Who cares about being popular? All that matters is being powerful.
Was this guy popular? I think not!
Pat Buchanan had other problems, including that he was a protectionist. Paul attracted obsessive followers who were good at online spamming not communicating the libertarian message.
Yes of course by the strict definition of the word all who are not anarchists are statists - things like this do little to help your case but to compare Friedman to Krugman? That is just absurd.
I am trying to explain why it has been unsuccessful. Krugman won the Nobel Prize that is one of the main reasons people listen to him but so did Friedman and Hayek. Obviously the Austrian school would prefer Hayek so lets start there. Marketing Hayek better while emphasizing his Nobel Prize would be a key part of a marketing strategy to push free-market economics to the intellectual classes, something Hayek wanted to do. Friedman admitted people only listened to him because he won the Nobel Prize and did a good job of exploiting it. Simple marketing strategies like this can have a big effect in the battle of ideas.
More on Libertarian Marketing Strategies. Take the Acton institute, they are dead on about more documentaries being needed about free market economics. The LVM should team up with them to produce these works and then sell them, like the LVM does with it’s successful book business. This would help reach younger audiences.
I’m one of those online spammers. And we did pretty good setting fund raising records without the corporate fundraising clout of the mainstream candidates. Paul’s campaign was a big flop because the people running it didn’t know anything about electioneering, and if you were inside (and I gather you were not) at least one person from Paul’s very successful congressional staff clearly explained the fact it was an experience and stubbornness problem with the presidential campaign.
The problem wasn’t the truthers. It’s that you can’t take a campaign run by fools, and fix it by adding 1000s of rabid supporters who have no experience with politics.
Anyone turned off by truthers didn’t understand the magnitude of the issues Paul was running on.
It’s not absurd. Both are economists, both serve the political order of the day. Those are the attributes they have in common, and Paul/Austrians do not.
That’s not a bad idea. Start working on it. This isn’t a “movement” (hate using that word) that relies on orders or central command.
Absolutely. I market for a living. But it is very difficult to overcome institutional and generational biases with tiny budgets and dead Nobel Prize winners.
I’d love to know what the “free drug movement” is. Googling for “free drug movement” brings up your(LS’) previous post in this thread as second hit.
IMO Poptech is just ranting because he wants a scapegoat for the general lack of progress of libertarianism. So why not blame some undefined “weak minded loser pot heads” ? It’s convenient.
Do you people ever speak to others outside your circle of friends? Because if you did you would hear what people complained about Paul, 911 Truthers was one of them. The mere fact that people were being turned off by truthers should be of concern and ignoring it does not fix the problem. Online spamming did nothing but equate the campaign to junk mailers. The poll spamming especially hurt the campaign and IMO was pathetic.
You do not need alot of money to market online and there are options for living nobel prize winners… James M. Buchanan and Vernon L. Smith.
I just analyze things. Maybe the people who realize what I am saying is true interact with more people from the major political parties? Pene Jillette for instance gets this. The libertarians as pot head label is fairly well established outside of libertarian circles. This is not a rant or a scapegoat but a marketing problem.
I’m still trying to figure out why you are so against an individual’s personal choice of drug usage. It is like you want to moderatize the ‘movement’ in order to sell it better. To me that just opens the door to contradiction and inconsistency for how can we say libertarians are for personal freedoms…well except for those drug users. It would transform the movement into the Conservatives whose ‘shock jocks’ like Levin, Wilkow and Hannity constantly cry out they are for freedom…except for the gay community.
I am not against self-inflicted brain damage. That does not mean I endorse self-inflicted brain damage. See again you fail to understand what I am saying. When Libertarians campaign for marijuana legalization they appear to endorse the use of marijauna. A much smarter marketing strategy would be focusing solely on personal responsibility and stop campaigning to legalize pot. The end is the same but the message much more acceptable. IMO too much of the Libertarian movement has bought into the propaganda that marijuana is a harmless drug.
Oh the gay community has every freedom you and I do except for being recognized by the state as legally married. It is ironic “Libertarians” are concerned with state recognition.
This, seriously, times one hundred.
Libertarians are for a limited government, anarchists are against any government…
Are you certain that you are an anarchist?!?
And why would we need social programs? This is an opened door for collectivism…
I can agree with this.
I am not sure that I understand how welfare could be included in the free market notion…
You need to define “too radical”.
Absolutely.
Poptech,
If some people want pot legalized so they can smoke it, so f-ing what? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to smoke it if they want to? I don’t know you, but I’m sure you’ve taken a prescription drug before–probably one far more dangerous than marijuana. And for what reason, other than a specific effect on your body you found favorable?
You may have missed it, but the experiment in “pragmatism” was just tried–with the Bob Barr campaign–and it was a total disaster. They did everything you demand, such as tone down their rhetoric (and position!) on the war on drugs and try to act “mainstream.” “Conspiracy theorists” and “extremists” were not given the time of day.
The result? It was a miserable failure. It didn’t inspire people (like the Ron Paul campaign), it made them doze off into sleep. The masses don’t need watered-down semi-libertarianism, but a good kick in the ass. Nobody is excited by the wishy-washy, boring approach to libertarianism you’re endorsing.
I don’t want to be loved by my enemies. I want to be feared by them.
