The Clone Wars: Bryan Caplan

Tyler Cowen started a minor internet firestorm when he posted this excerpt from a forthcoming (potential?) book by Caplan.

Bryan Caplan's cloning confession

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet. Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son. Seriously. I want to experience the sublime bond I'm sure we'd share. I'm confident that he'd be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me. I'm not pushing others to clone themselves. I'm not asking anyone else to pay for my dream. I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone. Is that too much to ask?

This confession didn't exactly arouse a chorus of adulation. "Icky" and "creepy" were common reactions. Others noted soberly that his expectation of "a sublime" bond with a person he imagined would be himself were wildly unrealistic. Clone or not, his son would be a different person, at least forty years younger, and very likely to learn to despise being under the control of someone who (inevitably) would look, sound, and act like his worst fears for his own fate.

Caplan, of course, has a book to promote, and what better way than to outrage the blogospheric classes. Cowen, DeLong, and Sullivan have all stirred up their own minions.

I'm not a fan, but for those who want a first hand look at his thinking, you could look here at what he calls his intellectual autobiography. It's the usual sad story: boy meets Ayn Rand, mostly downhill from there.

UPDATE: Jim Henley, at Brad DeLong's site, defines exactly why Caplan's statement is so creepy:

The creepy is Caplan’s confidence that he and his son will share a uniquely “sublime” bond. Yes, the undeniable relative deprecation of the bond he shares with his existing children is part of that. But so is the pressure his avidity puts on someone who would be, if Caplan got his wish, a real person in his own right – and a vulnerable, immature one.


My guess is that the clone would be forced to rebel just to get some intellectual oxygen.

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