Articles

“We must prevent exploitation of workers,” they say. Well, this is a complete nonsense. Capitalist exploitation is nothing but a fable that leftists, populists or inadequately educated individuals uses for haunting employees – just like parents use tales about bugaboos under bed to scare unruly children.

Since 1993, the great majority of public institutions have been managed by local governments. The introduction of KLIK (Klebelsberg Institution Maintenance Centre) led to a myriad of changes in the everyday life of every teacher and student. Financial centralization has transformed previously easy everyday tasks into heavily bureaucratic and difficult.

Due to the lack of a two-third majority which would enable Law and Justice to change the Constitution officially and to implement the ideas similar to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, the governing party is often hovering on the edge of breaching the Constitution.

Since the middle of January, the question of conscription has been in the center of public attention in Hungary. Leader of the parliamentary group of Fidesz expressed plans to change the current system but did not mention any exact agenda. The majority of opposition parties immediately objected the idea.

Hungarian educational institutions have been struggling with insufficient funding for a long time. Yet, the reforms aiming to tackle these challenges ended up damaging the education system. Tension is increasing between teachers and the government, with no solution in sight.

It really is a pity that the politicians currently governing Poland do not concern themselves with the negative demographic trends. It is even more sad that they do not care about the future of Polish pension system and public finance system.

According to the right wing public opinion, George Soros is one of these “money men”, who support left parties and civil organizations with the purpose of subduing the Christian-conservative course. There is heavy animosity towards civil organizations coming from the political right.

One thing Hungarian citizens, businessmen and politicians all agree on, is that rampant corruption is one of the main problems of the country. This situation calls for the increased transparency of government institutions, and for providing easily accessible information regarding the handling of public funds.

During the last fifty years, the United States and the EU countries have developed very high, though different, consumers protection standards. A free trade agreement based on the unification of standards will be unrealistic. Ideas of functional equivalents and/or mutual recognition of national standards is the best recipe.

The second part of the interviev by Josef Šíma (president of CEVRO Institute, Prague) with professor Peter Boettke on the importance of mainstream vs. mainline distinction in understanding economics, the power of ideas and education focusing on the link between philosophy, politics and economics, and the new master\'s PPE program in Prague.