We need far more anarcho-capitalists on reddit.

Miscellaneous General
1

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/

Because as it is it’s not really a subreddit about anarchism. I think that reddit is the biggest venue for public opinion forming discussion right now and that it is very important we discuss as much as we can.

Also:

if you dig econ, the same applies

http://www.reddit.com/r/economics/

if you’re into philosophy (who isn’t?)

http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/

and go here if you hate yourself and wish to die

http://www.reddit.com/r/socialism

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r|Anarchism is mostly anarcho-communist/socialist.

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I think reddit is a big venue for people who want attention for their opinions, and for people who need other people’s opinions to make important decisions. I personally don’t know anyone who views it regularly or takes it seriously.

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Don’t ever underestimate Reddit and how much it affects people’s opinions.

Reddit is:

  • Often the very first place people are exposed to serious arguments against mainstream views
  • Highly conducive to short-term debate because of its terse threaded comment system (mises.org: hint, hint)
  • Full of bald socialist and Statist fallacies that are easy to refute, but hardly anyone does
  • When a dissenting opinion is phrased well, it usually will get upvoted despite being radical (unlike Digg!)
  • One of the few places people can go to get an accurate idea of common thought on an issue, and highly valued for that function
  • A place where people have come to expect their mind to be changed on the issues
  • A place for people addicted to having their views broadened (not to the extent of this forum, but that means this forum is the next logical progression for many, esp. the many Ron Paul fans on there)
  • Becoming one of the main opinion-forming tools for a generation

It’s to the point that, as far as activism, I would say a post at Reddit is more valuable than a post here. It’s just that here is a lot more fun because people agree and you don’t have to constantly deal with basic fallacies.

@OP

I fully agree we need more effective representation on Reddit, but I wouldn’t bother with the sub-reddits. Just go to the main page and whenever a topic comes up - such as healthcare - jump in to the debate! The readership is way higher, minds are easier to change, and there is fun stuff to deconstruct in nearly every post. If some people can do so in a way that fits Reddit style (entertaining, pithy, not smug or rude, simple to understand, and starts out looking like you’re arguing for the opposite position of your actual one), I think it would make a big difference.

Again, people that read Reddit tend to be addicted to having their views changed and expanded. If you follow it for a while, you’ll notice that almost every article caters to this need. There is always plenty of dissent, and you can see minds changing on issues all the time. It’s classic Reddit. In theory, the ideas we discuss on these forums should be some of the most fascinating to Redditors, once they get past the initial “that’s moonbat talk” phase. The great thing about Reddit is that a substantial number of people actually do get over that - we saw this phenomenon clearly during Ron Paul’s presidential run.

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I welcome everyone over. Although as ancap on /r/anarchism, I’m not sure if I’m welcome half the time, hah.

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Beileive me, you’re not.

I used to bother arguing there but got largely got fed up when someone started alarmist nonsense about a “Miseoid Invasion”, probably in the aftermath on coming over here, arguing, & not liking that people responded crossly to the equivalent of someone kicking a bee hive & running away while dropping a link to their respective blog*.

*Granted, I think it might’ve been out of an initial genuine interest in debate, but as usual, debates with others of other ideologies tend to turn sour rather quickly.

Per inherent collectivist tendencies of many people there (who are not necessarily individualist anarchists), this eventually began to amass a perceived popular majority opinion that any & all users of that sub-reddit should & will be down-voted for having different arguments or not agreeing to whichever mod (yes, they have lots of mods for an anarchist sub-reddit, but it’s more of a limit of the reddit software than anything, but such mods do have an effect regardless) defined what anarchism “really is” in the sidebar of the sub-reddit.

I could be wrong & am only thinking about the most active or visible users there, but it’s pretty much daily occurrence of someone remotely “an-cap” or “market anarchist” being ridiculed because they aren’t sympathetic to anarcho-communists, the left, or whatever.

I would use reddit in general, & not bother with the libertarian, anarchist, socialist sub-reddits. They are more prone to more specific collectivist bias & a lesser scale but more visible tragedy of the commons than the bigger sections of reddit (/r/econ, the main reddit, etc. , with main reddit being less susceptible until people start bitching and moaning about not using a specific sub-reddit, usually at submits that they disagree with & do not want to see and/or have their views challenged).

So yea, while Reddit is largely great / useful, it’s certainly left me sort of jaded. Nowadays, I prefer hacker news much more, especially since coming across this submit when a surprisingly rational debate about Keysnenianism emerged from this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841287

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Avoid subreddits unless posting an article yourself.

The real pay-off is in going to the popular main-page articles and making your case to the much larger general audience within already established posts. Anything remotely dealing with government or politics or economics will be full of fallacies where people here could easily jump in with reasoned, mind-blowing responses.

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I really like reddit. I would spend more time commenting there but mises.org comes first

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Indeed, see this thread for example:

“No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?” – Thomas Sowell (self.Libertarian)

The other guy ultimately concedes:

I see - this makes your point very clear.

David_Z: So, when you put out one of these fires, what do you replace it with? I say, nothing.

I tend to agree with you on most of these points - they are mostly disastrous policies that have had myriad unintended consequences.

Thanks for the reply.

People there are, as a rule, fairly accommodating and open-minded. I don’t troll there every day, but I make a few stops a week, and if there’s something that’s just begging to be commented on, or someone begging to be fwnd then I’ll make some time for it..

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Very good point. Mainpage is a great place to focus on. It’s kind of unfortunate you can’t really necro threads there (like here HA!), because each discussion then only lasts for a few hours it seems ( I judge the shelf life of the discussion according to the amount of downvotes I get over time)

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Having a stronger presence on Reddit is a necessity going forward…

Digg and Reddit are the new commanding heights, and are especially influential among young people.

SiteAnalytics.compete.com tells me that Digg is far more popular, but I think that Reddit is easier to use.

Both are strongly leftist/socialist/authoritarian/Obama worshipping, but hey, at least a lot of people are somewhat idealistic… except for the people who say that “any extreme ideology doesn’t work” because you know, socialism and communism didn’t work, and apparently that applies to all outside-the-mainstream ideologies now.

www.reddit.com/r/libertarian is the libertarian community - it has 13000 subscribers.

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Reddit actually went through a Ron Paul phase in 2008.