The best course for libertarianism

1) Goal of Libertarian Activism To promote a stable environment for individual freedom and property rights 2) Political Means A) Voters are Rationally Ignorant The vote margin in this most recent election was just under 10 million [1]. Even in much smaller democracies, margins are still in the tens of thousands. The chance that an individual vote will make a difference are virtually zero. Voting might be worthwhile if I could control how other people vote, but I do not. I could spend hours of my life researching the best policies and candidates and it will make no difference because everyone else is gonna do what they're gonna do. There is every reason for voters to stay uninformed, particularly since political bias feels pretty good. Bryan Caplan Explains: "But why are there some areas — like politics and religion — where irrationality seems especially pronounced? My answer is that irrationality, like ignorance, is sensitive to price, and false beliefs about politics and religion are cheap. If you underestimate the costs of excessive drinking, you can ruin your life. In contrast, if you underestimate the benefits of immigration, or the evidence in favor of the theory of evolution, what happens to you? In all probability, the same thing that would have happened to you if you knew the whole truth. Unfortunately, the social cost of irrationality can be high even though it is individually beneficial. If one person pollutes the air, we barely notice; but if millions of people pollute the air, life can be very unpleasant indeed. Similarly, if one person holds irrational views about immigration, we barely notice; but if millions of people share these irrational views, socially harmful policies prevail by popular demand." [2] B) Libertarian Persuasion is Impractical (There was supposed to be evidence on the topic of "Libertarian Personality", but I can find no links to a study. Hot air, most likely). Whether we can persuade large numbers of people to become libertarians is unclear. My gut is that it will be nearly impossible because voters have no incentive to choose one of the most difficult ideologies to defend. Even if a majority became convinced of some libertarian ideals, what then? 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. David Nolan, the founder of the Libertarian Party, instead sees the LP as a social network for spreading the message of liberty rather than electing candidates to office. He writes: "I believe it is time for a wide-open, no-holds-barred debate on the role of the LP within the U.S. political system. We can continue pretending that we are going to teach the horse to fly, and watch our membership dwindle as people get frustrated and burn out, or we can redefine our mission as building a strong network of libertarians." [4] C) Libertarian Persuasion is Insufficient Free markets are a public good. They benefit practically everyone, but their provision in a democracy must be collective and selfless. Even individuals who believe markets are the best way to organize society may still choose to vote in their own narrow self interest. For example, entrenched special interests benefit enormously from influencing politics [5] and gaining special privileges [6]. The groups who are "net tax consumers" will never join the free market movement. To do so would be against their class interest. For info, see libertarian class theory [7]. 3) Re-open the frontier! A) Market Based Activism is More Libertarian Let's look at libertarian attitudes towards monopolies. If you tell a libertarian that there's a monopolistic firm in the market, what will they suggest? Will they try and agitate by protesting and try to change the company from within? Or will they suggest competition? The latter of course... This logic is regularly applied to markets, but it applies with equal force against government. Competition is the answer to state monopolies. One example I will focus on is seasteading. B) Seasteading Logistics From the SSI FAQ [8]: "Seasteading" is homesteading on the high seas. In other words, building permanent dwellings on the ocean. A seastead is a structure specifically designed for the purpose of long-term living in the marine environment." "Our current price estimate for the base platform is $300/ft^2. Undeveloped land in San Francisco costs $200/ft^2. We believe we can provide office space on a Coaststead for comparable or slightly higher rates than in San Francisco. It's true that seasteading isn't cheap, but innovation is costly, and we expect the cost to drop rapidly as the movement scales." C) Seasteading Appeal and Sustainability "Seasteads are much more likely to happen if somebody can figure out how to make a buck with them. If floating cities are worth building, they're worth building at a profit. And if they can't be built profitably, it is far from clear that they are worth building." "After a fair bit of thought, we've only come up with two unique features of seasteading which provide its competitive edge. The first is the freedom offered by sovereignty and the second is the unique ability of seasteads to provide some of the comfort and stability of land in remote marine locations. Hence any business must center around one of these features." The SSI has proposed several rough business models that can be operated profitably on seasteads. But as technology gets cheaper, and governments continue to take fixed %'s of our income, seasteads may eventually become viable for practically all business models. A reasonable example of an offshore business would be pharmaceuticals. The FDA holds back many drugs, and the revenue from their early sale is easily enough to cover the overhead of a seastead. Or another example: "Take a used cruise ship, plant it in international waters three miles off the coast of El Segundo, near Los Angeles, people it with 600 of the brightest software engineers they can find around the world (both men and women), and run a 24-hour-a-day programming shop, thereby avoiding H-1B visa hassles while still exploiting offshore labor cost arbitrage and completing development projects in half the time they'd take onshore or offshore…" D) Rendering Political Ideology Obsolete Seasteading does not require a mass conversion to libertarianism. Continuing from the SSI FAQ: "[Seasteading] opens the oceans as a new frontier for pioneering, a frontier with a fundamentally different quality - fluidity - that lets entire cities be rearranged and reshaped constantly. If you don't like your government, you can literally "Vote with your house" by detaching your seastead and sailing off to another city. In the long run, this will turn the oceans into a laboratory for innovation in social and political systems. No specific ideology is necessary: Seasteads will empower people with a wide variety of beliefs to self-govern and serve as examples (good and bad) for other societies. " [1]http://en.wikipedia.org... [2]http://www.cato-unbound.org... [3]http://www.brightandearlyblog.com... [4]http://www.reasontofreedom.com... [5]http://www.opensecrets.org... [6]http://online.wsj.com... [7]http://mises.org... [8]http://seasteading.org...