Mises.org has had quite a bit of success in promoting and proliferating Austrolibertarian literature and scholarship. To what extent do you guys think this can be copied with other areas? Mises.org-ish sites for mathematics textbooks/literature, comsci, etc.?
"Keynesianomics is a Ponzi scheme."
"You are correct in that Capitalism does not help with poverty, because it eliminates poverty altogether..."
"That wonderful strawman: greed."
Inequality bad.
One thing to remember is that most, if not all people feel strongly about economics, politics, and the social order. People usually don't feel strongly about the sciences or some kinds of literature.
I think one thing that helps with the popularity of this place is the political (or apolitical) like-mindedness of many of the people here.
The appeal to "charity" is a truly ironic one. First, it is hardly "charity" to take wealth by force and hand it over to someone else. -Rothbard
I think aside of their rejection of IP, which is a GREAT attractive feature for me, is the great variety of sources they offer on what truly becomes anything but a dismal science because of it, for example:
1. Profound, yet highly readable and often topical daily articles.
2.Access to plenty of literature and journals
3. A vast media section
These factors and many more I think contribute a lot to the "added value" of the site, as well its very interactive and unpretentious feel, contributed through the blogs, forums and the fact that if you want to participate in writing articles or even videos just send an email and get right on it!
I don't know how it could be applied to the hard sciences. Perhaps exposing the politics in science? Anyway, literature is just waiting for us to exploit it. It would be great to have Austrolibertarian literature out there.
My favorite online shop: www.cafepress.com/libertyphile
I can imagine something like that, tough arguably it might be harder to do then a site about politics / economics for the reasons stated above.
A site like that would have to be full of material by people who are good at explaining science to the population at large. Personally I can only name 3 people like that: Feynman, Sagan, and Dawkins, but it's possible there's more.
You'd also need some good writers for short but sweet daily articles to keep people comming back for new content.
I don't know how well it would work out, but I'd definitely be interested in seeing something like that.
Has Mises ever thought about something like a book club? That is, you advertise in a magazine (or online) and you offer the reader a number of books at extremely discounted prices (maybe a more "mainstream" book for only $2, or something like that). The contract accepted once those $2 are paid is that the client must now buy a certain number of books by the end of a certain amount of time. Obviously, I'm not sure on the economic viability of this type of business in regards to the Mises Bookstore, but I thought it would be good to put it out on the table as an idea.
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