It has been quite a ride!

How do you engage in a dinner conversation with a seemingly gruff Nobel Prize winning economist when you’ve just graduated university with a degree in history and drama?  My solution (which I continue to use) was to find a mutual area of interest and engage them on that topic.  In his case it was his vegetable patch – we had a great conversation that ended up ranging far and wide.

I mention this for two reasons as I prepare to leave CIS and reflect on what I have learnt over the past 40 years.  Firstly, finding a common point of interest opens a person up to consider your perspective on more difficult, contentious issues.  We can only change opinions if we start at a mutually agreed point.

Secondly, I realised how important it has been to hear a range of perspectives and get the chance to absorb, question and discuss ideas.  The more we can expose people to a range of ideas, the more chance we have of turning the policy ship around.

While I look back with a level of frustration and disappointment at the continual policy backsliding by government, I am blown away by human progress. In 1990 one in three people in the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2015 the figure was one in ten.

Another example that shows my age is that within my lifetime I have gone from learning to write using a nib filled by dipping it into an inkwell to being able to tell my computer to take notes for me.  The ingenuity of humans is a never-ending, deep well of both good and bad ideas.

There is no doubt that some very bad ideas are gaining traction.  Governments, busybody organisations and pressure groups believe they know what is best for everyone.

Thomas Sowell, another great economist I was privileged to spend time with said: “The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.” Let’s all remember those words and continue to press for individual and community decision making not commandments from high from ideologues and bureaucrats.

So, like Jim Buchanan, I plan to get my hands dirty in my vegetable patch, get involved in both my rural and city communities, rail against the busybodies, support the CIS and continue to be awestruck by the ingenuity and progress of humans.