The Cobden Centre Education Network gets to work

Sam Bowman, whom I mentioned in my previous posting below about the IEA, responded by emailing me further proof that he is taking his Cobden Centre duties seriously:

The Cobden Centre Education Network is a new network of students in the UK interested in libertarian and classical liberal economics, especially the Austrian school. Working with the Cobden Centre it aims to connect libertarian and classical liberal students across the UK and help them develop their interests and involvement in classical liberalism and libertarianism.

This summer, the Cobden Centre Education Network will be hosting a series of seminars studying Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State, a seminal work in Austrian economics that lays the foundation for further study of the Austrian school. The seminars will take place twice a month at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, and Cobden Centre board members and fellows will join us for some sessions. Electronic copies of all reading materials and a study guide will be provided.

As well as being a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the Austrian school, this will give Education Network members a chance to meet some of Britain’s foremost libertarian and classical liberal thinkers.

If you are interested in joining the Cobden Centre Education Network, please email Sam (sam @ cobden centre (all one word) dot org – I trust that will deter at least some spammers – BM) with your name, contact email address, and university and course if you are currently in education. Please also state if you are available to attend events during the summer in London.

Outstanding. And good on the IEA for lending them the place to do this.

Badgering politicians is worth a go, because you can get lucky, and because even if they don’t listen, someone else might, especially in an age when letters can double up as internet postings. But politicians will mostly just do their thing, which is fire fighting the fires on their desks within the limits set by public opinion, or by what they suppose to be public opinion, and within the limits that they all set amongst themselves. What matters is the long-term intellectual struggle, that is, the process of creating the limits within which politicians and other decision makers will operate in the future. The above enterprise is a fine example of how you go about doing that.

In the age of social media, blogs, emails and so on, it is tempting to suppose that personal contact is a bit superfluous. But I suspect that the most lasting impact of such novelties is creating and strengthening old fashioned face-to-face contacts, between people who might otherwise never have been introduced.

I wonder if there is an upper age limit.