Ah, spring: the birds are singing, the flowers blooming, and liberty is on everyone’s mind!

Come on down to the Pauper’s Pub, next Thursday, May 30th for another exciting night of liberty and economics!

Our featured speaker will be the inimitable Dr. Pierre Desrochers (professor of geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and author of the excellent book, “The Locavore’s Dilemma“), who will be talking about Rachel Carson, the late founder of the modern environmentalist movement.

We’re on the second floor, at 7 pm, as usual.

Pauper’s Pub
539 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON
M5S 1Y6

Right next to Bathurst station.

See you there!

Join the Facebook event!

https://www.facebook.com/events/390823844361302/

Ash Navabi is a student at Ryerson University. Send him mail.

As far as central bankers go, Mark Carney is a rock star. His cult of personality in the mainstream media influence how people see him. Very few actually look what he specifically did during the 2008 financial crisis. Most journalists focus on him as if he was a public relations issue and skim over these facts: In the wake of the ’08 crisis, Carney’s BoC cut interest rates, supplied the banks with credit and – along with the federal government – facilitated an increase of the CMHC’s balance sheet. These actions ensured that Canada would one day face the same credit crisis and economic depression as the rest of the Western World.

This is where Stephen Poloz comes in. Mark Carney is too much of a celebrity to waste his time in Canada. He’ll head the Bank of England before (probably) moving on to global central bank issuing a global fiat currency. In the meantime when the Canadian credit bubble bursts the media zeitgeist will probably be along the lines of: “oh why, oh why, did we let Mark Carney go? We should have begged him to stay!”

But let’s not forget the Harper Government. Poloz was chosen by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Export Development Canada is a crony-capitalist organization that worked closely with the PMO in the auto bailouts. Critics of Harper will jump on this bandwagon pronto, but without realizing that Macklem wouldn’t have been the better choice.

Tiff Macklem was Carney’s right-hand man, a sturdy reliable fella that would steer Canada’s economy through the next crisis. So obviously he wasn’t going to get the job. The establishment need a boob and Poloz is their guy. Now perhaps I’ve arranged the argument to produce the results I expect. The mainstream media never attacked Carney and it’s possible they’ll never criticize Poloz. Poloz is the “partisan choice” as chosen by the Harper Government. So the bursting of the housing bubble will be Harper’s fault. And if Poloz is no Mark Carney, then this is also Harper’s fault. The mainstream media will never scrutinize the BoC until Canadians demand it.

And if Canadians demand it – Poloz will likely take the fall. It remains to be seen whether Poloz sees high commodity prices as detrimental to the Canadian economy and if a “strong” loonie is something that should be offset by “cheap” loonie. He’s expressed this view in the past, but given the government that appointed him, it’s uncertain how he’ll rule. Whatever his past or present views, it’s likely to result in more “monetary stimulus” and lower rates of interest. In other words, economic chaos.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Jane’s Walk is a product of Tides Canada, the people behind Occupy Wall Street and the anti-capitalist AdBusters magazine. The federal minister of natural resources has accused Tides of taking, “funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.” And this appears to be true: George Soros gave Tides Center $3.5 million, who then gave AdBusters $185,000. Not long after AdBusters and Occupy Wall Street started promoting the “robin hood tax,” a tax that benefits position traders like Soros. Conspiracy or not – Tides Center and the affiliated Tides Canada are fascist think-tanks that strive to influence public opinion. They promote the merger of government and corporate power while limiting the spectrum of civil discourse.

Tides Canada is against everything Jane Jacobs stood for. The ideas she brings forth in her writings reveal a society fundamentally at odds with the status quo. This is evident in her 20-year-long battle with NYC central planner, Robert Moses. It’s likely that a vast majority of people out on their Jane’s Walk have never actually read any of her work. And if they have, they probably didn’t understand much of it. Jacobs is incredibly thorough. Her ideas are profoundly simple once realized, but complex en route.

Jane Jacobs is the libertarian outsider. She developed a theory of human action through the eyes of a city as the centre of civilization. Her method was highly inductive and conjectural – but self-evident when one examines city life for oneself. Her method contrasts with the Austrian school but both come to the same conclusion: economic progress rests on individuals cooperating, trading and diversifying goods.

