Whatever you want to call it, the libertarian push is the animating force behind today’s most-exciting business ventures, technological innovations, cultural movements and political trends. Where the so-called left is most successful today, it is due to the urge to end war and protect civil liberties against state encroachment. Where the so-called right is most successful, it is due to the emphasis on keeping what you earn and giving freedom to the entrepreneurial class.

And think about all the exciting technologies that are transforming our lives in the digital age. They are wonderful not because they are giving us greater access to the dubious offerings of the public sector, but precisely the opposite. They are allowing us to re-create civilization itself based on human volition, voluntary association, borderless economic exchange and choice as the driving agent of change.

What if there were a kind of intellectual exposition of the most wonderful ideas in the world of liberty? It turns out that there is one. It is called FreedomFest. This year, it is in Las Vegas, Nev., July 11-14, 2012. This year is particularly exciting because it promises to be the biggest yet and to feature all the key minds that are carving out a future for human liberty, despite the continuing push by leviathan to control our lives.

I time attended two years ago, and the whole experience blew my mind. I might even go further and say that it changed my outlook on life and the prospects for liberty in our time. There was a gigantic diversity of people and institutions represented. There were large sessions attended by everyone and hundreds of breakout sessions you could attend based on your personal interest in some particular cause.

Because the subject of human liberty is as big as life itself, there really are no limits on what is being discussed. The result is somewhere between an intellectual salon and a large-scale commercial bazaar. It is both very serious and very fun. The levity that exists here makes for a great learning environment because the mind stays constantly stimulated.

It makes sense to me that a conference on liberty should be fun, enjoyable, unpredictable. Nothing should come prepackaged. This is something that Mark Skousen intuited when he started this event. Let the socialists be the dreary ones, wallowing in depressing predictions about the plight of the workers and peasants. Let those who love liberty celebrate ideas in an atmosphere of reckless disregard for convention and approved ways of thinking! This is what is encouraged and what you get at FreedomFest.

Laissez Faire Books is not only serving as the official seller at the entire event. We are also holding our own panel. This panel will be competing against other panels, so I wanted to put together something completely different that would attract people and give attendees a new point of view.

The theme concerns new ways to live a happy and free life, and promote the right ideas, in these odd times when the leviathan rules the physical world and liberty is making gigantic advances in the digital world.

Here is what we came up with: “Liberty That Works: New Approaches in New Times.”

We are featuring six presentations.

• Robert Murphy, the economist who dared to eschew academia and set out on his own to become one of the great teachers and researchers of our times. He has a shy temperament, but he overcame it to use digital media to produce some of the greatest economic education tools you can find anywhere. He has written a leading text for high-school students, and he never misses an opportunity to teach, always with brilliance and wit. His topic is alternative educational institutions
• Wendy McElroy is a philosopher, historian and theorist whose work, dating back to the 1970s, seems incredibly prescient in the digital age. So far as anyone can tell, for example, she was the first to consistently apply the idea of liberty to the subject of intellectual property and publicly debate others who were waffling on the issue. She has a fabulous new book coming out from Laissez Faire called The Art of Being Free. It is brilliant, and I can tell you this: There are passages in here that had me nearly crying tears of joy. Her subject is simple, frugal, independent living
• Jacob Huebert is the young attorney who wrote the best primer on the topic of libertarianism. The audio version of his book is being released to members of the Laissez Faire Club. He is particularly enamored with finding practical ways to carve out large-scale zones of liberty in a statist world and has some unique thoughts on strategy as well. Example: He eschews political organizing completely. His topic is private forms of security and dispute management
• Chris Mayer is the author of World Right Side Up, a book that traces emerging markets around the world to show how we are transitioning to a post-American world economy. I’m particularly delighted with his participation because he has a nose for economic trends big and small. His book had my heart racing with excitement about the great trends for liberty in far-flung places. His topic is supporting capital and commerce globally through unconventional investing
• Stefan Molyneux needs no introduction to any liberty-loving student under the age of 30. He might be considered the philosopher king of the digital age. His audience is gigantic and his passion for liberty boundless. Yet he somehow manages to maintain a beautiful, service-oriented humility in the promotion and application of the ideas of the libertarian tradition. What’s particularly impressive to me is he has done this all on his own, without institutional support. His topic is redefining communities of peace and learning
• Finally, I’ll be speaking on the need to defy the plan through your own digital civilization. Yes, I’ll be speaking about the Laissez Faire Club, but also about many other ventures that are charting new paths toward building a global intellectual push for things that are most important in life.

