I like this idea a lot. Think about it, you don’t need to be debate politically or involve politics, when you show how a theory works in real life.
The best part, and LS understood this, was that the Internet is turning a stateless economy into a reality. It won’t be long before real world business models start emulating online business models, and you don’t see a lot of government on the internet…
It would be interesting to start some kind of crime insurance company.
Starving the state via the black market and avoiding taxation, perhaps? Nonviolent noncompliance seems one good route. Also exposing/introducing, without necessarily trying to start a debate with, others to libertarian ideas. Whenever I encounter people talking about politics, I often chime in with libertarian ideas, and they find them intriguing- often, they have never heard anything of the sort.
The Atlas Economic Research Foundation exists in large part to help people like your friends set up free market institutes.
-=Steve=-
I’d like to add something that I think could be of help.
Check out your favorite Libertarian books from the local (probably government) library as often as possible, and encourage your friends to do the same. Reading them is helpful, but that’s not the thrust of my suggestion, which is to crank up the circulation on good Libertarian books.
If your local library doesn’t have any, use the I.L.L. - Inter-library loan - system to request a good Libertarian book from another library that does carry it.
We teach our children at home (homeschool/home learning/etc) rather than using government schools, and we use the local library system fairly often, to the tune of 50 or 75 books weekly so we don’t have to purchase all of their reading materials.
The library staff are very friendly to us, and we suppose we’ve figured out why: it’s all about circulation. They show how active, how productive, how needy of more budget they are by how many books/magazines/cds/etc are checked out. They also decide on what sorts of new books to acquire based on how often particular books are checked out.
I don’t always have time to read all these books, but I usually do, getting through a couple a week. And of course that gives me more grist for the mill when I’m answering my smart aleck buddies who say things like “Libertarians have, generally, lousy morals and foreign policy…”. The most recent time I received this quip, which was yesterday, I gave my associate a lot more to think about.
Start a regular/monthly liberty social event - ‘Liberty Drinks’! Seems like you’ll get more traction and community than a Meetup group. Make it about meeting people and making friends - not activism - that comes after you have some cohesion. Make it about spreading ideas.
Invite as many local liberty groups as you can. Encourage those on the liberty fence to attend. Consider targeting young pros/people and college students. Make a Facebook page and Eventbrite page and others like at:
http://www.biztechday.com/52-websites-to-promote-your-next-event/
http://www.biztechday.com/52-websites-to-promote-your-next-event/
http://www.biztechday.com/52-websites-to-promote-your-next-event/
I wanted to add: Consider an optional/suggested admission price with proceeds going to a different liberty cause that changes each time.
For what it’s worth, if there were one in the D.C. area, I’d probably show up, although I don’t have time these days to be the instigator.
-=Steve=-
If you are willing to do a little preparation and a little typing, there are literally thousands of offers to be had in exchange for some information. Keep in mind that most “free” things come with some strings attached. In most cases, you have to register and participate in some offers or surveys.
I have found that most offers start by collecting an email address or zip code. After that, you will probably be offered a series of products and/or surveys to fill out or review. It is a fact that many web surfers ignore these free offerings but enough people purchase a product or service to make it profitable for a company to continue offering free stuff online. If it was not profitable, no merchant would make free offers.
There are many worthwhile offers online. And, if you find some you want to try for, there are some simple and easy things you can do to protect yourself when registering for the free stuff.
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Open an e-mail address used specifically for free offers. I have one that routinely gets 10 to 15 emails every day from vendors associated with free stuff. I check about once a week and usually just empty the folder.
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Buy a prepaid credit card for a small amount of money and use that number for your free offers. This will keep unwanted charges off your other cards.
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Get a pre-paid cell phone and use that number when a phone number is needed. These are readily available at a lot of stores and are relatively cheap.
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Make a spreadsheet or use a ledger and keep a list of offers you sign up for and expiration dates. You can use this to keep track of expiration dates and unsubscribe from unwanted offers before a charge hits your credit card.
