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Sebastian Wang, “Bodrum 2025: Reflections on a Journey”

by Stephan Kinsella on September 25, 2025

Sebastian Wang has written an excellent review of his experience at the PFS 2025 Annual Meeting: “Bodrum 2025: Reflections on a Journey,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 24, 2025). See also other Press & Offsite Material.

For other pieces by Wang summarizing many of the talks from PFS 2025, see PFS 2025 Annual Meeting—Speakers and Topics.

“Bodrum 2025: Reflections on a Journey”

Sebastian Wang

Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 24, 2025)

The Property and Freedom Society meets every September in Bodrum, Turkey. Since 2006 it has gathered friends of liberty in this old corner of Asia Minor. This year I had the privilege of attending for the first time. My official role was humbler than most: I was there to assist Dr Sean Gabb. It fell to me to guide him in and out of his mobility scooter, to steady him across the uneven pavements, and at times to keep his dentures securely in place. Such tasks may not sound glamorous, but they gave me an excuse to be constantly by his side, listening and learning.

The journey itself was a reminder that conferences are not only about lectures. Travel throws people together and creates those small incidents that stay in memory. By the time we reached the Hotel Karia Princess — the regular home of the Society — there was already a sense of shared achievement.

The hotel deserves a mention. Quietly luxurious, shaded by gardens, and staffed with unfailing kindness, it provided a refuge from the heat and noise of Bodrum. Meals in the courtyard, punctuated by the soft splash of the swimming pool, gave the conference an almost cloistered atmosphere. Yet this calm was balanced by the intensity of the talks, which ranged from monetary theory to piracy, from Roman slavery to Swiss anarchism.

The highlight outside the formal sessions was Dr Gabb’s impromptu tour of the Bodrum Castle Museum. The castle, built by the Knights of St John in the fifteenth century, now houses one of the world’s great collections of underwater archaeology. The stone walls, looking out over the harbour, and the jumble of Byzantine and Ottoman remains are impressive in themselves. But it was the cargoes of ancient shipwrecks that we were there to see.

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2025 Annual Meeting of the PFS

As noted here, the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society was held from Thursday, September 18, 2025 to Tuesday, September 23, 2025, in Bodrum, Turkey, at the Hotel Karia Princess.

Those interested in attending future meetings should contact Mr. Thomas Jacob (jacob@pfs-zurich.ch) (Administrative Secretary/Membership), regarding conditions, availability, and requirements.

Speakers and topics for previous Annual Meetings may be found here.

PFS Members/Attendees may sign up to the PFS-Announce Google Group or email Stephan Kinsella (kinsella@propertyandfreedom.org).

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“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — Frédéric Bastiat

“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2

The Property and Freedom Society (PFS; Facebook) stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association—which logically implies the right to not associate with, or to discriminate against—anyone in one's personal and business relations—and unconditional free trade. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form, whether of "outcome" or "opportunity," and it has an outspoken distaste for politics and politicians. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: "What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. ... There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government."

(A more complete statement of our Principles can be found here.)