[Lnc-business] Food for Thought

Sat Sep 3 12:30:28 EDT 2016

Thanks Starchild. But before we tackle the Trump and Clinton voters, we have
to convince (re-radicalize) the Libertarian rank and file.

More later - headed for the Johnson rally in Des Moines.

Thoughts?

Celebrate Life, Set the Bar High and LIVE FREE!

The Invisible Hand of Self-Interest is Mightier Than the Sword of
Government!

~David Pratt Demarest

 <http://www.lpne.org> http://www.lpne.org 

 <mailto:secretary at lpne.org> secretary at lpne.org

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Cell: 402-981-6469

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Office: 402-222-7207

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of
Starchild
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2016 10:13 AM
To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org; Michael Pickens <michaelpickens at lpwa.org>;
Patrick McKnight <patrick.joseph.mcknight at gmail.com>; Leigh LaChine
<Leigh.LaChine at LPAlabama.org>; Kimberly Ruff <kim.ruff2016 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] Food for Thought

            Great stuff David, thanks for sharing! Love the Arundhati Roy
quote - that is going into my quote file. And I'm with you on basically
everything else you say here.

            One piece of additional food for thought, though - and to the
extent it's a criticism, it's of myself as well, because I have often done
the same thing - It's generally to hold up the Ubers, the Airbnbs, and the
Googles of the world as our examples, because they are the big companies
with which we and others are most familiar.

            But we should consider that lots of voters focus on Clinton and
Trump for similar reasons! And the effect of doing so is similar in both
cases: It reinforces the dominance of the big players at the expense of the
little guys who are often more libertarian.

            The larger and more established a company is, the more likely on
average it is to be in collusion with the State and to exhibit other
un-libertarian characteristics. Of course there are exceptions, but as a
rule I think it's safe to say that smaller businesses tend to be more
pro-freedom in their business practices.

            How many small businesses, to use one example that's a pet peeve
of mine, make a practice of automatically recording your phone calls without
your consent when you call them up, and not even giving you direct access to
those recordings should you want to listen to them later? I have yet to
encounter a small, local business that does this. Conversely, it seems rare
these days to find a big corporation that doesn't violate your privacy in
this manner.

            Thus when talking about the sharing economy, I might try to cite
Lyft instead of Uber, Misterbnb instead of Airbnb, etc. There are likely
other even smaller competitors that would be even better to cite, if we take
the time to learn their names.

            Anyway, the idea of undercutting government with bottom-up,
voluntary, and peer-to-peer type solutions is definitely one we should keep
in mind as we develop goals and strategy.

Love & Liberty,

                                 ((( starchild )))

At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee

                              (415) 625-FREE

On Sep 3, 2016, at 6:13 AM, David Demarest wrote:

Food for thought:

"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music,
our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer
relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories." - Arundhati Roy

To paraphrase Arundhati Roy's inspiring quote: "Our strategy should be not
only to confront empire", we need to understand that when we limit ourselves
to a top-down legislative election strategy, the empire has the decided
advantage. A top-down strategy confines us to playing on their turf and the
empire is too good at it. Do we really want to become ruling authorities
too? No, that is what we are fighting against. But you say, how can we
defeat the evil empire if we do not get candidates elected?

Our best strategy to level the playing field and overcome the empire is to
undercut it. To bypass it. To circumvent it. To do an end run around it. To
delegitimize it. To make it irrelevant by taking back our empowering
responsibilities. We need to outperform the empire, not by relying solely on
a top-down election tactic, but by pursuing an even more powerful strategy,
the bottom-up approach. We must throw our moral support behind a voluntary
bottom-up grassroots entrepreneurial peaceful freedom revolution fueled by
peer-to-peer technology and peer-to-peer voluntary-society concepts.

Our bottom-up strategy starts with social media that cuts out the empire
middleman in the communication of ideas. Social media gives all of us the
freedom to digest unfiltered information and especially our young that will
become our future leaders. As we leverage social media, our peaceful
revolution will catch fire with peer-to-peer mobile apps like Uber that
thrive, no surprise, by also cutting out the empire middleman. The
peer-to-peer genie is already out of the bottle and the evil empire cannot
put it back in without the risk of strangling their ill-gotten source of
revenue. The authorities know they are damned if they do and damned if they
don't. The only strategy left to them is to ignore it and hope that it will
go away. We must not and will not let that happen.

We need to celebrate the "Uber-ites" among us, employ their powerful and
empowering keys to freedom and become independent peer-to-peer entrepreneurs
in our own right. Then and only then will we open the top-down door to elect
Libertarians at all levels of government that will quickly put themselves
out of business as they dismantle the empire.

As we hammer the empire with our bottom-up peer-to-peer fist, the specter of
authoritarianism will fade away into history with our shout of freedom
ringing in their ears: "May the peer-to-peer force be with you!" - David
Pratt Demarest, September 3, 2016

The War on Majority Rule Cronyism Begins NOW

~David Pratt Demarest

Secretary, Nebraska Libertarian State Central Committee

Region 6 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (IA, IL, MN, MO, ND,
NE, WI)

Nebraska State Coordinator, LP Radical Caucus

Cell:      402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

Office: 402-222-7207

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