Video Games As a Vehicle for Education

This blog is going to a much more personal forum for me than my more formal undertaking, "Liberty In Focus"

I'm hoping it will give me an outlet to discuss some less formal areas of my own interests, as well as an outlet for me to speak them. A lot of people criticize internet blogging as a silly exercise in self-involvement and indulgence. That's probably true to a great extent, but for me it's also an outlet for my thinking that is theraputic, spares my family the dead-horse beating of what they already know that I think, and most importantly it forces me to organize and actually record things. The other nice thing about using an internet blog for an outlet like this is that only those who actually have a desire need continue reading or listening :) There's no social barrier to simply leaving the page.

Economics provides a unique perspective on video games, whether it is the manegerial, control architecture presumed by the typical real-time strategy game like "Civilization" or the insights to inflation that can be drawn from the economy of a typical massively-multiplayer online game. These are things I can't help noticing in my gaming endeavors, so yes I will write about them.

Video games provide a subject matter that is intensely interesting to a large percentage of the demographics that are critical to influence for substantive change. I want liberty, in the fullest and realest sense possible meaning FULL control of my own life, time, labor and the fruits thereof. Before this can happen I must influence the people who are hulled up in their basements gringing away for a level 29 armor upgrade in world of warcraft, or gunning down friends in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The good news is that the very games we enjoy, provide an emotionally neutral environment within which someone like myself can explain and apply the workings of rational principles and do so without the emotional baggage and threats to personal beliefs that are ever-present in the politically charged "real world."

This is why I like to write about philosophy and principles such as natural rights, economic exchange (yes, this is philosophical, not just economics) etc in these contexts. It takes the emotional charge out of the equation and allows people to think things through without anticipating a threat to a party, system or individual in which they have a high level of emotional investment. Plus, I like to play them so it's a nice fit.