Our Spring sixth form conference

Last week we held our first sixth form conference of 2012 in Westminster. ISOS, the Independent Seminar on the Open Society, has been running for many years and is extremely popular with sixth formers and teachers.

One teacher I met at our conference told me how her pupils were much more free market than her and were keen to come to all our student events. A number of pupils attended independently and a couple of students travelled all the way from Yorkshire to take part. Hundreds of the free books we provided were snapped up within minutes and we were inundated with requests for work experience and for more events for sixth formers.  The enthusiasm of those attending and the quality of the questions asked were truly inspiring - encouraging me that there may be many more libertarians amongst the next generation.

As always, the speeches at ISOS were excellent and can be viewed on our YouTube page [We didn't get the debate at the end of the day between Jamie Whyte and the nef's Nic Marks, but I'm going to embed rest of the videos on the blog later today - ed.]. Dr Tim Evans’s talk on ‘The Morality of Markets’ was the highlight of the day for me and sparked challenging discussions on the myth of ‘market failure’ and controversial topics such as whether the banks should have been bailed out.

I wasn’t alone in my enjoyment of the day. In our feedback forms, 100% of the attendees rated the day as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ (with the majority voting excellent!). The comments on the forms were all very encouraging with pupils writing “Absolutely great, outstanding and highly intellectual seminar. Thank you!” and “Excellent conference. Really widened the way I thought about the topics discussed.” And that’s just a glimpse. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and served as a great reminder to us of why we choose to focus so much of our energy on student work.

Plans are already underway for our next ISOS conference in November 2012 and details will be out soon. If you are a sixth-former who is interested in attending, please do get in contact. And if you are a teacher or know of a teacher who would benefit from hearing more about our student conferences, please do drop me an email at sally@old.adamsmith.org.

We’d really like to increase the frequency of these events, but that is only possible with the support of people who share our vision of educating the next generation on the importance of free markets and a free society. If you would like to donate towards our work in this area, we would of course be delighted to hear from you!

ISOS 2012

Next Wednesday (25th April) the ASI will be holding its next Independent Seminar for the Open Society (ISOS) in Westminster. The one-day conference is aimed at sixth-form students and undergraduates with an interest in politics and economics. Named for philosopher Karl Popper’s book ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’, ISOS explores the principles and practicalities of an open, free and tolerant society.

Political views are formed from an early age and it’s a sad fact that far too few people come across free market and classical liberal ideas during their formative years. However we at the ASI are pretty confident that classical liberal ideas are very appealing to young people because they emphasise individualism, peace and mutually beneficial exchange. ISOS is just part of our work to inspire young people with the ideas of liberty and free markets.

On Wednesday we will have Dr Tim Evans talking on the morality of markets and Dr Madsen Pirie giving a short talk, based on his ‘Economics is fun’ videos, on economics for real people. Chris Snowdon, author of our cigarette plain packaging report, will be lecturing on prohibition and its discontents and Tony Gilland will be talking on the right to be offensive. The day will finish with a debate between Jamie Whyte and Nic Marks on whether it is the role of government to make people happy.

There are still some places available for sixth formers and undergraduates so please email isos@old.adamsmith.org if you would like to attend. Full details on the conference are here: http://www.old.adamsmith.org/events

For those of you who don’t fall into that bracket, but are interested to find out more about our work with young people or interested to support our student work, do feel free to email us!

IHS summer seminars

Our friends at the Institute for Human Studies have sent over this blurb about their student seminars this summer, which I'm more than happy to promote. IHS seminars are absolutely superb, with top-class speakers and lecture topics, and (in my experience) some truly excellent attendees who are a pleasure to get to know. The one thing I've noticed is that far too few British students tend to go. If you have a week free this summer, I highly recommend changing that and applying.

2 Weeks to Apply: IHS Summer Seminars on Liberty

Explore ideas that helped end slavery, introduce religious freedom, and inspire the women’s suffrage movement. More than ten weeklong seminars apply classical liberal ideas, such as individual rights and free markets, to topics in history, economics, journalism, policy, and more. From breakfast ‘til the evening reception, you can debate and discuss the ideas of liberty with enthusiastic professors and peers from around the world.

Good news for your wallet: the Institute for Humane Studies covers, meals and program costs; participants only pay for travel. Undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates are eligible to apply. Learn more: http://www.theihs.org/AdamSmithInstitute.

