 We're going to do a little bit of a different sort of talk this year than what we've given the last few years in the past. We've kind of mainly focused on writing for the Mises wire, which we still always encourage our Mises you alums to do. And Ryan will go in a little bit deeper on exactly what we're looking for in terms of writing production. But we're also going to talk more broadly about other ways to apply the ideas that you learn from Mises you, you know, out in the real world. I mean, I think one of the great things about Mises you is that we don't only attract people looking to become economic scholars, but from people from all different backgrounds with different interests to different skill sets. And so we're just going to kind of touch upon some of our own experiences and ways that we can kind of utilize what we have learned this past week out to make a more freer and prosperous world. So that being said, I'll let Ryan talk a little bit about the website and some of his background as a Mises you alum himself. I like how we use the term real world as basically the opposite of academia. I guess that's a slight insult to only professional academics. Real world and clown world. Yeah, that's right. So I guess we'll just cover as kind of a preface the whole writing thing. So I am the editor of Mises.org and so if you do find yourself wanting to write anything for it, you should just send it directly to me. Don't go through the whole like form that they've gone there somewhere on the side or you click on it and they have to fill in a form and says just send it to me. I want to send it to RW McMacon at Mises is which is derived from my name, which is Ryan at Mises. My middle initials W so RW McMacon at Mises.org is where you would send any submissions that you would wish to have evaluated for use on Mises.org. And I will send you back a critique if I don't if I don't think it's publishable. I spent many years grading papers. So I do have a sense of how to tell you what you can do to improve your submission. So I unless I just think there's no way to fix it to run. And then I'll just send you know I don't think it's a good fit for Mises or maybe next time. But in a lot of cases I do want to I want to cultivate writers right I want people who maybe start out. Maybe start out not as great. But within a few tries they become regular contributors and that has happened. We've got some people now regularly submit articles and at the beginning they weren't that good. But they're good now. And I like that. So again, I do not take criticism as a bad thing. The entire goal is to try to make you improve as a writer. So you became a becoming more useful asset for the Institute and helping us spread the ideas that we all care. That's really all you need to know is just send it to me and I'll let you know how what you need to do with it to get it published. But definitely please read the article guidelines for submission and that sort of thing. So you have a sense of how long it should be and how you should submit it and just the format and so on. Right. People send me PDFs and then I have to like if I want to edit it I got asked for a different format and all of that stuff. And that just annoys me and adds time to the day and not that that would prevent you from getting published. Just be nice. So just follow the rules. So anywhere in my bio it says read this first. If you want to submit an article just go to my bio. Again, my name is Ryan McMacon and it will tell you then how to do that. So that's really that's it. That's it on writing. And there's some lessons that you can take away from the Liberty Pitch competition. Right. You understand your audience that you're writing for. You know, we've got an, you know, a form town lay audience more than the pure purely academic audience understand your own limitations. Right. A lot of people in this room are not going to be able to completely design some brilliant unique insight into economic theory. But there's all sorts of ways where we can build upon the shoulders of those that have come before us to apply economic theory in the real world in ways that can be educational. So again, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just, you know, you can use quotes from Mises and Rothbard and then Joe Salerno and find little things that are going on in the news cycle and your community. If there's an area that of research or, or, you know, if you're an undergrad and engineering and you see some sort of interesting application that touches on Austrian concepts. These are things to build on. Because again, you don't have to reinvent the wheel and turn out a treatise to provide some really valuable information on how we should better, better see the world. Yeah, what I do is Mises Weyer, which is not the quarterly journal of Austrian economics. You send that to Joe Salerno or maybe Mark Thornton, and then they'll do that for you. That'll be your world changing long article. My stuff's like stuff that would go to newspaper, except better. Stuff that runs in newspapers. It's usually too simple. We have a fairly sophisticated audience. So it's something you would send to like your local courier telegraph or whatever probably isn't appropriate for the site, although I would encourage you write those things too. But just read a lot of the site and get a sense of what we like and what's run and who's an imagine in your head who's reading it. And then you can do that. But I would ask you this though, what if what if writing isn't something someone likes doing writing isn't for everybody of course so what else should someone consider doing. It was all sorts of ways. One, you know, given that we are living in the internet age, I think memes are a great way of transmitting these ideas. This is something that I personally enjoyed over the last