One who is well-versed in praxeology will probably understand The Nature of Economies on a deeper level than one who isn’t. Jane’s Walk participants may advocate the subsidized housing ideas from The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But only those fluent in the Austrian school will understand that these ideas can only work if conducted by competitive organizations collecting payment voluntarily (that is, private enterprise). Jane Jacobs may have been ignorant of Austrian economics but in her writings the role of the entrepreneur is incalculable. She may have never subscribed to libertarian ethics, but as Riggenbach has pointed out, her world-view is undeniably libertarian.

Jane Jacobs legacy isn’t found in Tides Canada activity propaganda. It is found buried in the pages of her works. Don’t go for a Jane’s Walk – stay home and read Jane’s books.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

I call the theory interesting because it is similar to Jane Jacobs’ theory on how civilizations develop. According to Jacobs, a staple resource is found – such as obsidian by hunter gatherers – and a community settles around it, or homesteads it. Staying in one spot has its advantages as human beings begin to discover repetitions in nature. People learn that some animals can be domesticated and how different seeds can be mixed to create new plants. They discover that trading with each other makes everyone better off. Eventually people learn how to find oil and use it to power the most technologically advanced society the planet has ever seen. Jacobs cites cities as the source of wealth, Austrians look to the individual, the state clings to arbitrary monopoly power.

Property-ownership, voluntary trade and specialization are all actions that result from stationary living. Markets make the original staple that brought people to the territory less relevant in the economy. This process is evident yet haphazard in Alberta’s history: it began as agricultural but influenced by Ottawa’s railways before moving into provincial “bitumen bubble” territory. A better option would be to allow entrepreneurs to generate the wealth of civilization and determine the boundaries of order.

Instead of hoping for high oil-prices to pay off debts, the Alberta government should – at the very least – stop taxing and regulating everything in sight. Prosperity comes from free markets, not by exhausting staples controlled by crony-capitalists and bureaucrats. Wealth is not a property bubble caused by the federal government and the Bank of Canada. The people living here deserve better. The Alberta government should secede from Confederation and then abolish itself. It’s a 108-year experiment that has failed miserably.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Pauper’s Pub

The next Toronto meet is being held at Paupers Pub on April 23rd! That’s three Tuesdays from today.

Come join fellow travelers on the road to liberty for a night of interesting conversations, presentations, and some very light inebriation!

Same location as usual:

Pauper’s Pub
539 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON M5S 1Y6

Right next to Bathurst station.

Second Floor

Books will be on sale.

Join the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/280006455466349/

Ash Navabi is a student at Ryerson University. Send him mail.

Eight RCMP officers are patrolling Lake Louise and Nakiska in resurrection of a failed government program circa the 1990′s. In Alberta there is no provincial police like in Ontario and Quebec. This role has always been assumed to the RCMP, the federal police bureaucracy. Being from Ontario, it’s strange to see the RCMP patrol the town of Canmore. I like to compare it to the absurd notion of the FBI performing basic police functions in any one of the fifty American States. Nevertheless, this is the way it has always been. Ever since the RCMP were called the NWMP and protected the State’s interests in building railroads by oppressing the First Nation communities opposed to the violation of their property.

But as I was saying – right now eight RCMP goons are hitting the slopes to bust ski-bums with measly amounts of marijuana and water-bottles filled with watered down vodka. “We were hearing a few things about people smoking marijuana, drinking in the gondola, reckless skiing, and we wanted to be proactive in consultation with senior management of ski hills and ski patrollers,” says Jeff Campbell, an RCMP detachment commander taking part in the volunteer patrol program. It’s important to note that reckless skiing is much like reckless driving – one does not need to be under the influence to act stupid. Stupid people are going act stupid, whether high, drunk or sober. Also, “proactive” enforcement might as well be called what it actually is: pre-crime. All skiers are guilty until proven innocent.

The other important thing to note is the nature of this program: it’s volunteer work. The RCMP are required to volunteer some of their off-duty time in the community. Typically, this has been in soup-kitchens or at the Salvation Army. It seems that eight guys with guns have found a loophole to this pesky community service problem by creating a “need” for police presence at ski-hills. A place where there is absolutely no need for this kind of enforcement.

Are there skiers and boarders that drink alcohol and smoke marijuana? Absolutely. My “friend” often takes a couple tokes on the slopes because he finds himself more relaxed and in control when gravity forces you down at 45 miles per hour. And I don’t know a single person who doesn’t pack a warm can of beer for a celebratory drink at the bottom before taking the lift back up the mountain. All this and more but never have I come across a drunkard unable to function or a skier on a bad acid trip. In every other scenario, the ski resorts’ own private enforcement have patrolled the hills sufficiently.

