Ron Manners on his experiences in bringing about positive change in society

“Well after all that, would we do it again? And we looked around and we saw the company in which we were keeping that night. We looked around into the faces of the people that we gathered there, and we all agreed that yes, we'd do it all again, because each of us have enriched the lives of each other. And when you look back, that's the measure of success. Who have you traveled life's experience with? People you respect, people you've learned from, the people you want to treasure as friends for the rest of your life. The answer is yes I'd do it again.”

Part 3 of a 3 part interview with Ron Manners, the Chairman of Mannwest Group Australian based mining consultation, international serial entrepreneur and an Australia's mining legend. Ron is also a passionate libertarian activist who made great contributions to the libertarian movement in Australia and beyond. In 1975, Ron helped start and run Australia's first libertarian party. In 1997 he founded and is the acting chairman of the libertarian think tank by the name of Mannkal Economic Education Foundation (http://www.mannkal.org). Finally, he is the author of several books, one of which is "Heroic Misadventures" that highlights his lifetime of business ventures around the world and Australia's economic climate in the past forty years.

(see video at the bottom of transcript)

Transcript:

Jadranko Brkic, (Sloboda i Prosperitet TV):

Other than living your life as a principled libertarian businessman, you also have a very strong record as a libertarian activist in spreading the cause of liberty in Australia. Back in 1970's, you were involved in helping to establish and run Australia's first libertarian political party. I guess it was called the “Workers Party?”

Ron Manners:

It was called the Workers Party, laughingly because we felt that we were the real workers. It was a difficult time, and we were chosen. There was about ten people all around Australia that got together. Things were very very bad politically in Australia, and we thought there was no choice between the two major parties. So we thought we'd start a new party. I remember that some of those who were writing the platform for this radical free market party decided to ring Murray Rothbard, the noted student of Mises. They rang him, they weren't quite aware of the timezone difference. I think we managed to get him out of bed at 3 am in the morning, but he was very excited to hear... He said: “I will help you construct the platform, because you will be the second libertarian party in the world.” Naming the libertarian party in the US was one with which he was involved.

Jadranko Brkic:

And that was back in 1975?

Ron Manners:

Probably like 1974. I think it was in 1974, because we launched the Workers party in 1975. It was officially launched. There was about a year working up to that putting it together. It was a good exercise, we didn't get many people elected into politics, but it created a whole network of people who were brought to the free market economics.

Jadranko Brkic:

So it was beneficial after all.

Ron Manners:

Yes. And those people are still there. And those people have moved on in very high places. And we still talk to each others, and we still have reunions. It created a little bit of a radicalism in us, and it's made us a very critical of the major two parties who are very soggy and very compromising, completely focused on the popular vote, not on principles.

Jadranko Brkic:

Right. Well, that's the modern thing, that's what all political parties do today.

Ron Manners:

It's a problem.

Jadranko Brkic:

In the past sixteen years however, you have been more involved educationally rather than politically, through establishing and leading a free market think tank by the name “Mannkal Economic Education Foundation” in 1997. Can you tell us something about that organization?

Ron Manners:

Well, I think out of that earlier political involvement many of us sat back and we realized that there really are 4 ways to become an activist, if you want to involve yourself in change. You see that radical change is needed, there really are 4 ways of doing that. One is the political method, which we tried in the political party, and some people carried on in the political sphere. Some of us felt that education was probably slower but in the longer term probably bore more fruit as you trickle those ideas down through society. The third method was peaceful protest. Civil disobedience. Make some of the rules look stupid by being carted off to jail, like not wearing seat belts and things like that. Some of us went in that direction. And I think the fourth method for change is outright war. We are pretty pacifist in that sense, so war didn't appeal to us. So that were the 4 methods. And it brought quite a few of us to the educational method. That's really where I've stuck... I'm an engineer at heart and I like measuring results. And I can measure results. I measure the results from my efforts in the educationally by looking at all the incredible letters I've received from young people. Four or five years they've written and said this happened in their life that they wouldn't have been perceptive enough to seize that opportunity without some free market input. And that attunes your mind to be ready for these opportunities when they come. So that's where I’ve settled, and that's where we are having our major success at the moment.

Jadranko Brkic:

And since it's educational, it may not come to people right instantaneously, but as you said later in life will come back: oh hold on, this is the thing that free marketeers are talking about, this is why it makes sense.

Ron Manners:

It does. It puts them in a position of being able to know when perhaps their university economic lecturers are talking nonsense. Which is often the case, because whilst they might be good lecturers, the sort of economics that are being taught to the young people is the sort of economics that brought us the global financial crisis. And it brought Europe down. And it brought USA down. That's the sort of economics that is still being taught in the universities. And when people say that the problems of the GFC while still lingering, these very same people say it's because we didn't stimulate enough, we didn't print enough money, we didn't create enough debt. Well, that makes about as much sense to you as it does to me. The problem was debt in the first place. Never will you solve the problem by creating more debt. But this is being taught to the young people. I know they've got to learn it, I know they've got to pass exams, but all I can say is don't use that sort of economics to run your own business, or to run your own family, or to run a country. The better form of economics is is the free market economics, which engenders in it individual and personal responsibility for our actions, without having anyone to bail us out.

Jadranko Brkic:

One of the ongoing projects of the Mannkal Economics Education Foundation is sponsoring Australian students with internships at free market think tanks around the world. In what ways have these student experiences helped advance the cause of liberty at home in Australia? In other words, what have they brought back with them, has it been a good return on investment?

