I have met many European Esperanto speakers who have very "non-elite" jobs. Railway workers, factory workers, etc.

I see Esperanto as being more linked to people with free time, than linked to the elite per se.

Who has free time?

College professors and schoolteachers with a break in their summer schedules. Students. Retirees. People who don't work and are on the dole as their main source of income (there is a certain European Esperantist who does not work much, if at all, and simply collects government benefits; he shows up at many summer Esperanto events). Europeans who work at jobs that give abundant vacation time and only a 35 hour week. These people are all well represented in the Esperanto world.

Who doesn't have free time?

Wall Street (or City of London) bankers. People working multiple jobs to make ends meet. People working full-time who have little kids at home. You won't find many of these people in Esperanto. Families with kids, for example. Maybe someone was involved with Esperanto as a student, then they get married and have kids, and they're too busy with their job and their limited time to do anything with Esperanto. Then the kids grow up and go to college, and the person gets back into Esperanto, as a retiree.

I do not think that Esperanto speakers are richer than the general population. In that sense it isn't "elitist" at all. There are many students and retirees. However, there is a bias toward higher education, that's true. Particularly in the US, where there are few government benefits, and people on the lower end of the economic spectrum have to work harder just to survive.

There is also an education bias in the sense that Esperanto attracts a certain type of person who enjoys learning for fun. It does not attract the kind of person who finds reading to be boring. And someone who enjoys learning is more likely to be educated than someone who hated school and wanted to be out at the very first second.

bartlett22183:
Still, the question is how we attract the "super-rich, the dictators of tin-pot countries, hedge-fund managers, minor aristocracy, fashion models, and even right-wing nationalists." And, yes, the Joe and Jane Sixpacks of the world. Or, in contrast, do we take the position that it is not needful to attract them?

Paŭlo

To me attracting these sixpack people sounds like a pretentious idea, something John McCain came up with during his presidential campaign, bringing in his "Joe The Plumber" fictitious character. The lower class are more self-absorbed with survival than others. They do what they do for money. Politics are often governed for them by racial ethics such as "does my race benefit from this politician?". Even then many will be too avoidant to even vote or register to vote. If anything, the progress would be the dissolution of this whole class of people rather than luring them into something they would scoff at such as Esperanto [in the USA].

There is only one thing that the lower-class are interested in, and it is art, music and art. That would be the marketing ploy for Esperanto then, and not really literature. You can find for instance M.C. Escher or something popular with the lower-class in the USA. Yeah, they have no knowledge of the 4th dimension or what Escher was trying to do, but the pictures nevertheless go with some kind of warped escape from marijuana ingestion accompanied by alcohol.

I have met total rednecks who nevertheless had collections of M.C. Escher books.

erinja:I have met many European Esperanto speakers who have very "non-elite" jobs. Railway workers, factory workers, etc.

I see Esperanto as being more linked to people with free time, than linked to the elite per se.

Who has free time?

I am merely outside of society, simply not normal in any respect. I have no children, wife, or house. I don't own a car or have any mortgage payments. I don't even watch TV or own one. I find my life is very easy to live otherwise. I have even been told I am not a human. I did not enjoy that. I doubt that just any person who had free time would study Esperanto though....in the USA I mean. It is more European. As you say, the railway workers are Europeans.

komenstanto:

I am merely outside of society, simply not normal in any respect. I have no children, wife, or house. I don't own a car or have any mortgage payments. I don't even watch TV or own one. I find my life is very easy to live otherwise.

Bravo, you have found a way out of the rat race. Would you like to share details of what you do for food, shelter, and internet connection?

You are well suited to being an Esperantist, K.

The Esperanto movement contains a substantial proportion of marĝenuloj, people who are not fully integrated into their own societies.

Erinja, you are undoubtedly right in pointing out that an important issue is the amount of free time.

Given the very high current levels of youth unemployment in some European countries - was it 50% or 25% for Spain - perhaps this augurs well for an explosion in the numbers of Esperanto-speakers.

Provided you have a PC and an internet connection you can learn Esperanto for nothing.

If you live in the UK you can even go to congresses cheaply. There is a foundation that give grants to young Esperantists for this purpose.

I am definitely a marĝenulo.

Internet connection? I have some a DSL package, in fact the same package deal for about 4 years. I have never changed providers or accepted more expensive upgrades. It comes with a landline phone and is rarely more than 18 to 20 USD per month. That is relatively little in the world of highspeed internet.

I live in a one bedroom apartment in the back of an 8 story block. It is very old and has high ceilings with large doorways. Perhaps to make up for not having a TV, I hang pictures and prints on the walls. I live near an art museum.

To be honest, I have Section 8 subsidized housing, but I still work and do web-design jobs. And I volunteer to teach immigrants English (TESOL certificate). People send me pictures of themselves or something and I crop them in Gnu Image Editor or take some watermark off that is troublesome. I am something of Linux nerd. Good things happen, someone I work for might take me to the local orchestra or something.

Cant complain, though admittedly there are many Americans who do not consider this "the American way of life". But this blend of Socialism and Capitalism works quite well for me.

I am frankly not interested in too much money. You know the saying: "man cannot live on bread alone". That's my motto.

They bail the banks out, and I am not a drug-addict, so there is no reason I should be homeless.

Oh, also in the USA we don't pay for downloads. I had this discussion with an Australian, that in Australia downloads cost money, or so I was led to believe. We just have flat rate Internet fees monthly.

My friend who lives out west lives in a building that comes wifi enabled. Eventually Internet will be free. The building next door to me has wifi enabled as well, after it was remodeled.

The Esperanto community has little money but has a lot of free time ? That is not a handicap. Obviously, the key is to fund the development of Esperanto by those who have not even heard of it, through an innovative project. This project must not be for Esperanto-speakers but by Esperanto-speakers. The next google or facebook in the near future must be in our hands and that's all. That is possible if we work together in a collaborative way. You can be sure that we won't be ridiculous at all, even without money...