Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his involvement in Operation Warp Speed, a uniquely successful federal government project. Richard asks how broadly applicable its lessons are, whether or not we could do something similar for cancer, and why economists and public health officials had such divergent opinions on the need to speed up the process of approving and distributing a vaccine.

Alex also discusses the Baumol effect, which he argues can explain much about rising costs in healthcare and education. Richard pushes back on the theory as a sufficient explanation, and asks whether a simple libertarian story better fits the facts, arguing that government support for these industries also plays a major role.

They then go on to talk about the rise of crypto, why America is severely under-policed, and how recent years have seen the collapse of challenges to liberal democracy.

This podcast was originally released by the Salem Center.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

• Paul Mango, Warp Speed: Inside the Operation That Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds.

• Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok, “Why Are the Prices So Damn High?”

• “Under policed” tag at Marginal Revolution.

• Richard Hanania, “The Year of Fukuyama.”