Why I Turned Down $100K From Bill Gates

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Neil by Neil

From the headline, you might think I’m crazy. For better or worse, this was the most rational, well thought out decision I’ve made in my life. To make a long story short, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave my company, CollegeZen a $100K grant through the College Knowledge Challenge, which aims to increase college access. The problem is, I don’t believe more people need to go to college. In fact, I think way too many people go to college already!

First off, this is the most personal post I’ve ever written. In order to give you full context, let me tell you a little more about who I am: My name is Neil Soni and I am a 22 year old college student studying engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. I’m obsessed with technology and entrepreneurship – I honestly believe it is the solution to pretty much every problem that exists. I’m also the founder of a few companies, including CollegeZen, which is my most “successful” company to date. At this company, we were able to get all the important metrics fairly quickly – investors, customers, and users. For these efforts, I was named a Finalist for College Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine. If you care to learn more about my background, here is my LinkedIn profile (feel free to connect with me there).

It’s obvious to everyone that higher ed is broken. Tuition rates are continuously rising faster than inflation, resulting in massive student debt (over $1 trillion outstanding at the moment). At the same time, new graduates are struggling to find jobs, meaning they are beginning their careers with debt and no way to pay it back. A good analogy is that new graduates have a mortgage with no house.

Since everyone agrees that this is a problem, what are the proposed solutions? Well, there are basically 2 groups proposing vastly different solutions:

Group 1: Higher ed institutions need to become more efficient to reduce costs. Government and society needs to do more to make sure people are educated. CollegeZen fit into this group – it focuses on improving higher ed recruiting practices and helping them reach their target audience in a more effective manner.
Group 2: The whole model of higher education delivery is broken. The problem is systemic and no amount of efficiency in the current model can improve it. Time to go back to the drawing board. This is where top entrepreneurs fit in, such as Mark Cuban and Peter Thiel.

After working in this industry for 2+ years, I now honestly believe that higher ed is irreparably broken. The first area this can be seen is in college tuition costs. The cost of attending college is increasing much faster than inflation. Since 1986, inflation has been 115.06% while the cost of attending college has increased 498.31%. But despite this huge increase, colleges are still going broke. Mark Cuban wrote a great blog post about this recently which I highly recommend.

My own experience at CMU and dealing with other colleges backs up Mark’s opinion. For example, as a current student at Carnegie Mellon (a college with an endowment close to $1 billion), I have received several solicitations for donations, all while paying over $50K per year for tuition. There is no way they are that desperate right? Wrong.

I often compare higher ed to the newspaper industry. Once upon a time, colleges were absolutely necessary to deliver educational content, just as newspapers were essential to deliver news. Then the Internet arrived and people realized they could get all the same (and often better) news content for free. Does that mean people don’t need news anymore? Nope, people need news today just as much as they needed it in 1950. The only thing that changed was technology and the existing institutions adapted too slowly. Similar things are currently happening in the education industry. Do I think all colleges are going to disappear – no. Some will continue to exist, but the number of higher ed institutions will definitely decrease as technology now enables one institution to serve far more students than they previously could.

There are some awesome companies out there already working to use the power of the Internet to make college more accessible and dramatically (we’re talking orders of magnitude) less expensive. For example, check out Coursera. They are now offering classes for credit for $200…compare that to the $200,000 cost of attending Carnegie Mellon! Economically, it’s a no-brainer.

Somewhere along the line, society stopped focusing on making sure students learned valuable skills and started focusing on degrees. But what is the purpose of a degree if you don’t know how to do anything useful in the real world? This could not have been more evident than during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address earlier this year. In his address, he called for increasing funding for higher education so that it is more accessible. Not once did he step back and question what people were actually learning in college and why costs had skyrocketed so much. But unfortunately, this isn’t a Republican vs Democrat issue. Ron Paul excluded, did anyone on the Republican side question the economics behind college costs? No – in fact, Mitt Romney was also in favor of increasing government funding for higher education.

