Libertarian Revival?
Long ago, when I was a mere slip of a girl, and RipVanWinkle had only just dozed off, I pitched up at the London Hilton for a job interview. I can no longer remember what the advertisement had said that attracted my attention, probably no experience or qualifications required. I do clearly remember the interview.
Two archetypical New York Jews, in loud check trousers that ended six inches above their shoes, identical tweed golfing hats, and Hawaii surfing shirts sat side by side on the edge of a single bed, leaving me the only available chair. They spoke in unison, finishing each others sentences with a rapidity of speech unknown in England. They were a sight to behold, and I struggled to keep a straight face. It was a job interview like no other before or since.
Their first question was ‘when did you lose your virginity?’ – given that they were sitting sweating on the only bed in the room, I looked at each of them in turn and replied, ‘why, is that the fabled Hollywood casting couch?’ ‘Good answer’ they said, ‘we just wanted to see how you reacted, the last girl got up and walked out’. I’m glad I didn’t. I got the job, a most unusual job, and came to learn some valuable lessons from the Rosen brothers.
Jack and Lennie Rosen were salesmen par excellence. They specialised in a lateral thinking that was totally original in those late 60s days. Finding themselves the proud owners of several tons of sheep’s lanolin, quite how, I forget; they set about creating a market for it. ‘Have you ever seen a bald sheep?’ said Jack, or it might have been Lennie. ‘Who would like to have hair like a sheep?’ – only a bald middle aged African Negro, was the answer. The lanolin was put in pots marked ‘hair tonic’, and a dozen nearly bald middle aged African Negroes were surprised to be given an unusual job. Not to sell the hair tonic, nothing so difficult, but to create the market. Day after day they toured pharmacies in their district, enquiring in vain for supplies of the fabled ‘Rosen’s hair tonic’, ‘the only product that had ever worked for them’. Other pharmacists had run out of the product and now they were looking for a new supplier…
A month later, the Rosen’s would arrive, searching for a fictitious pharmacist that they had a delivery for. The fictitious pharmacist couldn’t be found, but the pharmacist they were talking to would be glad to take the whole order off them, he had customers for Rosen’s Hair Tonic; Boy, did he have customers! Dozens of them, they were driving him mad, in every day looking for pots of the stuff….
They used the money they made to invest in Florida swamp land. Dirt cheap. You needed a glass bottomed boat to see the land. Nobody wanted it any more than they wanted several tons of lanolin. All the Rosen’s needed to do was find people who thought they wanted it…
They set up signs along the Tammy-Ammy trail that runs down to Miami. ‘Bet you’re thirsty’ read the first one. A few miles further on came another ‘Bet the kids are thirsty’. ‘Florida orange juice, cool and quenching’, read a third. Eventually, came the punch line – ‘Stop here for free Florida orange juice’. Classic Rosen thinking – first create your market of people who think they’re thirsty…
The reason they wanted people with cars full of kids to stop and talk to them was pure ‘Rosen’ too. ‘Retiring to Florida’ was the American dream, like ‘doing Europe’. They wanted to sell plots of swamp land for building retirement homes on. No point in trying to sell them to retired people, they could see there was no foreseeable ‘town’ built there. No, they wanted to sell the plots to people who dreamed of the future…$30 down and $5 a month, and you could secure your future retirement home, it would be ready by the time you retired…every six months the Rosen’s would recoup the cost of a plot, after that it was $5 a month from thousands of families living thousands of miles away, dreaming of the time they would retire.
By the time I met them in London, they were highly successful millionaires. They had refined their thinking. If ‘retiring to Florida’ was part of the dream, why not talk to people who were already living part of the dream ‘doing Europe’? They’d set up camp in London, found themselves a ‘free’ conference room – the 007 nightclub in the Hilton – who uses a nightclub during the day? The Hilton was happy to let them use it in return for a minimum of five lunches to be bought every day – all they wanted me to do was hire a coach, find a tour guide, and fill the coach everyday with Americans, married to each other, with kids, in employment, between the ages of 25 and 45, and give them a free tour of London and a free lunch at the London Hilton. Easy-peasy. I got £5 for each one on the coach…
Why hang around outside Buckingham Palace chatting up anything in trousers six inches above the shoes? It didn’t take me long to figure out that there was one group of people who knew exactly who was American, the right age, with kids, etc, etc, – hotel porters. They were holding the passports…I did a deal with every hotel porter who would listen to me…all they had to do was give away a free tour of London and a free lunch at the Hilton, £1 for every ‘qualified’ couple on the coach…
The Rosen’s were delighted, coaches rolled into the Hilton three times a day, filled to the brim with happily chatting American couples, mostly military. A team of salesmen sold them their ‘retirement dream’ over lunch and in no time at all the London branch of Gulf American Corporation was cheerfully shipping a million dollars worth of signed contracts for plots of swamp land back to the Miami bank accounts of the Rosen brothers. If I had ever heard of the rape of the Everglades swampland, or the trail of broken dreams and foreclosures that the Rosen’s left behind them, I don’t suppose I would have taken much notice back then, I was earning a small fortune.
