Things Like Freedom and Open Source Need Marketing. - Freedom Friday.
There is an intrinsic motivation for a certain type of person to lean towards freedom and things like open source, but if those ideas and concepts were more mainstream, would people actually participate?
Well, I mean, obviously would. I am pretty solidly motivated by trying to help people find ways to become free and independent and let others do the same in the way they wish. My "friends" and I would likely be called radical at best and are generally dismissed by our notions of voluntary Stateless societies where self ownership and private property are valued and the Non Aggression Principle and natural law are the dominant philosophy.
The problem is that there isn't a marketing machine for these things.
Back when I first became all pumped about open source and everything good that I saw in it, I wanted the whole world to adopt it. I pumped it at every chance. I bad mouthed everything proprietary. I was probably fairly obnoxious to those that couldn't care less. Clearly not everyone wants to participate in liberty and the challenge of creating stuff for ourselves.
Open source is actually what led me to liberty and the same thing happened there.
If you are a liberty person, a crypto enthusiast or whatever else, you likely went through this or saw it happen to others as they went through it.
This novice emotional dribble is about all the marketing that liberty and open source and the like ever gets. It is a very interesting phenomenon.
Marketing and promotion have no cohesive message. No consistency has been built into our message. No purpose has been defined.
It is well known that libertarians and project developers are similarly like cats. They cannot be guided to a central point in anything. This certainly has its benefits and is unlikely to change so we need to figure out how to adapt our marketing.
It can be done.
To be honest, I'm getting more and more convinced that we have to start to actually do things FIRST, before trying to convince people. You're more likely to attract interest when you're successful. Maybe you don't have to be super duper successful yourself, but you could relate to other successful projects that are out there, and show people how things can be done differently.
But other than that, I agree that there isn't really a coherent marketing strategy among libertarians, just as libertarians can never agree about anything ;-) Anyway, I think my suggestion should be taken into account if we are to come up with some kind of plan.
I feel like the time of talking is over and we have to start doing stuff. For example, I'm thinking about applications like PalmPay (see @agorise) and Cointext (https://cointext.io/), which can lead to mass-adoption of cryptocurrency. Or take Cody Wilson's 3D printed gun, which has basically made the gun control debate obsolete.
I think you are exactly correct. It is time to work on solutions, to out compete the State. How hard can that even be?
open source has a unique thing if its perfect the word of mouth really helps to become a giant