Guest speaker video interviews — new location

Yahoo! Video has shut down, so all CEE videos are now hosted at YouTube.

Here are the speakers, topics, and new URLs. (Thanks to Chris Vaughan for performing the gargantuan task of transferring the material.)

Anil Singh-Molares on Microsoft and entrepreneurship.
Terry Noel on The Virtuous Entrepreneur.
Emily Chamlee-Wright on non-profits and the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
Steven Horwitz on Wal-Mart to the rescue after Hurricane Katrina.
David Mayer on Thomas Jefferson, Part I and Part II.
C. Bradley Thompson on John Adams, Part I and Part II.
Timothy Sandefur on market entrepreneurs, political entrepreneurs, and the Constitution, Part I and Part II.
David Mayer on Constitutional Interpretation, Part I and Part II.
C. Bradley Thompson on Neoconservatism, Part I and Part II.
Jerry Kirkpatrick on Philosophy’s Importance to Business, Part I and Part II.
Jerry Kirkpatrick on Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism.
Jerry Kirkpatrick in defense of advertising, Part I and Part II.
Joshua Hall on educational reform.

Here is the full list of my video interviews with guest speakers.

APEE update — Elinor Ostrom

I’m looking forward to learning new things at my APEE session tomorrow on “Hayek and Rand on Values.” The panelists are Emily Chamlee-Wright, Steve Horwitz, Edward Hudgins, and William Kline, each of whom knows a lot about both Hayek and Rand.

At the opening banquet tonight, we heard an address from Lin Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Who would have thought that a talk on the evolution of water property rights in the Los Angeles area could be so interesting?

I previously wrote briefly about Ostrom and Indiana University, at the end of this post.

Hayek and Rand on values — APEE 2011 conference

For this year’s conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I am organizing and chairing a session on two giants of the twentieth century — Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand — with four scholars comparing their views on values and political economy.

Topic: Hayek and Rand on Values

Chair: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D., Rockford College, Illinois

Panelists:

Emily Chamlee-Wright, Ph.D. Elbert Neese Professor of Economics, Beloit College, Wisconsin
Title: “Cultivating the Economic Imagination with Atlas Shrugged”
Abstract: In this paper I describe my use of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in an undergraduate comparative economic systems course. I argue that the novel is the ideal vehicle for cultivating what I call the “economic imagination,” by which I mean the ability to see the systematic outcomes that emerge under different political economic rules of the game. Further, I argue that the novel is particularly well-suited to animate discussions of essential comparative systems topics, including Marxism, the various phenomena associated with the soviet-type economy, and fascism. Finally, drawing upon student writing, I argue that though Rand’s view of reason and epistemology are often at odds with Austrian economics, these tensions are productive in conveying Austrian insights regarding the extended order.

Steve Horwitz, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University, New York
“Hayek, Rand, and the Ethics of the Micro- and Macro-worlds
Abstract: Hayek and Rand both supported capitalism, but their ethical systems were different. This paper explores the differences and how they apply to the institution of the family. It concludes that Rand’s ethical system matches very well with what Hayek sees as necessary in the “Great Society” of the macro-cosmos, but that our understanding of the institution of the family seems better suited to a more altruistic ethical code. The challenge for a Hayekian ethics that pays attention to institutional contexts is how to ensure that the complex process of making those distinctions is learned as children pass into adulthood.

Edward Hudgins, Ph.D., Director of Advocacy, The Atlas Society, Washington, D.C.
Title: “Is a Moral Foundation Necessary for Spontaneous Order?”
Abstract: F. A. Hayek argued that social order and institutions—markets, money, law—arise spontaneously out of the actions of individuals seeking their own interests but not through specific planning by individuals. Further, because it is impossible in markets for any individual to know what mix of goods and services will best satisfy consumer demands, attempts at central government planning will result in adverse unintended consequences.
But it can be argued that such a system will only operate to protect individual liberty and limit government if enough individuals, reinforced by the culture, accept and live by certain moral principles and the Objectivism provides such a foundation.

William Kline, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Liberal and Integrative Studies, University of Illinois, Springfield
Title: “Individualism and Interdependence”
Abstract: When do we need other people? Both Hayek and Rand agree on the importance of the division of labor. People need other people to produce what they cannot or will not do themselves. Hayek and Rand also broadly agree on the importance of property rights that make the division of labor, and the market in general, possible. Yet, theses authors deeply disagree on the degree of interdependence necessary for establishing valid property claims. This paper explores Hayek’s use of a Humean conception of property that emphasizes tradition and cannot exist independently of others and contrasts it with Rand’s use of a Lockean/Cartesian approach that argues for the existence of objective, nonconventional property rights. This paper argues that the two authors can be reconciled by distinguishing between what Hume identifies as the need for property rights versus the actual rules that protect them.

The session is scheduled for Monday, April 10 at the bright and cheery 8:10 a.m. time slot.

Learning from Hurricane Katrina

A striking statement on school reform by U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. Duncan called the 2005 Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

Duncan continued: “That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’ And the progress that they’ve made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that — that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior, and the amount of progress and the amount of reform we’ve seen in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing.”

So a question: Without hoping for more natural disasters, what can we do to emulate New Orleans’s progress in other dysfunctional school districts? The hurricane shocked the system: Katrina (1) made everyone to focus on essentials, (2) disempowered the entrenched advocates for continued dysfunction, and (3) galvanized everyone else to positive action. In my judgment, we are good at (1) and (3), but we are weak at solving (2) through peaceful methods.

Another question: What else has Katrina taught us about disaster preparedness and how to recover? The Mercatus Center has a excellent ongoing project devoted to Entrepreneurship and Disaster Recovery. The project has published a useful series of articles and working papers by scholars studying the aftermath of the hurricane.

Two of Mercatus’s scholars, Professor Emily Chamlee-Wright and Professor Steven Horwitz, spoke last year at Rockford College on post-Katrina disaster response in the private sector. Their talks were sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and my ten-minute video interviews with them following their talks are available at CEE’s site: Chamlee-Wright on social entrepreneurial activity, and Horwitz on for-profit organizations’ response.

CEE video interviews

In my capacity as Executive Director of CEE, I have been fortunate to interview several of our expert guest speakers. We began the video interview series at the beginning of the 2008-2009 academic year, and so far we have published interviews with six of our speakers:

Entrepreneur Anil Singh-Molares on entrepreneurship, the liberal arts, and the global marketplace.

Dr. Terry Noel on the virtuous entrepreneur.

Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright on New Orleans’ non-profit sector’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Steven Horwitz on Wal-Mart’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. C. Bradley Thompson on founding father John Adams.

Dr. David N. Mayer on Thomas Jefferson.

Dr. C. Bradley Thompson on his forthcoming book on Leo Strauss and the neo-conservatives.

Dr. David Mayer on Freedom’s Constitution, his forthcoming book on U.S. Constitutional interpretation.

Forthcoming: Attorney Timothy Sandefur on market entrepreneurs, political entrepreneurs, and the American legal and political landscape.

The videos are also available at the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship’s site. Credit also goes to CEE’s Christopher Vaughan, who shoots and edits the interviews. Nice work, Chris.

Interview: Emily Chamlee-Wright on post-Katrina New Orleans

My ten-minute interview at CEE with Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright on her research on entrepreneurship and the non-profit sector in post-Katrina New Orleans.

More interviews with CEE’s guest speakers are available here.