Vargas Llosa giving his speech at the MPS meeting.
RNH was represented at the Mont Pelerin Society regional meeting in Lima, Peru, 22–25 March 2015 by Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, a MPS member since 1984. Professor Gissurarson organised, with Professor Harold Demsetz, a MPS regional meeting in Iceland in 2005. The 2015 Lima meeting was devoted to “Liberty: Theory and Practice”. The keynote speaker at the opening ceremony was Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in literature and a MPS member. Vargas Llosa said that classical liberalism was for him grounded on tolerance, the awareness of human fallibility. The MPS President, Professor Pedro Schwartz from Spain, argued in his address to the meeting that the objective of liberals should be freedom of opportunity, not the equality of opportunity. Lecturers at the meeting included Professor Arnold Harberger from the US and Professor Rolf Lüders from Chile, who both analysed the success of the Chilean economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many other distinguished men of letters participated in the meeting. Chilean writer and philosopher Arturo Fontaine discussed the prospects of Chile and the battle of ideas in Latin America. Flemming Rose, editor of Danish daily Jyllandsposten, spoke in defence of press freedom: he has received death threats from muslim fanatics because of cartoons published in his newspaper. Professor Gissurarson participated in a discussion group on natural resources and property rights, where he explained the workings of the Icelandic system of ITQs, Individual Transferable Quotas, in the fisheries. The meeting was ably organised by Peruvian lawyer and writer Professor Enrique Ghersi. The next meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society will be the 2016 general meeting in Miami, Florida.
