At the opening of Fair Trade fortnight we were guests of Cambridge fair trade supporters for a debate on whether or not fair trade was a moral obligation. We spoke under the watchful eye of Lord Keynes in his eponymous hall in King’s College. With me on the platform were Ceri Dingle of WorldWrite and Mischa Balen of Pembroke College. Our case was that it is trade which enables people to climb out of poverty – more last year than ever before in human history. Instead of trying to manage that to benefit selected producers, we should abolish all subsidies and tariff barriers in the developed world, and buy as much as possible from poorer countries. Wealthy countries can afford decent standards for their workers, and we can help them to get there by buying their goods.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Do libertarians have anything useful to learn from Karl Marx?…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

As if the threat of being bullied and labelled a fattie is not enough, there is now the risk that the state and its agents will take a child into care if that child is deemed "obese". Over the last few days, the press has carried reports of how a young boy, weighing in at a powerful 14-stone (196 lbs/ 89 kg), narrowly avoided such a fate. My first instinctive belief is that the state…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

It has often been pointed out that whilst government spending is seen as a proper way to express compassion we (meaning those of us who believe that government is too big) can not win. The above was brought home to me, yet again, yesterday. I watched a person being interviewed by a television presenter, and the person was requesting yet more government spending. A decade ago a new government scheme was set up to pay…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Classical music blogger Jessica Duchen yesterday featured a bit of video/audio of the great Grigory Sokolov playing the wonderfully manic third and last movement of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata, which is marked Precipitato. I have a DVD of Sokolov playing this, plus some Beethoven, and I assume this clip is from that. (The Beethoven on that DVD is also marvelous. I've never heard the somewhat poor relation Op. 14 numbers 1 and 2 sonatas sound…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The president of our National Welfare Rights Network is a man named Michael Raper. Surely an excellent name for someone who constantly thinks about how best to take advantage of taxpayers….

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Maureen Martin writes at TCS Daily about a school exercise that sounds like it came right out of The Communist Manifesto:
Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.
A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle. According to an […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Why is this unwieldy unproductive behemoth still around?
With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak’s never-stellar on-time performance declined to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s. When the routes where Amtrak owns the tracks are excluded, the on-time performance last year fell to 61 percent.
< ...>
Amtrak performs far […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

While the world’s attention has been focused on Iraq for the past four years, today the Taliban reminded us that there’s another country in the Middle East that we n eed to worry about:
Vice President Cheney was shuttled into a bomb shelter at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan this morning after a suicide bomber […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Which is most important?

a) The position of a candidate on the Iraq War, the economy and civil liberties

or…

b) The race, gender and religion of a candidate?

The way the mainstream media keeps talking about Hillary and Obama, one might think the 2008 elections are about race and gender. While it might be effective in getting people to forget Hillary’s war vote and the fact that Obama came out late in the issue department, there is something wrong with this picture.

At least Gallup has some figures about how voters react to such trivial issues, since political issues no longer matter.

If you don’t wish to peek at the survey results, here’s a snapshot of the results: A black female Catholic candidate probably has a better chance of winning than someone who might end the war in Iraq while restoring the economy and our civil liberties.

It’s a shame they didn’t poll on shoe size or favorite type of pet. Perhaps then we could get some really qualified candidates.

From US Libertarian Party

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom