Nick. B:Start a pure market anarchist organisation.
Just start a business. Hire people. Run your business in the most Austrian/Free Market manner possible. And make sure you're successful, because if you fail, that hurts the cause.
Nick. B:I mean when do we get organised and start fighting for our freedom?!
Don't wait. Be the change you want to see.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
liberty student: Just start a business.
Just start a business.
Can't help but think that's the very best way to support any free-market viewpoint. Show people the market gets you from A to B.
There's a trend (at least where I live) in thinking that young people are not politically conscious enough, and in trying to encourage political activism. That's all well and good, but it encourages the use of the political method to accomplish things rather than individual initiative and enterprise. That's a strike against libertarianism right off the bat.
Nick Ricci:Can't help but think that's the very best way to support any free-market viewpoint. Show people the market gets you from A to B.
And it can be a fairly honest way to live as well. Walk the walk so to speak.
When I study I use pieces of paper as a place markers. When I gave books back to the Uni library they I always left the markers in. I realised this could be an advertising opportunity. I made up on MS publisher 12 cards (about 5.5 by 7.5) and a few bookmarks. With Mises.org, the Mises coat of arms and a short description(free student economic resources ect.) As well a few Adam Smith Institute ones for variety. The opportunities for placement(both strategic such as in the the road to serfdom and the Mises section of economic dictionaries, and random places like billboards and sociology books)mean I have had to produce more consistently since.
I don't know whether Its done any good at all but It doesn't require that much effort, (although if you don't have a guillotine it can be a drag cutting them out one at a time) and it can hardly hurt the cause.
At my school I think that putting up posters would be a great way to start. They're up everywhere and they can grab attention. The problem is that I haven't really found any that I felt were worth putting up yet. Are there any more sites that have posters that I can print up and post?
Yes, I am a huge Dodgers fan.
Anti-state since I learned about the Cuban Revolution and why my dad had to flee the country.
tonyfernandez: At my school I think that putting up posters would be a great way to start. They're up everywhere and they can grab attention. The problem is that I haven't really found any that I felt were worth putting up yet. Are there any more sites that have posters that I can print up and post?
Freedom Fridays should fit your needs perfectly.
There is no group here at UCLA though. How can I get one started?
tonyfernandez: There is no group here at UCLA though. How can I get one started?
Tony, here's the YAL instructions on forming a chapter. I hope this helps.
Luis Buenaventura: liberty student: Spread articles and flyers. Apparently people attending public schools cannot do this due to Morse v. Frederick court case, I learned that one the hard way.
liberty student: Spread articles and flyers.
Apparently people attending public schools cannot do this due to Morse v. Frederick court case, I learned that one the hard way.
It is odd that a school administrator would choose that case as the basis for restricting article and flyer distibution. Morse v. Frederick deals with specifically with speech promoting illegal drug use, and only such speech.
This is a great thread; what I've been looking for. This is a great site for learning but I'd like to see some action also. Yes I have all the degrees, but this only means I'm a good student. Far more important I have political experience. Not big time at all, but I've been both elected and appointed.
All the ideas here are good, and some are great.But from reading it I get the impression that most of the bloggers are students, either in college or high school. So it's important to remember that most people are not in those age groups and different age groups have different interests. So let's plan for different age groups.
Next remember that most people don't enjoy focused learning; after they leave school they do as little of it as possible. Most people find thinking to be hard work.
Third is a very important piece of political knowledge. "10% of the people in any group do all the work." This is always true and often it's less than 10%. It works in any group. I even tried it out in graduate school and post grad and it works there just as well. In organizations take the 10% that do anything and put them together in a group, and the rule still holds true. 10% of that group will end up doing everything. This means that finding people who will do anything at all is very important. Even if they will only talk to others about it.
Most of the suggestions here are great for students. By 25 or earlier the vast majority of people have stopped thinking. They're focusing on their children, careers or jobs, and money. By 45 people are at the peak of their careers or jobs and are thinking about money. By 55 or 60 they're thinking alot about retirement and their infinancial situaion in reitrement. By 65 or 70 they're retired and now have time to think, read, volunteer or just relax. So a national campaign should include all these ages and interest points. Most people still vote, especially older ones and the young. People 45 and older typically do not access facebook, youtube or twitter, and a smaller % use email or forums.
So money is a common concern. i think information on money, today in this deflation, would be of considerable interest to a large portion of people. But definately not theory. Most people's idea of money is that they work and get paid, and the money they earn is theirs except for taxes and fees. How about discussing with them how the Federal Reserve and our government is stealing our money every day, every minute, and we don't even know about it. They kept it a secret. This is already one of their deepest interest points and will always get their attention. There are many, many ways to explain this. It's best not to get too involved or into too much detail, but that depends upon the level of interest. Do they know the Federal Reserve Banks are private, and the majority ownerss are the wealthist families in our history? The simplest way I can think of is the Fed.'s 2% annual inflation (compounded annually), which means that every 20 years the money you earned or saved or invested is worth only half as much. A more involved point is that of the 6% the Fed. charges for creating and managing their loans, they keep 2% profit for their private banks. That's 2% of all loans in existance at any given year. In fact, we don't even have any 'money'. What we have is IOU's from the Fed. for the labor and investments we hope to make in the future.
If you can expalin in the smplest terms that our government is stealing their money, people will become very interested, even angry. That's what you want. But then they will say,"but what can we do"? Answer - vote for a libertarian, constitutionalist, independent, etc.
Also be very careful not to use emotional words - activist, conversative, liberal, Democrats, Republicans, neo-cons, etc. I think it better not even to talk about democracy, economics, or any other broader subjects. Wait until you've got their interest fixed and built some trust. Stay simple.
I've given a lot of thought to how a community (town, village, city, state) could, on its own, create and use only sound money. I still can't see any way to do it without doing it nationally. But if anyone here has an idea, I'd love to hear it. For example, a small group of people in one town could open a gold/silver bank and issue demand certificates on 100% reserve deposits. The town business men could give a 3-5% discount for accepting those certificates (they would not ahve to pay the 3% credit or debit card cost). The depositors would have to pay a storage fee for their gold/silver held by the bank. Alas, the price of gold/silver is controlled by the government. When the price is flat or dereasing (as they wish) the bank is a loosing game, because of the costs of purchasing the gold/silver (with Federal Reserve $'s). "In a government controlled economy, bad money drives out good". "In a free-market, good money drives out bad." (Have I got that right?)
Again, as I've suggested before, put your name up for election - to anything; If you're old enough, for Congress. The experience is more than worth the effort. City Council, the water board, various commissions, anything. Personally I'd love to have more than 2 choices and would always vote for the 3rd, and so will at least some others. If you run for some office, focus on the interest point in that community, whatever it is. (We elected a complete City Council during 3 years of excessive rain by focusing on the need for sewers ((and we now have sewers.)
For influencing people I agree that the house to house approach gets the best results, expecially for those over 35. Try to spend time talking with them and getting to know them, rather than hitting the biggest number of houses or appartments.
Being an entrepreneur is a great idea already suggested. Offer what you enjoy doing and do well for sale, in a stand by the road, at craft or garden markets. I'm convinced no one in American knows how to make bread like the French, Czeck, or Polish do, so I make my own. I would make a bee-line straight to a person who sold good bread. (Its time consuming but very easy to make, and needs only flour, salt, water, and yeast, and no kneeding.) Did you know that successful small businessmen make a better living than most managers at any company, and you get to be your own boss and have to put up with no office politics?
Become familiar with the commodities market, particularly gold and silver. (DO NOT invest any money until after at least 1 full year of observation). Track the prices daily, chart them, correlate them with the Fed. actions, federal funds rate and T-bill and T-bond interest rates and other news. Check out the GATA site, and the Kitco forum. Learn the attitudes of the different countries toward gold and silver. Who is buying? Will some emerging countries succeed in creating an alternate reserve currency? Will it be gold-backed?
Well I have for a while been scanning/translating some Austrian School books up here: www.enxurrada.blogspot.com
some of them, like Hayek's Denationalization Of Money and Individualism And Economic Order, I actually uploaded last year, before Mises Institute...
But the thing is that my college does not have much AE books... If some college students in North America also started scanning some books it would be awsome... I've been trying to read Roger Garrison's Time And Money, but it's impossible to find it...
I have an idea to punish media outlets who support the state. Every time a company runs an ad on a network that supports statism, actively boycott that company for at least one month. If enough people did this, it might put pro-state media outlets out of business.
What do you think of this?
Max Keiser (www.maxkeiser.com) is big on boycotting. He has the Karma Banque and his new anti-state IP project PIRATE MY FILM.
Check him out. He's applying the idea of boycotts to activism practically.
max keiser is great. i respect a lot of what he has done, especially karma bank.
I heard another idea somewhere to have everybody withdraw their money from banks on the same day.
shazam: I heard another idea somewhere to have everybody withdraw their money from banks on the same day.
The government will just print more.
Keiser is into practical, OVERT agorism. Stop buying from corporations. Stop supporting oligarchs. Stop funding the people who use government coercion to make a profit. Deny them a profit. Make your own products, become your own entrepreneur.
If you really want to do something, take your capital and assets out of the Unites States and expatriate. Nothing will starve the beast faster than that. That's what I did, and it's increased my quality of life 1000-fold.
Quod licet jovi non licet bovi.
Seandon Mooy, I moved our discussion to a new thread.
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/7953.aspx
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned it but we have an opportunity now that we did not have before.
Join a local tea party group and educate.
This takes patience, you can't overdose them but it's doable. There's a lot of people who sense something is wrong, don't trust the GOP (rightly) but don't know where to turn intellectually. You can't go in there teaching the gospel accd to Rothbard or Mises, but you can sow the intellectual seeds of liberty. Don't directly challenge sacred cows, but take opportunities to point out that the other guys have similar cattle that they care about. Point them to articles here or other libertarian sites that you know coincide with their views, etc.
If we don't the GOP will co-opt them given time, because they won't see they have another choice. Even if the movement can't be completely steered to freedom, we'll have educated people.
I finally got tired of being a whiny libertarian who impotently railed against the sheeple who fail to see the tyranny of evil men.
I think it's time to be the shepherd;)
The easiest people to win over are the people without strong ideological or political ideas.
The majority of the American electorate are independents. Free agents.
In Canada, voter turnout is in decline.
There are a lot of people disengaging from hard politics right or left.
These are the low hanging fruit.
Unfortunately, libertarians love to do things the hard way. Instead of speaking to their family, they will spend 100 hours online trying to argue with one communist. Then they get discouraged, then they give up or lose momentum.
Start small. Do the easy things first until you get confidence and develop rhetorical skill.
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