By Mark Hilgenberg
The most Libertarian Generation is right under your nose but they don’t know it yet.
I have spent many years promoting libertarianism and I have found that many libertarian promoters and activists are missing the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, all because we keep looking for people who sound like we do and want our vision of liberty.
There is an old saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well it seems like Libertarians spend a lot of time trying to convert old dogs, being an old dog myself I appreciate the effort but we tend to be set in our ways. While we often seek out the youth, we do so by looking for so called “natural Libertarians”, those who tend to sound as we do and are receptive to our message of limited government and rugged individualism. The most overlooked and most fertile group of people we can reach out to are the independent left leaning Millennial Generation (those under 32).
Independent left youth are socially liberal and economically skeptical of institutions both government and corporate. They see the problems, just don’t have the solutions figured out yet.
Why I call them left is because they don’t use our limited government words and phrases but they are very socially liberal and they don’t automatically seek big government or corporate solutions to the problems they see. In conversation the average libertarian would “hear” them and call them liberals, socialists or statists, just because of the phrasing they use.
This is unfortunate because while they don’t sound libertarian, they are creating libertarian alternatives all around us. A lot of how they live their everyday lives is about practicing what they preach.
They aren’t out there trying to stop urban sprawl, they are just moving from the suburbs back to the cities. For the first time in over 100 years we have seen a reversal of 20 and 30 something’s moving from the city to the suburbs. They are now in massive numbers moving to the cities.
They aren’t pushing for laws on car emissions, they are just not buying cars or if they do, participating in Car share programs.
The cities are becoming hubs for voluntary communal and collective action, just a handful of examples include companies and services such as Airbnb and Tripping (rooms and apartments); Loosecubes and LiquidSpace (office space); RelayRides, Getaround, and Wheelz, Ushare and Enterprise (peer car sharing); Techshop and hackerspaces (industrial workspace); La Cocina(commercial kitchen space); ParkatmyHouse and Park Circa (parking space); Zimride,Sidecar, and Ridejoy (ride sharing); SharedEarth and Hyperlocavore (garden sharing);Grubwithus (restaurant dinners); Vayable (experiences); Skillshare and TaskRabbit (skill sharing); Thredup (childrens clothes); and Yerdle (general).
In just one year, New York’s Citi Bike sharing program has over 100,000 annual members.
Sharing is becoming much easier with Smartphones and the internet, people, especially the Millennials are interconnected like no other generation. Information and ideas travel instantly within local communities and beyond.
Another promising trend is the idea of Mutual Aid and mutual benefit associations. We have seen these spring to action almost instantly to provide real time local aid during disasters such as Hurricane Sandy. Mutually owned companies such as Winco are popular choices vs. government protected corporations like Walmart and more are popping up all the time.
Bitcoin Crypto Currency (the code and system, not necessarily the currency aspect) will have massive changes and it is free of concentrated power, has no trusted elite, is fully transparent and instant. The dominant generation in the use, creation and promotion of cryptos are Millennials. They are a natural fit for decentralized currencies and contracts, since they were kids they have been using borderless systems such as the internet, email, file sharing, social media and peer to peer networks. They understand and embrace decentralization.
There are a lot of us ignoring the con game we are forced to play and planting seeds all over.
How do we as Libertarian activists promote our ideas to this generation? The number one thing I tell them is I care about others and not just myself or my own issues of interest. This doesn’t mean I just tell them, I show them with my actions and words. Once they at least see we are looking in the same direction, they listen to solutions and don’t dismiss me as, “just another conservative”, a dialogue of understanding can begin. If we don’t, it will be back and forth left/right rhetoric driving wedges deeper.
People don’t care how much you know (Anyone can quote books) until they know how much you care.
We don’t need to convince them to support individualism, we should be encouraging them to keep working together to create alternatives, not berate them because their version of liberty does not conform to how we want to live. The idea of liberty is to live and let live.
Eventually things will sync and it will be liberty vs. authority and authority will be the left and right vs the rest of us. We should be on the cutting edge of this change, not promoting the same old scripted debate.
A libertarian society may look very different than we envision, this should be something we promote, not demonize.
