Have we been going about it all wrong?

Economics Political Theory
1

I’ve been thinking lately that many fine institutions and persons have been going about promoting the messages of liberalism, classically understood, through the scholarly approach a bit too much. You will notice that our ‘movement’ has not reached too wide a sector of society in general. Why is this? Because the majority of people do not really care much for essays, history books, and pamphlets. I really believe that is the case, and yet for the past 30 years or more liberals have been doing this same strategy with somewhat small success but not much.

So what do the majority like? Aesthetics. Appeals to the senses. Things that excite them, visually, audibly, etc.

An animated lesson in economics alone could, if widely released in theaters, reach far larger an audience than any of us ever could typing away at our computer screens. Our opponents realized this fact long ago, which is why the media is full of their crap; but it is possible to get attention this way.

How do we raise money for such a venture? The way Ron Paul got money.

What angers me is the fact that this “Campaign for Liberty” is going to spend 5 million dollars on pamphlets, rallies, and other useless “Preach to the choir” methods. It won’t work.

I realize a lot of you guys are convinced that you will all get your rifles one of these days and go storm the capitol building and instate your restored republic. To that I say, good luck, perhaps you should go back and read Liberalismus one more time… Mises knew exactly what happens minorities that rule against the will of the majority. It doesn’t last long.

Let’s look at it from the laissez-faire approach, the consumers don’t like our product, despite the fact that it is free. Our marketing, although doing a swell job at keeping regulars, are not making much headway. I am not saying that we should abandon scholarly work, but that we should expand into the other spheres of influence. We gotta attract new buyers.

No liberal revolution will work unless it has the backing of the populace, pure and simple.

How do we do that: Aesthetics. Music, movies, games, etc. - Hell, be creative.

We can do it!

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No response? =[

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I really don’t think that the free market and Austrian economics has a good future, and I think most austrian economists and austrian school are also aware of that.

You cannot expect the majority to value liberty more than security, that is just human nature.

But I’m still going to continue to study Austrian Economics because it feels good to know what’s really going on around me, and to have an idea of what’s going to happen in the future.

And the good thing about studying Austrian economics is that it taught me to not care too much about other people, or not care at all.

so yeah, I really don’t care whether our society wakes up or not.

In other words , Austrian economics opened my eyes to just accept how naturally stupid people are

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I’m not sure it’s really fair to say that people have been “going about it” wrong. As someone more interested in the academic side of the pursuit of liberty, I can comfortably assure you that a lot more needs to be done before we can uncontroversially declare ourselves “right” about some of the most fundamental ideas on which libertarian political philosophy is built. Having an activist movement which doesn’t reflect a solid underlying doctrine doesn’t sound like much fun to me; I don’t want to be looked at as an amusing joke by my academic peers. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s “wrong” to try to build upon these ideas.

That being said, the libertarian movement has a clear PR problem, possibly rooted in the fact that in order for it to be plausible, libertarianism needs to be understood in a very nuanced way. And unfortunately, we live in a world nearly devoid of nuance. Everything needs to be reduced to a sentence or less. But reducing libertarian ideas in that way often ends up making them counterintuitive and not entirely correct. For example, “Libertarianism holds that the initiation of force is always wrong” is not entirely correct if we adhere to the commonly used definitions of all of those words, and if we believed that, we would be guilty of the worst kind of naivity. For example, if I saw you stepping off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, and I could see that you weren’t paying attention, it seems reasonable to think that I might be justified in grabbing your arm to stop you from getting yourself killed. But in order to understand the ethical implications of initiated force in a way that’s nuanced enough to actually be plausible, you’d need to spend a bit of time getting to know different viewpoints, how they relate to each other, and what kinds of things we should be looking for in a proper theory. And I can tell you with at least a little bit of confidence that you would most likely never completely understand how these ideas work. I sure don’t. And average people certainly don’t have time for that kind of stuff.

So I agree that trying to make everyone into political philosophers and economists is likely to fail to produce the desired results. But straight out visceral activism doesn’t need to be the only alternative. See, for example, this thread.

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Yes, the freedom movement is going about it all wrong. Your conclusion here is that if they just used more interesting media then the masses would be all for it.

Here you conclude that direct action will not work. I agree with regard to the US.

You recognize the current strategy is not working and then advocate that we need the masses for it to work. The masses follow, they don’t lead. For example, why do so many people want to live in the U.S.? Is it because the US advertises well in foreign countries so people want to move to the US? No, simply put the US created a framework of relative freedom and more freedom is superior to less so people want to live in the US. If we create a free society even a small one then the people will come and join us all by themselves without us even trying to promote it. We have to demonstrate that a free society is superior by creating one and then the masses will follow. People will go where the freedom is.

