Moscow Tea Parties! – Protesting the Kremlin’s New Trade Law

putinIn protest of a new law that greatly curbs the right to freedom of contract and imposes barriers to trade and entrepreneurship, Russian libertarians, many of them graduates of InLiberty.ru summer schools, are banding together to arrange their own Tea Parties modeled after the  anti-tax demonstrations that swept America in 2009. They are calling on fellow Muscovites to stand up for the free enterprise system that has allowed them to put the old rationing ways of the Cold War-era behind them.

“Free trade is a necessary condition for the welfare of citizens – it is necessary for our shelves to be full with a diverse selection of products.  Free trade has allowed us to forget about the kilometer-long queues of the 80s and early 90s.  It is important to understand that when buying bread and milk, we take advantage of free trade, that choosing between the two manufacturers of cheese – we’re benefiting from free trade.  Let us deprive the greedy officials and lobbyists who think only of their own power and profit.  This new law only benefits them.  So what can we do? The answer is simple – show that we care! Say no to the new trade law!”

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Andrey Shalnev, graduate of Atlas's InLiberty.ru summer school and co-organizer of the Moscow Tea Party.

“This law removes competition and puts officials in charge who are not interested in providing good quality or a wide range of goods in retail outlets under their control.  The likely consequences of this bureaucratic planning will be a sharp deterioration in service quality, reduced number of stores, increased prices and product shortages.”

No dates have been set but the liberty storm is brewing and cloud seeding (ahem, or crowd seeding) won’t chase away the people’s demand for free trade.

Atlas’s Russian platform, InLiberty.ru, has a petition against the law up on its site signed by many prominent Russian economists including Andrei Illarionov,  Yevgeny Yassin, Segei Guriev, and the late Egor Gaidar.

Also, note the links to InLiberty.ru videos on the right side of MoscowTeaParty.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 12:38 PM. It is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “Moscow Tea Parties! – Protesting the Kremlin’s New Trade Law”

  1. In Soviet Russia, Tea Party Protests You : Conservative Compendium says:
    January 15, 2010 at 12:01 AM

    [...] not really.  But the Tea Party movement may be going global. In protest of a new law that greatly curbs the right to freedom of contract and imposes barriers [...]