The libertarian who founded a university

The Guatemalan Economic Miracle and the Man Who Helped It Happen - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Alfonso Abril:

March 15, 2018 - "Guatemala is a poor country, but we were richly blessed by the late Manuel 'Muso' Ayau, who was born here in 1925.... What can an honest citizen do to change a poor country for the better? Muso knew the recipe. Let me tell you how I interpret this Guatemalan hero’s vision and how his legacy contributes toward building a prosperous Guatemala.

"Our country is full of smart and passionate people. We have splendid weather, bountiful natural resources, and a strategic location with access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. So why is Guatemala poor? The reason lies in our weak institutions and flawed ideas, not in a lack of resources. Changing ideas so people support institutional reform, and then making those institutions work in people’s favor to create a prosperous society were the challenges that Muso tackled....

"Donald Boudreaux explains some background: 'Soon encountering burdensome regulations, corrupt bureaucrats, and absurd taxes, he joined with other Guatemalan businessmen seeking to free consumers and producers from the then-dominant command-and-control regulatory regime.... But as Muso once recalled to me, "I quickly became disillusioned. Even when we won a battle now and then, we continued to lose the war against statism. I realized that we would make no real progress unless we changed the underlying ideas of the people. We had to take a long-run perspective. I learned that freedom must triumph in people’s minds and hearts before it can make any headway in politics."'

"Muso believed in education, especially the education of intellectuals and other influencers to ensure a proper understanding of economic principles and the philosophy of freedom.... In 1958, he co-founded the Center for Economic–Social Studies (CEES), which began publishing and disseminating its own analyses of Guatemalan issues and also translating and distributing classic works in freedom literature such as Frederic Bastiat’s The Law....

"Undaunted by obstacles and skepticism, he founded Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM) in 1971, now a leading private university in Guatemala City, one of the finest in Latin America, and a beacon of freedom ideas. UFM, where academic excellence is a passion, is where I studied business.

"Muso established a rule at the founding of the University: Every student, no matter what his or her major field of study, must enroll and pass the 'Economic Process and Philosophy' courses. Those courses acquaint students with the 'Austrian School' of Economics, particularly the insights of two giants among 20th Century economists, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek. With that policy in practice at the university now for more than 40 years, solid free-market economic ideas have been spreading, slowly but surely, across the country....

"UFM is without a doubt the most important and enduring achievement of Manuel Ayau. His energy and his spirit endow every building and room on a stunning campus — in particular, the Mises Library, the Hayek Auditorium, the Atlas Libertas Sculpture, and the Liberty Plaza. The University teaches free-market economics and the philosophy of freedom to influential leaders of the future. The budget of UFM amounts to more than $30 million per year, a very significant figure for Guatemala. Visiting intellectuals from all over the world ensure lively discussions that keep the professors experts on the most innovative trends and ideas."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-guatemalan-economic-miracle-and-the-man-who-helped-it-happen/
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Guatemala's free-market university

The Bond villain libertarians of Guatemala - Don Hannan, Washington Examiner:

December 19, 2016 - "Hidden away in Guatemala, surrounded by tall jungle trees, ... Francisco Marroquin University has been turning out free-marketeers for 45 years....

"The buildings are named after F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and other Austrian School economists. There is a Plaza Adam Smith... One of the buildings is adorned with a massive sculpture of Atlas holding the world aloft — a homage to that vinegary anti-collectivist Ayn Rand. She would have approved of the way that lecturers must bid for teaching aids according to an internal market, with prices rising at popular times.

"Francisco Marroquin — named after the first Bishop of Guatemala, who translated several of the indigenous languages — is one of the best universities in Latin America. Its fees are at the upper end of the range, and it sets stiff entrance criteria, including a required fluency in English. All its undergraduates, whether they are studying law, medicine or architecture, are given a basic grounding in the principles of personal liberty and limited government....

"What makes Francisco Marroquin unusual is not that it seeks to inculcate values. Rather, it's that those values are not the leftist ones prevalent in almost every other institution of higher education. Instead of promoting anti-racism as the supreme political value, Francisco Marroquin promotes freedom. Safe spaces, micro-aggressions and trigger warnings have no place in these handsome buildings. Students are constantly exhorted to think for themselves....

"The free-market liberalism taught here has a samizdat feel. Most undergraduates are as opposed to the big-government paternalism that passes for conservatism in Latin America as they are to the Left.

"Which is why the best hope for the region lies in these young people. With the partial exceptions of Chile and Colombia, open markets have never really been tried in Latin America.... Latin America's underlying problem remains unaddressed.

"Governments are simultaneously too large and too small. Too large in the sense that they aim to control industries, dictate wages, set prices. Too small in the sense that they fail to operate impartial legal systems through which private citizens can claim redress....

"Just as the London School of Economics educated a generation of post-colonial leaders in Asia and Africa, with dire consequences, so there is now a crying need in Latin America for leaders who understand the difference between being pro-business and being pro-market. Every alternative has failed."

