Dylan - Good points and on the second one it must be emphasised that the Scandinavian countries have a lower standard of living than the more free market countries, even the USA (not to mention that they essentially free ride on NATO for defence). When this is shown, the social democrats don’t really have a leg to stand on.
Heaps of resources on this:
https://wiki.freecapitalists.org/wiki/Sweden
http://theuklibertarian.com/2010/06/22/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/
That’s something Buchananites and CATOites insist on, but actually even what they spend now is excessive and could be brought down. NATO membership fees, costs of taking part in the occupation of Afghanistan and buying American military hardware, including over cheaper alternatives, to suck up to Washington is all European NATO members could do without. Also Sweden and Finland aren’t in NATO.
Also Sweden and Finland aren’t in NATO.
Herd immunity?
I highly suggest that if you do write about the three issues Dylan suggests, that you do not go into great detail about them in your introductory article. If you mention them, they should be hooks leading to other, more in depth articles about those issues. The focus of an introductory article should be on hooking people into the topic, and introducing the main points of the topic. In this case, it is the NAP and anti-statism. Dylan’s suggestions are great, but if you use them they should be hooks to get people to read more articles. Don’t explain and justify those topics too much, or you will lose your focus.
LOL - you stirred up the hornet’s nest, Wheylous…
On the “oratio” or “delivery” component of your article, I would commend Ben Powell’s video I linked above as an example of striking the right “tone”. The human brain is well adapted to stories, so if you can relate a “story” (thought-experiment in terms of people), it helps draw people in and keep their imagination firing and their attention at full capacity. In fact, I think this is exactly the thing that makes the difference between what people call “dry” or “dull” writing versus writing that is alive and captures the attention.
Graham Wright’s and bitbutter’s videos are both great examples of this kind of communication accompanied by illustration. I’m not suggesting you need to make the article a “story about George” but that you should think about how to introduce a human element into the article that will draw the reader in and then keep his attention to the end.
This is part of the reason I objected to “academic air” - I think LvMI (and FEE, FFF, Econlib, etc.) has arleady cornered the market on that.
Clayton -
@Wheylous, I want to encourage you, more needs to be done in this vein. There’s more work to be done IMO on the theoretical side, mainly because too many libertarians are stuck trying to turn the ought structure of socio-political norms and laws into is. Meaning trying to turn subjective should, into objective IS. My argument would be the healthier approach is to embrace the subjective nature of the arguments, and then use objective logical analysis to examine the by-products of specific normative rules on a society.
Though, I personally seek to do more work on the theoretical side, I believe the biggest gap is in the rhetoric. The socialist/collectivist political pundits in (pick a country and party), have done a very effective job of using and establishing narratives through rhetoric and anecdotal stories which tug at the heartstrings, and while we argue about theory, trying to win the minds, we lose because they’ve already eloped with their hearts.
Our job is to win back the hearts by retelling the stories, and putting faces on the unseen victims of socialist and interventionist political systems.
For example, we all understand from basic economic theory that price-gouging is presented as a story of a poor old woman, Martha, on social security who is dying of thirst being outbid for the only bottle of water around by a rich man who’s a little thirsty. But what’s forgotten is that there are another x number of people who are also in need of water, and there are variations in how immediate that need is and in how much money they can bring to bear. So while Martha may in fact die, between now and when additional water shows up. The more extreme that price, the faster you’ll see entreprenuers with money show up to bid down that price. Putting a face on Martha’s 3 sisters who instead of dying today, will die tomorrow is important too. Then it becomes more obvious that there’s a greater likelihood that Martha and her 3 sisters will survive if the rich man can pay $100,000 for that bottle of water. But though Martha may make it one or two extra days, she and her sisters are almost certainly doomed to death, unless elsewhere someone uses force and theft to get water to the area at a fixed price. In fact, the higher the price for a unit of water, the larger a signal it provides to the market. That large signal is an extremely powerful signal to move water to this location because it’s in extremely high demand.
So, finding some bit of Rhetoric, like They say, “Fix the price. Save Martha.”, but we should respond with, “Fix the price, Kill Martha and her sisters tomorrow!”