Jagsfan82

Your view seems to be different than that of cynicist... If I understand it correctly, I am not resistant to it as much as I just disagree with it. I disagree that you cannot make progress through political action and who we elect to office doesn't matter. To assume that would be to say if Stef and 400 other anarcho libertarians controlled the executive and legislative branch we would somehow change all of our views, be influenced by money, and not vote to peel back the control of government. I don't think you would agree with that statement. To say that we couldn't be elected would be to say that votes don't matter. To say that we could never get votes would be to say the whole point of FDR and other avenues of communicating the libertarian anarchist view aren't effective, which would be defeat the purpose of investing time and energy and money into the effort, which was kinda the whole purpose of this post. Even if we take that statement as true though, that we can never have an impact through political action, I was simply trying to inquire as to how we can eventually make dents into government control and power. It appears your viewpoint is essentially that it is impossible, and we have to learn to live as free, empathetic, ethical people under the tyranny of government that will always be there. If that is not your viewpoint than I ask again to elaborate and be more specific. At what point does the tyranny of government become reduced? I understand the importance of what you are saying and I completely agree in the importance of the steps you are advocating. And under the assumption that we have no influence over the government it would be pretty silly to try to disagree with what you and cynicist are saying about sustainable long term influence and change. I just think you are taking the tendencies of government long term, which is to increase and power and influence, and apply them to the individuals. Its sort of like taking the tendencies of the free market and saying that each individual situation within the free market must follow those principles, which would be pretty illogical. Of course not every worker gets paid what they are worth. Of course not every good is sold at the equilibrium point between supply and demand. Just because increasing government size and control over time is inevitable does not mean that it is impossible to work against those trends. Certainly.. but the idea behind this post is how to prevent the impending collapse of the economy. The general vibe I am getting is there is nothing we can do about. We just need to prepare ourselves accordingly. Were in the path of the tornado. We don't have time to get out of the storm path, and we just need to bunker down and make the best of a shitty situation.I am not ready to give up on hope though. I don't think things will get better after the collapse, I think it will get worse, especially if we believe the individuals influencing government are as evil and corrupt as Magnus claims them to be. I still believe that the constitution allows us to have a certain amount of influence. Just because dismantling government completely cannot be accomplished, does not mean we can't make enough of a difference to at worst keep our freedoms from further attack, and at best increase our freedom significantly.

I didn't mean to imply no one gets locked up over taxes or ask if anyone does, I mean to imply that I do not know if I would. First of all, I haven't given the federal government a dime of taxes in my entire life. As a matter of fact, I have received credits of probably 5-10k over the past 7 years. I do anticipate owing the federal government taxes and typically pay the state a couple hundred dollars a year. How much in taxes would I need to not pay before they put me in prison? I know the jail sentences for fines in traffic court can be close to insanity (I seem to recall about 40 days in jail for $1000?). I am not ignoring your answer, you have not given one. You stated "The point is that in the future, people will understand that government and the initiation of force is not required for self-defense or a legal system, or any of the things that people think are necessary prerequisites for having a civil society. The ultimate goal is to not have that system, so there is nothing to curtail or be vigilant over." My question was once the future arrives and people understand that government and the initiation of force is not required for self-defense, or a legal system, or any of the things that people think are necessary prerequisites for having a civil society... once this happens how to we reach the ultimate goal of not having that system? How do we go from enlightened people living under a tyrannical state fueled by big corporations and corrupt politicians to enlightened citizens not living under a tyrannical state fueled by big corporations? So although being pretty vague as to my actual question, and despite some contradictions in what was said earlier... I am going to do some work and make up what I THINK the plan to make a difference is. It appears that the thought is to never use any sort of political action to make a difference. The plan is to slowly build up a population that has a significantly higher degree of enlightenment and rational thinking then the current population. At this point the goal is to then simply choose to ignore the state, which would suffocate the state out of existence. Maybe its the not paying taxes idea. Again.. the answer received is very vague and I'm trying to fill in some blanks, so I beg of you to elaborate.

