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The Free State Project, One Decade Later
Okian Warrior writes "About a decade ago Slashdot ran an article about the Free State Project: an attempt to get 20,000 liberty-minded activists to move to one state (they chose NH) and change the political landscape. Eleven years on, the project is still growing and having an effect on statewide politics. NPR recently ran a program discussing the movement, its list of successes, and plans for the future. The FSP has a noticeable effect on politics right now — still 6,000 short of their 20,000 goal, and long before the members are scheduled to move to NH."
WTF does that even mean? That could be anything from Libertarians who don't want to pay taxes to hippies wanting to set up a socialist utopia.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
These are libertarians, While they do support many liberties, they utterly fail on economic concepts, and are looking to negate liberty through plutocracy via corporate proxy.
Okay, now how do you stretch "News for Nerds" to this?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
But if i had a chance, I'd move in there. Not that i am not happy here in Germany or something... I like idea.
They must be really pro-big government.
Couldn't be bothered to RTFA, eh?
What are you talking about, Commie????? It means Freedom!!!11!!!! God bless Ay-Murrrrka!!!111!!11
There is a stretch of highway in southern NH (state road 101 I believe) that is actually sponsored by the Free State Project.
So yes, irony is still dead.
*whoosh*
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Perhaps I need to spell it out for you. Are you one of those people by the way? Anyway, all these lunatic mental patient activist hippie ass clowns move there. Then the government needs to dump more money into mental services for these idiots. So the joke is that they're all for big government with lots of services because they're causing them by putting so many deranged people in one area.
I'm an anarchist. I want a society free from capitalism, the state, and other forms of hierarchy. (Oooh look, communism.)
But even so, I can see benefits in working within the state while we wait for the mythical general strike that will bring down the government and implement the seeds of a new society.
And so I can see the benefits of this style of mass migration. Except, good luck. It ain't working is it. They don't even have 20 000 people after ten years!
Besides, they are still capitalists most of them aren't they. They don't want true liberty, just liberty to accumulate wealth and oppress others that way. And any attempt to go against the wishes of the actual rich (as opposed to the merely wanna be rich) will result in them being shutdown by whichever police force got the bribe quickest. Freedom doesn't just come, you have to fight for it.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
There will always be disagreement on some issues of policy. Unfortunately, preserving our fundamental freedoms and the checks and balances that ensure them seems to continually take backseat to all these other disagreements. Committing to uphold the constitution should be a prerequisite to serving in government, not something that is so low on people's priority that none of the candidates even discuss it in their campaign, and all of them violate it when elected. Assembling a large number of people who will put freedom first when deciding who to vote for will be a wonderful influence on our government, even (and perhaps especially) if the people they elect are split on other economic and social issues.
They chose my home town as the test bed.
They attempted to stack the select board with their members using unscrupulous means such as slander stuffing mailboxes without stamps in violation of federal rules.
There is some good as they oppose wind development which largely benefits out of state interests and decimates local ridgetops. As a group they seem like nice folks, kind of like right wing hippies ; )
However they are subverting the will of the public by attempting to hijack local and state politics and a similar bunch has devastated the legislature at the state level and made many questionable laws in defiance of the majority of the electorate.
...you can always flee across the border to Canada.
Probably would be more efficient to have one literal "crazy town" with 20,000 "crazies", than to have services spread across the country......sounds to me like they are all about cost-cutting.
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
I can only hope the "liberal-minded activists" are moving from Ohio. We can use less of them here. I am always embarassed for people with Obama bumper stickers still on their car.
Curiously, for a state whose motto is "Live free or die", NH continues to permit a government monopoly on the sale of any booze punchier than beer or wine. Those two can be purchased at grocery and convenience stores; but if you want the hard stuff it's off to one of the state's state-owned liquor distribution facilities.
So you want to show a difference in libertarian policy, and you choose New Hampshire as your test bed? New Hampshire is already one of the most libertarian states out there, and the capitol of "retail politics" due to it's state in the primary process. The state's motto is "Live Free or Die" already (joked to be changed to "Live Free or Cheap"), you think they come about that one by accident, or because they already espouse these values?
Tainted data from the start.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And that's what we're trying to change!
When we're done, you'll be able to get hard liquor at any store, guns at any store, and ammo at any store and none of this horseshit of IDs to see if you're old enough or any of this back ground check crap!
Government will be completely voluntary and therefore free.
Law enforcement will be done by the individual - caught breaking into grandmas? Well you're gonna get yer ass shot off! Young hoodie wearing suspicious looking kid? Well now, boy! WTF are YOU hanging around here fer? You're obviously up to no good - boy. Look'in at me like that - boy - is gonna get yer ass shot off.