According to the Calgary Herald, “on their first day, officers came across people smoking marijuana, seized three joints and escorted those individuals off the hill…Campbell said he’s hoping to expand the program to Norquay, Sunshine and other ski hills, and is looking for other Alberta Mounties who are interested.” Interested in getting free lift tickets to all the major ski hills by wearing your work uniform? Who wouldn’t? All that’s required is the enforcement of arbitrary laws regulating plant and alcohol consumption.

Is this another unfortunate case of the creeping police state developing here in the Western world? Or is it merely eight RCMP thugs that hate volunteer work and wish to justify their love for free snowboarding? Well let’s see, I’m still free to write: “The RCMP are armed gorillas incapable of coherent thought.” But for how long?

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Pauper’s Pub

The next Toronto meet is being held at Paupers Pub, on Tuesday March 5th, starting at 7! Meet other fellow travellers in the Austrian tradition. This week features a special guest: Morgan Poliquin, President and CEO of Almaden Minerals, and part of the Casey NexTen!

Come eat, drink, and be merry with fellow lovers of liberty! Discuss economics, philosophy, politics, finance, intellectual property, and the creeping, ever-encroaching hand of the meddling state!

In addition to Morgan Poliquin, Chris Horlacher (Chartered Accountant at myCFOweb.ca) and Chris Weisdorf (President at Praxis Vesta Group) will also be speaking.

Books will be on sale.

Pauper’s Pub is at 539 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON M5S 1Y6. We meet on the second floor.

Join the event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/532438250112506/

Ash Navabi is a student at Ryerson University. Send him mail.

Kingston city bureaucrats plan to alter the sidewalk and parking configuration in front of Tara Foods in a vain attempt to produce a “pedestrian-friendly” city. Now aside from the fact that Jane Jacobs demolished the “pedestrian-friendly” concept in her magnum opus The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the Kingston downtown is already pedestrian-friendly. Traffic is two-laned and one-way, the sidewalks are large (especially by the Wellington-Princess St. intersection where Tara resides) and for pedestrians, traffic lights act more as a guide than a lawful light one must obey.

Now the reason Rudi is concerned about the so-called “Big Dig” is that Tara Foods is housed in an old building complete with wooden floorboards and lack of a conventional receiving door where transport trucks can back up to. That means that all deliveries are made through the front door. That’s never been a problem before, as the sidewalk and parking spaces by Tara Foods are more than adequate to harbour deliveries without obstruction to traffic. As both a customer and a pedestrian, I never found the front-door deliveries to be a hassle. The shippers and receivers were always courteous to my coming and going, as I imagine they are to everyone – whether pedestrian, customer or both.

However the construction (or deconstruction) is only half the story. It’s not just inconvenient but “necessary” roadwork that is frustrating Rudi. Once the work is complete the sidewalk and road will be permanently transformed so that trucks will be no longer  be able to park outside the business. Ergo, no more deliveries for Tara Foods. “The food business is a logistics process,” says Rudi, “It’s all money. The one who gets the stuff the easiest is the one who will be in business the longest.”

Frankly, there is little rationale behind permanently altering the road in front of Tara Foods. The city bureaucrats are justifying this $6.5-million boondoggle as an attempt to replace the below-ground sewer, water, phone and electrical connections. Rudi’s plea to the city bureaucrats is that his business, and the entire downtown economy, is as fragile as that hidden infrastructure. Hence Rudi’s shock when he attended a central planning board meeting last November to find that, “The plans were all changed.” He told the bureaucrats, “I said, ‘This is not going to work for me.’ They said to us, ‘go to the nearest bulge and bring the products up the street.’ ” Obviously, bureaucrats don’t understand the logistics of running a grocery business (or any business for that matter). Grocery skids can weigh up to 3000 pounds, and “up the street” is not a figure of speech. The Kingston downtown descends towards Lake Ontario.

Mark Van Buren, the city’s head planning bureaucrat, insists that the new design is all about road safety. Although he admits that traffic-pedestrian collisions “has not been a concern that is immediate to us at that intersection.” So why the change? Why not? Rudi finds the irony in the road safety justification, saying that pedestrians shouldn’t have to “dodge 3,000-pound pallets on a public sidewalk.”