A shocking diversity of people and ideas! This is the way it should be. I’m hoping to see what emerges when all these great minds come together in an atmosphere of freedom and learning. In the right kind of setting, with the right kind of encouragement, everyone can come away from an event like this with new, creative ideas for tackling the challenges ahead of us.

I hope to see you there.

Jeffrey Tucker

FreedomFest was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

His secretary arranged for him to fly into Vegas in the morning, give his talk, sign a few books, and then fly back to New York in the afternoon. I was disappointed but understood. This kind of grueling schedule is typical of big-name celebrities.

I politely asked, “Wouldn’t Mr. Forbes like to stick around and enjoy the entire conference?”

She dismissed the idea. ”Sorry, that won’t be possible. Mr. Forbes’s schedule is very tight.” She pointed that that Mr. Forbes gives hundreds of speeches each year and never sticks around to hear other speakers. ”He’s too busy.”

Then, a miracle happened. The next week his secretary called back. She said, “Mr. Forbes has looked at your FreedomFest program and is so excited about the speakers and debates that he’s decided to attend the entire three-day event!”

I was in shock. Mr. Forbes took time out of his busy schedule to participate in what the Washington Post calls “the greatest libertarian show on earth.”

Attendees at the conference were amazed to see one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world walking around the exhibit hall or sitting next to other folks in breakout sessions. One attendee told me, “I was shocked to see Steve Forbes sitting next to me in a session. We had a great time talking. I’ve never seen anything like it. At most conferences, the speakers are nowhere to be seen other than at the podium.”

Steve (as we now call him) had such a good time that he now attends FreedomFest every year. He told me, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. FreedomFest is a fascinating, intellectually enriching experience with a host of stimulating speakers and dazzling debates on every subject imaginable.”

This year Steve Forbes has agreed to be our official ambassador, and will be giving our keynote address.

And at last year’s Saturday night banquet, he surprised everyone when he appeared in costume as the Father of our Country, George Washington, in a shortened version of the musical, “1776”! (See photo.)  The audience loved his humor and wisdom. They roared their approval and gave him a standing ovation.

The Steve Forbes story reminds me of the true meaning of freedom. Freedom is more than making money and talking politics. It’s what you do with your free time that matters. Sure, we have major sessions on finance and geo-politics, but we also have seminars, panels and debates on music, art, literature, healthy living, science & technology, law, religion, history, and philosophy. We even have yoga in the mornings. That’s what attracted Steve Forbes — and thousands of others who attend every year.

Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation said after last year’s event, ”You libertarians know how to have a good time with dancing, skits, mock trials, magic acts, yoga, silver dollars, and fun debates, all in the world’s most laissez faire city. It was incredible.”

Another one of our speakers is John Mackey, the creative CEO of Whole Foods Market. He comes every year. ”I love FreedomFest,” he told me, “You have wonderfully interesting people and non-stop intellectual stimulation.  The debates are great–Keep doing them. I’m really looking forward to this year’s show.”

Why did I create FreedomFest, “the world’s largest gathering of free minds”? Because I thought something was missing in today’s conferences.  Many of the speakers and topics didn’t interest me, and I’d find myself outside the hall way talking to friends or making phone calls. At FreedomFest, we have 10 sessions going on simultaneously, all on different topics, so nobody is ever bored. (Attendees buy the audio tapes if they want to attend more than one breakout session.)

Psychology Prof. Clive Wynne (U of Florida) said it best: ”I think of Freedomfest every time I wake up at a conference — during a presentation — and think of the one conference where I never fell asleep in the middle of somebody’s presentation. And that despite the fact that I feel no particular closeness to the tenets of libertarianism.”

