A Parable

Once upon a time, a group of people got together to build and sell the best vehicle ever. The design they came up with seated 20 people comfortably, aced all the safety tests, cruised at a top speed of 200 miles per hour, got 500 miles per gallon of gas, and sold for half the price of other popular vehicles.

Unfortunately, Libertarian Motors performed poorly in the marketplace, selling only about 25,000 vehicles every four years versus Ford Motors' "F-Family" pickup group, which sold more than 2.5 million vehicles every four years and had been the top seller in America for decades.

Every four years, Libertarian Motors chose a new chief salesman for their cheap, durable, fast, gas-saving, safe car. One year, a group within the company brought in a new candidate for chief salesman. "He used to be one of the top salesmen at Ford -- he had a stellar record as head of their New Mexico division!" "He KNOWS how to sell cars!" "He's the guy who can take us to the top!" The candidate was obviously very popular with Libertarian Cars sales reform advocates.

A smaller group within Libertarian Cars had some questions, though. "Will you be able to do for us what you did for Ford?" "What's your plan for making Libertarian Cars competitive with Ford?"

"Not to worry," said the candidate. "I have a plan that's virtually guaranteed to increase sales. As you know, the Ford F-Family has been the best-selling vehicle in America for decades. So what I'm going to do is re-tool our factory to produce something a lot like the latest Ford F-Family truck. Not exactly the same, but close."

"What will be the difference?"

"Well, instead of saying 'Ford' on the back, it will say 'LIBERTARIAN.' I think that if we go my way -- build a car almost exactly like Ford's, market it almost exactly like Ford's, and most importantly put a face on it that people associate with Ford, we might be able to sell 50,000, even 75,000 of these things every four years!"

"But that's not what we're really about. We designed a REALLY good vehicle. It's much better than anything Ford makes. It's faster, it's safer, it uses less gas and it's cheaper. We want to promote THAT vehicle, and we don't want to just sell two or three times as many vehicles every four years as we sell now. We want to sell 2.5 million or more every four years and beat Ford. It may take awhile, but we think our superior product can eventually out-sell Ford's F-Family if we concentrate on continuing to improve both the product and the marketing."

The man and his supporters among Libertarian Cars sales reform advocates shook their heads sadly. "You guys ... you need to get off this Libertarian Cars purity thing that's been holding us back. You're just not BEING PRACTICAL."