The gap between degrees and real world skills could not be more evident than in the tech world. There is currently a huge talent gap for skilled developers, which has caused starting salaries to climb to over $100K in Silicon Valley. As skilled as these people are, an average starting salary of $100K for undeveloped talent is quite honestly absurd. The only reason these salaries have gotten so high is that market demand combined with limited supply creates a bidding war, that only the largest tech companies are capable of winning.

There is a simple solution using the free market that would prevent this talent gap: tie student loan interest rates to college major. If someone is majoring in a tech field (such as computer science or engineering), the odds that they make enough money to pay back the loan are much higher than if they major in something with limited real-world application (such as history – I love history but not as a college major). These odds should be reflected in the interest rate. This would make attending college much cheaper for a technical degree and therefore drive more people into those majors. This solution doesn’t even require any technology – just common sense! When combined with amazing technologies and content providers like Coursera, Udemy, and Khan Academy, you have a very simple path to dramatically reducing higher ed costs.

So what’s next for me? I stepped down as CEO of CollegeZen in early 2013 so I am done with the company (although my equity stake means that I am involved in a small oversight capacity). I’ve been fortunate to develop skills in areas that are in high demand right now and I’ll be moving into a leadership role at another start-up in the very near future (keeping the specifics quiet for now).

I strongly believe we need to have this conversation now and stop wasting our time, money, and energy on a system that isn’t producing results. Please tweet me (@LibertyNeil), email me (neil@libertyentrepreneur.com), or comment and lets get the discussion started!

The Ridiculous Government Spending Problem

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Neil by Neil

Does the government have a revenue problem or a spending problem? If you watch mainstream media, you’d think this was a real question. But if you take a few moments to do some actual research into government spending, you quickly find that there are some IDIOTIC things that the government spends its money on. Before raising taxes (aka “revenue”, aka “theft”) by even a penny, the federal government budget needs to be cut to the bone.

Before I get into any specific government programs, I want to say that in order to solve the debt problem, the role of government in our lives needs to be critically re-examined. If we want the government to control what we eat, what we drink, what we smoke, how we conduct our business, and pretty much every other facet of life, we are going to be hopelessly in debt and this nation will quickly find itself on the verge of collapse. I’m not saying that to be a doomsday predictor, but it’s a matter of simple math. We simply can’t afford to keep increasing our debt load, despite what the brilliant (sarcasm, for those who are new here) Paul Krugman says. Right now, the U.S. is enjoying record low borrowing costs, not because of extreme confidence in the U.S. economy or the U.S. dollar, but mainly because the Federal Reserve is buying up huge amounts of new debt issued by the Treasury. Sorry for the financial mumbo jumbo. Basically what this means is that the only person willing to loan the U.S. government money is Ben Bernanke.

Ah Paul Krugman, you never fail to make me laugh.

That isn’t sustainable. Once the Federal Reserve starts getting worried about inflation risk (already happening) and reduces the amount of U.S. debt they buy, interest rates will go up. The U.S. economy is growing at a rate similar to Europe and has been that way for years. Well, European interest rates are in the 5-10% range, not the 0.5-1% range that the U.S. currently enjoys, artificially. When rates increase, our debt load is going to become unmanageable. I fear that it’s already too late to reverse course, but I wouldn’t be true to my problem solving nature if I didn’t at least try to show a way through this crisis.

Now, it’s time to talk about some easy spending cuts. Until these programs are cut, there is absolutely NO excuse to raise taxes. Without further ado, here we go:

The USDA gave Pepsi a $1.3 million grant to build a Greek yogurt facility in New York - I like Greek yogurt as much as the next guy but if you think a company with $66 billion in revenue in 2012 needs a grant, you are sadly mistaken. This is just another example of crony capitalism and political favors that I was talking about in this blog post.
The federal government gave a $1.45 million grant to Purdue University to study the “benefit golfers might gain from using their imagination” - this is just idiotic. Golf is not an essential service of government. Ridiculous.

If studying imagination helps you golf like Tiger Woods, great. Just don’t make me pay for it.

