Well, I’m half Armenian, anyway. Here are some belated photos from my speaking trip to Poland last month. Nine lectures, seven at universities around the country, mostly on the market economy (I assure you, I took the plumb line), and a couple times on American history.
I was genuinely shocked at how many people told me the Mises.org website and its amazing resources had been a godsend to them. One student passed me a note that read, “The Mises Institute saved me from socialism. Thank you very much.”
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I’m sometimes surprised by how pro-market Eastern Europeans tend to be. I guess they learnt their lesson well…
Some of us have, but we’re a tiny minority I’m afraid.
The reason Mr. Woods bumped into so many of us, is because we were the ones most interested in hearing him speak.
Inquisitor, I am afraid you are mislead by selective thinking, e.g. making presumption “they ought to do so†and confirming it with those rare confirmations you happen to bump into. I’m from Lithuania, and sadly, the situation here, as in most Baltic states, beneath the already dusty banners of not so distant past, leaves far more to be desired.
and so on. The second and more gloomy is that our democracy slowly but surely degrades toward that found in old democracies, as all aspects of social space move toward increasing of the all seeing and all caring state. Much of that comes from the membership in the EU, NATO and other organisations, though there are plenty of local champions of socialistic ideals I must admit. In this way, as soon as we got out of the iron union, instead of strengthening individual rights enforcement, we turned busy creating from the ground-up all the same powerful state apparatus, proudly calling it our fatherland Lithuania.
Two personal thoughts I’d like to offer. About one month ago, in my little town there was a lecture given by philosophy professor from Ohio university (who is Lithuanian) on the topic named “The problems of Lithuanian democracy†in effect comparing it with the lecturer’s preferred example of US. I’ll skip the lecture which could be summarised as having completely wrong emphases, and present you with two conclusions that I’ve crystallised for myself while making remarks to the lecturer. First, in Lithuania at the moment we have better democracy, if I can say so, than in the US, in that our country still has relatively simple legislation, not so “developed†economic regulations, non-interventionist foreign policy (as you may guess
So, while you may sometimes hear lone prophets of libertarian ideas, have in mind that allure of socialism still fascinates lazy minds of general public.
Thanks from here, too!
No better than the rest of Europe I guess, then.
nice pics, stop by Sweden next time!
Hah, been there! Great lecture, not so very good translation (broke the comfort of immersing into the depth of the lecture
), and a great experience. Too bad it was so short. I hope that such events will happen on more occasions in the future.
Very nice indeed.
I stongly agree with HH Hoppe, that small states are a virtue. I’m from Estonia, which is half the population of Lithuania and the concentration of power indeed is far lesser than that in US or France etc.
What also happens is that small nations understand that they need to be liberal and have tolerance and they are little keen to learn the wider backround of liberalism.
BTW. We have showevent with prime minister Ansip in Estonian largest bookstore of Mises Liberalism into Estonian of which I was one of translators.
Estonia was particularly lucky to have Mart Laar as a prime minister in the proper time. He did almost all which was vital to liberalize economy and set it on strong capitalistic course. That’s why Estonia is the strongest economy of the 10 new EU states, while Polish economy is the weakest – we forfeited all the opportunities which were open for us in the beginning of the 90′ies, and currently Poland is MUCH MORE SOCIALIST than it was under late communist regime.
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