by Benjamin Marks, Economics.org.au editor-in-chief

Dear ANDEV Members,

Why should you listen to me? Because I am the first and so far the only person to make available the work of Lang Hancock, Bert Kelly, Kerry Packer, John Singleton and Max Newton in over 20 years. Because I employ their work I call them my staff.

Having established my peerless credentials, I wish to invite you to the Mises Seminar, to be held on November 25-26, 2011, at an exclusive and private Sydney CBD location.

The Mises Seminar is named after Ludwig von Mises, an economist who understood that economics has to begin with the primacy of property rights and the property owner’s own value judgements. Only the Misesian school of economics believes in the primacy of property rights over democracy, and sees that democracy amounts to majority rule, which amounts to a giant lynch mob.

Five reasons ANDEV members should attend the Mises Seminar are:

  1. It will help you learn from similar groups to ANDEV in Australian history. The Mises Seminar will feature a kind of reunion of the Workers Party, which was a political party that arose in response to Whitlam and the Whitlamesque Opposition. Some of you who are in the mining industry may know the great Ron Manners and Viv Forbes, both Workers Party veterans, who will both be travelling to Sydney for the event. In fact, all surviving members of the Workers Party will be there, including Neville Kennard, founder of Kennards Self Storage and leading critic from the free-market perspective of the IPA and the CIS, of which he was the first chairman.
  2. It will prevent critics from dismissing you as self-serving and unprincipled. By better understanding where the principles of private property lead, you will see that there are many areas, not obviously directly related to your own industry, where the principles you believe in are compromised. For example, if you believe in private property, then you believe in self-ownership and must oppose the prohibition of drugs, since one’s own body is not government property. This, of course, does not mean that you approve of drugs or that you allow drugs on your own property; it simply means you believe government has no right to prohibit drugs, and to make drug quality control a secretive business. Despite the fact that everyone admits that prohibition of alcohol in the United States of the 1920s was a total failure, and despite the fact that there are even drugs in such heavily policed areas as prisons, do-gooders who do not care about facts and economic principles still maintain that prohibition of drugs is a good idea. Imagine if ANDEV began advocating an end to the drug war. Sure, people would call you crazy, but they already do that. And you could now adequately defend yourselves against accusations that you are self-serving and unprincipled, since you do not benefit by the decriminalisation of drugs, except indirectly and in a relatively minor way through less of your taxes going towards a futile exercise where every time a large batch of drugs are confiscated, their price goes up, the incentive to produce and import more drugs increases, and the money needed to continue the drug war increases also, so that the cycle can continue.
  3. It will help you to understand the economy. For example, did you ever wonder about the implications of going off the gold standard, especially in light of the direction the Australian currency in terms of the price of gold has gone? Why are the followers of Mises the only constant advocates of the gold standard? The Carbon Tax is hardly an isolated attack on mining and capitalism.
  4. It will help you see who your friends are and who just wants your money. For example, there are quite a few politicians, journalists and think tanks who pay lip-service to private property and self-ownership, but then go around saying that the market should not supply such important services as education, money, defence, healthcare and roads. Well, either they believe in private property and free-market principles, or, they don’t. Since they do not believe in the principles they pretend to espouse in aligning themselves with ANDEV, it should cause you to review your alliances.
  5. It’s a bargain! At only $165 for the complete Mises Seminar dinner and day at the most exclusive location in Sydney, it is worth it for the food alone. Although the speakers are so funny and controversial that you may have trouble keeping it down.

If you are interested in learning more about anarchocapitalism, browse the middle and right columns of Economics.org.au. Unlike every other group, we make our reasoning easy to find and invite criticism and questions.

See you at the Mises Seminar.