To Cut or Not to Cut?

You only live once and you’re very lucky to have a position where you won’t be fired for saying such things. Be bold. Write for the ages. Leave it in.

For one, restrictions on voting are far too easy to abuse.

As to the cloning? Leave it in. You are in a position to say controversial things without strong negative repercussions, so go for it.

I won’t lie to you Bryan, that makes you sound a little crazy. I think you should keep it in because you have a valuable reputation as someone who is willing to say unpopular things you believe are true, and because it will generate controversy. But it really does make you seem like a nut. A critic might wonder if you’d also want to dance, ride a tandem bicycle, fall in love, and then marry your clone. I’m not suggesting this… I’m just saying a critic might.

The government doesn’t even leave hairdressers alone and your argument is too weak to spark any controversy. Leave it in, but say that you want to intentionally harm or deform the clone in utero and that this should not be illegal. Then you will have a controversial paragraph.

I agree with Adam Ozimek, it does make you sound crazy.

Would restricting voter eligibility suffer all the problems associated with gerrymandered districts? As implemented in the real world, wouldn’t the incentives be for incumbents to define voter eligibility in such a way as to benefit themselves at the expense of outsiders?

You could imagine wars over the definition of “college educated.” Eg. does University of Phoenix Online count as a college? And would the positions of Republican and Democrat legislators be based on some principle or the statistical correlation with party registration?

Restrictions on suffrage is a provocative policy proposal, but I think it suffers from a classical policy failing… it is not robust to implementation by greedy, self interested politicians.

There is an excellent story possibility here. Man who thinks genes matter more than they do raises a clone of himself. Teenage child, disgusted by his own narcissism, murders his narcissistic father/clone to prove to himself that he is not a puppet of fate. The murderer’s DNA cannot be distinguished from his victim’s and so the killing is ruled a suicide. He is adopted by his twin older brothers/sons.

It makes you sound as though you have preconceived ideas of how you want your child to turn out, implying that you might not accept him (or how about a female clone — just one less Y and another X, almost the same as you) if he turns out to be more different from you than you expect. Of course we all do have preconceived ideas, and we don’t accept everything our children do, but most people try to downplay that.

Just to expand on my point, if the current Congress passed a bill limiting suffrage, would the groups most likely to lose the right to vote not be the least educated but bankers, free market economists, people making over $250,000 a year, smokers, and whoever else is a popular villain of the day.

Not having read your published books but as an EconLog reader who’s read several of your works on your homepage, I think you’re nuts (in a normally quite interesting and non-pejorative manner) already and won’t be offended, and I suspect book readers will think the same. Other people will, I believe, share Adam Ozimek’s view and simply think you’re nuts.

anyone familiar enough with your writing to gauge your self satisfaction will probably be surprised you didn’t lead off the book with it.

cut it since it’s already understood

You’ve branded yourself as an innovative, contrarian thinker. I would guess that bizarre ideas is what a lot of people buy Caplan books for. Packing as many controversial ideas as you can into books you write, whether you believe them or not is probably your best profit-maximizing strategy.

I don’t think you’ve struck the right balance.

Suppose that instead you weakened the strength of your hope by not using words like “dream”, “sublime”, “delighted”, etc. Your positive goals of making a good point and generating useful controversy will be achieved to almost the same degree by merely suggesting you “might” want to do this and that you “have reason to think” it would work out in your case. But you’d materially dial down the crazy/alienate-readers index.

In other words, dial the craziness up or down until the marginal benefit equeals the marginal cost. I think you’re over that line now.

Note that people confuse ‘clearly a good idea’ with ‘clearly will work out well’ (which I’m sure you understand is a higher standard). You sound like you think it will ‘clearly work out’, which would seem unwarranted to almost everyone, and that’s what (IMO) signals craziness.

Tests or hurdles for voters seem like excellent ideas. Why should those who are more informed and more productive have the same single vote as a person of no achievement? I say extra votes for extra accomplishments.

As for cloning, having another son or daughter is fine. But in my opinion having a clone reeks of narcissism.

I’d agree with a lot of others here. You’re an innovative thinker, so it would probably work out OK. That is, OK for everyone but one reader…your future clone son. I would guess that a son reading that as the reason you had him would think, “Wow, my dad is an asshole!”

Then again, no matter how genetically identical he is to you, he’s going to think that a lot in his teen years anyways!

