I think this is a great opportunity to create some sort of Austrian-oriented youtube presence to respond to any arguments he presents (supporting or dissenting). Because youtube is democratic (in the voluntary sense), I believe that a few dedicated individuals could come together and develop a popular Austrian-inspired youtube video series in response.
Of course, there will be competition for attention for those who respond to Obama, but remember that this is still youtube. With just a bit of production value and a good speaker / set of speakers, one could seriously compete.
I believe that this could be a great conduit for Austrian ideas to the American people. I would like to start such a group. I can come up with and articulate sensible economic arguments. I am asking for people to either -
Be a speaker for the video series (if multiple people, then take turns).
Come up with a name for the group.
Help with video production value.
If anyone is interested, please respond here (preferably) or send me an email at bryanedds@yahoo.com
I like this idea… I’ve sent you an e-mail detailing what I can contribute (modesty compels me to refrain from listing such details in a public forum [:)]
I have found, to even my surprise, that a level-headed, respectful, and interesting relay of ideas is well-received among the citizens of the internet. Take digg.com. Anyone who knows about digg knows that it is swamped with leftists. And yet, about half of my Austrian comments are well-received. I have made several hundred posts there and have found that the cool-headed and well-reasoned critiques of marxism, AGW, and other modern left ideologies are dugg up rather than buried. Accordingly, the posts where I was being a jerk were buried.
From my personal experience, I’ve found that Austrian ideas are about half the time well-received among the more democratic social sites. There is of course the other half of the time where they just won’t hear it no matter how well-reasoned the argument or how precisely directed it is to the left audience… but 50/50 is a very good ratio I feel.
I would disagree that such an offering would be unpopular. if anything I would say that there is a very strong libertarian streak to the online world in general.
I fear that such a response will come to resemble a broken record unfortunately. Just like FDR, Obama will most likely speak in empty platitudes the majority of his presidency, showing to the general populace what the educated already know: the president is more America’s mascot than America’s leader. How do you respond to empty promises of a better tomorrow?
Just make sure if you do so, that whoever is making the videos knows the subject well. Too many young Austrians embark on battles they can’t finish because they haven’t taken the time to study the works well.
One of the things I’m hoping to achieve by having multiple people involved is to diversify the group’s knowledge base. If you have a specialized knowledge or a general mastery of Austrian theory, we need you. You, specifically Please e-mail me if you’re interested. We need anyone who can provide greater rigor for our arguments.
I’m starting to visualize the process of producing these shorts. We need a spot to discuss what is the best argument against or in favor of the arguments Obama presents. Perhaps a yahoo group or some sub-portion of the mises.org community. We need to get those arguments summarized into some sort of small document. This is best done with more than one brain. Once that document is produced, we should choose someone to put those arguments into words in a quick prototype video. Or instead of just one person, we could segment the document and splice multiple videos from multiple people (this will probably have to come later due to the additional complexity it entails). Concurrent with video prototyping, we need post-production to come up with how the upcoming video might be transformed / arranged. Once the prototype is put together, post production can throw some prototypical graphics / mixing onto it. Concurrent with that would be a community critique of the prototype to see if the arguments themselves need to be changed or represented differently. If the arguments need to be tweaked, we go back to the document step. We continue this loop until we run out of time we’ve been time-boxed to or are satisfied with it. Then we make the final video.
There are three keys to making this work - doing things as concurrently as possible, making an empirical evaluation of what has been produced, then iterating on the production loop. If you’re a software developer, you may know the name that goes with this process
I agree. The quality of comments at Youtube makes one wonder if humans are capable of operating without actually generating any brain waves. Such user names like LiMpBIZCUTLoL!990 points to “most probably”.
Yeah, he will be speaking to the a very large pack of morons, but better than that, people are going to use the same tags, comments and system to mock him. The downside (or upside) of social networks, is that they are decentralized, and thus, by participating, you are surrendering control.
What will Obama do when someone comments,
Obama, suck my ass! You are the worst President ever. And you’re not even American!
Send that person to Gitmo? Is he planning to rendition every single YouTube commenter?
The trick to maintaining power, is to control the discussion. He’s planting the seeds of his destruction by trying to grow his tree in the orchard of liberty.
Normally I’d agree, but de-centralization can work both ways. All they would need are some dedicated for hire plants to comment in the discussions to aim the dialog in a certain way. Then again, as a citizen of The Internet for better part of my life, I can say that I have a finely tuned b.s. detector, & I’d imagine others would too, so it probably would make a marginal difference.
You forgot about the “disable comments” feature on YouTube. There will be no dissent. As you can currently see, at the bottom of the page, it does say, “adding comments has been disabled for this video.” That is controlling the discussion, as he is the only one with a voice. There is also a feature that allows them to approve comments before they are shown. Surely their web team will filter out all negative comments, if they were ever to choose to allow commenting.
However, are these videos protected under copy right? Perhaps a user could rip the videos and upload them to a different account to allow discussion.
To be honest this whole idea of Obama posting videos on Youtube strikes me as somewhat similar to the Orwellian telescreen. During this campaign season I’ve really been reminded of the fact that despite all his flaws, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty - Four (alongside the rest of his work actually) was a great piece of literature and above all else chillingly true, if only people stop thinking of it as a prediction.
I do believe videos uploaded on YouTube are copyrighted, thus they are likely to be DMCA’d if anyone has a problem with it. It won’t do much good if the videos are only up for a short amount of time.
I’m not sure why you linked me to this junk Steve.
If it’s on YouTube, it can be downloaded and re-uploaded. It can also be edited.
Even if the Obama Team of Tyranny tries to enforce DCMA, copyright or anything else, it won’t matter. In order to present content online, you have to set it free. And when it is free, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
