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Perhaps we should just dedicate a big chunk of land lets say Wyoming to all the idiots who think they are libertarian because they complain about taxes and let them run it there own way.

There's already the Free State Project, but I suspect most internet libertarians are content to just knock other people on internet fora and can't be bothered to really go somewhere and get involved in the civic process, which is admittedly hard work.

I realize that the government would like to keep it in effect forever just because of the power it grants them, but shouldn't they at least have to come up with some kind of new excuse by now?

Has the Federal Government ever backed away from more power, at least since the Jackson administration? There's not much you can do at the Federal level except watch it crumble under its own weight, but come join us in New Hampshire where we're fixing government from the bottom up. These folks will help you get here: http://freestateproject.org/

Herman Cain (GOP presidential candidate): Master of Arts degree in computer science from Purdue University in 1971.

The trouble with engineers who don't get Liberty is that they come up with very clever solutions. I used to be one of them. I loved the FairTax, for instance. What an excellent engineering solution to an economic problem - if you don't mind putting the entire country on welfare and Constitutionally getting the Feds involved in intrastate commerce.

Herman Cain is an example of this - he's a former head of a Federal Reserve Bank, the system which has caused so much of America's current problems, and he advocates for the system despite its obvious problems.

That said, many of my very best liberty friends here in New Hampshire are engineers. The Free State Project is teeming with them, and several of the most brilliant minds I work with in the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance are engineers. We're lucky to have several pro-Liberty engineers currently serving in our House of Representatives. They know how to attack problems, work a process, and create solutions.

Interested engineers might want to start here.

A USA-free Internet is what the world needs since Americans can't stand up to their own government.

yes they can, and they do: http://freestateproject.org/

My fellow supporters of market-friendly free software licenses (as opposed to the commie GNU crap) will be happy to hear that BitcoinJ has an Apache license, and hopefully it will be able to run on the Apache Harmony JVM in addition to the restrictive GPL one from Oracle.

The original Bitcoin client also has a Copyfree license, but it has some restrictive dependencies (ex. wx) and it's a pain to install on *BSD.

About that empty link in the last sentence of the summary - did the author intend to link to a story about commie thuggery against the Liberty Dollar?

The constitution is just an old relic

Some of us are rather actively fixing that

So how's the Free State Project working out there?

Not in New Hampshire. We rejected Real-ID, and any de facto national identification card system.

Some Free-Staters (again, not all) actually have been working hard on the notion of State Sovereignty; see the FSP page on this topic.

Also, a new bill has been introduced this session:
  HCR19 - Affirming States' powers based on the Constitution for the United States and the Constitution of New Hampshire.
There are also a few bills in play this session asserting the NH manufacturing shall not be regulated by the federal government. Longshots? Well, with over a dozen Free-Staters elected to the NH House of Representatives, maybe less long-shot than in other states....

Or even http://www.nhliberty.org/bills/view/2011/HB324 which is having a hearing today.

AN ACT relative to lawful commerce in goods and services sold, made, and retained in the state of New Hampshire.

Some Free-Staters (again, not all) actually have been working hard on the notion of State Sovereignty; see the FSP page on this topic.

Also, a new bill has been introduced this session:
HCR19 - Affirming States' powers based on the Constitution for the United States and the Constitution of New Hampshire.
There are also a few bills in play this session asserting the NH manufacturing shall not be regulated by the federal government. Longshots? Well, with over a dozen Free-Staters elected to the NH House of Representatives, maybe less long-shot than in other states....

I remember a quote about them, something like "they confuse freedom for corporations with freedom for people". Corporations aren't people, and so the tax rate for corporations (one of the reasons to pick New Hampshire I think) should be either irrelevant, or, a place with high taxes for corporations should be better (if it translates to lower taxes for real people).

Ahem, back on topic:
I think it is wonderful that at least one government is providing information in open formats (ahem, 'nerd-friendly, "pipe-separated" files'). I can't see the connection though between the "New Hampshire Liberty Alliance" (the group that seems to promoted the change according to the article), and the Free Staters.

Indeed, The Free State website says:

We are not a political action organization. We are not tied to any political party or organization; we do not run candidates for election, we do not financially support or endorse candidates, and we do not oppose or endorse legislation. All these things will be done by local activist organizations with which many Free Staters are involved.

New Hampshire is already probably the best place to field a 3rd-party candidate. They have the greatest number of state representatives per capita of any state in the US (and, I think, the greatest number overall). It means that you actually can talk to every voter in your district, if you like.

That's probably why these guys want to locate there.

Something like this? http://freestateproject.org/

I live in NH and don't pay sales tax on Amazon.com orders. In fact, I don't pay sales tax on ANYTHING.

101 Reasons to Move to NH

British MPs: you just gave a big boost to the Free State Project.

