I’ve noted that in the last year there are more and more libertarians on the internet forums. If we judge only by political forums in English, libertarianism is perhaps the leading ideology. Now we know this is not true outside of the internet. Does someone have data on the growth of the libertarian movement through the years?
It was the Jimmy Carter era that supposedly led to a rapid rise in pro-market, limited government sentiment in the US, or perhaps the Richard Nixon era itself. One of those two.
I’ve noticed the same. I visit the Total War Center. It’s a forum about the Total War video games, but most people who visit don’t even play the games anymore, the debate area is very active and has some great people. There were only 2 market anarchists for several years. Now there are about a dozen, not counting the large number of minarchists and libertarian leaning conservatives and liberals. In fact, we far outnumber the social anarchists, maybe even the communists on the forum. It fills me with optimism. If only we could spread our message outside the internet just as effectively.
Wow the TWC - that brings back memories…
TWCenter is fun. Only problem is that I get stuck in a debate composed of walls-of-text, I write a reply, my browser crashes on me, I rage for a while and can’t get myself to retype it all, then I feel like I have just lost by waiting too long.
I hate that. That’s why I started typing in Notepad or Word and copying and pasting it into the browser.
I didn’t even know there was a political debate section on that forum lol.
Yup. Plenty of Libertarians around, too, though in varying degrees. Back in 2008, when Ron Paul was cool, it seemed like a good 30% of the people there suddenly turned Libertarian, but then they disappeared after the election, presumably back to the regular forums (haven’t seen them on the mudpit for a while).
Also, at times arguing on the forum is like arguing with a brick wall. The fellow I am currenly debating is annoying. I say “Tulipmania was caused by Dutch coinage resulting in inflation”, he says “it was caused by the market, if it was inflation then other goods would have risen in price too”, I find proof of another rise in prices in housing and say “Tulips rose in price, houses rose in price, it is a very basic law of economics that a rise in the monetary supply results in a rise in prices, which explains everything quite well”, he says “prove it”, which I obviously can’t do even though every piece of evidence is on my side. If you want to see it yourself, I can link it here (with the link broken, of course).
But honestly, he isn’t THAT bad so far as they go. There’s this one particular fellow, a European social democrat. He doesn’t know a thing about economics, attempts to redefine everything, argues semantics to avoid having to actually, you know, back up his arguments with evidence, and it just becomes a mess. If you have been on TWcenter’s mudpit for a while, you will know exactly who I am referring to.
Hm. Twenty years ago, you’d have had to search pretty hard to find anyone who wasn’t libertarian on the Internet. Nowadays it’s full of leftists.
"Also, at times arguing on the forum is like arguing with a brick wall. The fellow I am currenly debating is annoying. I say “Tulipmania was caused by Dutch coinage resulting in inflation”, he says “it was caused by the market, if it was inflation then other goods would have risen in price too”, I find proof of another rise in prices in housing and say “Tulips rose in price, houses rose in price, it is a very basic law of economics that a rise in the monetary supply results in a rise in prices, which explains everything quite well”, he says “prove it”, which I obviously can’t do even though every piece of evidence is on my side. If you want to see it yourself, I can link it here (with the link broken, of course).
But honestly, he isn’t THAT bad so far as they go. There’s this one particular fellow, a European social democrat. He doesn’t know a thing about economics, attempts to redefine everything, argues semantics to avoid having to actually, you know, back up his arguments with evidence, and it just becomes a mess. If you have been on TWcenter’s mudpit for a while, you will know exactly who I am referring to."
I can’t stand people who think they can simply side step economics with their own “well thought out” opinions. I don’t even care if it’s Austrian economics, as long as they know what they’re talking about. Semantic debates drive me insane to the point that it just stresses me out. I might make an account and check it out though. I’ve only really been on the forum to get random downloads for Rome Total War. I’ve been waiting on Rome Total Realism 7 forever now haha, but I’ve heard they’re supposed to finish soon.
Again, I unfortunately don’t have numbers, but it seems to me that since libertarianism is so much more popular among the younger population (20s,30s), it means its growing significantly. Now I don’t know what was the situation on political forums on the internet 20 years ago, but surely political forums then had a lot smaller user base. However today political forums are very popular, and I guess there are tenths of thousands of people who participate in them. A good portion of those people are libertarians. Doesn’t that indicate growth or at least popularity?