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2007 Guest Talks
Gabriella Megyesi
Guest Talk Video
To schedule a talk:
GRehmke@aol.com
Events & Links
FreedomFest July 2008
Free! For Teachers
Online Library of Liberty
African Economic Development
Free! for Teachers
Daily Speculations
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Drawn from Rodney Stark's great book, Victory of Reason, this video will be premiered at select locations around the country this summer. Details here. Victory of Reason looks at western economic and intellectual history from the fall of the Roman Empire. Stark argues the Roman Empire held back progress across the western world, progress which came slowly during the centuries that followed. The "dark ages" were not dark. Reason and religion played key roles in economic progress. NYT review of Victory of Reason. Another from the Independent Review.
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Summer reading; fiction and freedom.
... they discussed freedom as a human need, like bread, like water. Itale got up and walked up and down the quiet little library, rubbing his head and staring blankly at the bookcases and the windows. Freedom was not a necessity, it was a danger, all the lawmakers of Europe had been saying that for a decade. Men were children, to be governed for their own good by the few who understood the science of government. What did this Frenchman Vergniaud mean by stating a choice--live free or die? Such choices are not offered to children. ...
... throughout Europe, stretched the silent network of liberalism, like the nervous system of a sleeping man. A restless sleep, feverish, full of dreams. … Itale went striding down the shady street like a summer whirlwind, his face hot, his coat open... [link to EconomicThinking fiction page.]
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Terminators and Technology, by Greg Rehmke, February 17, 2008
Tech stocks are always a wonder. We wonder which few new tech firms will explode onto the scene reaping billions in future sales. The net benefits of injecting thousands of significant new improvements into the world economy each year in enormous. New technologies and innovation are more than enough to strengthen the sinews of market economies that each year must carry heavier burdens of parasitic taxes, predatory litigation, and monopolistic regulation.
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So how far will oil prices fall as demand-side and supply side investments come on-stream? A lot depends upon the Saudis, as usual. Those who remember the 1970s, remember the abuse heaped upon Milton Friedman and other free-market economists who claimed that cartels always fall apart. ... [Continues on Daily Speculation]
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 To DDT or not to DDT...
DDT or not to DDT, that is the question...uses of DDT, Stop Pushing DDT, DDT Scaremongering Will Take Human Toll... Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,...See more on Economic Thinking's Africa page.
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 WaterHealth International - Leading the Blue Revolution
WaterHealth firm provides clean and safe water to save lives. Efforts in India discussed in Aug. 14, 2007 Wall Street Journal article. (more on NextBillion). Similar technology can provide major public health advance for Africa. See company website with details. Founder and President is Ghanaian Dr. Tralance Addy.
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Drawing clean water from the air. Science Daily reports new dew-collecting technology to draw clean water from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. According to the article: "one 315 sq ft unit can extract a minimum of 48 liters of fresh water per day. Depending upon the number of collucters used, an unlimited daily supply of water could be produced even in remote and polluted places."
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 Grameen Foundation Empowering people. Changing lives. Invovating for the world's poor.
Microfinance linked to health care improvements explains 2006 Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus at the 4th World Health Care Congress
Grameen Bank offers small loans to the poor, allowing them to escape local moneylenders: "the important thing is they must pay something, they must feel that this is a service they are buying, so that they feel equal, they don’t feel small. When you are taking something free, you feel small. You cannot claim, you cannot demand something, because you have not established any claim because you’re not paying. Payment is a claim that I do this and you do this. It’s a kind of two-way relationship.".
Transcript of 2007 speech • Transcript of 2005 speech . • Video.
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TCS Daily - Nairobi's Plastic Bags are Barking
A brief piece on on plastic bags in Nairobi as indicators. Property rights are costly to advance from traditional to modern. In Africa, independence came at the nadir of understanding and appreciation of secure "3D" property rights (Definable, Defensible, Divestible). Tom Bethell's The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages reports on the strange lack on interest in property rights in the twentieth century. Hernando de Soto, in The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital explains the impoverishing consequences of trying to develop without sound legal institutions.
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I was introduced to Milton Friedman some years ago at a Pacific Research Institute conference on immigration. Nervous and not knowing what to say, I blurted out "I really like your ideas!" Milton showed me his trademark smile and said with emphasis "They are not my ideas"! He knew I was referring not to the scholarly economic work that had won him a Nobel Prize in Economics (which were his ideas), but to the classical liberal ideas in his book Capitalism and Freedom and in the TV documentary series Free to Choose. -- Greg Rehmke
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John Quincy Adams' July 4th, 1821 speech. Often quoted from on the internet for his brief mention of foreign policy ("America does not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy"). But the rest of the speech is a broader discussion of the principles of liberty. Click here for beginning of Adams' speech on our ET Blog (with links to pamphlet with full speech).
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Institute for Economic Studies Seminars for college students at IES-Europe Summer University.
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Books & Videos
  Greg's new book!
Study Guide
Video
Video
Video
  Video
 
Book
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