😉

I love this paragraph, but it is much weirder than the one in MotRV. Critics will dismiss the entire book because you’re a “weirdo.” Irrational? Yes. Good publicity? I’m not so sure.

My girlfriend excitedly proclaims, “No, keep it in there!” She is also a little weird, and so am I; I think it would be a shame to see it go.

I forgot on cloning – yes, it is OK. I’m on your side.

After just listening to the most recent Russ Roberts/Mike Munger podcast, this seems to fit into the category fit for gift-giving. You come off as narcissistic if you get your own clone, but it makes a wonderful gift. Maybe you could change it to getting your wife a clone for her birthday. Maybe you could even make it a clone of yourself….Well, that makes it seem even more weird.

[link added–Econlib Ed.]

I say leave it in. It’s surprising, personal, and provocative.

It may alienate a few people, but so what? Better to be interesting.

[N.B. The commenter is a different Bryan, not Bryan Caplan–Econlib Ed.]

This is the best Econ Log entry ever ! Followed by the best econ log comment ever too (Steve Sailer??) !

Leave it in- it’s a great plan.

However, I think we’re all interested to hear what your spouse thinks!

Yes, it is provocative. I wonder if it would not be read as a “the grass is always greener” sentiment, though. Are you prepared to answer the critic who asks: What’s wrong with your biological kids? Don’t you have a sublime bond with them? Aren’t they satisfying? Still, as a true feeling, it probably belongs in the book.

Have you considered the externalities of another human being (particularly one who is genetically identical to yourself /snark)?

This is a fascinating idea, and I have no moral objections. On a practical level though, I really doubt it’s going to work out the way you seem to expect. Frankly, I wouldn’t include it because it seems to betray a lack of wisdom.

I’m not convinced that your clone child will seem particularly different from a natural child. Genetics is not predisposition.

Normal children already suffer from not living up to their parent’s expectations. I fear your clone child would find himself under a more uncomfortable microscope than most.

You see this is a great idea from your adult perspective, but parents don’t rebel from their children, nor do they generally understand why their children rebel from them.

If all your expectations are met and your clone child does in fact share a “sublime bond” with you, don’t you think your wife would find herself in an unpleasant Freudian situation for any of a number of reasons?

Dr. Caplan,

Doesn’t this really reek of endowment effect of your genes?

And what of your wife? Or even your children now? Do the ‘non-you’ genes really make that connection so difficult? Are you really that much of an egoist? Isn’t human connection really much more about relationships and not the attributes of those with whom you have relationships?

To give a little attention to the first paragraph:

The driving analogy is a sloppy one. We can all easily agree on what should be in a driving test (more or less). Any test to qualify as a voter will reflect the ideology of whoever makes the test, and is thus contentious. Even to make it a test on economic literacy and not something else reflects an ideology. Yours. Much less the questions themselves. Even if you, Bryan, got to be drafter of this test, and tried hard as you might to neutral (let’s set aside that you’d think libertarianism IS neutral), it would be open to manipulation by less-benevolent folks as time goes by.

Short answer is you can’t there from here. We’d have to already have a non-democracy, else we’d have to vote on qualification requirements. For the same reasons, you of course wouldn’t want all the uneducated riff-raff voting on the voting requirements, so you’d need to establish qualifications for them. Ad infinitum.

It’s good and you know it is so put it in.

For the time being, the question is really moot. From the national academies report:

“To date, five mammalian species — sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, and mice — have been used extensively in reproductive cloning studies. Data from these experiments clearly illustrate the problems involved and are quite compelling, the report says. Typically, very few cloning attempts are successful. Many clones die in utero — even at late stages or soon after birth — and those that survive frequently exhibit severe birth defects. In addition, female animals carrying cloned fetuses may face serious risks, including death from cloning-related complications. Human reproductive cloning is likely to have similar negative outcomes.

Because many eggs are needed for human reproductive cloning attempts, human experimentation could subject more women to adverse health effects — either from high levels of hormones used to stimulate egg production or because more women overall would be sought to donate eggs, which involves surgery with its own inherent risks, the panel noted.

Some proponents of human reproductive cloning have argued that voluntary, informed consent would give people the option of making their own decisions about participating in research. But when critical information is lacking, as it would be in this case, fully informing patients of potential health effects is difficult or impossible. Moreover, the cloned offspring — who would face the greatest risks of abnormality and death — would not be in a position to offer consent. These circumstances provide additional reasons to exercise caution, the report says.”

I would drop it.

