There was a packed room for the talk I gave last night that was co-sponsored by Polit.ru and Cato.ru on “Liberalism, Globalization, and the Problem of Sovereignty.” (Addendum: The conversation turned to the very serious problem of the “resource curse” and rentier states. Is it better from a libertarian perspective for a state to be funded with tax dollars — all taken coercively from the citizens, or from rents on a natural resource, such as oil? I think that the former, objectionable and non-ideal as it is, is much preferable to the latter, which tends to generate states in which the state is not dependent on the people, but the people on the state, which can use its oil wealth to buy support or acquiescence from the population. The conversation was very enlightening and quite enjoyable.)
I took part in a discussion today of a long-term Russian-language publishing project that will be presented to the public in the Federation Council (the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament) building tomorrow. (I hope soon to post the accompanying Powerpoint presentation to last night’s talk as PDF files, in English and in Russian; naturally, I added a lot of material in my talk, which was given with very competent consecutive translation. I will probably have to wait until I get home, as I’ve tried to upload it here a few times without success.)
UPDATE: A transcript, in Russian, is now available. It mixes my spoken remarks with the slides from my Powerpoint presentation.
Fascinating!