The Department of Health & Human Services is spending $106,000 on a YouTube contest about fruits and vegetables – Internet marketing is supposed to be cheaper than traditional marketing…unless you’re the federal government. Then again, why is the federal government advertising anything?
The federal government has been working on building a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for the last 10 years, spending $1.1 billion on it. For a damn courthouse - Are you kidding me? This should cost a couple million at most and take a couple months to build. A courthouse is not that complicated. It’s basically a glorified lecture hall.
The Department of Energy offered a $100,000 cash award to make an iPhone app…that already exists – because Google searches are apparently too difficult on government computers…
The National Science Foundation spent $547,430 of taxpayer dollars to fund the development of a dancing robot – I don’t even know what to say about this one. Let’s move on.

Yup. You paid for this.

Over the last nine years, the federal government has spent about $1 million on preserving magazines digitally - …even though Google is already doing the exact same thing, with no taxpayer dollars.
About $300,000 were spent on Legos to build a model 18 foot-long street – this is one that I genuinely wish I was making up. Unfortunately, I’m not.
Up until the end of 2012, the GSA was spending about $24 million each year on outdated items like typewriters and commemorative equipment – the GSA needs to be eliminated entirely. They suck at everything.
Marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers more than $40 billion per year – beyond the obvious moral argument of being able to put a substance into your own body, there is also a fiscal argument to be made for legalizing weed. Is outlawing a harmless substance really worth $40 billion per year? You can answer that one for yourself.
Congressional salaries and stipends cost $1.3 billion per year – They should not be getting paid until we’re not in bankruptcy mode. Period.
The National Institutes of Health spent $548,731 on a study which determined that heavy drinking in your thirties is linked with immaturity – why was it necessary to do a study for this? Literally everyone knew that already.

Heavy drinking in your thirties is a sign of immaturity needed a study? Fascinating discovery…well done NIH.

And…there’s more. But you’re going to have to Google them yourself. A good place to start is Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook, where his office sums up the idiotic federal expenses every year. What I have listed in this post is just the very, very tip of the iceberg unfortunately.

All of these wasteful government spending programs (and there is no other way to describe it) can be summed up by my girl Sweet Brown: “Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That!”.

I’d like to remind you that this is only a small sampling of the ridiculous spending done by the federal government. I didn’t even talk about foreign aid ($51.7 billion annually), military spending, Social Security, Obamacare, Medicare, welfare, or any of the other crazy systemic issues facing our system. I’m going to continue digging into the budget to identify more of the insane things we’re wasting money on. The fact of the matter is, until these expenses are cut out of the budget, there really is no reason to even entertain the idea of raising taxes on anyone. Progressives think nobody needs assault weapons? OK, well that’s debatable. What isn’t debatable is that nobody needs federally funded dancing robots. We’re running out of time to get the budget under control. Wake up people.

Share this post with your liberal friends and see how they respond to this government waste. I’m curious to hear their thoughts in the comments section…or have them send me an email at neil@libertyentrepreneur.com.

We’ve Entered The Twilight Zone On Gun Control

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Neil by Neil

The title says it all, doesn’t it? The gun control “debate” has reached a ridiculous point. If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch the Obama-Biden (Dumb and Dumber) gun control press conference, you can watch it below:

If watching that press conference doesn’t infuriate you, you aren’t awake yet. The references to “sportsmen and hunters” are designed to further convince people that the Second Amendment was made for “sport”. Unless you consider fighting a tyrannical government a “sport” (and I admire you if that’s really what you think), this perspective is entirely wrong. The Second Amendment was included by the Founders because they feared a government that had a monopoly on force – which is a necessary pre-condition for oppression and tyranny.

“But Neil, if the people tried to fight the government, they would lose for sure! How can shotguns compete against nukes?!” That argument has been repeated more times than I wish to remember. Shotguns would NEVER be fighting against nukes in any scenario. Let me explain: Imagine yourself as an FBI agent. If you were charged with arresting someone for dissent against the government (something you know is unconstitutional), you will be a lot more hesitant to carry out the order if you know there is a chance that you may get shot. After all, self-interest rules. Remember, Obama can’t enforce his laws alone – he needs a willing and able law enforcement body to help him. Giving law enforcement the possibility that they may be injured or killed when trying to unconstitutionally arrest people is part of the necessary “checks and balances” that maintain limited government power. The Founders set up a constitutionally limited government system but they weren’t too naive to know it couldn’t become perverted. Former Marine Joshua Boston did a great job explaining the situation to Piers Morgan (although for some reason, I don’t think Piers was convinced):

