Cato Event Podcast

Does China comply with its obligations at the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Is the WTO system effective at dealing with China? Doubt about China's behavior and the effectiveness of the WTO has been growing in both the popular press as well as among some U.S. trade experts and officials. One way to evaluate these questions is to consider China's reactions to WTO complaints brought against it. Through a review of these complaints, including China's response and its compliance record when there is a ruling, Zhou provides the most comprehensive analysis on this issue to date. His book's conclusion may surprise some people: China's implementation of WTO rulings has not been perfect, but it has been as good as that of other trading nations. In addition, we will discuss China's compliance with its WTO obligations more generally.This forum tries to bring some objectivity to the analysis, and to help guide the United States and other countries in the ongoing debate about China's participation in the world trading sy

In The Need for Humility in Policymaking: Lessons from Regulatory Policy, economists Stefanie Haeffele and Anne Hobson argue that thoughtful policy analysis and policymaking require an acknowledgment of the challenges that politicians and regulators face when intervening in a complex and changing society. The book seeks to cultivate an appreciation for the complexity of human decision making and the incentives that drive human behavior. In the edited volume, 12 scholars provide case studies examining the effects of regulations in diverse policy areas, including financial markets, computer and internet governance, and healthcare innovation and delivery. Each chapter explores regulatory hubris and subsequent unintended consequences of policy interventions. Please join the book’s editors for a conversation on the importance of humility in designing regulations and launching new policy initiatives. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Repugnant Laws provides a political history of how the Supreme Court has exercised the power of judicial review over federal legislation from the adoption of the Constitution to the present. The book draws on a first-of-its-kind comprehensive inventory of every case in which the court has substantively reviewed the constitutionality of a provision of federal law and either upheld the application of that statute or refused to apply it due to constitutional limits on congressional authority. The book makes use of the publicly available Judicial Review of Congress Database to reexamine how aggressively the court has enforced limits on congressional power over time. It also reevaluates the political relationship between the court and the elected branches of the federal government and revises our understanding of the history of American constitutional law. As battles over the future of the Supreme Court heat up, join us for a discussion of the promise and limits of judicial power and the ways in which the court re

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the transition experience of ex-socialist countries toward the market has been varied, with cases of successful economic and political reforms and cases of reform failure. Leszek Balcerowicz will explain how free-market economies based on the rule of law perform incomparably better than centrally planned economies, but, as he will also point out, that they can be undermined by constant pressure from illiberal interest groups, as is the case in many overregulated or fiscally fragile Western countries. Drawing from these experiences, he will discuss how various institutional regimes produce good and bad transitions, including more-recent ones toward authoritarianism. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informat

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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 soci

Public discussions about vaping nicotine products have changed dramatically in the last few months. Vaping, an activity generally regarded as safer than smoking, is now viewed by many lawmakers and health officials as a serious threat. People who vape have begun to face restrictions similar to those placed on cigarettes. While there’s no question that cigarette smoking is one of the biggest causes of mortality in the world, the failure to differentiate among many possible sources of nicotine is detrimental to public policy. Jacob Grier’s new book, The Rediscovery of Tobacco, provides a nuanced take on the history, policy, and health consequences of tobacco and the new world of vaping and makes the case for treating vapers and smokers with dignity and respect. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity. Yet a recent psychological study found that anxiety “is significantly more prevalent and impairing in high-income countries than in low- or middle-income countries.” Clay Routledge argues that these and related research findings are a warning that prosperous societies such as the United States are facing a crisis of meaning that may ultimately undermine liberty and prosperity. Affluence and liberalism, he claims, benefit humanity by reducing material concerns and liberating individuals to pursue their goals. At the same time, however, Routledge argues, affluence and liberalism uproot individuals from traditional sources of meaning like religion and interdependent communities. He says that people who are uprooted from traditional sources of existential security can become psychologically vulnerable and anxious, demotivated and pessimistic, and attracted to extreme and dangerous secular ideologies, which all threaten the sustainability of a free and flourishing soc

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) operate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These statewide electronic databases of prescriptions dispensed for controlled substances were established in response to the opioid overdose crisis. Their purpose is to facilitate drug diversion investigations by law enforcement, change prescribing behavior, and reduce “doctor shopping” by patients who seek drugs for nonmedical use. In 28 states it is mandatory for providers to access the database and screen each time before prescribing any controlled substance to any patient. There is evidence that PDMPs have contributed to the dramatic 42 percent decline in prescription opioid volume since 2011. Many healthcare practitioners cite the inconvenience and workflow disruptions of mandatory-access PDMPs as deterrents to prescribing, while others fear scrutiny from law enforcement and licensing authorities — even for appropriate medical prescribing. This is unintentionally causing the undertreatment of patients wi