1) I don’t believe it follows naturally from the rest of the book or your main thesis.

2) It makes you seem egotistical and unwise (I don’t think you are).

3) It will turn off readers who may agree with your broader point and make all your ideas suspsect.

Now these points are mainly coming from the assumption as quoted on your website that you actually want to change people’s behavior and get them to have more children. If your goal is to sell more books then I say leave it in.

I still find the whole chapter a distraction from the rest of the book. I think you risk both losing and alienating readers. That said, if you’re going to keep the chapter (and that graff) you should rewrite it with the intention of *not* losing readers. You’ll have dragged a lot of people to this point in the book because the rest of it is entertaining and thought-provoking. It would be shame to have them stop when they’re most of the way through.

^^ Why settle for billions (of clones) when you can have…. MILLIONS

@SydB
Thanks for bringing this up, this is the fundamental problem with human cloning, the consequence of the trial and error/reject process.

If one is Pro-choice then I can see how one would believe it is rational position. Still a lot of ethical issues to consider but the position makes sense.

However, if one is pro-life and believes life starts at conception, human cloning is worse than the Nazi’s and Japanese’s human test in world war two on live human subjects. The number of humans one would have to destroy to get one viable clone that would live even a few days as a normal infant would is atrocious. Add into the high likelihood of shorter death, numerous other health issues, and we do not even know the types of mental handicaps cloning could have on brain function at first or how long it would take to get rid of them. One would have to create and allow to die hundreds of thousands if not millions of clones even pro-choicer would consider human before we increased quality so the death/mutations of a clone was roughly equivalent to test tub babies. I do not find the justification and creating maybe tens of millions of sub-humans to justify finally being able to give someone a good clone of themselves.

So any pro-lifer will always be against human cloning. If one is pro-choice there still is the sticky issue of a poor quality of life for clones for decades possible centuries until enough medical history was compiled and solution were devised and tested to eliminate the quality variances between clone and non-clones.

Therefore, since you are pro-choice , you need to explain in your book when a fetus/embryo becomes a human? Then from that point you would need to justify the estimated human cost of progress. Do that or leave the statement out. It is to simple and generic of a statement with-out explaining the rational of why the cost justifies the means. The line about It being about personal right is only relevant if one believes a Clone is a human child (many do not believe that which I find silly), and is from a practical standpoint on all sides not really any different from having one the natural way (which is what you are missing).

If I were you, I’d leave it in. Expand on it even.

But, to be clear, the reason is that I think the idea, as you describe it, demonstrates your complete failure to grasp the relative influence that development has as opposed to one’s genetic make-up. More compellingly than anything else you could write it trumpets your ignorance of biology and psychology.

So, please, leave it in. It’ll serve as a warning sign to so many people who might otherwise be tempted to believe you have something valuable to contribute.

Just a question: if you did have a child who was your own clone, in addition to the kids you already have, do you think you’d have a problem with favoritism?

Copyrights imply the right to copy. Cloning is the copying of one’s genes.

So,

Bryan Caplan copies his genes through cloning

+

strong property rights on copyrights in the United States

=

Bryan Kaplan owns his clone

->

People are more free now than in 1890, as they have more property rights. QED

When ordered by a narcissist personality one “loves” to look in any mirror. And, believing nurture is next to nothing, nature becomes almost everything. A clone is a way to mirror selfish love for a material socialist, potentially forever.

Leave the cloning paragraph in, but “fix” the logic in it. “I’m confident that he’d be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me” isn’t cogent, for technically speaking, you wouldn’t be the one being raised, your clone would. So this should either be

() (backward looking) … because I would have loved to have been raised by me (but you weren’t; you were raised by your parents)
() (forward looking) … because I would love to raise myself

Of course, there’s still the fact that your clone, despite being generically identical to you, wouldn’t really be “you.” That’s ok, though.

It’s a keeper. I’ve posted an s-f romantic comedy (in adjoining English and Esperanto versions, no less), The Me Clone / La Mi-Klono http://www.genekeyes.com/MC-MK/MC-MK-U-Contents.html
which also dwells on philosophic and practical implications.

a friend linked this post to start a discussion of cloning… which has been interesting!

on the cloning snippet: i think you have a point about identical twins, and about the possibility of using cloning as a reproductive technology. however, i think you should leave out the part about how great you think raising a clone of yourself would be 🙂 i wouldn’t say most children appreciate the gift of genetic material from their parents, and i don’t see why a clone child would be any different.