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Talks and interviews from Hoover Institution events.
Episodes
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University, and Philip K. Howard, author of Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 10:00 am PT/ 1:00pm ET.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip K. Howard. Philip is a leader of government and legal reform in America. He is Chair of Common Good. In 2002, Philip formed Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to simplifying laws so that Americans can use common sense in daily choices. His 2010 TED Talk has been viewed by more than 750,000 people. His 2015 report, “Two Years, Not Ten Years,” exposed the economic and environmental costs of delayed infrastructure approvals, and its proposals have since been incorporated into federal law.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Elected leaders come and go, but public unions just say no.” Hiding in plain sight is a fatal defect of modern democracy. Public employee unions have a death grip on the operating machinery of government. Schools can’t work, bad cops can’t be fired, and politicians sell their souls for union support.
With this searing five-point indictment, Philip K. Howard argues that union controls have disempowered elected executives and should be unconstitutional.
Union power in government happened almost by accident in the 1960s, ostensibly to give public unions the same bargaining rights as trade unions. But government bargaining is not about dividing profits, but making political choices about public priorities. Moreover, the political nature of decision-making allowed unions to provide campaign support to friendly officials. Public bargaining became collusive. The unions brag about it: “We elect our own bosses.”
Sitting on both sides of the bargaining table has allowed public unions to turn the democratic hierarchy upside down. Elected officials answer to public employees. Basic tools of good government have been eliminated. There’s no accountability, detailed union entitlements make government largely unmanageable and unaffordable, and public policies are driven by what is good for public employees, not what is good for the public. Public unions keep it that way by brute political force—harnessing the huge cohort of public employees into a political force dedicated to preventing the reform of government.
The solution, Howard argues, is not political but constitutional. America’s republican form of government requires an executive branch that is empowered to implement public policies, not one shackled to union controls. Public employees have a fiduciary duty to serve the public and should not be allowed to organize politically to harm the public.
This short book could unlock a door to fixing a broken democracy.
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism and Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow and author of the recently released Hoover Institution Press book Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 10:00 am PT/ 1:00pm ET.
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Guest Speaker: Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley gave a presentation that challenged the conventional wisdom of carbon emissions, arguing that CO2 may provide more benefits than costs to the environment.
Ridley outlined several benefits, principally the global greening of land and the oceans. When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, vegetation can rely less on scarce water supplies. More CO2 would also result in higher yields and longer growing seasons, meaning that more land can be used for nature reserves. He maintained that more CO2 also translates into warmer winters and, in turn, fewer people dying from cold temperatures.
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https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and Steven Koonin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.
Chair: Ronald Bailey, science correspondent, Reason Magazine.
Steven Koonin argued that many advocates of sweeping mandates for climate change frequently peddle misinformation, promote extreme scenarios as the consequence of global temperature rises, and smear critics of their arguments as “deniers” and with other detractions. Koonin then presented several examples from his research that provide context for environmental trends that are usually omitted from the prevailing literature on the subject.
Niall Ferguson examined the rhetoric of proponents of drastic action against climate change, many of whom assert that, if the policies they favor aren’t adopted, the world will experience a catastrophe involving extraordinarily high temperatures, precipitation, and sea levels.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Mark P. Mills, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; and David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy, University of California–San Diego.
Chair: Neil Chatterjee, senior advisor, Hogan Lovells, and former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Mark Mills argued that ambitious goals to achieve zero carbon emissions in the coming decades are delusional. He said that over the past 20 years, after $5 trillion spent worldwide, there hasn’t been any significant movement toward transitions to renewables. Today, global energy derived from wood exceeds that of solar and wind power combined (which make up just 3 percent of all fuels). Moreover, a rapid transition to these other renewable sources, including batteries, would require a level of mineral extraction never seen in history.
In his first of four points, David Victor described the fragmented policy action in countering various pollutants. In replacing carbon, some alternative energies are farther along than others. Meanwhile, some industries face bigger challenges from other pollutants, such as aviation through the emission of contrail clouds from jet engines. These and other segments of the economy have different features that will determine if a market-driven or a mandate-based approach is more effective at mitigating environmental damage.
