Acknowledgments
I found the term "freedom engineer" used by Linda Dixon at
I'mpossible (see also this
article about Dixon) and by Nicholas Hood (also "freedom engineering")
at his website.
Nicholas Hood's work has inspired my further development of
the ideas and concepts of freedom engineering.
Freedom Engineering Essay Contest
A freedom engineering essay contest is hereby announced.
Contestants are invited to write essays of 1,000 - 5,000 words
on the topic of freedom engineering.
The first prize is $5,000.
Second prize is $2,500; third, $1,000. There are also
10 consolation prizes of $500 each.
The complete details of the first freedom engineering
essay contest can be found here.
Introduction to Freedom Engineering
When engineers set out to build a bridge, they first
design the bridge, then they acquire the necessary
resources (consisting of people, equipment, and
material), and then they build the bridge. In designing
and building the bridge, they apply formulas. If they
applied the proper formulas, the end result is a bridge
that stands.
The same kind of approach can be used to "build
freedom."
Consider the approach of "bridge activists" -- people
who promote the cause of certain bridges being built.
These people may not be trained bridge engineers. They
may not know how to build a bridge. They operate on
the basis of persuading others to build the bridges they
think are necessary.
With the necessary training (personal development:
learning bridge-building formulas, acquiring knowledge
and skills, etc.), bridge activists could become bridge
builders.
Freedom engineering is based on the idea that freedom
activists can become freedom engineers who build
freedom. If necessary, they start off by building their
own personal freedom -- the equivalent of an aspirant
bridge engineer acquiring the necessary training and
skills to build bridges. Freedom engineers learn better
formulas for building freedom, starting with their own
personal freedom, and then advancing to building
freedom for the rest of the world.
Part of the essence of freedom engineering is to continuously
improve the formulas you apply to make progress. And
an essential aspect of improving your formulas has to do
with prediction. An engineer can predict the probability
that a bridge built in accordance with certain formulas
will stand or fall. Effective action is largely based on the
ability to predict.
During November 1999, 12 Texas A&M University students
("Aggies") were killed when a huge, tall wooden log structure
they built for a bonfire collapsed. This is a "tradition" that's
been going on about 90 years. Every year, prior to a football
game against the University of Texas, the Aggies build and
ignite their bonfire. They don't use proper blueprints and don't
have professional engineers in charge. They use notebooks
with instructions (inadequate formulas).
To me it seems like one of the most absurdly stupid activities
you could imagine. Consider the cost of the activity against
the potential benefits. Consider the risks to life and limb. Has
anyone ever predicted that the Aggie bonfire has been a
disaster waiting to happen all these years? It'll be interesting
to see whether they persist in their folly in the coming years.
The Aggies have been applying the formula: "Tradition says
we must build the bonfire." Even if they were to apply good
formulas for the actual building process, the overall formula
remains absurdly stupid.
A second part of the essence of freedom engineering is the
creation or addition of value. Engineers build a bridge because
it adds value. A bridge makes it easier for people to get from
point A to point B. The bridge adds value to their lives. What
value does the Aggie bonfire add to anyone's life?
A third part of the essence of freedom engineering is how you
define freedom. For several years, I was puzzled by why so many
libertarians seem to spend so much time on trying to change
the political system, while neglecting other ways of expanding
their freedom. It made more sense to me when I examined Ayn
Rand's definition of freedom: "There is nothing to take a man's
freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must
be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else."
(Anthem by Ayn Rand; Penguin Books, NY; 1992 - first published
in 1938.) Directly and indirectly, Ayn Rand has been a major
influence for most libertarians.
"...Freedom... the
by-product of purposeful thought and action… Create exactly what you choose,
with lots of cash flow! Choose your freedom! DESIGN it! LIVE
it!".
How we define freedom has a tremendous effect on the
actions we take (or don't take) to expand our freedom
(or not). For the purpose of freedom engineering I suggest:
Freedom: The range of desirable, positive options
available to you. The freer you are, the more you live
your life as you want to live it, because you have more
desirable, positive options available to you.
["Act so as to maximize your available options." -- Heinz Von
Foerster (cyberneticist; writer on self-organizing
systems)]
According to Rose Wilder Lane: "Freedom means
self-control; no more, no less."
The more control you can exercise over your life and
affairs, the wider the range of desirable, positive options
available to you, and the freer you are. The more you're
subject to external control, the fewer desirable, positive
options are available to you, and the less free you are.
The Essence of Freedom Engineering
Three cornerstone concepts comprise the essence of
freedom engineering:
Your definition of freedom;
The formulas you apply to expand your freedom;
Adding value to your own life and to the world.
In prescriptive form, the essence of freedom engineering is:
EXPAND YOUR DEFINITION OF FREEDOM;
IMPROVE YOUR FORMULAS;
ADD MORE VALUE TO YOUR OWN LIFE AND TO THE WORLD.
