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The Gilder Fellows Seminar on Economics and Entrepreneurship is going virtual this summer, and is open to all ages!  The program — typically reserved for students and young professionals — features personal instruction from George Gilder, Jay Richards, Gale Pooley, Scott Powell, and other Discovery Institute friends and allies. The uncertainties of COVID-19 made a virtual program the best option this year.  But we’ve decided to make the program available to everyone, so don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity!

If you or someone you know would benefit from a better understanding of the intersection of free markets and technology, the ongoing debate about capitalism vs. socialism, how to compassionately care for the homeless or those in poverty, or the best ways to defeat the nihilistic ideology of scarcity, you won’t want to miss your chance to learn directly from these renowned experts. All registrants will also receive a digital copy of George Gilder’s book Gaming AI.

The virtual seminar will be two half-day, morning sessions on August 26 and 27. Lectures and discussions explore questions such as:

  • Is free enterprise still the best system for human flourishing?
  • How do we cultivate the “spirit of enterprise”?
  • What do cultures need to alleviate poverty and create wealth?
  • Why have policies meant to address poverty failed, and what are the alternatives?
  • How should we respond to the resurgence of interest in socialism?
  • How does capitalism relate to the Judeo-Christian tradition?
  • What makes the information economy unique?
  • What are the promises and perils of future technology?
  • How do we prepare for a future of smart machines and artificial intelligence?

Where

Online Event
Spread the word with #GilderFellows on social media!

When

August 26-27, 2021
9 AM to 1 PM (PT)

Cost

$49

Registration

Questions?

Email Jackson Meyer at jmeyer@discovery.org 

Schedule

August 26
9 – 9:15 amIntroduction:
Steve Buri
9:15 am – 12 pmGale Pooley: An Introduction to George Gilder’s Information Theory of Economics: Wealth is Knowledge, Growth is Learning, and Money is Time
George Gilder: Life After Capitalism
Jay Richards: Money, Greed, and God: Self-Interest vs. Selfishness, Altruism vs. Greed
John West: Survival of the Fittest or Survival of the Statist? Darwin’s Real Legacy for Economics
12 – 1 pmVirtual Lunch Hangout

August 27
9 – 9:15 amIntroduction: Jay Richards
9:15 am – 12 pmGeorge Gilder: Gaming AI
Scott Powell: Woke Capitalism: What’s Going On?!
Matt Scholz: Biological Information Systems and Medicine
Steve Bradley: The Future of Entrepreneurship
12 pmClosing Remarks:
Steve Buri: George Gilder into the Future
12 – 1 pmVirtual Lunch Hangout

Faculty

George Gilder

Senior Fellow and Co-Founder of Discovery Institute
George Gilder is Chairman of Gilder Publishing LLC, located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A co-founder of Discovery Institute, Mr. Gilder is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth & Poverty, and also directs Discovery's Technology and Democracy Project. His latest book, Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (2018), Gilder waves goodbye to today's Internet.  In a rocketing journey into the very near-future, he argues that Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet.

Jay W. Richards

Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is the Director of the DeVos Center and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, and Editor-at-Large of The Stream. Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; The Privileged Planet with Guillermo Gonzalez, coming out in a second edition in 2024; The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe with Douglas Axe and William Briggs; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with James Robison, is Fight the Good Fight: How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture War.

Gale Pooley

Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & Poverty
Gale L. Pooley teaches U.S. economic history at Utah Tech University. He has taught economics and statistics at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. Dr. Pooley serves on the board of HumanProgress.org.

Scott S. Powell

Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth and Poverty
Scott Powell has worked in the corporate, academic, and research worlds. He has taught at two universities, served on two corporate boards, and been an entrepreneur—founding two companies. He has been Senior Fellow at the  Discovery Institute since 2012, after a six-year affiliation with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has written three books and over 350 published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Newsmax, The Federalist ,USA Today, Barron’s Financial, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, and some 50 other newspapers and journals in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He delivered the valedictory address at his graduation from the University of Chicago with honors (B.A. and M.A.) and received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston University.

Steven J. Buri

President, Discovery Institute
Steven J. Buri was appointed President of Discovery Institute in December 2011. He joined the Institute in April 2000 as Executive Director and was named Vice President in 2005. Mr. Buri has served in various capacities in government at the local, state and federal levels. Steve was born and raised in the small farming community of Colfax, Washington and is a 1994 graduate of Washington State University (Double Major-Political Science, Criminal Justice). He has been a Seattle-Area resident for nearly 30 years.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

Matthew Scholz

Matt is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Oisín Bio. A serial entrepreneur with a background in computer security and immunology, Matt is also the founder and CEO of Immusoft, a biotech firm developing a breakthrough technology that will turn a patient's B cells into miniature drug factories. Matthew speaks and presents regularly to university, association and scientific audiences, including those at his alma mater, the University of Washington. He served for several years as a mentor to recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a program that awarded grants to some of the world’s brightest scientific minds under age 20.

Steve Bradley

Steven Bradley is the Steven Chair of Entrepreneurship & Private Enterprise at Baylor University and was recently the Founding Faculty Director of Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship & Free Enterprise. 

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