About the Minnesota Free Market Institute
The Minnesota Free Market Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit educational organization dedicated to expanding liberty and free markets. We conduct research, publish materials, and conduct public forums to involve Minnesotans in free market reforms that will enhance the quality of life for all citizens of the state.
What the Minnesota Free Market Institute does
By analyzing the actions of the past and applying the enduring lessons of the free market, the Minnesota Free Market Institute creates policy options for the future.
The Minnesota Free Market Institute taps the resources of Policy Fellows with scholarly credentials and practical experience in a wide variety of pursuits from economics to corporate management, legal studies to litigation, and grassroots activism to government policymaking. Our Policy Fellows are scholars, lawyers, journalists, teachers, business executives and technologists. The Free Market Institute integrates the theoretical knowledge and practical experience of its Policy Fellows through projects that bridge the divides among theory, research and policy.
The Minnesota Free Market Institute approaches each project from the perspective of maximizing free market principles in the service of public policy. We take that position not simply for ideological reasons, but because history has proven over and over again that free market principles produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It is our intent that our work will provide the framework by which public officials craft policy, by which legislative bodies approve policy, by which journalists inform the public about and the public passes judgment on policy.
How the Minnesota Free Market Institute is funded
Individuals, foundations, and small businesses and corporations who share our vision of individual freedom bounded by free market principles fund the Minnesota Free Market Institute. The Minnesota Free Market Institute is a non-profit, tax-exempt educational organization under Section 501(c) 3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to the Minnesota Free Market Institute are tax-deductible.
The Minnesota Free Market Institute – What we believe
Free choice. Free people.
That’s a pretty easy concept to understand, but a very difficult concept for some people to accept. The reason is simple: Some people are unwilling to trust the seemingly chaotic decisions of millions of people to create a great society. Out of fear or ignorance, a sincere but misguided compassion or a perverse desire to manipulate others, some would rather turn over everyday decision making to “experts” in the vain hope of creating a “perfect” society.
And therein lies the fatal flaw of the advocates of big government and central planning: “Perfection” and “freedom” are incompatible concepts. A perfect society cannot tolerate the imperfections created by individual freedom; the imperfections created by individual freedom will never yield a perfect society.
At the Minnesota Free Market Institute, we opt for individual freedom over collective perfection – the pursuit of happiness over the road to serfdom. We do so not simply out of blind reverence for liberty; we do so because individual liberty “works”; we do so because individuals freely operating with a free market system creates the wealth and prosperity necessary to carry out the acts of compassion that mark a civilized society.
Beyond unwavering faith in the self-evident truths expressed by the founders, a sincere desire to limit government to its proper role and trust that free market approaches to issues of the day inevitably produce more and wider spread prosperity than the collective, centrally planned economies, there is no ideological litmus test for Minnesota Free Market Institute Fellows. Fellows are chosen for their knowledge, experience and ability to integrate research and practical experience into a free market approach to policymaking. Disagreement and debate on policy among Fellows is welcomed and encouraged.
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