That’s totally wrong. Do you seriously believe that? It seems more like a statement that would be valid for Lojban. I know plenty of people (including myself) who use Esperanto every day as one of their main languages, certainly not only at “erudite meetings” but also for normal everyday activities. It’s the primary language at home for many international couples (including my home…).

And most of the organized Esperanto events I’ve been to are not what I would call “erudite” (though certainly some are – just like how it is with meetings that happen in other languages e.g. English or German), but simply people getting together to socialize with people and share common interests, e.g. the most recent I attended was a week-long New Year’s party with plenty of concerts and dancing and fun.

You also state that Esperanto is the creation of one person (Zamenhof), when in fact of course many people contributed to its evolution during more than a century, and of course Esperanto also draws from existing languages in terms of vocabulary, grammar, alphabet, figures of speech, etc. Indeed Zamenhof explicitly identified himself only as the initiator of the language and gave “ownership” of the language to its community as he didn’t want to be the sole creator.

And in what sense was Zamenhof a “conlang fan”? As I understand that term, it means someone who geekily enjoys exploring and knowing about and creating many conlangs for their own sake. I don’t think that’s what motivated Zamenhof; do you? If he was a “conlang fan” by some looser notion of “conlang fan”, how are the creators of Modern Indo-European not also “conlang fans”? (And why would someone being a “conlang fan” disqualify their language from being suitable as an IAL anyway?)

Incidentally, most Esperanto speakers I know are not particular interested in conlangs generally (though certainly some are).

To clarify: this is NOT meant as a comment about the relative suitability of Esperanto or Modern Indo-European as an international auxiliary language, but only to clarify some misconceptions you seem to be presenting about Esperanto, seemingly in your zeal for MIE as an auxiliary language. You’re portraying Esperanto as some kind of one-man conlang project that is merely a study object of conlang enthusiasts, and obsessing over it being “artificial” (as if reconstructing an ancient language like Indo-European ISN’T artificial!), and you seem unaware (or unwilling to acknowledge) that Esperanto has a live community of speakers, culture, history, literature, etc and is not merely some theoretical project on paper.

If there are good reasons why Modern Indo-European would be a better IAL for Europe than Esperanto, then cool, I’m interested to hear about it. But if your reasons are bogus stuff that boils down to “Esperanto is artificial and it’s just one guy’s personal conlang that no one really speaks except at erudite meetings”, then that’s simply bogus and unconvincing and makes me distrustful whether you are arguing in good faith.