Dear Friends of Freedom,

     After starting 2002 on a sharply-upward funding curve, the Henry Hazlitt Foundation, former host of Free-Market.Net, ended the year insolvent. We cut expenses when the funding dried up, but didn't cut them fast enough. And we paid the price of not adapting to the market quickly enough.

     But, rather than wring my hands, I got busy, trying to save what I could, find jobs for whom I could, and raise as much as possible for HHF's creditors.

     That's still a work in progress, but most of HHF's staff has found new ways to add value to the freedom movement and get compensated for it. And, as you know, the world's premier libertarian portal to the web – Free-Market.Net – has been saved by ISIL.

     You could even say that some of HHF's staff went to work for a competitor (ISIL) that outperformed us, and in the context of practicing what we free-marketeers preach, perhaps this is so.

     However, those of us who worked for FMN never regarded ISIL as a competitor. In fact, ISIL was a long-standing FMN partner organization – one of nearly 150. ISIL's mission to network and expand the libertarian movement is almost identical to FMN's raison d'être – but ISIL focused on paper publications and real-world events. FMN worked exclusively online, rapidly achieving a dominant position in the market for such services. Compatible? Absolutely! But in competition? A better "C-word" would be "Complementary".

     And now these two ways of empowering pro-freedom activists world-wide have come together under one virtual roof. FMN's joining forces with ISIL obviously eliminates one whole set of overhead expenses (one less office rent expense, stationary, etc., etc.), improving the efficiency with which FMN and ISIL both serve the freedom movement.

     More importantly, merging FMN with ISIL gives FMN's members access to great hard-copy materials for use in furthering their own education or activism, as well as providing opportunities to meet and network with one another in the real world. Conversely, FMN's on-line promotional systems allow ISIL to reach far greater audiences than they were able to before, at a cost of just pennies per educational interaction.

     So, to be honest, I can't deny that I wouldn't have volunteered to slate my former employer for extinction in a market correction. I can say, however, that the market's correction has already resulted in greater efficiency in the provision of freedom movement networking and educational services. I can also say that I expect to see FMN and ISIL combined reach more people and empower them to make greater differences in their struggles for more freedom.

     Like many of Life's most important lessons, this one was personally quite painful (a bit like those lightning slaps from Sister Mary Edwards' ruler in second grade). However, I truly believe it will end up being to my personal benefit, to the freedom movement's benefit – and like Vince, I hope you will contribute to ISIL to take advantage of this great opportunity to advance freedom on the Internet -- and in the daily lives of the people's of the world.

Laissez faire!
Louis James