Eventually they were forced to cease trading – but not before I had learnt some valuable lessons from them. The key to a successful enterprise is to give your customers what they think they want. It may not even be what they could really do with. Even if you have to start by persuading them that they want it. You don’t start by trying to flog them the product that you want to sell. You find a way of turning what you want to sell into what they dream of having.
Now that the flabby fabulist, Andrew P Withers, has finally found a way to exclude all true Libertarians from his Totalitarian empire, the formerly well supported Libertarian Party, there are many Libertarians wondering whether to set up a new party. Some are even arguing over the name. Sooner or later there will be a discussion on whether the business cards should be embossed or not. Or who should have which title.
To me, and I stress that it is a personal opinion, it is starting at the wrong end of the stick. The discussion should be centred round the product you are trying to shift. Libertarianism. Lanolin. It makes no difference. Can you flog it in its purest form – ‘anarcho-capitalism’ – or do you need to adapt it slightly? Who could it appeal to? It is only when you have answered that question that you can start working backwards to create the framework to make that happen.
There are a great many disaffected voters in Britain. A lot more than there are committed voters. UKIP answered the question by honing in on the dislike of the European Union, and have landed themselves with a reputation as a single interest party, ditto the BNP. Do those disaffected people even want a ‘Party’, are they really interested in a vague chance of electing an MP? If they are not, what is the point in forming a party? What does it matter what it is called? Isn’t there an anomaly in a ‘Libertarian Party’ trying to get elected into a system they despise?
The fat fraudster has said that the ‘new revived Libertarian Party UK’ won’t be ‘Internet based’, which seems to me about the dumbest thing I have ever heard. If there is any reasonable group description of the followers of the Blogsphere, it is Libertarian. Independent. Unherded cats. It is a ready made, messily formatted, tribal following.
Let’s use the Internet. Write a blog post. You’re doing that anyway! Ask your readers – ‘If you are a disaffected voter, what would persuade you to get involved? Involved in what? Another political party? Is an MP of a different hue actually of any interest to you, or would you rather form a lose association of like minded people to being pressure on the government to listen by other means? A ‘Union’ of disaffected voters perhaps? Mumsnet seems a pretty effective lobbying group and they are not a ‘Party’. So does the anti-smoking cabal come to that.
When you’ve finished writing that blog post, get out there and talk to some people in real life. You are never going to persuade the Tory or Labour supporters to vote Libertarian, but out there, in cyber world and beyond, is a vast mass of people who don’t vote Labour or Conservative.
What we need to do is understand why not. Then to build a product that they can relate to. Then we can worry about what to call it.
That product may not look anything like a political party, but if we can harness the dreams of the vast majority of the population who don’t vote, don’t have any faith in the present system, then we might have something impressive jostling for position behind a Libertarian flag.
Get writing, get talking. Whilst you are about it, register your interest on Gavin Webb’s site.
Discuss.
-
1
April 21, 2012 at 15:49 -
We ‘ve tried a fraudulent snake oil scheme based on Libertarianism.
The water, gas, electricity, buses and railways were privatised. Swamp property the lot of em-
2
April 21, 2012 at 16:50 -
Food supply and distribution is wholly ‘private sector’, and seems to work quite well. Nobody starves, there’s lots of choice of both foodstuff and where to purchase, and prices are actually fairly reasonable. About the only place where food is often atrocious is the NHS.
I wonder if the problem with the water, gas, electricity, buses and railways is that there’s still too much government interference?
-
3
April 22, 2012 at 14:58 -
@Engineer
“I wonder if the problem with the water, gas, electricity, buses and railways is that there’s still too much government interference?”With food supply we can go to numerous shops, survey the selection on the shelves, buy it and throw it in the back of the car for the journey home.
On the other hand, we can’t buy buckets full of water for the toilet and washing machine, or boxes full of electricity or train journeys. For the list you make there are really only single sources, despite the package varying.
