Ask Me Anything About Natalism

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SPEAKER 2

people just start putting questions into the comments and we'll see let's say all right not seeing any questions yet let's see what else should I say to get things going Yeah, I'll say this. I've written a lot of things, but the only thing I've ever written that actually clearly improved the world is my natalism book,

0:24

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. This is a book where I've got what I think is good evidence that there's hundreds of people that had extra kids because I wrote the book. I actually changed people's minds and people were in a position to go and do something about it. That was, well...

0:42

If you use economists' usual $10 million per life, then I'll claim to have created billions of dollars with that book, which is a lot more than I've ever done with any other one. In fact, it's not clear that any of my other books have actually changed the world at all. But that book has.

Ask Me Anything About Natalism

Bryan Caplan

Apr 02, 2025

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Here’s the footage from yesterday’s natalism AMA. Very fun.

Got other AMA topics you’d like to me to do? Please share in the comments.

Discussion about this video

Torches Together

Apr 2

I missed this, but I have a question: If you wanted to increase human birth rates as effectively as possible, with no bias for your own country, how would you do it?

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SolarxPvP

Apr 2

- I’d love to see you cover the welfare state more. I only just recently found a presentation that you did on the Great Society on YouTube. https://youtu.be/VYDLJrXf6d0?si=oKTH-C1SoJ6QDCXk

You don’t cover much of the data on poverty used to justify the welfare state in the presentation, though.

- Javier Milei. What do you think so far? This WSJ peace has some solid critiques of him. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/milei-suffers-self-inflicted-wounds-argentina-judge-appointment-529e0cee

His results have been fantastic, but he makes silly mistakes that could cost him votes for no good reason except that he suffers (like many libertarians seem to) from MAGA sympathy or what Hanania would probably call “rightoid brain.” Buddying up with Trump might help his votes if anything, but it’s also led him to support American hawkish policy worldwide and fall for other right wing silliness. Though if you’re a libertarian and want to win an election it’s probably the only way to do so at this point, even outside of the US.

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