Tech is Key in Ideas Battle

Earlier today, Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred Smith delivered an informative but lively, entertaining speech about the role of NGOs.  The speech was delivered at the Washington-based Atlas Economic Research Foundation, an umbrella organization that sponsors the creation of free-market NGOs worldwide.

Smith acknowledged that the libertarian movement, although weaker than its opponents, is gaining ground through the Internet, online video sharing and other peer-to-peer technologies.  The latest example of the successful usage of such technologies is yesterday’s landmark Tea Party protests, a spontaneous action on Tax Day led by regular American citizens.  CEI housed a supply of one million tea bags originally meant to be dumped at the White House, but a lack of adequate permission to legally make the delivery prevented the initiative.  Read 1,000,000 Tea Bags Find a Home

CEI’s president also recommended that the private sector end the mea culpa and allow libertarian think tanks to be a friendly critic of their policies.  “They spend $1 trillion trying to communicate with Joe and John citizens.  But businesses spend nothing defending businesses.  It is depressing how naïve the business community is with all their wisdom,” he asserted.

Other speakers at the April installment of Atlas’ International Thursday were Aleksandar Novakovic reporting on the rise of Liberty Camps in Slovenia, Feng Xingyuan of the Cathay Institute for Public Affairs and Marcos Victoria of the Argentinean Consultcom S.A.