Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Business and Society

June 28, 2012

Growing Detroit

Some time back I argued that urban farming and the entrepreneurial spirit in Detroit was something that should be embraced rather than dismissed. Detroit mayor Dave Bing has given verbal support for urban and community farms in the past, but in many cases some regulatory hurdles remained and he was somewhat skeptical at times about the importance of large scale urban agriculture projects. Continue Reading...
June 22, 2012

Food Trucks and Free Enterprise

The ongoing debate about food trucks here in Grand Rapids took a step forward this week, as this past Tuesday the city commission “voted unanimously to amend its zoning ordinance so that food trucks can operate on private property for extended periods of time.” Continue Reading...
June 20, 2012

From Success to Service

In my Acton Commentary this week, “Good Work Never Ends,” I look at the example of two local personalities, John Izenbaard of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Fred Carl Hamilton of Wyoming, Michigan, to argue that “the good work of service to others ought never end as long as we live.” Continue Reading...
May 23, 2012

Valuing Innovation, Not Smallness

Back in February I argued that since bias is inherent in institutions we should encourage the government to be biased toward entrepreneurship and away from corporatism. The result of such a bias would be to favor newer—and presumably smaller—businesses over more established—and presumably larger—ones, thereby reducing the levels of regulatory capture and crony capitalism (at least in theory). Continue Reading...