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Make sure you complete all the requirements for the free offer. Sometimes, online merchants will make it so difficult to qualify that most people give up or unsubscribe before they get a chance at the prize.
Check the the terms section on the website, usually, there will be a disclaimer that goes something like this “To get your free stuff you will be required to participate in offers from Providers. Following are requirements from past or current provider offers to give you and example of what to expect.” If you look at the examples, you will find that you have to subscribe or sign up for something to qualify (a lot of them make good gifts).
- Enjoy your free offer.
My research and experience has shown that it is possible to get good free stuff, everything from triple a memberships to zombi games online. The key is to choose which offers to sign up for carefully and be sure to follow the rules. You might buy $100 - $200 worth of stuff you don’t need (good gifts) and you will have to cancel memberships and subscriptions, but, it might be worth it to get a $700 device for around $150 plus a couple hours of time.
Stuff we can do:
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Talk to our friends, family, and coworkers about Austrian ideas
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Give them easy books to read like “How an economy grows” by Irwin Schiff (comeon, they’re not going to read “Man, Economy, and State”).
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Go to rival blogs and forums and express our viewpoint in a calm, rational, and collected manner. Indeed, the moment you resort to tear-jerks such as “thief! Supporter of theft!”, or ad hominems is the moment you lost your ground.
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Promote and use technologies such as Bitcoin, a distributed digital currency. If you are a good coder, help improve them!
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Write your own blog and introduce these ideas every now and then.
I am majoring in Graphics Design and English. If you guys have seen the user Beefheart, I’ve made the flag (he’s been my friend for a few years now lolol) he flaunts around this forum.If you don’t know what this is, it’s this:
I don’t get why I don’t see many libertarians concentrating a bit more on art as a whole - mainly indirectly. I have captivated a few people with the flag, and they began to ask questions, in which I was able to introduce them to the school. I think more usage of visual art - to spur questions in people - can be a good method. Not to criticize, but to incite questions. Some use of the Socratic method.I have been thinking heavily on the notions that perhaps better visual art can work. Mises’ dailies certainly captivated me with the high quality photos and photoshopping. Anyone else here (and in history) taking the method of expressing their libertarian thought in their art at least subliminally?
I just set up a new wireless router. You know how everyone’s network is named “John’s-PC-Wireless”? You see a whole bunch on the list when you go to connect to a wireless network. I put ours as “Read Rothbard Wireless”, so people will see 
Why not a video like Zeitgeist, but about Austrian economics, voluntarism, and anarcho-capitalism?
I don’t know if too many people would have heard of Zeitgeist if not for the videos, which were pretty well done from what I remember.
Here is a video from a comedy series we are making about the police. I think a bit of humor is a good way to get these difficult topics across.
I always thought that pamphleteering was a lost art. Just handing out flyers to houses and then linking them to get more information about Austrian economics and how to spread ideas themselves would be great. If I spread the ideas out, and then they spread the ideas out, it grows at a tremendous rate. So that’s what I’d like, a place with simple information about Austrian economics that’s not imposing to someone from the outside and that also has pamphlets and door hangers that are easy to find and print.
Why would you give a statist, a statist book?
Photography? Hopefully better edited than what I just did in 5 seconds on MSPaint and Google Images, and more like the “Rent Control or Bomb Damage?” pictures.
“Public Works”
I write a weekly political opinion column in the local daily paper and try to write about local issues from a voluntaryist perspective. It’s not always easy and that’s part of the reason I like to do it, to see how I can frame an issue and show that government is not the answer. If I can, I try to use humor to get my points across.
The paper gives me lots of freedom and I really enjoy it. I think using local issues and controversies that are happening in people’s “back yards” is one of the best ways to get people thinking. It’s much less abstract when you can relate it to something that’s going on in their own community.
The newspaper biz is changing a lot and local papers are craving local opinion from what I am seeing. So send them something and see what happens.
Nice contribution, thanks Debbie!