Saturday 12 August 2006

Fomenting free market revolution from the unlikeliest base

Wall Street Journal has a piece on the Mises Institute and its quiet achievements, and what the hell it's doing in Alabama of all places. As the author himself says, "Growing up next door in Georgia, I never thought of Alabama as a beacon of intellect." Who would? However:
The Mises Institute counts free-marketers from more than 30 states and at least 23 countries among its faculty. Its students' homes are equally far-flung: Poland, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France and China this summer alone. "Every one of them is an idealist in a very courageous way," Mr. Tucker said." A lot of people think it's silly to be an idealist these days. But Mises always taught that ideas are the only weapons we have against despotism.

For years, socialist European governments deemed those weapon-ideas dangerous. Intellectual dissidents had to leave the Continent to learn and reimport the ideas that classical liberals like Mises and Hayek -- and, going further back, Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Jean-Baptiste Say, et al. -- exported to America in the first place.

The dispersal of Europeans from Mises and other U.S. institutions is having an effect. Free-market think tanks are at last emerging in such traditionally statist places as Belgium, France and Romania. "It's a little funny, I think," said Alberto Mingardi, an Italian free-marketer who has visited the Mises Institute twice. "It's a little funny, I think," said Alberto Mingardi, an Italian free-marketer who has visited the Mises Institute twice. "How can you even imagine meeting somebody in Europe who knows about the Auburn [Alabama] Tigers?"
Read on here.

And do visit the Mises Institute online, and check out all the amazing online resources: online books and e-texts (an enormous and invaluable resource -- an easy way to get books you'd otherwise never see in NZ ... and they're free!), Mises Radio, Mises blog, Austrian Study Guide ....

And check out my own favourite Misesian, George Reisman at his own blog. His latest is on Free Market Science versus Government Science. Great reading.

LINKS: 'Von Mises Finds a Sweet Home in Alabama' - Wall Street Journal.
Mises Institute website
Free market science vs. government science - George Reisman's blog

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