sachin on Nostr: Might be the case that Hoppe, Rothbard et al, as they moved towards political and ...

Might be the case that Hoppe, Rothbard et al, as they moved towards political and ideological strategy, ended up alienating more people than convincing them. This is just a hunch.

I'm just thinking through what their assessment of tradeoffs in various strategies might have been.

I think there are two main types of allies they can onboard:

1. Intellectual allies:

Getting intellectual allies requires upholding value-freedom. This type would likely demand value-freedom in discourse.

If a set of ideas are not value-free, they will not consider it as science.

It would be dismissed as ideology, religion, cult, etc.

Focusing on this would've meant focusing on the 'austro' part of austro-libertarianism.

This includes advancing Praxeology as a science, popularising the rational method in social sciences, critiquing the empirical and historical method, getting more intellectuals doing research on the subject, challenging existing insights, providing structure to the whole body of thought, establishing educational institutions or departments in existing universities.

Problem is, this is a very long term endeavour that would require multiple decades or centuries to bear fruit. Till then, little to no awareness of these ideas or outright dismissal of them my the majority of public will have to be tolerated.

Advantage is that anyone with any set of personal values can hop on without being judged. Schools might consider adding simplified textbooks to their curriculum.

2. Political allies

Getting political allies on the other hand requires intellectual compromise, maneuvering social relationships, saying things you don't necessarily think is true and atleast some abandonment of value-freedom.

This means appealing to peoples emotions than their reasoning faculties, getting them angry, worked up and triggered.

A 'them' group will have to be identified to unite the 'us' group.

This would on-board people with conviction, but it would also mean the 'them' group would have an emotional block in opening their minds.

Many allies can be quickly on-boarded. But they wouldn't have taken the time to read or think through what happens after goals are achieved.

Constant propaganda-type repetition of watered down versions of deep insights will have to be done.

___________


Based on what I've written above, I clearly enjoy and prefer focusing on the former but it's just a preference. Not that it's the only correct way of going about it.

The latter seems exhausting to me. Political types are often prone to changing their minds often. Constant drama and personal conflicts will occur. If they can be convinced one way by emotional appeals, they can certainly be swayed the other way. Doesn't seem worthwhile to focus on them.

Even if the entire world is on-boarded and thinks the same way, circumstances can sway people.

Sticking to being value-free would also actually remove the pressure of having to be 'right' all the time.