Debating

Miscellaneous General
1

Inspired by the four-article debate between Jeff Madrick and Robert Murphy, I am interested in using my site as a means to set up similar debates (whether between professional economists or students, it doesn’t matter—realistically, and admittedly preferrably, students) between two individuals.

I recently joined a group called SDSU Libertarians (SDSU being the university I attend), and there is a discussion on how the members became libertarians. After the opening post, it quickly devolved into an argument of whether or not libertarians really have any political power in government. The link is between the current power held by libertarians and how to recruit more people over to the cause. Per usual, I thought about using the discussion as a tool to advertise my blog (because, let’s be honest, I don’t get many dedicated readers; and by “very many”, I mean “almost none”). But, before posting (and I still haven’t), I thought that perhaps I could use the blog as a tool to get more people at SDSU interested in the libertarian cause.

This led me to “my” idea of using it as a host for written debates between two individuals. The debates could do with anything that had to do with libertarianism (economics, political science, philosophy, et cetera). So, that’s great, but now there’s a new problem: where do I recruit people? Admittedly, I could start off as one of the debators (although, given my lack of knowledge in philosophy it would probably have to do with something about the history of economics in the 20th century), but then that leaves me with the problem of finding someone who disagrees with me, and is willing to debate me (and is a good writer, because all of this would be in the form of articles).

So, knowing the great minds which lurk these forums, I humbly post this in order to see if anybody could offer me any ideas on where to get these people. I have been thinking of ways of reaching out to the university population, but it’s difficult. I’m not sure if there is a “Keynesian club” on campus. Perhaps there’s an economics club, so I will have to check that out. Something to consider is that in San Diego there are two major universities: UCSD and SDSU. UCSD is the academic school, SDSU is the party school (#1 in the state until the 2007-2008 [I wasn’t living here, so I don’t know] drug bust). The amount of intellectuals is limited (although, I guess I could also recruit from UCSD).

Any ideas?

2

Open minded people just coming out of high school are your best guess, where you would find them I don’t know.

3

I went to UCSD. Sorry to say, I don’t think you will find many libertarians there, but perhaps that has changed in the past 5 years. I was extremely liberal back then, and it seemed most of the student population swayed that direction as well.

4

Also, I think there is guy that has set up a “Mises Circle” thing going through Human Action. He is not at any of the schools, but has good turn out of folks at his weekly meetings. PM if you would like his info.

5

Can you link the article please.

6

I’m part of the YAL at UCSD!!!

I can see you from my house!! Message me if you want me to relay a message at the next YAL meeting.

7

The four-article debate between Murphy and Madrick was done on PublicSquare.net. I was sad to see that Murphy did not respond to Madrick’s last piece, but to be honest Madrick was not responding in an intellectually honest way, or very intellectually at all. So, I can see why Murphy decided not to continue wasting his time (Madrick was not even addressing the points Murphy was bringing up). In any case, here is the first installment (written by Robert Murphy): The New Deal Was a Bad Deal.

I am a member of the UCSD YAL club on Facebook. I was originally going to transfer into UCSD, but about a week ago decided to instead transfer to SDSU (guaranteed entry, and so I didn’t want to risk it, given the current fiscal situation in California). I was thinking of going to the meetings, even if I’m not a student, but haven’t gone to any of the two hosted yet. I will message you, ViennaSausage, about that Mises Circle thing when I get back from work (and same thing to bigwig). In any case, I was actually looking for non-libertarians to debate. I know UCSD has an economics club (I have been there before; my friend recently graduated with a degree in mathematics and economics from UCSD), but I haven’t attended their meetings in a couple of years (I moved back to Spain, temporarily).