Mark Hilgenberg, Vice Chair Libertarian Party of Utah
OP–Thanks, Mark.
FYI http://www.libertarianinternational.org/apps/blog/show/17401051-high-schoolers-libertarian-president-inevitable-desirable …it’s not just US.
LIO cautions these people are informal libertarian-interested, a distance from formal LIO pledged Libertarians etc. but that’s where it starts.
For an old fart like me around the Libertarian project since the 40’s, this warms my heart.
Andy,
Exactly. Plus many of the things I am suggesting goes back to just focusing on the positives as opposed to the negatives (as far as our language). If we had candidates and the party promoting things we can do, not just what we want to abolish, we would see a very different party. (In a good way).
There are voluntary actions going on all around us, we need to be a part of them and letting them know that what they are doing is what we want to promote.
This site is filled with examples. http://www.shareable.net/
Brian fell for the Bush propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Nope. Of Bush’s 5 biggest mistakes about Iraq, I shared only one. But it was the crucial one.
“Nathan Norman May 21, 2014 at 3:04 am
Good for you. My opinion on your “outreach” efforts is that you are doomed to fail. According to the posters here you are proposing the same stuff as in the past. Where has that gotten you? Can you recall the definition of insanity?”
“Jill Pyeatt Post authorMay 21, 2014 at 3:15 am
How’s your new job coming, NN?”
I would not be a bit surprised if “Nathan Norman” is Michael Seebeck, who also trolls here as “Vernon” as well as some other personas. I also would not be surprised if he gets paid to do it.
“Nathan Norman May 21, 2014 at 3:04 am
Good for you. My opinion on your “outreach” efforts is that you are doomed to fail. According to the posters here you are proposing the same stuff as in the past. Where has that gotten you? Can you recall the definition of insanity?”
You mean things that were proposed in the past that worked, but were never fully realized due to a lack of money and lack of people volunteering to take part in said outreach activities.
There are lots of things that could be done right now to grow the Libertarian Party and movement, but they are not happening due to a lack of funding, and/or a lack of volunteers willing to do these things, and/or the party being too disorganized to do any of these things. This does not mean that none of these things are good ideas, it just means that the party does not have its act together enough to actually do them.
How’s your new job coming, NN?
Good for you. My opinion on your “outreach” efforts is that you are doomed to fail. According to the posters here you are proposing the same stuff as in the past. Where has that gotten you? Can you recall the definition of insanity?
I wrote the OP to talk about outreach, there are plenty of issues posts and the open thread is a great place for that. Thanks.
Discuss what you want. I’m discussing issues.
Issues are great but let’s try and focus on outreach.
Brian fell for the Bush propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Please. Saddam Hussein was no worse than any other third world leader. He just happened to upset the wrong people.
“Brian Holtz May 20, 2014 at 1:57 pm
You disdain libertarian purism to support socializing a particular industry. I once disdained libertarian purism to support deposing a genocidal totalitarian war criminal.”
Who was installed and supported for years by the US government.
Andy,
Thanks, yes there were a few of us back then, Doug Scribner, Brian Cross and many of the OC LP. The problem then as it is not is the zeal to keep the wording and outreach only to people who use the same wording and language.
As I try and show, some people can be doing and promoting liberty in a very different and community based way. We don’t need to demand conformity of voluntary actions and language.
You disdain libertarian purism to support socializing a particular industry. I once disdained libertarian purism to support deposing a genocidal totalitarian war criminal.
I own and defend my positions, and admit when history proves me wrong. You throw the f-bomb (“fascist”) while claiming to desire a “normal exchange of ideas”.
Since you admit that “net neutrality” represents state intervention rather than libertarianism, I guess we’re done here. The next time you talk about a “free internet”, you should tell readers you mean “free” as in “free beer”.
Holtz: “When I made a claim about the majority of libertarian intellectuals, you responded with an unspecified “I’ve met…” allegation. I stand by my claim — which you’ve yet to directly dispute.”
A common Holtz tactic. Rather than have a normal exchange of ideas, you tease and torture and parse every word and phrase, trying to win debating points on technicalities and turns of phrase.
