I recently found this thread at Liberty Forest - Ron Paul Forums. It got me thinking much more deeply about controlled opposition to the freedom movement. The thread’s protagonist, InterestedParticipant, writes to kick off the debate:
"If I had the money, I’d offer $10K to anyone who could prove that anyone in the extended media or in the public eye is NOT controlled. I haven’t found one yet, and I don’t care what names or organizations you bring up. They all are!
The public is on its own, and the sooner they realize it the better off we’ll be."
So, what does everyone think? Who do you think is controlled opposition? How do we fight against it? Has anyone at the Mises Institute written on this topic?
You can’t prove a negative.
It’s a load of bullshit, it’s just one way of insulating your theory from criticism. It’s unfortunate from conspiracy folks that nuts such as Icke and Jones discredit you. But it’s inevitable, a conspiracy theory may initially attract people, and when it receives criticism its believers will go one of two ways. The rational ones will admit their error and endorse the accepted theory, nuts like Icke and Jones will keep making ad hoc revisions to their theory. Postulating progressively ridiculous ideas until they start calling Bush Sr. a lizardman. At this point there’s no evidence that could possibly contradict their theory and they’ve “proven” to the world that they’re correct.
For a moment there, I thought you were describing Creationism.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but I did a two second search and found this article, which I have not read but will link it anyway: Thinking Tools: You Can Prove a Negative.
Anyway, the point is that this guy thinks everything is controlled. I think it’s clear that many organizations are controlled, like the mainstream media and major political parties. What are your thoughts about controlled opposition? I think one good example is Glenn Beck. He talks a good libertarian game, but in the end I think he’s basically serving the Fox News agenda, making people think they are opposing the status quo.
Since I’m too lazy to read it 
and have never studied logic, would you mind telling me why you enjoyed it?
Okay, it’s only four pages. I am reading it right now.
I enjoyed it also. Very clear arguments. So it looks like you can prove a negative after all.
Only read the first page. Clearly, the phrase “you can’t prove a negative” is not about logical propositions but about (logically consistent) empirical propositions.
The $10K offer in your post demands an unprovable empiral statement.
Suppose we would monitor every ‘public’ person 24/7. That in itself is already something we could never accomplish. But it gets much worse. Even if we did, it would still be possible that aliens were contacting them through a technology still unknown to us. But it gets much worse. We could all be living in the matrix. And your 10K pal could always fall back to those arguments so that he doesn’t have to pay up.
Conclusion: “everybody is controlled until you prove to me they aren’t” is a rather retarded proposition, showing a lack of a basic rational approach to reality.
but in response to the above, a logically consistent empirical proposition would still be a logical proposition, so if a log. prop. can validly be negative (-x) then so should the log. empirical proposition (people are not controlled -or, -P)
Agreed. I probably should just ignore this guy. But then he goes on about cognitive dissonance, dialectics, conscientization, Total Information Dominance, Information Operations, Fourth Generation Warfare, The Tavistock Method, The Frankfurt Institute, and on and on and on. This is all real stuff. This is worth looking into, I think, even if my 10k pal is a paranoid lunatic. Or not?
There is no need for a theory of this kind. The theory that those in the media share the beliefs and values of those in high public office (as well as the median voter) is much simpler and has more explanatory power.
Correct! Guys like Icke and Jones to a lesser extent (Jones doesn’t believe in lizard men) are often right in my opinion on many issues, but they take things too far. They, particularly Icke get into theories about lizard men who live in the 5th dimension and how all of our political and business leaders are aliens under their skins (Kinda like “V”) and want to enslave us. To their point I say, enslave us to central banks and big brother? Yes! But lizard men? Haha! Uh…No. But when rational people like us try to bring up many of the issues we have we just get lumped in with all the other crazies out there because most people are too lazy to make an attempt to seperate us and our valid arguments from the wackos out there
A theory of controlled opposition is not needed? If that’s what you mean, I disagree. I don’t think it’s simple to say that everyone just randomly happens to have the same values in the media, in politics, in the major universities, in the major corporations. The median voter has the values fed to him in public schools and through mainstream media. And who controls the schools and media? A very small group of people, with a lot to gain if they can impose their values on the masses.