Another local business, Vandervoot’s Hardware, is concerned with the city plan. Owner Bill Dalton doesn’t understand the disconnect between “those of us on Princess Street and those who design it… “You [the bureaucrats] talk about sustainability, you want to walk to a unique store and get good things. We have to look at his request and listen very carefully.”

Mark Van Buren insists that it’s about “trying to achieve an appropriate balance… if we surveyed each and every business, they would have issues unique to them.” Van Buren touches upon the core problem of bureaucratic planning. Like all bureaus, the planners remain ignorant of the dynamics of chaos and complexity in the free market, particularly in a city. Complex systems are inherently unpredictable and will produce unanticipated results. Van Buren and the Kingston city bureaucrats are attempting to impose static designs that assume certainty and unchanging data.

Hence the rationale behind privatization. Since taxation is clearly theft, it follows that the state is a criminal organization. This means that city bureaucrats like Van Buren have no legitimate ownership claim to the streets and sidewalks in Kingston. And since Rudi Mogl has been running Tara Foods for 15 years, it seems reasonable that he has a right to homestead the sidewalk in front of his business. Or at the very least, allow voluntarily-funded street, sidewalk or other “city infrastructure” companies to build and maintain these goods. This would give Rudi more power as private enterprise is dependent on consumer wishes, in contrast to the hegemonic relationship between city bureaucracies and the people “they serve.”

Nevertheless, Mark Van Buren said construction work will proceed as planned. “We believed we’d reached a consensus agreement that could work. It is somewhat disappointing that we haven’t been able to get full buy-in from Mr. Mogl,” he said. “I appreciate his business there. No one wants to see him suffer, but we’re balancing a whole lot of competing interests.”

As for Rudi Mogl and Tara Foods – the tyranny of central planning may have claimed another victim. “It just makes it much harder for me to operate,” says Rudi, “I have to consider if I can stay here or not.”

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Pauper’s Pub

I’ll be giving a short presentation defending the anti-intellectual property position, particularly against the recent attacks of (staunch libertarian and Austrian) Robert Wenzel, editor and publisher of the excellent EconomicPolicyJournal.com.

Pauper’s Pub is at 539 Bloor Street West (near Bathurst station). We will be on the second floor. You can’t miss us, we will have a camera set up. Check out the event on Facebook for more details.

Oh, and invite all your friends!

Ash Navabi is a student at Ryerson University. Send him mail.

The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail reports, “Growth more important than inflation says new Bank boss as he insists they are not ‘maxed out’ of ideas” My take? New Bank boss says credit expansion more important than inflation as he insists he is not ignoring ideas.[1]

Deconstructing the doublespeak of mainstream media is simple. Consider,

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

“The public doesn’t have a clear understanding of what the current debate is about,” says John Wright, Senior Vice-President of Ipso-Reid, “half of them think it’s about wages, the other half think it’s about bargaining.”

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation are protesting the Ontario government’s Bill 115, which outlaws strikes and purportedly strips their “right” to collective bargaining. Premier McGuinty heated things up last week when he called the planned one-day strike by elementary teachers “illegal.”

There are a lot of aspects to this issue and I could get into minute details about the whole fiasco like the extra-curricula activities, wage freezes, something about retirement funds, etc. etc. But there’s a common thread to all of this and it is this: the state should stay out of education. Granted, the state should stay out of everything and ideally it should abolish itself. But for now let’s just focus on state schools.

One of the many problems of “collective ownership” of things like schools is that when everyone owns it, nobody owns it. The current debate between teacher unions and McGuinty’s government is just another version of the tragedy of the commons.

Wikipedia defines the tragedy of the commons as, “the depletion of a shared resource by individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one’s self-interest, despite their understanding that depleting the common resource is contrary to the group’s long-term best interests.” If the “shared resource” in question is the taxpayer, then this about sums up the teachers vs. government fight.

Unlike the market, the state uses coercion to get its funds. Prices are an objective expression of the subjective valuations made when two or more people voluntarily exchange. This indicates the costs of using the traded resources for whatever end is in mind. The act of forcing money out of an individual destroys this cost calculation and thus destroys or greatly distorts the price system. All this talk over Bill-115 simply ignores the primordial fact that without market prices, any discussion of “cost,” “value” or the “best interests of the child” are void.

