Lately I’ve been thinking deeply about what is necessary in order to accomplish a total sea change of our current economic circumstances. I think we can pretty much all agree that the decade that has now passed was one of terrible growth in statist activity. To reverse these trends, we need to rethink our approach with regards to how we are trying to attain mindshare. Even with the incredible advances in communications technology in the 2000s, we still haven’t been able to reach the critical mass necessary to become an influential movement which is capable of changing the course of human events. I believe a new paradigm in activism is necessary. We need new ideas for these old problems, and the courage to see them through.
Allow me the opportunity to share a few of my own thoughts on what we should do in the next ten years. Let me divide these ideas into two sections. The first will be initiatives that Mises.org can help organize, while the second will be tasks that are better left to the community.
Stuff Mises.org can do:
1. We need our own ‘Cosmos’. Economics is, by its very nature as a humanistic science, incredibly simple to grasp once it is systematically presented to someone. Our problem, however, is that there haven’t been many attempts to reach people with this kind of knowledge without hitting them over the head with a thousand-page treatise. We can take our inspiration from Carl Sagan’s fantastic television program ‘Cosmos’, which has reached over 500 million people around the world. What we need is a similar program that does for Austrian economics what ‘Cosmos’ did for cosmology. It should be thorough, approachable, and well-presented. And unlike the Free to Choose program done in the 80s by Friedman, it should cover the entire corpus of Austrian economics (i.e. it must be praxeological in nature). There are millions of people out there who won’t for the life of them pick up a book, but would gladly watch an enlightening video program. We need to reach this heretofore unreached audience.
2. We need our own ‘Ansari X-Prize’. The X-Prize, for those who are unfamiliar with it, was a monetary award that was given to the first group that could successfully complete a private manned spaceflight. It was a smashing success, and we are now currently at the cusp of a big revolution in private space exploration (see Virgin Galactic). What the Austrians need is something similar, but for libertarian ideas. The idea is to create a pot of prize money that will spur innovation in the area of outreach and activism. The set up will be simple: individuals in the Austrian community will donate money that will go into a pot that is at the end of the year awarded to the person who can demonstrate that they have reached the widest audience with their project. Such an award will spur many to explore new ways of communicating these ideas to a mass audience, and we could potentially learn a great deal from the results. For instance, I can foresee a great amount of innovation in areas such like creating viral web videos, organizing libertarian musical groups, creating documentaries, websites, Austrian-themed games, etc. And there are so many possibilities that I can’t even possibly begin to imagine, which will be created simply as a result of chasing this prize. I can see an initial prize be something around the order of $10,000, depending on how much people donate to the pot. Although I am not affluent, I’m willing to throw down $50 to get this party started.
3. Be on top of the e-book reader revolution. Electronic book readers will be HUGE in 2010 and beyond. In fact, they were a pretty big deal in 2009. Millions of people found an Amazon Kindle sitting under their trees this past Christmas. And what do people do when they get a shiny new reader? They want to put books on it, of course. What we need to do is anticipate this growing trend and come up with a solution that makes the Austrian literature stick out like a hippo in a shopping mall when people do a google search for “free electronic books.” Mises.org should set up a special web page with a nifty layout that showcases all of the wonderful books they can get for their new reader, whether it be in pdf, kindle format, or epub. And it should be all given away for free, with an emphasis on the FREE part. Yes, we should think like drug dealers and get people addicted to these ideas and build a growing market for them first. Many of them will purchase the hard copies of the books later anyways.
4. Take better advantage of video sharing websites. While the Mises Media channel on Youtube is great, I don’t particularly think youtube is the best site to focus on. I don’t know if anybody has noticed, but the audience there aren’t particularly…well, let’s just say I lose my faith in humanity every time I scroll down to the comments section of a youtube video. I think we are aiming at the wrong target audience. There should be more effort exerted on reaching the audiences on places like Vimeo, which is usually filled with thoughtful, articulate people who would better appreciate the Mises media content. There are also plenty of other video sites like dailymotion, etc. What I am proposing here is not to burden the LVMI with the drudgery of maintaining all these channels, but to set up a project that will enable itself to unload that burden onto enthusiastic community members. Mises.org should create a blog post to this end with a link to a complete Mises media torrent file and encourage the community to set up video channels on all video sharing websites which do not have a LVMI presence. Just make sure to tell people that if they do make a channel, they should not to claim it is an official LVMI one.
5. Mises.org digital magazine. Another big trend that must be anticipated is the coming tablet computer revolution. Many manufacturers, including Apple, are scrambling to make new multitouch tablets that they hope will save the newspaper/magazine industry by making it all digital and interactive. Mises.org should strongly consider making a specific layout of the site specifically for these devices. Mises.org already has tons of content, all that must be done is to repackage it in a new form factor. (For an example of what I am talking about, see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CzQyjw1Gw ) If Mises.org can get a digital magazine out early, when these devices first launch, and give it away for free (income can come from links in the mag to the Mises store), many of the early adopters who wouldn’t normally visit Mises.org would subscribe to it out of curiousity, and it could quickly grow to have a massive readership. I will make an analogy to the podcast revolution of the last decade. Many podcasts that started out small are now huge, simply because they were there from the beginning, when there wasn’t much content to choose from. Mises.org (and the Austrians, I can see LRC doing this as well) must be there from the beginning, for every new technology development.
6. LVMI publishing should create a new label specifically for publishing fiction. We need to encourage the writing of Austrian fiction. In my experience, a lot of people won’t pick up a non-fiction book with premises they don’t already agree with, but they are perfectly fine with buying a thriller that was recommended to them by a friend. Straight to the point: We need an Austrian “Atlas Shrugged.” I personally am taking a crack at this problem with my upcoming novel (“Leviathan Slain”, Summer-Fall 2010), but I am not as presumptuous as to believe that it will be as successful as Atlas. However, I believe if enough people try, one will eventually “break through.” LVMI could encourage this by creating a new publishing label.
