The Mises Seminar
Today I attended the Mises Seminar in Sydney. It was organised by new kid on the block The Mises Institute of Australia. The event was very professionally organised, with a well planned agenda, a great venue, a terrific guest list, and brilliant libertarian speakers. As and when they have another such event I would encourage all libertarians to go along and have a look.
I met lots of terrific people. When I mentioned my involvement with the LDP I got an unfortuantely too typically libertarian response which is that people would like to join the LDP and vote for a candidate of the LDP if only the LDP was properly libertarian on policy X, policy Y or policy Z. Ironically many of these same people if in America would vote for Ron Paul who belongs to a political party far less libertarian than the LDP. Strange but unfortunately typical.
I would definitely hang out at one of these seminars again and I support the effort entirely. However if I was to complain about the lack of libertarian purity regarding the event it would be the obsession of most of the economic speakers with the very unlibertarian idea that fractional reserve banking should be illegal. It is the same idea that turned me off the Austrian school of economics when I first encountered it more than a decade ago. Thankfully they had one speaker, Steve Kates, who did not share this obsession. He kind of saved the day for me.
To be clear I do agree with Austrian economists when they say we should abolish central banks. This is a very libertarian proposal.
In summary libertarians can disagree on the details but should still work together where they have common cause and find agreement. So vote LDP and also support the Mises Institute of Australia.
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