July 17, 2015
How to get ‘pragmatic’ statists to pause and reflect on the actual worth of political programs.
Our last message talked about how you can use the Enforcement Question to move people in your direction. This message will talk about how you can use the Check Writing Question, a powerful tool that causes people to reassess the value of political programs. This is how we do it in our drug prohibition campaign…
Would you write a voluntary check to pay for drug prohibition?
It’s easy to say you’re for or against something when you really have no choice in the matter. But what if you did have a choice? What if the costs of enforcing drug prohibition were no longer hidden from you in your tax withholding? What if, instead, you had to make a voluntary decision each month to either…
- Write a check to pay for drug prohibition? Or…
- Keep that money to use for some other purpose or cause you value more?
What would you really do if you were no longer forced to fund drug prohibition?
Do you like our Check Writing Question? If so, please use it. You can start doing that right now…
- Go to this page on our site — use the slider to register your opinion about this question.
- Sign the drug prohibition petition if you haven’t done so already.
- Use our social networking tools to share the drug prohibition Check Writing Question on on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
- Please also consider making a contribution so we can spread these arguments to more people. We’ll send you one of our Zero Aggression Principle bumper stickers.
- Thank you, in advance, for participating in our work.
ZAP The State and have a nice day,
Perry Willis & Jim Babka
Co-creators, the Zero Aggression Project
Both the “Enforcement” question and “Check Writing” are effective, but I feel many statists would reply “Sure, I would personally do the enforcement, or check writing”. People tend to commit to positions that they though know they will NEVER face. To give an extreme example, a man might say “if I ever got pregnant, I would NEVER have an abortion”. Obviously it is extremely easy for a man to commit to a position like that, and he would never be faced with having to back off that position. Again, I think both questions are effective, and am definitely going to use them to help persuade people around to have a different perspective. Thanks.
Author
We agree Dennis. No argument is going to reach everyone. Our goal is more modest than that.
We want to move people in our direction where possible, and where that isn’t possible, perhaps we can at least make them a bit more uncomfortable with their stance going forward. Such discomfort can sometimes lead to more substantial change at a later date, especially after we’re no longer around. Conversations tend to be reactive. But reflective thought may happen later, after the conversation ends.
Reflective thought may also be more likely when you’re sharing these ideas through the Internet. People tend to be slightly less reactive when they’re reading things than they are when they’re talking to another person.