For the record, apart from your support for the Iraq War, I directly dispute the truth of everything you ever said, everything you ever wrote, everything you ever allegedly said, or allegedly wrote, and every and anything you every will say or write, allegedly or otherwise, in this life, or in any past or future lives, in this or any other universes, dimensions, realities, or space-time continuums.
Holtz: “If any reader states publicly here that Iraq is relevant to my statements on copyright, <<
Your position on Iraq is relevant to your statement on socialism. To wit, if my position on net neutrality is socialist, your position on the Iraq War is positively fascist.
You're throwing stones in a glass house. A burnt pot calling a smudged tea kettle black.
Holtz: "readers can decide for themselves whether you’re just squirming because you support socializing access to a particular communications medium, but don’t want to talk about it."
Another example of your poor reading comprehension.
I'm squirming? I don't want to talk about it? I wrote: "I think it’s very dangerous that the channels of communication are increasingly concentrated in a few powerful hands. I don’t care whether those hands are the “state” or “John Galt.” Rand be damned."
Did you read what I wrote? "Rand be damned." I'm not exactly hiding my disdain for libertarian purism.
I'm a minarchist. I support some statist regulation.
I support net neutrality.
You support genocidal war.
I own up to my positions. You shouldn't squirm to have readers reminded of yours.
Neither you or I are purist libertarians. Readers are free to decide which of us, on the whole, are the more libertarian.
When I made a claim about the majority of libertarian intellectuals, you responded with an unspecified “I’ve met…” allegation. I stand by my claim — which you’ve yet to directly dispute. Against your self-interested Schulman and ideosyncratic (and dead) Galambos, you can add not only Konkin but Long, Block, Kinsella, McElroy, Palmer, and Tucker. (Kinsella was the turning point here; it’s now just a question of waiting for the holdouts to die off.)
If any reader states publicly here that Iraq is relevant to my statements on copyright, then I’ll happily correct your red herring attempt at diversion there. Otherwise, readers can decide for themselves whether you’re just squirming because you support socializing access to a particular communications medium, but don’t want to talk about it.
The State doesn’t get to tell libertarians what they mean by their words. My position just says that you can copy what you want, but you can’t sell the expressions of others. If you’re confused by how that applies to particular cases you’re worried about, I’ll be happy to clarify.
Brian Holtz, what do you mean, “The (alleged) existence of libertarians who are confused or outliers on IP…”
What’s with the “alleged”? Are you suggesting that I am lying about the existence of libertarians who take extreme positions on IP? Is the honesty of anyone who challenges you suspect?
Or do you speak from personal experience? Do you often lie, and therefore suspect others of doing the same?
Samuel E. Konkin III opposed all IP protection. He felt that IP protection was inherently statist.
J. Neil Schulman believes that copyright should never expire.
Andrew Joseph Galambos believed that even ideas should be afforded IP protection.
As for your position: “We defend the right to freely reproduce original expression when doing so does not divert commercial benefit from the author to the reproducer.”
Your position means absolutely nothing. It is no guide. This is because the State’s very definition of copyright — a page, a paragraph, a single sentence — defines its “commercial benefit.”
If the State says that even a single sentence is protected by copyright, then the author can sell the right to quote that one sentence, and thus derive commercial benefit from it. Whereas if the State says quoting a single sentence is Fair Use, then there is no commercial benefit in that sentence to begin with. The definition itself creates the commercial benefit.
A copyright law professor once explained to me that this is why the “commercial benefits test” that some courts use is flawed. An example of circular reasoning.
No, not an “alleged” copyright law professor. I spoke to him in the flesh and blood. I’d even give you his name, if I had any respect for you.
Finally, Brian, you defended the Iraq War on presumably libertarian grounds. So you’re in no position to complain about the allegedly less libertarian position of others, on any issue, no matter how many links you provide.
Ralph Nader is more libertarian than you. So is the entire government of Sweden.