Freedom engineering includes some concepts and formulas
that may constitute breakthroughs for the expansion of
freedom. The concept of freedom resources is one of these.
There are vast freedom resources potentially available to us,
but mostly unrecognized by freedom lovers. This is covered
in more detail under Freedom Engineering FAQ
and
Key Freedom Factors. Even people for whom freedom
isn't an important issue can be utilized as freedom resources.
We even have formulas that enable us to easily persuade
some enemies of freedom to help us expand freedom!
Another breakthrough of freedom engineering is that you
don't have to promote freedom in self-sacrificial ways. You
can make money promoting freedom. So you're far less
subject to burnout. Freedom activists burning out constitute
a huge loss to the freedom movement.
One of the great benefits of freedom engineering, because
you focus on your personal freedom first, is that you can
get to quickly enjoy the benefits of improved health, wealth,
and freedom. You don't have to wait for the world around
you to change.
The Freedom Engineering Network
may serve as a
catalyst for triggering all kinds of freedom-building projects
and businesses.
Undoubtedly, one of the great breakthroughs of freedom engineering is my
concept of the Liberty
Money Machine -- an "automatic money machine" that brings in money with
very little work required by the "operator."
Creating a Free World
To create a "free world," requires capable freedom
engineers to do some freedom building. To become
sufficiently capable, some need to do some building
(growth work) on themselves. The first priority of a
freedom engineer is personal growth and development,
particularly in these areas:
Thinking skills (application of formulas);
Personal material wealth;
Personal physical health;
Personal power (the ability to useful, effective work);
Personal freedom.
Freedom engineering provides a wealth of formulas for all
these areas. Notice that any improvements you make in
these areas adds value to your life. The more value you
add to your own life, the easier it becomes to add value
to the rest of the world.
For some, the necessary starting point may be to increase
their thinking skills to the point that they are capable of
improving their health and wealth. (Improving your formulas
requires thinking skills; so does clearing "anti-formulas" from
your mind. An example of an anti-formula is the notion, "you
can't predict the future." There are many aspects of the future
you can predict with a known or estimated degree of certainty
-- just ask the Las Vegas casino operators! You can also
predict with a high degree of certainty that if you shoot
yourself in the head, you'll die!)
The second priority of a freedom engineer is to help expand and improve
"freedom institutions" and to build new "freedom institutions." An example of
a Freedom Institution is e-gold So are
BuildFreedom.com and
BigBooster.com.
Basically, three functions are performed by freedom institutions:
Educate the general public about freedom;
Activities aimed at changing the political system toward
greater freedom;
Provide freedom lovers with the means to live free in an
unfree world.
Freedom institutions that perform function #3 make it easier
for individuals to live free in an unfree world. Individuals can
enjoy certain freedoms despite a lack of freedom for those
around them, who may suffer from the consequences of an
unfree political system.
The following organizations are further examples of freedom
institutions -- I'm including their Alexa traffic rankings on 11/16/99 (the lower the number, the
higher the traffic):
These and similar organizations (explicitly or implicitly) use
formulas to attract visitors to their websites.
Hoover Dam as Analogy
About 20 miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada is the Hoover Dam
(sometimes called Boulder Dam). It's undoubtedly one of the
world's greatest engineering marvels. It was built in the 1930s.
As a result of Hoover Dam, millions of people have been able
to settle in Nevada, Arizona, and California, which would not
have been possible without the dam. In addition to water, Hoover
Dam provides hydroelectric power to millions of people.
Before Hoover Dam was built, the Colorado river flowed unevenly,
to put it mildly. Farmers downstream suffered periodic droughts
and floods. One season their crops perished for lack of water;
the next, their farms were washed away by floods. The Hoover
Dam tamed the Colorado, resulting in an even, year-round flow.
So farmers can produce a great deal more food. Indirectly,
millions of people can thank Hoover Dam for the food they eat!
Every freedom engineer is invited to visit Hoover Dam and to take the tour in
the elevators and tunnels, and down to the electric turbines. Also check out "The
Hoover Dam: Lonely Lands Made Fruitful." Grasping the life-expanding
effects of Hoover Dam may make it easier to grasp the potential
freedom-expanding effects of freedom institutions. Hoover Dam makes it
possible for millions of people to live comfortably in an otherwise
inhospitable world. Freedom institutions make it easier for people to live
free in an unfree world.
Hoover Dam adds phenomenal value to the lives of millions of
people. In similar ways, freedom institutions can add value to
the lives of freedom lovers, as well as the world in general.
Internet and Other Freedom Institutions
As a result of the Internet, I can do practically all my freedom-promoting
work at home in front of my computer. I no longer have to pay a
printer to print my books and reports. I don't have to spend a
fortune on printing and postage sending out direct mail solicitations.
I don't have to sell products to customers, collect money from
them, have a team of people on the phone answering their questions,
pay data-processing people to key in their information, handle their
complaints and refund requests, etc., etc.