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There is no need to “teach” liberty to anyone. Everybody wants liberty. The philosophy that we learn is only useful in debates with other intellectuals who protect the powerful. In that sense, fewer, more adept intellectuals are to our advantage.

What we need in order to gather public support is not education. That is the socialist dream to think that the common man can be educated to greatness. What we need is courageous leadership that the common man can rally behind to win his freedom.

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Exactly.

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The desire to have freedom (the end) and the way in which a person goes about attaining it (the means) are two seperate things. The majority may have the former, but current and past events seem to lend to the belief that they are quite lacking in understanding of the latter; but I personally do not think it is beyond their reach. The point of my original post was to use a different marketing strategy to sell our ideas, namely aesthetics. The chief purpose of economics, to my understanding, is the realization of how and if the means humans use in their actions achieve, or not, their ends and how to better satisfy goals, or not, through more efficient actions in relation to acting in the world around us.

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The closest thing to mass appeal of libertarianism is South Park. They always have a libertarian message or good moral thought at the end of the show. I wish they could do a show on the minimum wage. Maybe Cartman can get a job at a local store, and show how the government ruins small business at the local and corporate level, when he runs out of money and closes up, pissing off Cartman

Or have a new store open that doesn’t cater to jews or fat people, but turn the story into a theme of private property rights. Or have one about a new private school in South Park.

P & T Bullshit is a good libertarian show but has a limited audience because it is one cable. We need something that aims at the poor and working class so they learn how bad they are getting screwed by socialists and the “workers advocates” in Congress.

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This is a brilliant subject, I can’t believe I missed replying to it.

I agree with almost everything. Particularly the need for courageous leaders, not people who are waiting for the state to fail so they can leave their houses to see if the libertarians are marching to the capital. You don’t have to be strong, good looking or even charismatic. You just have to lead by example, and that might involve taking some risks. In my opinion, if you won’t take risks for liberty, then you have accepted being a slave.

I’m not good looking, I’m intensely private and have no desire to lead. I’d rather no one knew who I was. But if I think the opportunity is there, I will start it off. I’ll be the first one to volunteer, or to step forward.

No, I’m not advising everyone quit their job and stop paying their taxes. But it’s something every serious libertarian and anarchist should have considered and thought out somewhat.

One big problem I have noticed while on these forums, and this is not directed at anyone in particular, is that populism is looked down on, and avoided at all costs. We tip-toe around the authority of the government, saying it is immoral, unjust and unnatural, and yet we are rarely pointing the finger of blame where it belongs. Let’s not kid ourselves, the FED didn’t happen by accident. The booms and busts don’t happen by accident. Each and every time someone is profiting off these events. War is another one. Who here is willing to speak truth to power?

We should be challenging socialists in every on and offline newspaper article. We should be calling in to C-SPAN and call in radio and challenging the hosts. We should be erecting web sites daily challenging different parts of the state. We should be volunteering to speak to youth groups and such about sound money (all of the Philosopher Kings can do that based on the respectability of their academic sphere).

I’ve got some really cool ideas, but no time to implement them. There are a million TANGIBLE things we can do to CHALLENGE the state. To give people something to pay attention to. To gain some cachet with the next generation.

I’m getting all worked up again!

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TV is bad for you. And it is a dead milieu.

Aim higher. Create something interactive. We don’t need zombie eyeballs. We need radical thinkers and activists.

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A strategy that is dependent on convincing the masses to create liberty is doomed to failure. You were right when you suggested that people inherently want to be free it is just a matter of having some place to go. The US and the internet are good examples, its freer than most places so people naturally flock there. No media campaign is necessary. All that is required is for us to create the framework of a free society and people will find it and naturally flock to it. Forget trying to convince the masses, blaze the trail and the masses will follow.

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You know, guerillas fight when they’re not working in the fields. The harvest comes first though.

You can fight the state on your weekends.

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Bummer. The statists work 5 days to our 2. [:(]

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But we get more done with our time.

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I’d like to believe that. Honestly.

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How about using that money for TV spots and infomercials like Ross Perot did? There are so many issues that the majority agrees with libertarians, IMO. Take lower taxes. Who wants higher taxes? We could have a simple commercial saying “want lower taxes? vote libertarian.” Likewise, people like a balanced budget so you could have a similar commercial like that. You could also attack the government for inflation.

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This is based on the assumption that voting changes anything. Othewise the money is simply wasted.

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I agree. And it’s not like there aren’t libertarians doing this. But it’s always a fine line between entertaining with a moral and preaching in a boring way. Explicitly libertarian movies, music etc. isn’t really that easy to do.

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Because the Ron Paul movement didn’t convert anyone.