two years. I've written an article on why Mises would understand mean magic. The idea being that, you know, if we understand the power of ideas within a society, you know, memes are a language of transmitting ideas using images and humor and formatting. You know, it's, if you talk to a lot of international libertarians, it's always interesting how often you'll turn up on someone whose first introduction to libertarianism was actually a meme. So again, you don't have to write an 800 word article if you've got a sense of humor and, you know, basic operations of Photoshop. You know, you can be a part of the ideological battle in that way. There's other ways of just being in your community. You know, being a someone that people in your community look for that I respect their opinion, your opinion. I think one thing that Ryan and I have talked about it this week, but the one piece of advice I'd give every single libertarian who's interested in actually making a difference. We talk about decentralization and thinking locally all the time. It also applies to local history. If anyone in this room goes back home and reads 10 hours worth of local history, right, you don't have to do all in one day, you know, you could take two weeks doing this. Find your local library. There's usually some interesting stuff. All of a sudden you're a local history guy. And if you're 22 years old, using Facebook to talk about interesting gyms that have happened in the history of your community, then other people, business leaders, if you can run your social networks appropriately, people value people that have interest in where they're living. I think older people particularly like to see that from young people. So, you know, by spending a little bit of time, you know, taking our appreciation for economic history for the roles that ideas play and shaping the world that we live in. You're applying some of these lenses in a very micro level to your own community. Talking about that is a way of not only, you know, expanding your own knowledge about where you were, you know, where you come from, but a way of building kind of social capital amongst people because it's being able to find, you know, professionals in your community that respect you as an individual is one of the best ways of getting them to respect the ideas that you hold. Because the people matter when it comes to the war of ideas or simply being right, you know, only goes so far if people don't respect you as an individual talking about it. So, let's say, though, I am, I'm 24 years old, I just finished a master's degree and something, or I'm 22 years old and I just finished my bachelor's degree. So I don't want to go on to my back on my master, I don't want to get my PhD, or I got my bachelor's, I don't want to get a master's. What should I do now? What could I do that's a value? Are you saying that I should go back to my local community and become involved there somehow? I'll say it is not the worst case scenario. You know, you're being a professional, no matter where you end up, being a professional, being someone within your community that whether it's your hometown or a new town, that you're now living in after college, being successful is one of the best ways of being an effective communicator of these ideas. A few years ago, Jeff Dice gave a talk in San Diego where he talked about this. You know, if we as libertarians be one improved unit, you're building off of some of Harry Brown's work, you know, that's one of the most effective ways of fighting this battle for ideas. Because we as individuals, our own accomplishments do matter in all of this. So are you saying that being an unemployed ex-con living in a trailer is perhaps not the most effective way to not enhance your social capital and make you someone that people look for, you know, look for advice when it comes to Austrian business cycle theory. Or people are more willing to listen to a successful business owner than to someone who lives under a bridge. I think most people, yes. That's an interesting point of view, because most libertarians I've talked to seem to relish being as poor as humanly possible. Yes. You know, a lot of people that they would prefer and I think that what it comes to how we manage our social connections, this is really important, right. There are a lot of libertarian activists in the world that their entire sense of self worth seems to be grounded in the way that they are viewed within this libertarian social media community. And I find this very toxic, right, because then it becomes about purity test, it becomes about, you know, are you poking the wrong, the right people for this for your in group thing. You know, we are obviously, you know, just what everyone here is younger than I am, but you know, we have been raised in a internet culture where your social networks have been a big part of our life. There's value in that, but we shouldn't isolate ourselves to a libertarian ghetto. Again, the people around you, your family members, your work, your colleagues, you know, those people have a lot more importance on your day to day life than your reputation within libertarian social media Inc. Right. I mean, I see far too often people get wrapped up into that drama when, you know, this doesn't matter to most people. And at the end of the day, these ideas matter because not just simply because they're pure libertarian spectrums because they are important in the world that we live in. So we shouldn't get distracted by that we should be looking for ways of actually making a difference on a day to day basis in the communities that we live in. So this is something that's changed in my thinking over the years. I know that I'm not sure it's been entirely constructive for a lot of people especially involved kind of in the more hardcore anarcho capitalist group to