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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/
----- Featured Action of the Week -----
First Week of September, 2001
Eminent Domain, Free-Market Style
Sometimes a person's first exposure to ideas occurs in a kind of "sideways"
manner. It's an accident, a sort of random event that turns your world
upside down and makes you think about things in a different way. Think
about all the groups, clubs and organizations you belong to. Think about
how you found them, or how they found you.
If you belong to a group whose raison d'etre is helping folks adopt retired
racing greyhounds, did you come to that group because you woke up one
morning thinking about what happens to dogs after they can no longer run
around the track? Or did you find them because you were looking for a dog
and happened across one of their brochures? Or because you were at a local
fair and wandered up to their booth out of newly inspired curiosity?
Had you ever even _heard_ of them before?
A lot of potential "customers" of free-market ideas don't even know that
they're looking for us. They don't wake up in the morning thinking "gee, I
had a dream last night and I think I'll go out, find the libertarian
movement, and join it." It can be as random as finding a copy of _Atlas
Shrugged_ at a garage sale and picking it up because they remember the
author's name from its frequency as a crossword clue ("novelist Rand, three
letters").
I won't even say "a lot" -- I'll take it a little further. I'll say "most."
Most people either don't know that there is a coalescing free-market
movement around the world, or couldn't care less because they _think_ that
they don't agree with us, based on five minutes of conversation around the
office water cooler or on some random, false reference to Lyndon LaRouche
as a "libertarian."
_These_ are the people that we need to reach, and the internet provides
some interesting ways of doing it. One of them, not yet largely explored --
but about to be, by you -- is the strategic use of domain names.
This idea was suggested by Shane Steinfield of PoliticalNonviolence.Org and
SocialPacifists.Org, but it's also a natural outgrowth of projects like
Free-Market.Net's own Bureaucrash and, to be honest, of the "front group"
paradigm that the statist left and right have used since time immemorial.
It works like this: We know that people have particular interests. We also
know that they will seek information on those interests via web searches,
and go to the sites that they find. Sometimes, they will even randomly
point their browsers to something that _seems_ like an appropriate domain
name.
Whoever has that domain name has the surfer's attention. If it's the
statists, we lose. If it's us, we win. Our ideas come out ahead _when
people actually see them_.
This week's action works in two ways: those of you who have a little money
to spare can help by grabbing good domains and either constructing
free-market sites or pointing the URL at existing sites. Those of you who
don't can suggest appropriate domains and keep an eye out for their
availability.
Free-Market.Net has already been picking up some domains that might be
useful -- for example, greenactivism.org now points to our Environmental
networkRoom channel.
Domain names are getting cheaper all the time -- directNIC, for example,
charges $15 per year for .com, .net and .org domains -- and most domain
sales places will gladly point to pre-existing sites.
If you can, go out and pick up a couple of domain names. Choose names that
don't scream "libertarian," but that are plausible names for issues
advocacy. Then build a site with free-market information and links on those
issues -- or feel free to point the domain to another site (our
Free-Market.Net "channels" are great for this). If you know what you are
doing, or can get a friend to help, you can insert META tags in the page
code that will cause this domain name to come up in search engine results,
attracting more traffic.
If you don't have (or don't want to spend) money for this, you can still
help. We've set up a Free-Market.Net forum for "Project Eminent Domain."
Drop by and suggest some good domains to grab. If you subscribe to an
expired domains newsletter and see a promising domain name become free, let
us know via the forum!
"Project Eminent Domain" forum:
http://www.free-market.net/forums/eminentdomain0109/
directNIC domain name sales:
http://www.directnic.com/
PoliticalNonviolence.Org:
http://www.politicalnonviolence.org/
SocialPacifists.Org:
http://www.socialpacifists.org
Free-Market.Net's "channels":
http://www.free-market.net/channels/
Archive of past Action of the Week columns:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-archives/activism/maillist.html
----- Alternate Actions -----
The Freedom Action of the Week Club: Commit yourself to doing one
action per week. If the action above doesn't appeal to you, consider
one of the alternate actions at:
http://www.free-market.net/features/action/
If you know about another action or organize one of your own, e-mail
Tom at tlknapp@free-market.net so we can tell the rest of the group
next week.
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