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Why Liberty Doesn’t Appeal to Some People

Why Liberty Doesn’t Appeal to Some People


Published in Communicating Liberty - 3 mins - Jun 06
People are fickle, and anyone who has ever worked sales can tell you that without batting an eye. In direct sales, you are sometimes allowed to do special promotions to push a certain product or even give out free samples. The free samples come with by far the funniest situations according to my own experiences and that of other peers of mine. It comes down to if you can understand why someone would refuse a free sample of gummy bears, for example, you’ll understand why some people either aren’t fans of individual liberty and economic freedom in general. Gummy bears are pretty much universally loved by all people, and unlike its more popular candy cousin chocolate, most the world also isn’t allergic to it so that’s a plus too. On a late Friday night at my local mall, the place is packed, and that is the best time to go directly to customers with those free gummy bear samples. Now, imagine you start offering those things to everyone that comes by, then here you are literally giving out free samples of a new gummy bear flavor (this is a candy shop if you haven’t figured it out yet) and they don’t have to do anything other than taking it, they can even take two samples if they want. With most people, the samples will be a hit, but some folks will just either ignore you entirely or let you pitch them and then decide for some random reason they don’t want it. You might think getting everyone to take a free sample of gummy bears would be the easiest thing to do, but there are those random people who just don’t take advantage of a good situation when they see it. Libertarian solutions aren’t as easy to digest as a free gummy bear sample, but the example of the people who just don’t take it still applies. Libertarian solutions don’t require force, theft, or coercion, they just require individual responsibility. You distill it down to that basic understanding and on a surface level, people will probably agree with you, but there will always be those that don’t, and honestly, you can’t do anything about those folks. Most people who just can’t even agree with libertarian philosophy at a basic level usually latch onto three camps- they don’t want any responsibility, they think little of humanity itself, or they are so wrapped up in a partisan battle flag, they won’t even let you try to convince them. Whether you’re going business to business selling bags of makeup or selling religion to sinners on a city street, you need to understand that no is just another word for go, you can’t make people who don’t want to listen to you listen, so don’t get caught up on them and instead focus on general conversations with those who will.

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