The most Libertarian Generation is right under your nose

I have spent many years promoting libertarianism and I have found that many libertarian promoters and activists are missing the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, all because we keep looking for people who sound like we do and want our vision of liberty.

There is an old saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well it seems like Libertarians spend a lot of time trying to convert old dogs, being an old dog myself I appreciate the effort but we tend to be set in our ways. While we often seek out the youth, we do so by looking for so called “natural Libertarians”, those who tend to sound as we do and are receptive to our message of limited government and rugged individualism. The most overlooked and most fertile group of people we can reach out to are the independent left leaning Millennial Generation (those under 32).

Independent left youth are socially liberal and economically skeptical of institutions both government and corporate. They see the problems, just don't have the solutions figured out yet.

Why I call them left is because they don’t use our limited government words and phrases but they are very socially liberal and they don’t automatically seek big government or corporate solutions to the problems they see. In conversation the average libertarian would “hear” them and call them liberals, socialists or statists, just because of the phrasing they use.

This is unfortunate because while they don’t sound libertarian, they are creating libertarian alternatives all around us. A lot of how they live their everyday lives is about practicing what they preach.

They aren't out there trying to stop urban sprawl, they are just moving from the suburbs back to the cities. For the first time in over 100 years we have seen a reversal of 20 and 30 something's moving from the city to the suburbs. They are now in massive numbers moving to the cities.

They aren’t pushing for laws on car emissions, they are just not buying cars or if they do, participating in Car share programs.

The cities are becoming hubs for voluntary communal and collective action, just a handful of examples include companies and services such as Airbnb and Tripping (rooms and apartments); Loosecubes and LiquidSpace (office space); RelayRides, Getaround, and Wheelz, Ushare and Enterprise (peer car sharing); Techshop and hackerspaces (industrial workspace); La Cocina(commercial kitchen space); ParkatmyHouse and Park Circa (parking space); Arcade City (ride sharing); SharedEarth and Hyperlocavore (garden sharing);Grubwithus (restaurant dinners); Vayable (experiences); Skillshare and TaskRabbit (skill sharing); Thredup (childrens clothes); and Yerdle (general).

In just one year, New York’s Citi Bike sharing program has over 100,000 annual members.

Sharing is becoming much easier with Smartphones and the internet, people, especially the Millennials are interconnected like no other generation. Information and ideas travel instantly within local communities and beyond.

Another promising trend is the idea of Mutual Aid and mutual benefit associations. We have seen these spring to action almost instantly to provide real time local aid during disasters such as Hurricane Sandy. Mutually owned companies such as Winco are popular choices vs. government protected corporations like Walmart and more are popping up all the time.

Bitcoin Crypto Currency (the code and system, not necessarily the currency aspect) will have massive changes and it is free of concentrated power, has no trusted elite, is fully transparent and instant. The dominant generation in the use, creation and promotion of cryptos are Millennials. This will facilitate smart contracts and other forms of sharing through owning.

They are a natural fit for decentralized currencies and contracts, since they were kids they have been using borderless systems such as the internet, email, file sharing, social media and peer to peer networks. They understand and embrace decentralization.

How do we as Libertarian activists promote our ideas to this generation? The number one thing I tell them is I care about others and not just myself or my own issues of interest. This doesn't mean I just tell them, I show them with my actions and words. Once they at least see we are looking in the same direction, they listen to solutions and don't dismiss me as, "just another conservative", a dialogue of understanding can begin. If we don't, it will be back and forth left/right rhetoric driving wedges deeper.

People don't care how much you know (Anyone can quote books) until they know how much you care.

We don't need to convince them to support individualism, we should be encouraging them to keep working together to create alternative, not berate them because their version of liberty does not conform to how we want to live. The idea of liberty is to live and let live.

This is the perfect year for libertarians to embrace a generation, not just a few who sound like we do.