The ever brilliant GMU Professor Bryan Caplan notes that the social skills of libertarian students have materially increased over the past few years due to the internet.
Professor Caplan writes,
The best explanation I've got so far: the Internet. Back in the old days, libertarian students spent a lot of time alone with their books. It was awfully hard to meet others with a shared interest in liberty. This social isolation had two effects. The first was a treatment effect: Libertarians got a lot less practice sharing their ideas in a civilized and constructive way. The second was a selection effect: Few "people people" became libertarians because it was too depressing. As the Internet - and social networking, its favorite child - blossomed over the last two decades, these effects of libertarian isolation largely faded away. Nowadays, almost no libertarian is isolated unless he wants to be. As it turns out, few do.
Aside from linking or connecting shared interests in real time and across diverse geography, the internet offers a wealth of informational exchange, at diminishing costs, from which libertarians use to solidify their convictions, grounded mostly on philosophical, political and or economic reasons.
So convictions are not only backed by what marketing guru Seth Godin would call as ‘tribes’, but also by increased knowledge that provides confidence to libertarian adherents. And this helps increase social skills and the number of enthusiasts which likewise help reduce libertarians from isolation.
Besides, in what I would call the unfolding Hayekian knowledge revolution brought about by democratization of knowledge through the internet, libertarian philosophy blends smoothly with horizontal flow of informational exchange as previously discussed here.
In other words, my bold forecast is that the philosophy of libertarianism and classical liberalism is bound to go mainstream.
No comments:
Post a Comment