The fact that the American people are willingly giving up their right to bear arms is truly a sight to behold. The current administration and the mainstream media have made Americans afraid of inanimate objects – their own weapons. Think about it: if someone blamed plates or spoons for obesity, people would laugh. If someone called for banning cars because of drunk driving deaths, no one would take it seriously. But when people blame guns for mass killings, most people take it at face value and start nodding their heads. “Yea, we really need to do something about those guns! Who needs 20 assault weapons?!” It truly is the twilight zone.

The Founders, particularly Jefferson, understood that the government needs to fear its people for liberty to thrive. When government has a monopoly on force, they get arrogant and tyrannical, believing that “might makes right”. The attack on assault weapons recently should be fully expected from the government. They want Americans to be virtually unarmed so that the ability to resist ceases to exist. The unfortunate thing is that Americans are willingly giving up the right to defend themselves – a decision that has serious, far-reaching consequences, particularly with a rapidly approaching economic depression on the horizon.

The Danger Of The Nanny State

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Neil by Neil

We’ve all heard it before. You don’t want to do something but then your mom/teacher/some authority said you have to because “it’s for your own good”. The difference when government says you “have to do something” is that if you don’t, you get thrown in a cage or worse. But it’s OK since they are just trying to protect you from yourself, right?

There are tons of laws out there today on the federal, state, and local levels that are designed to protect you from yourself. For example:

1. The individual mandate to buy health insurance. And just because I can’t pass up an opportunity to call out President Obama on his hypocrisy, here is a video of Obama preaching against an individual healthcare mandate:

2. Banning assault weapons, possibly by executive order. Don’t believe me? Here it is from the horse’s mouth:

3. Banning soda in sizes larger than 16 ounces. Well, maybe this one is OK because it will help Chris Christie when he’s hanging out in NYC.

“It’s OK Chris, Mayor Bloomberg has a weight loss plan for you”. “Thanks Barack, I appreciate it.”

There are so many of these “nanny laws” out there that it’s getting ridiculous. Reason TV did their Nanny of the Year 2012 awards a couple weeks ago. Watch for yourself:

I have had a couple of personal business experiences with these “nanny state” policies. It’s story time folks.

Story 1 involves federal law: One of my past businesses was in the education industry. The company had the word “college” in it, which apparently set off an alarm at the Department of Education. Our lawyer alerted us that in order to open for business, we had to testify under threat of perjury that we were “not offering any accredited college courses or perpetrating to offer such courses”. One visit to our website could have answered the question for them but unfortunately, they didn’t think of that. The approval took two weeks to “process” and of course, there was a fee for the approval process. So much for supporting small businesses.

Story 2 involves Maryland state law: In 2010, a friend and I got an idea for a hookah lounge in College Park, Maryland – which is where the main campus for the University of Maryland is located. We had done some research on the number of people who smoke hookah and found that it was a rising trend that we wanted to take advantage of, especially since there was virtually no competition in the area. After some research however, we ran into a legal problem: Because of Maryland’s Clean Indoor Air Act (read the link for a great laugh), which banned smoking in bars and restaurants, we had our hands tied. We would only be allowed to open the lounge if we could maintain 70% of our revenue being from “tobacco-related sales”. This was a major problem because the business model for a hookah lounge is to draw people in with hookah as an attraction and have them spend money on drinks and food, since a bowl of hookah takes about two hours to smoke. There is a really small margin on the hookah itself and like bars, the real money is made on drinks. Now, I’m all for non-smoking restaurants and bars. Second-hand smoke sucks and violates the non-aggression principle, since someone who inhales second-hand smoke didn’t necessarily consent to it. However, if you are entering a hookah lounge, it’s pretty damn obvious that you’ll be inhaling second-hand smoke and that you’re giving your consent. Hell, I’ll put a label on the door warning people about second-hand smoke if I have to. Just another example of the government not letting people make their own decisions and face the consequences.

This might be dumb. But not as dumb as borrowing $16 trillion you can’t pay back.