Final deadline: March 31

Freedom Forum 2012

It's that time of year again. After the roaring success of last year's inaugural conference, the Liberty League Freedom Forum 2012 is only a month away.

For just £30 per ticket, they've booked out the entire Albatross Hostel in Newcastle, so will be providing your accommodation, meals, drink and books, as well as giving you the chance to meet other young pro-liberty activists from all over the UK.

You'll have the chance to meet and debate some of the liberty movement's best speakers, and take part in seminars and lectures with topics such as whether the state should ever intervene in parenting, banking and currency reform, the Ancient Greek and Renaissance conceptions of freedom, the evolution of libertarian thoughts, whether humanitarian military intervention is ever justified, the morality of food, free market environmentalism, and a whole lot more too.

This will be alongside activism and training sessions exploring and improving skills in journalism, public relations, debating, and how to set up and run pro-liberty student societies on campus.

With even more speakers to be announced over the next few days, the list already includes Madsen Pirie, President of the Adam Smith Institute, along with Mark Littlewood, Claire Fox, Angus Kennedy, Max Wind-Cowie, Nick Pickles, Josie Appleton, Dan Hamilton, Kevin Dowd, Mark Pennington, Chris Snowdon, Patrick Hayes, Rob Lyons, Alex Singleton, and Jamie Whyte.

Date: 30th March - 1st April

Venue: Newcastle University, and Albatross Hostel, Newcastle.

Check out full details all of the sessions and speakers, and book your ticket right away by clicking here: http://uklibertyleague.org/2012/02/08/sessionssofar/

Economics is fun, part 12: Banking

He's back, and you might notice one big improvement — from this video onwards, the sound should be a lot better. In this video, Madsen talks about banking. Banking isn't about money stored in vaults, he says, but people acting as middlemen between savers and borrowers. In lubricating the lines of savings and credit, bankers are indispensible to a well-functioning economy. But there's a dark side, too: politically-driven bailouts for banks that go wrong.

You can watch the rest of this series here, and buy Madsen's book, which these videos are based on, here.

Economics is fun, part 9: Joint enterprise

Madsen explains why we have firms today. It's all about specialization and economies of scale. This is the point where threads of past videos are beginning to be woven together, adding another layer to the foundations he's laid so far. If you've missed these earlier videos, you're in luck. They're all available on Youtube to watch right now.

Economics is fun, part 8: Speculators

Madsen takes on speculators this week. Or, rather, people who object to speculators. As Madsen explains, when you think about what speculators do on an individual level, they seem rather reasonable — and, indeed, valuable to the rest of us. Speculators are a form of insurers. They don't gamble any more than your car insurer does, but they absorb risk so you don't have to worry about it. It's all a form of specialization and trade.

You can watch the rest of Madsen's videos here, and be sure to subscribe to our channel too.

The Armchair Economist on why more sex is safer sex

Steven Landsburg, better known as the Armchair Economist, is one of the closest things the economics world has to a rock star. His book was one of the first of the series of pop economics books like Freakonomics - and one of the best at that.

I'm delighted to say that he'll be speaking at the Adam Smith Institute next Monday, on his new book "More Sex is Safer Sex and Other Surprises From Economics". You can see the event details here — it's free and open to everyone, so do come along if you can. Please RSVP so we know you're coming, and let your friends know — they'll never forgive you if you don't!

Join the Next Generation

In Facebook's drive to annoy its users to the point of madness, our The Next Generation (TNG) group for under-30s (this is quite a strict rule, I'm afraid) has been archived so it's no longer useful. Our Next Generation events are hugely popular monthly events for under-30s with a short speech by a person of interest and an informal reception afterwards. If you'd like to subscribe to our Next Generation emails and come along to future TNG events, please enter your email address in this form.

You should also like us on Facebook — much as we'd love to leave Facebook behind, it has its uses.

Our next TNG is being held on Tuesday 7th Feb with Nick Pickles, Director of Big Brother Watch. Details here.

Economics is fun

Madsen starts a new ASI series today.  For a few weeks we'll be posting a short video of 2-3 minutes very week on the ASI's YouTube channel.  The theme of the series is that "economics is fun", and in each of the videos Madsen will be covering a different point about economics.  Far from looking and sounding like worthy but rather dull lessons, the videos are designed to be quite lively and entertaining.  Short and sweet are the bywords.  The series marks the release of Madsen's new book, "Economics Made Simple".