My land is my land. If I wanna dump anti-freeze on my property or other peoples anti-freeze, it's non of yer bizness. Neither are my hand-grenades and rocket launchers.
Yeseree bob, I can't wait for the Freedom!
Make them responsible for themselves, with no gun laws.
Should sort itself out pretty quickly.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
AS there are no JOBS in NH... From the beginning this "project" screamed, "for rich people only" because those are the only ones that can just uproot their lives and move without having to have a job.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't know what these people are trying to prove. We know communism doesn't work, because we've tried it in eastern Europe. We also know that libertarism doesn't work, because take any failed African state and you see that people don't self organize into well-functioning society.
Besides, I really despise these smug libertarians, who thump their chests about liberty and privacy and are not even remotely aware how much they got from this society, not to mention they they are not willing to give any of it back in taxes... Big egos, little brain and compassion.
A lot of people who work in technology care about the impact it has on society and on individuals' lives. To me, for example, the dumb pipes of the Internet are only interesting because of what you can *do* with them: from checking the basketball scores to organizing the Arab Spring. This is why Slashdot as a "Your Rights Online" category.
So to get to "news for nerds" to "update on the free state project" is about 3 hops: nerds -> Internet freedom -> libertarian platform -> libertarian group.
Disclaimer: I don't call myself a libertarian but I agree with some libertarian policy goals.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Also, Ron Paul supporters... apparently gravitating to the Republican side.
Though, my favorite quote is this:
"A lot of people who follow the rabbit hole of liberty have already lost their friends and family to begin with, because they're willfully ignorant of something we believe very strongly in," he said. "And what we're creating is an individualist, intentional community, and I point out the individualist part because we're not a commune or a cult or anything; people can live wherever they want."
In other words, these are folks who are too radical for their own friends and family due to their extremist political beliefs.
They also find themselves to be the only "sane" people around.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Looks like one of the Ron Paulbots had modpoints... please give if you see what those racist shits are up to.
The first time the FSP was on /. I was tempted. The second time the FSP was on /. I signed up.
Now I've lived here for five years. This is the real deal, NH has the perfect state and local government for this experiment. Politics is the unofficial state sport of NH with 400 state reps for only 1.3 million constituents that are about equally divided between the two major parties. Republican and democratic parties engage our ideas, sometimes in battle, other times in courtship. You don't have to explain first principles over and over again, everyone here knows government like fire can be a dangerous master, you get to have debate and make an impact on people and policy with all that stuff as accepted framework of the discussion.
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
I guess that there's nothing that distances the US from western europe more than the attitude towards taxation. I like to pay taxes - I feel that contributing to my nation is a great way of demonstrating true patriotism. The money is used to benefit those who are less advantaged than me. I cannot believe that anyone who has substantially lived in a country that offers universal healthcare would ever dream of going back to any other system, regardless of the fact that such a system entails taxation.
Likewise, the way in which I judge the success of a country is not by the looking at the elites, but by measuring the sense of fulfilment of the least advantaged; it's a different way of seeing the world, I guess.
As for liberty, doesn't that tie in strongly with what one identifies as the individual - i.e., who one is responsible for? For instance, a family man may wish to fight for the liberty of his family, rather than just himself, - his sense of self is tied into what he is responsible for. Likewise, a good politician works for the benefit of the entire country (or state), with no self-interest - he identifies with the needs of who he is responsible for. In my mind, the larger the community one can be responsible for (and identify with) the more mature one becomes, and the more worthy of respect and honour.
So, if we take on the view that liberty for all is the highest possible achievement, then we find that the libertarian view is not different from the socialist one - there is a need for taxation in order to provide liberty to those who cannot otherwise achieve it - for training, for support, and for developing a sense of value, so that even the most humble person may feel great about the society within which they belong.
I probably left everyone behind by this point. Thank goodness everyone believes in the right to freedom of thought.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
Given that's the definition of socialism, all do. Well, that's ONE definition of socialism from a respected dictionary. A better definition might be "a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned or controlled by the state" (changing AND to OR).
Are you thinking of a socialist country that doesn't meet that definition?
Given that's the definition, that's why when Obama said the government needs to exercise it's "ownership and management responsibilities" of General Motors, and similar statements, people call those ideas socialist - because government "ownership and management" is the very definition of socialism.
Rep. Warden’s Democratic opponent in 2012, Aaron Gill, alleged that Free Staters threatened New Hampshire’s ideals. “Imagine what happens when 20,000 Free Staters move here, get elected and vote,” he said in a letter to the Concord Monitor.