Read more: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-bond-villain-libertarians-of-guatemala/article/2609902
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Libertarians square off in 1st presidential debate

Libertarian Party presidential debate was last night, follow up next week | Examiner.com - Karl Dickey:

April 2, 2016 - "Last night, April 1, 2016, three of the top Libertarian Party presidential candidates ... discussed the issues of the day on the Fox Business Network with John Stossel. Another segment of the taped 'Libertarian Presidential Forum will air next Friday via John Stossel's show on Fox Business. The three candidates who were invited to the debate are Gary Johnson, John McAfee and Austin Petersen....

"Many topics were tackled including abortion, foreign aid, same-sex marriage, the death penalty and many others. While Petersen was pro-life, Johnson and McAfee said they are pro-choice. All the candidates said they would eliminate foreign aid especially when it came to its misuse. All of the candidates were against intervention [into any] other country's domestic affairs.

"Stossel asked the candidates when is the right time to go to war. Johnson answered simply, "When attacked.' McAfee turned the question around by saying, 'My question is why do we have war. I mean we are operating under the assumption that war is a necessity. I don't buy that.' Petersen stated ... 'Only if the Congress declares war Constitutionally is it right. If we have a significant threat there are circumstances when the United States may go to war but can only do so with due process'....

"Petersen promoted his Penny Plan in an effort to get to a federally balanced budget.... Petersen is suggesting an across the board cut of one percent of all federal programs. For those programs Congress would not want to cut, that one percent would need to come from another program equally and correspondingly....

"Johnson said, 'I want to support those who are truly in need. I think the biggest issue facing this country right now the fact that government is too big, it spends too much money, it taxes too much. I would be proposing a balanced budget to Congress which would be a 20 percent reduction in federal spending, and to do that, you've got to include Medicaid, Medicare, military spending and to do that you could devolve Medicaid and Medicare to the states'....

"McAfee responded, 'let's look at the Social Security Administration. It is the second largest drain on the federal budget, over $700 billion and yet everyone on Social Security paid money that they worked hard to earn into a system that the government promised would pay them back when they were older. Now, that is a commitment that we made as a government and as Libertarians do we not meet our commitments?'

"Stossel challenged each of their candidates to defend themselves where the general public may take issue. For Johnson, Stossel said that Johnson was too 'low key' and that Johnson admits to occasionally smoking marijuana. Johnson responded, "Well, I'm one of over 130 million people in that category'....

"Stossel challenged McAfee that he 'sounds a little flaky' and how ... he was famously suspected of murdering his neighbor in Belize which prompted him to escape to Guatemala. McAfee said, 'I was never charged with murder.... I did indeed escape into Guatemala.... I was asked for a $2 million 'donation' for the ruling government. I said 'no' and exactly one week later my property was raided by 42 armed soldiers who shot my dog in front of my eyes, tortured me and destroyed half my property.'

"Petersen was ... asked about his young age. Petersen responded by saying ... "On July 4, 1776 Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old, James Madison was 25 years old, Marquis de Lafayette was 18 and Alexander Hamilton was 18. It was young men who founded this country and young people will restore it. Young people will take our country back'....

"The Libertarian Party will select its presidential nominee late next month at their national 'Legalize Freedom' convention in Orlando, Florida."

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/article/libertarian-party-presidential-debate-was-last-night-follow-up-next-week
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Guatemalan Gloria Alvarez on populism

A Dazzling Libertarian Debut, on Univision - Gerardo Abascal, MRC Newsbusters:

February 10, 2015 - "Univision anchor Jorge Ramos recently invited to his Sunday talk show, Al Punto, an extraordinary young libertarian activist who is capturing the imagination of increasing numbers of people throughout Latin America, following a powerful speech she delivered that went viral. Her name is Gloria Alvarez, and she delivered a stemwinder of a speech at an Iberoamerican youth conference, in which she denounced the scourge of populist politics in Latin America....

"Ramos featured excerpts of Alvarez’s blockbuster speech, seen by more than one million viewers, in which she pointed out that populism begins by 'dismantling institutions little by little, rewriting constitutions to accommodate them to the whims of corrupt leaders' and later that 'populism loves the poor so much that it multiplies them ... in order to continue receiving their votes by providing any particular material object the people may need at a given time.'

"In her interview with Ramos, Alvarez located the origin of modern-day populism in the aftermath of the historic collapse of Communism in the early 1990s, and the Left’s resulting necessity to play the 'democratic game' in order to obtain and wield power. In this context, Alvarez explained, what populism does 'is to promise, and to manipulate, economic necessities and above all justice ... to come and say to people, "I’m going to help you get ahead. You’re bad[ly] off because someone’s well off, and I’m going to balance that out." It gives people a false sense because ... when they receive their material need…they feel like "well, at least I got something, at least this is mine"'....

"Alvarez maintains that, on the contrary, 'the Guatemalan has to have a sense of dignity, and has to see the government not as a father or a guarantor of economic objects, but rather as an arbitrer.' The same can be said of all inhabitants of the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia, because, to quote Alvarez once again, 'the worst damage that populism does is that it robs people of their dignity, it takes away from people the sense that they can move their own lives forward.'

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/gerardo-abascal/2015/02/10/dazzling-libertarian-debut-univision#sthash.ZDTDxnnQ.dpuf
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