1) What are your impressions from this year’s Free Market Road Show so far? What are the most significant highlights? Do you see any opportunity how to improve this concept?
Robert Murphy: This is my first time so I am very excited to see people from Central and Eastern Europe interested in the ideas of liberty and free market. It is something encouraging. I guess my advice would be to spread the word about this kind of events so that as many people as possible can discuss these issues.
Josef Šima: The best way for young people to explore ideas of freedom is to expose them to foreign influences with people who have studied these ideas for decades, economists, political scientists, historians because local schools don’t offer this kind of knowledge.
2) You are both dealing with education in different ways. Education is one of the most important field of activities. Mr. Murphy, do you think that young people today are more inclined to government interventionism and welfare state rather than to free market approach? What is the most significant factor that influences young people in developing their own ideological position?
Murphy: Unfortunately, while we are recording this there are a lot of young people in the USA who are pro-Bernie Sanders which is not good sign. If I would generalize, the optimism that I had was wrong, the optimism that the young people are aware that politicians are a bunch of liars and that they as young people can not hope to work in one corporation for 30 years, that they know that they cannot get social security and medical care from the federal government, that they have to be flexible in their own individual lives. This shows that libertarian movement has failed to reach out to more young people even though it is better now then 20 years ago. Many people are now aware of our ideas. One of the dramatic changes that is going to happen in the USA is that too many kids are graduating with 100.000 USD in debt and cannot get a good job. Model that we built up is not sustainable. So I hope that very soon young people won’t say: “I have to go to four-year college to start my life. I hope that they will see there are a lot of other opportunities for them. And traditional source of leftist propaganda on the colleges is going to lose in that sense.
Mr. Šima, what would be your advice having in mind the position and reputation of your institute? How did you develop brand of CEVRO?
I started 25 years ago with summer schools, 30 students on seven days’ seminars with some foreign and some local professors. Then we introduced training programs for high school students and high school teachers as well as annual conferences with growing audiences. My later achievement is that I became the president of a fully accredited university and I hope that now I will strongly influence people who care about ideas. Key issue is to have an audience. In a small country you can make a huge difference. You just need to talk to a lot of people.
3) We often ask our guests how to inspire politicians to think more seriously about free market solutions in economy?
Murphy: There are two pieces of advice from US experience – when you talk with politicians they are concerned with immediate practical results so they are not interested in abstract notion of liberty and philosophical issues. You must explain them tangible results that they can present to their own constituencies. On the other hand, you must educate the public and interest them for your proposals. Then the politicians will automatically notice what the problem is that upsets the people. This two advices are complementary.
Šima: Slovakia is a good example where policy analysts are very influential. On the other hand, we in Czech Republic do it through education trying to influence policy process indirectly because of good relations with universities. It is not crucial to elect good politician but to have ideas that politicians will accept.