Posted on 06/21/2014 3:35:02 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat
Long before billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel dreamed up the idea of a floating libertarian island nation, a 24-year-old Yale grad student named Jason Sorens proposed a far more down-to-earth experiment for those who wanted to live the limited government lifestyle: that a critical mass of “freedom-loving people… establish residence in a small state and take over the state government.” The “Free State Project” call to action was in 2001. By 2003, five thousand people agreed to take part and they held a vote to decide which low-population state would be the staging ground for the libertarianvasion, which would be triggered when 20,000 people signed on. New Hampshire (population: 1.3 million) won — narrowly beating out Wyoming (population: 576,000) — and early movers began trickling in to help the state fully realize its “Live Free or Die” motto.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Ping for your list.
I don’t see how this could be possible. Obama would never allow a State freedom and Obama is not going away.
Possible or not, they seem to be doing it.
One thing that the articles and indeed the FSP doesn’t talk about much is that a significant number of their adopters/advocates don’t identify as libertarians.
this is a good article.
It seems that the FSP has somewhat morphed. Certainly looking in from the outside, NH just gets more and more socialist....I never agreed with NH (not that anyone asked, of course). I thought it was already too far gone...in any event, a good piece.
Don’t get me wrong. I am for anyone willing to walk the walk. I see from the article that already the local authorities are branding them as someone to watch and fear.
Also seems the article is very heavy on Bitcoin. I’ll stick to my junk silver coins. Just curious, how many that respond to this thread have a Bitcoin in their Dark Wallet?
NH is an odd duck. Yeah, the rats are currently in control of the state house but they do seem to live up to the Live Free of Die motto in any case. One of the great advantages of NH is that they have 400 reps in a state of 1.3 million. So each house member represents roughly 3000 people. You don’t lack for representation and it really is a citizens legislature.
The FSP already counts about a dozen legislators in the NH house as members and they do walk the talk.
I would like to read how they decided on New Hampshire over Wyoming. Sounds like a bad decision; I would like to read how they reached it.
Well, I sure wouldn’t want to talk about any bitcoin holdings I had or didn’t have on a public website. Kind of defeats the purpose of owning them.
That said...I think bitcoin has quite a way to go because it lacks the history and tangible advantages that silver or gold have. As a payment mechanism or way to transfer funds, I think it has great promise and I don’t think owning gold or silver excludes owning bitcoin. And there are coin shops that accept bitcoin so you can go back and forth.
Proximity to family is the usual motivator however party drugs may have been a factor. The amount of government that people want is proportional to population density. It requires more government for tribal humans to get along in closer quarters. NH has an above average population density and its proximity to Taxachusetts and NYC doom it to constant gov lover infections. Wyoming has an extremely low population density of 6 people per square mile. There is no demand there for even a single jackboot dog shooter.
http://freestateproject.org/about/why-new-hampshire
http://freestateproject.org/about/organization/history
Those links provide some insight. Speaking as someone who loves Wyoming...I think they made the right choice. Wyoming is truly a beautiful place with nice and conservative people but it lacks infrastructure and population. If you’re trying to attract people to an area, things like jobs, restaurants*, a relatively wealthy population and cultural opportunities do matter. I’m sure the extremely harsh winters played a part as well. NH has cold winters, but WY can be a lot worse.
Also, when doing something like this you need to think through what happens later if you are successful in pulling it off. Let’s say FSP triggers the move and a liberty migration happens. What happens to NH 10 or 20 years later as a result?
*Laramie has some awesome restaurants.
Free Staters in NH have been mostly a blessing.
They were a tremendous help in destroying the RAT effort to implement one of the most restrictive homeschool laws in the country. The RATs that fostered that effort did not run for office again, being thoroughly discredited.
The Free Staters often carry in the open, which has acclimated a lot of the public and police on open carry. Some police in the more rural towns consider them as backup if needed, so there is mutual respect there.
The problem is that they don’t see the threat of giving in to the rainbow agenda. Free Staters are predominantly libertarian and very live-and-let-live. What they don’t seem to recognize is that the homos will not leave anybody alone and will use the government to force people to bow at the rainbow altar.
Another problem is the open smoking of pot, especially in Keene. Most of us find these antics humorous, but the problem is that they tend to alienate the more solid, old-time NH conservatives.
They are having an effect, though. In a conversation I had with a policeman the other day, he told me that he thought marijuana should be legalized, but not coke or heroin. So, they seem to be gaining some traction there.
ping for later
Thanks for the on-the-ground insights. I don’t consider myself a libertarian and the disagreements I have with the philosophy are pretty much mirrored by your posts. I also disagree with the tactics of the folks in Keene.
Bottom line for me, though, is that I want to live in freedom. And I want to do it before I die or am too old to care. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing a whole lot of organized efforts to bring that about outside of some variations on the tired theme of spending more resources on an electoral system that has generally failed us.
Does John Galt live there?
“Does John Galt live there?”
I don’t know, but it certainly looks like he’s going to.
I first heard of the FSP around 2008, probably heard about here on FR. I looked into it and thought to move to NH, however circumstances arose that negated the thought, I just forgot about it, it’s interesting to read it is still going on, of course the idea of freedom is hard if not impossible to stifle, I hope it strengthens but as it does; the obstacles to it will strengthen as well.
As far as Bitcoin, I own some as an investment and I’m not afraid to talk about it, I can only afford at this time to buy in small quantities, usually a tenth of a coin at a time, it does at fifty to a hundred dollars a month accumulate at a good pace, I believe it is here to stay, and those who ridicule it as an investment, will be doing some head banging in a few years...IMO!
I think its because we have a seaport that tipped the scale to N H.
Seaport access is important for any free state. Gotta think about the future 10 or 20 years hence.
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