So at school i was trying to spread the word of liberty and introducing a friend about anarcho capitalism/
Friend- Hurr durr apple will buy up all the industriezz!!!!!
Me- They cant do that, no company has enough money to buy out all the companies you envision
Firned- Hurr durrr they will get gunz and force money from you!
Me- They cannot, if they did that, it would be highly unpopular, and no one will buy apple products, therefore apple will lose all revenue and would quickly fall into the ground
friend- hurr durr too bad hurr durr hurr durrrrr monopolyzzz
Me- There will always be competition in the free market if a monopoly were to arise. Even if a competition oesnt arise, then wouldt it be ok if the monopoly provided good services at a decent price?
Friend- i guess thats ok, but hurr durr what if they do not?
me- Then it would open up doors to competition in which people willl buy products from the competitior with better prices/services
friend - hurr durr it cannot happen <no logic inserted for argument>
me- fuck off then you stupid bitch.
----
friend2- we need minimum wage
me- (shows suply/demand graph/ logical arguments against minimum wage)
friend2- i dont have any arguments but i still want minimum wage cuz its not about eficiency, i want government to take caer of everyone
me- that requires taxation which is like stealing
friend2- its not stealing if an elected official does it
me- fuck off stupid bitch.
--
so you can see here my rage when talking to brainwashed deadfucks who only know what they have been taught by the shitty public education system.
</rage>
I need a chocolate and cookies.
I AM SO ANGRY I CANNOT CARRY A GOOD CONVERSATION/DEBATE WITH A PERSON AT SCHOOL.
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
Well I assume you attend public school.
Public school programming = the source of your problem
Yep. I'm in class right now (ap computer science)
NOW YOU KNOW WHAT MINORITIES FEEL LIKE.
They allow you to go on Mises.org in school? Back when I was in public school, they didn't let me do jack on the computer except make me play JumpStart while the teacher sips her Diet Coke.
Most people have been fed propaganda their entire lives. You can't expect to change someone's mind in 5 minutes.
In my experience, it takes several long, polite conversations to get anywhere. Be patient. Try not to insult people, even if their arguments are stupid. Insulting them will only make them more resistant to what you have to say.
I, for one, in my US History class made it a point to show that the initial workers' unions were capitalistic constructs.
You could take their argument to an absurdity, like the Candlemaker's Petition.
Oh, I agreee with minimum wages, we should all get a million dollars an hour then everybody would be rich.
Oh I agree about monopolies, the government is the only monopoly that should exist since they never abuse their power of monopoly.
My elementary school history class told me that the United States is a democracy and was born that way.
Oh and I was also told that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were all about "defending my freedoms."
ARGH
SkepticalMetal:They allow you to go on Mises.org in school? Back when I was in public school, they didn't let me do jack on the computer except make me play JumpStart while the teacher sips her Diet Coke.
That sounds about right. God those bitches and their diet coke.
Definitely check out The War on Kids if you haven't already.
SkepticalMetal:My elementary school history class told me that the United States is a democracy and was born that way. Oh and I was also told that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were all about "defending my freedoms."
One of my favorites:
from Beginner videos (politics)
Hmm. I'll definately check it out.
But yeah, everything that I've learned that has long-term value was never through the public education programming system, it was always through either self-education or my parent's input. Nowadays I'm cyberschooled, which is still school that's on the government payroll but it gives me the opportunity to have more time to educate myself on the real issues through the internet more often.
That's why I like the ideas that the Sudbury Valley School brings up, allowing kids to find their own path rather than forcing them to stick to some highly centralized curriculum that's been Washington buereucrat-approved.
Oh yeah,
from Guides and Knowledge for your Intellectual Journey:
Education
I saw war on kids.
Its absurd.
Wow, just checked out the trailer for The War on Kids, looks interesting. I particularly liked the part where they said something about how your thoughts and feelings are controlled. It reminded me of back when I was in the 5th grade, and I was on the morning show, and for some reason, when the show went live, I just cracked up. My anchor cracked up. The whole room cracked up, and so did the school when they saw me laughing hysterically on television.
The school police officer came in, the principal came in, the vice principal came in...and we got a serious lecture. They told us that we had to be serious when we do these kinds of things, so that the kids aren't all riled up and excited.
They literally wanted us to be tortured and gloomy for the duration of schooltime. It was absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I thought about saying how schools were a government institution, and that I had the right to freedom of speech, I don't know why I didn't. Actually show those tools that I knew something taught outside their programming curriculum.
My mom was a teacher for a short while, and she was glad when her program was cut off, because she said it was absolutely ridiculous at how the government steps in the way of true education, to the point where all the good teachers are fired and all of the buereucratic teachers remain.
Yeah you never really think about it until you start getting into libertarian philosophy, and even then someone usually has to put it in front of your face.