You may be thinking “But isn’t it good that people won’t get hurt by their bad decisions? After all, if you like people suffering, you’re an evil ogre”. Yes, in a world where people faced the consequences of their decisions, bad decisions would cause harm to the people who make them. My question is, what’s wrong with that? The only way to know if a decision is “good” or “bad” is to judge the results. In a world without consequences, there is no incentive to make a good decision and no penalty for making a bad decision. It is the opposite of a free market. For example, with government healthcare, there is no financial penalty for eating unhealthy food and not exercising; the government will pay for the negative health effects that you face. Feedback (good or bad) is the only thing people have to judge the consequences of their actions and make changes for the better. People will always do dumb things and by robbing them of the consequences, government is also robbing them of the opportunity to improve their choices.

You simply can’t ban stupid. Plenty of things are stupid to do. Yes, smoking is stupid. But you know what else is stupid? Spending $16 trillion you don’t have.

An Entrepreneur’s Gameplan For The Liberty Movement

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Neil by Neil

Entrepreneurs are known for getting a lot accomplished without a lot of resources. If that doesn’t define the current needs of the liberty movement, I don’t know what does. As a movement, we have a lot of passion, but very few mainstream resources, like media talking-heads, politicians, or big money donors. Because of that, we need to play to our strengths and keep the momentum going. Without further ado, here is the LibertyEntrepreneur gameplan for pushing the movement forward:

Strength #1: Guns!

With all the debate about gun control going on these days, this is a point of great common ground with the much larger conservative movement. Conservatives have been really passionate about stopping any kind of gun control measures (which I applaud them for). The liberty movement is completely against gun control too, and more importantly, we fully understand why government should not have a monopoly on firearms. Using the gun control issue as a starting point, you can introduce them to libertarian brainwashing materials (otherwise known as Ron Paul videos). I even did the work for you and found a great gun control article by the Mises Institute that you can share with your conservative friends. Now you don’t have any excuses.

Ban spoons. Boom. I solved the obesity epidemic.

Strength #2: Libertarian Women

Now I know what you’re thinking. There are libertarian females? When did this happen? I’m not saying there are a ton of women in our movement but we need to take advantage of all the “resources” at our disposal.

If you don’t think these ladies help the Cowboys get a wider audience, you’re a damn fool.

If we’re going to become a real movement, we need as wide of an audience as we can get and if some statist coming across Libertarian Ann, Libertarian Girl, or Julie Borowski, is what it takes for that statist to learn something, then I’m all for that. In fact, Julie recently put together an awesome video about the lack of female libertarians, which you can watch below:

Strength #3: Great Personalities

If there is one thing that our movement has no shortage of, it’s interesting characters. There are almost too many to name. If you’ve ever read anything by Tom Woods or watched a video by Adam Kokesh, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Like him or not, Adam is an asset for the liberty movement.

We need to be smart with using this asset though. You don’t want to be sending your grandmother Adam’s profanity-filled videos, or maybe you do…if that’s how your grandma rolls. Just understand that different people will react to these personalities differently and you can use that to your advantage. With the variety of personalities in our movement, there’s something for everyone.

Strength #4: Grassroots Activism

We are the movement’s biggest asset. No other group (besides maybe Obama 08 – but even that is a bit of a stretch) can claim that they have supporters who are as devoted or as passionate as we are. Our supporters are the most educated, most well-informed group out there and we need to use that to our advantage. Because of our limited numbers, all of us need to get active in our communities. Unfortunately, too often we end up “preaching to the choir” and not really reaching a new audience with the message of liberty. There are lots of things you can do to spread the message. Start a Twitter account and engage with conservatives who haven’t made the leap to libertarianism. Start a blog and share posts with your friends. And yes, you might even have to talk to people face to face (can’t do everything behind a computer screen…yet).

Our Big Weakness: Celebrities

Unfortunately for us, most people are sheep and they are going to remain that way for the rest of their lives. These people learn what to eat from fad diets, learn what to wear from Kim Kardashian, and get their news from MSNBC, Fox, or CNN.

Sorry Kim.

