Who Is Bryan Caplan?

Bryan Caplan 

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. 

He is a New York Times bestselling author. His books are The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. He is currently working on a book about poverty. He also plans to publish a book with his best self-help essays, and when that happens, we will let you know. 

Professor Caplan blogs at EconLog. He is part of an influential group of libertarian bloggers who are also academics. Perhaps the two best known such bloggers are Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, who blog at Marginal Revolution. David Henderson, Scott Sumner, Caplan and others can be found at EconLog. 

You can follow Professor Caplan on Twitter. 

Why This Website?

I have been reading Bryan Caplan's blog posts for years, but I recently noticed that my favorites among his rather prolific output are the occasional posts where he offers advice on how to live a happy life. I saved Make Your Own Bubble in 10 Easy Steps on my browser bar, so that I could easily re-read it any time I wanted. I  also particularly liked Better Ways To Buy Your Happiness. 

Noticing Bryan Caplan's advice at one of his posts (item number 10) I read The Letter to Menoeceus by the philosopher Epicurus and became really interested in Epicureanism, which among other things is a philosophy on how to be happy. I noticed that Caplan's advice on his blog and Twitter account  fitted my new interest in Epicureanism. For example, Epicureanism puts a heavy emphasis on the value of friendship, and as of this writing, the pinned Tweet at Dr. Caplan's Twitter account says, "Anytime you see me in public, please introduce yourself. 

"Making friends has worked out swimmingly for me so far!"

So I decided to put together a collection of Professor Caplan's life advice blog posts. At first it was going to be just for my own use, but then I decided to put together a public collection, both to make it easy for me to access it from anywhere, and because I thought others might be interested. I have also offered a sampling of other blog posts. 

About Me

This website was created by Tom Jackson. I am a journalist in Ohio. I have a Twitter account. 

I have a blog devoted to Robert Anton Wilson (with information also about Robert Shea, co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy). My Russian Futurism blog is devoted to avant-garde Russian classical music, and classical music in general. 

Disclaimer

This website collecting some of Bryan Caplan's most useful advice is an unofficial fan site. I have obtained permission from Dr. Caplan and from the Liberty Fund to reprint these pieces, but I made the selection and any mistakes in those judgments is on me. 

I should mention that while I endorse almost of Professor Caplan's advice, I can't agree with his suggestion that his readers avoid following the news. I try to avoid TV news as much as possible, but I believe subscribing to the local newspaper is a good way to know what's going on in your community, and that local news coverage tends to keep politicians (relatively) efficient and honest. I also have a digital subscription to the New York Times; I simply tune out the coverage in areas where I think the paper is weak, such as technology.