An Older Tweet Goes Viral (Sort Of)
A while back (late May) I found a meme on one of the conservative/libertarian Facebook groups, with an infamous quote from Krugman that the Internet would have no more impact on the economy by 2005 than the fax machine. I wrote a typical ad lib ("I'm waiting for Krugman to fax in his report on the economy") and published the tweet. It got a smattering of impressions (reader views) but nothing special (as I've repeatedly written, I don't publish in blogs or social media for the numbers, but of course it's always gratifying to an author to find his work appreciated by others).But my experience is most of the impressions you get are soon after you publish--but then many of my tweets are published on trending topics; this was more of a one-off. In any event, the tweet went viral around mid-week, and I think the first retweet drove it. After 2-5 days I had 10 likes and 4 retweets and something like 840 impressions. No, it's not a personal record; I probably have a few dozen 1000+ impression tweets. For example, from Nov.1 through January (an arbitrarily chosen sampling period), I had some 15 1000+ impression tweets, including one at 5.5K. When you consider I have a limited following (about 72 at last count, none of them friends or family, and I espouse a relatively unpopular point of view on most issues, it's somewhat impressive.
As a stat junkie of sorts. I've seen my readerships down across the board recently. There are rumors that Google and other "progressive" owned/managed companies are implementing tactics to limit traffic or access to libertarian and/or conservative content. I will say my blog numbers are way off of the trend over the past year; it would be self-defeating for Google to impair readership off its own platform; if and when I believe this is happening, there are other blog platforms out there, including pro-liberty ones.
In any way, as good as I think my ad lib was, I'm well-aware it was Krugman's quote that grabbed the most attention. If you are aware of Snopes (which has a somewhat left-leaning reputation; I've often told my mom to check out these urban legend emails she gets against Snopes), apparently some suspicious cranky leftists seeing the Krugman meme went to Snopes seeking to debunk the meme. I think I've seen the quote before (and in fact I myself have debunked a quote or two in the history of the blog); someone tweeted back a source on the Krugman quote, and so I Googled it, just to note that a Snopes hit appeared. I opened up the Snopes link and was pleasantly surprised to find my own tweet embedded. Snopes noted the Krugman quote was part of a longer quote and confirmed the validity of the quote! (I also found an archived copy of the longer quote, which is in my records.)
How Best To Preach the Libertarian Gospel?
We libertarians tend to be an eclectic sort. Whereas Gary Johnson hit over 3%., a record vote total (including mine) in 2016, he should have done a lot better, when two of the most polarizing candidates in recent history got their party's nominations. This was a change year election--one in which Johnson should be done better with young voters who will inherit the senior entitlement Ponzi schemes, who inherit sky-high college loans, in part resulting from irresponsible government meddling and subsidies. We had a $20T debt, an overextended, expensive military footprint, with something like 800 military bases abroad. On the local and state level in particular, we have public pension systems which can amount literally to over a million dollars for a significant percentage of long-hired teachers or others; most other taxpayers, including me, have no pension; I have no plans to retire if and when I reach retirement age. Now I didn't read all of Johnson's statements, and he may well have paid lip service to these ideas, but I saw no effective response to young people's tragic attachment to socialist talking points in the age of Bernie Sanders.Instead, we have this weird campaign where Johnson seems to endorse forcing bakers to take business which includes that which they oppose on principle, like Nazi cakes and he had positive things to say about Hillary Clinton. He made no real attempt to reach out to people like George Will and me, who were repelled by Trump's economic nationalism and right-wing populism, his shameless feeding on toxic xenophobia.
I myself have joined and severed my relationship with several liberty groups on Facebook. If and when I do post comments, I don't really pull a lot of support from others. Just a couple of samples to illustrate the point. There are Cato Institute libertarians who feel compelled to argue that Southern secession was largely motivated by pro-slavery reasons. Well, we could flip that argument and say the colonies themselves weren't clean on slavery either--explicitly wrote it into the Constitution. Does that mean the British Crown was justified in trying to stop the American rebellion/revolution? No, none of us who criticize Lincoln's aggression suggest we endorse the Confederate causes beyond the concept of voluntary association, which is in principle no different than the original Revolution. Many of us believe that it was just a matter of time before slavery collapsed of its own weight. A Northern Union would have soon banned slavery and repealed the Fugitive Slave Law. This alone would have have undermined the economy of holding slaves. And I rather suspect that the Confederate states would have rejoined the Union. What most of us critics loathe is that the Lincoln government broke the balance between the states and the federal/central government.
A second example is a left-populist piece on California rationing of water. The piece basically uses the allegation that Nestle has siphoning up untold gallons of water "for free" since the 1940's, and so the piece quickly devolves into leftist corporation-bashing. This quickly becomes one of corporate welfare. Now of course I don't endorse corporate welfare if and where it exists. But what is clear here is that the State is interfering with the market mechanism of addressing the water industry; higher prices would result in less demand, attract more supplies, etc. I don't know why any water rationing bill would have exempted or favored businesses, but certainly Nestle should be paying a market price for the water it uses. I have not heard Nestle's position on its use of water; it may be that the leftist account is untruthful.
So am I just a crank who turns off others from the pro-liberty cause by bashing economically illiterate folks or turning off potential allies? Perhaps. Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to formulate my own libertarian perspective which I hope to publish (sorry, not in a free blog), No timetable yet, but more details to come.