They are also the same people who choose who to vote for based on who Snoop Dogg endorses. Well, in this country, these people have a vote that counts the same as yours (sorry if that doesn’t seem fair – it isn’t). For this reason, as painful as it is, we need to get these people into the movement too – if we want to win. The key to getting the sheep? Celebrities. It worked for Obama and it will definitely work for us. The Ron Paul 2012 campaign actually had a golden opportunity to get Snoop Dogg’s endorsement this time around but blew it. Dirty little secret: I contacted the campaign in 2011 about the celebrity strategy and was told they were waiting until the general election to implement it. General election? Hello, did they realize their candidate was Ron Paul? Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that the sheep are going to need some celebrity endorsements before getting behind the movement and we seriously lack celebrities…for now.

In the end, being an entrepreneur is all about being creative to achieve an objective. This movement has accomplished so much already in such a short period of time but we clearly have a long way to go. As you can probably tell, I’m so excited to see what the future holds for liberty and for this movement. The quote that keeps coming to mind is one that Ron Paul always uses: “No army can stop an idea whose time has come”. The time for liberty has come. Let’s make it happen.

Do you have ideas for bringing the liberty movement into the mainstream? Let me know in the comments below.

Entrepreneurship Is On The Rise – Here’s Why

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Neil by Neil

I’m really bullish on entrepreneurship in the United States these days. No, its not because of any Obama stimulus program. Once again, its because of the free market.

The closest thing we have to a “free market” in the US today is the Internet. Plain and simple. It moves far too fast for government to keep up with regulations and because of that, its relatively free of a lot of annoying speed bumps that brick-and-mortar businesses have to deal with. This isn’t to say that there aren’t regulations on the Internet, just way fewer than in other areas of business (for example finance or medicine). What’s amazing about the Internet and technology in general is that barriers to entry have been decreasing steadily, which has given rise to ever more entrepreneurs.

Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur and now venture capitalist did a great presentation last year about the State of Venture Capital. During part of his presentation he discusses the dramatic decrease in cost of starting a company that has the potential to be venture-backed. I recommend watching the entire presentation but the relevant slide is below:

As you can see, eleven years ago it was 1000x more expensive to start a venture-backed company. This dramatic cost decrease was the result of three stages – open source projects, cloud servers, and developers starting companies (reducing a huge overhead cost for startups). At $5,000, starting a possible venture-backed company is attainable for almost everyone. Students, middle class families, and even older Americans can now afford to start a company if they want. In the past, most people couldn’t put together $5 million to start a company, meaning they would have to pitch their idea to an investor, who would then agree to back them in exchange for a significant stake in the company – since the risk of failure was so high. Now, with the cost being only $5,000, a company can gain traction before raising investment capital, allowing them to get better terms and maintain control over the creative direction of the company – a much better situation for innovators and entrepreneurs. The impact that this reduced cost has cannot be overstated – it literally creates a whole new world of innovation. If this trend continues, it has huge potential for reducing poverty both in the US and around the world. As you can probably tell, I’m excited.

But how has this trend actually impacted the state of entrepreneurship in America? Entrepreneurial activity has skyrocketed in recent years, increasing 60% between 2010 and 2011 alone. The reduced cost is a huge reason for this. And as I’ve previously talked about, startups are responsible for almost all job growth in this country – so entrepreneurship increasing is the only way to reverse the current macro-economic situation. This trend will continue and start to penetrate other industries as well – especially education. In the past, universities and schools had a near monopoly on knowledge and educational resources. Today, thanks to technology and the Internet, information is so easily accessible and available that the institutions are becoming increasingly obsolete. A great example of this is the Khan Academy, which I urge you to at least explore to get a sense of what I’m talking about.

The lesson to take away from the trend in Internet startups is that fewer institutional barriers to entry is a great thing for everyone. Well…except for the institution (duh). Increasing access to information and reducing costs associated with being self-employed are going to be crucial to human progress moving forward. I’m so excited to see what the future brings. Look at all the technological progress we’ve been able to make with the institutions in place so just imagine what will happen when every human being on the planet has access to as much information as they want – without institutions controlling it. It’s going to be amazing and I can’t wait for that day to come.

