Episode · Dwarkesh Podcast · 2023-01-24
Dwarkesh Patel & Garett Jones: books mentioned on Dwarkesh Podcast
Garett Jones — Immigration, national IQ, & less democracy
Garett Jones is an economist at George Mason University and the author of The Cultural Transplant, Hive Mind, and 10% Less Democracy. This episode was fun and interesting throughout!
Dwarkesh Patel discussed Hive Mind by Garett Jones, The Culture Transplant by Garett Jones, Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and others, 10% Less Democracy by Garett Jones, and The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and others. Garett Jones recommended The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Hive Mind
Hive Mind by Garett Jones is a provocative nonfiction book that explores how national intelligence averages shape the economic, political, and social success of nations.
Discussed“I wanna linger on Hive Mind a little bit before we talk about The Cultural Transplant. If you had to guess, do the benefits of National IQ come from having a right tail of elites that is smarter?”
Where to get it
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The Culture Transplant
Discussed“I'm sure you saw the book that was released in 2020 titled Wretched Refuse? where they showed a slight positive relationship between immigration and free-market laws.”
Where to get it
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Open Borders
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith is a graphic novel that makes an economic and moral case for the global freedom of movement.
Discussed“I don't remember the exact figures, but didn't Bryan address this in his Open Borders book as well, that even if the national IQ lowers on average, if you're still raising the global IQ, that still nets out positive, or am I remembering that wrong?”
Where to get it
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10% Less Democracy
Discussed“I thought this was also one of your really interesting books. Even controlling for how much democratic oversight there is of institutions in the government there seems to be a wide discrepancy of how well they work.”
Where to get it
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The Myth of the Rational Voter
The Myth of the Rational Voter is an influential critique of democratic political participation and voter behavior by Bryan Caplan.
Recommended“Yeah, that's a great point from Bryan Kaplan's excellent book on Myth of the Rational Voter. I think his stories are right, which is that politicians facing reelection have this tradeoff between giving voters what the voters say they want and giving the voters the economic growth that will help the politicians get reelected.”
Where to get it
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind is an investigative book detailing the rise and corporate collapse of Enron.
Discussed“I'm really curious to ask you this, because in Hive Mind you're talking about the fact that higher IQ people on average are more cooperative in prisoner's dilemma type situations and I just interviewed Bethany McClean on the podcast. She wrote the Smartest Guys in the Room which is about Enron.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (6) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“He's most recently the author of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left and also the author of 10% Less Democracy and Hive Mind. We'll get into all three of those books.”
“He's most recently the author of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left and also the author of 10% Less Democracy and Hive Mind. We'll get into all three of those books.”
“He's most recently the author of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left and also the author of 10% Less Democracy and Hive Mind. We'll get into all three of those books.”
“Sports teams that are hiring don't just say, “We wanna hire people who are better than what we got.” They say, “let's get the best people we can get.” Why not get the best? That was Jimmy Carter's biography, Why Not the Best?”
“I try not to Math this up for a popular book, but it means we face a trade off between being a small country with super awesome positive externalities for all the workers by just selecting the best people.”
“That's why my book 10% Less Democracy is really targeted at the rich, rich democracies. Once we get too far below the rich democracies, I figure once you put elites in charge, they really are just gonna be old-fashioned Gordon Tullock rent seekers and steer everything toward themselves and not give a darn about the masses at all.”