Today, Hoover shares a trailer for a major new documentary interview series; Ross Levine channels the wisdom of Adam Smith in a letter discussing the foundational role of justice in any free society; Matthew Turpin points out several underappreciated recent developments within China that call into question narratives about the PRC’s “unstoppable” ascendance; and on the latest EconTalk, Russ Roberts and guest Luke Burgis explore how individuals become themselves in the context of community influences.
Hoover Institution News
Hosted by Director Condoleezza Rice, Only in America is a new documentary interview series featuring some of the nation’s most accomplished innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, and business leaders. Through deeply personal conversations, guests reflect on the role that freedom, opportunity, risk-taking, and American institutions played in their journeys. The inaugural season features NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang; former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi; entrepreneur and software pioneer Tom Siebel; General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra; renowned computer scientist and AI leader Fei-Fei Li; and world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Despite their diverse backgrounds and fields of achievement, each offers a unique perspective on the opportunities, values, and institutions that enabled their success. Watch the series trailer here.
Political Philosophy
At Freedom Frequency, Senior Fellow Ross Levine, continuing his series of letters in the voice of Adam Smith, outlines the cardinal virtue that upholds all the others: justice. Justice is not the only value of a humane society, Levine notes, but a society cannot thrive unless there are rules protecting all its people from force, fraud, or other injury. Justice also is the foundation of trade and prosperity, joining people who owe one another no personal debt but who feel secure they will not be harmed by associating with strangers. Justice is corrupted by unjust judges, Levine warns, and by the allowance of the wealthy and prominent to warp it to their needs. “Let the law become a respecter of persons—and the ground on which you have built your society will give way beneath you,” he concludes. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
“While much of the commentariat class is busy China-maxxing and telling Americans that Xi [Jinping] is confident and winning, I think there are at least three important signals that suggest the opposite,” Visiting Fellow Matthew Turpin argues in his weekly China Articles newsletter. Chief among them, in his view, is “Beijing’s decision to impose strict travel restrictions on its AI researchers and entrepreneurs.” In this action, paired with heightened capital controls intended to limit the flow of wealth out of China, Turpin sees profound insecurity on the part of the ruling CCP regime. The defense scholar also looks at arms sales to Taiwan, pointing out that increased US weapons sales to the self-governing island in recent years correspond with the increased “scope and scale of the threat posed by the PRC.” Even if the Trump administration pares back future arms sales, Turpin concludes, it “has already approved an enormous amount (nearly $29.8 billion), far more than any of his predecessors.” Read more here.
Philosophy and Community
A new episode of EconTalk places Research Fellow Russ Roberts in conversation with author and entrepreneur Luke Burgis. Finding community can be difficult. But Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we’ve found it and we become subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. Burgis argues that the disappearance of traditional rites of passage bodes ill for major life commitments such as marriage. Burgis also recounts his personal journey from Wall Street through the Great Books in search of a strong, differentiated self. He then draws lessons for today’s communities from Saint Benedict’s 1,500-year-old guide for monastic life and describes the moving ritual he practiced with his father before he died. Watch or listen here.
Environmental Economics
Experts on energy and environmental policy, environmental entrepreneurs, and scholars gathered at the Hoover Institution on May 12 to consider how trade, technological improvements, and entrepreneurship can augment the success of market-based approaches to promote conservation and environmental quality. The Markets vs. Mandates research program at Hoover is directed by Senior Fellows Terry L. Anderson and Dominic Parker. Anderson encouraged attendees to channel an oft-cited insight from another Hoover scholar, Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell, when thinking about the role of markets and mandates in improving environmental quality. “Every time you think of an environmental issue discussed here, think, ‘There are no solutions, but there are lots of trade-offs,’” Anderson said. Panels covered the environmental impacts of trade restrictions and data centers; the role of entrepreneurs in boosting environmental quality; and how markets will foster adaptation to climate changes over the coming years. Read more here.
Corporate Governance Research
In a new paper, Senior Fellow Amit Seru, Distinguished Visiting Fellow David Larcker, and coauthors examine how and where corporate directors receive information and guidance to improve their decision-making and performance. The authors find that “directors are active consumers of advice. They rely on paid advisors particularly in their early years to acquire new skills as they learn to oversee management and function in a boardroom setting.” The authors find that directors engage unpaid advisors to help them think through “big picture questions of strategy, culture, and governance.” The paper presents evidence that corporate directors are not merely “independent experts” bringing “their own skill and experience to the board room” so much as they are “nodes in broader networks of information and expertise.” The authors also explore the implications of this finding for the selection process for corporate boards. Read more here.
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