LISTEN, Libertarian!

NOTE: The opinions and commentary expressed in this essay are those of the author and are an exercise of free speech. They do not necessarily represent the views of Free State Project Inc., its Directors, its Officers, or its Participants.

LISTEN, Libertarian!

By Tim Condon • October 9, 2005

[This essay was also published in the Sierra Times 10/10/05]

Libertarians are such losers. I know, this is not a way to endear myself to them, even when my best friends are all libertarian or near-libertarian. But success is staring them in the face, and a significant proportion of them deploy massive brainpower and argument to make sure that nothing ever gets better. It's incredible.

LISTEN, libertarian! It's over 30 years later, and we're still hearing endless platitudes that keep us from gaining political power in the service of individual freedom.

"All we need to do is a better job at selling our product!" the activists say. But we've been trying to "sell our product" for decades, and the people of America aren't buying.

"All we need to do is a better job of educating people about what we stand for!" say the activists. But after 30 years of libertarian presidential candidates and campaigns, the voters are more than aware of what we stand for.

We are caught blinded...blinded in the floodlights of an ugly reality: Today there is no significant voting constituency in America for libertarian ideas. And it's time to face up to that fact.

If we are really interested in living in a society where every man and woman can do whatever they want so long as they harm no one else, there is only one possibility for success. Our numbers must be concentrated in one sovereign American state, there to exercise the power that comes with voting power in a democracy.

There is simply no other way.

Such a "democratic experiment" would be no experiment at all. It would merely reference what the Founding Fathers intended the thirteen sovereign, revolutionary states to be. It would be a shining example to the rest of America and the world, demonstrating the salutary effects of people living in freedom. It would be a "little Hong Kong," and would instruct our country on what it has lost, just as Hong Kong instructed China on the benefits of free markets and property rights for the past half-century (as of January 2005 Hong Kong was rated by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal as the freest country in the world economically; the United States isn't even in the top 10).

This is the meaning, and the aim, of the four-year-old Free State Project (FSP). It offers real hope for liberty in your own lifetime.

Yet in the face of the FSP opportunity, the great majority of libertarians remain immobilized, or worse. The Executive Committee of the national Libertarian Party has refused to endorse the Free State Project, even while many state parties have. Former LP Presidential candidate Harry Browne all but dismissed the Free State Project ("I have not been a big fan of the Free State Project...I have no wish to participate in such a program..."). Reason magazine ran an article that reprised all the failed "new country" projects of the past 40 years, making it clear they think the FSP is just another "pipe dream". And the CATO Institute won't even comment on the Free State Project.

As for the rest of you libertarians, you seem to regard the FSP plan with a mixture of fear and revulsion. Move to a small-population, cold-weather state to attain liberty in your lifetime? Suddenly we hear you bleating about how "things aren't so bad" where you live. And we hear emphatic statements that you're sure as hell not moving thousands, or even hundreds, of miles away from your comfortable home, just to live free. Uh uhhh!

After all, you live where you live because you like it there. It may be that you arrived at your present place and state of lassitude through an accident of birth or parentage. Or you may have visited at some point, and liked it enough to stay. Now it is where your friends are. It is where your job is. It is where your family is.

But most of all, it is where you are comfortable.

Of course, the question of "comfort" to those who profess to believe in libertarian ideas and ideals is problematical. When you say "things aren't that bad here," you sound both smug and hopeful, even as you delude yourself. You also sound oh-so-earnest when you explain that "I'm not prevented from doing most of the things I want to do. As long as I'm careful, and don't make myself too public, it's not that bad at all."

You pause to let that fortuitous bit of information sink in, and then continue: "Besides, I'm not really interested in smoking pot or setting up a whorehouse." As if such things meant anything in the parlance of what individual freedom is about. Texas Representative Ron Paul has stated that, "American history, a least in part, is a history of people who don't like being told what to do." Yet today, he points out, we have built a society that has "laid the foundation for tyranny by making the public more docile, more accustomed to government bullying, and more accepting of arbitrary authority."

Meanwhile, you libertarians fall all over yourselves explaining why you can't or won't move to a single state where you could fight being "told what to do." After all, it's not so bad to bend a little to accommodate your lives to the ever-increasing demands of local and state governments, right? You're quite comfortable where you are, and if you can't stem the increasing tendency of government to minutely supervise what you are permitted to do, well then, you just go along with it.

Let me ask you a few things.

What does it mean when a house of a few thousand square feet — nice, but not palatial by any stretch of the imagination — can be assessed and taxed so that the property tax bill amounts to one or two thousand dollars per month? It means those who own the homes aren't really the "owners"; they merely "rent" their homes from the local government, often while clamoring for more "government services."

But it's okay to you libertarians, because you don't live in a big, expensive house anyway, so you don't have to worry about sky-high property taxes. And you think paying two hundred dollars a month in property taxes is quite reasonable, especially when compared to the taxes paid by people with bigger houses. Except that even those levels of taxation applied to our homes are outrageous when you think about it.

