Adriana Lukas - "Rescuing Privacy from the Internet"

Since founding the Big Blog Company in early 2003, Adriana Lukas has advised companies in Europe and the US on how to make sense of the web and 'social media' hype and if and how to use blogs, feeds, wikis and tags, social networks in their communications and beyond. She is also working on the Project VRM and runs the Mine! project, desiging a tool that helps individuals manage their personal data online. She is an editor of Samizdata.

Fed up with people claiming privacy is dead? Privacy is to identity what freedom is to morality - one can't exist without the other. Adriana Lukas describes how recent developments on the Internet have destroyed our ability to maintain private information and how we can get it back.

Mark Pennington - "Democracy and the Deliberative Conceit"

Mark Pennington is Reader in Public Policy and Political Economy at Queen Mary, University of London. He has written *Rescuing Social Capital from Social Democracy* (with John Meadowcroft) and *Planning and the Political Market: Public Choice and the Politics of Government Failure.* His most recent work, *Towards the Minimal State,* will be published soon.

Dr Pennington discusses the theories of deliberative democracy, including the work of Jurgen Habermas. He argues from a Hayekian perspective that the case against the social democratic state rests with the superior capacity of markets to extend communicative rationality beyond the realm of verbal discourse. Deliberative democrats privilege discourse above other more successful forms of communication and expression instantiated in free market institutions.

Jan Lester - "A Pre-Propertarian Theory of Libertarian Liberty"

Dr Jan Lester is the author of *Escape from Leviathan:* *Liberty**, Welfare and Anarchy Reconciled* (2000) and *The Dictionary of Anti-Politics* (forthcoming). He has also written two philosophical dramatic dialogues: *The Naked Politician* and *The Philosophical Genie* (available on request; performances encouraged).

The liberty that libertarians promote is not inherently about self-ownership and private property. A pre-propertarian theory of libertarian liberty is possible. And from this theory, self-ownership and private property are derivable as contingently normal but not inevitable. This pre-propertarian theory of liberty explains how libertarians are not “just propertarians without a real interest in liberty”. It also enables solutions to various traditional paradoxes and novel problem cases that arise with private-property libertarianism.

Scott Sumner and Kevin Dowd: "What caused the financial crisis?"

Scott Sumner is Professor of Economics at Bentley University. His research interests include the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression, liquidity traps, the use of market expectations in guiding monetary policy, and the history of macroeconomics. He blogs at the Money Illusion. Kevin Dowd is Emeritus Professor of Finance at Nottingham University and a Senior Fellow at the Cobden Center. His research interests are in risk management, free banking and financial regulation, macro and monetary economics, and political economy.

They discuss the causes of the recent financial crisis, and whether it was a failure of short-term monetary policy or an exposure of more fundamental flaws in modern economic theory. Martin Cox chairs the discussion.

Deirdre McCloskey - "Liberty and Dignity"

Deirdre N. McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was Visiting Tinbergen Professor (2002-2006) of Philosophy, Economics, and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Trained at Harvard as an economist, she has written fourteen books and edited seven more, and has published some three hundred and sixty articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, feminism, ethics, and law. In this talk, she discusses the ethical foundations of the modern world and how free trade and bourgeois values help to generate the conditions in which human dignity may flourish.

Deirdre McCloskey - "It's Good to be a Don if You're Going to Be a Deirdre: Gender Crossing in Academia"

Deirdre N. McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was Visiting Tinbergen Professor (2002-2006) of Philosophy, Economics, and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Trained at Harvard as an economist, she has written fourteen books and edited seven more , and has published some three hundred and sixty articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, feminism, ethics, and law.

In this talk, Prof. McCloskey discusses her experience of crossing gender during her academic career and the unique challenges she has faced while doing so.

Scott Sumner - "It's Complicated: The Great Depression in the US"

Scott Sumner received a BA in economics from the University of Wisconsin and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. Since 1982 he has taught economics at Bentley University, 8 miles west of Boston. His research interests include the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression, liquidity traps, the use of market expectations in guiding monetary policy, and the history of macroeconomics. He blogs at the Money Illusion.

In his talk, Sumner argues that the Great Depression in America had two main causes. The initial contraction was triggered by a big drop in aggregate demand caused by worldwide gold hoarding (especially in America and France). Then the recovery was slowed by a large drop in aggregate supply resulting from President Roosevelt's high wage policy. He also discusses the Depression in other countries, and some modern parallels.

For the video of our next event, a discussion on the causes on the causes of the current financial crisis, featuring Scott Sumner and Kevin Dowd, click here.

