Erik Visits an American Grave: Part LGM Died Because Readers Didn’t Support the Site

This is a post from the very near future.

This is the grave of Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a top 100 Political Science Blog, which was quite an honor given there must have been 50 or so of them. It was an august site, one of the few places on the internet that was still the Old Internet, where people could chat and build community and whatnot. The site had some good writers and then some Loomis fellow who was a very poor writer and also a lazy slovenly bastard but who the site allowed to stay on out of charity.

LGM went on for 21 years. And then it died because its readers did not support the site. They took it for-granted. They figured it didn’t need them. They figured someone else would donate instead. Maybe they even gave a little bit of money. But they didn’t realize that LGM has a lot of expenses. This stuff costs money! So they didn’t up their donation, even though they totally could.

And so the site died.

This is what will happen if you don’t donate or up your donate if you already do donate. We will go away. Maybe we can stumble along for a little while. But this whole enterprise is really fragile. It could fall apart at any time. To say the least, it’s an underpaid, volunteer effort. We make a bit of money on the side too, which is cool, but I’d hate to do the math and find out this is a below minimum wage side gig. So I’m not going to do the math.

What I do know is this–you don’t like Fundraising Day. I don’t really like Fundraising Day either. I’d rather talk about whatever needs to be talked about that is not this. But it is necessary.

The way to ensure that this only happens one day a year is to do your part. This is a collective effort. Obviously, it is free. We’ve never done a paywall and wouldn’t consider it. We keep this to a day a year because you all cover the expenses with one day, plus the monthly donations that you really need to do if you don’t already. We’d hate to start fundraising like a modern PBS station. But we will if we don’t raise enough money.

Or, alternatively, the site will die and so will part of your life. And it will be your fault.

Don’t kill the site. You have one job today. And that is giving us your money. Do it.

• Paypal
• Patreon
• Merchandise
• Venmo
• Physical Address (for you check writers out there, we love you too, so here’s the address).