The Stockholm Network people are trying as hard as they can to parlay their Golden Umbrella Awards into something truly significant. So they were pleased when Perry de Havilland did a piece here about the awards dinner last week, and even more pleased when Instapundit linked to that posting. And they were also delighted by this Wall Street Journal piece by John Fund. With awards ceremonies, what matters is not so much the dishing out of the awards as the matter of whether anyone else cares, or can be persuaded to care. This event was good. But it is the response to the event that will surely mean that the corresponding jamboree next year will be better.
Fund, who presented one of the awards, to a Bulgarian by the name of Dimitar Chobanov, begins his piece thus:
The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and other free-market Washington think tanks are known to many Americans. What isn’t generally understood is that there has been an explosion of free-market think tanks around the world that are increasingly challenging the conventional view that government is the solution to society’s problems.
Like Perry, I was part of the throng, and in a piece I did about these awards for another European think tank last week, I made the same point about free market think tank expansion. Whereas Fund sees these enterprises spreading beyond the USA, I see them spreading beyond Western Europe, but however you slice this story, free market think tanks are spreading.
In among being impressed by all this, I took photos. Usually, when I take photos at pro-free-market events, my only questions are: How many women are here and how nice do they look? But the photography I did at the Golden Umbrellas focussed more on what was being officially talked about. Those ladies I did snap were snapped because they were on the stage, like Mistress of Ceremonies Karen Horn, Janet Daley and Cécile Philippe. There were plenty of other fine looking women present that night, but I concentrated my picture-taking on the people who were giving and receiving awards. And as well as photographing them, I listened to what they were actually saying. Which you can also do by going here.
Not to criticize too harshly, but shouldn’t the page about the Golden Umbrella awards have some sort of precis about the awards, or at least link to one? If they’re trying to get the word out, it’s not a good idea to give the impression that “if you don’t already know, it’s not worth explaining”.
Dude, just follow the second link!
So people who hit the Stockholm Network page should know to search on Samizdata for further information? The goal of outreach is to make it easy for people to figure out what you’re about.
P.S. It’s just a nitpick, but it’s the kind of sloppy web design that bugs me.
The only potential problem with the SN is the involvement of Pfizer and how this can be seen to compromise their intellectual activity (I don’t believe it does compromise it but there is always a risk that it might). I have no problem whatever with sponsorship by big business, of course – so long as the shareholders in publicly-quoted companies know about it and the sponsorship is fully disclosed in reports that SN think tanks publish. Fair’s fair: the same disclosure would be expected if a think tank were backed by a trade union or public body, for instance.
And as it’s hardly like the SN’s sponsors are hiding their sponsorship, I really don’t see that it is a problem.
What do people thinking about their report calling for a tax on Google? They want the tax to compensate the RIAA because Google can be used to search for movie downloads. You have to dig into their annual report before you realise that they are RIAA backed.
It would be fair to say I think that would be a very bad idea. I usually disagree with them on IP related issues in fact.
The tossers might criticise the Stockholm Network for being successful and raising funds, but it is people like the Stockholm Network that are successfully pushing market-oriented ideas. The world is full of dead think tanks like the IEA who living in the past, consuming funds but producing nothing. The Stockholm Network is bringing new donors to the table and expanding the forces of market-oriented thinking.
If you don’t agree with the Google Tax idea, I wonder if you also disagree with the Stockholm Network’s cholesterol report of 2006, which stated “there is a gaping hole in the [EU] policy agenda: tackling cholesterol.”(Link) Do you think this is motivated by:
a/ A nanny state philosophy?
b/ policy for hire to pharmaceutical companies?
c/ a desire to expand the powers of the EU?
Apart from holding nice party, what else has the Stockholm Network done for the cause of freedom?
I’m interested to see the Stockholm Network insider’s attack on the IEA, which is described as being dead. I wonder is this has anything to do with the fact that the IEA recently resigned from the Stockholm Network? The IEA may be a tad old and wonkish these days, but they have done more for the advance of liberty than the Stockholm Network ever will.
I suspect with all the funding scandals involving political parties going around, the IEA didn’t want to be associated with a “think tank” which tailors policy to suit the client. Earlier this year, a journalist friend of mine received a media release from the Stockholm Network as a Word document. When you looked at the original author, it was listed as Hill and Knowlton, a public affairs firm with pharmaceutical clients. I’m surprised that only the IEA have quit!