A lot of you talk about how wasteful and inefficient government programs are and the injustice of taxation in general. You also point to the free market as being able to provide many of the same services as the government does, potentially both better and at less cost. So why not put your money where your mouth is?
Something that often comes up in debates between Libertarians and more left-leaning people is the question of how to deal with the poor and disabled; the answer usually given by Libertarians is that these services could be provided by charity. A lot of you are entrepreneurial. So how about finding some like-minded people and setting up a non-profit organization that targets a specific social problem that is currently addressed by government programs?
As an example, you could work to develop a program to help poor or homeless people in a specific city get housing, food, training, education, networking, employment or whatever else they need with the goal of getting them off any government assistance. Be creative.
A lot of the skills used in IM could come into play here: you could do case studies, split test different approaches, use marketing methods to solicit donations, etc. You could set up websites tracking the success of various methods. Make it open source. Spread the idea. Get people setting up non-profits in other cities and trying different things to compare results. Optimize.
You could donate money to such an organization yourself and write it off your taxes. Since it should be far more cost-effective than the government programs, wouldn't this be a much better use of your money? Doesn't this make sense?
You want government to shrink, right? The only way you're going to be able to do that is to get people to be less dependent on it. Starve the beast. Make it obsolete. Sitting around bitching about taxes and all the lazy moochers isn't going to get anything done. Take matters into your own hands. Take action.
Change like this isn't going to happen overnight. But if no one works at changing things, it'll never happen. You can't expect to vote for a guy and magically the problem is going to get solved. This is a lot bigger than a Ron Paul or any one person can change. It's going to take people who are willing to work, to put real effort in, to change things.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
Think about it.
Something that often comes up in debates between Libertarians and more left-leaning people is the question of how to deal with the poor and disabled; the answer usually given by Libertarians is that these services could be provided by charity. A lot of you are entrepreneurial. So how about finding some like-minded people and setting up a non-profit organization that targets a specific social problem that is currently addressed by government programs?
As an example, you could work to develop a program to help poor or homeless people in a specific city get housing, food, training, education, networking, employment or whatever else they need with the goal of getting them off any government assistance. Be creative.
A lot of the skills used in IM could come into play here: you could do case studies, split test different approaches, use marketing methods to solicit donations, etc. You could set up websites tracking the success of various methods. Make it open source. Spread the idea. Get people setting up non-profits in other cities and trying different things to compare results. Optimize.
You could donate money to such an organization yourself and write it off your taxes. Since it should be far more cost-effective than the government programs, wouldn't this be a much better use of your money? Doesn't this make sense?
You want government to shrink, right? The only way you're going to be able to do that is to get people to be less dependent on it. Starve the beast. Make it obsolete. Sitting around bitching about taxes and all the lazy moochers isn't going to get anything done. Take matters into your own hands. Take action.
Change like this isn't going to happen overnight. But if no one works at changing things, it'll never happen. You can't expect to vote for a guy and magically the problem is going to get solved. This is a lot bigger than a Ron Paul or any one person can change. It's going to take people who are willing to work, to put real effort in, to change things.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
Think about it.