really emphasize that it's a bad thing to become involved in local politics or that it's a bad thing to ever vote. I was more like that and then I got older and then the state where I live in Colorado, switched over to mail-in ballots almost entirely, and they kept sending me ballots. And I would open it and it would say vote yes or no do you want this tax to be increased. And I thought, well, shouldn't I vote no on this and send it back in. So I started doing that. So then they got me. So then I started voting again. Mostly to just vote down tax increases, right. And then I started realizing that some of these people running for office were especially horrible. So I thought I should at least vote against this person. So the next thing I know I'm like voting for state legislature people and all of that stuff. But then I realized would really be the end of the world if we started having some people in the state legislature who aren't just the worst human beings imaginable. And so, so now I actually participate in that stuff. And I don't think it was the worst decision ever. I think it's okay to know what your county commission is doing. Also, I think one of the the good things that happened out of this whole lockdown stay at home order thing is that people realized that it matters who's on your city council and who's on your county government and who's your sheriff and who's in the state legislature because in my state, if you just had a few more people in the state legislature actually thought maybe there was something wrong with the whole stay at home or to lock down system. They might have been able to force a vote a resolution that might have brought the emergency period to an end. If you had just a few more people in county commissioners who weren't totally bonkers on this issue, they might have been able to prevent some lockdown orders and that sort of thing. And it's not a lot like all of these people are want to be, I don't know, Condoleezza Rices or Hillary Clinton's of the world a lot of these are just part time people who aren't particularly even that interested in politics they just kind of ended up on the city council because somebody encouraged them to do it. A lot of the time it's just completely part time, and it doesn't pay much in many cases. But I want to say it's okay to probably maybe try and get some of the less bad people in these positions, especially if the next time something like this happens that maybe will be better prepared and realize that the next time you vote for governor. It's not just something about Oh, you know governor so boring, right, they, it's just a matter of like school funding or some issue having to do with where are we going to put a new county road or something like that. Now, we all recognize that who's your governor is you're basically voting on who's going to be the next dictator if there's some sort of health emergency. And will this person completely destroy your life by closing your business. That sort of thing strikes me as fairly important sort of thing we would want to pay attention to. And you can certainly have a lot more say over those those sorts of things if you're actually paying attention, and also not living under a bridge. And then share some particular we've seen, you know all sorts of very interesting trends throughout the country, often focus on enforcement of gun control laws. I know in Washington State, you had this major cultural clash between, you know, what's happening on in the big cities relative to the more rural areas we had a lot of sheriffs in eastern Washington State that said that you know they refuse to enforce a lot of these gun control laws that are being pushed by the state government that's far more progressive than the people in their communities. This is an example of nullification within a state you're focusing on local government, you know, really comply an important role and, and again that's decentralized political effort, push back against a lot of this stuff. Also, schools, school boards is one area where you can have influence on getting things in the curriculum. You know, you can if you're able to get economics in one lesson in the hands of 300 students in your county. And the Mises Institute is have thanks to our donors is making economics in one lesson available for free. And you can sign up for that Mises dot org slash one lesson. Our entire purpose is to try to send people throughout the country throughout the world, free copies of economics in one lesson to hand out. A lot of these areas, a lot of school curriculums, the way that teach economics is no better than they do in universities. And but there's a lot, especially in conservative areas right now where people are kind of waking up to my God, you know, look at the products of the education system that we have. These are now the people tearing down statues. You're seeing a lot of conversation at that grassroots level on exactly what are we teaching our kids. It's a great opportunity for those that provide alternative solutions and the Institute, you know, we've got economics in one lesson. We have Bob Murphy's textbook lessons for the young economists that I think is a remarkable book, particularly if any of you know anyone's homeschooling now with these trends going on. Bob Murphy's economics or lessons of young economists free. There's a teacher's guide online. I think that's a great resource. And that's, you know, it requires though talking to people in your community that are outside of libertarian social networks and kind of making that difference there. