Cato Event Podcast

Soaring tuition and student debt, the rise of high-tech alternatives, and a persistently sluggish economy have provoked a startling question: "Is college worth it?" It's a question that raises many others: Must I go to college to learn skills I'll need for my career? Is just getting a degree — any degree — the key to my future prosperity? Should higher education be about marketable skills, or is it about personal fulfillment and expanding human knowledge? These questions disconcert students, parents, and taxpayers alike. We hope you'll join us to hear intriguing answers to such difficult questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The advent of wearable tech creates huge new opportunities for liberty advocates to engage in innovative strategies for changing policy. At the same time, the inherently invasive nature of the technology invites a number of serious privacy and legal concerns. Google Glass has particularly stirred up controversy, with several high profile confrontations between users and skeptics making national headlines. How can this exciting technology best be used to advance liberty, without harming individual rights to privacy?Join three freedom fighters doing hands-on work with Google Glass for a live-streamed lunchtime presentation, followed by a private Q&A session.Come prepared to share your own experiences and join in the discussion with other digital strategy and new and social media professionals. You can also follow along the conversation on Twitter using #NewMediaLunch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

American higher education is being swept by two potentially irresistible waves of change. The first is intense scrutiny of academia’s costs and benefits, driven by soaring prices, student debt, and the ensuing public anger. The second is the emergence of postsecondary models that threaten to replace traditional colleges and universities on a major scale. In this special forum, we’ll look at the threats to accreditors — and through them, schools — stemming from federal reactions to public unhappiness, and at ways to foster quality in the many postsecondary options coming our way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

American higher education is being swept by two potentially irresistible waves of change. The first is intense scrutiny of academia’s costs and benefits, driven by soaring prices, student debt, and the ensuing public anger. The second is the emergence of postsecondary models that threaten to replace traditional colleges and universities on a major scale. In this special forum, we’ll look at the threats to accreditors — and through them, schools — stemming from federal reactions to public unhappiness, and at ways to foster quality in the many postsecondary options coming our way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the potential market risks associated with high frequency trading and algorithmic trading in general. Proponents of high frequency trading suggest the practice is a contemporary tool that facilitates informational market efficiency and is capable of being regulated by the market and market participants. Opponents have argued that these practices create risk and require aggressive regulation. This discussion takes place against a backdrop of heightened regulatory scrutiny given the recent push by the Securities and Exchange Commission to monitor high-frequency trading and related practices, such as the creation of dark pools, more closely. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the doctor’s office to the workplace, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. In this book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck lays out a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry. Economist David Henderson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and coeditor of EconLog, lauds the book as full of “gems” and “juicy” insights: “Schuck does a beautiful job of laying out all the problems with government intervention.” But can the state get better results by pursuing more thoughtfully conceived policies designed to compensate for its structural flaws? Schuck believes it can. Many libertarians will disagree — and that debate will enliven our discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Purchase bookOne of the most contentious ethical issues surrounding transplantation today is the question of organ selling. Given the shortage of donated organs, should people be able to sell their organs either directly or indirectly? Today, organ selling is illegal in nearly all industrialized countries. One of the few that does allow it is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until recently, that country’s experience has gone largely unreported. But Sigrid Fry-Revere, a leading medical ethicist, traveled to Iran and observed how the market in organs functions in practice. Now in her new book, The Kidney Sellers, she describes her experience. Please join the Cato Institute for a discussion of the book and how it can inform the ethical issue of organ selling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The immigration reform debate is increasingly polarized and has policymakers looking for new and innovative reform options. State- or regionally managed guest-worker visa programs, in addition to federal visas, should be considered as part of any immigration reform. Under such a system, individual states could manage and experiment with different guest-worker visa systems designed to suit their particular economic circumstances. Canada and Australia have regional visa programs that have worked well, aided economic growth, and slowed population decline in some areas. Their approaches could be adapted to the United States. This panel will address the potential economic, political, and legal issues that come with regionally managed visas. Please join us for an in-depth discussion of the costs and benefits of state and locally managed guest-worker visas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Purchase bookNo country is as misunderstood as North Korea, and no modern tyrant has remained more mysterious than the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. In his new work, DEAR READER: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, Michael Malice pulls back the curtain to expose the life story of the "Incarnation of Love and Morality." Taken directly from books spirited out of Pyongyang, DEAR READER is a carefully reconstructed first-person account of the man behind the mythology, as well as a stranger-than-fiction history of this unique country. Please join us Friday, March 21, at 4:00 p.m., as Malice separates the fact from fiction and explains what life is really like in the least-free nation on earth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On March 19, 2011, the United States and nineteen allied states launched an air assault against the Libyan military. President Obama and other leaders argued that military action would protect Libyan civilians, aid the progress of democracy there and across the region, and buttress the credibility of the U.N. Security Council, which had passed a resolution demanding a cease fire. By October, local rebel militias had killed Libya’s long-time ruler, Muammar el-Qaddafi, and overthrown his government. Three years later, it is time to ask whether the intervention worked. Did it protect Libyans or, by prolonging the civil war and creating political chaos, heighten their suffering? Is Libya becoming a stable democracy, a failed state, or something else? Did the intervention help other revolutions in the region, heighten repression of them, or was it simply irrelevant? Should the United States help overthrow other Middle Eastern dictators? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.