Hanania/Caplan + Khan

This winter, the Salem Center for Policy sponsored two back-to-back public events.

Event #1: Interview with Richard Hanania on his new book, Public Choice and the Illusion of Grand Strategy. (I discuss his book in detail here, here, and here, and we also did this wider-ranging podcast on “The Politics of Everything”).

Event #2: Famed genetics blogger Razib Khan joins me and Hanania for an Ask Me Anything panel.

All at Austin’s hottest new venue, Steve Kuhn’s Dreamland Dripping Springs.

Here’s the full video for both events. Enjoy!

P.S. Plans are now in the works for regular intellectual events on Dreamland’s huge outdoor stage. Stayed tuned.


The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - New Edition, – Illustrated (2008)

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Purchase on Google Books

TRANSCRIPT: The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan is worth the read. In case anyone is wondering why we link to Google Books versus Amazon, it's not because we receive monetary compensation for one versus the other. We, at planksip, support Google Books over Amazon simply because our Journalists use a shared copy for commenting. Of course, we have to purchase individual copies for each contributor on any given project or story, but the ability to create a shared Google Doc directly linked to the book, research or citations is extremely valuable.

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