From my youngest years I always liked freedom. I thought every single person on Earth should be free to do whatever he or she wants, as long as it doesn’t harm other people and do something to them without their consent. Soon I realized that freedoms are usually restricted by large and overgrown governments. In my home country of Slovenia (formerly southern Yugoslavia), I saw firsthand how communism and big governments failed. I studied in Austria before coming to the United States. It was a real eye-opener for me when I spent my first day shopping in the more capitalist Austria. It was interesting and at the same time ironic to see that food was cheaper in Austria, even though wages were three or four times higher than in Slovenia. Austrians appeared to be working the same numbers of hours. The only difference was that people in Austria were working more efficiently and producing more because they weren’t restricted by their own governments. I became interested in economics and wanted to know more about how the economies of different countries work.

About this time I attended a special open lecture given by Andrej Bajuk (a Slovenian emigrant who escaped the Communist regime) who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and around the globe. Bajuk is the man who motivated me. He and my brother, who also studied in the United States, inspired me to get my education here. Thanks to free markets and civil liberties, the U.S. has become the richest and most prosperous country in the world and also a great higher educational system.

I selected a reputable private school, Hawaii Pacific University (HPU), because I didn’t want to endure socialist lessons at public universities. At HPU, I learned about the true champions of the free market--people like Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, and Ronald Reagan, all of whom believed a free society is more peaceful, productive and prosperous. I also learned that the forces of coercive government control and socialist and Marxist ideas didn’t perish with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The United States, a land unscarred by the destruction of communism, is at high risk to adopt socialist ideas. This country has a lot to lose if it does. The people and governments of Eastern Europe learned firsthand that the communist experiment doesn’t work. They learned their lessons the hard way. Those same countries are now rapidly reforming and becoming the economic powerhouses of Europe, thanks to some very successful reforms like a flat tax. To prevent the American people from being lured into populist and socialist ideas we need to educate them and explain to them why socialism doesn’t work. We must convince them to vote for limited and more accountable government at all levels. I think it's my duty to educate and convince all people not to choose socialism (where transactions are sometimes coercive) but to choose capitalism (where transactions are voluntary) and that the free enterprise system is the solution for the world's problems.

-GIR-

Kristian Somi is a recent graduate of Hawaii Pacific University where he studied economics. He's currently a public policy intern at the Grassroot Institute and recently published a new Grassroot brief "TheBoat to Nowhere".