Slashdot Mirror
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.
It is easy to equate this with "News for Nerds" -- they are hacking a system while attempting to use the system against itself in order to bring about change. It is also a learning process. This is the epitome of what hackers and other creative people used to embody -- and what many of us should strive for now. Learn, grow, change (for the better, we hope) instead of just maintaining the status quo.
All it takes is one "domino" to fall the right way and systemic change is created - even if it takes years for that domino to fall. The things get exciting.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Libertarianism sounds like a nice idea, on paper. Until you get sick from the unregulated chemicals in your Libertarian Utopian job, discover that your Libertarian Health Care determines this to be a pre-existing condition and drops your coverage, your at will employer fires you from your non-union job (remember, you have freedom but don't even think about forming a Union, Liberty!) and all your savings are wiped out in yet another unregulated stock market collapse. Then you're cold, sick and homeless and wondering why nobody cares that you did everything the way you were supposed to and still failed miserably so go die in a hole and by the way there's a $10 hole fee.
don't even think about forming a Union, Liberty!
Libertarianism (Latin: liber, "free")[1] is a set of related political philosophies that uphold liberty as the highest political end.[2][3] This includes emphasis on the primacy of individual liberty,[4][5] political freedom, and voluntary association. A voluntary association or union (also sometimes called a voluntary organization, unincorporated association, common-interest association,[1]:266 or just an association) is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement as volunteers to form a body (or organization) to accomplish a purpose.
Sounds like Unions are fine so long as they are voluntary.
"stuffing mailboxes without stamps in violation of federal rules."
OMG!
Ironic how most people in the USA say they support "democracy", but when a group of people (with whom they disagree) decide to engage in political activism, those people are accused of "hijacking" politics and "subverting" the process.
Are they engaged in actively suppressing the majority? Election fraud? Voter intimidation?
If the majority of "the public" refuses to participate in politics, then why should the "will of the public" matter? If "the public" doesn't like it, what's preventing them from employing the exact same techniques that the FSP activists are using?
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.
I am not suggesting that taxation is used to make payouts. The point is that liberty is about freedom, and freedom is founded on rights. Those rights are where all liberty starts. The right not to be hungry. The right to healthcare. The right to education. The right to vote. The right to work. The right to warmth, clothing and shelter. The right to be protected and looked after when you are flooded, your home destroyed, or your land invaded, or you or your family merely get old, or sick. The more fundamental rights a nation is able to give it's population, the better that nation is, but some of those come at a price, which is taxation. In my mind at least, rights take precedence over freedom. The right not to be harmed takes precedence over the freedom to harm. A huge amount of rights vs. freedom is about the ability to give consent, which requires the asking of it. Maybe if your friend had asked for consent, he wouldn't have ended up involved in the interlocution you describe.
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