Stuff the Community can do:
1. Control the discourse on social news websites. Reddit, digg, etc. We need to be on the front lines of the social news battlefield. Which leads me to…
2. Create new ways to mobilize Austrians to respond to situations on the internet. How can a small but vocal minority make itself felt in a big way? Let me tell you a story that may provide a germ of inspiration. Way back when, in the mid 90s when Apple computer was on the brink, there was an Apple mailing list that was created which would point its members to media sources that were critical of Apple. The list had around 40,000 members, and at command they would be pointed to news stories that needed to be “enlightened” when they made a mistake. While this is typically remembered as one of the most shady moments in Apple history, this behavior helped nudge public opinion just a bit to keep Apple afloat until the company got back on its feet. Austrians shouldn’t repeat this kind of douchebaggery, but we can learn from its example. Perhaps instead of a mailing list, there should be an RSS feed that is created which points people to hot spots on the internet that require attention. For instance, if a news story shows up that makes a strawman of the Austrian position, the RSS feed can direct people to the news story, the email address of the author, and the address of the editor, and we can, en masse, politely inform them of their mistake. What Austrians need to do is make themselves felt on the internet, and nothing could be more demonstrative of that than thousands of emails in your inbox.
3. Don’t be afraid to play dirty. We need to quit being so polite and directly attack the Marxist and Keynesian fallacies in the public eye through a campaign of websites specifically crafted to “expose” certain ideas they promulgate. I’m not talking blogs, mind you, but specific issue web pages that cogently attack these fallacies from and Austrian point of view. These should be among the first sites that pop up on a google search of the topic.
4. Create a crisis of faith in mainstream economics. This one might be too dirty, but maybe there is some merit to it. Perhaps someone can set up a web site that documents the relationship between mainstream economics research and government funding of that research, implying an inherent bias and raising questions as to the legitimacy of the science being conducted. Create a debate that will cause chaos among academics, and make them rethink their paradigm.
5. A rebranding campaign for Anarcho-Capitalism. We call ourselves Capitalists in spite of the fact that it was invented as a pejorative. Perhaps this is done in the hope that through its adoption, we can change the meaning and perception into something positive. Get real. To the majority of human beings on this rock, Capitalism is synonymous with greed and evil, coca-cola and fascism, and no amount of clarification from our side will change their minds on the matter. We’ve had almost two hundred years to do so, and it hasn’t happened, and now the term should be abandoned by proponents of the free enterprise system forever. With regards to Anarchism, it is to the majority of people simply another word for chaos. Honestly, labeling ourselves as anarchists is one of the stupidest moves we can make, as it is a completely loaded word and already firmly associated with the crazy molotov-throwing deviants who break windows and burn cars. With that in mind, combining the terms Anarchist with Capitalism is perhaps the most mind-bendingly daft acts of ideological suicide one can perform, and a huge barrier to entry for people looking from the outside-in. Another thing to consider as well is that having all these terms, capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, market/libertarian anarchism, voluntaryism, natural order, etc. etc. confuses the heck out of anyone trying to get the ropes of what we are teaching. What we need to do is throw out ALL of those terms that are synonymous with anarcho-capitalism and replace them with ONE term that we can all agree can encompass the full meaning of that philosophy.
My suggestion for the term is “Propertarian.” I suggest this term, instead of something like “pure capitalism” or “voluntaryism” simply because Private Property is the ultimate foundation of the free enterprise system. It is also a very descriptive term; you do not need much elaboration to understand what it means. You don’t have to make any mental jumps with “Propertarian.” It emphasizes the most logically reducible component of the philosophy which we can call Propertarianism. A Propertarian is someone who believes in the primacy of private property rights, period. A Propertarian takes private property rights to their full logical conclusion. A Propertarian can make no exception to private property rights (outside of defending their own property), otherwise they cease being a Propertarian. People can readily understand the concept of property, since it stems from the axiom of self-ownership. It doesn’t require detailed and copious explanation of what it “truly means” as you have to do with terms like anarchism, capitalism, and voluntaryism. It encapsulates what all those terms mean in a much more elegant manner. You can’t have true anarchism, raise capital, or engage in voluntary contract without presupposing private property rights.
Another benefit of the term Propertarian is that its meaning cannot be distorted. It necessarily implies boundaries between what is propertarian and what isn’t. All non-Propertarians are Statists. Propertarian and Statist, there can be no degrees in between. This dichotomy keeps things very simple. People like binary things. It is easy to grasp and explain. Not only that, but the adoption of this terminology also has the tremendous advantage of putting the statists on the defensive for the first time, as they now have to explain why they are violating your private property rights. They can no longer simply flog a shapeless phantom such as “capitalism.” They must answer the difficult questions. And we know they can’t.
So say it with me, “ I am a PROPERTARIAN!”
6. Project Think Tank. We need more ideas such as these. We also need to be able to conduct massive social engineering campaigns quickly and adeptly. We need to be masters of information in the internet age. We need a think tank to come up with ways to spread propertarian and Austrian ideas. A prototype for this in my mind is 4chan, which wields an almost unbelievable ability to create new memes. A great number of the memes you see floating around the web originated from 4chan. We need a group that will be able to have the same influence. We must create a digital center for memetic engineering.
These are just my thoughts on some projects what we need to work on in this brave new decade. Feel free to add your own in this thread.
Best regards,
Bright