Yes, imagine when 20,000 people who are actively engaged and informed about what's going on in politics and the world have the temerity to vote and make their voices heard. 20,000 people who won't just vote a party line. 20,000 people who believe they can make a difference and are actually working to do so...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
If you're going to go around with no seatbelt on, whose taxes are going to pay to clean up the mess when you spread your brains on the pavement?
Our seatbelt-free ways predate the arrival of Free Staters. NH is the only state to not mandate seatbelt use for adults, just for 17 and unders. We also have mo law requiring the use of motorcycle helmets for adults.
The real problem with the capital-L sort of libertarianism is that frankly, we're not good enough to make it work. Much like communism, you essentially set up a system that's almost trivial to game, and then you ask people not to game it. Recorded history has shown all too clearly what humanity is in the dark: not enough people will uphold the system to be able to support the system.
You could do it in a culture with an absolutely ironclad notion of honor that was so all-pervasive and agreed upon that the people followed it instinctively. In the West nowadays, we actually see such cultures -either from our own histories or from elsewhere entirely- as exotic: we're that far removed from where we'd need to be for a libertarian system to work. But even in these cultures, honor is almost always confined to the warrior classes: finding a culture that actually practices it throughout borders on impossibility. And when you find these, the underlying philosophies don't even claim to be libertarian in nature.
Honestly, this is where libertarians really need to be spending their time. Their goal is a good one to strive for, but the culture simply is not ready. The real work right now is preparing the culture, and as much as political parties would love to think otherwise, you cannot do this from the top down. You have to work from the bottom up: learn how to produce honorable people in an honorless world, then get out into the dialogue and spread the memes. This is slow, but it's the only way cultural change has ever really worked.
And yeah, this means we're unlikely to see a true libertarian system in our lifetime. That's a shame, but honestly, it doesn't really change the odds. Plunk the modern populace down into a libertarian system, and you'll only wind up with Thunderdome. You've got to fix the people before you can fix the system.
What is the point of this? What are these people doing up there, besides "changing the political landscape"? Do they have jobs or families?
So is an entire town being paid by the RNC to do astroturfing, or do these people have real jobs? Did some Texas 'Merican factory owner moved a factory up there and then imported Republicans to work at it. (I have no idea if this is legal, having a political test for employment; but there are so many loopholes it can probably be done either way.)
So this is a plan to try to take over a small state that tends to vote democrat in national elections. Nothing wrong with that, in theory it is a great idea. But I can see why they are not looking to fix the broken electoral system; the last thing Republicans need is a direct vote, they would get crushed even more badly than they do now.
FTA
On the lighter side, in 2012 state Rep. Seth Cohn (R), in response to the attempted repeal of the 2009 New Hampshire law recognizing same-sex marriage, submitted legislation that would have banned marriages between two left-handed people. In previous years the jokester had submitted bills outlawing all marriages and replacing them with civil unions.
Ok, now I kind of like these guys. Legislative Trolling at its finest. Also maybe they are doing their own thing and are not just a propaganda wing of the RNC. Certainly the Republican rank and file would not support a group that is a proponent of same sex marriage. Hell, anything to get us out of our two standard parties.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Look, libertarians, like any other political group, cover a wide range of opinions. I lean very strongly libertarian for people, meaning, equality in the public space, freedom of choice for one's self, complete freedom of speech, the right to defend one's self, one's family, one's property, personal responsibility, qualification as "informed" by demonstration of same, rather than an (incredibly stupid) age metric, castle-like home property ownership and control (none of this "taking" crap if you actually own it), etc.
At the same time, if you elect to operate as a shop, corporation, or government entity, service provider, road or bridgekeeper, package delivery, etc., singly or in groups, then I'd just as soon see said group pinned right down by laws that ensure that people trying to deal with them receive equal treatment regardless of what groups they might fit in, or not fit in, while protecting the entity, group etc. from people's behaviors that are corrosive to the group on its property.
I really like the idea of a constitutional republic where basic rights are enshrined at a level above the ability to legislate them away; I deeply regret that the USA no longer even remotely resembles such a nation and has fallen down to a corporate oligarchy; and while we, the USA, have failed to hold on just as we were warned might happen, I am all for another try, warts and all.
