I’m in Las Vegas attending FreedomFest. The self-described libertarian event is billed as the “world’s largest gathering of free minds” and features many panels that appear to be very interesting.

There are many speakers this week from everything from politics to finance. Unlike many other conferences on the “center-right”, this conference is more likely than most to actually come up with solutions to the political problems we’re facing. Whereas many of the conferences, such as CPAC as the biggest example, are little more than cheerleading events for the GOP that are populated by college students.

One of the panels I was able to catch today was a great one put on by the Atlas Society on entrepreneurship and how it is in decline. Because entrepreneurship is in decline, American individualism is on decline. More and more Americans look to the state to provide needs and services.

A leading reason why entrepreneurship is in decline is becaue many people, especially Millennials, see cronyism as capitalism. When conservatives try to defend cronyism instead of advocating against it, they’re unwittingly abetting the growth of socialism. Once the socialist state conditions Americans to be good little serfs, there goes the whole spirit of innovation in everything from art to the culture.

One of the big things we like to stress at The Hayride is how politics flows down stream from the culture. This is an example of that. An entrepeneural society is an innovative, vibrant, and free society.

Finally, economic freedom is a must in order to have social freedom and vice versa. That’s the biggest take away from this panel.