Its becoming quite apparent you don't know the answer to my question. I am saying the process is the same. You need to build up a consensus and then use that consensus to achieve the desired result. I never tried to say legalizing weed is gonna give us a free state. I'm saying its an incremental goal that would increase freedom in-between the long term goal of getting people to understand the more broad concepts. I can teach a kid to add on their fingers up to 10. Sure that doesn't necessarily mean he knows how to add and subtract in the broad sense, but it sure as hell works in the mean time.My point is you say nothing can be done in short term politically, but at some point long term goals will require short term progress. How will that transition happen if we accept the idea that we can't use political action to get what we want? What's the transition plan. The short term goal is to convince more people how much government sucks. So its 2030 and people are convinced. Now what.

Interesting story because it counters all the "you can't get anywhere with argumentation" that is very popular around these parts.Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but coming from a huge christian background, you should not be an exception to the rule. That being said, you were already an exception to the rule because you had anarchist leanings... I guess to sum it up you are absolutely no doubt an extremely unique individual. You should fit right in.Congratulations on your newfound freedom.

Oh god.. this list could go on forever. I would argue an extremely tiny percentage of what was taught in school that was preached as an undeniable fact was actually nearly as cut and dry as they made it out to be. I need to be leaving so I gotta keep it short, but essentially many "theories" or "ideas" (Such as democracy is the most moral of government institutions) are taught as facts. If they were presented as just that, theories or ideas, there wouldn't be as much of an issue, but they are presenting these as facts to young impressionable minds, most of which were never really taught to question things. Its human nature to use the logical fallacy of appealing to authority and appealing to the masses. It would be counter to this to NOT believe what you hear in school, and as such things that are still up for debate should be presented as such. Very depressing topic. Gonna go cry myself to sleep now.

I'd be willing to go to jail for this. I don't think you need as many people as I get the sense you think you need. The problem I am having is would they actually throw me in jail for not paying taxes, or would they just get money out of me some other way? I haven't paid my local taxes... ever... so I know that won't do it. You can file exempt on your W-4s to not have federal taxes withheld from your paycheck, but I'm assuming payroll taxes you can't get around. State taxes I am not sure how those work. If people started getting locked up over taxes though... I think that might make a strong enough point. Tough would need to talk it out much more in depth. Yes. I've listened to about 20-30 hours of Stef. I have read no books. I asked you a question. I have yet to receive an answer. You say the point is to convince more people government is not the answer, but yet again you say that you cannot change the government in the short term. But at some point the long term changes into the short term. At what point does that occur, and what happens? How is change made? How is it going to be different from now?I did not mean to accuse anyone of not having a solution if I did, but i don't think I did, rather I meant to simply infer as to what that solution was. So we get 50% of the people to believe government is the initiation of force... then what? How is that different from convincing 50% of the people to legalize marijuana and then act on that principle and make a difference? Again, not saying there isn't a valid response to this, I have just yet to hear it.

There's a number of bad assumptions and generalizations, but the biggest problem I have with it is, as many have mentioned, the fact it was a parent not a mom. I figured it out within 1 minute of watching. Even with all the bad assumptions and generalizations and not including the father I am still OK with the video as a whole. Just because a McDonald's cashier doesn't greet you warmly doesnt mean that's not part of the job description. Besides some slight exaggerations, most of what's in the video is accurate to what a parent is responsible for doing. Its a lot of work. It makes you think about what your parents have done for you at least a little bit, and that's a good thing. Sometimes the overall message is more important than picking apart every little thing. Not many things can hold up to that type of scrutiny, but that doesn't mean there isn't any value or the overall message isn't worthwhile. As far as being funded by American Greetings, I would be very surprised if they expect to make any decent amount of money from this video. They probably were hoping for a net neutral and maybe a little recognition. Surely there was some profit motivation, but I would gamble it was mostly a desire to do something cool and meaningful for mothers day. Genuine if you will

So let's assume all this is true. Lets assume political action would get us nowhere. Let's assume the country, and all modern countries for that matter, are run by evil politicians and corporations that no matter how much we try we cannot penetrate and influence. Whats the point of trying to spread the message? What's the point of bringing about new intelligent rational minded thinking into society? If they aren't going to have any influence on changing anything... what are we really doing? If they are going to be able to change anything, why is the future going to be any different than now? At what point does this magically switch over from not being able to change anything to being able to change anything? If we are constantly going to have a government that can start wars, put people in jail, take taxes, and regulate business... then what is creating more rational people going to help if they are going to have no influence over that system?I am not proposing the only two choices are political action or do nothing, but those are the only two options that have been presented in this thread thus far. The ideas being proposed about a slow steady sustainable growth of rational empathetic thinkers is all good and dandy, and very important, but that does not address the short term problem that the economy is just setting up to get worse and worse, reaching a very likely tipping point in the early 2020's. This is an actual idea. Certainly raises a lot of questions. How much revenue would need to be lost? Considering the top 20% pay about 85% of federal income taxes, it might be difficult to make a dent. State level? If you got enough people to stop paying taxes at the state and local levels... there is no way those governments could handle the combination of lost revenue and increased workload. In order for this to work I get the sense it would need to be a surge rather than incremental.

Its not subjective as much as people have wrong ideas of what some words or phrases mean via ignorance, which is a perfect example. Many people say ignorant when they mean rude or a host of other options. Also sometimes people speak way to vaguely in an effort to save words and time.Certainly its on the speaker to make themselves clear, but the speaker may full well think they are making themselves clear while actually being ignorant to the real definition of some of his word choices. That may put the speaker in the wrong, but placing blame doesn't help the problem that regardless of who is at fault, there is often huge levels of miscommunication. Stefan actually mentions this in his "debating UPB" and why he doesn't participate in the message boards much

Here's what I know. There are members of the Senate and Congress and local office and Gary Johnson who, despite massive misinformation and very little organization and direction from the libertarian movement, have been elected to office. They are able to craft ideas that get support. Point being there ARE success stories about politicians who genuinely care and want to shrink the federal government. If they got elected without significant organization of the libertarian population, how many could we get elected with? How much support could we getfor specific ideas with organization?If the answer is not enough, then what's the plan as I asked before? Wait to see what tyranny those in power come up with? Just sit back and take it?

This is mostly a bullshit study that focuses on building a study to reach a desired result. Granted I did not read the whole study. The people mostly have government that they want. The newer small scale bills don't really do a whole lot to change the general concept we love in a nanny state that thinks it can take care of the poor and underprivileged while taxing the 'rich'. That's a short summary and not very good, but the idea is that the biggest of big laws: social security, medicareincome tax, huge defense spending, government regulation in everything, monopolized roads and schools, etc.. are popular amongst the people and mean much more than a couple small bills that passed that shift our policies a hairline in either direction to favor some group. People still have the power, they just don't know how to use it.

I believe that its going to be very tough to remove serious governmental influence, but that doesn't mean there can't be small achievable goals. Again, legalization of marijuana is a fantastic example. Whether it be at the local, state, or federal level there has to be examples of crony capitalism or just plain stupidity that we could point out and say hey, I think most people can agree this is a little bit insane. 1 and 2 seem counter to your initial point don't they? I agree that argumentation won't work if we define argumentation as sitting down at a table and debating someone. But if we advocate what you are saying in 1 and 2 I think you can make a difference. Stopping the spread of misinformation for example through facebook would be a legitimate cause. There are a lot of articles that get spread around filled with either straight lies or blatantly false or misleading statistics. Having a unified group to write calm, well written counterpoints I believe would have a huge impact. Many of these articles make it appear as though no one can logically argue against their position. Jon Stewart for example does it through the daily show, which gets reblogged on the internet a quadzillion times. 3 and 4 I absolutely agree with and very important.As for 5, again, I feel like this is somewhat of a copout and giving up. If you think better libertarian/anarchist media and convincing people within your friends group can work, why couldn't we get anything done via political action? We wouldn't even have to put anyone directly in office, just build support for a few common sense ideas that would have real impacts and help provide examples of the efficiency benefits of less government. I completely agree and I think that is part of the strategy that needs to be used if you want to try to influence others. As a new employee at a job example, first you must build up some level of respect. Once people trust you as a rational, intelligent person then you have a certain amount of influential power over them. Once that happens when you bring up things in a calm manner, such as, "I read an interesting piece on ___ the other day. People seemed to give it a lot of support but there was quite a bit of bad assumptions and facts used. They claimed ____ but theres a lot of studies that say quite the opposite". This seems somewhat forced in that scenario, but I think we get the idea. Ultimately I guess the main problem I have with the feedback I am receiving here is that it doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency. Its all fantastically valid and helpful at long term outlook, and that must be something that continues with ever increasing intensity, but it does nothing to address the short term upcoming collapse.Are we at the point of acceptance here? We're just gonna sit back and hope sometime soon the keynsian policies will cause a huge crash and then somehow Government will say, "Hey, maybe I was wrong, we should scale back"?Whats the thought process as to how this is all going to unfold?

So I watched part 1 and part 4 of the "Bomb in the Brain" series. Hopefully watch the middle two soonish. There is one issue I would like to bring up and discuss involving the idea that logic and reason and evidence won't get you anywhere when debating people about ideologies and politics.I absolutely accept and agreed with this even before watching the video that when you debate with someone on these issues they tend to go into defense mode and ignore any logic and reason. My theory on the issue up to this point has been that what happens is after they cool off the evidence you gave them stays in their brain. Even if they try to consciously cast it off, it is still back there floating around. When they go to sleep at night those facts are constantly ramming themselves into the defense barriers they have built up protecting their beliefs.. If you throw up enough of those facts, and those facts are strong enough, and they hit the weak spots in their defense system... eventually that wall will at least crack and you will at least get somewhere. I don't think you will ever get someone who is passionate about something to make a drastic concession in their ideology in that moment, or at least that applies to 99.5 percent of people out there. I do however when they cool off and their reason centers open back up, if they truly do care about the issues and they truly do care about the people they claim to care about, they will process those ideas more rationally and they have a much higher chance of at least knowing they might be wrong even if they don't admit it. What are the thoughts on this theory. The only case studies I currently have are my family members and myself. I originally, although not passionately, was for taxation. I wasn't for the size of the government, and I wasn't for making people pay for things they didn't want however. I was for allowing people to choose where their taxes went to. For example someone who disapproved the war could only uncheck all the boxes that had to do with the armed forces. Granted, I was 17 and had no clue how this could ever logistically be done. I also acknowledged that there was a huge amount of government waste and social security was a ponzi scheme, but I was not willing to give up the government was necessary for things like national defense, roads, research, etc... I would disagree with my Libertarian uncle constantly on how taxation was not theft and how the rich only needed about 300k a year and after that I didn't have a huge problem with massive taxation. I might have been for essentially the top 10% paying all the taxes under a less wasteful government. Either way I was still a big statist. Eventually though my Uncles Points started to resonate, and I believe this was caused by what he was saying making sense with what I was seeing in the real world and having a deeper understanding of how everything is interconnected. Maybe it was establishing a deeper cause and effect relationship. But it was also resonating much more deeply from an ethical standpoint as well. A similar situation happened with my brother. I also seem to slowly notice some of the people that I have been constantly bombarding with facts after facts on some taxation issues slowly start accepting the message. Not making big progress, they are still huge statists, but there is progress.TLDR: People can't reason in the heat of the moment, but if we try to present the ideas to them in a way that doesn't make them anxious and doesn't trigger those fight or flight mechanisms, eventually, maybe after the discussion and after they think about those ideas when their reasoning centers are functional again, are people more prone to changing their views? There is no arguing the empirical evidence against initial responses to being presented with dangerous information... but do they just cast off the information and never consider again, or does that logical evidence resonate for a while and slowly make a difference?

I did a little more research and apparently its not nearly as revolutionary as many are making it out to be. Apparently even economists who are liberal are even calling out some of the blatant poor assumptions that are being made. I believe he is talking about world growth, and not sure how he is measuring it. Regardless of statistic I think this is one huge flaw many are pointing out. I think in order for these numbers to work economic growth in under-developed countries needs to be on par with that of developed nations, which is clearly insane. That being said I find it hard to say that economies are "growing". I guess you can make any case if you make up the correct statistic... I would say Piketty's argument is that the middle class and poor and/or the governments are creating debt, while the rich get the capital gains. The mises article talks about a couple obvious points. One being capital doesn't just automatically grow by the fact that it exists. It takes on growth after accepting a certain form of risk and that risk proved to be a good decision. This is a good thing for the economy, not a bad thing. Also lumping capital into one blob of money is just not accurate either. Theres all types of forms of capital. I think the overall gist is the same of any liberal argument.. oversimplify the economy and ignore long term cause and effect of actions and the free will of people so that bogus assumptions can be made to come up with statistics that help prove a desired end goal. The end goal doesn't come from the evidence or the logic, the evidence and the logic is fabricated based on the end goal.

I could not read all the posts.I just wanted to drop by to say a couple short things.The person whose beliefs are perfect may appear to have a strong confirmation bias, when in fact they are actually just correct and not explaining themselves in a manner that convinces the other party. The english language has a lot of words which people use differently. People get mad at me often for asking what people mean over even mostly basic vocabulary. I do this because before I respond I like to make sure I know exactly what that person was really trying to say. I can look up every word via a dictionary to figure out what someone meant, but that would only be valid if the person who made the statement did the same and made appropriate notes where confusion might occur. This does not happen. People think they say what they mean, and the person receiving the message thinks they received it correctly, but in reality both parties are in fact wrong. The person meant A, said B, which was interpreted as C. Long story short, I saw a lot of that in the early parts of this thread, and its a common problem among forums and internet communication in general. Something to keep in mind before making negative assumptions about what a person said. Assume innocence until evidence mounts otherwise, or accept the risks and consequences of miscommunication. Maybe the second one was not so short.

Obviously defining abuse would be an appropriate first step, but regardless of that, I would say i most certainly had some forms of abuse against me. That being said I clearly wasn't abused to the point where I was unable to think rationally, I was just never presented with the ideas and concepts of how government works. It was a lot to handle and I had trust in the ideas that were being thrown at me my entire upbringing that democracy was good and taxes are necessary and we need government for public services and the like. Never digging deep into the issues why would I consider this not to be the case. Once I had the facts I was able to rationally look at the facts and come to the pretty obvious conclusion that free markets and less government is both more effective and morally consistent. So to say that any abuse I had caused me to lose rational thinking, well I would say I was not abused to that level. Not sure I agree with the statement you need to be abused to allow yourself to be "brainwashed", but again that requires defining abuse and brainwashed. What I mean is people can accept ideas as valid based on the logical fallacies of appealing to the masses/authority/experts and repetition. That doesn't mean they were abused or cannot think rationally, simply they have not been presented an alternative in a simple enough manner and broad enough scale to convince them that these people they trusted perhaps have it wrong. To say that we won't make any progress without first making sure everyone is thinking rationally and have overcome their abuse... I think that isn't the case. Surely some people have been abused and don't feel empathy and will have a longer process as far as getting them to realize for themselves that government and taxes are not the answer, but I think there is certainly a significant number of people that have simply been presented with a lot of misinformation from people they trust. In reference to making significant change... the theory you proposed would be a false dichotomy. Surely addressing the core problem of building empathy and rational thinking and overcoming abuse... and of course ending a culture that accepts abuse is extremely important for long term viability, peace, and prosperity. But to say that significant change can't be done in the meantime as well? That sounds like not wanting to put forth the effort more than a logical conclusion. We don't need to dismantle the federal government to have significant change. We don't need to become a taxless state to have significant change. We don't need to end all victimless crimes to have significant change. Significant change would be repealing one regulation that costs thousands of jobs. Significant change would be repealing one law (IE: legalizing marijuana) that keeps hundreds of thousands of people from having their freedom taken away. Significant change would be preventing one tax hike from the left that prevents even further weakening of our economy. The approach you are advocating is obviously extremely important. But to say there isn't anything we can be done until progress is made on that level... I can't believe that. That may apply to a few individual people, but like it or not we are still in a democratic state and people can influence policy changes that do have serious impacts on peoples freedoms in the present day. "But it's not up to them if other people get stolen from and if they consent to being stolen from themselves, then it's not theft." I don't even know what this means. It is up to us as citizens... or at least a majority of citizens, if taxes are increased, stay the same, or decreased. It's not that they are disagreeing its theft, its that they believe it is necessary, and they believe others should feel the same, and if they don't feel that way they don't care. So they aren't consenting to theft, they are donating to a cause they believe in. To say that people holding a viewpoint that taxes aren't theft doesn't mean anything in the discussion of politics/morality is just not accurate. Certainly it doesn't have any bearing on reality and what happens, but it does mean something in terms of the actions they take and the policies they propose. I agree with you in that there is no point in arguing with a person if they don't understand the basic concepts and refuse to accept. I am saying there might be ways to accept that they feel this way, yet still make progress in providing evidence and strong examples of taxes as inefficient and contrary to their ultimate goal. "You were given a resource to help you achieve your stated goal, but you did not avail yourself of it. Yet you're expressing a belief on the same subject. Could this maybe explain why you have not been met with the results you'd like to see? Our values can be found in our behaviors." There are a lot of assumptions here. One is that I really had a whole lot of time to do this and I chose not to while continuing to try to make progress in the area OR its possible that you assumed this applied to past situations where I had a resource to help me and i refused to use it. So no, I would say this is probably not the reason I have not been met with the results I would like. Maybe I'm not getting the results I would like because I don't have a proper enough education on how to influence minds, but it would not because I tried to do so while ignoring known resources that would help me achieve that goal. "THAT is how YOU can make a difference RIGHT NOW." Not sure if this is accurate either. In fashion what happens is someone who people look up to or respect or think looks cool puts something on, and other people think to themselves one of two things. One is "If that person is wearing it, it must be in style and I should wear it to be in style" or the other being, "wow that looks cool I am going to put that on". In the form of not associating with statists resulting in a change of what is fashionable to believe in, we aren't exactly in a perfect analogy. There is a general disrespect among statists for anarchists. So when an anarchists says, "If you aren't going to prescribe to what I morally believe in I cannot associate with you", that does not mean that person is going to say wow, I need to become an anarchist to fit in. Surely, this might happen if that person had respect for you as a person, but then again if they truly had that respect and admiration you would be able to win with logic and reason. If 10% of the United States started not associating themselves with the statists, that does not instantly make it fashionable to be an anarchist. What this does do, and what I was driving at in my original statement, is make a point that if 10% of people believe this maybe it is worth looking into. I guess my point is if the conditions exist to where not associating with people would make it "unfashionable" to be a statist and move over to the anarchist side, then those same conditions should lead to being able to get people to buy into whatever ideas you want to throw at them, especially when that propaganda has some empirical evidence to back it up.

Has anyone read this book? Thoughts? Comments?Basic premise being growth of capital in the modern world grows at 5-6%. Economic growth tends to be 2-3%. Therefore the wealth gap is always going to increase and the solution to this is to have huge wealth taxes and raise top rate taxes by huge amounts (as if they aren't already taking enough money...).Being praised by statists and liberals. http://www.mises.org/daily/6736/Thomas-Piketty-on-Inequality-and-Capitalhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/piketty-amazon-reviews_n_5212386.htmlSeems to be an important read to understand the other side, as it surely will pop up everywhere now, but I cannot justify the investment right now.

