When I embarked upon the task of teaching Austrian Economics at USFQ (as ECN101 and with some concessions to the mainstream such as teaching their flawed theories before attacking them) I couldn’t predict beforehand if I was going to find either resistance or support from my students and colleagues. I promise to tell TLS readers about the latter in another occasion. Of every class of 30-33 students for ECN101 I end up focusing on the 5-10 that are really into the material. We read a lot of Hoppe, Rothbard, Reisman, Dilorenzo, Kinsella and Block. Of course I tell my students that my class’ purpose is to show them a different point of view, since the “official” one can be found on the MSM of Ecuador and the U.S. and other classes even at USFQ (most PhD professors being either natural science types or liberal arts former hippies that support any soft form of socialism you can imagine there is.)
Of course of this 5-10 (per class, and I teach 3 classes per semester) maybe 2 or 3 become ardent libertarians and are encouraged to attend Mises University and FEE Seminars during the following summer. Last semester, I taught an “Advanced Libertarianism” seminar for the 12 best students from the past two years. Their enthusiasm being at a peak, they decided to do as Helio Beltrao and his libertarian cadre did in Brazil and create a LVMI-Ecuador think tank. My students Esteban Perez, Cindy Aguiar, Esteban Torres, Lizeth Torres, Alejandro Veintimilla, Pablo Mateus, Paul Riera and Lizeth Vasconez are the culprits: they are they driving force for LVMI-Ecuador. I’ll just say you better remember their names, they are very young but I bet they will make the headlines of libertarian and MSM publications later on.
The most exciting thing is that thanks to web 2.0 we can hold board meetings via Skype, promote our articles (60% of mises.ec being the translated Mises Daily articles) and events (this Wednesday we begin with “Cuba and the elephants” a thought-provoking documentary) via Facebook and keep our fixed costs to $40usd a year (for the .ec domain.)
In sum, today I want to share with you the official launch of www.mises.ec as the core service the Instituto Ludwig von Mises Ecuador has to offer the region and country in which it operates.
