Meeting up with someone who likes the Zeitgeist soon (yeah lulz), and some tips would help.
What I have noticed when discussing economics and politics with people is that the ethical argument (the NAP), is totally irrelevant to the general population. They don't understand the utilitarian grounds of free market economics. Anyone have of a good set of points to hit when discussing that sort of thing, without having to read Human Action to someone (for example calculation problem, broken window fallacy, etc)? I want to show how intervention hurts people and the free market brings a better result.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Here's what I got out of this: "Hey guys, I'd like some ideas on how to show that intervention hurts people and free market brings a better result. But I don't want any talk of ethics, no untilitarian arguments, no specific theory explanation and no hypothetical examples. And, go."
Short of a "ghost of markets past" to teleport you through time and space and show the direct result of specifc policies, I have no idea how to accomplish this.
I was thinking of just doing a quick skim of concepts which demolish it, for example primers on the:
Calculation problem
Zero sum game fallacy
Broken Window fallacy
Etc
I'm open arms to simple hypotheticals, and brief explanation of theory. Just ignore ethics, and stick to utlity.
If anything, simply point out other small arguments like the above that I can make, and I can just find primers myself and quickly review.
Well, for a zeitgeist person, I'd say the easiest thing is to point out the Nirvana fallacy on which their entire philosophy is based. The root of their whole argument is that scarcity can be eliminated. You might check out:
Venus Needs Some Austrians
HuffPo Abolishes Scarcity
Well thankfully for you Zeitgeist is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of coming out of the internet.
One good set of videos I've seen critiquing Zeitgeist movement/Venus Project are here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c11sREuEc&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLSxITH-1tE&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhNoUW4UTpI&feature=channel_video_title
Now, the Venus Project and Zeitgeist movement in general advocate a system of central planning that socialists around the world gave up long ago based on the critique of Mises himself, except their idea is to do it with supercomputers. Their assumption being that the calculation problem can be solved with a smarter computer. Obviously, this misses the entire point of the calculation problem and it's mentioned in those videos.
The Venus Project isn't just about intervention, it's rejecting the market entirely and advocating a form of central planning which only gives people the bare minimum they need to survive, because commercialism has brainwashed them into being materialist, in their view.
Based on the critique by Mises you can already see the inheirent problems in that form of system, it would be a disaster unequaled by any other government disaster in history, resources would be misallocated to such a degree that I don't see how people would be able to eat, let alone enjoy their lives.
Discard everything and adopt a common sense approach using down to earth examples. That's what I use to explain Austrian Economics: let them know how the present situation hit their wallets.
Example: farming. Biofuel subsidies, the EU Common Agricultural Policy and crippling tariffs on imported agricultural goods are an excellent way to kick this off. If the person listening used to love Coca Cola when they used cane sugar instead of corn syrup or had problems in his/her car due to ethanol fuel do not be afraid to beat the iron while it's hot.
Example #2: Bastiat's axiom "When goods aren't crossing the borders, armies will". The present isolation of Iran by economic means is a perfect example. The fact we aren't at war with China yet could also be a useful argument, but use at your discretion since most people, despite using Chinese goods every day, hate them guts.
A personal advice: be very careful when using the cheap money argument to explain a boom. It's right of course, but most people believe cheap credit is an "unalienable right".