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Free State Project 93% Towards Goal (freestateproject.org)
Okian Warrior writes: Long term readers may recall the Free State Project, a plan to gather 20,000 liberty-minded participants and move to a low-populated state, as covered here on Slashdot. The project reached 90% of its 20,000 member goal last year with accelerated growth in recent months, and is on track to trigger the move to New Hampshire before year's end.
Let them spend a full winter in NH and we'll see just how many stick around.
Turnout for state-level races tends to be under 50%, and some of the population is too young to vote, so that 1.5% is probably gonna be a full 5% of the electorate. Assuming a) they all show up on election day, and b) they all (or at least a reasonably large proportion of them) vote the same way.
A 5% voting block is pretty important. It really helps that they are in a state where they won't be the only people going "live free or die," and that the state's legislature is so fucking huge. With a 400-member lower House, there's only 3k or so people per legislator, which means it's much easier to get in on the ground floor then it would be in Cali.
The problem these guys have is not gonna be that their plan is stupid, it's gonna be that getting a bunch of Libertarian internet activists to a) actually follow the fuck through and move to New Hampshire, b) show up to vote in boring off-years elections when nobody actually votes, and c) all vote the same fucking way even if both candidates disagree with them on some issue; is pretty much the definition of impossible. Especially c).
That said, I wish them luck. Whatever happens, this is a lot more productive then the internet activists typical routine of posting a rant, and then concluding that the process is rigged/corruption is rampant/the parties are Fascistic Nazi-lites/etc. when everything isn't fixed in an hour.
What will happen is that, at some point, people who have lived there their entire lives and do not share the extreme political views will have to move out.
Isn't the whole point of this project? Not only do these "liberty minded people" have to move out, they have nowhere to go and have to fix themselves a place with more acceptable politics.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Because when I think of forcing democracy down people's throats, I think of ISIS...
Wait why do people have to move out? Who has to move out? Is it the people who need to live in a state where they have the freedom to control what other people put into their bodies?
The next thing you know, they'll be forcing freedom of speech down everyone's throats and taking away the freedom to silence others.
If you treat the words "liberty" and "religious extremism" as interchangeable, they are literally identical to ISIS. What is this world coming to?
Quite apart from the question of whether this is feasible, I think am important question is whether this is morally right? People who have lived in a cplace for generations generally get up in arms if a large group - say, muslims - suddenly stream in and want to change things; the same will apply with any other large group. They are simply newcomers, who want to impose their views on people. And, of course, isn't there something contradictory in trying to impose "Freedom" on anybody?
You misunderstand how statists work. "West Side Story" scared old people in the 60's so they wanted to ban switchblades. To be good bureaucrats they banned all knives capable of one-handed operation, including multitools that EMS uses. Some EMS medics accepted the risk of prosecution to be more effective at their jobs but now they don't have to. The legislator who ran this effort, Jenn Coffey, an EMS medic, was accused of political extremism by the statists for her efforts. As a long-time NH resident, I say bring on such "extremism".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You should read more about libertarianism/classical liberalism and Austrian economics - I suggest starting with a paper called Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard. He also has a book called For a New Liberty that I recommend. You can download all of his and other influential libertarian thinker's writings for free from the Mises Institute website. While you're at it, read up on the other side - communist manifesto, Marxism/Leninism, neosocialism, etc. Anyway, I think a lot of people confuse Ayn Rand's Objectivism with libertarianism - they are very different things and Rand was explicitly not a libertarian. Most libertarians do believe in a stong social system - just a private one. This may seem crazy to you at first, but you can look at the numbers and see the poor were much better off before the government got involved and that private charity was much more effective. The social security systems in place now are little more than a thinly veiled attempt to buy votes and do little to actually help people improve their condition. Case in point - the standard of living among poor minorities was improving rapidly until the 'war on poverty' was started and has since leveled off. While libertarians just don't agree that forcibly taking money from one group to give to another is really charity, that doesn't make them greedy people who wouldn't freely give. Actually I believe they tend to be above average in charitable giving, but don't feel like looking up any stats. Wanting a state imposed system that takes by force so they don't have to get their hands dirty doesn't make one a caring charitable person. Anyone who thinks libertarians are just greedy Republicans really has no clue and hasn't done an ounce of reading. I started as a libertarian - lite but have moved to the anarchocapitalist side since I'm just not convinced by logic, reason, and actual data that the state can ever produce a better outcome than private interaction, and even in instances where it may, I believe voluntary interactions are always preferable to the use of force and coercion by the state. Many may disagree, but I think one's willingness to have the state take from me by force is a fucking dick who really doesn't give a shit about his fellow man no matter how much he jumps up and down with feigned concern. /rant
Calm down
I predict they will initially struggle to get people who pledged to actually move. They should have got 10x as many as they need, figuring in a 90% reneg rate.
Then the people already living there get pissed off.
Then it turns out that the people who did move were mostly part of some sub group, like SJW men's rights activists or homophobes or something.
