Cato Event Podcast

The Italian law scholar Bruno Leoni was a champion of law over legislation. In his classic Freedom and the Law (1961), he presented the case for organic legal systems that adjust to human behavior and against legal systems that attempt to adjust human behavior to fit the needs and desires of the politically powerful. It’s a message still urgently needed today. Please join us for a discussion of Leoni’s contributions to classical liberal thought as we celebrate his 101st birthday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tumblr sits at the unique intersection between blogging and social media, presenting an unusual challenge for social media managers. What role should Tumblr play in your online marketing strategy? How can you find and engage supporters on the platform and what are some best practices for measuring ROI?Join Tumblr’s Liba Rubenstein 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Ticket: The Many Faces of School Choice, is a new documentary film that takes viewers on a whistle-stop tour across the United States, asking: “What is school choice?” As the film illustrates, various forms of choice are proliferating around the country, from charter schools to scholarship tax credits. The film finds one simple premise underlying these different models: parents and children deserve the freedom to choose the schools that work best for them. Please join us for a screening of this highly informative documentary, followed by questions and answers with director/producer Bob Bowdon. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?” That was the question a mild-mannered physics professor at Haverford College privately asked a few fellow antiwar activists in late 1970. Soon, as part of an unlikely band calling itself “the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,” he did just that. On March 8, 1971, the group broke into a Bureau branch office outside of Philadelphia, seeking evidence for what they’d long suspected: that Hoover’s FBI was engaged in a secret, illegal campaign of surveillance and harassment of American citizens. The documents they found revealed massive abuses of power and helped lead to new legal checks on domestic surveillance.As a young Washington Post reporter, Betty Medsger was the first to receive and write about the secret files. Now, 43 years later, in The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, she reveals the never-before-told full story of that history-changing break-in, bringing the activists into the public eye for the first tim

Twitter has certainly come a long way since it first launched in 2006. While it may seem obvious that Twitter deserves a central position in every social media manager's online strategy, the specifics of what those tweets should look like remain hotly debated. Are unsolicited tweets uncouth or par for the course? How many hashtags are too many hashtags? When IS a retweet an endorsement? The latest updates to Twitter's interface, coupled with their gradual roll-out, further complicate things.Join Twitter's Sean Evins 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For four years, the Obama administration has been engaging in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations with 11 Pacific Rim nations, and last year initiated similar talks called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union. These negotiations offer the promise of significantly reduced barriers to international trade and investment, which would be an important source of economic dynamism and growth. But Congress is not on board with the administration’s trade policy agenda, and the president’s effort to secure fast-track trade promotion authority has been derailed, in all likelihood, at least until after the 2014 mid-term election. What are the strengths and shortcomings of the administration’s trade agenda? What are the major concerns of Congress, and what should we expect from trade policy in 2014 and beyond? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our children are in constant danger from — to quote Lenore Skenazy's list — "kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape." Or so a small army of experts and government policymakers keep insisting. School authorities punish kids for hugging a friend, pointing a finger as a pretend gun, or starting a game of tag on the playground. Congress bans starter bikes on the chance that some 12-year-old might chew on a brass valve. Police arrest parents for leaving a sleepy kid alone in the back seat of a car for a few minutes. Yet overprotectiveness creates perils of its own. It robs kids not only of fun and sociability but of the joy of learning independence and adult skills, whether it be walking a city street by themselves or using a knife to cut their own sandwich. No one has written more provocatively about these issues than Lenore Skenazy, a journalist with the former New York Sun who now contributes

Intellectual property has been a focus of U.S. trade policy for many decades, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations include an especially ambitious effort by the United States to strengthen international intellectual property laws. At the same time, however, there is serious debate within the United States over the proper scope and level of intellectual property protection. Is it in the interests of the United States to seek to harmonize intellectual property rules around the world, or is the U.S. position overly influenced by special interests hoping to export bad policy abroad and to lock it in at home? Come hear our panel of experts discuss why trade agreements cover intellectual property law, whose interests are served, and what, if anything, should be done about it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the IRS quietly proposed major changes to the rules governing nonprofit social welfare groups, or 501(c)(4)s. For years, pundits and politicians have attacked (c)(4)s as so-called “dark money” groups that are illegitimately trying to influence elections. Last year, Congress heard testimony that the IRS had targeted conservative (c)(4)s with demands to answer onerous questions and to fill out endless forms, purportedly in order to assess the scope of a (c)(4)’s “political activity.” Now, with the proposed rules, the IRS seems intent on codifying many of those practices and thus greatly limiting what (c)(4)s can do. Get-out-the-vote initiatives, candidate scorecards, and voter registration are just some of the activities that, under the proposed rules, will be considered “candidate-related political activity,” even though no candidate is directly supported or opposed. The proposed rules have both frightened and baffled people from all over the political spectrum, and the IRS ha

The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law on December 23, 1913. It was designed to provide an elastic currency and prevent banking panics. The Great Depression, the Great Inflation, and the Panic of 2008, however, seriously mar the Fed’s record. In particular, the Fed’s failure to detect and prevent the 2008 financial crisis needs close public scrutiny. Moreover, the Fed’s vast expansion of its balance sheet during the last five years and its suppression of market interest rates have failed to generate robust economic growth and full employment. Those issues will be addressed by our speakers and a case made for creating a Centennial Monetary Commission (HR 1176) to explore alternatives to the current pure discretionary government fiat money regime. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.