Vote:
Last month saw the inauguration of the "Blavatnik School of Government" at Oxford University, described as "Europe's first major school of government". How on earth, one wonders, could we have done without all these centuries. And what does it say about our current crop of leaders here in the UK who have a plethora of Politics, Philosophy and Economics Bachelors' degrees from the University that such qualifications aren't actually enough to give them the skills to run countries?
Leonard Blavatnik, who has donated an initial £75 million to the project, is not one of yer "traditional Russian oligarchs"; for a start he was an emigre before the collapse of the USSR who had made his first fortune before the wall came down. But let's make no mistake he has benefitted hugely from the failed state that his homeland became in those few short years after emancipation when money came rushing in to buy up the natural resources that should really have been distributed more evenly amongst his former countrymen.
Now, it so happens that I have an opportunity here in Oxford, potentially to establish a rival, perhaps a European equivalent of the Ludvig von Mises Institute or the Institute for Humane Studies, focussing on learning about ungovernment. My university has a hall of residence it no longer wants. It had invited bids for it to be rebuilt and leased back to them as a hall of residence, and I had submitted a rather fanciful bid to create a co-operatively owned hall of residence, a sort of a "Permanent Private Hall" linked to Oxford Brookes University.
However they appear to have changed their minds, and now wish to receive unconditional offers and not lease the resulting hall back it wold appear. I suspect that this may well be aimed at a local, well funded, international language school who may have an interest in taking it lock, stock and both barrels to expand their operations, but there's no reason why we could not put together a bid for an alternative use, such as an "Oxford School of Ungovernment".
Of course, most mutualists and scholars of liberty I know of struggle to make ends meet and are unlikely to be big investors in such a venture. I have heard that there are some wealthy libertarians out there though who have in the past helped to fund such things. We could not expect to be greeted with the same enthusiasm, I suspect, by either of our illustrious academic neighbours, at least initially, as the School of Government has received, but at the very least we would be located in this prestigious academic city - an ideal place in which to build a reputation.
Changing the business plan from a more or less cash-cow such as a hall of residence, to a fully fledged academic institute would take me some time, and we could of course start as a hall of residence (dear knows there is plenty of demand for such in this city) with summer school courses and day conferences in liberty studies, in any case. I estimated in my initial bid that I could offer initial investors willing to help buy the property something like 3.5% indexed linked using one of my "Open Capital Partnerships" vehicles and then borrow conventionally to rebuild the place, on the basis of keeping student rents down to a more affordable level than most privately constructed halls are currently charging.
But...there are only ten days before this second round of bidding closes. So, I know it is a huge task, but it is, as they say, one final fling of the dice. So if anyone knows of any such individuals (or even pension funds for whom a 3.5% index linked 10-25 year return might look attractive too) I'd be interested to hear from them!