Eventually it ends up being as screwed up as anywhere else, just a different flavour. The glut of skills will cause employment problems, the sudden influx will cause infrastructure problems, and you will have a bunch of opinionated people who are motivated to vote trying to serve their own interests as they inevitably will.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
because to conservatives the word 'democracy', much like 'compromise', means 'I get my way all the time'.
they refuse to acknowledge that either word by definition involves and includes other people with a different opinion, and that they might not get what they want.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I don't know what situation would really require a switchblade, either, but I think that's a poor reason to make them illegal. Needing to have a compelling reason for things to be legal is a shitty way to run a society. Things should only be made illegal if there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason to do so.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
They are looking to repeal laws, not create them. Unless you think "OMFG ... I could legally posses a switchblade if I wanted to! I need to move to a state where I can't! is a reasonable reaction, then your claim holds no water. (Optionally, show me the rise in Switchblade attacks, but you can't, because there isn't one.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Liberty is fascist to people who like tyranny (and telling others how to live). I mean, how dare you want to live free, you must conform to our version of reality!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Democracy, is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. This is why we live in a Republic, which tends to be more steady than the passions whipped up by "dynamic" leaders with great oratory skills but really bad political views ... like Bernie and Trump.
I like democratic process, but it too is flawed. Until people realize that democracy isn't a panacea, we're in danger of populist tyranny. ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Its funny how people are for or against jury nullification (simultaneously) depending on the "law" they support (or don't). I've seen liberals say they are against Jury Nullifcation until they are show that very example, who change their mind. And conservatives the same thing (with gun laws). The problem is, they want to pick and choose the circumstances of jury nullification.
If you're only for Jury Nullification for cases where you like the outcome, then you're just a hypocrite
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Well, you certainly illustrate the point that there are thoughtful libertarians out there. An interesting point on libertarianism along the lines of what you're saying... I once volunteer-taught a class on American politics for some adult ESL students. When I introduced "libertarian versus statist" as a dimension that is distinct from liberal and conservative, it was pretty new to most of them. That is, while almost all societies grapple with the how much control the state should exercise over various kinds of activities, it's only in the US that we have a name for that (Liberty!) and a group that (nominally) wants to minimize state control over everything. The US has a long lefty-libertarian tradition that has fueled many important social advances (freedom to love and marry whoever you please being the most recent example), while our righty-libertarians have also served to keep the US out of some of the worst excess of statist economics (think price controls).
That said, it's pretty hard to line up with libertarianism in it's current form. The three axiomatic views that most turn me off are
1. The private sector does everything better than the government does or might do
2. Everyone can always have everything if they only try hard enough
3. Social well-being can only be maximized by increasing individual well-being
What drives me nuts is how often these are asserted as axioms in spite of numerous and obvious counterexamples. Skepticism that government intervention will solve a problem is necessary, healthy, and frequently true. But there are so many readily available counterexamples that these cannot be axioms.
# 3 might be a little different than the others, and I'd actually be interested in a thoughtful libertarian critique of it. It is what Pope Francis calls "subsidiarity", the idea that humans actually gain meaning and satisfaction from feeling that they are subsidiary to something bigger than themselves. I'm no Catholic, but I see this in a lot of things. An individual who is free of all external obligations is a lonely, disconnected person, and I have a hard time believe that there are many people who are happier this way. Clearly there is such as thing as too much obligation to society, but what about too little?
A potent example of #1 is the lunatic response to Obamacare. This was an idea from 1970s "conservative" think tanks that was a pragmatic compromise right up until someone tried to implement it. And all told the ACA has a pretty non-statist system architecture: the state does not mandate what insurance you get, it does not mandate which company you choose it from (in fact there are standards to ensure a minimum of choice), it does not say what doctor you can or cannot go to ...you are always free (like Liberty, not beer) to go to a doctor that is not in your plan, and Obamacare makes that EASIER not harder.
The mandate components of the law (health insurers have to take anyone who wants insurance ---> everyone has to buy insurance) that elicit all this yelling about "state force" and "FBI marshalls frog-marching me" are just system architectures to deal with real and fundamental problems.
The business of insurance is to collect as many premium dollars as possible, and it's very, very easy for insurers to cheat without some rules (oh, you got cancer in the rain on Sunday... if you look in Appendix R20421.13 subsection 7 of your plan, you'll see that this is not covered). Likewise it's really easy for covered people to cheat without some rules (oh, I rode motorcycle without a helmet for 10 years and now I crashed and am paralyzed from the neck down... pay for all my healthcare). This is what happens in the real world, and we as engineers/technologists are the ones who stick our heads out and find a set of tradeoffs that makes things a little better. And we are also the ones who deal with the sucky parts of the architecture we chose. So I can't understand when this type of thinker can't relate to what Obamacare is about.
Because to Liberals, the ability to control every aspect of other people's lives is bread and butter.
You do realize that the Left does exactly the same stuff as what you accuse the conservatives of doing right?
Obama's definition of compromise when the budget was being debated way back was "you do what I want or else", how is that any more compromising? He had his press secretary literally called conservatives terrorists because they wanted to negotiate budget priorities.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
“We are for cutting spending, we are for reforming our tax code, we are for reforming entitlements,” Mr. Pfeiffer told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “But what we are not for is negotiating with people who have a bomb strapped to their chest.”
"I won't negotiate with you while you are refusing to sign my budget", that is what that says.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
At first, when I saw this, I thought to myself, "Huh, secessionists? Didn't Utah try that some years back, and got smacked down hard by the Fed for it?" But then I took a look at what they're doing and realized that they may be geniuses, assuming they keep things on track: They're working from within the system to change the system, which, by the way, is the way the United States is supposed to work in the first place. They're just going about it in a different way than we're used to seeing, and they're doing it one State at a time, starting with New Hampshire. I'd say that the biggest roadblock they'll come up against is their own people, because as I like to say, "The best way to ruin a good thing is to get a bunch of people involved with it"; if they can't keep an entire State full of people on track with their original concept, then it'll fall apart and become a gigantic mess. Will be interesting to see how this works out for them and I'll be watching. Something like this might just turn the entire Country from some of the bad directions it's going.
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