This weekend I’m off to the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, to give a couple of lectures at one of their conferences for students. This will be my first visit to FEE, which is (I believe) the oldest libertarian think tank in existence.
As you can see from the schedule, it’s a fairly radical, mostly-anarchist (possibly all-anarchist) lineup of speakers: Walter Block on privatisation and reparations, Bryan Caplan on irrational voters and whatever “Less Than Minimum” is (I’m guessing it concerns minimum wage?), Jeff Hummel on the Great Depression and Anti-Federalism, Sandy Ikeda on interventionism and private neighbourhoods, Jim Otteson on global ethics and Adam Smith, Ben Powell on immigration and Somali law, and Ed Stringham on private law in general and the Dutch experience with private law in particular. My own lectures are on “Equality, the Unknown Ideal” (drawing on my discussions here and here) and “Thick Libertarianism” (see my handout here).
Unfortunately, I can’t stay for the whole week – because on the 17th I head to Indianapolis for a Liberty Fund conference (run by David Beito) on Zora Neale Hurston, focusing on both her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God and on her nonfiction political essays. (In passing: I’ve probably said this before, but someone should really do a study of the possible influence of Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain on the early chapters of Rose Wilder Lane’s Discovery of Freedom.)
I’ve been to Indianapolis a number of times and I’ve never gotten to the art museum (though I’ve been to the rather creepy war monument quite often enough); this time I’ll really try to make it there.