CSPI Podcast

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his involvement in Operation Warp Speed, a uniquely successful federal government project. Richard asks how broadly applicable its lessons are, whether or not we could do something similar for cancer, and why economists and public health officials had such divergent opinions on the need to speed up the process of approving and distributing a vaccine.

Alex also discusses the Baumol effect, which he argues can explain much about rising costs in healthcare and education. Richard pushes back on the theory as a sufficient explanation, and asks whether a simple libertarian story better fits the facts, arguing that government support for these industries also plays a major role.

They then go on to talk about the rise of crypto, why America is severely under-policed, and how recent years have seen the collapse of challenges to liberal democracy.

This podcast was originally released by the Salem Center.

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Links:

* Paul Mango, Warp Speed: Inside the Operation That Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds.

* Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok, “Why Are the Prices So Damn High?”

* “Under policed” tag at Marginal Revolution.

* Richard Hanania, “The Year of Fukuyama.”

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Bryan Caplan joins the podcast to talk about his new book Don’t Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice. The lead essay is written as a letter to his daughter in the hopes that she will reject an ideology that is wrong on the facts and psychologically damaging. Richard asks whether Bryan grants too much to feminists in the first place by treating the relevant issue as whether society treats men better than women.

The book also contains criticism of the political right’s nationalism and immigration restrictionism. Richard asks about some common objections to open immigration, including increased crime and a lowering of national IQ. They close by talking about Bryan’s foray into stand-up comedy, and some of his other hobbies.

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Tyler Cowen needs no introduction. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book, co-authored with Daniel Gross, called Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World. Richard asks him about whether intelligence is overrated or underrated, the idea of “State Capacity Libertarianism” as an improvement over old-fashioned libertarianism, cultural differences between China and India, how optimistic to be about the future of the United States, different kinds of courage, free speech, and whether the world has too much or too little wokeness. The conversation also covers the feminization of intellectual life, with Tyler being optimistic that we will get better over time at navigating gender-integrated institutions.

Richard closes by asking Tyler about how he sees his own role as a public figure. They discuss the Emergent Ventures grant interview for CSPI, and the benefits of asking an interviewee about their own ambition.

A lightly edited transcript of the conversation is available here.

Listen in podcast form or watch the episode on YouTube.

Links:

* Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.

* CEO Study from Sweden.

* Econ Talk episode where Tyler and Russ Roberts discuss Germany.

* Tyler on State Capacity Libertarianism.

* Tyler Cowen, “Why Wokism will Rule the World.”

* Eric Kaufmann. “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.”

* Tyler Cowen, “My Personal Moonshot.”

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Amy Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She joins the podcast to talk about the ongoing attempt to cancel and possibly fire her for making politically incorrect remarks. Usually there is some pretext that a professor actually engaged in forbidden conduct in these kinds of investigations, but this is as clear an example as one can find of a university trying to punish speech. This leads to a conversation about whether higher education is worth saving, and if it is, the best way to go about doing so.

Amy has also gotten in trouble for her views on immigration and growing racial diversity in the United States. She also talks about that topic here, and much of the discussion centers around the concept of “Western culture” and the extent to which it is threatened. Richard argues that the post-1960s West has seen such a break from its past that this perspective assumes a cultural continuity that no longer exists. This leads to a discussion of whether and how conservatives can appeal to immigrant voters.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

You can also read a transcript here.

Links:

* Amy Wax Defense Fund (tax-deductible)

* Amy Wax Legal Defense Fund (GoFundMe)

* UPenn Law Deans Report Regarding Amy Wax

* Michael Anton, “That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is.”

* Richard Hanania, “Women’s Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas.”

* Richard Hanania, “Terms of Surrender” [Review of Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge].

* Jon Marcus, “Why Americans are Increasingly Dubious About Going to College.”

* The Glenn Show, “Contesting American Identity | Glenn Loury and Amy Wax.”

* Glenn Loury, “Amy Wax Redux.” [interchange with George Lee]

* Education Realist

* Amy Wax on Tucker Carlson Today

* Richard Hanania Survey Results II: Likes and Dislikes

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Stephen and James Grugett are programmers, entrepreneurs, and cofounders of the website Manifold Markets, which hosts user-created prediction markets. They join the podcast to discuss the CSPI/Salem Tournament on Manifold Markets, which launched last week.

