RIP Milton Friedman and Cheers to Freedom

I have been posting little on del.icio.us, due to a couple of events that have keeped me busy in the last couple of days.  The first one was the celebration of the 17th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Atlas Economic Research Foundation where I work started this celebration on the ocassion of the 15th anniversary.  Ever since then, november 9 is being celebrated more and more arround the world.  Since this year coincides with Atlas 25th Anniversary, the celebration preparations have been large at my office.  Last night Charles Murray delivered a fantastic keynote address.  Although I was not very keen on his comments on previous ocassions that I heard him, yesterday he was superb.  The second event that has altered my daily routine was yesterday’s passing away of one of the greatest heroes of Freedom in the 20th century, Milton Friedman.  Alex Chafuen my boss at Atlas prepared a very nice remembrance on Milton Friedman and his connections with Atlas.  I have complemented his piece collecting links to blogs, news outlets, think tanks and universities of their homages to Milton Friedman, see this link to Alex piece and the link-o-rama.  The only thing that I regret was not being able to met him, in the 2 ocassions that I had a chance, due to unforseen and last minute reasons.  My dad was able to met him on a MPS meeting in Berlin in 1982 I believe.

Finally see this classic video of Milton Friedman narrating Leonard’s Read "I Pencil" story

Upcoming free market movies

Today in a luncheon conference I learned of this 2 exciting projects:

January 29 will be the release of the Biographical video of Milton Friedman. I think I have at the office a screening video of “The life and ideas of Milton Friedman” that you can check here for a trailer:

http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/production/POC/index.php

The few little parts that I saw are amazing.  Particularly nice was the idea of not only focusing on Milton Friedman, but on his wife, longtime partner in love and intellectual ideas.  I almost got tears seeing the small section on their first days as newlyweeds, great love story.  Great cheers for Robert Chitester who has push for this project while Milton Friedman is alive.  I also learned that the same production company is working on a video that takes the late Julian Simon book title The Ultimate Resource, check below:

http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/production/ultimate_resource/index.php

Blogs at Atlas

Atlas Economic Research Foundation where I currently work has started a Blog written by their top executives. At the same time Atlas has started a BlogHub where all the free market bloggers or free market think tank bloggers are listed. I encourage people wanting to know about what Atlas does and hence what I do for a living to visit these links.

McElroy and DV

I came across her website long time ago, but I have not checked it back in a long time among other things because I only go through websites that have Rss or Atom feeds. This time it caught my attention her parallel blog on domestic violence (DV) and her own experiences with the issue some 20 years ago. As always her positions are not the traditional feminist positions, and are more geared toward individualistic feminism. She cites also George Rolph expert on DV against males and the gender bias that currently exists on the issue towards taking only into account the violence against women and not against men. McElroy tries to draw paralalells to her own experiences and how she thinks Rolph’s insights are non-gender specific.

Big Brother in Virginia

The use of RFID in Virginia Licenses is currently being taken into consideration. That has sparked a debate over privacy and security issues. The traditional privacy advocates views is that this might be a nightmare and that our privacy is going to be thrown into the trash. On the other hand tech gurus, and big companies that will be able to handle more efficiently their inventory and offer better suited products to the consumer preferences, argue that RFID is only going to make our lifes easier. Reason Magazine had a good article that explored the pros and cons of this new technology that is being pushed by big companies as Walmart as well as governments, and it’s hottly debated among libertarians.

Prehistory of the Moderm Libertarian movement in America

My colleague Leonard Liggio in an interview with John Blundell of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London in a recent Liberty Magazine recalls some of his encounters with the heroes of the libertarian, consevative world. I am amazed by this interview on how little things lead to great changes in the history of the US. As he says in his interview the election of a Republican congress in 1946 probably saved the country from becoming another Sweeden. Six influential books helped save the US according to him and is the answer of how the US started leaving the path in which Roosevelt and his New Deal had put the country after WWII. Read this piece in PDF format at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation Website