Hillsdale College Hutchison Center for Commerce and Freedom Hosts Program on ‘America’s Opportunity Economy’
Topics included resources, regulations, entrepreneurship, and the future of America’s economy.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College’s Hutchison Center for Commerce and Freedom hosted a program on April 4 titled “America’s Opportunity Economy.” Speakers and panelists discussed resources, regulations, entrepreneurship, and the future of America’s economy.
“Resources are infinite because really resources are a function of knowledge.”
“Economic freedom is essential to a free and prosperous society,” said Charles Steele, associate professor of economics and director of the Hutchison Center. “The Hutchison Center for Commerce and Freedom seeks to advance human flourishing by promoting the ideas that make this freedom possible.”
Gale Pooley, co-author of “Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet,” spoke on “Superabundance and Future of America’s Economy.”
“Atoms without knowledge have no economic value. It is only when we add knowledge to them that they become valuable,” Pooley said. “We do live on a planet and in a universe that appear to have a finite number of atoms, but resources are infinite because really resources are a function of knowledge, and there doesn’t appear to be any upper bounds on the amount of knowledge that’s yet to be discovered. So, we argue that we really live on this infinitely bountiful planet because all of us have this potential to learn and discover and share knowledge.”
Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research spoke on “The Next American Economy.”
“So, in America today, we may not be facing outright socialism or other forms of hard collectivism, but the soft collectivism that’s fostered by interventionism as well as the economics of identity politics are very dangerous in their own way,” Gregg said. “What’s more, they need a considered response that includes but also goes beyond the strictly economic case for free markets. It’s a response that demands and involves a commitment to economic liberty. It’s also a response that stresses that false views of the human being are at the root of false and mistaken economic ideas.”
Panels addressed “Resources, Growth, and Freedom,” “Future Regulatory Challenges for Commerce,” and “Increasing Profit for American Entrepreneurs.”
The object of the Hutchison Center for Commerce and Freedom is to advance the study of the role of commerce in human flourishing. The center examines commerce not only in economic but also in historical, philosophical, cultural, and political contexts, knitting together the elements of a free society: commerce, property rights, education, and self-government.