Hardly Working with Brent Orrell

Turn on the news, and you’ll be accosted with narratives of societal decline and tempted to despair. Dr. Eric Reinhart is one voice fighting for hope in the disadvantaged communities of Chicago, Illinois. With a kaleidoscope of degrees and credentials, Dr. Reinhart works to address both the symptoms of poverty and disadvantage by addressing their root causes.

In this episode, he explains the factors that influenced his multifaceted career, how he views the empathy and the nihilistic impulses of society, and how restoring public trust through accompaniment could help us reconnect with one another.

Mentioned in the Episode

Eric Reinhart

Harvard History of Science – Charles Rosenburg, Allan Brandt, Jeremy Greene

Paul Farmer

Arthur Kleinman

Community health worker systems

Jim Kim, Ophelia Dahl

Brigham Women’s Hospital

Carl Bell

Accompaniment

Immanuel Kant

Empathy vs. Sympathy

68,000 people die per year due to lack of health coverage

Eric Reinhart on nihilism

Long term decline of male labor force participation

Deaths of despair

Bullshit jobs book

Slate piece on gun control

Stephen Moret is a leading expert in the connection between education and work. In this episode, Dr. Moret shares lessons and successes from his many years leading state and local economic development efforts, educational fundraising efforts, and his new role as CEO of Strada Education Network, a social impact organization helping all students access and make the most of their educational opportunities.

Mentioned in the episode

Strada Education Network

Stephen Moret Student Body President

LSU Foundation

Virginia Economic Development Partnership

Stephen Moret Dissertation

Huey Long

St. John’s College

Virginia Talent Accelerator Program

Georgia Quick Start Program

Louisiana Fast Start Program – Economist Article

Tim Bartik

Virginia Office of Education – VOEE

Strada Institute for the Future of Work – New Learning Ecosystem

KYStats

Non-technical skills in career development

Increase in Master’s degrees

1 counselor for every 1000 students

Joe May

In their short, shared history, electrical and computing technology have fundamentally altered the way we live and work. Documents are sent in a flash, and goods are produced more efficiently than ever. While that efficiency tends to increase productivity, raise wages, and create new jobs, it also imposes costs in transitions for workers in affected industries. In this episode of Hardly Working, I am joined by Clinton Smith, co-founder of RIOS, a company that delivers robots-as-a-service to manufacturing companies. RIOS seeks to alleviate labor shortage and reduce human wear and tear, especially in fields like manufacturing. We discuss Clinton’s path to industry as well as the benefits and challenges created by his company’s product in on our increasingly-automated economy.

Mentioned in the Episode

Georgia Tech Computer Science

Princeton Electrical Engineering

Clinton Smith

Clinton Smith Dissertation

PARC

SPIR Grant

ARPA, DARPA, IARPA Grants

IOT Distributed Sensing

McKinsey Report: A Future that Works

Bernard Casse – RIOS Co-founder

Haptics

Mechanoreceptors, in fingers

Deep Learning

RIOS Website

RIOS Case Study: Hit Promotional Products

RIOS VULCAN Robot Workcell shows the possibilities of Pack Out to Box

Robots as a service (RaaS)

Who Made the Pencil?

Erik Brynjolfsson’s paper “The Turing Trap: The Promise and Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence” argues that the “imitation game” of creating tech that mimics humans has increased productivity and living standards, but does not exist without costs. Those costs make up “The Turing Trap” which happens when humans not involved in creating AI cannot compete with the productivity and efficiency of the robots designed to do their jobs, and lose control of their economic and political futures.

The Turing Trap sits at the center of contemporary labor force struggles, including the Great Resignation, the fight for “good jobs” and cratering male labor force participation. Michael Strain, who directs AEI’s Economic Policy Studies, joins Dr. Brynjolfsson and I to discuss what economic policy can do to encourage more innovators aim higher and create machines that augment rather than replace human labor, and how that effort is crucial to the American Dream.

Mentioned in the episode

Erik Brynjolfsson

Utopia Paperback by Thomas More

Foundation Mass Market Paperback by Isaac Asimov

Heilbronner’s Worldly Philosophers

Doug Hofstadter

The Turing Trap by Erik Brynjolfsson

Michael R. Strain

The American Dream is Not Dead

The High School Movement

Pigouvian Tax

Consumption Tax

Tax Reform Act of 1986

Greg Mankiw Pigou Club

Economic changes bring prosperity, but not without cost. The globalization of how we produce and consume has left many American workers in dead end jobs without prospects for advancement. Some critics of this change have argued for the necessity of walls to protect American industries from global competition and labor exploitation. In his new book The Wall and The Bridge: Fear and Opportunity in Disruption’s Wake, Glenn Hubbard argues for bridges to economic opportunity. We discuss themes from his book in today’s episode.

