READER TREVOR DAHL WRITES:

In light of your recent column, I thought I’d share my experiences this weekend. I attended the Federalist Society’s Student Symposium at Stanford. The theme of the weekend was on the ever expanding role of the administrative state and the last panel talked about future innovation and the regulatory state. One of the panelists was Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, and he has taken a very dim view of the future. He spent his allotted time arguing that innovation outside of computer technology has basically stalled since the 1960s. He also argues that we are living in an increasingly Malthusian world of scarcer resources. Although he spent most of his time describing the “what”, he did mention one possible “why” could be the bureaucratic sclerosis that has seized most industries and a large majority of the sciences. In contrast to the dismal view of Thiel, I spoke with a local attorney in Palo Alto afterwards, an immigrant from Croatia, who argues all the predictions of permanent decline in the West are overblown. It is his contention, that twenty and thirty somethings in Europe are increasingly becoming innovators and entrepreneurs in response to the dismal job market. His view is that humans are incredibly self-reliant and will overcome the increasing burdens of government. It was an interesting contrast of world views offered by Thiel and this attorney. I suppose like all things in history it will come down to the battle between individual and state. I sure hope that you and the attorney are correct and that Thiel is wrong.

So do I.