If you want to win a chess match, you have to play chess, not lecture the other players

By David McElroy · June 6, 2011

If changing the world were about winning debates, libertarians would have brought freedom to the masses long ago. The vast majority of libertarians I know are scary smart and can make convincing and rational arguments for their positions. The only problem is that changing the world has little to do with winning debates.

I have to confess that it’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut when someone makes what seems like a ridiculous argument. My natural instinct is to point out the flaws in an argument and to lay out the facts and logic from my point of view. I have to confess that this approach has never changed the mind of a single person I know. What’s worse, reacting in my natural way has made me look like a jerk a time or two. Or three. Well, OK. Way more than that.

Dale Carnegie famously said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” In other words, even if you’re able to logically prove a point — and get someone else to admit that your logic is correct along the way — the typical person isn’t going to change what he believes in his heart. That’s a lesson that’s hard for hard-headed libertarians to learn.

Those of us who want to change the world have to quit trying to argue people into seeing things our way. They’re not going to suddenly see the “brilliance” of our positions and thank us for showing them the error of their ways. Instead, they’re going to resent the arrogant people who think they know everything. (Too many times, that would be us.)

Changing the world is more like a chess game than a debate. It doesn’t matter who’s right. It only matters how skillfully the players play the game. If we want to create free zones in the world, it’s up to use to creatively find ways to do it, not to berate our neighbors for their unwillingness to see the world as we do. If you try to win a chess match by lecturing your opponent, you’re going to look like a fool and you’re going to lose the game.

Libertarians are losing the game today, because we don’t understand the game we’re playing. We have to quit trying to talk people into agreeing with us. We have to instead find those who agree with us and find ways to implement new ideas to prove that our ideas work.

Some people are trying to do that. Patri Friedman and the folks at the Seasteading Institute are taking one approach. It might work. It might not. But they’re doing something instead of waiting around for permission from other people. The same is true for those who are trying to promote and start “free cities,” which I’ve mentioned before. Michael Strong is the most passionate advocate I know for free cities. Watch his 18-minute opening address to a recent conference about free cities. It’s not pie in the sky. It’s something real that smart and passionate people are working to actually try.

We’re not going to change the world by winning debates. We are going to change the world by building floating seasteads and free cities based on new rules and by doing things that I haven’t even thought of yet.

There are thousands and thousands of really smart libertarians. More and more of us need to quit arguing with others to prove our brilliance and start coming up with original ideas for building a new world. I’m putting my lecturing days behind me and I’m learning to play chess. I think it’s a way that we can win in the long run.

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In the coming months and years, we’re going to need inventive and productive people pursuing things that matter. We’re going to need smart and self-directed men and women who will find ideas and create enterprises that will help bypass the political class and build a new and better society. But everything I see in media right now seems geared toward telling people how to entertain and amuse themselves. The stories are full of advice about what to binge on Netflix and what games you should be playing while you’re stuck at home. We desperately need to ignore this advice and be looking toward building new futures instead. Being passive consumers got us where we are today. It’s time that we reclaim our former role — the one that made this country wealthy — as productive and free people who build far more than we consume. This could be a great opportunity for those who will take it. Turn off Netflix. Put down the video game controller. We need new ideas, new achievements, new goals — not more coach potatoes. This is the time to be thinking and creating and planning for the future that you and I both want.

The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault — and the source of many other failings in me — is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently as 10 years ago, I would have dismissed it as a small failing that showed up only every now and then, but I now see it as the wellspring from which my other sins are born. It’s such an insidious belief — and one that can look on the surface like a reasonable desire to be good and right — that it’s hard to acknowledge it as the inner cancer it is. But until I understood this, it was always going to be impossible for me to get over my deep shame about my imperfection or to accept the love of another person, because she is bound to be flawed, too.

If it’s not yet spring where you are, you can at least enjoy 60 seconds of spring in the South with me. This was just outside my office late Thursday afternoon. Don’t you need a relaxing break today? See it on YouTube by clicking here.

It pays to be nice to the employees at Walmart — and everywhere else, for that matter. I was just in Walmart to buy some kitty litter when one of the employees called me over with a conspiratorial tone: “Hey, David, do you need some toilet paper?” she almost whispered. She had found a giant package hidden somewhere and she said she had been saving it for someone she really liked. So I’m the proud new owner of 24 additional mega rolls of toilet paper, which are worth something like $748 on the black market. On a more serious note, be good to people when you have a chance, as this employee was for me. And remember that people remember the way you treat them. I wouldn’t have treated this woman and her co-workers a bit differently in the past if I’d known she would someday do me this small favor, but there are benefits to treating people well, even if that’s not your purpose. Be good to each other.

My neighbor Cora — a retired teacher — called me while I was driving to the office earlier today to remind me that she wants to take me out to dinner sometime. We’ve talked about going out together, but we’ve never gotten around to coordinating a time. As she was about to get off the phone, she said, “I love you. You’re such a good neighbor!” And I told her that I loved her, too. I wonder how upset the racists of the unquestioned Jim Crow world — only about six decades ago — would have been that a white man and his elderly black neighbor care abut each other in such a way. There’s still a lot wrong with racial attitudes in the world today, but small things such as this remind me that we’ve come a long way.

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