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Hammurabi? Are you fucking kidding me?! Hammurabi created a *law*! with a *sanction*! That is regulation, you muppet! As the ruler of the country -- you know, the government -- he wrote a law that said builders whose buildings collapse and kill someone should themselves be killed. You should be *outraged* at Hammurabi interfering in the free market in that way, not parading it as though it's an example of the free market in action.

Jesus fucking Christ, you people try to be so clever and then you say such stupid stupid things.

Saying "stupid stupid things"... free markets are not free of ethics... https://freekeene.com/2007/12/...

This sounds similar to the search of Free Talk Live in Keene, NH about 2 weeks ago. Early on a Sunday morning, the FBI served a warrant , under which FBI agents walked off with anything with a USB or SATA interface.

Did that change jack shit?

Here's a link to one report of the story: http://freekeene.com/2011/06/1...

Did that change jack shit?

Here's a link to one report of the story: http://freekeene.com/2011/06/1...

I've been following the trial with some interest.

The Free Keene group went down (from NH to NYC) to protest the trial and hand out Jury Nullification pamphlets, for which they were threatened by the judge.

The government is using threats to prevent jury nullification information from getting to potential jurors. Doesn't seem fair to me, but then the constitution is probably written in some strange dialect of English where the meaning is something different to a lawyer.

It occurs to me that this is one way we can have an effect on government in addition to the vote. By informing people about jury nullification, we can encourage juries to ignore unfair laws.

I've been following the trial with some interest.

The Free Keene group went down (from NH to NYC) to protest the trial and hand out Jury Nullification pamphlets, for which they were threatened by the judge.

The government is using threats to prevent jury nullification information from getting to potential jurors. Doesn't seem fair to me, but then the constitution is probably written in some strange dialect of English where the meaning is something different to a lawyer.

It occurs to me that this is one way we can have an effect on government in addition to the vote. By informing people about jury nullification, we can encourage juries to ignore unfair laws.

I always knew I'd find a way to get back at that small town meter maid.....

Oh, just pay the meters for other people and they'll completely flip out.

The "Massholes bringing socialism here" thing is largely a myth. Most people moving from Massachusetts are in fact economic/political refugees, just like some of the people in this thread. (I left the day Romneycare went into effect, 2007-07-01.) And most settle around the southeastern part of the state, between Manchester/Nashua and the seacoast.

There's an organization called the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, of which I'm a board member; we rate State Representatives each year on their respect for liberty---both economic and personal---based on how they vote on bills with a liberty impact, for example, bills creating or eliminating taxes or fees, restricting or improving firearms freedoms, marijuana decrim/legalization, increasing or decreasing government transparency, and so on.

The most highly rated reps are from the same areas that those Massachusetts refugees tend to settle in. Rockingham County, for example. On the other hand, our most statist reps are from the college towns (Keene, Durham, Hanover) and the economically depressed areas such as Claremont and Berlin, not places "Massholes" are settling in.

We've had a couple of "high-profile" incidents where state reps trying to bring major statism to New Hampshire were recent movers here from the socialist holes to the south of us---a few years ago a rep from the Henniker area (I forget her name) introduced a bill to ban open carry in public buildings; she had moved here from Massachusetts less than a decade earlier. (The NHLA targeted her during reelection and she lost in the primary.) And just recently, Cynthia Chase, a rep who publicly claimed that freestaters moving here are "the single biggest threat" that N.H. faces was revealed to have moved here from Rhode Island herself in 2006 (two years after the FSP chose N.H.). But these few anecdotes don't really lead to the conclusion that Massachusetts movers are ruining the state.

There is a large and growing movement in New Hampshire of libertarian types who engage in civil disobedience basically as a lifestyle. As long as you're not hurting anyone, do what you want, regardless of the "law." Many of us are involved in things such as Free Keene and the Shire Society. You can read about a lot of the stuff going on here on Free Keene's blog. There are dozens of other links to sites set up by people in the N.H. liberty movement in the sidebar on this site, too.

See also the Free State Project, which is where most such people have come from.

The system is built to promote people that screw others and exploit things/people for themselves, and punish the ones that does things for others. Maybe is is capitalism, or human nature, don't know.

It's called 'government', a system of societal control based on coercion through violence. There are other mechanisms for governing human behavior - at least religion and markets (check out the free audiobook of The Market for Liberty - compare their 1970 proposal for education to Coursera), probably other mechanisms exist as well, especially with an Internet. After all, a Republic is just a compromise arrangement based on available transportation and communications technology.