--fyngyrz
anon due to mod points
If this turns out like Slashdot, people will move there for the purpose of voting downmods.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Bir Tawil is administered by Egypt, though they don't claim it. That means you're subject to anything the Egyptian government decides to do, even if it conflicts with Egyptian law, because, ta-da, it's not actually Egypt. Just like here in the US, you have some protections (mostly fake, but still, they're law) you can call upon from the government, but outside the US, the US government is not going to obey those laws. They will rendition you, drone you, wiretap you, stop you on the high seas and confiscate your craft, or just sink you if that seems like it would please someone, somewhere.
So let's not go pointing at Bir Tawil as a reasonable place to found a community, shall we? It isn't.
--fyngyrz
anon due to mod points (unfortunately out of them or I'd mod you into oblivion, because your post was worthless)
There's no such thing as a "big enough boat." It's the ocean. Every once in a while, it produces waves that can, and have been known to, snap the largest ships made in half. I'm not talking about tsunami; I'm talking about rouge waves. There is no sea-surface-residing construction we can make that can stand against them. Seasteading is like building your home on a muddy slope. Any day could be its last, and its eventual demise is certain.
And living under the water doesn't work out, either. Tech isn't up to it.
Somalia is NOT an example of anarchy, as the common strawman argument goes. Anarchy requires the absence of organized coercion, just as the state requires the presence of organized coercion. Whether that organized coercion is "official" or not is irrelevant to the question at hand.
Ask yourself one simple question. In Somalia, is there one or more group which has organized on the premise of employing coercive authority over others? If so, then anarchy is simply out of the question.
Anarchy does NOT mean "no rules", but rather, "no rulers". Got rulers? Then you don't got anarchy.
Free Staters are vastly outnumbered by tax exiles from Massachusetts. Something like 10- 20,000 move here every year.
Externalities. In the real world externalities overwhelm the economic benefit of almost any activity run in an unregulated environment. Contracts, just as now, would simply be used to protect the powerful and continue to extract wealth from the poor and society.
IOW it is simple to privatize the profits and socialize the costs (pollution, taking advantage of misinformed or mentally challenged individuals, patient dumping, death and illness, etc.) ANY individual or organization can easily cause more harm than the economic value of its production, because it is so much easier to destroy than to create (a libertarian core belief, btw) Absent regulation and government (by the people, remember) oversight the number of organizations causing harm will grow, first arithmetically then exponentially as we race to the bottom.
The libertarian answer to this is government enforcement of contracts and the court system. So we trade a nation of laws and regulation for a nation of contracts and lawsuits. No evidence the costs of this or the benefits of this are better for society than what we have now, probably would be much worse. The court system would expand, be just as subject to corruption as the current government system, and would eventually collapse under its own weight.
TLDR: People suck, and any system can and will be gamed by the psychopathic among us.
but you need to be able to have jobs. Get someone like Bill Gates interested and then it could be feasible.
You can bring all our liberals with you if you want.
the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round.
big wheel, keep on turnin'
you spin me right round baby right round, like a record baby, right round round round
My favorite conspiracy is the one where everyone who believes in conspiracies are nuts because there are no conspiracies. Thus all of the laws against conspiracy, people convicted of conspiracy, and exposed conspiracies are really just a conspiracy to make us believe that there really are conspiracies.
I take it you've never been to Springfield, IL. It's hard to find anyone here that isn't batshit insane.
20,000 arrogant elitist self-centered folks who think they know better than the plebes that surround them? New Hampshire is home to over a million folks who apparently are pleased with the system we already have. Thanks, but no thanks.
I'm reading these comments and all I can say is "wow". Libertarians used to make up a much larger percentage of slashdot than it does now. Once a political view reaches a certain low percentage within a group it is almost impossible to have rational, productive discussion. I didn't realize that taxes = freedom or that government = freedom or that wanting to be left alone when you are not bothering anyone means you must be a racist or that you are rich or powerful or selfish and uncaring or insane.
As a Libertarian I never realized any of this. I especially like the part about how rich I am. Every time there is a discussion about how much most of you make I am astounded to see how many of you make about 10 times more than I do. But I'm a Libertarian so I must be rich without realizing it. I'd rather be poor and free than a rich slave.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The majority of people don't want freedom. They never have and they never will. Only a very, very tiny minority of people truly want to live in a free society. This is why the Great American Experiment has failed so spectacularly. It always lacked popular support.
I think the only way for such a society to exist is as a small community of like minded people. This is why the Free State Project is basically a good idea. The whole NH thing didn't work of course because there aren't enough Libertarians to form a majority against the pro-government people in NH or anywhere else. Most of the bad laws are federal anyway. The state would have to literally secede and be able to fight the army successfully in order to do so.