Liberty Movement: Debating Issues is Pointless

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Neil by Neil

Lately, it seems like we’ve ¹ been fighting tons of individual issue battles, whether its gun control, the fiscal cliff, or healthcare. After what happened in Sandy Hook, its understandable that people are interested in preventing similar tragedies in the future. When it comes to the fiscal cliff and healthcare, everyone seems to have their own ideal solution. When it comes down to it, no one really knows what the right solutions are to solve any of these complex problems. Don’t get me wrong, its definitely possible that your particular solution is the right one. You just don’t have a way to prove it – especially with all of the emotions involved.

With all of these individual battles going on, we’ve lost sight of the larger war – getting people to believe in individual freedom and individual rights. Our movement has always been about the individual versus the state. I’m going to go ahead and quote Uncle Drew ²: “These guys don’t practice the fundamentals anymore”. The fundamentals of our movement start and end with individual rights and we’re not conveying that to people the right way.

If you’ve ever tried to convert someone to the libertarian philosophy, you’ve probably tried various arguments to get them to see things your way. In my (and others – including Stefan Molyneux and Adam Kokesh) experience, the non-aggression principle is the path of least resistance. There are very few people that have morals so degraded that they believe in explicitly performing an act of aggression against someone who hasn’t done a thing to them. You can argue that most do this everyday when they continue to support the state but I think that gives them too much credit. Think about it: with so many external factors promoting their blindness – whether its TV, celebrities, sports, pompous speeches by the “coolest President ever“- its a wonder that anyone “wakes up” to the true nature of our society. When you explicitly call out the hypocrisy of our society – that everything government does is compelled by aggression – it can serve as a powerful wake up call. Most people don’t realize the simple fact that any money a government has, at one point or another, was taken by force from an individual.

This isn’t to say you’re not going to encounter people who say that its OK for the government to use force to control society and that it’s for the greater good. Those aren’t the people we’re trying to convince yet. We can first build our numbers by simply getting people to recognize that government is force. You can be sure that people will react less emotionally to this argument than to any individual issue argument (as you know if you’ve talked about gun control with anyone in the last few weeks). Lets get back to the fundamentals and use the moral argument to bring more people into the fold.

Remember, the solution to our problems is for each of us to do everything we can to spread the message of liberty. Even if you only wake up one person, thats better than nothing!

Have you had success “converting” people to the liberty movement? Tell us how in the comments below.

Notes:

When I say “we” I’m talking about us liberty-minded folks (if you’re one of those people that has a vendetta against the pronoun “we” because its collectivist – you’re on the wrong site) ↩
If you haven’t watched the Pepsi MAX & Kyrie Irving’s Uncle Drew video, you need to. ↩

Gun Control Is A Dangerous Myth

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Neil by Neil

I want to start this post by saying rest in peace to the victims of Sandy Hook, Aurora, and any of the other numerous shootings that have taken place in the past. I can’t even imagine the pain felt by the families. It’s heartbreaking.

There is a very dangerous myth being thrown around these days. Everywhere you look – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or the mainstream media – people are talking about increased legislation to control guns. This sounds logical right? Guns were used in all of these mass shootings and it is obvious that no one wants to repeat these incidents in the future. But they are not asking the right questions. Lets ignore the moral argument on gun control for a moment (that one is too obvious to address here) and look at its track record.

A recent example is the United Kingdom, where due to the Dunblane massacre, “a campaign was launched for tighter gun controls and in 1997 it was granted making it illegal to buy or possess a handgun in the UK.” So did gun violence go down in the UK after banning handguns? Nope. Predictably, gun violence actually increased. What’s astounding is how much gun violence increased. Between 1998 and last year, gun crime INCREASED by 89% in England and Wales. With a track record like that, you would have to be insane to call for gun control.

