By G. Warren Nutter
In his 1974 Bicentennial lecture, the economist G. Warren Nutter examines how America’s founding economic principles have evolved over two centuries. Dr. Nutter explores Adam Smith’s influence on the founders and the political system they designed, which prioritized free markets and voluntary exchange and placed strict limits on government’s economic role. Over time, however, this emphasis on individual liberty, private property, and limited government began to compete with increasing public demands for government intervention. Generated less by market failures than by growing prosperity, these demands reflected a shift in social values that prioritized security and equality above economic freedom. Dr. Nutter also chronicles how over time, courts, contract law, and the economic institutions that once reinforced individual autonomy gave way to a new ethos of state-driven economic management.
This lecture isn’t simply a history lesson—it’s a warning. Dr. Nutter contends that America has steadily drifted from its revolutionary economic foundations, risking the very freedoms that made its prosperity possible. He challenges the notion that government is the best solution to market inefficiencies, cautioning that unchecked expansion of state power could stifle the dynamism that defined American enterprise at its inception.