For the rest of our videos, click here.

Language of Liberty

For three years now, I (Nick Cowen) have been attending an English camp each summer run by the Language of Liberty Institute. I highly recommend this experience to all libertarian students and graduates with an interest in teaching. It involves meeting lots of young people in Eastern Europe (and now parts of East Asia and Africa), encouraging them to practise their conversational English and being willing to impart some aspect of the philosophy, social theory or economics underlying free societies. Besides being great practice for a variety of skills, it is a great way to make new friends and learn things for yourself. Teaching places are unfunded (although there might well be appropriate funding opportunities available within the network of libertarian societies) but the accomodation and expenses are relatively cheap. Check out their website for more details. This is their latest promotional video.

Dennis C. Mueller - "Religion and Liberalism"

Dennis C. Mueller is Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna. He previously taught for many years at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Public Choice, Profits in the Long Run, Constitutional Democracy, and others. He is a past president of the Public Choice society, the Southern Economic Association, and the Industrial Organization Society. Here he discusses the relationship between individual liberties and constitutional rights, and how religions can pose threats to both individual rights and liberties.

Don't Vote

In response to our more collectivist friends over at Liberal Conspiracy, we present our general election talk by Christian Michel - "Why I am not a democrat (I prefer freedom)." President of the Libertarian International, he makes the case for alternative forms of social change and for refusing to participate in the exploitation inherent in state power.



Here is the discussion that followed:

Stephen Davies - Time to Revive ‘Individualism’?

Stephen Davies is a Program Officer at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. Prior to joining IHS, he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr. Davies received his PhD in history from St. Andrews University in Scotland and recently completed a book on modernity and the history of the world since 1250.

In recent years there has been a clear revival of a political philosophy or coherent set of beliefs, which currently tends to go by the name of ‘libertarianism’ or (among intellectuals) ‘classical liberalism’. This tends to be identified with a particular economic perspective, centred on free markets, but in fact that is only one part of it and in many ways a secondary one. At the moment there are two related problems or obstacles. One is that these ideas tend to be associated with conservatism and a set of other ideas, which in fact are often opposed to them. The other apparently trivial but in fact significant is that of the name given to them. The argument is that it is time to revive the label that they had in the past, that of ‘Individualism’. The history of this term and movement is set out and the benefits of reviving it. The application of the ideas to the present are also set out.

In the video below, Stephen Davies answers questions on his thesis that classical liberals should call themselves (again) individualists.

Hicham Yezza - 'Arbitrary Detention in the United Kingdom'

The Speak Easy is a regular forum organised by the Oxford University Liberal Democrats, Compass Oxford and the Oxford Libertarian Society, with discussion topics of interest to liberals of all kinds.

Hicham Yezza is a writer and activist. He has edited Ceasefire magazine since its founding in 2003 and is also a founding member of the Nottingham Peace Movement. In this talk, he discusses his experience starting in 2008 of several long periods of arbitrary detention under the Government's anti-terrorist and immigration powers, as well as the Home Office's attempt to deport him.

John Meadowcroft - 'How Markets Solve Social Problems'

John Meadowcroft is Lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College London. He is the author of The Ethics of the Market (Palgrave, 2005), co-author with Mark Pennington of Rescuing Social Capital from Social Democracy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2007), and editor of Prohibitions (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2008). He is also Series Editor of the twenty volume Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series published by Continuum from 2009 to 2011, to which he is contributing the volume of James M. Buchanan.

In this talk he argues that markets can, do and should solve social problems, but to allow them to do so requires the rejection of the idea that elite political actors should determine what constitutes a social problem and then select the correct solution. It will be argued that a market approach offers the prospect of genuine popular empowerment that political processes are unable to deliver.

Recorded at Christ Church, University of Oxford, 25th February 2010

Jock Coats - An Introduction to Mutualism

Mutualism is a left branch of the libertarian family tree that particularly draws on the tradition of the American Individualist Anarchists. As its best known contemporary exponent, Kevin Carson, describes, its philosophy is to "build the structure of the new society within the shell of the old" before we try to break the shell. Jock Coats, an Oxford based Mutualist, looks at some of the possibilities and practicalities of what he prefers to call "viral anarchism".

Chandran Kukathas - 'The Labour Theory of Justice: A Critique of G.A.Cohen'

Chandran Kukathas holds the Chair in Political Theory in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He previously taught at the University of Utah and at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author of Hayek and Modern Liberalism (1989), Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (with Philip Pettit 1990) and The Liberal Archipelago (2003).

