In this informal interview, author Bryan Kaplan talks with longtime mentor Tyler Cowen about the themes of his new book Build, Baby, Build. The conversation centers on housing deregulation, with Cowen generally favoring liberal building rules (YIMBY) but acknowledging NIMBY concerns in historic districts such as central Paris and certain Victorian neighborhoods in San Francisco. They debate the trade‑offs between preserving iconic architecture (e.g., the Eiffel Tower, Louvre pyramid, Pompidou Center) and allowing new, denser development. The dialogue moves to European examples—Bruges, Dinkelsbühl, Florence—where Cowen supports restrictions to protect tourism‑driven heritage, while Kaplan argues that market demand can sustain historic housing. The discussion then shifts to the massive amount of U.S. federal land in the West, with Cowen suggesting that over 90 % could be privatized except for iconic national parks, and they explore the idea that such privatization could enable domestic charter cities. Cowen is skeptical about the feasibility and governance of charter‑city experiments, likening potential outcomes to affluent U.S. counties like Loudoun, Virginia. Throughout, the tone is conversational, peppered with humor and occasional banter, and both participants present nuanced, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on progress, preservation, and the role of government in shaping urban development.
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Good morning. I am Brian Kaplan, author of the new Build Baby Build, and I'm here with my mentor of 30+ years, the great Tyler Cowen. We've been arguing about these issues for quite a while, and I just thought I'd bring him here to talk about what's going on inside of his head. All right, so Tyler, are you on board with housing deregulation or not? What's going on?
First, let me say I loved your book. It's the best book on housing deregulation, and it's innovative as a medium to use graphic novels as a way of presenting economic ideas. You are the GOAT of all time. Now we'll get to the topic.
All right. Well, I'll always appreciate the compliments, but I sense some pushback coming. So in On Marginal Revolution, I've noticed sometimes you seem to be very sympathetic to housing deregulation. Alex, We can always count on him. You, on the other hand, we've got some pieces where he's— where you're sympathetic, but you've also got one saying, let San Francisco be San Francisco, right?
I love this kind of indictment. It thrills me. It excites me. So first of all, on what you might call liberty grounds, in the overwhelming majority of cases, I favor housing deregulation. But that said, there are neighborhoods where I am fully NIMBY. So Central Paris would be a simple example. I don't think there should be freedom to build in the historic parts of central Paris.
Should they have been able to put up the Eiffel Tower despite local opposition at the time?
Yes.
It was really unpopular. What do they know?
They can add some things. So the IM Pei pyramid at the Louvre, that's fantastic. I'm glad they added it.
That's the one thing they should demolish. That and the Pompidou Center. What a piece of garbage.
I don't think they should be allowed to just knock down everything in central Paris and put in new stuff. Now, You mentioned San Francisco. I think to have the Victorian homes protected there, not as strong a case as central Paris, but I have sympathies. But when it comes to Oakland, I want full-scale Dubai, right? Build baby, build, as is the title of your book. Crush Oakland, reconstitute it, and turn it into one of the world's densest, greatest urban units, because that is what I think would happen.
I mean, but like, do you really need all those Victorians? Like, how about you just save 5 or 10% of them, which is what the free market would probably do anyway. And then and let the other stuff get built.
There's something to be said for preserving mankind's very greatest of achievements. Now, if you think the Victorian units are not up to the standards of Paris, we can debate that. I think there's easier and tougher cases. I think also the country matters. So a country like Ireland, it seems obvious to me that not enough building is by far their biggest problem. If you take Cambridge, England, not even that beautiful an area, It seems to me that's by far their biggest problem. But the United States, when you have NIMBYs, there's a lot of other areas where you can go and build. And I don't think it's that huge a cost for the nation as a whole. So I'm happy we have Austin, Miami, other like second, third tier centers for tech activity. People move to them. It gives us some geographic diversity and also I think some innovation. So I'm less upset about NIMBY in the US. All right.
You're pretty much the founder of Progress Studies, which, by the way, I just cannot believe how successful this meme has been. I just meet random people like, I'm doing Progress Studies. Like, that's my friend. You're just using his words and wrapping your life around it. But here's the thing. We know from the past that a lot of the great things that we have were built on the demolition of things that were previously considered great. So right here in Biblibbibuild, I've got a time machine where I go back and I show the original Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. It was a fantastic, gorgeous building. They just knocked it right down to build the Empire State Building. It seems like you're getting in the way of progress. You don't want to let people build the history of the future. Who's to say that the, well, like, so-called great stuff we got wouldn't be better if we're knocked down and we build something even better?
We have plenty of data on architectural styles of the current time and what it's economic to build. And if you say, "Tore down those Victorian homes in central San Francisco," I'm pretty sure you would not get something better. You'd get something much worse. You would not get the Empire State Building. You would not get wonderful Art Deco. You'd get workable buildings that are pretty mediocre. And in fact, there are lots of American and also British cities where there was plenty of yimby in the '60s and '70s, like say Buffalo. And what you got was even much worse than today. You got a load of crap. And huge parking lots and ugly bank buildings. And they should have kept central Buffalo. It was a beautiful city. You can see from photos.
