Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better

by Bryan Caplan, Brian Mandeville (editor), Aditya Ohri (editor)

Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times Bestselling author, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022. His latest book combines the very best of his EconLog writings on finding happiness, success, meaning, connection, and convenience in a world that too often lacks all five.

In the title essay, Caplan challenges the all-forgiving idea that people who make poor choices "can't do otherwise." If you don't accept this excuse from anti-vaxxers, why would you accept it from alcoholics or overeaters? Humoring the pseudo-helpless may be kind, but reinforces poor behavior and often leads to the scapegoating of innocent bystanders. Yourself included.

Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine is packed with helpful life hacks. How to stop packing for trips. How to turn arguments into bargains. The high cost of being single. A long-time homeschooler, Caplan tells readers to turn truancy into a peak experience -- and master math along the way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Personal Development, Essays, Self Help

172 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 29, 2024

About the author

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He received his B.S. in economics from University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. His professional work has been devoted to the philosophies of libertarianism and free-market capitalism and anarchism. (He is the author of the Anarchist Theory FAQ.) He has published in American Economic Review, Public Choice, and the Journal of Law and Economics, among others. He is a blogger at the EconLog blog along with Arnold Kling, and occasionally has been a guest blogger at Marginal Revolution with two of his colleagues at George Mason, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. He is an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

Currently, his primary research interest is public economics. He has criticized the assumptions of rational voters that form the basis of public choice theory, but generally agrees with their conclusions based on his own model of "rational irrationality." Caplan has long disputed the efficacy of popular voter models, in a series of exchanges with Donald Wittman published by the Econ Journal Watch. Caplan outlined several major objections to popular political science and the economics sub-discipline public choice. Caplan later expanded upon this theme in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter (Princeton University Press 2007), in which he responded to the arguments put forward by Wittman in his The Myth of Democratic Failure.

He maintains a website that includes a "Museum of Communism" section, that "provides historical, economic, and philosophical analysis of the political movement known as Communism", to draw attention to human rights violations of which, despite often exceeding those of Nazi Germany, there is little public knowledge. Caplan has also written an online graphic novel called Amore Infernale.

Reviews

[Arne · Rating 3 out of 5]

As advertised but not as packed with insight as hoped for.
A bit too eccentric perhaps.

[Peter Zhang · Rating 3 out of 5]

incel economist misses the mark most of the time but otherwise has good glimmers of insight

[Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delivers what you I'd expect from a self-help book written by an economist - a bunch of interesting ideas proposed by someone who may have never met another human being.

[Eugene Shcherbinin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mediocre collection of essays that gives good perspective on the way of thinking and background of many economists. Good lesson from the book: notice when something in your life dissatisfies you, and experiment on different solution. Mediocre lessons: most of the book is overly rationalistic, neglects deeper effects of many common sense approaches and doesn't understand why people behave the way they are, lacking worldly wisdom and experience. He admits and praises his self enforced bubble, but it doesn't excuse him from the fact he is in a bubble and misses many common sense things. Good lesson: you can see how the way he talks about preferences diverges from the way people talk about preferences ("depressed people prefer to be depressed") - he may be semantically correct in saying that often people talk about meta preferences, but he better come up with some better term than convincing people that economists definition of preferences is what preferences are - and I think it extrapolates more broadly to the econ community.
I spent only 90 minutes reading this, and for that, it was quite alright. If you were to spend more, I would discourage you
Reading this book was a good excuse to unfollow him on substack

[Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally good. Really is just a collection of essays. Id say the essays were:
15% crazy or seemingly completely misunderstands something
20% unpersuasive, not very well thought out
40% reasonable and somewhat informative but not particularly novel or interesting
15% The best presentation of a good or at least interesting idea I've seen.
10% Interesting and thought provoking novel ideas, or at least novel conceptualizations of new ideas to me.

So most of it is not amazing, but this density of good stuff is certainly good enough to warrant recommending.

The biggest takeaways for me:
- Kaplan is not a fan of anger as an emotion, I already also wasn't but have updated to be even more proactively on guard against it now
- I'm sold on bubble construction

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd read the best essays (the Bubble essays, My Life of Appeasement, How I Raised my Social Intelligence), and the others were a mixed bag. There were gems: the Rand essays outline the dysfunction of her social circles, the betting essays seem broadly corect, and the titular, self-help essays are strong. But I didn't feel I was getting insight on each page, and when Bryan disagrees with Tyler Cowen, I tended to agree with Tyler.

Also, just weirdly, why have a fourth section on Dale Carnegie, and not include your Carnegie reviews?!

[Daniel Melgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required Reading if You want to Live Better

I only this year stumbled upon Bryan Caplan’s essays and books, but he has skyrocketed to the top 10 of my-must-read list of authors for my children and anyone I care about. I remember when I discovered Thomas Sowell and that’s how important Bryan’s writing is to me. In a word: his ideas are essential!

[Heiki · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book was written with a good premise, it failed to deliver on its promise. It felt much more like a random collection of interesting thoughts, than a cohesive book on life wisdom. Occasional nuggets, eg on parenting were interesting and worth reading, but all-in-all the book came off more like an economists to-do list.

[Art Carden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read More Caplan!

I’ve been learning from Brian Kaplan for 2 1/2 decades. This collection of some of his best advice may not mean you get to live your best life now, but you’ll definitely live a better life now.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've been following Bryan's writing for a while you've already read or are familiar with the ideas in almost all of these essays, but it's a nice summary of his highest value blog posts. It would be nice if other prolific bloggers assembled similar compilations of their more timeless essays.

[Nathan Koerschner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthwhile.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caplan remains bad at book titles and covers, but good at most everything else

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got more out of the “You will not stampede me” collection, didn’t feel like there was much here for me that was particularly interesting. Still, fun writer, finished it.

[Debjit Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Radical ideas that I enjoyed.