Glenn Hubbard

The Wall and the Bridge

The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

Ken White

Eagle Scout

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Adam Smith Works - Liberty Fund

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Smith’s Idea of Mutual Sympathy

Laissez-Faire Economy

Dignity at Work by Brent Orrell

President Bush's High Growth Job Training Initiative

Block-Granting Entitlement Programs

Growing Fairly by Stephen Goldsmith and Kate Markin Coleman

One Counselor for Every 1,000 students - Northern Virginia

Community College System

Personal Reemployment Accounts

American Industrialization

Mexican Truck Drivers Situation

Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program

Trade Expansion Act of 1962

Morrill Act

Land-Grant University

GI Bill

“Go west, young man” by Horace Greeley

The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi

Place-Based Policies

Amidst widespread talk of income inequality and the rise in working women, many American men have retreated from the labor force steadily since 1965. Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI’s Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, noticed this trend in 2014 and began work on a project tracking men who lie outside the reach of traditional measures of unemployment since they are not working or looking for work. That project culminated in Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis.

In 2022, Eberstadt released a Post-Pandemic Edition of Men Without Work, which forms the backbone of today’s discussion. We discuss who the men without work are, how they spend their time, and how to convince society that work as an institution is a worthy investment of time.

Mentioned in the Episode

Harvard University

Roger Revelle – AAAS

American Enterprise Institute

Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis

Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition

NILF (Not in Labor Force) Rate

BLS Definition of Employed - 1 hour per week

US Marriage Rates

US Family Structure 1965 to now

US Religiosity 1965 to now

1996 Welfare Reform

Yuval Levin on formative institutions

Decline of the Summer Job

Homo Economicus

The unlimited choices we face in modernity make us restless, which is why Dr. Benjamin and Dr. Jenna Storey wrote Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment. The book explores ideas by those who have thought about and written on contentment and the application of those ideas today. Benjamin also shares about his own quest for knowledge and how it culminated in this book.

Mentioned in the episode

Benjamin Storey

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dr. Larry Goldberg

Committee on Social Thought - The University of Chicago

Michel de Montaigne

Furman University

The Tocqueville Program

Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies

Yuval Levin

Joseph Epstein

Majoring in Fear by Mark Shiffman

Machiavellianism

Hertog Foundation

Plato

Herman Melville

Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age

Ross Douthat

The Decadent Society

Renaissance Humanism

The Classical School Movement

William James and the Great Pragmatists

Radical Skepticism

Why We Are Restless

Aristotle on Happiness

Queen Elizabeth: A Lifetime Of Service | Timeline

Blaise Pascal

Town and Gown Relations

The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

How can employers find workers that fit and elevate their organizations? Where are the “diamonds in the rough” that everyone else is missing? In his book Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives and Winners Around the World, Economist Tyler Cowen and entrepreneur Daniel Gross point out helpful strategies for hiring managers to find job seekers to who aim to be noticed by the right people. Tyler also dives into his journey into economics, sharing his takes on AI, skills, modern hiring practices, and the many projects that occupy his day-to-day.

Mentioned in the episode

Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World

Tyler Cowen chess prodigy

Marginal Revolution Blog

Fee Seminar economics

The Incredible Bread Machine

Henry Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson

Hayek – Use of Knowledge in Society

Friedman

Rothbard

Mises

Ayn Rand

Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations, Theory of Moral Sentiments

Walter Grinder - Center for Libertarian Studies, Institute for Humane Studies

Daniel Gross

Emergent Ventures

Allen Iverson

Kyrie Irving

George Mason University

Noncognitive skills

AI hiring systems

GPT-3

Supplemental AI

Veronique de Rugy

Throughout America’s history, its people formed churches, social and fraternal organizations, and neighborhood groups at an astonishing pace. When we talk about “American exceptionalism” this is what we’re really talking about: the self-organizing community that solves its own problems.

In second half of the 20th century, however, scholars and pundits have pointed to a decline in American neighborliness and propensity for joining civic organizations. Church attendance is down, social organizations are dissolving, and two-parent families are declining. What can the data on American attitudes toward community tell us about why this is happening?

Today, I am pleased to welcome Ryan Streeter and Dan Cox to discuss the state of American communities. Streeter is a Senior Fellow and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at AEI. He studies topics of civil society, community, localism and religion. Dan Cox is the Senior Fellow in Polling and Public Opinion at AEI and the Director of the Survey Center of American Life. He specializes understanding American attitudes toward politics, youth culture, identity, and religion. We discuss highlights from AEI’s fall American Community survey, which can be found on the AEI website. We’ll also discuss their vocational journeys and professional lives and the role of civic engagement in building a happy and fulfilling life. 

Mentioned During the Episode

Ryan Streeter

Dan Cox

American Community Survey

Stephen Goldsmith

Adam Smith

David Hume

Social network analysis

Pew Research Center

Public Religion Research Institute

Karlyn Bowman

The Moral Sense- James Q. Wilson

Irving Kristol

Michael Novak

To Empower People

Thermostatic Opinion

Sam Abrams on public libraries

This episode is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes! We hope that bringing it back now will allow the content to find new listeners. Enjoy!

~Hunter Dixon (podcast producer, Hardly Working)

We live in times marked by the omnipresence of the internet and instantaneous access to the accumulated knowledge of humanity. This leads us into relying on quick, narrow answers to large, complex questions. Are we going too far in our reliance on experts and, in the process, forgetting how to think for ourselves?

Brent talks to Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer at Harvard University and the author of “Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in An Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence”. They discuss the need to reduce our reliance on experts living in the silos of their own professional fields, the importance of a liberal arts education, and the importance of staying focused on your mission.