Saturday, August 18, 2018

Advancing Liberty With $100 Million

Alex Zoumaras emails in response to my post, Are Americans Already Socialists?
If you did have the $100 million what do you think would be the best way to get DiLorenzo's and Ostrowski’s books in every nook and cranny of America?

My pea brain tells me that to make an impact these books would have to be in schools. This is a curriculum issue. The $100 million would be useful but would it be enough to grease the many school districts, colleges and university departments?
I am not sure I would take any one specific tact, and I would probably avoid the heavily government-influenced current school systems completely. I wouldn't really want the books associated with the horrific educations students are getting now which are really just part-time prisons.

I would use many marketing techniques to get the word out about the books and especially get students who might become strong second-hand dealers in ideas to become familiar with the books.

I would, for example, maybe launch annual $1 million youtube video challenges.

One million dollar challenge award would be for the student who best describes DiLorenzo's book via YouTube and another million dollar challenge award for the student who best describes Ostrowski's book via YouTube.

I would also perhaps run a weekly television challenge where a student advocate of socialism debates a student advocate of laissez-faire about one of the books. With votes at the end of the debate being cast by viewers. With $100,000 going to the winner of the vote and $5,000 going to the loser.

I would also cut a deal with Amazon to see to it that anyone who wanted the books could order physical paperbacks for free.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

-RW  

     

4 comments:

  1. Government has its present hold because very early on in its progression to the present state it took centralized control over the public schools, the model on which schools are based, and what is taught in them and how.

    So long as government has the schools the vast majority of children attend either directly or indirectly it will be unlikely for liberty to advance beyond the minority it has today.

    I find that ~98% of the difficulty in arguing for liberty is overcoming the conditioning and misteaching from the government schools. People would rather maintain an illusion than accept (to themselves) they were told wrong as children and fell for it.

    For liberty to advance either a way is found to overcome what government school programs into people or the schools are taken from government and returned to control including funding that is extremely local and decentralized if not private.

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  2. I agree that it would require some involvement in schools, but the biggest bang would probably be in children's videos. By children, I me preschool to 2nd or 3rd grade. Look how well the climate change, environmental folks have been with indoctrination of the youth. Would need a similar kind of effort.

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  3. I like the debate for money idea. $100,000 is nothing to sneeze at; you would have a ton of people vying to win it while at the same time getting an education on the evils of progressivism and socialism. You’ll convert some of the hardcore socialists debaters, but a greater effect could be realized through the masses being exposed to how bad socialism and progressivism are.

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  4. These are ideas worth trying to fund. I would say the YouTube challenge does not need to be as much as $1 million. The Amazon deal seems like it would be relatively simple. I have never used GoFundMe and doubt this cause could bring in $100 million but maybe the YouTube challenge and or one of these other ideas can be funded for far less.

    I would like to hear some other ideas. I understand the school systems would be a near impossible nut to crack but my pea brain still tells me that to de-propagandize the masses produced by the government schools is a pretty tough nut also. As far as where the money should be allocated, the schools are going to need too big a chunk of change at this point, unless we are playing a very long game.

    One of the ideas I had was to run ads for the books, but the YouTube challenge and debate ideas will probably bring more publicity to these books than direct ads. Maybe someone that knows more about advertisement in this day and age could chime in.

    Of course not only will this take money and good ideas but also time, energy and expertise from people to make it happen.

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