Robert Poole, Jr., the libertarian founder of Reason magazine, put it this way: ”FreedomFest is the most intense, rewarding, intellectual, create-your-own 3 day conference I’ve ever attended.”

I hope you will join me at this year’s extravaganza, set for July 14-16 at Bally’s/Paris Resort in Las Vegas. Speakers include Judge Andrew Napolitano, Steve Forbes, John Mackey, Steve Moore, David Boaz, Nick Gillespie, and hundreds of other notables. Take a few minutes and read what we have in store this year by clicking here.

It will change your life. I guarantee it.

As Jerry Cameron of St. Augustine, Florida, said, “I can’t remember an event in my life that was more gratifying than this convention. It was like having access to all the greatest intellectual food in the world and you just couldn’t eat fast enough to sample it all!”

In liberty, AEIOU,
Mark Skousen
Whiskey & Gunpowder

May 31, 2011

Steve Forbes Did What in Vegas?! was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Speaking in the argot of our highly refined modern culture, my Agora “homeys” Dan Denning and Jim Amrhein were there in Las Vegas, as well. (And don’t worry, guys. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Right?) Dan came up from Australia to discuss investment opportunities Down Under, and Jim discussed issues of personal freedoms, as he does so well in his essays in Whiskey & Gunpowder. There was far more to the conference than I could assimilate, what with its multiple sessions occurring simultaneously. It was a true intellectual smorgasbord, so I did the best I could during the time I was there.

I listened to my good friend Rick Rule discuss natural resource issues, which is kind of like having Babe Ruth as your batting coach. Both Rick and I are keen on the future of geothermal power, which has been the subject of discussion in Outstanding Investments in the past couple of weeks.  I also attended sessions that discussed such things as immigration policy, the conduct of the war in Iraq, the direction of international terrorism, the interest rate trends of the Federal Reserve, as well as the life of Abraham Lincoln and the guiding ideas of Winston Churchill. You never really know when or where you will find a good idea, let alone a good investment idea. So be on the lookout for FreedomFest in future years. It is quite a good ticket to a great ride.

Mountains of Our Fears

The talk that I presented to one group of FreedomFest conference attendees (including many of our very own Outstanding Investments and Whiskey & Gunpowder subscribers… thanks for listening) was entitled “Mountains of Our Fears: Personal Freedoms in a Post-Peak Oil World.” Why the title? My thinking was that FreedomFest 2007 was focused on, well…on “freedom.” So I decided to discuss how much of what we consider to be “freedom” in our culture is really just the liberal application of abundant and cheap energy.

Think about it. Could you really enjoy the so-called “freedom of speech” that the Internet offers without an abundant supply of high-quality electricity or a well-wired and powered-up telecommunications system? Could you really enjoy the so-called “freedom of travel” without relatively cheap and accessible motor or jet fuel? Could you live in the climate-controlled comfort you enjoy without a long network of power lines and pipelines bringing energy supply directly to your thermostat or keyboard, if not your fingertips? Could you live the lifestyle that you live without a highly evolved system of global trade, relying on massive cargo ships and airfreighters hauling goods rapidly across intercontinental distances? Like it or not, our lives are part of vast energy and material systems, and we are all products of the grid. There is the power grid, the transportation grid, the trade grid and more.

Now add the Peak Oil factor, and in the foreseeable future, bring on physical scarcity and high prices for basic elements of the world’s energy supply. Let’s think about how this will degrade the world’s energy and material systems and grids, with physical scarcity of product and very expensive energy supply. How much “freedom” (or stated another way, how much less “freedom”) will you have in that environment? Good question, huh? That is where the “fear” part of “Mountains of Our Fears” comes from. One of the great benefits of giving a talk like that is that I could ask the questions in true Socratic fashion, but did not have to come up with the answers. Why not? Well, we are talking about the future. And we are not there yet.

The future will be the product of many options and choices. As the great futurist of the 1960s and 1970s, Herman Kahn (1922-1983), once noted, “We invent our own future.” If we invent the wrong future, our society is going to have some very rough times. So we had better invent the right future, huh? As a society, we had better invest in things that will work in the future whose profound energy and material trends are already looming.

