Bryan Caplan: belief

Transcript context

…Now, I know, in general, you're not a fan of revolution, but if you had to choose: What is the best revolution, the most justified, or the one that had the best effects? So this is one where there's the cheesy thing of picking something that I don't really consider revolution and then saying other people do. So the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, you could call it a revolution. I don't think it really was because it was just way too peaceful to count. If you'll count that, then that is very likely the best example of a revolution. But again, what you really want is a bloodbath. In terms of wars, the Korean Wars had the best record; it basically saved two-thirds of a country and turned out great. We sort of have a reasonable counterfactual for how awful it would have been in North Korea. But again, North Korean propaganda might claim it was a revolution, but that’s a civil war, not a revolution in terms of what would be the best example. Of course, a lot of people want to do the American Revolution, but I'm not a fan of that. You could argue that Britain abolished the slave trade earlier, but one interesting argument I've heard recently, not about this particular, but generally, is that the argument that the end of slavery was a lot more contingent; there really wasn't a strong reason for thinking that slavery had to end then. As you told me, it was pretty profitable at the time. So if you think it was just the combination of a bunch of random things at the time, one of which was the American Revolution, which led to the end of slavery, then that's not a strong argument. My view is that it was this British-based anti-slavery movement that was really key, which then spread to the colonies. It probably would have spread stronger and furthermore. The British have a much better record of getting rid of slavery peacefully. It would have cost so much more to do it in the US because there were so many slaves. So it's complicated. I'm still trying to come back to the question about the best revolutions. The other things you have are more coups than revolutions. The coup against the mother Muslim Brotherhood was not great, but still, it’s better than letting those fanatics take over. So let's see… There's the glorious revolution! My understanding is that it really was a real revolution and that people at the time tried to portray it as totally peaceful, but it actually really was not. The first Russian revolution against the Tsar in February, the one that replaced the Tsar with the first democratic government of Russia probably have worked out okay, if it hadn't been for Lenin. It didn't work out, but it had potential. How contingent do you think history is overall? Let's say that Lenin wasn't shipped back to Russia in World War One. Does the communist takeover not happen? Or was that kind of baked into the cake?…

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