Mont Pèlerin Society
| Abbreviation | MPS |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1947 |
| Type | Economic policy think tank |
| Headquarters | Switzerland |
|
President
|
Pedro Schwartz Giron |
|
Budget
|
Revenue: $136,740 Expenses: $138,748 (FYE March 2012) |
| Website | www.montpelerin.org |
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organization composed of economists (including eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences), philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others committed to their understanding of personal and political freedom. Its founders included Friedrich Hayek, Frank Knight, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman. The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies, the political values of an open society. The members see the Society as an effort to interpret in modern terms the fundamental principles of economic society as expressed by those classical economists, political scientists, and philosophers who have inspired many in Europe, America and throughout the Western World. [1]
In its "Statement of Aims", 8 April 1947, the scholars were worried about the dangers faced by civilization.
Over large stretches of the Earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power. Even that most precious possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression, is threatened by the spread of creeds which, claiming the privilege of tolerance when in the position of a minority, seek only to establish a position of power in which they can suppress and obliterate all views but their own.
The group also stated that it is "difficult to imagine a society in which freedom may be effectively preserved" without the "diffused power and initiative" associated with "private property and the competitive market", and found it desirable inter alia to study the following matters:
The group "seeks to establish no meticulous and hampering orthodoxy", "conduct propaganda" or align with some party. It aims to facilitate "the exchange of views – to contribute to the preservation and improvement of the free society.
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