Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. Today is Monday, April 2nd. This is your host Anastasia Iglova.

Last week, Olaf Gursman, for news editor of the Financial Times Deutschland, spoke at the Cato Institute about the role of corporate social responsibility

in the business economy.

Olaf is also author of the Cato book Cowboy Capitalism, which compares European social and economic policies to those of the United States

and finds that the welfare states of continental Europe offer no meaningful advantage over the

American brand of capitalism.

For today's podcast I pick Olaf's brain about corporate stewards of the environment, immigration

and integration, and what's wrong with old Europe.

You spoke a lot at your forum about corporate social responsibility.

Is there any validity to this concept?

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR as it's called is highly popular among executives nowadays.

Most major companies nowadays say they are actually behaving in a socially responsible

way or they're aiming at it.

And I think one has to be very skeptical if you hear

executives saying something like this because I think that's highly problematic if managers start to get into this kind of business they are not hired for.

You made the point in your speech that executives are not qualified to make decisions about how to

improve the world but who then is qualified is there some monopoly and who can

make decisions that impact the environment no I mean on an individual basis some private entrepreneur or some private citizen

decides that he wants a further promote some social ends like fighting for the environment, saving the environment, fighting against poverty.

It's certainly a very honorable thing to do and there's nothing to say against it.

The same is true if the Democratic majority decides that we want to say send

development aid to the third world, nothing to say against it.

...