British people: come to New Hampshire. We're waiting for you to come HOME.

http://freestateproject.org/intro/real-id

why is it the self professed 'defenders of liberty' don't seem motivated enough to actually exercise their liberty and work to change the laws that they seem to detest so much?

I don't know about 'self-professed defenders', but people who actually care about liberty are moving to New Hampshire and some of the ones who have moved already are working with local groups like the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance to get those laws changed.

The results are good to date. As just one example, as of a few weeks ago there are no longer any illegal knives in New Hampshire. It's going to take a while to unwind 150+ years of bad law, but we're making progress.

When 20,000 more liberty lovers move en masse to propel the effort forward, it will get even better.

Yes, they do. Some of them are actually doing something about it, too!

For those of us who have closed our Facebook accounts:

http://freestateproject.org/

Which leaves me facing the next election to choose between the candidate who says he'll do things I care about, but won't, and the candidate who says he'll do things I hate, and will.

Or you could pull up stakes and move to New Hampshire.
Desperate times call for desperate measures...

Ah, lucky you, you live in a free state. I'm not allowed to legally possess magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. *sigh*

There's an app for that.

Sales tax!? Bah, if you give up schools and paved roads, you can do without it entirely.

We do!

Schools are paid for through property tax, while roads are paid for with gas taxes.

-A Free State Project member.

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.)

In a free society it would be within the right of the content authors to try to use whatever "technological cleverness" they come up with to track at least some of the "pirates" who copy their works, for the purposes of identification for legitimate contract enforcement or ostracism. For example Microsoft might gain the identity of the individuals / businesses pirating their software (or at least the individuals / businesses like ISP's that refuse to cooperate in their investigation) and blacklist them with certain business groups where Microsoft may be influential. Vast business alliances can form naturally in the free market to protect common interests like anti-piracy, and a university may be contractually obligated to punish their students for "piracy" lest the university's garbage pickup company boycotts them - you get the idea. Market pressure can be a powerful force, but, unlike government force (i.e. copyright / patent laws), it is always based on legitimate individual rights and not mindless violence for the sake of the state!

Join the Microsoft Developer NetWork today!

Seriously.

Or not.

So how's all that "hope" and "change" working out for you?

Republicans and Democrats are two advertising campaigns for the same rotten statist / semi-socialist product. They actually like to take turns - one hand (or iron fist) washes the other. The diapers change, but the source of the poo remains.

Third party politics are a bit better. Dropping out of the corrupt system entirely with movements like Seasteading and the Free State Project is best. Tax resistance -- if you have the balls -- can also play a very effective part in getting your voice heard.

"Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes." -- Alexander Haig

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

Linux beats the crap out of Windows.

That isn't objectively true. Its desktop usage share is still around 1%, and that's counting dual-booters and all the communist countries where buying Apple or Windows products is a no-no. And I'm still having more stability and usability problems with Ubuntu than for Windows 7 - Linux definitely ain't ready for grandma's computer just yet. You might say that Linux beats Windows in specific deployment categories (most Web server situations, supercomputing, etc), but you need to qualify your statements as such. And to make your arguments valid you'd also need to compare the leading FLOSS solution to a leading proprietary solution, which doesn't always come from Microsoft.

Firefox beats the crap out of IE.

Again an invalid comparison. IE is not the best proprietary Web-browser in terms of quality (Opera, Safari, Chrome), but it is the most popular.

Vorbis beats the crap out of MP3.

MP3 is not the latest or best proprietary audio format.

And Theora should beat the crap out of H.264!

Yes, we want this to be the case, but it isn't a foregone conclusion.

Unfortunately right now they play little dictators [...]

So do the GPL authors. Only the software that doesn't rely on government force is truly free!

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

This is a National ID card. Call it what it is and be done with it, don't try to hide it as part of an immigration bill.

Several states already have laws on their books preventing their executive branches from servicing a National ID card. A few years ago they called it "REAL ID".

e.g. New Hampshire. Folks interested in these issues ought to come out and lend a hand.

... archiving (i.e. anonymous cache proxy) and extending the old, with 100% private locally-owned "last mile" underground wiring, or better yet wireless mesh infrastructure that would be very difficult for the government to subvert and control. Of course such a project would benefit from a sufficient density of liberty-loving individuals habitating in close proximity to each-other, but luckily we a already have the Free State Project gradually taking shape in New Hampshire.

Only the fools are being fooled by the governments. Sooner or later, Atlas will shrug!

Freedom!

Chromium's license and dependencies are almost 100% restriction-free BSD. You can do whatever you want with it - without the fear that the Copyleft gang will drag you to court and make you waste millions on your defense and/or product launch delays / cancellations!

Firefox and its dependencies are locked away behind an iron wall of Copyleft and other restrictions. Every person who cares about personal liberty and free enterprise should use Chromium (or a less Google-entangled fork of it) instead!

