Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 7pm
Madison – UW Madison Discovery Building – DeLuca Forum
330 N Orchard St, Madison, WI 53715
The Thompson Center cosponsored a debate on economic systems hosted by UW-Madison’s Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE). The debate discussed the ideas, philosophy, and practical policy questions behind socialist and social democratic systems, and compared them to capitalist economies (both in ideal form and in current practice in the US). The debate also discussed the historical and economic record of socialist and social democratic economies, and related past experience to current policy proposals.
This debate featured:
Brian Leiter, Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence, and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago Law School will speak in favor of social democracy (and perhaps eventual socialism). Dr. Leiter is an expert in moral, political and legal philosophy; constitutional law; evidence; freedom of speech and religion; and academic freedom.
Bryan Caplan, Professor Economics at George Mason University and Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center will speak in favor of capitalism. Dr. Caplan specializes in public economics, public choice, psychology and economics, public opinion, economics of the family and education, genoeconomics, and Austrian economics. A great deal of his professional work has been devoted to the philosophies of libertarianism and free-market capitalism.