April 27, 2015
A personal message from Jim Babka and Perry Willis, Co-Founders of Downsize DC and Co-Creators of the Zero Aggression Project
We’re introducing the Zero Aggression Project (3.0) by telling you a story-in-reverse. So far we’ve…
- Explained why the Zero Aggression Principle is a superior way to recruit new libertarians
- Taken a tour of a Zero Aggression society
- Showed you the final stages of how that society was created
- Described what happens when the Zero Aggression Principle achieves universal visibility
Also, at the end of our last episode, we asked how that universal visibility could be funded. We answer that question in today’s…
Episode #4:
Universal visibility seemed a long way off back in 2015. After all, on April 7 of that year Paul Krugman wrote an article arguing that libertarians were of no importance because basically there are none.
If Krugman was right, then surely there wouldn’t be enough people to fund universal visibility for the Zero Aggression Principle any time soon. But…
You remember how the polling guru Nate Silver rebutted Krugman two days later on April 9, 2015..
Silver started his refutation by admitting than only 11% of Americans self-describe as libertarians. That’s clearly not enough to elect a President, but then you did the math…
11% amounts to a whopping 33 million Americans!
You immediately recognized that even a tiny subset of that number would be enough to fund universal visibility.
But nate Silver had dug deeper…
Many more than 11% of Americans took issue positions, in 2015, that were consistent with a libertarian worldview. Silver used support or opposition to gay marriage and income distribution to arrive at this breakdown…
- Left (liberal) — 34%
- Right (conservative) — 28%
- Libertarian — 22%
- Hardhat (populist?) — 20%
You ran the numbers again — by this measure the number of libertarians in America would amount to 66 million people!
You then recalled how a previous study by Reason magazine had arrived at a similar conclusion back in 2011. They had arrived at the following breakdown…
- Left (liberal) — 28%
- Right (conservative) — 28%
- Libertarian — 24%
- Communitarian (populist?) — 20%
By that measure the number of libertarians in America would amount to 72 million people!
Any way you looked at it, there were more than enough libertarians and proto-libertarians to fund universal visibility, if only they could be recruited to do so.
Then you remembered the plan Jim Babka and Perry Willis had devised for achieving this.
And that will be the subject of the next installment of our story-in-reverse. In the meantime…
If you’re not already a member of the ZAP Founders Committee please consider joining before it closes on April 30th.
Founders will be immortalized on the ZAP website.
You’ll be able to say, “I was in on the ground floor of the Zero Aggression movement.”
- Become a Founder by donating here. Or…
- If you’re already a member, raise your current listing on the roster by donating more (the names are ranked by size, cumulative)
You can take a quick tour of the new ZAP site when you visit the contribution form. Some sections are already open, and some are behind a curtain, to be unveiled after we finish our “story-in-reverse.”
Please stay tuned for the next installment of that story. And…
If you have libertarian friends who might be interested in ZAP, please forward this to them.
With high hopes for the future,
Jim Babka & Perry Willis
Co-creators, the Zero Aggression Project