Thanks for the welcome! Marijuana legalization and bumper stickers certainly wouldn't bring back fundamental change on their own. The goal is two-fold. One, is to find and target areas that are currently under heavy government control and regulation that we could potentially garner enough support to remove government. Marijuana is one I think would be an option. If we can provide examples such as these to point to, we can make the argument, "We removed government here, and look what at the results". The second Goal would be to try to lessen the idea that libertarianism is an extreme viewpoint that only a small percentage of Americans believe in. It is no longer a small percentage, especially in my and presumably your age group. The problem is many casuals are still oblivious to this fact and fail to even acknowledge libertarianism as a viable option. Again, this won't bring fundamental change on its own, but it might create a stronger base as to which fundamental change can happen. Posting on anarchist forums about how much government sucks to other anarchists isn't going to bring about a whole lot of fundamental change either. I also don't think bringing about a massive wave of fundamental change in a short burst is possible. As Rothbard said, you need a strategy with short term goals that build towards your ultimate goal. I didn't mean to imply "brainwashed" as an isolated incident. Maybe a mark, but not one I necessarily blame the person for. I am not sure it is absolutely a sign of abuse though. Sure abuse could lead to some people brainwashing, but to say the majority of brainwashed people are so because of abuse... not sure if that holds up... maybe I just haven't seen the data. I was never abused and I was brainwashed heavily until about 19. Hell, I'm sure I am still brainwashed about many issues, but I am more open to the idea that I may not have been presented with accurate information. As for the last paragraph, this is all good and dandy for a slow healthy upbringing of a society, but we probably have less than a decade before the "shit hits the fan". I wholeheartedly agree that we do need to approach these topics in which we currently have disagreements with empathy. Just saying, 'no you're wrong government is bad, and taxes are theft, and everything you believe in is immoral' will clearly get us nowhere, but that doesn't mean we have to sit back and focus on making people feel better about themselves while the democrats and republicans fight over whether the government grows by 5% or 10% next year. I think we do need to bring up some issues, but we need to do it in a respectful and as you mentioned empathetic way. We need to make sure we acknowledge their concerns and we admire their intentions, but there is hard evidence to suggest that maybe the best way to achieve your goals is not through the solutions that are being proposed.... and then back it up with some empirical evidence. Certainly I guess this all depends on your goals. My goal would be to try to make some significant changes in the relative short term so I have a country I can feel confident pursuing wealth and prosperity in. If the goal is a slow and steady culture change in helping people, especially the next generation, think rationally... well yes you are right, talking about the issues really isn't important. I know Stefan is all about approaching the issues from the standpoint of Morality, but I'm not sure its possible for short term success. I think even when you start with morals you hit the roadblock of utilitarian morality. I will try to listen to that series. Maybe that comes up there. But ultimately people think the poor and the middle class need to be taken care of and they fully believe that theft is justified if it can help others more than it helps them. I don't think most people that believe that are going to change their mind. I think it needs to be shown that the theft is NOT helping the poor. I think it is fine to start with morals, but I always find that using the moral debate swings back to what works and what doesn't work for helping society as a whole.

