LibertyCon in Prague

Between April 25 and 27, around 700 people (mostly young white students) from more than 50 countries gathered in Prague's historic Gabriel Lóci building to celebrate the victories of capitalism and capitalists, to hear about the free market, freedom of expression, the minimal or non-existent state, privatizations as miracle solutions to economic crises, how to use crypto and bitcoin to avoid paying taxes, about anarcho-capitalism as a path to freedom and also how agreements to deal with the climate emergency are hindering progress. And, of course, the room was packed to hear how Argentina is winning under the government of Javier Milei.

What is LibertyCon?
LibertyCon Europe takes place once a year and this edition was open to the public, with tickets priced at 20 Euros for the three days, including lunch. The target audience was students. The event is organized by Students For Liberty, which calls itself “the largest international pro-liberty student organization in the world”. Among the sponsors of LibertyCon were the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Center for Neoliberalism, Tholos Foundation, World Vapers Alliance, Atlas Society, The Mercatus Center of George Mason University, and many others.

Economists and CEOs

Among the keynote speakers were: David D. Friedman, economist and author of “The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism” published in 1973, which includes a description of how a society with property rights and no government could function and offers a consequentialist defense of libertarianism and Federico N. Fernández, CEO of We Are Innovation, a global network of more than 45 think tanks and NGOs. The full list of speakers can be seen here.

The speech that most caught my attention at the event was that of Dr. Nikos Sotirakopoulos - who “lectures on Marx, the communist movement and the New Left” at The Ayn Rand Institute (an organization whose values are individualism and laissez-faire capitalism). In an engaging and stage-trained manner, in a lecture that evoked different emotions, with pauses for applause after punch lines, he talked about how we live in a wonderful historical moment because of capitalism and capitalists. Under the title “What have the Capitalists ever done for us?” he celebrated Jeff Bezos, the techbros, Steve Jobs. He raged, recalling a time when the geniuses at Apple asked Mother Earth to forgive them for their carbon footprint. “Can you imagine? These wonderful people who have made the world a better place with their creations having to be publicly shamed?”

He taught answers to leftist questions using a line of reasoning so disconnected from reality that it made me reflect on the degree of privilege of the (overwhelmingly white) young people in the audience. He said, for example, that if a worker carries 10 boxes a minute, a capitalist comes along and gives him a machine, that worker will carry 30 boxes a minute and will therefore be richer, less tired and have more free time. Here's an excerpt from the lecture:

“I would call it J.K. Rowling's new way of acquiring wealth. It means that you create something good and beautiful, other people appreciate it and give you something in return. So you don't fight over crumbs, but you create twice when you produce wealth creatively. If you look at who we build statues for, you'd think that the people we owe the most are kings, warriors, generals and politicians. But in most cases, progress has come in spite of these people. Others will say that we owe this progress to scientists. As if they were humanity's greatest heroes. Think about it: There have been intelligent people and good scientists throughout human history. But most of their knowledge died with them. Their knowledge didn't translate into billions of people having a better life."

Anarcho-Capitalists and Vapers

Other lectures that caught my attention during the three-day event were: “The Anarcho-Capitalist or Anarcho-Agorist Path to Freedom in Practice”, which packed the room, with young people squeezing into the corners and surprised the speaker himself, called Urza, a local anarcho-capitalist celebrity - and who basically talked about disobeying all laws, not paying taxes and not doing things for the collective but for oneself; A panel on the politics of prohibitionism called “Bad Policy, Worse Outcomes - The Case Against Prohibition” with Alberto Gomez Hernandez , Federico Fernandez, Martin Pánek, Tom G. Palmer and Reem Ibrahim, who I thought was going to talk about the war on drugs but in fact spoke against the high taxes on tobacco and alcohol and defended the use of vapers to reduce smoking (ignoring all the scientific research that points to its harm) and a talk about the “wonders” that Javier Milei is doing in Argentina called “How is Argentina Faring under Milei's Radical Agenda?” with Federico Fernandez and Eliska Volencova, which was also packed and had to be moved to another room twice as big. “The chainsaw metaphor comes because we need to cut things, because the country is dying and poverty is growing. Argentina needed shock therapy,” said the speaker.

A column of Andrea Dip in ICL Noticias in Portugues can be found here.

Redaction: Ulli Jentsch