If there is ever to be another Libertarians society, something like 18th century US system, we would have to basically seize our own piece of land and be prepared to fight and die to defend it. Because we are such a small minority on this planet the only way to do that would be to choose a place that no large state is really willing to fight to keep.
That means some remote uninhabited island, probably in the Southern Ocean or a piece of Antarctica itself. I just can't picture a large nation going to war to defend either the Antarctic Treaty or a claim to such remote and desolate land.
Unfortunately, in addition to building a permanent settlement in some of the harshest conditions on the planet we would have to start manufacturing weapons almost immediately to anticipate the inevitable war.
If interplanetary space travel ever becomes practical and affordable we would have the option of starting a free society off world, but those conditions would be even more harsh than Antarctica.
BTW, Wyoming is a freer state than New Hampshire.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
... in that no one shoots anyone else?
I'm glad we can all come together here and finally agree on these important issues.
Keep telling yourself that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Marshfield, WI as well, although they have a bit of a meth problem.
You think that's not a real thing? I am completely not making this shit up. There's a city in upper Michigan that used to be an army air base of some sort. It's like a giant hole cut out of thick pine trees. We were driving and then all of a sudden it turns from forest mountain to creepy old school Fallout New Vegas shit, lol. Guess who lives there? It's a government experiment where they ship in mentally disturbed people, ex-cons, and tons of people on perpetual government assistance there and give them government semi-sponsored jobs and stuff. You basically feel like you need a weapon at all times. We had to do a short contract project up there and it was like the damn circus moved into town and stayed, lol. Just imagine Walmart at 1:00 in the morning times 100 and living in one place with zero normal people. So yeah, it happens.
You're probably not making it up, but knowing you, you almost certainly failed utterly to understand what was actually going on. Either way, your retarded babbling is safely ignored.
You ignorant motherfucker.
You don't even know what the fuck slavery is.
You can quit working whenever you want to. You don't want to work? That fine you don't have to work, no problem, you don't have to and nobody s going to force you to. Your boss and his cronies aren't going to come kick your door in, tie your ass to a tree and take a bullwhip to you if you decide you don't want to work. And slaves and freeloaders are the only fuckers who don't pay taxes, they just get whatever food, drink, clothing and shelter master decided they deserved.
You want the freedom to choose what you want to eat, where you want to live? Your ass is free work and pay taxes like the rest of us, because freedom ain't free--motherfucker.
20,000 screaming idealogues who equate taxes used to educate children to create a literate society with fascism.
idealogical morons, the lot of them.
Absolute statements are never true
Not sure I agree, although I am against these endless wars on ideas, like terrorism, or things, like drugs. We can stop those wars, if we are willing to exercise our power as citizens.
Read up on feudalism, or just watch Game of Thrones, if you want to see the results of decentralized power. Also - that ship has sailed with the advent of nuclear weapons and other WMD tech. Unfortunately we can no longer afford the luxury of infinite warlords, each with the ability to render large parts of the world uninhabitable. Again - it is much easier to destroy than to create, or even maintain.
In any case I was not writing a treatise on government and libertarians, just answering how libertarianism (like any system) can be gamed.
What happens to me if I don't pay the government in power? If I don't want any of the services they are offering and really want nothing to do with them?
Guess what? That's not possible.
If you live in a society with a government, you are benefiting from the services that government provides whether you like it or not. Their army, their police, the roads they build, the laws they make protecting the air and water...you literally cannot take a breath without benefiting from the services the government provides.
You say you want a place where people can be "free to live"? Let me tell you what that would end up like.
Within a generation, it would go one of two ways: Either it would be an absolute shithole that no one would ever actually want to go to, because too many people joined it who just wanted to do whatever the hell they wanted and screw the rest of the universe, or a body would emerge that functioned as a government. And if that body wanted to be able to provide anything meaningful to the people of the Free State beyond conflict mediation, it would have to be paid somehow. Donations might work for a little while, but I guarantee that wouldn't last.
Humans in groups naturally gravitate towards some form of governed society. It's just part of the way we're wired. Yes, I dare say something like the Free State project could probably work for a while—with small groups of people who voluntarily put themselves in that situation, and a way to screen out people who just want to mess everything up because they don't think anyone can stop them. But the reason I say "within a generation" is because these sorts of Utopian societies have been tried before, and they have invariably collapsed because the children didn't choose to be there, and don't all agree with the way they're set up.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I believe https://goo.gl/StBEh is a better than FSP.
A currency with an automatic devaluation _if_ not spent within a month or so.
This of course causes things to be done, since money supply is automatically there... and one is forced to spend it...
Casteism