Many times, when I start to explain an idea that is new to someone, for example, the idea of unschooling, or of cryptocurrency, they will say something like "that will never work", or they misunderstand the idea to an extent to which it almost seems that they putting in effort to misunderstand, rather than welcoming the new information. This is especially common in developed countries.

A Monopoly on Ideas

My hypothesis is that this is caused by governments having a monopoly or near-monopoly on education. Many governments provide schooling that is funded by tax money or national debt, rather than directly by the students or their parents. Of course, there are private schools too, but these are also regulated by governments, and so they rarely stray too far from the curricula and methods which are used by the state, methods which are ultimately based on military means, and (at least originally) to military ends.

A Distorted Market

The government has caused this severe distortion in the marketplace of ideas, where people have a certain way of thinking beaten or repeated into them, where they even get angry when someone suggests another idea, such as homeopathy, or how a society might function without government, or the idea that the earth is flat, or the rope hypothesis.

When I first saw this short documentary by Patrick Moore, where he visits a few rugged individualists, free thinkers with unique or even bizarre ideas, I started to realise just how unusual society has become, because of this mass centralisation of ideas - this distortion of the free market.

A Free Marketplace of Ideas

In a world where people are free, where there is no "standard" method of education, but parents decide whatever method of education they believe will be most beneficial, or their children decide... much fewer people will get angry upon encountering new ideas, because new ideas will be the norm. There will be such a diversity of theories about how the world works that people will anticipate frequently meeting people who have different ideas, perhaps ideas so vastly different that they have completely opposite principles or assumptions, or assumptions so radically different that they eclipse one's views.

In a free market of ideas, the question "How do you think the world works?" or "What do you think makes up the universe?" should have an array of responses as diverse as , or more diverse than, the question "What would you like for dinner tonight?"