The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades

By Keli'i Akina, Ph.D., President/CEO Grassroot Institute, July 15, 2024

Greetings from Las Vegas!

You might be wondering what has brought me to Hawaii’s unofficial sister city. I’m excited to say that I’m here to celebrate liberty.

Every year, some of the most influential thinkers and speakers on the topic of freedom gather at FreedomFest — an annual convention that explores all aspects of liberty, from economic to cultural.

Presenters this year include Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, publisher Steve Forbes, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and rapper Ice-T.

I’m playing a small role as a speaker on a panel about retirement states, but I’m also here to learn and make new friends.

A major highlight this year is a longtime friend of mine: author Gale Pooley, a former BYU-Hawaii professor and member of the Grassroot Institute’s Board of Scholars.

Pooley and his co-author Marian L. Tupy are the innovative minds behind the book “Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.” As the title suggests, it is deeply optimistic about the future. More than that, it is a scholarly contradiction of the myth that population growth must lead to scarcity.

In “Superabundance,” Pooley and Tupy looked at the prices of goods, commodities and services over the past 200 years of population growth and found that the earth’s growing population has not depleted existing resources. Instead, resource abundance has increased faster than the population because people on average create more value than they consume.

This is largely due to human ingenuity that helps people overcome shortages, grow the economy and actually increase our standard of living. This is the “superabundance” of the title.

However, superabundance requires more than just the ability to innovate. It also requires freedom. Without the freedoms to exchange ideas, trade goods, invest, make a profit and simply pursue your own goals, superabundance is stifled.

In short, people create value, but only if they are free to do so.

Unfortunately, not everyone is prepared to embrace the promise of freedom and superabundance. But here at FreedomFest, Gale’s book is practically required reading. It won the festival’s Leonard E. Read Book Award, and is the subject of its own special session. It seems like everyone is talking about “Superabundance” and what it means for our planet.

In The New York Times, business columnist Peter Coy wrote that “what makes ‘Superabundance’ more than a reiteration of cornucopian optimism is the tables and charts the authors have put together showing exactly how much better life has gotten because of technological progress and trade.”

Psychologists Jordan Peterson, author of the best-seller “12 Rules for Life,” advised: “Read this book. It’s a valid antidote to demoralization, cynicism and hopelessness.”

On X, journalist John Stossel highlighted Pooley and Tupy’s work with a video about why population doomsayers are wrong. Elon Musk shared Stossel’s video with an enthusiastic “I agree!”

The message of “Superabundance” is important, especially when one considers how much the younger generation has been influenced by the pessimism of the scarcity myth.

Here in Las Vegas, there is a palpable sense of optimism and excitement about the future, and I think that “Superabundance” is one of the reasons for that.

Congratulations to Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy for their well-deserved award. We’re so proud that you are part of the Grassroot family.
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This commentary was Keli‘i Akina’s weekly “President’s Corner” column for July 13, 2024. If you would like to have his columns emailed to you on a regular basis, please call 808-864-1776 or email info@grassrootinstitute.org.