Ideas for Influencing

A guest post by SolarxPvP

Here’s another guest post from the Twitter personality known as SolarxPvP. I bet he’ll be happy to reply to you in the comments!

---

I have thought of several potential routes for making your ideas more influential using your connections. I'd love to see your ideas make a measured impact on the world, and these will likely be your best opportunities in the near future. I hope these things don't seem too idealistic, but I don't think they are and I give reasons to think so. I think they would be great ways to market your ideas and make an impact.

1. Vivek Ramaswamy is a unique politician and presidential candidate (as you seem to have noticed). I don't think I have ever seen a major candidate for president from the two mainstream parties quite as open to ideas and discussion as he (that isn't perhaps Ron Paul). He cares about policy, is curious, and appears open-minded. 

His charisma and clarity make him very well-liked, as FiveThirtyEight notes in section 3 here. He had the highest favorability rate of all Republicans who had heard of him (at least at the time).

Fascinated by Richard Hanania's critique of his book Woke, Inc., Vivek invited him to appear on his podcast a few months ago. It's cool seeing him write down things that Hanania says and accept his ideas into his repertoire. I have seen him appeal to Hanania's policy solutions to wokeness since then along with Alex Epstein's talking points in his interviews. In his interview with Ron Paul, he says he was a major fan of Paul back in college even though he no longer identifies as a libertarian.

However, he still has many confused policies and ideas. He's threatened to invade Mexico to stop drug cartels and I think his education policy is a little confused even if it would be an improvement from the status quo. My friend and CSPI affiliate Jonah Davids explains his confused policy well here.

Thanks to your connections with Hanania and Epstein, it's plausible that you could appear on his show and not just moderate him on several issues, but convince him of perspectives he might not have. Have Hanania and Epstein endorse you as a guest, and give him copies of your books. Include pre-release copies of books if you can by then.

The top issues you should emphasize:

- Housing. Housing regulation has the benefit of being a massive economic issue while also lacking the anti-foreign bias of immigration issues. You should encourage Ramaswamy to place a large emphasis on the effects of housing regulation on popular issues like income inequality, working-class despair, and homelessness. Convince him of the major economic effects of regulation so he'll realize how much it needs to be emphasized. 

- Education. Convince him that we will need much more than just school vouchers to change our broken system.

- Occupational licensing. This along with the educational system could probably be accurately sloganed and linked together as the "credential-inflationary complex." Speaking of, try to think of useful but accurate slogans he could use to appeal to conservatives and the general public for these issues.

- Foreign policy. Convince him that even the best forecasters and prediction markets are relatively inaccurate and make most foreign policy reckless. He already supports legalizing some drugs as far as I am aware, so getting him to realize that freeing up the drug market will likely already assuage many of his concerns with Mexico.

- Markets. He already wants to abolish much of the state, but try to convince him to go further. 

- Immigration. This will be much tougher than the others, but perhaps you could convince him to moderate his position. Little things like open borders with Canada and other first-world countries (with some restrictions on criminals and voting). Perhaps you could convince him that a TSA-like system at the border where people are thoroughly vetted for criminal backgrounds and banned from voting or getting welfare would make the border situation much better. The main hurdle will probably be the "they're taking our jobs" issue, however. The best route would be to convince people that we need more low-skilled employees like construction workers and janitors.

I know his campaign is still a long shot, but his chances are better than any libertarian. And if he loses, he might still get a spot in the Trump or even Desantis administration. He's been floated as a Trump vice presidential pick. If he were a deciding vote in a Senate deadlock, he could have significant libertarian influence along with taking over the presidency if Trump passes away in office (not unlikely due to his age). He'd also probably have a good influence as a secretary. Then, coming 2028, he could run again with more name recognition. 

2. Prospera seems very promising. The recent legal issues against it don't really seem like much of a problem as it's often suggested from what I've read. However, I am skeptical if it's as good as it could be from some of the policies I have seen it implement (it seems to want to elect a council, and its education system might be the typical approach but private). It would be incredible if you could give a speech there engaging and critiquing the way it's doing things while also presenting your other ideas. You have a connection with Niklas Anzinger, and Robin Hanson has visited from what I have seen on Anzinger's blog, so I could totally see it happen.

My dream scenario would be for you and some other libertarians in your realm of thinking like Michael Huemer, David Friedman, and Jason Brennan to speak at Prospera in one big event. You guys could all convince the Prospera guys behind it of their own project even more.

3. Libertarian, Austrian economist, and anarcho-capitalist (!) Javier Millei is the betting favorite to win the Argentinian election.

His victory would be without a doubt the best political result for libertarians in world history. If this isn't, let me know of something else.

I know he's an Austrian and is already a libertarian, but perhaps you could at least chat with him. Make sure he's aiming for an incremental approach that allows for a gradual dissolution of the government and not a radical overnight abolition of the government (if he's allowed to do that). Perhaps you could find some way to have influence on how he does this.

Thank you for reading. Sorry for the length, but I believe it was necessary. I hope you find these ideas to be good.