Ron Manners:

Well, with my engineering background again, I measure this. Five years ago, when we had various intern opportunities on offer, we had difficult finding enough students to take up those opportunities. But now when we advertise those opportunities, we get bundles. We wanted one student to go to “The Austrian Economics Summit” in Shanghai, China, about a year ago. We had 40 applicants.

Jadranko Brkic:

Ken and Lee Schoolland?

Ron Manners:

Exactly! It was wonderful. It was so good that I went myself, as well as the student we sent. We got 40 people applied for that. And this is because those students that go come back and they become ambassadors and they hear about these other opportunities. They are like our talent scouts, and they go out and they find students and they say: “hey, that was good for me, you should apply for this, you should sign up.” And now it's not difficult finding students, we are just finding too-many. Our challenge now is expanding on the number of student opportunities to match the quality of the student and the quantity that we have lined up to go. So we've put more people on our staff, we are currently advertising for a CEO to take a lot of load off of me, and we are in expansion mode.

Jadranko Brkic:

So once they come back, what are the sort of different ways they get involved? Do they... I guess sometimes they just go in their own private lives, and they go to business, maybe they are not really always in touch with Mannkal? They just do things on their own?

Ron Manners:

I'm surprised that so many are in touch with us, there is absolutely no pressure, we are pretty busy doing what we are doing, we don't chase people up. But we've got a network now.

Jadranko Brkic:

That's also part of the agenda for you to keep up with people I guess.

Ron Manners:

There's a benefit, we learn far more from them than they learn from us. This could be called rational selfishness. I'm learning how they interact with each other, how they interact on social media. Alot of people my age really keep rather away from that space, but I find it fascinating. Fascinating seeing inside the mind of the next generation of leaders, because we rely on them to solve some of the problems of today that our generation created for them. Probably to summarize all that one might say that our success has been enthusing the quality of students that come back after being able to receive all this wisdom and all these collection of various ideas and bringing them back in, incorporating it in their philosophies of life. Our success in quality of those people is now giving us benefit that they are ambassadors and they are really recruiting the next year's internships and so it goes.

Jadranko Brkic:

The reason I'm really asking about these kinds of questions is because back in Balkans we have organizations that do these kinds of things, trying to do these kinds of things, and we really need some input from others. They don't really have much resources to travel around, to go to conferences and hear from others, so it's really valuable for us to hear …(how things are done)

Ron Manners:

We are involved in this learning process too very much so, so that we are adding to the student experience. So that every year if for instance in Hong Kong, the students come up here and spend their six or eight weeks with The Lion Rock Institute, but we've recently added on another dimension because of our involvement and membership of the Asia Society up here, which got a wonderful facility that expresses in very concrete terms the history of Hong Kong. Their add-on to that experience with the Lion Rock is spending some time at the Asia Society, learning about Hong Kong and the history of Hong Kong. Also, when they go to various Atlas Network events or the CATO Institute, we are now getting so good at finding what other events are on in that particular part of North America, so we can take them from this conference to this seminar and add this experience... The major expense is the airfare, to get them there and back. While they are there, let's add to their experience and give them value. So we must be always giving value to these students, otherwise the whole thing doesn't work.

Jadranko Brkic:

Ron, you live a very busy life as a businessman, so how do you find time for all these things, for the cause of liberty?

Ron Manners:

With some discipline, people don't think I'm disciplined, but with some discipline I try to split it three ways. A third of my time, and that's very important, is earning a living. Because without generating an income you can't indulge your passions. The worst thing in the world for me to do would be to indulge my passions on borrowed money. Or just hope that somebody else would donate money so that I could indulge my passions. I've got to generate the wealth, the income to do that. So that's a third of my time. The third of my time is running the Mannkal foundation, because that's my passion. And the other third of my time, which is a passion, is writing. So I spend a third of my time writing, bringing these thoughts together. I think these thoughts, but you got to get them out of here on to paper. And then you look at them again and you try to refine them. Like most writers, I write too-much. It is all in the editing. The secret of good editing is throwing away what other people refuse to read, because it's just too-much. People don't want all that information. So if you can refine it down , and that's the challenge for me to tighten the stuff I'm writing, tighten it down, because people's attention span is shorter now than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Jadranko Brkic:

Absolutely.

Ron Manners:

So that's the way you go: you got to create the income to feed your passions. Otherwise you can't indulge yourself in the thing that you really feel are important.

Jadranko Brkic:

And for us libertarians we can't really rely on government because it would be against our principles. We can't say “oh let's try to get some funding from the government so that we can do all these things.”

Ron Manners:

If the government wants to offer you some money, be suspicious.

Jadranko Brkic:

And lastly, having been involved in the fight for the cause of liberty since the 1960's, and considering the present economic turmoils around the world, has the libertarian movement grown stronger and more influential over time in your opinion, and what future outlook do you envision for the cause of liberty?

Ron Manners:

Well, it's probably another way of asking me if I would do this all again. We had a little reunion of some of the early pioneers of Australia's libertarian movement. We had that reunion in Brisbane in Queensland just recently. And so many of us asked ourselves that question. Well after all that, would we do it again? And we looked around and we saw the company in which we were keeping that night. We looked around into the faces of the people that we gathered there, and we all agreed that yes, we'd do it all again, because each of us have enriched the lives of each other. And when you look back, that's the measure of success. Who have you traveled life's experience with? People you respect, people you've learned from, the people you want to treasure as friends for the rest of your life. The answer is yes I'd do it again.

Jadranko Brkic:

Ron, thank you very much for your time.

Ron Manners:

It's a pleasure, Yad. Any time.

End of part 3 of 3 part interview.