How to Build a Creative Renaissance – Decentralize or Die (Part 4)

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.

– Albert Camus

The first three parts of this series largely focused on how decentralization is necessary in the political realm and should be applied more aggressively to governing structures. I believe moving to such a model is no longer just a quaint option, but absolutely required if we want to expand human liberty and build more voluntary, ethical and sane communities. That being said, decentralization can and should be applied to as many aspects of life as possible.

Most humans live completely unfree lives. Whether its parents, schools, religion or ultimately employers, far too many of us are told from birth what to think and what we can and cannot say. Interestingly enough, the older we get, the more restricted our speech seems to become. Ironically, while we have more mediums for expression than ever before with the internet and social media, increasing numbers of people are too afraid that their bosses might see what they wrote to actually express themselves publicly. This is one reason why anonymity is so incredibly important online, and must be preserved at all costs, but that’s another topic.

I am of the view that we are enriched as a society if people are empowered to speak their minds freely in the public square without fear of dire consequences, such as being fired and not being able to feed your family. If you’ve been reading me over the past couple of weeks, you’ll be familiar with my push to move Liberty Blitzkrieg into a reader-supported project in the coming years, but I want to explain my thought process a bit more and how it relates to decentralization.

From day one, I was very hesitant about launching a donation drive on this website. In fact, it wasn’t until three and a half years of writing (at the very end of 2015), that I officially sent out a post detailing contribution options and created a support page. There are many reasons for this, but at the root of it were my own hangups. I consider myself a fortunate person and am far from being in dire straights, so the idea that someone would sacrifice money they might really need to support my work made me feel very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, in the past year and a half, hundreds of you have voluntarily donated to the site, which led to a direct shift in my attitude and impacted the direction of my work in many important and, in my view, beneficial ways.

It wasn’t until late last year that donations started coming in at a reasonable clip on a monthly basis. It was around this time that I did a lot of soul searching and decided to kill a certain ad network I had been using that populated the site with sleazy click-bait images. While running this ad network didn’t make me beholden to any corporate interests, I was still putting stuff on my website that conflicted with my values and message just to earn some cash every month. It was around this time that I started thinking more and more about what direction I wanted to take Liberty Blitzkrieg in, and I determined it was time to shift from quantity to quality.

Prior to this year, I had been publishing an average of 2-3 posts per day, which mostly consisted of news articles complemented with some brief personal commentary. This led to a frenzied existence where I spent too much of my energy frantically trying to get stuff out, as opposed to thinking and writing deep, introspective commentary. In contrast, these days I’m typically writing just one post per day, and they more often than not consist of unique, proprietary content. There is no question that part of what allowed me to free my mind and focus on high-quality work was knowing that I had readers out there who liked it enough to support it.

While it isn’t a revolutionary concept, it’s a simple fact that if your business model consists of generating clicks from ads, your entire focus will be on page views as opposed to quality content. At some point over the course of 2017, I simply made the decision that I wouldn’t care about page views any more, and would dedicate my time to writing stronger, more interesting posts, building a community in the comment section and strengthening my connection with my dedicated readers. Combine this decision with the fact that Google ad revenue at Liberty Blitzkrieg has been plunging for years, and I recently decided to take yet another step toward the reader-supported model with the recent launch of my Patreon page.

When I first started doing this back in 2012, I naively believed that the revenue model of third party ad networks actually freed content creators. You didn’t have to sacrifice much to earn some money; or so I thought. I’ve come to recognize the foolishness of this perspective in the years since. As I explained, not only does this model provide the wrong incentives (clicks vs. quality), but it means you’re generating most of your income from a dominant tech monopoly that has interests quite distinct from your own. This goes back to the philosophical question I posed in a post last month, Do Ends Justify the Means?

The moment you justify one very wrong action to achieve a noble goal, what’s to stop you from next even more unethical action, or the next and the next? Nothing. This is what’s so dangerous about going down such a path. Indeed, those who fight monsters often end up becoming the exact thing they claim to be fighting. The world doesn’t benefit from this, only the person who has gained power as a result does, at least superficially. Ultimately, even that person doesn’t benefit when all is said and done. A person who attains their goal by sacrificing principles is a tormented, miserable person. They may seem to “have it all” from the outside, but deep down they hate themselves and what they’ve become. There is no peace. I believe karma eventually catches up to everybody one way or the other.

If I hold true to my beliefs, the source of income from this website is of intense and crucial significance to everything I do. After much thought, I’ve come to realize that there is no more honest and empowering source of revenue than voluntary reader donations. This is why I have been pushing in that direction much more aggressively. If this website can be supported and funded by readers, then no one or no organization can ever threaten the longterm viability of my work. No one can manipulate me into doing things in an unhealthy manner, irrespective of how subtle that manipulation might be (forcing you to chase clicks, for example).

This is where decentralization comes into effect. The more people I have donating, the more empowering it becomes. Decentralizing my revenue stream aligns perfectly with what I believe we need to do to improve the world going forward. Of course, this goes way beyond this little website. If we can get people to start thinking about creative content in general this way, we will get much better art, whether that be music, poetry, prose, videos, movies, etc. Decentralize the revenue sources of content creators and we can help usher in a new period of creative renaissance with no strings attached.  As such, the purpose of this post isn’t to convince you to support Liberty Blitzkrieg, but rather to ask you to change your entire mindset about the content you consume and what you can do to support creative people in general whose work you appreciate.

Patreon is a particularly interesting concept, which is why I’ve embraced it. The number of patrons and the monthly amount I’m earning is all public on my page (39 and $190), and the platform allows me to communicate directly with patrons, poll them, etc. While I haven’t done this yet, it’s something I am definitely considering as a way to gauge the opinions of those who appreciate my work so much they’re willing to take that extra step.

While you can donate as much as you want per month, the interesting part is that even $1 a month can go a long way and is greatly appreciated. The power of this model can be demonstrated by the fact that if only 1,000 people pledged one dollar, I’d reach my goal immediately and would then remove all Google ads from the site. For most people $1 per month is not something you’d notice, but if it’s meaningful to you, by all means do not contribute. I only want people who can easily afford to support the site to do so. This is about doing things the right way, and demonstrating the power of a decentralized revenue model. I don’t want anyone sacrificing to become a patron.

If any of this speaks to you, consider becoming a Patron for whatever amount makes sense and also start thinking about who else you may want to support. I’m totally convinced that this sort of model represents a crucial way for humanity to guarantee a steady and increasing supply of deep, thought provoking content going forward. For some of you, Patreon may not make sense due to the EU VAT tax and fees, while others may simply prefer Bitcoin, PayPal, cash/check, etc. Your support is no less appreciated and you can continue to do so at our Support Page.

One thing I can promise is that as this project becomes more reader supported, the better the content will become, and the more interesting projects I can try to take on. Thanks for hearing me out.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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