Inventing the Future

On that note, I should add that I left FreedomFest a day early to fly down to Southern California to attend the funeral of a close relative. Genealogically, the deceased was a second cousin, but in terms of family ties, he may as well have been an older brother. He and my late father were quite close, having grown up together in Pittsburgh many years ago, in the 1920s and 1930s. Among other forms of trouble that they got into, my cousin and my father used to build model airplanes and hold flyoffs, sometimes in large but crowded spaces such as church…on Sundays. Eventually, during World War II, my dad flew P-47 Thunderbolts in the Army Air Corps, and my cousin flew the P-38 Lightning. So between the two of them, they were Lightning and Thunderbolt, both literally and figuratively. Now, good and faithful servants both, they have gone on to the great flyoff in the sky.

I am mentioning all of this because since we are discussing airplanes and energy and material systems and grids and inventing the future, I made other good uses of my visit to the California Southland. While I was staying at the Irvine Hyatt, perched above and overlooking the convenient, if not scenic, Interstate 405, I watched the Internet broadcast of the rollout of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, held at Everett, Wash., on July 8, 2007 (7/8/7 — get it?). I wrote about this in an article published July 9 in Whiskey & Gunpowder, but there is far more to say about Boeing’s remarkable new aircraft. The airplane is a philosophical statement in and of itself.

How Will You Travel Through Life?

“How will you travel through life?” ask the good people of Boeing in their promotional effort for their revolutionary new Dreamliner. It is an interesting question to ask — certainly, to pose to someone who is in a reflective mood, having just attended the funeral of a close relative whose life spanned much of what we consider the modern era. As I said about FreedomFest, you never really know when or where you will find a good idea, let alone a good investment idea.

Obviously, the folks who build and sell Boeing Dreamliners want passengers to travel through at least some moments of life while strapped into the seats of one of their fine B787 airplanes. And if the early returns are any indication, this Boeing airplane is selling like gangbusters (677 sales booked so far, for some $120 billion) to airlines and operators all over the world. (And for more on that point, see below.) The Boeing production line is booked solid through 2014 and well into 2015, and it is all but assured that the Dreamliner will become one of the most commercially successful airplanes ever built and offered into the aviation marketplace.

From nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip, the B787 is filled with technological innovations, to include operating at a fuel-efficiency that is a dramatic 20% improvement over the current standard within the airline industry. One of the things that make this improved fuel-efficiency possible is the extensive use of lightweight composite materials, as opposed to traditional metals, for much of the structure and frame of the aircraft. The B787 is 50% composites by weight, versus 12% composites in the 1990s-vintage B777. This is a very important point.

Composites

To say that the Dreamliner is built of composites is not to say that the B787 is a plastic airplane. Composite materials have been used in aircraft for well over 40 years, but have been incredibly expensive to incorporate recently. As a result, composites were used primarily in military-grade applications such as with the B-2 stealth bomber. But in recent years, developments in computer-assisted design and fabrication, plus fundamental advances in physical and carbon chemistry, have brought costs down dramatically for composite materials.

The term “composite” refers to a material made from two or more different ingredients that, when used in combination, take on the properties of each and offer benefits beyond those of the individual components. The B787 makes extensive use of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), which is more than twice as strong as either aircraft-grade steel or titanium, by weight. That is, fine carbon fibers are entwined together into larger bundles, known as yarns. These yarns are then laced into a loose mat or ribbon, called a tape. The tape is wound around a mold (such as a mold for the nose section or fuselage of the aircraft) and saturated with another substance called polymer. You can build up certain sections of your creation by adding more tape, so as to make certain areas (say, around the baggage or cargo compartment) thicker or stronger. Finally, this saturated tape is baked under pressure in an autoclave, resulting in a molded part.