Government interference is only a part of the battle.-
4
April 22, 2012 at 15:47 -
Bob – I didn’t make the list, davidb did. All these ‘services’ are very heavily ‘regulated’, in other words, one size shall be made to fit all. Maybe a bit more freedom to innovate and to provide a more local service might improve things. We know that the opposite extreme, full nationalisation, tends to result in inefficiency and stagnation, partly because government won’t (or can’t) invest. Government certainly can’t invest at the moment an won’t be able to for many a long year, so the decision is to a great extent hobson’s choice anyway.
-
-
-
5
April 22, 2012 at 14:36 -
Notice you did not mention British Telecom – who now remembers how long it used to take to get a ‘phone connection?
-
-
6
April 21, 2012 at 15:57 -
The best chance any of us have got to seeing anything remotely like a libertarian tinge to policies inflicted on us is to vote UKIP.
-
7
April 21, 2012 at 16:20 -
To some extent UKIP is like the SNP years ago – it set out with a single objective, managed to garner enough support to start winning votes, then seats. Westminster got rattled and gave them devolutions.
The SNP presses on, getting more votes, more seats and actually holding local power. Westminster gets rattled again, offering even more devolution. And so it goes on.If we all support UKIP until the tide turns, we too could be on the Scottish path and away from the alien dictatorship we currently suffer. Then libertarianism could follow, but until we achieve Step 1, the further steps will never happen.
-
-
8
April 21, 2012 at 16:46 -
I struggle to see UKIP as anything other than old style Tories (before the Tories got into bed with Europe and turned all Blairy) and thus nothing like libertarian.
But I think Anna is asking the right answer. There is a profound cognitive dissonance in the idea of a Libertarian Party. After all, isn’t libertarianism about what you do, not about what you are? Why, for the love of whatever, would any genuine libertarian want to be an MP or councillor?
-
9
April 21, 2012 at 18:17 -
You will have to go back to the days of Winston Churchill to witness a CONservative party that is not wedded to Yerp. Even M. Thatcher was sold on Yerp until the scales fell from her eyes about a week before she was sacked.
-
-
13
April 21, 2012 at 17:16 -
A visit to Dr. Richard North’s ‘EUReferendum’ & boning up a tad on REFERISM might be both informative & helpful.
http://www.eureferendum.com/
This is not about MPs, none of whom represent us, but about controlling the purse-strings from the local level upwards. The leeches cannot exist without our money & they must be made to ask us for it…not steal it from us.Anna: Funnily enough I was one of those selling the swamp land at the Hilton…..very hard times indeed.
-
14
April 21, 2012 at 17:19 -
Correct Anna. There is such a lot to be done apart from elections. I’m supportive of party creation in the article you link to, but am already trying hard to do something else.
Unfortunately, I think I will that unless I recruit more writers I may have to take a break from blogging to get it done. So, seeing as you’ve encouraged people to write a blog post, perhaps I could encourage them to register for posting access on LibertarianHome? From today, moderated posting rights are available to anyone that wants them just register and start.
-
15
April 21, 2012 at 18:20 -
Notwithstanding that your twins were crooks Anna, you have a very good idea, and one which I suspect George Galloway used when took on TPTB in Bradford.
Maybe Nigel F should read this article.
-
16
April 21, 2012 at 20:21 -
I saw Mr F give a speech at a public meeting last night and he wasn’t bad at all. there are lots of old style tories there for sure, and the anarcho-capitalist in me doesn’t believe in much if any government, BUT where will change come from if we don’t engage? It seems to me that some libertarians (not you I must stress Miss R) write eloquent and intelligent blogs about government failure and inconsistency but won’t take any action. Now I agree the big three parties are the same and voting for them is pointless and making a breakthough as a minor party is very hard, but we have three choices
1. Violence ~ the first principle of Libertarianism is the non-initiation of force, so this is morally wrong and also tactically stupid, who has all the guns anyway?
2. Blog but do little else ~ I have this image of the intellectually superior Jew being herded into the gas chambers in 1944 with his co-religionists saying “See I told you so” Correct but hopeless.
3. Get involved politically ~ Be it a new Libertarian party or UKIP we can’t just blog and do nothing else. Mainstream poiticians are useless and deaf to us granted but the ongoing collapse (for that is what it is) presents opportunities as never before. The hard left will try to seize them, we should not concede the field.Last but not least, I am reminded of what Charlton Heston said in the 1970′s “planet of the apes” movie when he saw the humans, “If this is the best they have, we will be running the place in six months” Thus UKIP. To really see the colour of their money, I am going to see where they stand on drugs. I don’t personally care, but if you are a “legalise everything” merchant then you are a pragmatic libertarian, but if you are a “hang drug dealers” type, then you are just another statist.
