“If you require force to promote your ideal, there is something wrong with your ideal.” - J. S. B. Morse
I am not necessarily the biggest fan of marketing, but persuading people is an important part of promoting liberty, and I believe it can be done better. An important part is making people think about a free world in a different way. Now, I am not a fan of utilitarian arguments myself, but sadly many are, and fortunately liberty has strong utilitarian arguments going for it - albeit I believe the deontological ones are better.
I think one of the bigger obstacles in convincing people to embrace freedom is that they cannot conceive how a free society would be. The main mistake is to believe the world would be exactly like the current one with a lot less government, so in their view without the things they feel they get from government. This is very wrong.
For a few quick examples, some will think maybe their income will stay the same or at most increase with the amount they get taxed. In the longer term, it would be much more, as a lot more wealth would be generated. Wealth, not money. They think goods and services would be the same quantity and price. Wrong, with less taxation, less inflation and more competition, the whole structure of the economy would be different, and much improved. They think corporations would dominate everything. But many corporations are creatures of the state, not of the free market.
The free world would be vastly different from this one. Do we know exactly how? No. No one does, and I will not claim any certainty on this. But we can try to gleam.
It is hard to even grasp how much the economy is hurt by war, pointless bureaucracies, disastrous laws, suffocating regulation, high taxes, licencing, corruption, cronyism and assorted collateral damage of big government, oh and war, it must be said multiple times. It could be quite staggering. In a free world there would be more wealth, more choice, and more opportunity. The economy, less distorted, would have a different structure, more suited to the needs and wants of people, with more businesses, more self-employed, fewer bureaucrats and corporations.
What about the poor people? Ask yourself how many of them are poor due to government? Many could not work because of crony licencing, could not start a business because of stupid regulations, could not accumulating wealth because of taxation, and other high barriers set before them.
Many are poor because they were sent to jail on bullshit victimless crimes, and they lost a lot of time and got a criminal record, for no reason except to get tough on crime politicians more votes.
And all the previously mentioned poverty extends to families and children and to the next generation. You can’t provide for kids when in jail for a few grams of a god damn weed.
Many are poor because of getting trapped in bad welfare schemes. Even more are poor due to central banking hidden taxation-through-inflation. The answer to the what about poor people question is not to say more charity as many libertarians often do, but to say a lot would less poverty. Less, not non-existent, whoever says they will cure poverty is full of you knowing what. But it needs to be mentioned that poverty is genuinely fixed by allowing people to earn enough by themselves, not by making them dependent on aid.
But what about insert preferred issue here. Now, I can’t tell with absolute certainty how every single issue will be solved, but I can tell you free people will find a way; they always do, and quite likely better then government.
A common issue I see here is healthcare when people compare the so called compassionate Western European government system with the bad greedy free market American one. Let’s get something clear here. There is nothing, and I mean not a single damn thing, free market about healthcare in the U.S. It is the most heavily regulated sector of the economy, with large government encouraged cartels, and structures which are determined by regulation and taxation schemes. This makes it expensive and inefficient, although I have seen no compelling evidence, that the European ones are better. As a Romanian, I can tell you how much government healthcare can suck. But USA is not what healthcare in a free world would look like.
Healthcare, education, housing would probably be solved at the very least at the current level, probably even better, without trapping people into government dependency. How can you be free if you live your life on what a politician sees fit to give you?
Anyway, I would not advocate getting rid of all these government functions in one fell swoop. The path to liberty should be gradual, just not too gradual. When it comes to reform, faster is better then slower. But not all at once. The current structure cannot be replaced in one year. But we should move in that direction. And piece by piece wind government down, as a truly free market takes over various functions.
I will say again, it must be understood that, beyond various speculations, no one really knows what liberty would bring to the general society, but history, as much as it can be used to speculate, shows people will make due and innovate new ways. Using historical data is off course very limited. The world now is not what it was, society changed. One of the problems with models about society is that the initial situation is never the same; all other things are never equal. A free society is a multigenerational problem; it will take time for it to develop.
But it should be seen as advancement, not regression to some previous historical situation. Because people will scream regressive at you whenever you want to scale back the power of the state. Utopian libertarianism can be just as misguided as utopian statism. It will not be perfect, some things will clearly be less efficient then under a bigger government, many will be more efficient. There will still be some poverty, some pain, and some unhappiness. But whoever sells you a system without any of this is selling you natural animal sourced fertilizer.
well said
if only i could learn to do it with ease...
What corrupts governments is money. The evils of government, taxation and inflation, both have to do with money. They go to war because of money, the healthcare system is corrupt because of money. I think money is the one to take out of the equation, not government.