Yeah, that was going to have a huge problem just from depopulation anyway, right?
Sure. Same with Detroit. But there are cases where we should be more and less enthusiastic about YIMBY versus NIMBY. And certainly Europe, where there's so much that's historically important. For Bruges, Belgium, I absolutely favor restrictions on building over the older medieval structures. Absolutely. It's a public good. It draws in tourism. Tourism is by far the biggest part of that city's GDP. I'll ask you, when it comes to Bruges or Florence or Rome, are you an imbie? I hope so. Yes or no?
Absolutely not. Look, like, here's what I'll say is the stuff that is actually good, the market will support it. If you've got a tourism business, you go and you sell tickets. If you've got— if you've got just people that want to go and live in lovely historic buildings, I will admit I am kind of puzzled by these people because usually these places, like, this is really mean, it doesn't even look that good. But yes, in those places I can see people paying vast sums in order live in a historic place. I mean, also worth putting—
you can't charge for entering the buildings. It's not like the Pantheon where maybe you could charge people. What's striking about Bruges is walking through the streets. Now, if you had a fully private city, all the streets privately owned, maybe that gets internalized, but that's not going to happen. And in the meantime, we need to make a decision. Let Bruges be wrecked or keep Bruges as it is? Which side are you on?
Yeah, I deny it's going to be wrecked. I think what's going to happen is it will be improved. And here's the other thing is that One of the better ways of maintaining historic stuff on the outside is just to let people do what they want on the inside. And that too is really hard. You know, a lot of that has worked for Bruges, right?
A lot of European cities with a big tourism component have done that. You go to like Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria, you know, they let people put shops in those buildings. That's clearly for the better for the reasons you mentioned.
All right, I got a last radical idea for you. So one thing that I'm embarrassed about is that I accidentally forgot to go and talk about privatization of the enormous amount of federal and state land that we have in the United States. I have done it, just did a guest blog post for Reason where I went over the maps. I knew about the stuff. I just somehow it slipped my mind when I was writing the book. Anyway, I think this is the kind of thing that we're likely to have a bit of a disagreement on, but I'm curious. All right. So how much of the federal land, especially in the West, where the federal government owns a crazy amount of land, should be privatized?
Over 90%. But that said, I would not privatize the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon or Zion. Yellowstone Park. You could make a longer list. I'm not sure what percentage it would add up to, but there are some places that we should keep as is.
But that's the stuff that, as Milton Friedman pointed out, it's easiest to actually go and privatize those things and charge admission.
The notion that you would have advertising and billboards on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for aesthetic reasons, I think our society should take a stand and say, here's something that is so special, we're going to treat it as a public good. That it will inspire future generations, instill in people an awe of nature. And even if the utilitarian calculus goes against that, even if, even if I'm going to say I want to keep it that way. All right.
Now, one last thing. Oh, yeah. Like, it seems to me that privatization of federal land is the best chance to have domestic charter cities. What do you think about that?
I haven't thought about it. It sounds plausible, but there are still so many obstacles. It could be the best chance and still quite a low chance.
But I mean, you can easily imagine Elon buying up 100 square miles of federal Overland in Nevada and turning it into the next Las Vegas, Musk style.
Someone has to move there. And once they move there, they vote. And I'm not sure why those voters should be all that different from voters elsewhere. There's a paper you just tweeted that basically brings together the two great Bryan Kaplan books. People vote not very intelligently often. And then on housing deregulation, they have views that are pretty much wrong. Yeah. Why would you expect this, like, charter city in Nevada to be better than, say, Reno, which is a good city, right?
So I've actually got an answer for that. Here's the thing. The best chance to do awesome stuff is when people are still moving in and they're confused and disorganized and there hasn't been time for your local activists to go and start messing things up. So I say that this gives you 10, 20-year window to do awesome stuff before things do probably start reverting to the mean. Although if you are clever, you can go and structure your local government to make it harder for these people ruin things. But yeah, basically you've got this window of awesomeness when you can just drive things through Jeff Sachs shock therapy style, uh, except it's shock therapy when there aren't even any people to notice that there's— that you're changing anything because there wasn't anything before. That's my story.
But there's still some governance. There's a state government. You're part of what is currently a county with county governance. I'm all for trying these experiments, but my best guess is you end up with something like Loudoun County at the end of it, if you're lucky. I love Loudoun County. You live near Loudoun County. You go see movies.
I just saw one last night.
Which one was it?
Yeah, it was Last Stop in Yuma County. By the way, Best Picture 2024. It's awesome.
Say the name of it again.
Last Stop in Yuma County.
Oh yes, yes, yes. And this is the new one or the old one?
No, it's the— you know, this, this is, this is not Last Train to Yuma.
This is—
oh yeah, totally new, totally new plot. It's incredible. 98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's getting a very brief theatrical release. Uh, today and tomorrow are your last days to see it, so you better get over there.
This is tragic. Yes, I can't make it tonight.
Oh, well, but so tomorrow it's a matinee. You could wake up early and go see a movie, which is the way we professors think, by the way. It's a scam, and I will end it there. Thank you very much, Tyler, for being here. This is my buddy. He's been looking after me for 30 years. I love him. All right, bye-bye.