Essential YouTube viewing:

• Eric S. Raymond and his opinion of the GPL
• BSD v. GPL, Jason Dixon, NYCBSDCon 2008

Jeremy Allison is one of the top villains of the software world (Richard Stalinman of course being #1), locking away software behind the restrictive anti-free-market legal virus they call the GPL, instead of something closer to truly free software (i.e. BSD license or public domain) which is how it would have naturally ended up due to free market competition. Neither freedom nor the ability to earn a living, inevitably leading to government funding and control of all software - that's the GNU way!

Microsoft is a much lesser evil, and one that is much easier to avoid. It is noteworthy that Microsoft didn't start using patents aggressively until it has become a victim of government violence itself. Microsoft could do just fine without copyright / "intellectual property" bull entirely, as would be the case in a 100% free society where they would be forced to operate through contract law, while GNU is completely and utterly impossible in a 100% free society - government force is what it's all about!

The GNU fiends love using the sword of government to their benefit, but when it is used back against them, oh no - hell hath no fury like a software commie scorned! He'll rant and rave in his mother's basement or government-subsidized dorm room - "I am a victim, hear me roar!"

(Now watch as my karma here goes to negative infinity and beyond, tee hee hee.)

States with great weather -- like California and Florida -- tend also to be hopelessly big-government.

New Hampshire really is unique in terms of the structure of its government. You know we don't pay our politicians? There's no money to be made. Does wonders at reducing corruption.

http://www.freestateproject.org/files/101-Reasons-to-Move-to-NH.pdf

The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.

A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.

There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.

NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.

A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.

There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.

NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.

A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.

There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.

NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.

A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.

There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.

NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Federal government will grow till the empire (and its currency) collapses.

A State government, however, can be pared back... if we concentrate our efforts.

There are 4 of "us" (Free State Project members) who have already been elected to the NH House of Representatives. NH has no income tax, no sales tax, no seatbelt law, no helmet law, shall-issue concealed and no-license open-carry. NH will not participate in the Real-ID program. We're pushing forward on jury nullification, marijuana decriminalization, and, possibly, secession.

NH is not "free", not by a long shot. But it's a lot better than most other US states, and I have seen the growth of government halted here many times. I've seen my friends elected to the state legislature. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

RMS is a skilled manipulator. I guess you've read the same gnu.org page that I have read, but failed to see through the nuanced BS and recognize it for what it is: a defense "intellectual property" laws!

This isn't really about GPL vs BSD (I actually prefer public domain), this is about government force.

You do have the right to do whatever you want with reflections of other people's work in your own mind, or on your computer. Quoting my recent post from another forum:

You get to own yourself and the consequences of your actions (i.e. capital), but not their immaterial reflections in the minds of other people. By immaterial I mean absence of scarcity: you own your body, because it can only serve one owner at a time, but not a copy of your DNA on someone else's computer, which once acquired can be copied without limit. You own your face, but you cannot put a post-it note on your forehead that says "by seeing my face you agree to the following contract" and expect that to be enforceable.

You can own explicit contractual privileges, land, plants, animals, robots, and even entire planets, but there's just no such thing as a right to enslave other people (or "rational economic actors" - possibly including AI entities and extraterrestrials)!

Consider parents' rights for example: parents should rightfully get power over their children (to fill the initial gap in a child's ability to handle the rights to liberty and property), but parents' rights are limited by the rights of the children themselves, up to a point where (unless they have a mental disability) they can come to own themselves outright. The same thing applies to author's rights as well: when their ideas move out of their mind and onto the minds of others, the second-hander minds have rights as well.

You can always prove whose parent you are, and if you take certain steps you can prove that you thought of something first, and I strongly believe that a society should value those accomplishments by ostracizing plagiarists and children who don't take care of their parents, but that should all be done in absence of blunt government force.

Now, once again, this socialist-leaning forum is not a good place to have this debate, especially when outspoken points of view like mine are restricted to only 2 posts a day. If you want to debate this further then please go to a more libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist forum instead, where dissenting views are likely to be treated more substantively, and not stifled as they are here.

The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!

BSD is the most restrictive license a freedom-loving person should ever want to use. GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is, but usually doesn't come close to it in terms of quality or convenience.

At first, I was in general agreement with what you were saying. Developers are affected by market forces and are free to take actions that benefit themselves as they desire. But then you dove right in to this freedom-is-tyranny anti-GPL litany. The mental gymnastics involved are what's mind-boggling here. It's rather amusing how BSD fanatics are using this case to push an agenda.

The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!

BSD is the most restrictive license a freedom-loving person should ever want to use. GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is, but usually doesn't come close to it in terms of quality or convenience.

And Monty Widenius is trying so hard to win the "communist software troll of the decade" award even Richard M. Stalinman would blush!

