SAVE THE DATE: LIBERTY FORUM & FREEDOM DINNER 2015

May 1, 2015

Join Atlas Network for the worldwide freedom movement’s most inspirational event of the year. On Nov. 11-12 in New York City, Liberty Forum and Freedom Dinner 2015 will bring together liberty’s most inspirational leaders who are strengthening the worldwide freedom movement.

ATLANTIS RISING: WHY FLOATING CITIES ARE THE NEXT FRONTIER

May 1, 2015

Anyone who knows basic biology knows the value of natural selection — a species either adapts to their changing environment or dies off. In some ways, this process also applies to governments, but millions of people can still be chained to a failing state with no exit options. This is what the Seasteading Institute, an Atlas Network partner, hopes to solve with its Floating City Project. The freedom of international waters offers a unique opportunity to experiment with different structures of governance on floating city-states, which ultimately must compete for citizens.

LIBERALIZED MIGRATION, LABOR POLICIES WOULD BOLSTER EUROPEAN ECONOMIES

May 1, 2015

Europe is in the middle of a severe immigration crisis, with waves of migrants washing up on Mediterranean shores from North Africa. Migrants arrive in shoddy boats, filled to the brim with desperate people looking for a safe haven and a better life. Many of them are refugees escaping turmoil in the Middle East, particularly Syria and Libya, but the majority originate from sub-Saharan Africa. Mediterranean countries, particularly Italy and Spain, bear the brunt of the current crisis — not long after beginning to find their feet again after the recent economic downturn.

DREAMING OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

April 30, 2015

“Even if China is covered with graves, we must kill all Japanese.” In 2012 a protester emblazoned these words on a sign contesting Tokyo’s claims to the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyutai islands in the East China Sea. Angry demonstrations roiled a number of major Chinese cities in the months that followed. Mobs destroyed Japanese businesses and restaurants, burned Japanese cars, and attempted to bar Japanese patients from receiving treatment at local hospitals. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fostered this nationalist agitation not only to strengthen its diplomatic position, but also to promote domestic cohesion during a sensitive political moment.

REALIZING THE WORLDWIDE VISION OF ANTONY FISHER

April 27, 2015

The key to achieving a free society is, first and foremost, to change the climate of ideas. That’s the lesson that Atlas Network founder Sir Antony Fisher drew from Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek before he abandoned his electoral ambitions to begin work founding and supporting think tanks that would assemble the analytical nuts and bolts of classical liberal thought, apply them to practical policy solutions, and thereby build a worldwide freedom movement.

BOOM, BUST, REPEAT

April 24, 2015

In a monetary regime of sound money — as opposed to our present discretionary fiat monetary arrangements — the boom and bust of the U.S. housing industry during 2002-09 could not have happened. The damage done to the national economy by the bursting housing bubble can be understood only in the context of the government’s role in fostering that bubble.

SOUND MONEY FELLOW NAMED CHIEF ECONOMIST OF SENATE BANKING COMMITTEE

April 24, 2015

The free-market think tank community generally relies on two broad strategies to achieve a free society. First, they focus on spreading the ideas of liberty and building the cultural foundations of freedom. Second, they do the heavy lifting of policy analysis, studying the actual effects of government policies and suggesting reforms that foster individual liberty and prosperity in a more direct, practical sense. Fostering a societal climate of freedom makes policy success more likely, and longer-lasting.

MALAYSIAN ALA GRAD HELPS BUILD OASIS OF LIBERTY

April 22, 2015

Malaysia has a tradition of classical liberal thought at its core, dating back to its 1957 Proclamation of Independence, which stated that the nation should be “founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people and the maintenance of a just peace among all nations.” Even so, reactionary forces have vast influence in modern Malaysia, with a government that arrests journalists for “sedition,” crackdowns on religious liberty, calls for Internet censorship, and a political system often divided along racial lines.