As a result of the Internet, my life has become a great deal
simpler. I can give away all my writings for free by having them
on a website, because visitors come to read them and one of
the potent Internet formulas is that visits can be converted into
money.
The Internet adds tremendous value to my life, as well as to
the lives of millions of others. Other freedom institutions can
do the same.
With a few cliks on my keyboard I pay a company on the other side of the world
for a service through my e-gold account. The
transaction is instantaneous, private, and secure. E-gold adds value to my
life.
A few weeks ago, I pointed my mouse at my StockGeneration
money machine and discovered to my delight that I've earned a $6,000
commission. I didn't know who the customer was and had never communicated with
him or her. It all happened automatically! StockGeneration has added
considerable value to my life as well as to the lives of other
players.
Two thousand miles from me, a programmer is developing the software that will
enable BuildFreedom.com to list the top 100 freedom websites. With a few
clicks on my keyboard I pay him through my BIG International
account. The transaction is instantaneous, private, and secure.
At the beginning of this month I was glad to notice that our monthly earnings
from BIG had jumped from
$4,367 to $8,033. Another great benefit is that the BIG system can be
used as a private payment system between members. Money can easily be
transferred from one account to another, and there are no transaction fees for
this. Currently, any cash balance in your account earns 4% per month interest!
BIG adds a great deal of value to my life, as well as to those of other
players.
A few days ago, I tested my debit card associated with Virtual
Beneficiary Trust for the first time. In three successive transactions, I
withdrew $1,500 from an ATM machine. Anywhere in the world, where there's an
ATM, I can use my card to obtain local currency. Virtual Beneficiary Trust, as
a Liberty Money Machine, combined with its interface to the ATM system, adds
considerable value to my life.
In a similar way to Hoover Dam making it possible for me to
live comfortably in the desert, with all the water, electricity,
and food I need, the Internet and a number of other freedom
institutions make it possible for me to live and conduct my
affairs with a great deal of ease and freedom. Both Hoover
Dam and a number of freedom institutions add a great deal
of value to my life.
Elements of Freedom Engineering
The Freedom Engineering FAQ
provides an overview
of some important aspects of freedom engineering.
The Freedom Engineering Forum
is a new
private forum that's just been created for discussing,
implementing, and practicing freedom engineering.
Anyone interested in any aspect of freedom engineering
should join. You could discuss how to create your own
liberty money machine and make it successful. Anyone
with a freedom-promoting website interested in sharing
and improving freedom formulas is welcome here. Those
seeking to network and find like-minded people for joint
projects are also welcome here.
The Freedom Engineering Network
is basically a directory where you
can list yourself and/or your business under up to five categories. You
can enter your personal listing, as well as listing any number of businesses
each under up to five categories. All listings are free of charge.
The Freedom Engineering Network is a way for people with similar
interests to link up. It's also a way for any businesses owned/operated by
freedom lovers to get more customers. One of the aims is to have freedom
lovers do business with one another.
The intention is also that the Freedom Engineering Network will
serve as a catalyst that triggers all kinds of freedom-building projects
and businesses.
The Future of Freedom Engineering
The concepts "freedom engineer" and "freedom engineering"
and the insights and actions they lead to could be an example
of what C.H. Waddington describes in 'Tools for Thought': "A
final type of game-result worth noticing is one which I have
called 'hitting the jackpot' (or 'creating a new archetype'), and
have discussed particularly in connection with evolution. It
happens when, in an attempt to meet some fairly modest
short-term goal, the player stumbles on a move which gives
him enormously more return than he expected (or perhaps
knows what to do with).
The terms "freedom engineer" and "freedom engineering" lend themselves to the
marketing concept called "positioning." Marketing gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout
wrote the book Positioning:
The Battle for Your Mind.
It's just possible that there will soon be dozens of freedom engineering
websites and hundreds, if not thousands of individuals and businesses
listed in the Freedom Engineering Network .
We may have the beginnings of a major "movement" here. See 'MOVEMENTS' by Tom
Heuerman, Ph.D. with Diane Olson, Ph.D.
In general, freedom engineers should become more successful than
those who don't apply freedom engineering formulas. Thus the
"movement" is likely to grow more rapidly than other freedom
initiatives. There's little doubt that some freedom engineers will
find highly profitable ways to promote freedom that will make rapid
expansion possible.
The freedom engineering movement could be accelerated through
freedom engineering fiction, including science fiction.
["Something's up, young Hank, something's abroad, we're stirring
in our long sleep. Something vast and new, as when Moses came down from the
mountain, evolution is converging, the glory of man is beginning to force up a
little green shoot through all the crap and crud of what's called
reality." -- A. Rogers St. Johns, 'Tell No
Man']
Will freedom engineering take root, grow, and blossom -- producing
bright flowers with new seeds that spread far and wide? We shall soon
find out!
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