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more. I mean this really is the issue of right you don't want, you don't want to be an academic you don't like writing particularly so you don't spend all your day writing stuff on a, for a website. It saves you the grief of being told what an idiot you are all the time, but things out there and public to read and so on. And that can be particularly disturbing if you're young. I mean, I'm old. I've been married for 20 years I got four kids so when some like in cell from somebody's basement tells me, you know what a stupid sell out I am. Possibly care less, but I know that everybody wants to open themselves up to that sort of thing. And so it's okay to have a family and influence people just in interpersonal relations so just like a lot of what you're talking about right. You can form your own opinions become an educated person and just be a person in the community who tells me things when it comes up in conversation. I can think of many cases where just one or two comments from a person who wasn't any sort of famous person or writer or something impacted me deeply. In many cases, it was just one or two things they said I didn't even necessarily know this person that well, but just the fact that this person had some opinions and it was a person I respected. And that's the thing I think that so much of it comes down to we're not really building up our ideologies from the ground up right at some point. We need to trust other knowledgeable people and their opinions, because if you get cancer, right, and I know you're, you might research it somewhat so you're somewhat educated, but you probably don't have the time and the background to just completely rebuild oncology from nothing in order to come to your, your opinion about what is correct in this time you, you got to find someone whose opinion you find respectable and just kind of wing it from there that's what we're all doing, really when it comes to ideology and our view of history and everything your religious views in many cases just got to find the people whose opinions you think are reliable and valuable, and you can be that person. At some point, you can just be. Hey, I know this guy and he he he owns an insurance firm, nothing sexy, right, but I respect him and he has these views about economics or something which I think I think it holds a lot of water and and that could actually really affect a bunch of people, not to mention that of course obviously if you have children. You can affect their opinions and ideology I know that. I know a lot of grown people who are always telling me, usually baby boomers I guess who are telling me that their children are terrible now and have all become communists and that sort of thing. I don't know does that mean the parents are total fairs maybe things would have been way worse if their parents had had and tried to impute to them some more sensible values. So I don't know, but I do think there's value to being a parent and trying to pass on your values to your children. And that's how the world is that does things one person at a time, I meet so many and I don't meet them either in many emails from them or they comment on Mises.org and so on, where and it's usually older people who have just kind of given up, I guess, and the, and this is at the heart of what the Mises Institute does. Mises Institute is here to try and build an ideology to change people's views to get people to see the world in a certain way to change their views of history to get people thinking in a certain way and then pass those values down. This is how schools of thought are built is how ideologies are built. These are the building blocks of civilization. And the way it works in terms of when you look out in the world and there are certain ideologies that control the world right now. Those ideologies came from a specific place and specific thinkers from people who wrote books from who taught children and all that sort of stuff. The people who control that right now had a very long term plan in place. I mean they worked for decades to put themselves in positions in academia to write books to make movies to write literature. And they all did it reflecting a certain point of view that now dominates, but I hear so often from people are probably now in their 60s and 70s and so on. Well, I tried for 20 years to turn everyone into a laissez-faire free market liberal and it didn't work. So obviously this whole changing minds thing is garbage and I give up and I'm moving to the middle of nowhere now and I'm just not even going to talk to anyone anymore. It was a failure. And a leftist of course would be like, well, we've been working on this project for 200 years and it's, you know, keep going if it takes another 800 years to accomplish our goal we're going to do it. And we're never going to give up and we're going to keep writing movies and keep writing books. Meanwhile, the right wingers like I tried for a few years and I failed so I give up. And you see that like all over the place they they don't understand how ideological change works they expect instant success. And they want everything to go their way, or that's it forget about it. And if that's our attitude, it is never going to work. I'll just give up now I don't even bother if you're you have a 20 year time horizon. If you're really lucky, when you're 90, you might be able to see some good success there. And that's the knocky in view that's the Rockwellian view to refer to Lou to the view of these guys in the 30s he thought we need to change minds got a long way to go and we got to build it from the ground up. And of course if I've mentioned in my talk we already got 200 years of a great ideology it's called liberalism, and they've said a lot of great things but we, and that was the most popular ideology in the 19th century. It's not like this ideology could never be popular. Change the world in a huge way and a lot of the benefits we live with now in terms of vibrant economies and what we've got left of private property and respect for it is still exist to some extent. And