We will see.
-
17
April 22, 2012 at 10:54 -
On the drugs theme…
There are a couple of things about UKIP that need to be known.
The first is that they are the party of small government… aka libertarianism. Which means freedom from government interference, so if “drugs” is your thing, go ahead.
Second, one of their most longstanding policies has been to introduce “Swiss style” direct democracy, which is where the “people” petition the government for a referendum on a given issue, if enough people sign up to it, a referendum is automatically triggered on the question that was petitioned (as opposed to a different question that the government thinks will give them the result that it desires), and then it is up to people to vote on it. So, if a UKIP government were to repeal the drug laws, and the people objected, they could re-introduce them, or if UKIP did nothing, the people could force them.
I know one thing, for the majority of people, it is a bit of a non issue until they come back to their parked car/home and find that some little scumbag has broken a window and nicked their trinkets… These things are run down to the nearest cash converter (be he legitimate or a “fence”) and cashed in for a wrap.
If the inherently cheap drugs that these people are after, were legal, they would be able to just pop in to their local branch of Boots or Menzies (in the case of pot) and buy it with their dole money… It’s cheaper than beer. The prices are high because they are illegal and the dangers of trading in these substances due to their illegality makes for some interesting partners… Those with guns and knives.
And just as a little side issue, it is better to treat those that are afflicted with these addictions, with therapy in a consulting room, than buggery in a prison cell.
-
-
-
18
April 21, 2012 at 20:27 -
I was an LPUK member, and changed that fairly smartish when you pressed the big red button marked ‘Boom!’, Anna. It was only a short while later that I decided to join UKIP.
There is a claim to Libertarianism in UKIP, but I’m not entirely sure about that, I’ve had a couple of chats with Farage about the whole burka thing. However I’ve come to the conclusion that just as our liberties have been sliced away, the only way we’re going to get them back is to stick them back on slice by slice.
To my mind the first step can only be withdrawal from the EU, and at this stage I don’t much care who I’ve got to jump into bed with to do it. When the big threat is removed then it’ll be time to assess how (properly) liberal people and parties are. There’s no point in standing in the garden arguing over whose mobile you’re going to use to call the fire brigade when the house is burning down.
-
19
April 22, 2012 at 17:54 -
A good market would be those who don’t like authoritarian councils, nannying officials, overzealous health and safety officials, PCSOs going beyond their remit, etc. You will find nealy everyone hates such people even though they will kow tow to these officials demands. What needs to be done is to instill a little bit of knowledge into everyone telling them that they can say no to such public officials.
A good example would be N2D and their slow but methodical work on imparting knowledge to people who bring in their own tobacco about what the Border Agency is actually able to do and what they do through FUD. Just little things like not signing a notebook and recording an interview is enough to through off the officials from their narrow minded path of following procedure or from abusing their authority.
One piece of knowledge would be to tell people that photography is safe everywhere no matter what olympic security guards or PCSO or police say. Putting a piece of paper with the rules written down in your camera case or wallet is a useful step. It can then be produced when you are accosted by an official me and can’t remember all the in and outs of the rules. Plus you can show it to the official to remind them of the rules which they are likely to not know. See not-a-crime.com
In terms of libertarianism, the little bits of knowledge would be to instill that little bit of questioning to authority. So when a politician says that a new law is required for something or other, everyone should be encouraged to ask “Why? What does it do? Who benefits? Will it make a difference? Does an existing law already handle it? etc.”
-
20
April 23, 2012 at 10:50
-
-
21
April 24, 2012 at 20:23 -
May I suggest a name for your new party Anna? If a party called the Liberal Libations Party campaigned on the slogan “Bigger drinks for everyone” not only would I vote for them and bung in a few quid, I might even stand as a candidate. Politics has been too serious since Screaming Lord Sutch died.
-
22
April 24, 2012 at 22:34 -
Please can anyone wishing to express their interest in seeing a new libertarian political organisation visit http://www.gavinwebb.com/libertarians.
Unfortunately, I have had to change the url due to a complaint my hosting provider received from the Libertarian Party UK over copyright violations, relating to the use of libertarianparty.org.uk – a domain I have own for over two years. This complaint led to my hosting account temporarily being suspended.
A more comprehensive article about this affair is at the above address.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }