fear everyone? A normal well adjusted person might think the answer was to choose the best party and try to move it in the right direction. Bryan has an even better solution though. Use everyone to weaken everyone.

… the best way to do this is to make every group a small minority – to split society into such small pieces that everyone abandons hope of running society and refocuses their energy on building beautiful Bubbles.

…

welcoming everyone is a great way to turn everyone into a minority.  And while that hardly guarantees safety, it’s less menacing than the status quo. 

Any right-wing normie who thinks of Caplan immediately intuits that he must just hate them. Sadly this does not appear to be the case. Or at least he hides it very well. It’s just never occurred to him that waging a pre-emptive war against everyone who treats him well might be a bad thing to do. It’s normal to hate and harm your enemies; but to do this to your friends?

The Last Man is far more despicable than Nietzsche could’ve possibly imagined. He’ll write shit like this:

“India is the most unequal country I have ever visited. Officially, granted, it’s more equal than the U.S. But I strongly disbelieve the official statistics. In India, the worst slums I’ve ever seen are walking distance from some of the most lavish malls I’ve ever seen. These malls were vast and packed, their prices were as high as northern Virginia’s, and almost none of the customers were foreign. The upshot is that plenty of rich Indians were spending as much on a fast food lunch or a two pints of ice cream as an Uber driver earns all day.

India is the filthiest country I have ever visited. Outside a few prime locations, garbage and rubble line the streets. Skinny stray animals — including stereotypical sacred cows — abound. 98% of the inhabited areas I saw were comparable to the bottom third of Palermo, Italy. And that’s saying a lot!” - Bryan Caplan

In a post advocating for increased immigration from India and feel not the slightest bit of dissonance because it does not compute for him that you should not wage pre-emptive wars against everyone who treats you well; just in case someday… they stop being so nice. If one were to give way to the urge to psychoanalyze everything, one might conclude that he feels this way because on a deep level he understands that no undistracted group of people would fail to conclude eventually that he should be destroyed.

So distractions must be created while there is still time so that the world may be safe for Caplans and so that Caplans may survive.

This is a reasonable position I suppose, given that even someone like me who should feel sympathetic to Caplan given his work rescuing Richard Hoste and others from cancellation —-

hates Bryan Caplan.

Given his free speech absolutism, anti-cancel culture activism, similar social circles to mine… I suppose I should cut him some slack.

But I really do hate him.

And I don’t think he’s factored that into his calculations for what success means.

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