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Yes, the trick is how to get people to be allowed to try other methods when all the land on Earth is claimed by groups that profess exclusive ownership.

The Tannehills had some intriguing proposals in the 1970's. Bob Murphy has expanded on some of those.

They might not all work, but one thing is for sure - if nobody is allowed to try other methods, a superior method will never be found. Many people suffer from chronological ethnocentrism - the idea that the current society is the best possible one (or at least the best that's ever existed).

Asking democracies to democratically give up democracy is a logical paradox.

Tuition should be zero. It works in Germany.

It works in Coursera too. Prospective employers pay for access to top talent. This strategy is straight out of The Market for Liberty - it just took 50 more years for the technology to make the ideas feasible. Some of their ideas still require more technological advances.

and ... that's why Minnesota is trying to ban them. They have a model that will obsolete the State's role in education which is a major power crisis.

The libertarian idea is guided by the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), which states that only the initiation of force or fraud against another is immoral. Anything else is permitted, including using force or fraud to stop someone who has initiated such against another. Another way to frame it is that it's never moral to interfere with another's freedom of choice. This all stems from the idea of self-ownership: That a person is absolutely the owner and controller of their own mind and body, and that no one else can own or control them without their consent.

The NAP therefore prohibits stuff like theft, kidnapping, assault, rape, and murder. All of these actions are initiations of force or fraud, all of them are interfering with another's freedom of choice, all of them are disrespecting a person's absolute self-ownership. The NAP does not allow for common laws such as paying nonconsensual fees to the government (taxes, licenses, permits, &c.), requiring permission from the government to engage in various activities (drive a motor vehicle, engage in certain professions, develop a piece of land, hunt, fish, purchase or carry a firearm, &c.), and prohibitions against things such as drug and alcohol use, assisted suicide, or any consensual sexual activities. In fact, since all of these laws interfere with a person's freedom of choice, the laws themselves are violations of the NAP.

The concept of property rights is derived from, and inherent in, self-ownership.

If the non-aggression principle is wrong, then it's perfectly okay for me to come over there and settle this debate through violence.

Ownership originates from self-ownership. This article is a pretty good explanation of the concept of self-ownership and its implications.

The free market is only "lazy" in that it lets people solve their own problems and make their own choices without external interference. Sure, you can call it "lazy"---in that people don't meddle in other people's business.

Ridley Reports on Kelly Voluntaryist's Most Revealing "Don't Strip Our Rights" Ever

In New Hampshire, we've been working on spreading knowledge about this fact for some time now. See http://nevertakeaplea.org/. There are flyers we hand out at court, too. Glad to see more and more people are waking up to this.

This activism is a nice complement to it: Not only demand a jury trial but convince the jury to acquit because the law is unjust, too.

The university is probably a "person" whenever it wants to be, but isn't whenever it wants to be.

We're fighting a similar case in New Hampshire. A couple decades ago, the University of N.H. employed their legal "political subdivision" label in order to protect themselves against another party in a lawsuit. And the court duly recognized their status as a political subdivision of the State of New Hampshire.

So recently a group of activists tried to challenge the UNH's firearms policy by pointing to N.H. RSA 159:26, which states that no political subdivision of New Hampshire can regulate firearms; only the Legislature may do so. The university of course tried to argue they're not a political subdivision.

If the legal system here was even remotely non-corrupt, this would be a slam dunk. The principle employed here is called "collateral estoppel" in legal parlance. "You can't have it both ways" might be another way to describe it. Or "blatant hypocrisy."

Guess which way the Superior Court ruled.

...activists have several ongoing legal battles concerning this nonsense. Here is the blog of one activist who has been fighting a similar charge in court for a while. His blog is also following a bill we have in the N.H. Legislature to fix the wiretapping law here. Slashdot reported on this case too, New Hampshire activists who were charged in Massachusetts and recently exonerated.

Google "voluntaryism", "stateless society". Or read some of this.

Easier solution: get the government out of it, so that multiple private agencies could compete, both for the registration of their novel ideas, and for adjudication where a party claims damages.

Monopolies generally suck. Governments, by definition, create monopolies of every product or service they touch.

And yes, thinking like this will eventually make you an anarcocapitalist

Here in NH we have this thing called the "NH Liberty Alliance" which is this psuedo-anarchist libertarian/teaparty group that tries to indirectly egg-on the police. They pull stunts like carrying a pistol standing downtown at a crowded intersection (which is legal), and pull out the camcorder if a cop walks over to ask them if everything is ok

As a former Director of Research for the NH Liberty Alliance, I can say fairly categorically that you're damn confused about what the NHLA is, and does.

