The debate over copyright seems to consist of two irreconcilable poles. One side dismisses copyright as a plaything of political forces, imposing illegitimate restraints on freedom of expression. The opposing side regards copyrights as fundamental property rights that deserve the fullest protection of the law—like rights to houses, cars, and other forms of property. Neither view, however, captures the essence of copyright.In his new book, Intellectual Privilege , Chapman University law professor...
May 07, 2014•1 hr 24 min
The technocratic approach to ending global poverty favored by development experts often strengthens authoritarian governments and neglects or undermines the preferences and personal choices of poor people. William Easterly will explain why a different branch of economics emerged for poor countries and how it has served the interests of decisionmakers in powerful countries, political leaders in poor countries, and humanitarians in rich countries. Join us to hear Professor Easterly make a case in ...
May 06, 2014•1 hr 19 min
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. Hosted on Acast...
May 06, 2014•1 hr 20 min
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 d...
May 01, 2014•48 min
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, par...
Apr 30, 2014•1 hr 23 min
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 individua...
Apr 17, 2014•1 hr 1 min
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 unhappi...
Apr 17, 2014•1 hr 22 min
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 unhappi...
Apr 16, 2014•1 hr 24 min
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 height...
Apr 01, 2014•56 min
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 Instit...
Mar 27, 2014•1 hr 18 min
Purchase book One 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, tr...
Mar 26, 2014•1 hr 21 min
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 w...
Mar 25, 2014•1 hr 22 min
Purchase book No 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-...
Mar 21, 2014•57 min
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 governmen...
Mar 19, 2014•1 hr 29 min
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 ...
Mar 18, 2014•1 hr 28 min
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. Joi...
Mar 13, 2014•48 min
“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 campaig...
Mar 13, 2014•1 hr 30 min
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...
Mar 07, 2014•55 min
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 mi...
Mar 07, 2014•1 hr 10 min
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 ...
Mar 05, 2014•1 hr 26 min
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 “...
Mar 04, 2014•1 hr 23 min
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...
Feb 28, 2014•45 min
There has been an explosion of partnerships, exchanges, and programs between U.S. institutions of higher education and those in China. While made in the spirit of intellectual and scholarly collaboration, these relationships have proceeded without serious consideration of the practical and moral/ethical issues posed by dealing with authoritarian regimes. This presentation focuses on the case of Wellesley College's relationship with Peking University as it unfolded in light of the persecution and...
Feb 27, 2014•1 hr 18 min
Purchase book Nobody likes to fail, yet failure is a ubiquitous element of our lives. According to Megan McArdle, failing often — and well — is an important source of learning for individuals, organizations, and governments. Although failure is critical in coping with complex environments, our cognitive biases often keep us from drawing the correct lessons and adjusting our behavior. Our psychological aversion to failure can compound its undesirable effects, McArdle argues, and transform failure...
Feb 24, 2014•1 hr 20 min
In this sequel to Gold: the Once and Future Money , Nathan Lewis describes the theoretical basis of gold-standard monetary systems. Lewis argues that the pre-1913 world gold standard system was perhaps the most successful monetary system the world has ever seen, enabling high levels of economic growth. Descriptions of both Britain’s economic rise under the gold standard and the United States’ rise to economic prominence under gold are also discussed. Lewis offers the technical details necessary ...
Feb 12, 2014•1 hr 20 min
More than three years after the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, a determined insurgency rages against the government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Violence has claimed thousands of lives. Some question whether the Iraqi government can maintain control of several major cities, including Fallujah, the scene of some of the toughest fighting during the eight-year-long U.S. war in Iraq. Some of Maliki’s critics accuse him of stoking the unrest by refusing to make concessions ...
Feb 11, 2014•1 hr 24 min
A once-in-a-generation supply shock is transforming global energy markets, lowering crude oil and natural gas prices, and quickly making the United States the world's largest producer of oil and gas. But energy politics threatens to short-circuit this American economic boom. Of immediate concern are federal regulations — in particular, discretionary export-licensing systems for natural gas and crude oil — that were implemented during the 1970s, an era of energy scarcity. By restricting exports a...
Feb 10, 2014•1 hr 22 min
Purchase Book Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China's Future addresses the challenges China will face during the coming decades and why it is unlikely to overtake the United States this century. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the threats to China's continuing rise, offers bold policy prescriptions addressing those challenges, and explains why — without substantial reform — China is unlikely to replace America as the next superpower. Yale nominated the book for the prestigious Samuel J...
Feb 06, 2014•1 hr 20 min
In his latest Cato book, Tim Sandefur addresses one of the most neglected topics in modern American constitutional law, the philosophical foundations of the Constitution. He argues that for that we should look to the “conscience” of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, as Abraham Lincoln did. And if we do, we discover that the Constitution was written not to empower democratic majorities to rule widely, as happens today, but to secure our natural rights to liberty through limited g...
Jan 30, 2014•1 hr 32 min
Glamour promises to carry us out of quotidian life into a world more beautiful and fulfilling. But what is glamour? A mere daydream distracting us from our true duties and long-term well-being? An illusion created to stimulate commerce in a capitalist economy? How does glamour relate to envy, to art, to self-improvement, to personal charisma? In her new book, Virginia Postrel builds on her path-breaking work in The Substance of Style to show that beauty and luxury are far from the only touchston...
Jan 29, 2014•1 hr 31 min