Oh, and as for “Root’s Teeth Are Awesome’s” comment about Selzer and Hilgenberg failing to bring in lots of young people, keep in mind that they are only two guys, and that neither of them are millionaires or billionaires. Doing anything that will bring in lots of new people to the party is going to take a lot of work and money. Instead of sitting back and criticizing a couple of guys who were actually working hard as part time volunteers to grow the party, why not pitch and help them, or launch your own effort to grow the party if you think that you’ve got better ideas on how to do it than they do?
“Root’s Teeth Are Awesome May 19, 2014 at 9:45 am
I remember Mark Hilgenberg saying the SAME THING — 20 YEARS AGO, when he lived in Los Angeles. He and Mark Selzer were touring the local libertarian supper clubs, lecturing us on the new libertarian generation and how to reach them.”
It sounds like whoever “Root’s Teeth Are Awesome” is, they were probably in the Los Angeles, CA area in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s. I was there as well during that time, and I remember when Mark Selzer and Mark Hilgenberg were going around saying that stuff, and I’ll say this, they were right then and they are still right about this today.
“But I’ve been hearing libertarians say the same thing — the need to appeal to youth, women, and minorities — for over 30 years.”
Yes, and it is still something that the party and movement needs to do if we are ever going to make it to a higher level of success.
“All libertarians agree on the need to expand beyond older white men. Many libertarians claim to have plans for doing so. And yet after decades of talk and attempts, the problem persists — we remain a small group of mostly older white men.”
Most of the older white males in the party did not start out that way. Many of them started out as younger white men in the LP, as in a lot of the people who are in the LP today who are in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, plus, first got involved in the party or movement when they were in their 20’s, and a few even got involved when they were in their teens.
So the Libertarian Party has always been able to attract young people. The problem is that the LP does not attract enough people in general, so what ends up happening is that a lot of people become frustrated by the lack of progress from the party, so they stop being active, and many of these people stop donating to the party. Lack of progress means a lack of new people coming in to the party. The people who are still involved in the party get older and older and eventually are no longer young. Few new people joining means less young people (not that older people do not become new Libertarians, because sometimes they do, but the point of this discussion is the number of young people in the party), so you end up with the people who’ve been in the party for a long time making up most of the people who show up at meetings.
The problem is not so much an inability for the Libertarian Party to attract young people, the problem is for the Libertarian Party to bring in new members in general, and to keep people as members after they join.
I think that one of the main reasons that most Libertarian meetings consist of predominantly middle aged and older white guys is due to a lack of outreach, and due to what little outreach does take place, it is primarily done to conservative leaning groups and to people who’d be described as computer geeks.
The only way to break this cycle is for the LP to do a lot more outreach than it has ever done, and to do a lot more outreach to diverse groups of people, not just to conservatives and computer geeks.
Libertarians oppose initiation of force/power, not “concentration” of it. (Teeth seems unaware that the Cato article I linked above explained how the government interventions that Teeth here defends have historically tended to increase concentration of market power.)
The (alleged) existence of libertarians who are confused or outliers on IP does not negate my assertion that most libertarian intellectuals generally oppose the current IP regime.
That many libertarians are not anarchists does not mean that no minarcholibertarian can describe another’s position as socialist. If one advocates government-enforced equality of access to a communications medium, then one advocates socializing it.
Equating socialist “net neutrality” rules with “free speech” makes the basic mistake of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre.
Libertarians are all over the map on IP.
I’ve met libertarians who believe there should be no copyright or patent protection. None whatsoever. I’ve met other libertarians who believe that copyrights and patents should never expire, that even ideas should be protected by copyright.
As for net neutrality being “socialist,” I think it’s very dangerous that the channels of communication are increasingly concentrated in a few powerful hands. I don’t care whether those hands are the “state” or “John Galt.” Rand be damned.
Oh sure, I can defend net neutrality on “libertarian” grounds. I’ve read libertarians defend most any position on libertarian grounds. For instance, I’ve read libertarians claim that the current concentration of media ownership represents “market failure” and is not the result of a “true free market.”
But like Brian, I’m not an anarchist. I’m a minarchist. I support some statist intervention. We may differ on where and when the state should intervene, but once you reject anarchy, you’re agreed in principle on the need for a state. So no minarchist is in any moral position to accuse another minarchist of statism or socialism.
