What do you think of the Free State Project?

[LAGC]

They just had their Porcupine Freedom Festival 2009 in Lancaster, celebrating their pick of New Hampshire as the state for libertarians of all shapes and sizes to infiltrate and start converting locals toward libertarian principles. So what do you think of them? Are they mostly harmless "gun nuts" who want to create a libertarian paradise? Or are they really a dangerous threat to the unity of the United States of America?

http://www.idahostatesman.com/usnews/story/845166.html

[leftstreet]

1. What's with all the Libertarian posts here lately?

:shrug:

[LAGC]

7. I only posted because their little get-together was in my local paper.

I haven't seen many other libertarian-related threads. What are you referring to?

[leftstreet]

24. Oh. Were there any decent recipes? n/t

[datasuspect]

2. a majority of libertarians are just republics who lack the intestinal fortitude of their batshit

crazy rw cousins.

[MADem]

5. I thought they were Republicans who wanted to smoke pot... nt

[Selatius]

15. Then they are pot smokers who are apologists for capitalist excess.

They have elevated the notion of free markets to a religion, an ideology that cannot be wrong. Free markets only work when there is a set of rules that everybody plays by. When the players become the rule-makers in the game, the game is over. Their trouble is admitting that no regulation invariably leads to tyrannies of monopoly and unfair competition and unethical business practices. But assuming the players aren't also the rule-makers, free markets still won't do all things.

In a free market, for instance, no firm would want to deliver mail to remote areas where only a few people live. It is costly and generates no profit. For that, the public sector becomes the stronger of the two. This is why we have the USPS. Roads and rail are the same way. Roads have to serve everybody. If all roads were privately owned toll roads, half the country would have nothing but dirt roads because the population density is too low to sustain profits. This is why there is a department of transportation to build highways and roads as well as local municipalities and state governments.

But some things are public precisely because everybody needs them or it's for everybody's enjoyment, like water facilities for tap water and beaches people go to enjoy or public lands set aside for grazing animals owned by members of the community.

[abumbyanyothername]

16. A purely private enterprise system

would have collapsed around 1937, 1940 or so.

Wealth began to congregate at the top of the pyramid in quantities that made it impossible for those holding it to use it all, even in the name of conspicuous consumption. Without consumption, production is worthless, meaningless. So since then we have been engaged in a never-ending cycle of expanding war, to burn off excess production, and credit, to make working classes feel like they have the capacity to consume, and population growth.

But the party is over now and I doubt that our private enterprise system will survive the hangover. Seems like the most likely outcome here is fascism, but I hope not.

[Selatius]

19. We suffer from proto-fascism already. We haven't junked elections yet though.

Many markets inside the US are now dominated by a small number of large corporations. They use their power to crush upstarts, and they go the extra step of legislating their positions into law by lobbying Congress for preferential treatment at the expense of everyone else. If they finally junk the veneer of democratic elections and simply declare themselves rulers, then we'd be a classic example of right wing fascism.

[MADem]

17. Or just fearful, angry, status quo demi-racists who want to get high. NT

[Tesha]

20. Bingo. (NT)

[Raven]

3. Very. Dangerous. People.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Other: Paranoids of various political persuasions

--d!

[LAGC]

6. I attended their Grand Western Conference in Missoula, MT in 2003.

And I must say, it didn't sound like any sort of Republican get-together at all to me. Mostly civil libertarians concerned about encroachments against free speech and invasions of privacy -- ALOT of bitching about the Bush Administration. There was one Republican speaker, a state congressman, who was really just a libertarian-in-Republican clothing.

They support women's rights, racial equality, civil liberties in general, oppose corporate welfare, and merely just want the nanny-state to BACK OFF. I must admit, as a left-libertarian myself, there's a lot to like. However, my biggest drawback to them is how, just like the conservatives, they want to cut taxes for the rich and place a greater tax burden on the lower and middle classes. Plus gutting welfare and the social safety net would devastate those who are truly in need.

But who knows? Maybe they'll succeed and turn New Hampshire into their own little utopia. I feel for those liberals there who have to deal with the onslaught and might be subject to some of their rightist policies if they become law, but just their presence alone is a threat to the authoritarian Republican establishment and should be encouraged, IMHO.

[DBoon]

8. They should move to Somalia

No taxes, no government regulation, lots of guns

And I am not kidding....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_in_Somalia

[Iggo]

9. You sure they didn't pick DU?

Are ya?

[LAGC]

10. Heh. What are you referring to?

I hope not the recent spate of "cop bashing" that some here call it...

[Iggo]

11. Noooooooo....

...not that.

[LAGC]

12. Well then what?

You're the second person now to suggest we have libertarians running rampant on DU, but I don't see it.

[abumbyanyothername]

14. No mirror handy? nt

[LAGC]

18. Okay, I'll bite.

I don't subscribe to the linear left-right dichotomy that prevails in today's politics.

I prefer something like the following political quiz:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

I fall firmly in the LEFT-LIBERTARIAN quadrant. You don't have to be a rightist to be against the idea of a "nanny-state." Things like mandatory seat-belt or helmet laws have nothing to do with the left-right spectrum, but rather the authoritarian-libertarian one.

Do I think government's too big? Depends on what part you're talking about. As for the part of "government" that provides social services like for the general welfare and things like scientific research and corporate regulation? NO. But as for the rest of government, what you would call "The State" in regards to far-reaching authoritarian laws that intrude on personal privacy and encroach on individual civil liberties in general, the size and scope of the military, etc. put me down firmly in the YES column.

Do I think there are too many libertarian-leaning threads here on DU? No, hardly enough of them.

[abumbyanyothername]

21. Well . . .

The name of the website is DEMOCRATIC underground. Not Libertarian Underground. Nor even the political accurate and best response underground.

But I am sure that you can find like-minded people on the internet somewhere. Not to chase you out of here. Not at all.

Just to let you know that you are dealing with an audience here that is pre-disposed to think that good government can be a positive force in human affairs.

[LAGC]

23. I guess I focus more on the UNDERGROUND part.

It kind of seems to suggest a struggle against an authority, does it not?

No, for the most part I feel quite welcome here. There seems to be a "big tent" allowing leftists of all varieties their say here.

In any case, I certainly prefer the Democrats over the Republicans in power any day of the week.

[Orsino]

13. Proudly ignorant yokels...

...compensating for feelings of extreme impotence? Maybe? :shrug:

[NoPasaran]

22. Wackazoids with brains pickled from drinking too much grain alcohol & rain water

[Naturyl]

25. It makes me glad I left New Hampshire years ago.

Beautiful scenery and good memories, but I wouldn't want to be any part of a "libertarian paradise."

I live in the South now, but if I could live anywhere, it would be NH's neighbor state of Vermont.

Libertarians are toxic.