Alexander McCobin & Mr.Read.

We discussed How To Advance Liberty by Leonard E. Read with Alexander McCobin.

One of the first questions asked was by Alejo, and I found it to be a very interesting question. He asked if at Students for Liberty they had the three levels of leaders that Read mentions. McCobin answered that they did. They always started out with the first level, which he considers is when people lend their body to the cause, not really knowing how to advance liberty on their own. From there they moved on to the second level, in which they dedicate their minds. They build events, use resources and organize people. The last level that they have is when people dedicate their identity to what their doing.

Contrary to what Read says, McCobin says that in order to approach people you do have  to market liberty. He said that there are three types of students: those who are pro-liberty, apathetic and against liberty. The issue with the ones that are apathetic and against it is marketing, to get them to think that it is worth the time to study liberty. He thinks marketing is the only way to hey people to learn about libertarian education.

He also thinks that movements are lead by few individuals in level 3 leadership. One strong person moved the rest. That a great leader spreads his idea  so that other people can follow and agree. This is also a marketing problem because if not marketed correctly people will stereotype it and get confused.

IMPOSING VS INVITING PEOPLE

Inviting people gives more options and opportunities; it is like an invitation with information. The main problem is that for this to work you need to ask the right question.

There was something very interesting that Bert said during our dialogue. He said that he had the chance to meet Mr. Read and that he described what genuine individualism was for him; he said that this individualism is that every person is a miracle because everyone is unique. We should revere human beings because they are one of a kind, we will never find another person like the next. I had never really thought of human beings that way, I guess its kind of cool. I believe he is absolutely right. Every one is different and we should take advantage of that, really trying to get to know other people and try to find that uniqueness that they have.

At the end of the dialogue we moved towards teaching vs. marketing. We came to the conclusion that teaching individuals use the same principals as marketing. Teaching and selling go hand in hand and they are all subjective to these conditions:

• If presented the wrong way, people shut down.
• People are capable of learning things
• They have to be humble and try to get people to view the world some specific way.
• Selling is just engaging them in the process (learning process),

Soon after these commentaries the topic went off hand, we started to talk about teachers, and how they shouldn’t or should be paid, and the dialogue ended soon after.

I think this was a great dialogue, but I found two things that we should improve: we should keep on topic, and more of us should talk. I noticed that only some people were actually participating in the dialogue, while the rest just observed. Almost at the end more people started joining the dialogue. Apart from  that I really liked the way our dialogue flowed and the questions some of us asked.