TEACHING PROPERTARIANISM ATTN: Michael Andrade Michael, At one point you offered

TEACHING PROPERTARIANISM

ATTN: Michael Andrade

Michael,

At one point you offered me advice on how to structure teaching propertarianism. (But I can’t find it)

Since I’m pretty much done with the project, and just working my way through organizing all my notes and drafting the book, it seems like a good time to offer a class, generate some additional demand, and maybe learn something myself from students and followers.

I can think of sort of three layers of doing it.

1) the ‘idiot’s guide so to speak that covers the main topics but avoids the epistemology and all the analytic arguments. There are a limited number of basic concepts. I can describe them as historical narratives in general terms that most people can grasp. I can cover them in a dozen or so 20 minute conversations. I am pretty sure this is easy to do by video. It’s just ‘watch and learn and ask curt questions in the forum or chat’.

2) the social science guide, which walks through the entire work as a history of incentives. This is rationally rigorous, and touches on the problem of truth without getting into the formal reasoning or formal writing. This is a sort of college level course I think. This course is longer (I don’t know how much longer) and includes Applications: there are about 30 significant ethical issues in the field of politics and each of these takes about six to fifteen minutes to cover. I think these subjects require users to perform a little hand written work – not multiple choice. What I’ll be looking for is the ability to remember the sequences (spectrums) so that at the very least they walk away no longer thinking in ideal types, but spectra.

3) the formal logic guide which teaches the epistemology across all the academic fields, how to construct propertarian arguments, how to write natural law. And how to structure constitutions and various forms of government. I see this as a seminar course of sorts where individuals who have taken the previous classes can learn how to argue against (and defeat) pretty much every standing argument. I do not see how to do this without being able to work with the people directly. It might be possible but it seems very hard to me. I would expect people to walk out of this able to be pretty scary in rhetoric.

Can you give me some of your thoughts?