The best course for libertarianism

== Pro Plan == Pro continues to iterate his plan to persuade a large number of people to support libertarian goals. Pro misunderstands my criticism of the KKK and New Deal examples. I don't think libertarians have anything in common with these groups (which is actually my other argument against persuasion). They simply haven't been grass roots motivated movements. I pointed out that the KKK movement relied on excluding large sections of society from the political process. A farmer did not think of the New Deal and then persuade his community to go and vote for it. Again, "The ideological source of government intervention came from the government itself, not the masses". Pro concedes that special interest groups might have a little to do with how our government is structured, but he still thinks that politics has always been driven in a bottom-up fashion. His source for this is the wikipedia article of a book, who's contents and bibliography we cannot access. I could bolster my claim that special interests really do control the majority of American politics, but to introduce new evidence in the last round is be abusive (in my mind, at least). I simply ask the judges to disregard his source, and instead look to my citation of US Political dependence on corporate contributions. So Pro's case is largely a historical one. As far as I can see, mass persuasion is not supported by any of his examples. == Con Analysis == 2) A) Voters are Rationally Ignorant Pro continues to iterate that I am claiming voters are stupid. That's not the point at all. Even if voters have amazing reasoning capacity, there is no incentive for them to become educated or try to figure out what the correct ideology is. The chance their vote will make a difference is very very small, so they calculate that their time would be better spent doing something else, and rationally choose to pay little serious attention to politics. Those of us who do pay attention do politics as a hobby. We do not expect our endeavors to remotely influence the next election. B) Libertarian Persuasion is Impractical So even if you don't accept that voters don't have a reason to think seriously about politics, there is still the intellectual question. Pro thinks that libertarianism can be spread through the same tactics as mainstream politics – slogans and images. I already pointed out that the left and right both have extensive mythologies to back up their platform. Libertarians don't, because we don't control public education. It will take actual intellectual rigor to overcome the appeal of both ideologies. Pro also ignored my point that the wishes of voters are essentially ignored. I'll re-requote: "The good intentions of a democratic majority were subverted with the flick of a wrist in this latest election [3]. We should expect this. Mass political action is not effective because the system is broken. See above." And, to extend, the founder of the Libertarian party actually disagrees with Pro on the effectiveness of political action. C) Libertarian Persuasion is Insufficient I won't requote myself again... but free markets are a "public good". They do not benefit individuals, they benefit society. If voters are self interested, they won't ever vote for free markets even if they think capitalism is the best thing for society. They'll still vote for special privileges and welfare for themselves. I recently drew a really offensive (by mainstream standards) comic where the final panel is a white hand shaking a black hand with a welfare check in the middle. No amount of persuasion would ever convince someone to turn down free money. 3) Re-open the frontier! A) Market Based Activism is More Libertarian Don't agitate! Voting is for collectivists! Libertarians are individualists. Each man can make his own way. B) Seasteading Pro doesn't really delve into the seasteading logistics. I addressed all his peripheral concerns about pirates above. His argument distills into "floating cities? U mad.". Its true that this is unprecedented. If there were a bunch of free territory sitting out there waiting to be homesteaded I wouldn't even suggest it. I'd be urging us to go try out now societies in New-America. But we can't do that. The only unclaimed parts of this earth are on the oceans. Luckily, seasteading is ONLY an engineering problem. It will get cheaper as technology becomes better and governments become more oppressive. Our income grows exponentially, and therefore our taxes grow exponentially. Soon, taxes and regulations will outweigh the decreasing cost of Seasteading. In many industries, such as pharmaceuticals, they probably already do. C/D) Seasteading Appeal and Sustainability/Rendering Political Ideology Obsolete Pro thinks that seasteads will only be filled with those intellectually elite enough to understand true libertarianism. This is not what I'm saying at all. I'm actually downplaying the importance of armchair philosophy by pointing out that it won't work on the masses and it doesn't need to work for seasteads. You don't have to convince a group of investors that libertarianism is THE ideology. You just have to convince them that your idea will make money, which is the whole spearhead initiative behind seasteads. Even if the majority of seasteaders are state-communists, they will be supporting the libertarian movement because seasteading is intrinsically libertarian because it is voluntary and based on homesteading rights. So the advantage of seasteading is that we don't have to rely on persuading a bunch of people that we're right about free markets and libertarianism. We can just go see what works (and laugh at the communists for unwittingly creating a capitalist paradise). In closing, I thank Inno for this debate. I believe the tactics and outlook of libertarians are very important. We can proceed with more hope if we believe success is possible. Thankfully, there are many paths to liberty.