Net neutrality promotes free speech. If that puts the burden on the media conglomerates, so be it. That should be the cost of their enormous concentration of power.
Root’s Teeth doesn’t realize that “net neutrality” is a form of socialism. cf. http://www.cato.org/blog/fccs-net-neutrality-rules
Young people are sweeping some traditional libertarian positions to victory, like on marijuana and marriage. Another traditional libertarian position has perhaps even wider acceptance among the youth: the rejection of the government-created privileges called “intellectual property”.
Even though most libertarian intellectuals generally oppose the current IP regime, the LP has always been AWOL on this issue. I’m not really sure why. It might be lingering Randian influence. It might be that the opposite zero-IP position is intuitively unappealing, and the LP’s anarchist immune-system prevents it from taking nuanced positions on such questions.
So we Libertarians have to watch the “Pirate Party” spring up in various countries, while the LP can’t muster a position on this topic.
What we should say is something like: “We defend the right to freely reproduce original expression when doing so does not divert commercial benefit from the author to the reproducer.”
Root, they key you are missing is back to the message. Our message is for “Natural Libertarians”, in order to get youth in large numbers we need to learn to rephrase things.
Yes, we started in 98 with Kubby but 2000 was our big push with the youth concert at the 2000 convention. We made our video in 00 or 01.
Root’s Teeth Are Awesome May 19, 2014 at 11:06 am: “All libertarians agree on the need to expand beyond older white men. Many libertarians claim to have plans for doing so. And yet after decades of talk and attempts, the problem persists — we remain a small group of mostly older white men.”
Some of the ideas involved with recruiting more young people into libertarianism have been tried, and have worked, and are in fact working right now. It is just that more of it needs to be done, and more of it needs to be focusing on not only getting younger people to accept the libertarian philosophy, but to actually join the Libertarian Party.
I recently read that Young Americans for Liberty (a campus libertarian club founded by Ron Paul) has 162,000 members. Students for Liberty, another campus libertarian club, has lots of members as well. How many of the young people who are a part of these campus clubs, and who are ALREADY libertarians, have actually joined the Libertarian Party? Unfortunately, not too many.
There needs to be a major effort put into getting these young people who are a part of college campus libertarian clubs, to actually join the Libertarian Party. I’ve been to quite a few college campus libertarian club meetings around the country, and I can tell you that the people in these clubs are most definitely open to the Libertarian Party. I’ve been on many college campuses and done lots of outreach at them for the Libertarian Party, but I can’t do it all alone, and 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 people doing this is not enough. There needs to be a major effort put into this. I’ve been saying it for years and I’ve even talked to people who’ve been elected to leadership positions within the party about this, and even though some of these people acted like they agreed with me, NOBODY in elected to a leadership position in the LP has actually done anything to make it happen.
Mark, it was over 16 years ago. I don’t know how much over, but definitely over 16 years.
I know this, because I remember that you and Mark Selzer were involved in a Steve Kubby for Governor, Halloween fundraiser party, in Hollywood. It was to be youth-oriented, with rock music, and an example of your planned methods for appealing to young people.
Kubby ran for governor in 1998, the year of the party. But you and Mark S. had already been promoting your ideas before then.
Yes, you were talking about trying “something different” even back then. You put together a South Park parody, Kubby commercial as an example.
But I’ve been hearing libertarians say the same thing — the need to appeal to youth, women, and minorities — for over 30 years.
All libertarians agree on the need to expand beyond older white men. Many libertarians claim to have plans for doing so. And yet after decades of talk and attempts, the problem persists — we remain a small group of mostly older white men.
So despite all the talk, I’ve become cynical and pessimistic that anything will change.
Roots. Yes, more like 13-14 years ago but Selzer, Scribner and I were big on youth outreach (early wave M’s and late wave Xers). Our focus was more on presentation of the message for broader appeal, going after concrete communicators as opposed to abstract. As for youth we targeted the more non-conformist Xers.
As you see with the M’s, they are much more “conformist” but in many cases for the better.
It is interesting that you talk about the past, yet we keep using the same words, phrases and appeal to “natural libertarians”. Maybe it is time to try something different.
