Academic economists have useful ideas about how to make the world better off. The papers they write are important but aren’t going to make the best seller list. Nor are they targeted at persuading enough people to generate the political popularity necessary for legislative change. This is where the economist Bryan Caplan steps in. His latest book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, provides a more accessible take on the subject and puts it into a graphic novel. I discuss this work with him on the Overton Window podcast.

“Housing is one of the most regulated industries in the United States,” Caplan says. “We treat developers like criminals any time they want to build something.”

He argues that we would all be better off with lower housing costs. “People spend roughly 20% of their income on housing,” Caplan says. “If you double that, you’re drastically reducing living standards. It leads to a lot more inequality. A shockingly large share of the rise in inequality that usually is attributed to markets and capitalism just comes down to housing regulation.”

Lower housing costs increase social mobility, decrease crime, improve U.S. population trends, and even lower drug abuse.

Yet housing policy prevents development. “The regulations exist because people think the world would be a lot worse without them,” Caplan says. “Most of what I’m trying to do in the book is to say that this is actually incorrect. It would be better if we let builders build what they wanted.”

He also decided that matching images with words would better convey his points.

“The comic book framework and the research are almost tailor-made for each other,” Caplan says. “So much of what the research is doing is pointing out how the world can be really different. One of the great things you can do in a comic book format is draw this alternate reality.”

He pulls from many common references to make his points. “We’ve got lots of different kinds of mythology. We’ve got fairy tales. We have movies. And all this pop culture is out there. It’s very easy for most people to latch onto mentally,” Caplan says.

“The research is intrinsically fascinating. But it is not actually fascinating to read for almost anybody.”

This is his favorite panel in the book:

“When the bear says, ‘How am I losing to this guy?’ Yeah, that’s me,” Caplan says. The major benefits of lower housing costs can be drowned out by concerns that ought to matter less.

The panel also identifies barriers to better housing policy. “It’s a small number of activists who exert an enormous amount of influence and they are not people that represent the community in any broader sense,” Caplan says.

The diversity of structures in American cities shows that the Overton Window is wide open on housing regulations. “You’ll see that there are some cities that build no skyscrapers and others that have some. So all that is within the Overton Window,” Caplan says.

States have made some policy changes. California and Oregon have new rules that stop local governments from mandating only single family homes. Governments have adopted rules that reduce minimum lot sizes when platting out areas for development. Some governments have eased up on minimum parking requirements.

Whether governments continue liberalizing housing restrictions is a matter of persuasion. “I’m just one person. I don’t imagine that I am capable of fundamentally changing policy,” Caplan says. “I can only be someone who assists. But I will say that I think this book has a much better chance of changing minds than almost any academic book on the topic.”

Check out the conversation at the Overton Window podcast.

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