"The Free Market and the Common Good: Wilhelm Röpke and the Future of the Humane Economy"

ISI National Leadership Conference
Saturday, April 12, 2008

Location
The Columbia Club
121 Monument Circle
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Directions

This event is complimentary, and open to all ISI members and supporters.

Program Overview
It was assumed that the fall of the Berlin Wall would usher in a golden age of global capitalism that would be welcomed by all. On the way towards this capitalist nirvana, however, mega-corporations rushed to fill the vacuum left by inept socialist planners. Thinkers on both Right and Left began questioning the wisdom of exchanging local autonomy and customs for global corporate governance, highlighting the urgent need for a real alternative to the siren songs of both Big Government and Big Business.

Wilhelm Röpke's unique, but largely ignored, "humane" brand of market economics provides just such an alternative vision. Röpke maintained that sustaining vital market competition requires certain firmly settled virtues that would work to preserve the market from degeneration: virtues that only come from the just traditions of local communities. This conference brings together a compelling cadre of renowned scholars to explore the proper human scale of economic and social life and other central features of the Röpkeian project that are so pressing today. Join us in Indianapolis to examine these vital topics and the questions they raise.

Attendance is free and open to ISI members and supporters.

For further details about this event, please email indy2008@isi.org, or telephone John Joseph Shanley at (800) 526-7022, ext. 122.