The NHLA is a non-partisan, libertarian-leaning political organization. The organization's goals are "to increase individual freedom in New Hampshire. We do this by monitoring bills in the legislative sessions and encouraging private charity, a civil society, and citizen involvement."

I suspect you are confusing the NHLA with other "liberty-oriented" groups in NH, just as the apolitical civil-disobedience crowd over at Free Keene or NH Underground. Personally, while I agree with the philosophy and sentiment of many of those people, I despise those groups and their frankly stupid, counterproductive antics.

Have you ever considered RTFM'ing up on an issue before asking the obvious questions that every introductory text (or audio-book) on Anarcho-Capitalism would clearly answer? Here's one example of an endless debate on this issue... I'm not asking for anyone's approval and blessing, just my own liberation and all the consequences it would bring!

Anarcho-Capitalists like me clearly believe that the greatest tyranny in a society comes from a monopoly on violence (aka government), and that decentralization would lead to an emergence of "checks and balances" that keep private power from ever approaching the level of tyranny governments exercise today. You of course are free to disagree - I respect your right to subscribe to a government if you so choose. So why not respect my right to opt out - especially if it's on my own privately owned land, seastead, or space-station (someday)?

No one wants to "force people to be free"! We just want the freedom to put our money where our mouth is and experiment, and we believe that our ideas would lead to better economic growth, attract top brains and investment capital, and pretty soon the more socialist governments will simply run out of competent people to tax. If we are wrong, then what do you have to lose?

(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)

Government is a monopoly on the legitimized use of force. I trust competition more than I trust mobocracy. Any day.

The Market for Liberty is a good place to start.

I prefer the term anarchocapitalist

heh... I know a guy who got sentenced 90 days in prison for not sitting down fast enough when the judge ordered him to. Think I'm hyperbolizing? video. blogs.

It's interesting that we've finally come to a time where people are actually vocally discussing a change of the whole system. That really says something about the magnitude of the changes that are happening.

That said I think you got it quite right about the problem being that humans govern other humans and thus face a conflict of interest.

However I dare to claim that the program you are proposing already exists and is in place and has been for practically ever since humans existed on this planet. That program is indeed open source to the core and completely free for everyone to participate in. It is called THE FREE MARKET.

If the problem is humans governing other humans how about letting human individuals governing ONLY themselves. I govern me and you govern yourself. If you want somebody else to do something for you or believe as you do, do not apply force to make them comply (like the current governments do), but instead use persuasion and other PEACEFUL non-violent means. And if it doesn't work then simply give up. Using violence against another (which current governments unfortunately legitimize, even while forbidding everyone else from doing it, thus taking a monopoly on violence) only results in more violence - violence breeds more violence.

This is not anarchy in the sense most people have been taught to look at anarchy. It is not lawlessness in the same sense either. It is simply a lack of a coercive ruler in place of self-rulers trading both value and ideas between each other on a purely voluntary basis. And it is law that is private where the only universal, and natural, principle to be followed by everyone and at the same time enforced by everyone (right to bear arms for defense) is the principle of non-initiation of force or fraud.

This philosophy is called by varying names: anarcho-capitalism, market anarchy, voluntaryism (because the CORE idea is that all human action should be voluntary, not coerced) etc. It is arguably also the original libertarian idea, although nowadays libertarianism is seen as compromising with coercion and government a bit too much so with respect to that we can call it a subset of libertarianism, or libertarian purism.

Lastly I want to refer anyone who didn't before think this idea through to check out these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism
http://www.mises.org/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://freedomainradio.com/ (a fairly popular podcast by a genious market anarchist philosopher Stefan Molyneux which can with great proficiency answer every question you might have about market anarchy).

If you're curious enough that you'd give a book a chance, there's a free one with an audio book available here called "The Market for Liberty": http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/

It changed my life.

And if you are convinced already or become sufficiently convinced after exploring this, there is good news: a place where free market and liberty stand most chance in the world: New Hampshire, because of a project of moving thousands of liberty minded people to it: http://www.freestateproject.com/

Thanks for your consideration (and sorry for such a long post, I'm just too passionate about this). I truly hope that instead of worsening conditions for our freedoms, this shift we are seeing happening in the world opens the eyes of people towards the true nature of coercive governance and what freedom truly is).

Float your boat so long as it doesn't sink mine.