Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, gave a talk at a conference held by the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Skopje in North Macedonia on 25 April 2024 about the free economy after the recent polycrisis. This is a term used for several crises that happen simultaneously and reinforce one another, creating a conundrum.

On the 2020–2022 Pandemic, Gissurarson said that it was something that had already happened and could not be changed. But it was crucial to know its origin in order to reduce the likelihood of it happening again. The Chinese authorities refused to provide any information on this, and this by itself suggested that the virus causing the Pandemic had leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan.

On the War in Ukraine, Gissurarson said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had twice received the wrong signals from the West. He had attacked George with impunity in 2008 and Ukraine, also with impunity, in 2014. Therefore he had thought he could attack Ukraine again with impunity in 2022.

On the 2007–2009 credit crunch, Gissurarson said that other nations could perhaps learn an lesson from the Icelanders who had limited the financial obligations of government, and instead made deposits priority claims in the estates of failed banks, thus averting bank runs and panic. Banks should operate under the same principle as other businesses that they would not always be rescued in hard times.

On the attack on freedom of thought and expression at universities and in the social media, Gissurarson said that probably this was a convulsion that would go away, just like the left-wing convulsion around 1968 had left nothing behind except some long-haired drug addicts.

Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, gave a talk on the ethics of the free market at the School of Business Administration and Economics in Zagreb, Croatia, on 24 April 2024. He said that it was relatively easy to make the case for free trade. Ef you own an apple and need an orange, while another person oens an orange and needs an apple, then you and him exchange the apple and orange to your mutual benefit. It was seemingly more difficult to make the case for private propery in apples and oranges. John Locke had argued that private property rights to resources could be developed with the proviso that others would not become worse off than the new owner. David Hume had on the other hand argued that it was a sufficient justification of private property rights that others could not present any legimitate claims to them.

Whatever the origin of private property rights, the general arguments for them were twofold, according to Gissurarson. First, they tended to produce peace because good fences made good neighbours. By dividing up natural resources people reduced the likelihood of conflicts. In the second place, private property rights encouraged wealth creation because people spent more effort on what belonged to them than on what belonged to others. Farmers cultivated their own plots with more care than any plots held in common. The business of everybody became the business of nobody.

Gissurarson added that the intellectual support for the free market order had usually been based either on natural rights or on utility. But in his opinion English philosopher Michael Oakeshott had perhaps presented the most cogent argument for this order. This was, briefly, that modern Western man had gradually acquired the will and ability to make choices. He (or she) had stepped out of the tribe and become an individual. Romeo and Juliet had not found it sufficient to remain merely a Montague or a Capulet. The freedom to choose had become the second nature of modern man, and those Westerners who rejected this freedom, for example socialists, were simply refusing to recognise who they themselves were; they were mistaken about their own identity.

Gissurarson and former Prime Minister Peterle.

Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, gave a talk on the conditions of peace at a conference held by the Catholic University of Ljubljana on 23 April 2024 where the audience included Lojze Peterle, the first Prime Minister of Slovenia after the fall of communism. Gissurarson recalled that there were three ways of obtaining from others what you wanted. You could ask for it, pay for it, and seize it. The first way was appropriate for family and friends. The third way was not conducive to peace. The second way was however desirable for the interactions of strangers. You pay for what you want in free market transactions, and you sell to others what they want. Trade was preferable to conquest, a coin better than a sword. Gissurarson recalled a comment by a prominent German free trader of the nineteenth century: If you see a potential customer in somebody, your propensity to shoot at him diminishes.

Gissurarson also quoted a famous observation, often wrongly attributed to Frédéric Bastiat, but. very much in his spirit, that if goods are not allowed to cross borders, soldiers will. A good example was Japan in the fourth decade of the twentieth century. In the Great Depression, her export sector had lost access to many foreign markets, and she had also had found it difficult to obtain the raw materials necessary for her industry. Support for seizing by force what could not be obtained by price hence increased in the country, and Japan went to war.

Gissurarson described a Nordic model in international relations: 1) Peaceful secession, Norway from Sweden in 1905, Finland from Russia in 1917, Iceland from Denmark in 1918. 2) Border change by plebiscite, Schleswig in 1920 when the northernmost part chose to belong to Denmark and the southernmost part to Germany. 3) International arbitration, Sweden accepting the decision by the International Court of Justice that the Aaland Islands belonged to Finland and Norway accepting the decision by the Court that Greenland belonged to Denmark. 4) Cooperation on economic, social and legal integration in the Nordic Council with a minimal surrender of sovereignty, which might, Gissurarson suggested, inspire reforms of the European Union.

Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, gave a talk about the proper role of government at a meeting held by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Belgrade in Serbia on 22 April 2024. He recalled the parable of the Good Samaritan. On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a traveller had been robbed by some highwaymen, and he lay helpless by the road. When they saw him, a priest and a Levite moved to the other side of the road and passed by, whereas a Samaritan came to the aid of the victim, moved him into a hostel and paid for his necessities. Gissurarson said that this parable illustrated the most important task of government, to keep law and order so that highwaymen would not threaten travellers. It was to make the roads safe.

Three other conclusions could be drawn from the parable: 1) The Samaritan had sufficient time and money to help. This was an argument for people of independent means. 2) The Samaritan had done good at his own expense, unlike leftists who always wanted to do good at other people’s expense. 3) The two intellectuals had passed by, probably thinking like modern leftists that somebody else ought to pay, not themselves.

Gissurarson said that the two uncontested tasks of government were protection against local scoundrels and foreign rogues, which implied the operation of a police force and a judicial system, and a military. The private sector could provide most other goods, although government might finance some of them, such as primary education. However, in the last one hundred years the public sector had taken on many more tasks. The welfare state had grown rapidly, even though the real need for it had greatly diminished with increasing general prosperity, more job opportunities, improved health and more generous pensions. Gissurarson recalled that the American economist and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan had estimated that probably the state needed only 15 per cent of GDP, gross domestic production, to fulfil its necessary role satisfactorily.

Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus in Politics at the University of Iceland, gave a keynote lecture at the Cultural Weekend of ECR Party, European Conservatives and Reformists Party, in Nicosia, Cyprus, on 31 March 2024. He described the relevance today of two remarkable thinkers, the Danish poet and philosopher Nikolaj F. S. Grundtvig and the Italian economist Luigi Einaudi. Grundtvig had emphasised national consciousness and active participation in civil society. He sought to turn his fellow Danes into decent citizens of a liberal democracy, and he is still a strong influence in Denmark. Einaudi was a committed free trader who believed that a firmer alliance of states than the League of Nations had been was necessary if freedom and democracy in Europe were to be preserved. He therefore supported the European Union, originally called the EEC, the European Economic Community.

In his lecture, Gissurarson expressed his opinion that the European Union ought to be a federation of nation states, with only the minimum surrender of sovereignty necessary. The Europeans could learn a lot from Grundtvig’s nationalism which had been peaceful and conciliatory, not militant or aggressive. Danish culture, moulded by Grundtvig, should be an inspiration for others. The European Union had for the first fifty years been on the right track, increasing economic freedom and encouraging competition in European markets. Economic integration was desirable. But then the European Union had gone astray. Political integration was undesirable. The unelected and unaccountable Brussels bureaucrats were gradually but methodically trying to construct a powerful, European federal state where their own voices would be heard as a roar, but the voices of the nations as a whisper.

Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Icceland, gave a talk in Amsterdam on 12 March 2024 at a conference held by the Austrian Economics Centre and the Nederlands Instituut vor Praxeologie, about the EU in 2030. He recalled that the ‘founding fathers’ of the EU had witnessed the inability of the League of Nations in the interwar years to maintain peace and promote free trade. They therefore wanted a powerful federation and not only a confederation. This federation had to have a military and the power to tax. But after the Second World War the United States, Canada, and Great Britain came to the assistance of the continental European states, enabling them to meet the aggressiveness of Soviet communists. Therefore there was no need for a European military. The task in security affairs was now to ensure cooperation between the European and North American states.

Recently, however, the EU has been on the wrong track according to Gissurarson. It was changing from an open market into a closed state, from a federation of states into a federal state which sought to become a superpower. The proper response was the dispersal of power, as the Subsidiarity Principle prescribed: that decisions were made as close as possible to those whom they affected. This principle had been violated several times in the EU where no democratic constraints seemed to apply to the European Commission, while the European Parliament was a powerless travelling circus, alternating between Brussels and Strasbourg. Moreover, the Court of Justice of the European Union was staffed by ardent supporters of centralisation, and they had greatly extended the power of the European Commission.