I haven’t preached at you all in a while, so here’s an attempt to actually make a few serious points. My hope here is genuinely to improve the level of discussion.
First, props to Lilburne and the moderating team for increasing the quality of discussion over the past few months. Don’t get me wrong, I still take issues with a lot of the tone and quality of discussion that goes in, but it’s moving in the right direction. And what problems I have can’t really be attributed to the moderating staff, who with few exceptions, tend to be impartial, hands off and fair. The tone and composition of the forum seems to have changed quite a bit, I generally don’t see many people here who post regularly and have been around longer than I have: Juan, BP, LS, Niccolo, Len Budney, Stranger, Donny with an A, BAWAA, Jon Irenicus and a few others who slip my mind all seem to have moved on to one extent or another. And thankfully, there no longer seems to be a single predominant issue that creeps into every thread and seems as a means to dichotomize the forum. When I first joined it was agorism vs. political means which drifted slowly onto the who left vs. right libertarianism thing (did that last too long or what) and then onto the whole moral subjectivism vs.objective morality feud.
Second, and this will come off as very preachy, a while ago there was a topic about how one should behave in a debate. I believe Jonathan defended the position that we should act as gracefully as possible in a debate on the grounds that any other way of debating is likely to make your opponent unreceptive. Well, I think he was right but for the wrong reasons. Like it or not, you are definitely wrong on a few issues and you’re probably wrong on quite a few issues. The real reason to be open minded in debate is simply that there is no other way you will learn unless you assume that the person you are arguing with is at least as sincere, intelligent and well informed as you are (unless they’re quite obviously not). If you assume anything else going into a discussion you’re essentially saying that you’ve got nothing to learn from them, and invariably we see these discussions turning into bickering matches. Some here will no doubt consider this as just evidence of my spinelessness but I was once a self proclaimed “hardcore” Rothbardian-Hoppean, I considered myself pretty steadfast in my beliefs too. Pretty soon I found arguments against my beliefs that were very convincing, or at least to me. My thinking has consequently changed, as far as I’m concerned, for the better. I’m not saying that no reasonable person can listen to critiques of Rothbardianism and still remain that, I’m suggesting that if you block yourself from criticism your going to find it much harder to present convincing arguments for your case.
Once again, without trying to be arrogant, I think we need to recognise that some members here are more advanced in their study of economics than others are. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that none of us regular posters are really above an undergraduate level but there are still varying degrees of expertise amongst posters. Everybody would do well to recognise this, and those that have a less comprehensive grasp of their subject would do well to listen to those with a better understanding of it, even if they still disagree. I may have a fair few disagreements with Mises or even Rothbard, but if they were in front of me I’d shut the hell up and listen, only speaking to ask questions.
Third, once again, this will sound somewhat preachy. But, I don’t have much social capital here anyway, so I might as well go on. Generally if you’re saying something that’s interesting and original, it’s been said before somewhere. This needn’t always be the case, with a forum like this it’s more than possible to give anecdotes that relate to your specific “knowledge of time and place” but generally there will be some literature pertaining to the subject. I’m not saying you have to know enough to produce a PhD dissertation on the subject. But some knowledge of the literature would go a long way in reducing a lot of the repetition and misunderstandings. Fortunately a lot of this literature can be found for free on the internet or bought off Amazon for dirt cheap prices. If you’re unaware of where to find this literature, I daresay there are any number of posters who know where and will be willing to point you in the right direction, I know I’m always willing to provide suggestions.
Finally (for now at least), use the message feature more often. Too often topics get dragged down with personal baggage or useless bickering. People are often a lot more receptive in private messages, both parties have less of an interesting in “impressing the crowd” and will therefore be more inclined to go out on a limb more and be less inclined to try and score points in front of other posters. A lot of my most productive discussions here have been through private messages and I see no reason why the opposite would be true for other posters. On a personal note, if you ever feel I’ve ignored an important point it’s generally because I found better uses for my time and I thought the discussion was going nowhere, send me a link through private messages and I’ll get right back to replying when I have the time.
Yours sincerely, some troll.