19th Annual CRC-CPPE Fall Ethics Symposium: The Ethics of Hope and Change
Date and Time
Monday, October 28, 2024
9:00 am to 4:30 pm
Location
This is an in-person event.
Contact
Kyle Swan
kyle.swan@csus.edu
(916) 278-5011
Website
Cost
Free
Many Americans, including and perhaps especially younger ones, are pessimistic
about their future prospects. Recent polls suggest that most are doubtful that today’s young people will be better off than their parents. The public’s trust in our political, economic, and legal institutions are at or near historic lows.
To what extent are these perceptions accurate? Is a once dynamic society fizzling out? Speakers this year will help make sense of the data and identify bright spots that should fuel some optimism, focus on some problems that remain, and what we can do to solve them. Speakers this year will help make sense of the data, identify bright spots that should fuel some optimism, focus on some problems that remain, and suggest how we can solve them.
Schedule
- 9:00 to 9:20 am - Opening and Introductory Remarks
- 9:30 to 11:50 am - Julie Sze, American Studies, UC Davis
- 11:00 am to 12:20 pm - Gale Pooley, Economics, Utah Tech: Superabundance
- We live in a superabundant world, where on average every additional human being creates more resources – more value – than he or she consumes. This superabundance is obvious when we look at the "time prices" of goods over time. This relationship between population and abundance is counterintuitive, but true. Why? Because more people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test these inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living.
- Lunch
- 1:30 to 2:50 pm - Kyla Scanlon, Independent Financial Commentator: In This Economy?
- How do we reconcile economic data and economic reality? Why doesn’t the economy… make sense? This talk will walk through key economic indicators and how they apply to our lives. We talk about the issues with economic data, the problems we face as an economy, and what we can do to solve them.
- 3:00 to 4:20 pm - Harry Blain, Political Science, Sacramento State: Politics and the Supreme Court: The Search for Informed Pessimism
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- In recent years, many scholars and commentators have displayed a pessimism bordering on despair when analyzing the U.S. Supreme Court. In February 2024, Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Times editorial board, published an article on “The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law,” which included several interviews with law professors across the country who see the Supreme Court as so politicized that they can barely bring themselves to discuss it objectively or dispassionately in the classroom. This presentation asks whether such pessimism is well-grounded, and it argues that while, in a democratic society, pessimism toward an unelected judiciary is surely a healthy thing, it is currently based on two exaggerated assumptions about the Supreme Court. While seeking to correct these exaggerated assumptions, with reference to its recent cases, I discuss how we can develop a more informed critique of the Court, its political biases, and its role in society today.
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- 4:20 to 4:30 pm - Closing Remarks