Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) was founded in Switzerland in 1947 by Frederic Hayek, a young Milton Friedman, and 35 other scholars, mostly economists. They met to discuses the growth of governmental intrusion and the future of classical liberalism.

MPS had a strong commitment to responsible liberty but not to any political party. “Its sole objective was to facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society and to study the workings, virtues, and defects of market-oriented economic systems.”

Members include Nobel Prize recipients, economic and financial experts, and legal scholars from many nations. Until recently worldwide membership was capped at just over 500—and 4 were from Bozeman, Montana. Ramona and I have attended for 30 years and FREE has hosted two MPS meeting. We were in Istanbul attending this year’s meeting when Steve Jobs died.

Steve Jobs’ industry facilitated instant, easy communications among distant people. One clear benefit is exposure of the problems inherent to statism, mainly self-dealing and corruption. Hypocrisy and lies are uncovered. It’s harder for politicians to mislead and hide misdeeds. Gaps between ideal and actual behavior are identified; think John Edwards.

The Internet helps MPS evangelize for liberty. The Istanbul meeting included 80 relatively young women and men, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, all on foundation scholarships. All communicate with MPS through the Internet, many on Apple products.

At nights Ramona and I streamed San Francisco’s NPR station KQED on my IPhone. That’s how we learned Steve Jobs had died. The amazing thing is such communication is normal. This experience, people from Bozeman listening to a San Francisco NPR station while in Istanbul, has huge implications. Apple and its competitors have changed the dynamics of political plunder.

Thanks to better information, the rational citizen’s default is to assume politicians gain and retain power via redistribution. They promise libertarian taxes with socialist entitlements, a clearly unsustainable combination. This is the predictable end-state when governments allocate wealth and rig preferential opportunities. The 37 men at the first MPS meeting 64 years ago understood this dynamic. They organized to resist it.

When MPS was created classical liberals were rare and lonely. The general presumption reigning among academic, business, and political elites was and still is clearly and widely understood; right thinking people agree that some centralized system of detailed planning and control is a requisite of the good society.

Jobs’ success demonstrates the opposite. Productive and innovative economies arise from ambitious, creative individuals working in a civic culture that respects the rule of law, private property, with coordination through markets, not politics.

When government planners pick industry’s winners, waste and corruption predictably follow. Chicago Tribune writers are ideally located and conditioned to spy the results. Here’s their commentary on Solyndra, “a solar panel company that got a $535 million government-backed loan with the help of the Obama White House over the objections of federal budget analysts.” As John Kass wrote in the Trib, “Those of us from Chicago know exactly what the Solyndra scandal smells like. And it doesn’t smell fresh and green.”

“Progressives” have long claimed a monopoly on the ethical high ground and sound public policy. They claim 20-20 vision for spotting real and imaginary market failures from monopolies and externalities. Yet they demonstrate incapacity for anticipating predictable consequences of political allocation. However, the principle is quite simple. When decisions are made in the political arena most are based on political calculations and defended by lies. This is a key foundational truth of multi-cultural democracies.

Steve Jobs has received great and well-deserved praise for his entrepreneurial, design, and marketing genius. More importantly, he and his competitors have given citizens the means to monitor threats to liberty and prosperity and to organize in their defense. MPS founders would rejoice.

—sent from my iPad in Istanbul