Statism &mdash; Love It Or Leave It
<p>For many years I&#8217;ve been seeing proposals for implementing<br />
libertarian reforms that look superficially appealing and plausible,<br />
but on closer examination run hard aground either on some pesky<br />
reality of politics as it is or the extreme difficulty of waging a<br />
successful revolution.  Since I&#8217;m a <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/libertarianism.html">libertarian</a>,<br />
you may well imagine that I find this annoying.  How do we get there<br />
from here?</p>
<p>For the first time, I think I&#8217;ve seen a path that is both<br />
principled and practical.  Not the whole path, but some firm steps<br />
that both accomplish good in themselves and open up great<br />
possibilities.  And the best part is that it&#8217;s a path most statists<br />
can&#8217;t object to, one that uses the premises of the existing federal<br />
system to achieve a fair first test of libertarian ideas within that<br />
system.  Even opponents of libertarianism, if they are fair-minded,<br />
should welcome this reality check.  Libertarians should cheer it on<br />
and join it.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve had troubles with other libertarians recently.  Too many have<br />
retreated into isolationism in the face of a war with terrorism that I<br />
do not believe we can or should evade.  The isolationists judge that<br />
empowering the State when we use it as an instrument of self-defense<br />
has consequences for the long term that are more dangerous than<br />
terrorists&#8217; aims are in the short term. I sympathize with this view,<br />
but when all is said and done, Al-Qaeda shahids with backpack nukes<br />
from the &#8216;stans are more of a danger than John Ashcroft has ever been.<br />
I have done my homework and if anything, I believe the U.S. Government<br />
is <em>understating</em> the danger we face.</p>
<p>But the dangers of empowering the State to fight a necessary war<br />
make it more, not less urgent that we pursue all possibilities for<br />
libertarian reform at home.  Now, I think I see a workable one.  What<br />
if, by perfectly legal and proper means, we could take over a small<br />
American state and actually try out our ideas there?</p>
<p>Yes, I thought it was a crazy idea when I first heard it.  An<br />
entire <em>state</em>?  How?  But the <a href='http://www.freestateproject.org/'>Free State Project</a> has<br />
done the math.  I&#8217;ve looked at their arguments and trend curves, and<br />
I&#8217;m pretty much convinced.  It can be done.  We can do it.  The<br />
key is very simple; enough of us just have to <em>move</em><br />
there. Vote with our feet, and then vote in a bloc.  And why<br />
a state?  Becausr that&#8217;s the only intermediate level of government<br />
with enough autonomy to make a good laboratory.</p>
<p>The Free State Project identified ten small states where 20,000<br />
active libertarians would be a critically large voting bloc.  They are<br />
signing up libertarians and like-minded people to vote on the target<br />
state and to move there when the group passes 20,000.  The winning<br />
state will be announced on 1st October; they&#8217;ve signed up about 5400<br />
people so far, on a classic exponential growth curve with a six-month<br />
doubling time that should get them there in late 2004.</p>
<p>What could be more American than migrating to a thinly-settled area<br />
to experiment with liberty?  And this time we won&#8217;t have to kill off the<br />
natives, because they&#8217;re not going to be organizing any scalping parties.<br />
Most of the states under consideration have a strong local<br />
libertarian tradition, and none of them are going to look askance at<br />
the sort of bright, hardworking, highly-skilled people most likely to<br />
be pro-freedom activists.</p>
<p>Some people won&#8217;t like this idea, though.  The national media<br />
establishment, which is statist down to its bones even in the few<br />
crevices where it isn&#8217;t leftist, will inevitably try to portray the<br />
Free State migrants as a bunch of racist conservative redneck gun-nuts<br />
(all these terms being effectively synonymous in the national media)<br />
intent on turning the poor victim state into one gigantic Aryan<br />
Nations compound (especially if it&#8217;s Idaho, as it could be).  Expect<br />
network-news interviews with locals teary-eyed with worry that the<br />
incomers will be hosting regular cross-burnings on the courthouse<br />
lawn.  Awkward little inconsistencies like the libertarian opposition<br />
to drug laws, censorship, and theocracy will be ignored. This prospect<br />
is especially ironic because, in most of the possible target states,<br />
it is our lifestyle liberalism that is actually most likely to produce<br />
a culture clash with the natives.</p>
<p>The more intelligent members of the political class won&#8217;t like this<br />
either.  The brighter and better-able one is to extrapolate<br />
second-and-third-order effects, the more likely the potential success<br />
of libertarianism at a state level is likely to scare them &mdash;<br />
conservatives nearly as much as liberals, and conservatives perhaps<br />
more so when we challenge them to emulate our success with<br />
small-government policies that they speak but don&#8217;t really mean.</p>
<p>But I don&#8217;t think this will be easy to stop.  Libertarian<br />
demographics being what they are, 20,000 of us in a small state will<br />
be a <em>huge</em> concentration of technical, creative and<br />
entrepreneurial talent.  We&#8217;ll found software businesses, studios,<br />
innovative light-manufacturing shops and engineering companies<br />
by the bucketload.  We&#8217;ll create favorable regulatory conditions<br />
for old-line businesses like financial-services houses and for<br />
bleeding-edge ones like the private space-launch industry.<br />
We&#8217;ll attract more people like us.  The lucky state, especially<br />
if it&#8217;s depressed and mostly rural like a lot of the candidates, will<br />
experience a renaissance.  And we&#8217;ll get to make the difference.</p>
<p>The real fun will start when Americans elsewhere start asking &#8220;Why<br />
can&#8217;t <em>our</em> state be more like this?&#8221;</p>
<p>Liberty in our lifetime?  I think this might be how to get there.</p>
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