What he's advocating is government tyranny against millions of Sun's and Oracle's shareholders, employees, customers, and other stakeholders, not to mention the European tax-victims who'll end up paying for a socialist software industry once they entirely succeed in destroying free market enterprise on that economically and demographically shrinking continent!

Those people have a right to manage their property however they see fit - they are not the serfs of their government overlords, nor are they the slaves of MySQL freeloaders. Life doesn't owe anyone a free ride! Free / open source software should come about as the natural result of market competition, not government force!

(More about libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist software philosophy here.)

Copyleft / GPL software is only "free as in communism" - that is not free at all. It is a viral license that uses government force to spread itself, subverting the free market in software development (which naturally leads to the most common software components becoming open source and public domain, while the best developers are still able to make money selling cutting-edge innovations), and encouraging ever-more government funding and control of yet another important industry.

Permissive licenses aren't perfect, public domain is, but I don't think anyone in history has ever been sued over forgetting to give proper credit to the downstream authors, as the BSD license requires. The main point of the BSD license was to cover the legal butts of the original authors (i.e. no warranty, traceability, etc), which would be completely unnecessary under a more rational system of jurisprudence.

Responsibility comes from the rights of other human beings, and there is no such thing as the right to enslave others, which is what GPL claims of anyone who dares to borrow its code on his or her own terms.

(More here.)

Emacs can't do one very important thing -- stop relying on government force -- the rest is irrelevant to me!

GPL

And then there are states like New Hampshire, with no state sales tax (and no state income tax, either)
I guess these dying dinosaur newspapers will concentrate their efforts where governments are largest and extract the most wealth from the serfs.

You are not alone! Might I suggest checking out The Free State Project? It is 'l'ibertarian only.

Most (all?) participants would agree with your view of the 'L'ibertarian party. Activism is underway :)

This thread really demonstrates how narrowly most /.'ers view libertarianism, which isn't surprising considering the recent antics of the national LP like nominating that fraud Bob Barr and the ridiculous wikipedia article. As a voluntaryist/anarchist/"little l" libertarian, I'd like to point out that the philosophy of individual liberty requires as an absolute, the respect of everyone else's liberty first and foremost, provided they are not harming anyone or anyone's property (generally speaking. discussions on property rights abound. libertarians would never oppose voluntary communes, etc. as long as violence is not used to force others to participate). This boils down to the non-aggression principle. Because of this ultimately respectfully pacifist ethos, most libertarians do not actively seek to suppress fringe speech or otherwise interfere with the nonviolent activities of other individuals. This does not mean that they agree with said (often crazy) speech. For instance, I've never even heard of the Heartland Institute, nor any of the other allegedly-libertarian organizations or individuals referenced in TFA for attacking free software. Free software is incredibly libertarian, though telling me how I can or cannot prioritize traffic on my network is not. My customers are not forced to remain so.

People interested in individual liberty should check out The Free State Project and Reason Magazine. For fun, check out Free Talk Live, a liberty-oriented radio show that takes calls on absolutely any subject and reports regularly on the FSP.

I think my state, and the few that surround it, should all consider secession.

You don't happen to live in New Hampshire, the home state of the Free State Project?

Falcon

The Constitution was undermined after the US Supreme Court ruled against Jackson in the Worcester v. Georgia case in 1832 and Jackson said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"

I used to think that too. Now I'm unsure. Wikipedia says the quote is actually a misquote paraphrased to have the same effect.

First, thanks for the link. I searched wiki but didn't find the article, perhaps that's because I searched for "Worcester vs Georgia" not "Worcester v. Georgia". One little "s". Now if you google "Worcester vs Georgia" it returns more than 44,000 results. Remove the double quotes when searching Wiki, which I just did, and the article is the first result.

As for whether Jackson had indeed said it, I don't recall hearing or seeing a dispute on whether he did or not.

Roosevelt more or less did the same thing by telling the Supreme Court "make me" when they determined a lot of it's New Deal legislation unconstitutional and ordered it stopped. This forced the court to compromise and expand the interstate commerce clause to allow much of the meat of the new deal to stay.

I don't recall that though I know a lot of people accuse Roosevelt of court packing.

Roosevelt knew his new deal legislation was largely unconstitutional before even attempting it.

"It's a shame to let a good crisis go to waste."

FDR wasn't the first, and Obama (I know he didn't say it) won't be the last. All I can see to try to stop it is a revolt, and if I could I'd move to New Hampshire to join the Free State Project.

Falcon

Many of the United States are on the path to have a national ID card as well. But not New Hampshire. The ability of any average citizen to testify on any bill before the Legislature is one of the strengths of the governmental structure here. I enjoyed testifying before the NH State Senate that there is no such thing as a completely secure database.

They're making a decent go at it in New Hampshire...