An educational strategy for achieving anarchy I’ve thought up is community conversions: teaching anarchism to specific intellectual or cultural communities, like atheists, gun nuts, 9/11 Truthers, anti-war groups, personal development gurus, spiritual teachers, cannabis activists, etc. The best communities would be ones with a distinct leader, who could directly influence their followers. Web-savvy communities would be preferred, as virtually all of the anarchist community and literature is online.

Essentially, this strategy is just one result of applying the 80/20 principle to conversions. Who would be the most profitable converts? Who could promote anarchism most efficiently? Who would have the strongest influence on the masses, or on the elites?

In terms of actually converting a community, I would follow a two-step approach. First, make the standard case that government is immoral, unnecessary, and doesn’t work. Second, show how anarchism is congruent with that community. Make specific, practical links between anarchist philosophy and the community, and show why they should support anarchism. For example, anti-war groups should oppose the State because it is the institutionalization of war. Keep reading...

 

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” – Murray Rothbard

There is no question Rothbard was addressing the vast majority of humanity when he wrote the above quotation. After all, it is true: nearly everyone is completely ignorant of economic reasoning, and yet nearly everyone holds very strong opinions on economic subjects. Just think about the many, many basic economic fallacies that are accepted as common knowledge:

  • minimum wage
  • rent control
  • price controls
  • price gouging
  • drug prohibition
  • gun control
  • protectionism
  • bailouts
  • Keynesianism
  • stable price level
  • government can create jobs
  • anti-trust regulations
  • etc. ad nauseum

People just do not understand the basics of supply and demand or the price system, or the incentive structure of a tax-funded monopoly. For example, the average person is ignorant of the fact that a minimum wage will unemploy marginal workers, or that there are systematic reasons why there are long lines at the post office and not at the supermarket.

Clearly, those of us who do understand economic reasoning will have to address this widespread ignorance. But instead of having to use the unwieldy phrase “economic ignorance” over and over, I have coined the term ecognorance (e-COG-nor-ance) to designate the ignorance of economics so prevalent today. Thus, “ecognorance” as a noun means the condition of economic ignorance, while the adjective “ecognorant” designates being unaware of economic knowledge. For example, we would say that statists are ecognorant, or that they live in a state of ecognorance.

I foresee that this new term will save a lot of economists’ time in pointing out how ecognorant people are. (See? Before I would have used the clunky, longer phrase “economically ignorant”. Linguistic efficiency!)