G.A.Cohen has defended a conception of justice as equality, according to which departures from equality are warranted only when people are rewarded for making greater effort or undertaking more burdensome work. This talk presents a critical analysis of this view of justice, and of the presuppositions that underpin it. The Q&A following the talk is below.

Jamie Whyte - 'The Financial Crisis: too much freedom or too much regulation?'

Jamie Whyte is a former lecturer of Philosophy at Cambridge University and winner of Analysis journal’s prestigious ‘best article by a philosopher under 30’ award. He has written extensively for The Times newspaper and had several books published including ‘Crimes Against Logic’, ‘Bad Thoughts’ and ‘A Load of Blair’. He is famous for dissecting confused logic and public political nonsense.

In this talk, he discusses whether the financial crisis was the result of too much freedom in banking or too much regulation. Jamie also scrutinizes the new regulatory proposals and examines their likely effects.

Yaron Brook - 'The Morality of Investing and Financial Markets'

Yaron Brook is the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, which promotes the novels of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. He served in the Israeli Army military intelligence, is a former professor with a PHD in Finance and cofounded and is managing director and chairman of BH Equity research, a financial advisory firm. He frequently features as a radio and TV having appeared on Fox Business News, Fox News(*Glenn Beck*,*The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera*), CNN (*Talkback Live*), CNBC (*CNBC Reports, Closing Bell*and*On the Money*), and C-SPAN.

Dr Yaron Brook explains how and why it is moral and appropriate to be a professional investor or in the financial markets, contrary to popular opinion which holds that investors are just feeding off of those “real capitalists” who make products. He argues that, in fact, professional investing, can be a profoundly moral profession.

Co-host: Capitox capitox.com/

The two videos beneath are the Q&A session which followed his talk.

Brian Micklethwait, Tony Brown, Chris Mounsey - 'What YOU can do for liberty'

Chris Mounsey is leader of the Libertarian Party UK and blogs at the Devils Kitchen, which was voted the second most popular libertarian blog by readers of Total Politics magazine. Brian Micklethwait was a pamphleteer for the Libertarian Alliance and now blogs at Samizdata. Tony Brown is the editor of Libertarian Press. Here they discuss how to spread libertarian ideas in the 21st century.

Helen Evans & Shane Frith - 'Alternatives to Government-Run Healthcare'

The ubiquitous assumption in British political discourse is that state control of healthcare is a necessary policy to ensure universal access to high quality care, free from profit-motivated decision making. Our speakers challenge this assumption, arguing that evidence from voluntary schemes around the world present a compelling case for rejecting the deference to state-run systems of healthcare. Arguing from her experience as a senior nurse in the NHS, Helen Evans tackles the reform of healthcare provision, criticising the rationing and bureacracy of NICE, and the special interests served by the state's position as a monopolist in healthcare. Shane Frith discusses alternatives means of funding healthcare, in particular examining the possibilities of health savings accounts and private medical insurance as means of lowering costs, reducing moral hazard (the tendency to overconsume healthcare because it's 'free' to the end user) and encouraging medical innovation. The second video is the Q&A session following the talks.

Dr. Helen Evans is the Founder and Director of Nurses for Reform, a UK think tank that campaigns for more consumer-led and sustainable healthcare systems in Britain and throughout around the world. A senior nurse with more than twenty years experience in the NHS, her career has seen her work in some of Britain's leading hospitals, including the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, the Royal London Hospital NHS Trust and St. Bartholomew's Hospital. She holds a degree in Health Management, and was awarded a Ph.D in Health Economics from Brunel University in 2006. She is a Health Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, and has recently published Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS? via the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Shane Frith is the Director of Progressive Vision, a London-based think tank that promotes classical liberalism and free markets, and founder of Doctor's Alliance, a pan-European network of medical professionals seeking better ways to deliver healthcare. Formerly Chairman of the International Young Democratic Union, he is active in centre-right politics in the UK and his native New Zealand, and has worked at Reform, the Centre for Policy Studies and Open Europe in recent years.


Recorded at Christ Church, University of Oxford on 3rd November 2009

Eric Mack - 'Q&A on Natural Rights and Property'

Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, Eric Mack is a leading classical liberal political philosopher, with special interests in the foundations of moral rights and property rights. This is the second half of his session with the Oxford Libertarian Society, where he defends his views from challenges ranging from issues of environmentalism, children's rights, the concept of freedom and intuitionism.

Recorded at Christ Church, University of Oxford, on 18th November 2009