The Grugetts and Richard talk about the origins of Manifold, what differentiates it from other prediction markets, and how their version of creating a new

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Manifold Markets

* CSPI/Salem Tournament on Manifold Markets

* Richard Hanania, “Introducing the Salem/CSPI Forecasting Tournament”

* Richard Hanania, “Salem Tournament, 5 Days in”

* The Economist, “How Spooks are Turning to Superforecasting in the Cosmic Bazaar”

* Manifold Markets Statistics

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On this week’s CSPI Podcast, Richard interviews the top three winners of the CSPI Essay Contest: Policy Reform For Progress.

The first interview is with contest winner Andrew Kenneson, a program navigator at a public housing authority in Kodiak, Alaska and former reporter. In “Gathering Steam: Unlocking Geothermal Potential in the United States,” Andrew explains why exempting geothermal exploration on federally owned lands from NEPA requirements could set off a cascade of energy innovation.

The second interview (starting at 29:12) is with Maxwell Tabarrok, an Econ and Math student at the University of Virginia whose essay on science funding reform “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” won second prize. Maxwell proposes a system of research guided funding in which the ~$120 billion spent by the federal government on science each year is distributed equally to the ~250,000 full-time STEM faculty at high research activity universities.

The third interview (starting at 57:03) is with Brent Skorup, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center and a visiting faculty fellow at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the Nebraska College of Law. Brent’s 3rd place essay, “Drone Airspace: A New Global Asset Class,” outlines how public auctions for drone airspace would be an improvement on the FAA’s current plan to ration airspace to a few lucky companies.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Winning Essays:

* “Gathering Steam: Unlocking Geothermal Potential in the United States” by Andrew Kenneson

* “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” by Maxwell Tabarrok

* “Drone Airspace: A New Global Asset Class” by Brent Skorup

Honorable Mentions:

* “The University-Government Complex” by William L. Krayer

* “It’s Time to Review the Institutional Review Boards” by Willy Chertman

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Richard Lowery is an Associate Professor of Finance at The University of Texas at Austin and a senior scholar at the Salem Center for Public Policy. He joins the podcast to talk about his recent article “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative,” which details what went wrong with plans to build the Liberty Institute.

Lowery and Hanania discuss the politicization of academia and how it has even reached finance, why developing new educational institutions is difficult, how “fake conservatives” on campus provide cover for the Left to control universities, and the failure of Republican donors and politicians to push back against these trends effectively.

They converge on a set of ideas regarding how to fix academia going forward. Working within the university and without outside support is hopeless, as radicals committed to stamping out dissent have already won and are in a position to thwart any attempts at reform. Nonetheless, state university systems are ultimately under the control of politicians. Conservative elected officials need to show a greater interest in taking concrete steps toward restoring free inquiry and the search for objective truth, which will only happen if they are pressured to do so by donors and right-leaning media. Usually, this will mean not trying to reform individual departments, but relying on state funding and private philanthropy to create new institutions within existing universities, if not apart from them, that can be run by those ideologically committed to rolling back the triumph of anti-capitalist dogma and identity politics.

These problems are not insoluble. American conservatives have accomplished political goals before. All it takes is an understanding of the scope of the problem and the political will to do something about it. The conversation includes specific steps that elected officials, academics, donors, and political activists can take to build new institutions.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Richard Lowery’s Twitter (@RichardLoweryTX).

* Richard Lowery, “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative.”

* Kate McGee, “UT-Austin Working with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Conservative Donors to Create ‘Limited Government’ Think Tank.”

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David Bernstein is a Law Professor and Executive Director of the Liberty and Law Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

David and Richard discuss the history of racial conflict and classification in America, the political construction of ethnic identities like AAPI and Hispanic, how wealthy immigrants hijacked government set-asides, why medical researchers care so little about actual physiological and anthropological distinctions between ethnic groups, and the political feasibility of colorblindness in a world of racial disparities.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* David Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

* David Bernstein, You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws.

* G. Christina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American.

* Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study.

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Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a data scientist, author, and keynote speaker. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times. He joins the podcast to talk about his two books, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (2017) and Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life (2022). He and Richard discuss the behavioral genetics of sports, whether we pay too much attention to hate crimes, physiognomy as a science, the limits of evolutionary psychology in explaining porn preferences, and how to apply insights from big data and social science to improve our dating lives, careers, and overall happiness.

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Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, a CSPI research fellow, and the author of several books, including Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. He returns to the podcast to discuss his new report for CPSI, Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity. He and Richard talk about the factors underlying recent increases in LGBT identification and same-sex sexual behavior, the connection between being very liberal, LGBT, and having mental health issues, and the influence of modernism on left-wing ideology and right-wing political movements. They conclude the conversation by discussing whether concerns about teaching sexuality and CRT in K-12 schools should take precedence over free speech issues on university campuses and debates over history and national identity.



Eric Kaufmann, “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.”

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