First week on the road
I’m writing these lines sitting in my room in a very nice hotel in posh Chelsea, London. However, with the Free Market Road Show, things are not as glamorous as they seem…
In any case, last Monday April 13th, the 2015 Free Market Road Show launched in beautiful Ljubljana (Slovenia). The first week of the Road Show was travelled by land.
The trip to Ljubljana is simply spectacular. The landscape of both countries (Austria and Slovenia)is magnificent. You travel between mountains, alongside lakes, forests are all around you, and little fairytale towns are everywhere.
In Ljubljana we joined forces with the newly-formed Visio Institute. The organization of the event went perfectly and the level of the panels was very good. As both Barbara Kolm and Tanja Stumberger mentioned, the FMRS is indeed a hub for more and more think tanks to cooperate, synergize, and create value.
Tuesday 14th was the turn of Bratislava. That stop was characterized by the almost unanimous emphasis on entrepreneurship in both panels. There’s clearly something vibrant about Slovakia — although its current government seems eager to sabotage it. Our partner there was INESS, an institute known for their rigorous work. By the way, in cooperation with them, the Austrian Economics Center is launching The Price of The State in Austria.
Wednesday we didn’t travel since the event took place in Vienna. The debate between the economic spokespersons of Austria’s political parties was intense. However, I found Erich Weede’s analysis regarding the conditions of economic growth and his views on immigration absolutely worthy of attention.
I would also like to mention another very important feature of the event. The venue was the Industrial Union, which is an impressive place (take a look at Christopher Ohmeyer’s pictures if you don’t believe me). And what is absolutely delightful about the place is that is one of the last venues in Europe with functioning “paternoster” elevators. They’re just lovely.
Prague was next — and we went there on Thursday in the morning. Franz Kafka wrote that Prague was “a little mother with claws”. To me, it definitely is. But this visit was special because I was caught not only by its beauty but also by the ideas that were discussed.
First things first. The FMRS stop in Prague was an effort done by many institutions and individuals. The institutions were Prism Group, Cevro Institute, European Students for Liberty (Czech Republic), and the Liberal Institute. Among the individuals who helped us, knowing that one always runs the risk of forgetting people, I would like to mention Dan Urban (from Prism), Bohumir Zidek and Luca Bertoletti (currently interning at the Austrian Economics Center), Lucie Lotkova and Jan Skapa (from the Czech branch of ESFL), and Prof. Josef Sima (from Cevro).
Both panels were of a very high level. The first one started with a keynote by Prof. Ekkart Zimmermann. He talked about the importance for institutions to compete. Unfortunately, as Zimmermann explained, universities are very far from a competitive situation. The metaphor he used was: “We have at least ten leagues of football teams and only one league of universities”.
The second panel dealt with entrepreneurship. As it will be a constant during this Road Show, most of these panels are comprised almost completely of actual entrepreneurs. This really sets another tone to the discussion and gives the audience a real taste of what starting a company means.
On this panel spoke Pavol Lupták, who runs a Bratislava-based company named Nethemba. What’s so great about these guys is that they’re spearheading the campaign “We do not work for the government”.
In a nutshell, what they say is that it’s not cool to provide the government with your skills and that, if you do so, you will be playing in an uneven field. For instance, if there’s a dispute, can you trust the courts to settle it? Most likely, you can’t.
You could say that what a medium company in a small country is doing won’t have any effect on the statist quo. Perhaps… Alberto Benegas Lynch (Jr), a great classical liberal from Argentina, says that probably the first defender of human rights was devoured by his cannibal fellow cavemen. However, that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t right and also that doesn’t mean that he won’t triumph in the end. Great causes have usually very humble beginnings.
And last but not least, Munich. According to every attendee I talked after the event, it was great. However, I can only offer you in this case a second hand opinion because during our trip from Prague to Munich we literally destroyed a tire and we didn’t have the proper tools to change it. We made it to Munich exactly when the event was finishing.
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed our visit to the city. Munich is amazing and, although we were late for the event, we weren’t late for the superb lunch our kind hosts -the Bavarian Tax Payers Association- invited us to. What is more, they were so kind that they prepared for me a special dessert with candles because it was my birthday.
