IN THIS E-BULLETIN:

The Ayn Rand Lecture: Get yourself in to our flagship event.
New Research: On consent, Hong Kong, and other sources of stress
Other stuff: Boris (no, the other one), Keynes, Pinker, Churchill...

But first...

The economy is obviously doing very much better than the official statistics suggest. (It’s the only explanation for how many people seem to have the time to blockade and march up the streets complaining about climate or Brexit or whatever.) I hope they’re smiling: apparently the UK has almost as many facial-recognition cameras as China, with 20x the population. (Mind you, it looks as if there’s a few Westminster faces they won’t be recognising much longer.)

Google must have noticed a spike in Westminster searches for ‘deselection’ as Boris plays hardball with his rebels. (But if he really wants to beef up his tough-guy persona, the new Downing Street dog, a Jack Russell puppy called Dilyn, was a mistake. He should have got a fully-grown Rottweiler and called it Fang.) The MP behind the porn laws lost the whip after she rebelled against Brexit [it's what she would've wanted — Ed.]

The papers report that Jefferey Fry, 73, has worked at Waterloo Station for 58 years. (When asked whether he had seen lots of changes, he replied: “Nah, everyone’s still mumping on about that ruddy Europe thing.”)

But I digress...

Ayn Rand Annual Lecture

Thursday 14 November
City of London

Star filmmaker and author Johan Norberg delivers this year’s Ayn Rand Lecture at the swank Drapers’ Hall in the City of London. His topic: Progress: Who Needs it?

Human creativity has given us a golden age of health, wealth and truly amazing technologies. But there are always people—Rand’s ‘parasites’—who prefer to live off these achievements, rather than help create them. Norberg argues that we need to embrace freedom and see off the parasites if we are to progress—and why failing to do so could produce an anti-industrial revolution and mounting poverty.

He’s a great speaker, by the way. You’ll love it.

Request a place

NEW RESEARCH

Who’s body is it anyway? Our new report by Ben Ramanauskas makes the case for dropping the legal bans on what you can do to your body. So if you’re into a spot of masochism or would like a superhuman set of pins so you can outrun the tax collector, Ben’s your man.

Our duty to Hong Kong. We said it in 1989, we said it again in 1997, and now we're saying it again: the UK should welcome Hong Kong citizens who don’t fancy living under Chinese rule. The UK welcomed in ex-British citizens from Uganda who were being persecuted, after all. And the threat of large numbers of folk leaving might just convince China that it needs a dynamic, free Hong Kong after all.

No Stress IV: We’ve said this three times before too [and still it’s true — Ed.]: the Bank of England’s ’stress tests’ to make sure that our banks are solid are…well, worse than useless. Confused aims, too narrow tests, low pass standards, useless measurements. I’m getting stressed just thinking about the ineptness of it.

MORE EVENTS

In addition to the 14 November Ayn Rand Lecture, we have:

9 September: Boris! No, not that one: the Cuban journalist Boris Conzales Arenas, who will be talking about press freedom (or lack of it) in his home country. And maybe there might just be some lessons for what certain people would like to do to press freedom here too.

30 September: We’re hosting a trio of events in Manchester, a panel on 21st Century Neoliberalism with Lee Rowley MP, Jack Powell of the libertarian blog 1828 and our own Morgan Schondelmeier. Then we’re Reimagining Aviation—a deregulated and more competitive sort of regulation that would cut costs and boost innovation. And lastly we are Fixing the Housing Crisis with innovative experts from housing and architecture.

1 October: We’re saying No to the Nanny State and Yes to Free Trade (CANZUK), and Giving the Green Light to Cannabis in another set of meetings in Manchester.

ON THE ASI SUPERBLOG

Infuriating statists since goodness knows when

State Ponzi scandal. The state pension is a massive pyramid-selling scam, says our new recruit Charlie Paice. It worked when there were 8 taxpayers to each pensioner. But with our annoying habit of living so long, now there are half as many payers. It’s time to replace it with Chile-style personal accounts.

Let’s all agree not to exploit common lands. Sounds a great idea, but it’s sadly impractical, says our other new recruit Julia Behan. Local agreements might hold, if everyone signs up. But on a large scale…forget it. You’re better to use the market.

How Keynes got work wrong. The invention of the vacuum cleaner, writes Madsen Pirie, reduced housework and freed domestic servants, mostly women, to take higher-status jobs elsewhere. Keynes thought that better technology could cut work hours; but it’s actually housework hours that have fallen most dramatically.

Matthew Kilcoyne speaks on BBC Radio 2 about the situation in Hong Kong

MEEJA

Daily Mail on income taxes. Financial Times on Labour's £300bn pension raid plans. Politics.co.uk on why asylum seekers that want to work should be able to do so. The Times on scrapping stamp duty. Sky News on why we should expect a rise in the state pension age. Daily Express on inheritance tax. Tortoise Media on the best laid plans of mice and men in housing. The Sun on Hong Kong's protests. CapX on Russian pro-democracy protests. Telegraph on global trade and freeports. City AM on executive pay. BBC Radio 5Live on why Britain's consent laws our out of date. And resident antipodean Matthew Lesh was quoted in the suspectly named Gimpie Times [not an innuendo — Ed.]. We’ve really had so many mentions or articles in the media that I just can’t realistically list them all and still maintain your interest.

Our paper on the UK’s outdated body modification laws Stirred them up a treat at Sky News, Spiked and elsewhere. Then our bank stress test report even made it into the Yorkshire Post along with the usual national coverage. And our work on Freeports even sparked an enthusiastic piece in the Grimsby Telegraph! Woohoo!

AND I QUOTE…

Winston Churchill once remarked that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute converstion with the average voter. He was wrong: the best argument against democracy is a five-second soundbite from the average Member of Parliament [As I'm sure Boris is finding out... — Ed.].

Bye…

E.

Donate

Adam Smith Institute
23 Great Smith Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3BL, United Kingdom

View this email in your browser | Update | Unsubscribe