Liberty!

On 22 - 27 August 1999, 180 libertarians from
all over the world met in San Jose, Costa Rica to
discuss, plan, strategize, commiserate, and enjoy
libertarian comraderie.

This was the 18th Annual ISIL World Libertarian Conference.
ISIL stands for: the International Society for Individual Liberty.

The Movimiento Libertario of Costa Rica may well forge the way
to a truly libertarian society.   It was founded by three heroes,
whom I was honored to meet:

Here I am with Rigoberto and his Dad.

Rigoberto is working towards making the
Limon province of Costa Rica into an
autonomous free trade zone.

He's written a book, "Limon Real",
which describes the project.  The book is
in Spanish, but an English version is due
out in November.

Raul is a ball of fire -- a speaker of infectious enthusiasm
with a great big heart.

A native of Cuba, he remembers the tyranny of Batista.
He was 9 years old when Castro came to power, and
celebrated in the streets with all the others.  Within a
few years he had fled Cuba along with the other
young boys in his extended family in order to avoid
the inevitable assimilation into Castro's military.

During the conference, he read with great emotion
our petition demanding freedom for the Cuban people.

Since 1998, Otto has served as the first
libertarian congressperson elected in Costa Rica
(one out of 57 ain't bad).

He has been an effective leader in the Congress,
is widely quoted in the press, has a higher name
recognition than any other Congressperson, and
has twice been voted "Congressperson of the year"
by the press.

He is an articulate speaker, and is making real progress
in bringing about liberty in Costa Rica today!

In the 2002 elections, we hope and expect about 8 libertarians
to be elected to the Costa Rican Congress.

Unlike the USA's winner-take-all districts,
Costa Rica is blessed with proportional representation
-- if you get 10 percent of the vote in an area,
you get 10 percent of that area's representatives.

Here is the Movimiento Libertario's flyer depicting how much the Costa Rican government
takes from each person's paycheck in taxes ("impuestos") and inflation ("inflacion").
"Retener" is the portion the Costa Rican person gets to keep
after they've been "served" by the government.

In the past election, the Movimiento Libertario also used short cartoon stories to promote the party.
One slogan/theme was: "Where there's a permit, there's a payoff" -- in other words,
government regulation promotes corruption in the economy (while stifling productivity and innovation).

In Costa Rica, the word for payoff/bribery/corruption is the same word as for "sausage".
So the cartoon told the story of poor peasant who wanted to sell taco's, but the
government agent keeps insisting that he must put "sausage" in his taco's.
The peasant doesn't want sausage in his taco's.  The government agent then directs the
peasant to the paperwork needed for making taco's (without "sausage").
Finally, after many hours of forms, and lines, and frustration, the peasant says:

        I'm voting for the Movimiento Libertario!!!!

I thought of this recently when I saw news of a pending merger of two big companies in the U.S.
The headline said that the $35 billion merger needed to be approved by two government agencies
(oh, i can't remember which ones... SEC, Dept of Justice, maybe).  I smell one heck of a big
piece of "sausage".

A highlight of the conference was Milton Friedman's talk, via a satellite video link.  Here's Milton framed by palm trees.

Kristine's luggage got lost in Newark airport
[it eventually arrived several days late, so that
she could retrieve it at the airport on her way home.]
-- so, in order to have fine evening attire for the
opening reception, we donned sheets as togas
(i was just lending moral support).

I suppose it would have been more appropriate
in Athens.

I purchased this piece of art in part to help support the Movimiento Libertario.

Isn't she lovely?

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