Libertarian Marketing

Concept

I was sitting down with my friend James the other say, and we were talking about how libertarian ideas could be brought back into vogue. Small government isn't sexy anymore, handouts are the order of the day. Even the Republicans aren't for it in actions – only words. Are our ideas dead? No, what we need is a better way to sell small government. Freedom and saving people money isn't going to do it anymore. James suggested that we sell the movement by appealing to people's desire for strong communities.

If Obama doesn't turn out be the kind of “change” people were looking for, it would leave the libertarian & paleoconservative part of the Republican party with a good opening. The tag line would go something like this: The federal government moves too slowly, and with too general of intentions to really address peoples' problems at home. Instead, why not give the power, and the purse, to the states themselves? In the states, why not give the power to the counties? ...and so on. The whole marketing point would be strong communities with a government that you could bring change quickly and with maximum relevance to you at home.

Possible Problems

There are some definite adoption issues with this movement. Firstly, getting “regular” people to move on something, and change behavior, is quite difficult. The media is currently setup to bias toward the country as a whole - not the locality. Many people, including myself, usually watch national news as opposed to the local KDKA. However, there's still a large (though shrinking) segment that reads local newspapers, and there is also the emerging (and expanding) group of readers of online news and blogs. Local TV broadcasts through IPTV might also become relevant in a few years.

I would think by definition that local media would be supportive of local movements – after all, it's their local market that gives them any advantage to the national media. Perhaps this would go along with covering the activities of this local movement in a favorable light. Who doesn't like to see cool things happening in their neighborhood?

Another issue would be arguments of “fairness”. Many counties, and boroughs, are a far poorer the surrounding areas. Pittsburgh proper is far poorer compared to Upper St. Clair and Fox Chapel. Unfortunately, people usually are agreeable to this Robin Hood mentality. Check out the Obama voting by district in our own Allegheny County: here. I'm not sure there is positive upside to this though - like with the media. Perhaps the state would step in – which would still be better than the Feds.

I saw this article about how the states have in total $48 billion in budget deficits, and they were acting like that was a bad thing. We can see here that the total federal deficit is $455 billion – nearly ten times the total of all the states combined! Further, they said the states had to made budget cuts and use their currency reserves in order to make up the difference. What an amazing concept, cutting sending and pulling money out of savings – so pedestrian! I wish the Feds acted like the states, but they don't have the clout. Accountability at the state level is much higher as well. In PA, “remember the pay raise” was a rallying cry that ousted many big time incumbents.

Another issue relates to arguments that are based on economies of scale - healthcare, education, etc. I know that the Obama plan for healthcare assumes that having the US as the buyer will decrease costs because of this effect. However, the obvious problems that arise are: agency costs of government that actually counteract the benefits, old fashion corruption / favoritism to those with power, in ability to address local issues – among others.

A problem that comes up with issues like abortion is that, if Pennsylvania makes it legal and West Virginia doesn't, everyone will just drive to PA to receive service – outsourcing the “problem”. It is also relevant to immigration, outsourcing, etc. I think this goes to the core of why people like these types of laws, and that's that people want others to conform to themselves for personal validation. A possible marketing reframing of this issue would be that people could actually feel like their voice matters on a host of other local issues. Maybe this empowerment would overcome the validation sensation.

These are just three types of issues that need to be accounted for in a properly marketed libertarian / federalist movement. I'd like to know what you guys think are some more types. Also, it would be good to see a summary of position points & defenses that appeal to the community marketing technique. Then we could get another post going – maybe even some guest posts. I'm anxious to get some feedback.

Comments

[Anthony Russo]

Very interesting idea -- I just have one initial concern. Keep in mind, this isn't with much thought, but just something that popped into my head right away. I still think it's worth bringing up. My concern has to do with rational v. responsible politics. As you probably know, responsible politics is when elected officals genuinely have the public good as a concern. As a result, they tend to enact policy (popular or unpopular) that is carefully thought out, deliberated, etc. In contrast, rational politics is the idea that politicans will only enact popular policy -- basically to get re-elected. This comes at whatever expense.

With that being said, we had two periods of history where local-level politics was the major functioning force in America: Jacksonian demoncracy and the machine era (look them up if unfamiliar). In both of these eras, voter turn-out was extremely high, as the electorate was motivated with a local level -- door-to-door-- campaign strategy. The problem was, however, especially in the machine-era, was the resulting rational politics. The political parties would promise things to citizens -- in return for votes. In other words, they would approach the citizens, literally door to door, and say "we'll build this bridge and fix this sidewalk but you have to vote for us." Sure, voting was not closed-door back then, but I still think something similar would happen today.

As you say, local level politics is great in that, people can actually look down the street and see a result. But politicians only practice rational politics. I fear that many politicians would indeed market themselves like this, but in turn, not practice the libertarian policies they promised. But, the people would think it's great! They are getting new sidewalks, new jobs, new bridges, more money for schools, etc. But this might come at the expense of increased spending and other things. So basically, what I fear, is politicians might use a "local-level marketing" strategy to get elected and in turn, not practice libertarian politics, but because local-level politics gets things done in communities, the politians would maintain power, despite bad politics. Hope this makes sense.

[Paul]

I agree that the Federal government has become too bloated and not responsive to the peoples needs. With regulations, growth of agencies and the usurpation of power from the states through control of the purse strings, (which Americans need to re-evaluate), the structure of the government and their roles at all levels need to be realigned to better serve the people. I was very disappointed at the presidential election; it was like a horse race with an old nag that ran the track so many times that there was no “fire in the belly” of the old hay burner. The other horse in the race was like a colt kicking up its heels in all directions without a set of defined goals except in mediocre rhetoric for the screaming crowds to cheer on. And the truly sad part of the race was that some horses were placed in stalls with their voices drowned by the roar of the crowds and the media spewing out falsehoods and reticule not allowing for even giving the horses a chance to run; quite a dismal race in all.

Well enough of my pontificating. I think the premise of having a stronger local government with a very restricted state and federal government is the correct path. Can you imagine how much money could be saved (Less taxes paid) if the state and federal governments were restricted to only a few agencies with limited powers? With that kind of thinking we just may be able to pay off the staggering deficit, and not burden the next few generations.

I still believe that the Constitution and how the founding fathers framed it is still a valid way to govern our country. The problem has been the decline of social morals throughout the decades allowing for emotional out cries from certain segments of society to ram through changes in courts along the way that have distorted the fundament concept of what was originally perceived. We need to take back our country and what it stood for, for so many years (Not that it was perfect by any means). We need to for get about “Party” lines and get back to principles that we believe in and that have truth woven in their fabric. To many times we allow the emotions of the time and situation to blur our focus, from the core principle underlying the reason for the law.

On a national level the perspective of what is right is too distorted; what is right for one segment of society may be totally contradictive to what another segment society holds to be right. By allowing local government to make decisions free from the pressures of state and federal mandates that may not apply, true justice may prevail. If people don’t like the laws of one state, then let them move to the state that leans to their way of thinking. By placing politicians into offices at the local government level and holding them accountable, which would be much more easily accomplished; and giving the politicians limited time to serve, the people may end up with a government working for the common man and not special interest groups. If a politician will be returning to the local community, he/she will be more apt to do what is morally right for those constituents and what is good for his own community that he and his family reside and are apart of.