Sean Gabb The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today announces the title for its 2008 Chris R. Tame Memorial Essay Prize competition. This Prize is funded by a generous grant from The PROMIS Unit of Primary Care and is in honour of Chris R. Tame (1949-2006) Founder and first Director of the Libertarian Alliance. The

I hope that Patrick and I will have another of our violent agreements about this: No free market economist thinks "greed is always good." What we think is good are institutions that play to the self-interest of private actors by rewarding them for serving the public, not just themselves. We believe that's what genuinely free markets do. Market exchanges are mutually beneficial. When the law messes...

David Davis 4.15pm-5.30pm Session 4 “Future Imperfect”: Tech Revolutions That Might Happen and Their Consequences… Speaker: David Friedman (Professor of Law at Santa Clara University; author, The Machinery of Freedom) Moderator: Dr. Sean Gabb (Director, Libertarian Alliance) [Floating (time to be arranged): The Great British Road Pricing Debate:Free Market Incrementalism or Just ...

Another good example of the free market in actionLloyds TSB have announced they will provide Islamic business accounts, which conform and adhere to Sharia law.This is a good example of the free market in action. Lloyds TSB have noticed a demand for services and are creating the supply to meet it. Their competitors, like HSBC, Barclays, RSB, etc. may soon follow suit, since they may lose market sha...

Never mind that the Libertarian Alliance isn't holding a conference this year because there's another conference to take its place. It's a one-day, less expensive event on Saturday 22 October that's being held in the same venue - the National Liberal Club in London. For £65 you get a day of libertarian speakers and dinner at the club, too. Among the libertarian fig...

Cameron's Conservatives seem to be fair weather friends of capitalism, even the FT's in-house free market philosopher, Martin Wolff, has abandoned free enterprise for banker socialism. Besides Guido only Heffer in the papers remains a strident capitalist tool, managing to quote Ayn Rand approvingly this morning. Ruth Lea, once a Thatcherite free market scourge of wet Conservatism, seems to have ta...

If at all possible, it would be nice to have a free market in everything. You can't really have a free market in public goods or core functions of the state*, but that's only five or ten per cent of the economy or overall activity. The only other half-way sensible thing that a government can do is redistribution and/or subsidising merit goods, i.e. education and health. Given our startin...

Director’s Bulletin 14th February 2009Introduction Libertarian Alliance Publications Media Appearances Speaking Engagements Libertarian Alliance Events Libertarian Alliance Book Recommendation Libertarian Alliance Conference Negative Scanner Needed Introduction It is cold. I am working hard to finish a book before April. My Baby Bear is now running about the house with more hands than the av...

This statement, from Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, is priceless: Instead of celebrating the Fourth of July next year Americans will be celebrating Bastille Day; the free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America... The action proposed today by the Treasury Department will take away the free market and institute socialism in America. The American taxpayer has been mislead throu...

Gary Younge paints a portrait of an ideology. Greenspan’s ideology was unfettered, free-market capitalism. Its understanding of how the world works was rooted in self-interest. It was a value system that placed the private before the public, the individual before the collective, and the wealth of the few before the welfare of the many. Given that Greenspan