Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: The successes – and failures – of the Free State Project

If less than 20,000 members have moved to NH by the year 2022, the Free State Project will reassess its current operations.

Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: The successes – and failures – of the Free State Project Porucpine

A Porcupine, mascot animal of the libertarian party.

In July of 2001, a Ph. D. Student at Yale University named Jason Sorens wrote an article highlighting the failures of libertarian activism and what might be done to further the cause of personal human liberty. The traditional method of capturing government power and influence through elections in order to reduce such power and influence simply was not working. The Libertarian Party had been around for almost 30 years by that point, having been formed in December of 1971 in response to growing concern over the Nixon Administration, the War in Vietnam, military conscription, and a move away from an economic gold standard of currency. In those thirty years, the party largely failed to accomplish any of its goals. It had only one single electoral vote in 1972 from the presidential candidacy of John Hospers and Theodora Nathan.

Up until 2001, with the exception of Ron Paul’s candidacy in 1988, a series of political unknowns ran, gaining less than one percent of the popular presidential vote each time. To this day, the Party has not elected a single Representative or Senator to Congress. What victories the party has enjoyed, few and far between though they’ve been, have largely come in state and municipal elections. Those victories have generally not been enough to sway federal, much less state, policy on a long-term basis.
A new approach other than electoral politics had to be adopted. Rather than working as disparate voices in the wilderness talking about government overreach and political corruption, libertarians would be better served congregating together in a single state in order to form an island of small government activity in a nation going increasingly mad with unwieldy government power. Such was the idea.

The number set by Sorens was 20,000 libertarian activists moving to a single state he called a “Free State Society.” In 2003, New Hampshire was chosen as the state where libertarians would settle, with Wyoming coming in second place. Thirteen years later, Free State Project (FSP) President Carla Gericke announced that 20,000 people had signed a declaration of intent to move. The number of people who had actually moved to New Hampshire was far less than this, coming in just under 5,000.

More: https://manchesterinklink.com/the-successess-and-failures-of-the-free-state-project/

Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: The successes – and failures – of the Free State Project

If less than 20,000 members have moved to NH by the year 2022, the Free State Project will reassess its current operations.

Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: The successes – and failures – of the Free State Project

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