By being taxed to support the “public” system, taxpayers erroneously believe that they have a property interest in how “their” schools are run and by whom. In contrast, the owners of a private school announce their decisions and then parents make their own choice as to whether to patronize the school with their money. That is to say, parents either voluntarily enter or don’t enter into contract with the school for the education of their children. Privately-owned schools experience fewer of these kind of conflicts simply because there is no illusion as to who owns the school. If teachers and administrators of a private school were fighting like this, I’m sure parents would have long since pulled their children out and put them into better schools, thus causing bankruptcy for the school that cares more about financial goodies than offering a legitimate service.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Now this is a man who’s monetary policies are sowing the seeds of the next Canadian recession. He is (one of many) responsible for the level of consumer debt in this country, he has a questionable history with Goldman Sachs and he sits on the board of directors of BIS, an international cabal of central bankers. Yet mainstream media journalists gloss over these facts. Instead, they’ve built up an entire myth around the man (really, a cult of personality) that he is somehow the saviour of the Canadian economy and will perform miracles as the head of the Bank of England.

But no one is immune to scrutiny. The mainstream media weren’t going to let Carney leave for England without tarnishing his squeaky clean record.

It seems that Mark Carney spent last summer with a Liberal Party MP. This is scandalous – apparently – because the Liberals wanted Carney to lead them to electoral victory in 2015. Not to mention this somehow interferes with the Bank’s “independent,” “non-partisan” role in the economy. The idea is that by vacationing with Scott Brison, Carney was engaging in a conflict of interest.

But wait — there’s no scandal. Never mind. Not even Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is worried, “Mark says there is no partisan political activity,” therefore it must be true. Mark Carney never lies. Obviously.

The lesson to be learned here has less to do with Carney’s Liberal vacation and more to do with the complete lack of integrity with mainstream media. Thanks to independent media and organizations like Mises Canada, Mark Carney can be scrutinized for who he really is and what he’s actually doing. But we’re supposed to hate that. As David Budge writes in a Calgary Herald editorial, “online nonsense is a threat to our intelligence….Political saboteurs have been planting misinformation on social media since its inception.”

I’ll concede half-way. My daily visits to 9gag probably don’t leave me any smarter, but when it comes to distributing misinformation, mainstream media journalists are clearly guilty of incalculable crimes.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

The interest of non-academics is something that distinguished the conference from a typical academic annual meeting, where everyone is either a university professor or a graduate student in a narrowly defined field of study. The presence of non-academics and non-economists has, in my view, one great advantage—it motivates the presenters to express complex concepts in the form relevant and understandable to the general public. This is the ultimate goal of social science—to be understood and relevant to most members of the society.

The presenters covered a wide range of topics. Lloyd P. Gerson (University of Toronto) discussed the problem of criminal justice in a stateless society. Pierre Desrochers (University of Toronto) provided strong historical evidence that businesses take initiative in continually innovating to avoid environmental degradation. George Bragues (University of Guelph-Humber) argued that democracies have an inherent tendency towards inflation, while John Tomilson (The Cobden Centre)  proposed some practical solutions to the current banking crisis.

Moin A. Yahya (Univeristy of Alberta) showed the merits of Spooner’s idea that court juries should judge the soundness of current laws. Calvin Heyes (Brock University) revisited and re-evaluated Hayek’s fight of the century, while  J. Huston McCulloch (Ohio State University) evaluated Mises’s philosophy in comparison with that of Marx and Hegel.  Glenn Fox (University of Guelph) revealed a yet unappreciated face of Menger’s methodology. Andrius Valevicius (University of Sherbrooke), on the other hand, revealed the less known, economic features of Genghis Khan rule, like his policy of reducing taxes in all newly conquered lands.

My contribution focuses on incorporating the Austrian market process perspective into the theory of comparative advantage. This perspective helps us understand the limits of central economic planning in determining the most appropriate geographic location for particular industries and products.

There were also three PhD students presenting the current state of their work. Their topics ranged from applied problems of assessing the effects of micro credit on poverty in rural Pakistan and the problems of controlling government debt in Argentina to a theoretical analysis of property rights and the distribution of wealth.