People don't even give it a second thought. They just go on because "yeah of course kids hate school. That's how it is. That's how it was when I went through it. Everybody's gotta go through it. This is just how it is...etc etc."
That film was the first time I ever really started thinking back on my school days and realized just how horrible the whole system is. It's like you don't even really realize the true depth of it until you're outside, and operating from a different mindset. Like getting out of Scientology or something.
If you followed down the link hole, you'd see Gero's original link where you could view the whole film, here.
^^^
My fellow classmates tell me this. Live life bro, dont worry about shit, just get through it then live life hurr durr.
Not only are adults saying that.
@OP
LOL, I feel your pain. I've mostly given up on convincing classmates. You'll have better luck convincing random uneducated working class people; they have no more knowledge of economic realities than the students, but they also don't think they do. The intelligentsia (or what passes for such these days) is the intellectual bodyguard of the House of...Socialism. I do have my moments of weakness, however. The other day I somehow ended up talking about Marx with a classmate. We were talking about his philosophical underpinnings more than his economics, and I mentioned (per Rothbard and Kuehnelt-Leddihn) that he was a pietist turned atheistic uber-statist (a common enough pattern), and that the core of Marxism is not rational scientific theory of some kind but mystical pseudo-religious nonsense, part of the long communist tradition in heretical Christianity going back to the coercive anabaptists et al. Long story short, the conversation ended when I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist. : /
I think reason doesn't play too well with most people, best to imitate the public schools in their methods and just repeat the same simple slogans over and over again until they stick subconsciously. Unfortunately, it seems to me the liberty movement has more need for able propagandists than masterful debaters.
Well, minarchist...
Its easier to advocate minarchism than it is with anarchy.
Tell them you want small government: :"Sure y not? Thats a reasonable cause".
Tell them you dont want a government: "HURR DURR WTFROFLMAO CRAZY IDIOT HERE!!!!".
I have not studied much marx.... Probably the most marx ive studied was reading a mises daily and reading the commie mannifesto. Probably will study moar as my books arrive (got one coming all the way from the UK).
If you got the feeling that Marx was a tad on the moronic side when you were reading the Commie Manifesto, then you've really got the gist of what Marxism is, in general.
@Kelvin Silva
Well, minarchist... Its easier to advocate minarchism than it is with anarchy. Tell them you want small government: :"Sure y not? Thats a reasonable cause". Tell them you dont want a government: "HURR DURR WTFROFLMAO CRAZY IDIOT HERE!!!!".
No doubt. If I'm dealing with non-libertarians, I never take the ancap position, it won't get you anywhere. But to be clear, I'm not a minarchist in the usual sense of that term; I'm in favor of a stateless society, but also in favor of a natural (aka non-coercive) monopoly in dispute resolution services. You could say I favor minimal government, as opposed to a minimal State. Anyway, don't need to get into details here, would be OT, just wanted to clarify where I stand.
For good commentary on Marx's philosophical underpinnings and the older tradition of which he was a part see:
Rothbard, Murray. “Austrian Perspective on History of Economic Thought.” Volume I, Chapter 5, Sections 5-7
Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik von. “Leftism: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse”, pp. 50-58
Rothbard, Murray. “Austrian Perspective on History of Economic Thought.” Volume II, Chapters 9-11
Unfortunately, it seems to me the liberty movement has more need for able propagandists than masterful debaters.
The problem is that if you lack the full means of submerging someone's life in propaganda, your own counter-propaganda can be used by the state propagandists (who do have the full means of indoctrination) to further their own cause. Your slogans become means of identifying 'extremists' and enemies of mainstream society, which in turn makes your full, logical arguments even less accessible to most people. That is why libertarianism has only made headway with people who are intellectually capable and honest. The attempts at sloganeering (e.g. the 'Tea Party') have been counter-productive and will remain so as long as the means of propaganda are controlled by propagandists for the state.
@SkepticalMetal
Indeed. The more you read of and about Marx, the more shocking it is that this guy's thought has been so influential in world history. But then again, religion sells, doesn't it?
@Aristippus
In other words, the propagandist with the loudest bull-horn wins. Yea, I'd say that generally holds true. It's an uphill battle, what can I say.... : (
Well in the commie mannifesto itself it says on the first line that it is fake.
A specter of communism?
A specter is fake.
@ kelvin silva
i was a border in the 1990s at the worlds first state secondary school nelson collage new zealand(every student was constantly reminded of the fact) .the boarding houses built in the 1930s ran out of money, so they couldn't afford a roof till the 1950s or windows till the 1960s. i was told by a old boy who was their at the time that every year the parents were told they would have a roof by the end of the year.(economics needs a no window theory).the daily routine read like the worst days of the cultural revolution morning runs from 6 till 7.my economics teacher was a politician mp for new zealand first (our racist political party) .my science teacher didn't believe in evolution.