Recently, I got a new book idea. After soliciting title ideas, I really liked Nathan Goodman’s Unbeatable, to which I added the subtitle The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets. Before long, I was so jazzed about the idea - and the sales potential - that I decided to rearrange my queue to try writing
If your intent is to persuade any among the unpersuaded and you immediately dismiss communism with reference to incentives and pleas to your own authority, you will fail. Those who think communism sounds good (and are not your own children) will not consider “communism is bad because no one has any incentives to produce” to be a knockdown argument. They have heard that before and considered that before.
If instead you intend to write only for the already persuaded, kudos, quality start.
Communism is deeply rooted in our culture. Took Christianity: richs are banned from heaven (at least if we don't find a way of passing camels trough the eye of a needle).
An envy is a very powerful force in humans. Communism promise of leveling us with all the "have more than us" is truly unbeatable. Sweet revenge!
And championing comunism ideals make us feel good about ourselves at a very low individual price. Communism includes making others pay for our virtue signalling. Unbeatable too.
Communism idea is so powerful that it is embeded in a lot of "democratic" constitutions.
Abandoning communism (not a bad titlte, by the way) requires much more than good reasoning and good lessons on economic history. It is something we need to feel, not to think. We are all communist at heart
Hey Mr Kaplan. We readers know that your kids are quite bright, but someone who's never heard of you before reading these paragraphs will have a hard time believing someone had a conversation on this level with two six year olds. Plus, like the other guy said, I doubt this line of argumentation would have much of an effect on convinced socialists. Chances are, they've probably been exposed to this sort of argument before (unless you're trying to preach to the general public instead of socialist true believers, which would be a different matter).
Hey Bryan, what about a book called: "The myth of the rational communism" ... after all communist are like voters: they are what they are and behave following their own biases.
Trying to convince them to be rational is a total waste of time (you have to give some credit to a way of looking the world that survives Mao, Stalin, Castro, North Korea, Venezuela, Argentina ...). But a good "rational" analysis of the human biases that allow the total irrationality of communism/socialism survival and prevalence ...
It sure sounded good when Biden told us that he could conquer Covid so we elected him President based on his promise. It sure sounded bad when others claimed that Covid couldn't be conquered.
Not only is it often the case that good-sounding things are bad and bad-sounding things are good, when it comes to proposed policy changes, I submit to you that we should expect this to be *more and more* true over time.
The broad idea is basically that, for essentially psychological reasons, if we have a pool of candidate policy changes, we're biased to try the ones that *sound* good sooner than the ones that *sound* bad, and so eventually the only way to improve anything is likely to be with policy changes that sound bad.
If your intent is to persuade any among the unpersuaded and you immediately dismiss communism with reference to incentives and pleas to your own authority, you will fail. Those who think communism sounds good (and are not your own children) will not consider “communism is bad because no one has any incentives to produce” to be a knockdown argument. They have heard that before and considered that before.
If instead you intend to write only for the already persuaded, kudos, quality start.
Communism is deeply rooted in our culture. Took Christianity: richs are banned from heaven (at least if we don't find a way of passing camels trough the eye of a needle).
An envy is a very powerful force in humans. Communism promise of leveling us with all the "have more than us" is truly unbeatable. Sweet revenge!
And championing comunism ideals make us feel good about ourselves at a very low individual price. Communism includes making others pay for our virtue signalling. Unbeatable too.
Communism idea is so powerful that it is embeded in a lot of "democratic" constitutions.
Abandoning communism (not a bad titlte, by the way) requires much more than good reasoning and good lessons on economic history. It is something we need to feel, not to think. We are all communist at heart
Good luck!
Hey Mr Kaplan. We readers know that your kids are quite bright, but someone who's never heard of you before reading these paragraphs will have a hard time believing someone had a conversation on this level with two six year olds. Plus, like the other guy said, I doubt this line of argumentation would have much of an effect on convinced socialists. Chances are, they've probably been exposed to this sort of argument before (unless you're trying to preach to the general public instead of socialist true believers, which would be a different matter).
I'm looking forward to Poverty: Who to Blame. Good luck with Unbeatable!
Hey Bryan, what about a book called: "The myth of the rational communism" ... after all communist are like voters: they are what they are and behave following their own biases.
Trying to convince them to be rational is a total waste of time (you have to give some credit to a way of looking the world that survives Mao, Stalin, Castro, North Korea, Venezuela, Argentina ...). But a good "rational" analysis of the human biases that allow the total irrationality of communism/socialism survival and prevalence ...
It sure sounded good when Biden told us that he could conquer Covid so we elected him President based on his promise. It sure sounded bad when others claimed that Covid couldn't be conquered.
Not only is it often the case that good-sounding things are bad and bad-sounding things are good, when it comes to proposed policy changes, I submit to you that we should expect this to be *more and more* true over time.
The broad idea is basically that, for essentially psychological reasons, if we have a pool of candidate policy changes, we're biased to try the ones that *sound* good sooner than the ones that *sound* bad, and so eventually the only way to improve anything is likely to be with policy changes that sound bad.
I am kind of dissapointed. I have been waiting for "Poverty: Who to Blame" for a long time!!