Dusan Petrovski and Kel Kelly provided unique perspectives of independent scholars and market entrepreneurs. Dusan explained how smoking prohibitions by taxation drives the market for cigarettes underground, thus making smoking less safe rather than safer. He applied this argument to explaining the features of illegal trade of cigarettes in Canada and in his native Macedonia. Kel shared his unique experience in financial markets and outlined the paths through which financial markets can impact markets for physical goods and services.

Joe Salerno concluded the conference with an excellent keynote talk on Rothbard’s legacy on the understanding of financial crises. One aspect of Salerno’s talk I found particularly intriguing is that Rothbard’s work in the area of monetary theory is starting to receive more recognition outside the Austrian circles. This is an encouraging trend. The birth of the Mises Institute of Canada two years ago is another indicator of a revival of interest in Austrian thought, and the first Toronto Austrian Scholars Conference provided further evidence of a bright prospect for the future.

Predrag Rajsic is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Friend him on Facebook.

The unfortunate news is that someone new has to become the Governor of the Bank of Canada. Personally, I think no one should replace Carney and the Bank should be abolished. Anyone who critically examines central banking must, if they are intellectually honest, come to the same conclusion. However, this doesn’t negate the fact that someone new must be chosen. Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem has been cast as the front-runner, with Jean Boivin and Paul Beaudry being the other media favourites. However, I have my own list that I’d like to share with Mises readers,

1. Walter Block. A Professor of Economics at Loyola University in New Orleans and Senior Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Block is more than qualified to lead the central bank into oblivion. From 1979 to 1991, he was the Senior Economist with the Fraser Institute, so he knows much about the Canadian economy.

2. Chris Horlacher. A Chartered Accountant who’s worked with Euro Pac Canada (Peter Schiff’s Canadian brokerage branch), Horlacher currently provides his expertise to companies as an independent entrepreneur. He’s one of the Directors of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, where he has written numerous articles clearly showing what’s wrong with the Canadian housing market. Horlacher knows exactly what a central bank does and how to prevent the mayhem it creates.

3. Tom Velk. A Professor of Economics at McGill University, Velk has got some serious creds. With a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, he’s served on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and has worked for the World Bank. He specializes in money and banking, monetary theory, and public policy.

He’s written for the Wall Street Journal, the Canadian Forum, Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Montreal Gazette, Le Devoir, and the CBC. But the best part about Velk? He’s an establishment economist turned Austro-libertarian. My brother had him as a Prof two years back, so I attended a couple of his lectures. He was teaching Keynesian macroeconomics but with absolute reluctance. He often inserted his Austrian views into the talk and the Leftist-hippie-Che-Guevara-loving-progressive-socialist students would go berserk! To me, it’s a win-win: an establishment economist with an Austrian viewpoint.

…Well those are my picks. Although I’m sure there are many more people that, if given the chance, would reform and eventually end the Bank of Canada.

Caleb McMillan is an autodidact and blogger living in Canmore, Alberta. He blogs at TANSTAAFL CANADA!

Dr. Susan J. Crockford:
10,000 Years of Polar Bears & Climate Change

Tuesday August 14, 2012
19:00 – 21:00
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
Room 1200
Bahen Centre for Information Technology

The Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and the International Climate Science Coalition present Dr. Susan J. Crockford, noted biologist, zoologist, and author, in Toronto. Dr. Crockford, an expert on polar bear evolution, and focused on evolutionary biology and archaeozoology, will be presenting a 10,000 year perspective of polar bears and climate change.

About Dr. Crockford: Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist with a specialty in skeletal taxonomy, paleozoology and vertebrate evolution – and has spent almost 20 years studying the history and evolution of dogs and other domesticates (B.Sc., zoology; Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Studies; 35 years working in archaeozoology, paleozoology and forensic zoology, see www.pacificid.com).

She has many professional papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals and books, and wrote her Ph.D dissertation on the topic presented here (entitled “Animal Domestication and Vertebrate Speciation: A Paradigm for the Origin of Species”). Susan works full-time identifying animal bones for Pacific Identifications Inc., and holds an adjunct faculty position at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she teaches a course for Anthropology students on animal domestication and speciation and advises on matters of paleozoology and archaeozoology.

About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy: The FCPP is an independent, western Canada based public policy “think tank” with offices in Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. Our mission is to develop and popularize policy choices that will help Canada’s prairie region live up to its vast but unrealized economic potential.

About the International Climate Science Coalition: The ICSC is a non-partisan group of independent scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages assisting vulnerable peoples to adapt to climate variability and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change.

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