AFF Chicago round table: Marketing the classical liberal alternative

Went to a great panel discussion by AFF Chicago on Wednesday evening, May 20. It was moderated by John Tillman; the panel consisted of four short presentations suggesting different approaches for libertarians to advance their agenda and candidates. The first discussant, Nikki Sullivan, said that since voters vote irrationally anyway, a movement needs a charismatic leader, whether it's Reagan, Obama or a new libertarian spokesman. By contrast, Marisa Maleck presented the argument that since the intellectuals distribute ideas in society, convincing the intellectuals is crucial. In other words, the Right (whichever Right) needs to hone its arguments first, and keep up its bottom-up pressure on the universities. Kent Nielsen, viral marketer, spoke wittily about internet marketing. In conversation later, he related the funny story about a presentation at the University of Chicago a little while back by the head CTO of the Obama campaign (who had skillz, said Kent, but not mad skillz). A woman in the audience on that occasion stood up to say that she had volunteered for the campaign and found that the much-vaunted listening of the campaign (by text message, from local brown-shirted volunteers) was a joke. Finally, Melissa Hayes spoke of her own efforts to use fun and friendly internet marketing (Libertarians make better Lovers is one) to tip the swingable voters in the center, and get them to see libertarianism as not a hoky, blurry idea, but a regular position.

Someone in the audience proposed that AFF or a group like them hold a contest for coming up with a new ad campaign to get a good marketing idea. Perhaps a video contest with a $1000 first prize for shooting a 1-2 minute PSA-type advertisement against the new tax increases in Illinois. Tillman, the moderator, mentioned that something like that was already in the works.

Another person proposed that between Nikki's suggestion of the charismatic leader and Marisa's suggestion that ideas have consequences lies the bridge of the easy formula. Thus, the left wing argument for nationalizing health care goes like this: It's unconscionable that so many people don't have health care in our rich society and ridiculous that it costs so much. We should have national health care because it would be such a good thing and cost each individual on average little.

The right needs to formulate a simple, ready to hand argument against this. I don't have such a simple formula, or else I wouldn't be writing this note. But it would go something like this: If government takes over health care, it will be just like when it runs the post office, GM, the airlines or any other complex service industry--low quality, lack of accountability, lack of innovation, and very hard to fire bad workers, etc. (Note that a good rhetorical form for listing things is to list the least persuasive aspect first, the more persuasive aspect last. So the argument should continue on the more important point, which is that the private market can do it better: We need less government intervention and cartelization, not more. Right now, [something about the insurance system] incentivizes doctors to perform lots of expensive tests, in order to check for every last possible detail, even when they don't think there's a high chance that this will get results. The problem is that neither doctor nor patient has a direct price-motive. If people can just adding extra stuff to their shopping cart, like in one of those old game shows where you run around the supermarket grabbing stuff, then they will just take and take and take. And [that] is why the system costs so much. Also hospitals and the medical profession itself are heavily cartelized -- they have the quasi-legal means to decide who gets to join their club. Well, if college professors could basically get together as a professional association and vote to limit the number of new hires in the field absolutely, and strictly control who could even get to be a professor, the supply would bec choked and the their pay would be ratcheted up. Doctors aren't any different.

Anyway, you probably get the idea. This is not a short argument, nor a simple one, nor does it get at all the major points. But we need to formulate a basic, simple counter-argument to the foolish and misguided claim that We The People should just step up and essentially nationalize any "problem" that comes along. Anyone have any suggestions? How about we hold a contest?