Well, where you you take your notion of Classic Liberalism from? Libertarians are for the most part “classic” Liberals, though we could just dispence with the whole classic if you could tell me, other than hijacking the word, how any party in American Major Politics is liberal in any sense. The cornerstone to a Liberal (or free) society, is in the Economic Liberalism (or Freedom), because when you are free to pay for government at will and not by compultion, the government gets no funding if it does the wrong thing. With that said the peak Liberal document is the Articles of Confederation, where the government has no power to tax at all, and must rely on voluntary interaction (consent) of the governed, therefore giving the most economic freedom to the people, and this is the important difference in Libertarianism in the United States and Liberalism. It is only in logic that the argument can be made for not paying taxes, if I do not agree with the way my employee is doing their job, well why should I continue to pay for them, and if their actions cause me to be denied the necessities of life, liberty and happiness (property), again, why would I pay for them? The only people who think these ideas are radical, by the way, are people who want state control, usually over another, not realizing it gives the state sanction to control them as well…
It is only Fascism if those property owners are allowed to vote away the rights of those who do not own property. Sure there is the paradox of slavery in the United States, but that was a compromise, and I will quote an unpopular lady here, “in any Compromise between good and evil, only evil profits,” but this compromise was self correcting shorty after the war of 1812, despite what the American popular opinion of the situation states. Even Fredrick Douglass stated, a free black man living in the United States, if slavery were to end today (1850’s) the Constitution would not require to be changed," this is because slavery is a violation of individual rights, so the federal government could legislate against slavery, and the 3/5ths compromise would be nullified by extension. Do not let those who do not understand the concept dictate the circumstances, it leads to incorrect assumptions.
Why Not? The income tax in America is supposed to pay for social programs that are wholly illegal in this country to begin with, and with a pay out rate of 1%, there are plenty of free market solutions (private charity) that have to report a much higher percentage, legally I think it is above 75% (though I could be wrong), in actual payouts to be considered a charity. AA is illegal in this country because it does not legislate the protection of rights (examples of correct legislation is: Murder, Theft, Rape, etc.), but rather the granting of special privilege to a demographic, basically saying that all other demographics should have less than equal protection under the law.
- it is laughable at best to still assume we have a two party system, both parties are wholly statist and have the appearance as different on emotional issues that are more the choice of the individual rather than government legislation,
- in the situation where you have a single party expanding the power of government you cannot convince them that reducing government power will achieve this goal, they do not care about you, your liberty OR your life, they only care about your productive output that they seize without your consent to increase the dependency on government by either food (entitlement programs) or fear (preemptive war),
- Lobbyists are not the problem, it is the lacking integrity of the politicians, we should not legislate against the lobbyists, but rather the politicians that take their money.
Slow change will not work, unfortunately, as for this country, I am not speaking on behalf of others, slow change brings tyranny, just as the founding of the Confederated States of America happened in quick response to England’s statist regime over the Colonies, so will the people’s reaction ultimately be over this Federal Government’s regime. The more distant the Central Government gets from its people the more frustration the people will feel, unit ultimately, and this is a logical progression seen in history, to quote an avatar Marquise’s used on another site, “Let Freedom Ring With A Shotgun Blast.”
Why is it wrong? If they want a government that treats rights as privileges, there are many other contries they can live in and achieve this, why should we be coerced into an intrusive government because it is the will of people that want the crutch, which ultimately forces taxation upon us, who do not want, or need such a crutch…
I think it is foolish to want to abolish the government (be an anarchist) and state anything but that, it shows there is a lack of integrity and this kind of compromise is is hazardous…
Let them laugh, those that want the government dissolved completely are not dealing in reality, just as the ones that want the government involved in any aspect of life and think it ends there…
Limited government and an informed populace acting voluntarily with government is the only realistic goal…
You may not have any idea how correct this is, I am friends with one of the Campaign volunteers that traveled across the states talking on behalf of Ron Paul, his contention was not with Ron, who he is a friend of now, but rather the campaign management that was not relaying the information to Ron about the public. Wholly it is an issue of electioneering, as the points my friend made were about free market health care in this particular example, and the management decided that Ron should not discuss this fact…
But on the other hand, Ron would be assassinated by now if he were elected, so I am sort of happy he was not…
He started here, here he was popular…
Alright. I’m going to clarify a few things about what I meant earlier.
I am for anarchism. But, I was only talking about the more radical supporters of libertarianism who want to do away with everything. We obviously can’t do that right away. We need to find some way to persuade the public that these ideas would be good ideas. Libertarian supporters- many of the older ones-- quite frankly I think would be repulsive to many people out there in the mainstream. We need to persuade people that these ideas are good ideas.
Like, we should rather call first for the limiting of government agencies… not the abolition of them altogether… but when we prove to the masses that these agencies are wrong then we would call for the abandonment of them altogether?
I’m not talking about marketing ourselves to be moderate. But, rather we could do it in a moderate fashion. That’s what I mean really.
I’m talking to you, aren’t I?
And how many of those people did you qualify by testing them on Paul’s positions? As I said, anyone who had a problem with Truthers didn’t understand the magnitude of the issues he was running on. They were like the Obama voters who didn’t know that Obama voted to protect Bush for warantless wiretapping.
You can’t run a libertarian campaign and alienate peaceful groups with extreme views. It’s hypocritical, and that’s precisely why Paul never pursued serious political power.
It did a fantastic job raising awareness. I deal with the term “spam” professionally every day. The polls were not spammed, as much as they were flash mobbed (h/t NitroAdict). The Paulies used RPF, DailyPaul, email, IM and MeetUp as they had never been used before in American politics for mass action.
As far as the online “spamming”, it generated enormous fundraising. The beauty of aggresive market competition.
It seems to me you make a lot of shallow criticisms based on perception and not reality. Which is perhaps why you are promoting an image campaign over a substantial one.
When people market online without money, you call it spamming. When they do a lot of marketing online, you call it spamming.
No one cares about economists as names or credentials. The sexy factor is nil. The entire internet revolution is based on ideas, not personalities. It seems to me you’re suggesting a pre-internet approach.