The molded part can then be finished by cutting penetrations for doors and windows. Eventually, the molded sections will be fitted together on the assembly floor of the Boeing hangar at Everett. Yes, the buildup process requires carbon feedstock and uses significant amounts of energy to run the autoclave. But by comparison, fabricating a traditional aircraft fuselage barrel out of aluminum requires hundreds of sheets of aerospace-grade metal (not the stuff from which they make beer cans, but an advanced form of energy-intensive metallurgical substance in its own right), held together with tens of thousands of rivets inserted into holes that have to be drilled at precise locations. So with composites, the part counts and labor costs plummet within the assembly process. And for the purists out there, I will have to look into the complexities of the overall carbon budget and relative energy balances, because these calculations are by no means simple.

Corrosion

Another great advantage of composite material is its resistance to corrosion. Moisture is the enemy of finished metal, to include aerospace-grade aluminum, and corrosion is a critical maintenance issue for airplane operators. Moisture has a cumulative and insidious effect on metal structures, weakening structural strength in vulnerable and usually hard-to-access areas. Classic forms of corrosion include galvanic corrosion, when two dissimilar metals make contact with one another in the presence of an electrolyte. Or there is concentration cell corrosion in which foreign materials can lead to the internal breakdown between metal joints. Another form of corrosion includes fill form corrosion, which attacks metal beneath painted surfaces. There is metal ion corrosion and intergranular corrosion, which begins along the boundaries of chemically different parts of the metal. The low points in any structure, where gravity tends to concentrate drippings of water, oil and other fluids, are the places of primary vulnerability, but any metal surface is prone to corrosive damage.

In short, corrosion is a deadly enemy of any aircraft, particularly when you consider the stresses and strains that the entire flying system undergoes due to takeoffs, flight at extreme altitudes and temperatures and landings. Corrosion, plus the general stresses of flight, tends to enhance and enable metal fatigue, as well. So left to its own devices, corrosion can lead to catastrophic failure, which is why aircraft operators always have (well, they should always have) an aggressive inspection and maintenance program. (This is not at all unlike the situation within the energy extraction business, by the way, where corrosion issues are of paramount concern from well bore to gasoline pump.) And the B787 has addressed this critical maintenance issue by incorporating extensive amounts of corrosion-resistant composites within principal structures.

Live the Dream, or Fly It

So with Boeing’s B787, we are seeing an airplane that is lighter, stronger, safer, more fuel-efficient and less maintenance intensive than its air transport forebears. The B787 is a remarkable achievement and quite an investment in the future of transportation — except that most U.S. air carriers have not signed up to buy any of them. In fact, almost all of the 677 Dreamliner aircraft under contract are going to foreign purchasers, except for a total of 43 planes destined for Continental and Northwest.

This is quite a comment on, if not an indictment of, the blurred vision and myopic investment style of the present-day U.S. business culture, where simply making money is more important than the fundamental concept of making things. But at the same time, the short-term view that permeates U.S. business culture is certainly not confined to the airline industry. (And the long-term corrosion of the U.S. business culture, if not of U.S. politics and policy, is a subject for future articles in Outstanding Investments and Whiskey & Gunpowder. )

In case you are wondering, the list price for the new Boeing product, depending on the specific model and accessories purchased, is in the range of $130-150 million per copy. Can you afford one? Asked another way, if you fly airplanes for a living, can you afford not to have a Dreamliner, especially in a post-Peak Oil world? This sticker price, which will put you literally in the pilot’s seat of the world’s most fuel-efficient large aircraft, compares favorably with the $165 million asking price for the newly listed 29-bedroom Hearst mansion in Beverly Hills, Calif., located on 6.5 acres of prime real estate just north of Sunset Boulevard.

So it is your choice, dear readers. You can buy the Hearst mansion and live the dream, if not admire the view from Sunset Boulevard. Or you can buy the Boeing Dreamliner and fly it into your own sunset. The price is about the same.

As the Boeing people ask, “How will you travel through life?” At the end of the day, it boils down to these questions: What are the guiding principles of your investment style? What are your priorities? Where do you want to be in a few years? If you subscribe to Outstanding Investments, I think you are giving us a clue about these issues.

With that, I bid you all farewell.

Until we meet again…
Byron W. King

July 23, 2007

Freedom, Corrosion and Investment Opportunities was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.