Richmond's own Keith Preston is the winner of the U.K.-based Libertarian Alliance's Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize Essay Contest. The theme of the competition was, "Can a Libertarian Society be Described as ‘Tesco minus the State'?", reflecting the general debate in libertarian circles on the exact nature of the free market we so doggedly advocate. Keith's essay nails it:
Read this articleAn economy organized on the basis of worker-owned and operated industries, peoples' banks, mutuals, consumer cooperatives, anarcho-syndicalist labor unions, individual and family enterprises, small farms and crafts workers associations engaged in local production for local use, voluntary charitable institutions, land trusts, or voluntary collectives, communes and kibbutzim may seem farfetched to some, but no more so and probably less so than a modern industrial, high-tech economy where the merchant class is the ruling class and the working class is a frequently affluent middle class would have seemed to residents of the feudal societies of pre-modern times. If the expansion of the market economy, specialization, the division of labor, industrialization and technological advancements can bring about the achievements of modern societies in eradicating disease, starvation, infant mortality and early death, one can only wonder what a genuine free enterprise system might achieve, and would have already achieved were it not for the scourge of statism and the corresponding plutocracy.
