Anton Howes

It's that time of year again. After the roaring success of last year's inaugural conference, the Liberty League Freedom Forum 2013 is only weeks away.

For just £35 per ticket, they've booked out the UCL School of Pharmacy in central London, and will be providing your accommodation, meals, drink and books for the entire weekend, as well as giving you the chance to meet other young pro-liberty activists from all over the UK. If you're based in London, it's £25 without accommodation.

The London School of Economics' much-vaunted "Growth Commission" has finally released its report, after a year of discussion, debate and work. Unfortunately, the policies it advocates are unoriginal and underwhelming.

Over on the Guerrilla Economist blog, Ust Oldfield discusses the economic consequences of the dragon Smaug on Tolkien's fictional universe, Middle Earth. He argues that the net effect on Middle Earth's economy may well have been positive. Both Dwarves and dragons hoarded the gold, so there would have been no monetary shock from the rapid withdrawal of so much precious metal from the economy.

Professor Dani Rodrik at Harvard University has offered up a challenge for free market liberals. He is openly, and unashamedly mercantilist: the very ideology that Adam Smith originally set out to defeat back in 1776. While rejecting the historical obsession with amassing precious metals, Rodrik proposes a mercantilist alliance of government with corporations towards common objectives like economic growth.

Even in the face of high taxes, borrowing and debt, the history of modernity gives us every reason to be optimistic. Economic growth and the rise in living standards since around 1780 has been immense. In Britain, not even accounting for improvements in the quality and choice of consumer products, the average person is 1500% wealthier than their ancestor in 1780.

For the first time in decades, Britain's economic growth is stagnant. With a predicted -0.1% for 2012, Treasury forecasts for the years ahead look wildly optimistic. Yet the Chancellor's tinkering around the edges is unlikely to achieve much. The problem is that the debate over achieving higher economic growth totally ignores its causes. It forgets the important distinction between what the Nobel Laureates Kenneth Arrow and Robert Lucas Jnr. describe as "level effects" and "growth effects".

Michael Gove’s proposal to abolish competing exam boards for his new O-levels has sparked an important debate within the free-market movement. On the one hand, Liz Truss MP leads the approving side, while Dale Bassett of Reform, James Croft of the Centre for Market Reform of Education, and I, have all cautioned against the dangers of establishing subject-by-subject exam board monopolies.

Michael Gove's proposals for education are certainly an upheaval, but scrapping competing exam boards for the new O-levels may be a big mistake. The reasoning behind the proposal, espoused by supporters like Liz Truss MP, is that competition causes a 'race to the bottom', with teachers and schools self-interestedly choosing the easiest qualifications for any given subject in order to boost their rankings in the league tables. The argument goes that this has been one of the chief causes of 'dumbing down' in school qualifications.

The debate over tax avoidance never dies because most people tend to act in their own self-interest. We always search for the most common-sense approach to organising our own finances: We tend to buy things with lower VAT because they cost us less, and we tend to put our savings into a tax-free ISA when the opportunity presents itself. Likewise, with the financial resources to do so, you would tend to seize the chance to avoid tax on a much grander scale à la Carr.