I’m reading a news article. Admittedly, a mainstream one: just for kicks. The article mentions something about “Tea Party” or “libertarian principles” or something of the sort. At first, I’ll get encouragement, “They’re talking about it! And all the arguments they used against it are the same argument that have been hashed and rehashed almost 50-100 years ago (it’s so easy to see through)! People have got to go for it!” Then I scroll down to the comments, and see post after post that says something along the lines of “Lol-racists” or “Don’t they understand that this is what started the Great Depression/this mess in the first place?” or “Lincoln was a great president”. And the event is not isolated, pretty much every single article on anything remotely economic has the same nonsense from both the article writer and the commenter. And it happens day in and day out. I’ve pretty much isolated myself from listening to current events, but I still keep hearing these arguments, and it feels like I’m shouting into a brick wall.
“[U]nder democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a commonplace of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. … I confess, for my part, that it delights me greatly. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.” - HL Mencken
Frankly, I’m with you - I can’t help but get enraged when people speak plain absurdities. I expect, with age, I’ll learn to live with it better and appreciate it the way Mencken did.
The people on the left and right consent to being slaves if it means a betterment of humanity or safety.
I had one guy say to me something along the lines of? You would trust a private company with your sensitive info over the government?
People consider Assange from wikileaks a traitor. Want him brought up on warcrimes charges. Even though we are not at war. In way a sympathize. He could have “censored” the names and save a few lives, but wikileaks and censor don’t really mix.
Edit:
Also, this is the internet. People tend to say the darndest things.
I try to remind me I’m only preaching to small percentage of honest intellectuals out there. My goal is to inform those people who would rise to the top in a free market court system. You’ll never convert 50+% of voters to ancap, just as car engineers could never educate the public enough to make good cars in communism. This is without even taking into account perverted incentives…
I take the approach of Jesus. “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But seriously, I think a lot of people out there are just really ignorant about a lot of things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve explained something to someone, and they come back with “Wow, I never thought about it that way before”. Part of being able to explain things well is to put them in terms that the intended recipient can understand. Most people don’t think of themselves as intellectuals. (I think that term is overrated anyway.) But that doesn’t mean they don’t think about things. So I think it’s always good to do your best to not insult their intelligence.
Then again, there are also plenty of people who aren’t open-minded, who may even be in denial about a lot of things. Unfortunately, there’s not much that I can do for them, aside from pointing out their ignorance, their closed-mindedness, and/or their denial. Often they still won’t see. There are none so blind…
Yeah unfortunately I think it’s going to take a real crisis before most people finally see the need to think for themselves. I know I personally was a (well-intended) neocon zombie until the financial crisis shattered my lazily-formed paradigm. I doubt many will be willing to re-examine their philosophy until events make it clear that their current one isn’t working.
During the collapse of communism, I remember reading that people were totally confused and indignant about the idea of non-central planning. To be sure, they no longer wanted to live under a particular regime anymore, but at the end of the day, they were still asking “how will the farmers know what to grow without central planning?”.
I don’t think you can wait for a catastrophe. They sure help jar some people loose but if the USA collapses some new POS will be set up if people can’t even conceive of a free market in the X industry.
There are only so many possible combinations of stupid ideas and bogus solutions. Even the stupidest idiot can’t keep up believing this stuff after a few centuries of getting the same results. It’s only a matter of time.