Are citizens with guns dangerous? Not at all. In fact, gun owners are responsible for PREVENTING the types of tragedies that we’ve witnessed recently. This has happened a couple times in the past week alone. For example, Nick Meli, a citizen in Portland utilizing concealed carry, was able to stop a massacre at a mall last week. Nick Meli should deservingly be recognized as a hero by President Obama – but I’m not holding my breath. Another example is an attempted movie theater shooting in San Antonio where an off-duty sheriff was able to subdue the attacker with a single shot. We’ll never know how many lives were saved by these gun owners but the fact of the matter is that they are heroes. The right to bear arms has simply saved countless lives throughout the history of our nation. Criminals will always be able to get their hands on weapons as long as they exist and taking them out of the hands of responsible gun owners will only enable them to act that much more effectively.

If you look at oppressed populations around the world throughout history, whether its in Syria, China, Turkey, or the Soviet Union, it’s obvious that governments want their citizens unarmed. It makes them much easier to control and dominate. To quote Dr. Dre – “Who’s the man with the master plan? A n**** with a muthaf***in gun”. When government has all the guns, it becomes easy to dominate the population. Never give up your guns. Never.

Get Congress on the $1 Salary NOW!

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Neil by Neil

In the real world, when a company isn’t performing and/or losing money, the management team is accountable to the stockholders. In order to show the stockholders that they are working hard and willing to make sacrifices to get things back on track, management often takes a pay cut, sometimes even eliminating their own salaries. Here is a small list of prominent CEOs who have taken a $1 salary in recent years:

Steve Jobs (Apple)
Vikram Pandit (Citigroup)
Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt (Google)
Jerry Yang (Yahoo)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

If this guy can take a $1/year salary, so can Congress

This is incredibly relevant to any discussion about the deficit, spending, and government. US citizens are essentially stockholders in the US government and with a 10% approval rating for Congress, its obvious that we are not happy. And with Congress (on both sides of the aisle) calling for Americans to make sacrifices, whether its entitlement reform or higher taxes, its time for us to force Congress to make sacrifices as well. Congressional base salaries are $174,000 per year! That doesn’t even include the $1.7M-$2.8M additional funding each gets to hire their staff. What’s the total bill for Congress and staff salaries? Almost $1.3 BILLION each year. Absolutely absurd.

If Congress is going to freeze federal employee pay (thus ending inflation adjustment), they need to be willing to lower their salaries. If it were up to me, they wouldn’t get a salary (maybe $1/year for symbolic reasons) but for the sake of argument, lets say they got a housing and food stipend. I’m not talking about anything extravagant either. If they want the taxpayers to pay for their housing, they can live like college freshmen: 2 to a room (yes they will have a Congressional roommate – making the infamous sex scandals a little more difficult) and a food stipend limited to $100/week. If they want to spend their own money, they can live wherever and eat whatever they want. But if they want to spend MY money, they are going to be living frugally. Being in Congress is not about making money; its about serving the people. If they want to make money, there is a mechanism in place for that. Its a wonderful thing called the free market but judging by most Representatives actions, they’ve never heard of it.

Its time to bring back the term “public servant” and remind Congress that they are working FOR US, not themselves.

Politics is Like High School…And It Sucks

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Neil by Neil

Unfortunately for people living in democracies, laws are made by people who win popularity contests. And if you went to high school, you know that the most popular people, more often than not, are not the brightest crayons in the box.

In high school, the brainiac who knows all the right answers but may not have the best social skills is ostracized. People don’t like to feel inferior or dumb and enjoy hanging out with people who may not be as intelligent but possess good social skills and can make them feel good about themselves.

The problem, is that these popular kids (aka politicians), are incredibly incompetent at solving the HUGE problems that face us today. Its OK to have a pretty face and be a smooth talker when times are good, but in times of crisis, you need problem solvers; people who aren’t afraid to work hard and get their hands dirty. We need the geeks and nerds.

This guy might save us all.

Sadly for us, even though “geeks” and “nerds” could solve all our problems and then some, politics will continue to be a popularity contest and because of that, never lead to ideal solutions. The only way to stop this vicious cycle of voting for incompetent individuals and then expecting them to solve monumental problems is to reduce the size of government dramatically. That way, you give the idiots less power to screw things up and let the smart people solve the real problems using the free market. The way forward starts with individual rights and scaling back the forced coercion that defines government.

America, if you follow my advice, we can have more people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and fewer people like George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And that, I’m sure we can all agree, is a good thing.