I peruse many a liberty themed site, and I found a piece another blogger wrote. I don’t think I know a lot of liberty-minded individuals who come off as cultists, but I’m sure we’ve all run into the “well you’re wrong because you sound like a cultist” bit when explaining our views. That’s why I got banned from one subreddit.

Sure I can say “I love freedom,” but the response you’ll get no matter where you go is “Yeah! Me too!” even if they really would disagree with you. We all seem to have different views on freedom. A lot of people think freedom means democracy / republicanism, or a freedom from society in general. I witnessed one anarcho-capitalist forum splinter off and start another over one application of the non-aggression principle, and both sides still hold themselves as freedom loving people.

But in daily discourse, if you follow your “I love freedom” with “and therefore we shouldn’t have government,” you’ll get shouted down as crazy. And there’s a reason for that. This is the mathematical equivalent of showing a kindergartener how to add and then immediately following it with showing them the fundamental theorem of calculus (either half). There’s a long list of steps in between you just have to understand in order to follow the fundamental theorem of calculus, and so too is it with government and anarchism.

I won’t sit here and make a list of things to say to convert someone because everyone is different. There’s no one way to introduce anarchism to unwilling listeners. You have to keep in mind that people shut out alternative views because they believe inherently their view is correct. The right way to go about introducing anarchism is not “taxation is theft,” “governments start wars without regard to cost,” or any other moral argument. For god’s sake we have people who take ethics courses in college and study it as Ph.D.’s and still don’t know what morality is definitively.

I’ll throw out me as an example. I was a hardcore socialist for a long time up until a magical series of concurrent events happened. I got done with a political philosophy course in college, started playing on the predecessor of CivCraft (which was anarcho-capitalist only at the time), started looking into candidates for the 2012 election and found Ron Paul, and the last bit was me playing Victoria. That last part was most important because all of Paradox’s empire games are obscenely complicated. Not only can you build a nation and wonder about what buildings to build where, you could also wonder about how you wanted your government structured. I was terrible at the game, and I still am terrible at any Paradox game.

And that was important because I was reading walkthroughs simultaneously as I was playing the game. With detailed instructions, I, a person who was acing some very difficult classes and doing very well for myself in some less complicated but equally difficult games, could not create an efficient state. Every empire I built was bloated, abysmal, and usually found itself as the laughing stock of the region / world. Some very good let’s plays of Victoria and other Paradox games would encounter similar results with no real good way to be efficient. It’s like everyone just assumed a bloated state was normal and it was just management of bloat.

I quickly changed over to libertarianism because I realized centralization was impractical. A government had to be small if it were to exist and be of use.

My descent into anarcho-capitalism was a bit muddled because it was more me reading stuff by Murray Rothbard, Jeffery Tucker, Tom Woods and Bob Murphy, etc. It was me finding practical ways to replace government services until there was no place left for government. Sure, all these people talk about the evils of the state, but I don’t hold that government is out to be evil. The matter is that government must destroy something to create something else, whether that be the economy by taxes, demand / supply by law, or defense by fear. Hell, there’s an argument for anarcho-monarchism: You know who to go to if things go wrong.

And so it was practicality that made me look into anarchism. And so it happens to be that the people around me tend to listen to that type of argument. When someone complains about “if only we had the right government we wouldn’t have X” I explain how the government goes about making those decisions. When someone asks “who will do the X in anarchy” I usually say “I will and here’s why: Profit,” and then explain how various services would be provided in a non-aggressive manner.

So the goal is to address any underlying concerns your audience has. Build on what they know and work towards the goal. Make your audience comfortable with your ideas. Tell them your ideas are safe and explain why when they express their concerns.

Normally I hang around people who have money on their minds. I’ve encountered people who argue that anarchy wouldn’t work because of money. These people I usually try to explain that money is natural by beginning with the definition of capital as delayed consumption. A commune would have people who get very good at specific things and do things in expectation that the other stuff will be done, which is trading, and thus capitalism. Money would take form as the most commonly traded item with immediate use, and then there would be a bank that forms in order to let people take the load of investment responsibility off so the bank can do it. Then people with big ideas can take out big loans to do big things. As long as the bank doesn’t have infinite backing like central banks do, the bank has an incentive to only loan out to people who would do things with good returns. I’ve found that the less you say capital or capitalism or banks the more willing people are to listen to you. It’s almost like they’re curse words.

And of course there will be the obstinate: The people who seem really scary and you might not want to be around. We can’t convert everybody as a movement. Liberty means responsibility too, and not everyone wants that. I guess some people prefer to live in stasis in order to be safe. Without responsibility you can’t progress very far on your own means. Imagine if there were 100% income tax. Employers would be feudal lords and be maniacs because they don’t reap any benefits or losses from their decisions. But what of those who can’t do for themselves? Well, we have charities already. That and insurance companies.

And the list goes on. If a person asks me a question I usually either have an answer, can find an answer, or begin to brainstorm with mental ping pong with my audience.

So if you want to go around preaching about what you believe, be ready to hold the hand of your audience and take them through the journeys you have been on. You’ll have to address some complaints, and you can’t just sit back and / or give up when people try to get you off track or refuse to answer you. As long as you’re rational, you’ll only be called crazy because of what you say and not because you are.