I would like to have a discussion dedicated to getting people interested in our ideas. Primarily, statists, or people who are apathetic towards politics. I have a few friends who hate politics, but they actually research the issues and such. However, their minds are still subject to statism because they haven’t discovered our ideas.
What are your ideas/methods for getting our ideas around?
Lambasting the cajoler.
The Misesian Project:
I fear that these will be lost on people since in my experience, people don’t know logic and so will not catch the point of your arguments or the form of your arguments and why they are valid/etymologically certain, etc.
I suggest teaching logic as the first step in the broader education process.
Some people are too thick to get it. They believe they know everything and what’s right and what people should do and what the government should do, yet they don’t realize their own errors when they assume the government can fix the problem they started. It’s hard to get someone to read economics who either thinks they know about it, or despises it.
What Grayson stated is the best way. Be objective in your approach, and be a gentleman at it. When I explain economics to a friend of mine (who detest reading it, and claims to hate money) I start with the building blocks and move up. I don’t make it seem I’m forcing anything, and that it’s purely science that I’m stating. I don’t try to force values. (I’m hoping to get her to read Economics in One Lesson, if not some theory).
On the other hand you can come across the people who’s ego’s are too big for a nice discussion, and they end up asserting whatever you’re saying is unheard of and not true, and they want the “facts” right then and there, yet still won’t listen.
Aristotle’s theory on Natural Slavery pretty sums up why most people would not be interested in libertarianism.
Move to New Hampshire (freestateproject.org)
Commit civil disobedience
Question the court’s/state’s authority at trial
Youtube and audio clips are much more desirable and easier to digest.
I think this video of Rothbard speaking is pretty good
I think the best strategy for continuing the surge in interest in libertarianism is to continue publishing and debating from a libertarian perspective. You are not bound to persuade anybody of opposite intellectual ideologies in a day. Persuasion, especially of those already very comfortable with their current beliefs, is something that has to be done over time, and usually as a result of self-thought. Few people are persuaded by others, given that there is an issue of pride and the need to always be right—something we all suffer from, even if at varying degrees—, and so the idea of persuasion by means of making people second guess themselves is key.
As has already been mentioned, Lilburne’s comment about being a gentleman is key. I think a major weakness in my writing is the hostile tone it sometimes takes towards Keynesians, or people who are not necessarily libertarian/anarchist. Most of the time, the hostility is conveyed very subtly. For example, this was brought to my attention as being perceived as hostile:
Yet, it is his misguided view of economics that is most prevalent amongst those pseudo economists who shape national policy. (“Paul Krugman and the Consumption Myth”)
And, I don’t mean towards Krugman; I mean towards those who agree with Krugman, but are reading the article to open themselves up to other opinions. To me, it seems innocent and largely an attack on Krugman, but to one reader it—even if to a minor degree—suggested that he was misguided.
My point is that, ideally, we should be very careful with our langauge—obviously, this is a concept I have to learn myself—, whether you are debating orally or writing a blog article, because one sentence taken the wrong way can shut your reader off from your point, and therefore ruin any potential you had in quickly persuading the other side. In other words, you have to make your argument as agreeable as possible, without surrendering your intellectual integrity.
I think the first step to selling anything is empathy. You need to know who you’re selling to and what they care about and want.
I like this site by a poster called Nielso. I think we should try to come off using the word Anarchism, and go toward Voluntarism. That way it will be a new and interesting idea, and people don’t chastise us with the “anarchies” in Africa.
I think it would be helpful to first try and make sure all the low hanging fruit is picked. There are probably a bunch of libertarians out there who just don’t know it yet, and then there is also a matter of try to educate people who already call themselves libertarians in the economics of it.
Then moving out, I think that it might be easier to try and find common ground with whoever your trying to persuade. Unless your debating with a complete authoritarian (who your not going to convert anyway), there should be some sort of current event issue that you should be able to find common ground with a non-libertarian. Then in theory, it should just be a matter of getting that person to explain why it is they believe that X should be the solution to problem Y, and then try and extrapolate that way of thinking out.
Sounds like a good start. Reminds me of Atlas Shrugged. Also like you say it’s important to equip the current Libertarians with the in’s and outs of how things work.
You don’t need to convert a majority, or even a large minority, of people as Spider has pointed out. The question remains whether a transition away from statism will occur over time or in a quick fashion.
Ever since I came to the revelation that I was a libertarian, I’ve come to one incredible but realist idea about libertarianism. I once saw libertarianism as a very dangerous and single minded ideology that wouldn’t work or would only invoke total chaos. That being said, it was only through constant study, I realized that there was no other mechanism that insured maximum personal and economic freedom. Because of my desire to understand, I could see myself being brought to slowly believe in Libertarianism. However, I seriously doubt the masses would want to read books for self study and so forth, to understand the framework of how libertarian philosophy is constructed.
Our public education has created a nation of sheep. Critical thinking is not a requisite anymore in education. I’m beginning to believe that this was done deliberately. If this is the present state of the general populace, how are we supposed to want others to self educate themselves with the constant bombardment of television, public education, and the mass media which all advances statist ideas.
Please excuse my negative rhetoric but it’s becoming more difficult to deal with the irrational.
This is why I think we should work on converting the logical first -they are the low-hanging fruit. Who becomes libertarian? Computer scientists, because of their training in logic, logicians because of their training in logic, mathematics majors because of their training in logic, and of course Aristotelian/thomist/randian philosophers again because of logic.
On the contrary there are very few austrian literature majors or empiricist philosophers and that is because in one case logic is not emphasized and in the other, the logical principles lead to skepticism.
Strangely though, there are a lot of engineers and physics majors who seem to be austrians -more than I suspected.
I don’t know why you would find it strange to find engineers and physicists to be Austrians. Obviously there aren’t many Austrians to begin with, but when looking at technical professions of those who are Austrian, I don’t see why they would be precluded. The logic involved in Computer Science and Mathematics are certainly more formal and rigorous than engineer’s and physicists, but there is a lot of overlap. Being an Engineer myself, I found the comprehensive and systematic philosophical approach to the NAP/Libertarianism and AE to be very appealing. It took awhile for me to digest the info in my own time, but I came around eventually. I’ve also found that conversations with my peers about politics to be far less emotional and far more productive compared to conversations with friends/family.
I usually concentrate on the few who seem like they may stand a chance of breaking away from statism. So far it’s worked for a good friend and my girlfriend.