I thank all those people who worked hard in the 19th century to make that happen. But they did their best and fell out of favor with a lot of people, but that doesn't mean just stopped and it can never be regained. And I mean, if we if we believe that that's pointless and there's no point to coming to the music to reading the website or doing anything just give up now forget about it. And I don't know consume things and eat a lot of food and just avoid death until you die in your bed decades from now. The sound of Trump inspiring. Yeah. Right. Another thing is that, you know, I think one of the reasons the left has had so much success is that we've seen the destruction of so many civil institutions that historically have provided different barriers between individuals in the state or you used to have instead of having a centralized welfare state there were a variety of different private organizations dedicated towards taking care of the community. You know that that one of the big issues we have now is a lot of these civil society groups, even the big ones like the Kiwanis Club and the Lions Club, Rotary Club, things like that. They're increasingly older increasingly smaller. I don't know how successful some of these will be and adapting to the world as it is today. But that's another area though where you do have these networks that you can join a part of become a part of these local legacies. And again, being a young person. This is one of the great opportunities we have that being a young person who is not a socialist and is actively anti socialist makes you stand out amongst your peers and people in your community that are willing to that care about the stuff that are looking for causes to donate to to to help support because they are now concerned about the future in ways that they might not have been before. The Kiwanis now have a massive competitive advantage being here being interested in these ideas, and it's up to you to really take advantage of it. Nothing is stopping you from from being people within your community that people look up to you've got massive advantages right now that a lot of your peers do not have. And so again hopefully and you're keeping in touch the people that you've met here this week. And really seeing how many people have built lasting friendships, because having that that social interaction where you can discuss these ideas, you know, broad libertarian social networks might not be valuable but strong groups of people that you respect can generally discuss ideas are very important. And Brian Capital is talking about this idea of creating bubbles for yourself. And I think there is some value with that with that as well and you can not just for social media purpose but in your actual community. And we're not privileged because I've brought several friends to me says you now after the last few years I've got a lot of professionals that read me says wire, you know, I can now sit down and have a conversation at my house with like, well, six, seven or how much however much the government will allow me to have now to talk about is make hopper jokes right and actually having that within my community be you know that that you know I don't have to visit in Alabama for that is one of the great. You know, particularly in times where we're things can be really crazy out there and there's there's certain weeks this past past year that that you know things are very depressing, having that social that that genuine personal social network of support. Some that I would encourage everyone to try to find. Absolutely do not neglect your personal life to fight for freedom. You'll end up very sad and lonely and depressed. So you definitely want to make sure and you build a social network that you have a support system that you have a normal life. That isn't just, you know, I'm writing columns I'm hanging out online talking to people on social media, and that is not a rewarding way to go through life you do need actual people in physical space that you can maybe touch on occasion and see face to face and get together and maybe even not talk about politics at all. That's sometimes very nice break. And I've known too many people who spent their lives writing and making great contributions to the cause of building civilization but you get beyond a certain point and you start asking is that that all there is, and this course not all there is although it's a very good and important thing. And I don't want this to sound too much like I'm giving out advice. Right. I'm not telling you how exactly to do this. I'm just saying that I don't want to give people the impression that if you're not writing columns for Mises.org or writing books or doing these things are constantly preaching that you're you're not doing it right that you deserve a break you deserve maybe and it doesn't even have to be at all times in your life right maybe you need to take 10 years to devote to just your family or something like that and you don't go to any conferences. I had a 10 year period I didn't come down here at all even though I've been loosely affiliated reasons too long before I've ever worked here. And because I had a bunch of little kids and and my wife got annoyed if I just left home and she had like toddlers there. So, yeah, I had other other values to consider for a period. And I just often I just know I hear often from people who I think are they they haven't been given permission in many cases by free market activists and so on to do other things. But I think you actually end up doing more good for the movement in general by building up your life and becoming a person and influential within your own community. And that being said I think that we're at 1230 so we're probably if you've got any questions we're always happy to answer and talk between now and the rest of the day.