Starchild, exactly!
Starchild: “I am optimistic about technology’s ability to erode the State by enabling people to get things done outside of its grasp.”
Sorry, Starchild, but there is reason for doom and gloom. I’ve been hearing optimistic libertarian cheerleading on the “new, libertarian generation” since the 1980s, with scant results to show for it.
And there is reason for doom and gloom about technology. WIRED magazine ran a highly informed article a few years ago, arguing that the internet is a lot less free and open than it was in its infancy. It’s gone proprietary. Its “cowboy days” are over: http://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1
And the FCC’s recent ending of “net neutrality” is yet another blow to a free internet: http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/fcc-proposal-net-neutrality/
The above two are victories for plutocratic corporatism.
Then there’s the recent European ruling that compels search engines to delete articles that people don’t like about themselves, even if the article is accurate (score one for Orwell’s Memory Hole): http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/eu-google-dataprotection-idUSL6N0NZ23Q20140513
I remember Mark Hilgenberg saying the SAME THING — 20 YEARS AGO, when he lived in Los Angeles. He and Mark Selzer were touring the local libertarian supper clubs, lecturing us on the new libertarian generation and how to reach them.
And even before that, some 25 years ago, I heard the 19-year-old daughter of a prominent local libertarian as the guest speaker at one supper club. She told us that hers was a libertarian majority generation, and she predicted great gains for the LP by the end of the 1990s.
It seems that EVERY generation is the most libertarian generation ever. So why no LP votes?
Partially because they’re not that libertarian. Sure, young people want to be free. But they also want freebies — free higher education, free health care, and free whatever else.
A few years back, Obama was speaking to a crowd of college kids about Obamacare, He announced that his ACA would mean that insurance companies would be required by law to keep “kids” on their parents’ health insurance plans till they turned 27. All those young folk cheered upon hearing the news.
Are those young folks now disillusioned? If so — so what? All those no-longer-young libertarians of 20-25 years ago should be even more disillusioned with the state, yet most of them are not voting LP.
Hearing Hilgenberg speak about the new libertarian generation, and how to reach them, is deja vu all over again.
Starchild – Exactly! Well said.
I’ll add my kudos on Mark Hilgenberg’s piece. It is vital for our movement to have a positive, forward-looking vision. I think we do have that, but it easily gets lost sometimes in all the doom and gloom about the economy, the police state, the wars, etc.
I am optimistic about technology’s ability to erode the State by enabling people to get things done outside of its grasp. The key question indeed is not “Is this individualistic?” but rather “Is this voluntary?” Mark is right that libertarian solutions are being created all around us via things like the sharing economy, Bitcoins, mutual aid, and so on.
Lots of these things rely on “the wisdom of crowds” in one way or another. If you get the structures and incentives right, and don’t initiate force, it’s amazing what people can and will do cooperatively. Look at Wikipedia, for instance — the #5 most popular website in the world, run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers, people who work on it because they want to. Non-profit, collaborative, and with a very bottom-up model of governance.
We as freedom activists play an essential role in creating the space for this kind of stuff to happen, by helping keep the State off people’s backs enough for innovation to flourish.
Well then. Virtual drinks for both of us, my probably-not-biological son 🙂
I’m the only one of us who has a birthday that is completely coincidentally exactly the same as IPR’s though. But it’s pretty cool that yours is the same week.
“I myself will be 42 this Tuesday (assuming I don’t die in the meantime)”
I’ll be 27 on Friday. 🙂
Metaphorically true. More literally, I’m a prime candidate for a heart attack.
Paulie,
You are young at heart. 🙂
I’m with Mark and Jed on this, although I myself will be 42 this Tuesday (assuming I don’t die in the meantime).
Ever seen Idiocracy? The society depicted in that film provides a better example of this new generation.
Brilliant, and I agree completely. Very proud of my generation and all they’ve accomplished so far. We are the generation of liberty.
My apologies to Mark Hilgenberg: I can’t get my computer to post your photo. If one of the other writers can do it for me, that would be great. My computer sometimes crashes every time I post a photo, and I don’t have access to my extra computer right now.