I am new here. My name is Nick. I've been slowly getting deeper and deeper into libertarianism ever since high school (I am currently 25 finishing up an accounting degree). Recently I've kicked it up to another level on research into the issues and engaging people in conversation about the issues, although time is still limited by time I am not willing to give up with my family, work, and schooling. Progress seems to be nonexistent when engaging with brainwashed liberals. I try to approach them with respect and facts, and when they don't understand the facts or don't want to believe them they deny the evidence as being accurate with no counter evidence to prove their point. I'm sure everyone has been through this and has been discussed often on these forums. I end up ranting to a fellow anarchist/libertarian at work about all these issues for hours.My most recent posts and discussion have just been trying to get rid of the idea that the 1% or the rich aren't paying their 'fair share'. When engaging in these discussions I did some research into the federal budget for the first time in a year and looked at some of the projections. By 2017 our interest is going to start increasing by 80 billion a year and surpass the annual deficit by significant margins. I believe this will be the point where the masses start realizing the unsustainability in our current system.The point of all of this is I am tired of these meaningless debates that go nowhere. I am tired of complaining and researching how crappy our current situation is for hours and hours without actually doing anything to work towards solving the problem. I think as a whole the majority of the anarchist libertarian debate is in this category. Its either talking to people who agree with the sentiment or talking with people who are too brainwashed and intellectually lazy or incompetent to ever change their ideas. Stefan has talked about this as allowing ideas win out over empirical evidence. Can't really make much progress there. Certainly there are wonderful programs such as these that are the exception, but as a recent video stated they don't have nearly the support and resources they need, and its anyones guess how long shows like this would take to make any sort of difference in policy. Its also been happening for almost a century and the problem has only been getting worse and worse.I think we need something drastic, and I think we need that to take place sooner rather than later. I am not sure anyone is going to like what will happen in the earlier 2020s. I think it is going to get much much worse before it gets better. To make a difference we need something big. We need such an onslaught of empirical evidence, that anyone who has any sort of intelligence will have to start considering the possibility that maybe they have been wrong their entire life. We need droves of easy to understand counters to every crappy upworthy article that gets posted. Ultimately, I think we need to either find existing foolproof, specific examples that show what moving towards a free market can do. Where those examples don't exist, we need to make them happen. Thinking big here its got to be possible to get a small free market 'state' up and running, or at least something that is drastically closer to it than what we currently have to point to. Whether it is implementing economic freedom in a current state through focusing resources into one small area (IE: Rebuilding Detroit) or starting something new, there has to be a way.I don't have the real data here, but I think it stands to reason that of the people that have logically thought through the issues and been introduced to libertarianism in an appropriate way, there are actually a significant percentage of those people that have agreed with the principles. Hard to argue a majority, but still a significant percentage. Peter Schiff has tons of fans. Not that every one of these is a perfect example (nor do I know their complete views), but Ron and Rand paul have millions of fans. The Mises institute is highly influential. We have people who are at least holding office that are trying to spread more freedom (Justin Amash). There are tons and tons of economists that know the power of the free market. This show in itself has a huge base of supporters.There has to be a way to bring all of these people together to combine our resources to make a larger difference. Time is of the essence. This needs to happen. If something drastic doesn't happen I just don't think I will be able to stay in the United States. Anarchy is probably never going to happen, but that doesn't mean we can't get huge chunks of government out of our lives piece by piece. I propose we start by first by building one massive centralized libertarian online community. We may not all be pure anarchists, and we may not all agree on everything, but if they are open to drastically reducing the size of the government and expanding freedom then they would be welcome. Maybe something like this is already started. Maybe this is the place. I feel this may be too hardcore and we may need something that is a little more friendly. We all know people can tend to shut off when you throw the word anarchist out. Then I think we have to focus on attainable goals. Legalizing marijuana would be one goal that could drove up enough support and would make a big difference. With enough manpower and research and money there has to be countless examples of government failures that could be dismantled. The libertarian community is far too disjointed. It is still viewed by casual observers as radical and extreme. If we got everyone together and started showing how many people are on board with these views, libertarianism would be viewed nowhere near as radical by the casuals. People might not automatically shut off every time they hear the word "Libertarian". Just imagine if we coined a phrase and made stickers. Every libertarian had that phrase on the back of their car, or in the window of their small business, or on a billboard on the side of the highway, etc... Libertarianism couldn't be ignored anymore. People would be forced to talk about the issues. Thanks for reading. I'm willing to put in the work to make something happen. Who else wants to make something happen. Let's start brainstorming. We need to keep talking about the issues, but we need to start acting as well.