Though I say this in uncertainty, I believe the people would side with the police in this situation.
That’s irrelevant, who will the police side with?
I’m with Stranger on the point that organization/structure is and has been lacking for the liberty focused view point. This may be due to the abstract reasoning required to grasp its main points, but I also think it’s due to people depending on the concept that good ideas sell themselves. If that were the case, Microsoft and Apple would have been defunct years ago or any other mediocre institution (public/private). Like Life itself, change takes blood, sweat, and toil. And just doing it all at random won’t get you anywhere. You need to plan, first and foremost. In some ways, you have to plot or conspire as it is a conspiracy against the current paradigm (and its leaders) than anything. shrugs
“The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process.”
I have a hard time reconciling these two ideas.
Yet at this time of great crisis I feel as though most Austrians have been content to sit out of the current fight.
Is there really anything to be gained by media attention or political jobbying? Austrian economists are just that, economists - intellectuals and professors. It is not really their job to try to fix what’s built to be broken. And they couldn’t if they tried. The trouble is not to convince the majority through academic appeals (which most people, naturally, have little interest and even less training) nor to convince the academics - who are more or less peon-priests of the fascist state. People need to stop relying on mass-media and ‘higher’ education altogether if we are to escape this mess.
I think that the police and the people would gang up on us. What I mean is that we will be alienated.
Htut:
This is the great debate- is it not. How to bring about change. I disagree with your assertion that it is not up to the scholars etc. Then why the hell are they there? Why do we need them if only to pass on their ideas to us. What use is this information if not to be used to bring about liberty?
If it is not to be done through mass media, then how? There must be real options available, not just pie in the sky dreams. We need to look at how the left has come to dominate academia and media. It was “ a slow march through the institutions”. The main problem as I see it is that libs do not seek the power that the progressives did.
People are easily influenced; libertarianism can influence both the left and the right. We can speak out against a current war and a current economic crisis. Millions of people listen to neocon talk radio, Austro economists can influence them to vote for liberty minded politicians. But you say we don’t need so called political leaders. How many minds did Ron Paul influence? Think of what another dozen of him could do. Maybe end the Fed??? Who knows. We must be realistic, the party system is not going away any time soon. We must use it or we can continue to talk to the hand, I mean speak to the choir.
I always thought that most of the time a publicist gets their clients on these shows??
If “we” means a bunch of philosophy nerds, most likely. If “we” consists of a large number of natural elites with the direct support of a large portion of the population through an election, then it will be the politicians who are ganged upon.
Then do you not understand that organization does not imply coercion or exclusion of alternative organizations?
Do you mean election as in state or as in organization?
This may have been discussed a lot here already, but does anyone else think the TEAPARTY thing is pretty cool.. this is the kind of energetic grassroots movement liberty needs.
I agree we need natural elites AND as many of the masses asses as we can get. Theory is useless without action. Action can not come about without education. We have to educate enough to piss people off enough to get off their duff. How many of you have read the blatherings of Marx? yet look at the action he inspired. He helped change the course of history.
The ideas of liberty can not stayed locked up in a box for only the few curious to find it. it must be marketed. We need to study the left and use their greatest tools against them, envy and class warfare. Instead of it being pointed at entrepreneurs, we must show them that it is the party elites and the state itself that are their enemy. and this must be done with a nuance as not to be labeled crazy fringe radical nut. That is why I do not like to use the term anarchy, unless speaking with a fellow traveler. Ok, you can tell I’m fed up, i’ll stop now. Thank you for allowing the vent
Perhaps you misunderstood me. Perhaps I misunderstood the above quotes. I’m selfish so I’ll blame you [:P]
I guess what i was wrestling with in my head is (and has been for some time) the question of what does this organization look like? How is it born? From the LS quote I’m thinking via the market, but then I find myself asking how can (will?) the profit motive lead to a firm with the balls to challenge the state?
Does that make sense?
what we NEED is a Bastiat-like figure. He would beat the pants off of most politicians today!
To seriously promulgate AE, the movement needs some billionaires.
Seems like that’s how most movements grow to mass appeal.
Focus on getting a support network, business ties, etc to make money in order to promote AE-inclined artistic hipsters, private schools or whatever.
What difference does it make?
This is passionate, but I don’t think it’s strategy aimed at the right objective.
Please elaborate on “aimed at the right objective”. would you agree that the right objective is educating people to the evils of the state??
That’s not an objective.
If it’s a state then , again out of pure opinion, I think that anarchism would turn into statism.