COSM 2021 is fast approaching. On the weekend of November 10-12, titans of the tech world will descend on Bellevue, Washington, to discuss the future of technology. Topics to be covered include blockchain, NFTs, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and Big Questions like “Is Technology Soaring or Slumping?”
This year, COSM will include Discovery Institute’s own Gale Pooley, senior fellow at the Center on Wealth & Poverty.
This isn’t Pooley’s first round at COSM. He addressed the COSM crowd in 2019 with a talk entitled, “Killing Thanos – Defeating the Ideology of Scarcity” (video posted at the end of this article). This November, Pooley’s topic is “The End of Inflation.”
The economics professor has spent his career lifting our spirits about the state of the world. His has been a voice of hope in opposition to the prophets of doom who warn of a dark future burdened by overpopulation and scarce resources.
Toward that end, Pooley is the co-creator of the Simon Abundance Index, named in honor of economist Julian Simon, who challenged Paul Ehrlich‘s claims in the latter half of the twentieth century that mankind would run out of resources as the population increased. To the contrary, Simon argued, data suggests the opposite: resources abound as the population grows.
The Simon Abundance Index “measures the change in abundance of resources over a period of time.” It is a much larger-scale examination of economic progress than Simon himself examined, including far more factors such as food, energy, and materials.
The 2021 Simon Abundance Index found that “the Earth was 608 percent more abundance in 2020 than it was in 1980,” despite an increase in population of over 3 billion.
Currently an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus, he has previously taught economics at Alfaisal University in Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University in Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. He completed his Ph.D. in 2000, defending his dissertation on the Knowledge Acquisition Preferences of the CEOs of the Inc. 500, at the University of Idaho.
He is also the founder of Analytix Group and a board member of HumanProgress.org.
In an age of ever-evolving technology and the ethical issues that arise alongside, you won’t want to miss the wealth of knowledge that will be shared over the course of these three days. Register now to reserve your spot for COSM 2021.