Cato Event Podcast

Full event: 37th Annual Monetary ConferenceShadowing the Fed’s strategic review, Cato’s 37th Annual Monetary Conference explores a broad array of recommendations for improving the monetary framework — and goes beyond the narrow scope of the Fed’s agenda to share a vision for a monetary system best suited for a free society. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full event: 37th Annual Monetary ConferenceShadowing the Fed’s strategic review, Cato’s 37th Annual Monetary Conference explores a broad array of recommendations for improving the monetary framework — and goes beyond the narrow scope of the Fed’s agenda to share a vision for a monetary system best suited for a free society. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full event: 37th Annual Monetary ConferenceShadowing the Fed’s strategic review, Cato’s 37th Annual Monetary Conference explores a broad array of recommendations for improving the monetary framework — and goes beyond the narrow scope of the Fed’s agenda to share a vision for a monetary system best suited for a free society. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In their new graphic nonfiction book Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, authors Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith turn the heated public debate over immigration on its head by proposing a radical and controversial solution: open borders. Caplan argues that opening all borders would practically eliminate absolute poverty worldwide and usher in a booming worldwide economy―greatly benefiting all of humanity, including Americans. With a clear and conversational tone, exhaustive research, and vibrant illustrations by Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame, Open Borders makes the case for unrestricted immigration in a new format sure to spark lively debate. Caplan and Weinersmith will be joined by Tim Kane, the JP Conte Fellow in Immigration Studies at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who is a supporter of liberal immigration laws but a critic of open borders. Please join us for a timely and lively discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take for liberty to emerge and to flourish? Daron Acemoglu will explain how, from antiquity to the modern age, the strong have tended to dominate the weak because states are too strong and despotic or because violence and lawlessness arise in their absence. Achieving liberty requires a constant struggle between the state and society that strikes a balance between the elite and citizens, and between institutions and norms. Acemoglu will draw from history to discuss how and under what conditions societies have gained freedoms, maintained them, or lost them. John Nye will critique Acemoglu’s views on the emergence and continuance of liberty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Competitive grant funds, including BUILD (formerly known as TIGER) and New Starts (also known as transit capital grants), are supposed to ensure that federal dollars are spent where they are most needed. In fact, most of them are wasted as state and local governments propose expensive and obsolete projects in order to get the most "free" federal dollars. Since these programs are up for renewal in 2020, Feigenbaum and O’Toole will show how Congress can make them work more effectively. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Zubrin tells the amazing true story of how hard-driving entrepreneurial ventures such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have accomplished what was previously thought of only as a capability of major-power governments: space exploration. He contends that private-sector competition will bring down the cost of space launches and in-space technology and shows how those trends are already underway. Zubrin’s book lays out a compelling vision for the future of humanity in space. As space exploration increasingly becomes the domain of private companies and private citizens, humanity may be on the verge of a revolution in spaceflight that could open up a future of limitless possibility. Please join us to hear Zubrin’s presentation and comments by Berin Szóka. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a candidate for the presidency, Donald Trump declared the prevailing American foreign policy consensus “a complete and total disaster.” He vowed to “shake the rust off of American foreign policy” and promised that his administration would be guided by putting American security and American interests above all other considerations.In Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover), John Glaser, Christopher Preble, and Trevor Thrall argue that, instead of breaking from his party and the bipartisan consensus that has guided foreign policy for decades, Trump’s administration shows remarkable continuity with the more misguided policies of the last three decades. Simultaneously, the administration has undermined and stifled our two most valuable foreign policy tools: trade and diplomacy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donald Trump’s presidency has triggered a growing debate on both sides of the Atlantic about the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and U.S. policy regarding the alliance. In NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur, Ted Galen Carpenter outlines how NATO in its current form has outlived its purpose, and burden sharing is only part of the problem. Continuing to expand NATO eastward, encroaching on Russia, will only endanger the alliance. Join us as the author offers his insights on the problems with the trans-Atlantic alliance and how to approach it going forward. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, “left” and “right” have been used routinely to describe conflicting political ideologies, notwithstanding their notorious ambiguity and—a fact too often forgotten—a shared utopian root. The dream of a perfect world has inspired each generation; that hope is universal. The vision of a demigod-superman who destroys all evil, thereby inaugurating a utopia of perfection and bliss, is at least as old as the book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. But behind that apocalyptic vision lies a fatal conceit, to borrow a phrase from Hayek, which the Greeks called hubris. It reemerged in some sects of early Christianity and again in medieval millenarianism, Jacobinism, Marxism, Fascism, antisemitism, modern-day Salafi Islamism, and even “liberal” collectivism. In an age of rampant skepticism, religious and quasi-religious ideologies bent on the vilification and destruction of entire communities confront and undermine a confused, guilt-ridden, materialistic, often nihilistic Western society. In this book, political philosopher Juliana Geran Pilon argues that a strong defense of freedom and pluralism, which form the basis of constitutional democracy, is necessary for survival. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.