Niall Ferguson examined the rhetoric of proponents of drastic action against climate change, many of whom believe that if the policies they favor aren’t adopted, the world will experience a catastrophe involving extraordinarily high temperatures, precipitation, and sea levels.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Christopher Costello, distinguished professor of resource economics, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California—Santa Barbara; and Barton “Buzz” Thompson, Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford University Law School.
Chair: Dominic Parker, Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution.
During his remarks, Christopher Costello articulated the advantages of markets over regulatory approaches to conservation and mitigation of harms inflicted on the environment. As an example, he described that the coastal waters of Santa Barbara are home not only to one of the most biodiverse maritime habitats in America but also to some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. These circumstances have resulted in large container vessels causing harm to maritime wildlife while traveling to and from the Port of Los Angeles.
Buzz Thompson provided another example of the feasibility of markets for environmental protection. Delivery of water from the Colorado River was weakening the flow of its stream and, in turn, endangering its fish population. He explained that limiting water to farmers would have been a daunting challenge. Understanding this reality, authorities instead paid farmers for access to their water rights so that they could strengthen the flow of the river.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Matthew Kahn, Provost Professor of Economics and Spatial Sciences, University of Southern California; and Maria Waldinger, Deputy Director of the Ifo Center for Labor and Demographic Economics.
Chair: Terry Anderson, John and Jean DeNault Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.
Maria Waldinger provided a historical analysis of how societies have adapted to climate conditions. The oldest adaptation strategy was migration, she explained, which was more easily achieved when societies were nomadic and there were no political boundaries. More modern societies have adopted various processes to ensure their survival. She explained that crop failures were an omnipresent feature of European societies between the 14th and 19th centuries, a period of regional cooling that has been referred to as the “little ice age.”
Matthew Khan outlined to the audience how markets can provide optimal incentives for adaption to climate change and reduce its economic effects. If enough people are facing a challenge, markets are the mechanisms that can empower entrepreneurs to produce and deliver innovations, Kahn maintained.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Sanjai Bhagat, professor of finance at the University of Colorado–Boulder; and John H. Cochrane, Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.
Chair: John Taylor, George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Hoover Institution.
Sanjai Bhagat explained that ESG investing principles and new standards of corporate social responsibility are not based on the fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. They are primarily centered, he said, on maintaining the well-being of societal stakeholders, including customers, employers, suppliers, and communities, as well as particular objectives such as environmental justice.
John Cochrane asserted that the Security and Exchange Commission’s plan to enforce ESG investment practices isn’t based on “saving the planet” but on bending corporations to serve a particular political agenda. Echoing Bhagat, Cochrane said the ESG mandates would not maximize shareholder value. It would instead deny capital to companies, lower their asset prices, and curb returns to investors. ESG mandates would also pervert markets, destroy competition, and encourage some companies to rent-seek from the government.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Presenters: Terry Anderson, John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and Dominic Parker, Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution.
Terry Anderson began the conference sessions by providing definitions for mandates and markets in their environmental contexts. Mandates (or rules) means that politics and administrations assign environmental objectives and use fixed command-and-control mechanisms to achieve them. On the other hand, markets are based on processes whereby resource owners respond to changing values.
Dominic Parker examined the trade-offs of both market-driven and mandate approaches to environmental policies. He explained that there are cases in which mandates have proved effective, but that their policy outcomes should be analyzed with a nuanced perspective.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Hoover director Condoleezza Rice introduced the conference by recalling the institution’s long history of researching environmental policy issues.
Rice explained how the imitable George P. Shultz was a pioneer in advancing environmental solutions. In partnership with Tom Stephenson, former chair of the Hoover Board of Overseers, the late secretary of state formed a task force dedicated to identifying pragmatic policies aimed at strengthening America’s energy security while providing environmental protection.
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Click the following link for more information
https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-hosts-conference-evaluating-market-driven-versus-regulatory-approaches