This is why, when it comes to rejecting a particular ideology, I believe you need to have adopted that ideology to the point that you genuinely grok it. If you can't replicate the mental operations that allow a subscriber to make sense of the world, what its problems are and how to solve them, and the ways they derive comfort and validation from those operations, then you're guilty of being uncharitable to their worldview. And if you're uncharitable, you're unlikely to develop an argument that demonstrates how an ideology is flawed given its own values and assumptions, or how that ideology actually conflicts with one's pre-ideological values and assumptions.
The ideologies that survive are always more resourceful at countering counterarguments than a non-grokker will expect. Which is as good a reason as any to actually try it out, first.
I grew up a Socialist in a Socialist house hold. I spent much of my teenage years in all kinds of "important" positions in a socialist party in Denmark.
Then I became an entrepreneur and my whole world view changed. I didn't read Ayn Rand or any libertarian literature until 15 years later, but my world view changed completely during a year and I became what I later realized was a Libertarian. Most of my opinions are based on observation.
This also frustrates me sometimes with other libertarians (and in particular Republican's) is that they don't understand where socialists come from, so they often have difficulties communicating with them.
I understand all the arguments socialists make because I used to make them. But I also understand that their reasoning is based on absolutely flawed understandings of economics and human behavior.
I would recommend anyone reads Marx's Communist Manifesto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Manifesto as it expresses the basic ideas behind not just Communism, but socialism as a whole and to a somewhat smaller extent the more left wing parts of the Democratic party in the US.
It would also be useful if Republicans, "liberals" and socialist had a quick read of Adam Smith's truly profound Wealth of Nations as this is kind of the libertarian equivalent of Marx's writings. So they would actually have a clue what we believe. PJ O'Rourke wrote a pretty good cliff notes edition of it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6743689
- Republican conservatism (raised in a Republican household) to
- pseudo-communism (some crazy idea I had in high school without reading Marx) to
- Objectivism (a friend gave me The Fountainhead while in college, picked up Atlas Shrugged shortly after, then Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Peikoff's book on Objectivism) to
- utilitarian liberal (introduced to Mill in a course on political philosophy (along with Nozick, who is unconvincing), studied more utilitarianism in other courses)
Note that I'm a utilitarian first, and liberal by implication of (my) utilitarian logic. I'm also aware of the bevy of criticisms that have been leveled at utilitarianism, some of which are persuasive (the Greatest Happiness Principle does not adequately address the complexity of moral psychology), while others are simply demanding a precision of calculation that's not attainable. In practice, one can successfully apply utilitarian reasoning in a great many situations.
The problem that I have with libertarianism is that I don't buy the "negative rights only" stance (at all), and believe that social interventions backed by force of law are necessary to overcome historically and sociologically entrenched inequalities of opportunity (positive feedback loops of discrimination and decay). That we haven't done it as effectively or efficiently as we would like doesn't mean that it shouldn't be attempted at all. There's room for experimentation, and we're getting better at experimenting. Many of the recently developed entrepreneurial practices (fail early) can be fruitfully applied in this area.
"The purpose of argument, should not be victory, but progress."
PS: Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene works as an analogy for ideologies. They don't need to help their followers as ideology only needs to propagate faster than it's killed off.
I think ridicule is a bad idea, because it invariably activates one's ego defense mechanisms. When that happens, your chances of convincing someone that they're wrong (assuming that they're wrong) drop to zero, while the level of polarization goes up. Granted, some people are so hardened in their beliefs that only widespread ridicule may be able to put a crack in their shell (albeit at high psychological cost).
Take global worming there is a manufactured debate on the issue and few people are willing to say, "Ok, smart guy how should we rewrite the laws of physics?" Or, letting people say "Clean Coal" like there is such a thing when they can say, "Ok, I agree that Clean Coal is great let's mandate zero CO2 emissions from coal in 5 years." so they need to say, "Well we don't have the ability to do that."
Exploitation as an effective maneuver is dependent on a society unpracticed and unconditioned in the use of reason. It may be a practical move in the short run, but invariably has terrible consequences in the long. A society that remains vulnerable to such exploits will be swayed by the best exploiters rather than the best arguments (which is how it is now).
In the long run, our best strategy is to cultivate cool, calm, collected, and charitable discourse.
The ability to engage in charitable discourse is simply a skill that can be taught like any other. Parents could be teaching it to their children, but socially and culturally we haven't yet made it a priority. We should.
True, rationality can be pervasive, and it can be taught, but it can never be totally dominant. Our primitive substrate keeps coming out, and that is every bit as pervasive as rationality.
Someone suggested turning that hierarchy of disagreement into tags that people could assign to comments on a debate site, and filter accordingly. I built something of precisely this sort for my master's project, and believe the idea should be implemented for nearly all online communications. It's doable, and an effective way to impress a great many people with the value of rational discourse, to which they simply may not have had enough exposure to appreciate.
And there is, I think, potentially a tipping point or critical mass where a culture of charitable discourse enters a positive feedback loop and makes gains even faster than before.
Whatever the case, I think there are definitely plausible means for improvement. They deserve to be tested.
So who decides what is pollution?
Once someone says CO2 is pollution, government now controls nearly all of your life.
(This isn't a failure of Libertarianism, it's a human failure -- greed.)
AKA CO2 costs 3$ per 1000lb. Every billion pounds you collect 3 million and every American get's their pollution check for 1c. This can still be corrupted but because the government is not spending the money it's more balanced.
PS: IMO the secret is for markets to price the correct information not for some group to tell them what to do.
I think I have a new maxim for the internet: Never have so many people said so much about that which they knew so little about.
(And yes, I count myself in that)