In New Hampshire, by contrast, there are no state income taxes, no general state sales taxes, no estate taxes, no tangible personal property taxes, no intangible personal property taxes, no corporate income taxes, and no fat "political class" endlessly agitating for higher taxes and larger state government. Says one committed libertarian from another northeastern state, "When all state and local taxes are taken into consideration, along with other mandated expenses such as insurance, I'll save between $50,000 and $75,000 every year after I move to New Hampshire from New Jersey."

How about when whole cities, and even states, presume to tell business-owners whether they can or cannot allow smoking — or drinking, for that matter — in and on privately owned commercial property?

That's all right with you libertarians. You don't like smoking anyway, and you're perfectly willing to do your drinking at home. And when the property rights of others are violated to suppress behavior you don't favor, well then that's okay too.

In New Hampshire, by contrast, there are no statewide anti-smoking laws because the predominant cultural outlook is "live and let live." There are also no "open container" laws, and random police roadblocks are forbidden by law without a court order. Fittingly, the state motto is "Live Free or Die."

Here's another example: What does it mean when cities totally ignore the 2nd Amendment, routinely outlawing the right to keep and bear firearms by citizens living in those cities? The people must like the idea, since they keep electing the politicians who push it. And when murder and assault rates skyrocket in such places — as they have in Washington DC since firearms have been virtually outlawed — the people and politicians agitate for even harsher anti-gun ordinances!

But it must be okay with you libertarians, because you continue to live in such places. Perhaps you don't feel the need or desire to own or carry a firearm. And you figure you're safe enough in your neighborhood anyway, so you think such laws really don't affect you.

In New Hampshire, by contrast, the right to openly carry personal firearms is enshrined in the state constitution. It is also a "shall issue" jurisdiction where state law commands local authorities to issue concealed carry permits upon submission of an application. Not surprisingly, New Hampshire has one of the lowest crime rates in the country and is said to be one of the four safest states in America.

LISTEN, libertarian: Virtually every political and philosophical position you hold is well thought out, logical, and beneficial. Yet most of those political and philosophical positions are utterly rejected by the mass of Americans. They don't agree with you! Your ideas scare them! And your numbers are so pitifully small that after 30 years not one LP candidate for any statewide or federal office has ever been elected.

Why do you sit there so smug in the clarity and justice of your positions that will never be implemented? Nor ever be seriously considered or debated? You cannot win because in any democratic political calculus you are swamped by those who disagree with you and fear the ideas you espouse.

The only way for you to have any kind of hope for success is to take it upon yourselves to concentrate your numbers. It has been done in Utah, where the Mormons hold sway. It has been done in San Francisco and Key West, where gays hold sway. It has been done in New York and New Jersey, where predominantly corrupt state socialists hold sway. It has been done in Vermont, where a formerly rock-ribbed Republican state has been transformed into a highly-taxed political paradise for liberal statists, so much so that whole towns are now asking to secede and join neighboring low-tax New Hampshire.

New Hampshire. The chosen Free State. It is the only place where politically active freedom-lovers have a chance to wield real political power. Why? Because the state is already semi-libertarian in outlook, which is why the FSP membership chose it.

The chance is right in front of you, libertarians! Right now! The migration of freedom-loving people to New Hampshire has already begun. Several hundred people from all over America and the world have already moved to New Hampshire. You can read about them and their stories on the Free State Project web site at www.freestateproject.org. If you join the others already moving there in a steady stream, you won't have to put up with the common, petty annoyances forced upon you by increasingly officious apparatchiks of state and local government. You won't have to put up with the increasing numbers of "little Hitlers" in daily life whose mission it is to help make you "do as you are told" and "obey the rules." Rules that shouldn't exist in the first place.

But even that prospect doesn't entice most of you. For most of you the response has been continued lassitude. After all, you're comfortable where you are, and you're certainly not going to endure any disruption or discomfort in your life to make freedom happen. Not now, and not in the future.

In the 2004 national election, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik — himself a signed participant with the Free State Project — garnered almost 400,000 votes. Yet the Free State Project seeks only 20,000 activist libertarians and other freedom-lovers to make the move to freedom (they're currently at almost 7,000 signed-up participants.

What would be the impact on politics in New Hampshire? "If you put just 5,000 politically active liberty-lovers into New Hampshire, let alone 20,000," one Granite State resident told me, "they could sweep the state; they'd be more politically powerful than anything either the Democrats or the Republicans could put up."

But you libertarians sit there in your highly-controlled, high-tax home states where property rights are routinely violated and local ordinances endlessly proliferate, and you refuse to take any action other than running futile election campaigns that never garner more than a few percent of the vote.

In the final analysis, you're doing little to attain liberty in your own lifetimes, even while you prate on about how much you believe in political activism, individual freedom, and the Bill of Rights.

Never before were Samuel Adams' words more apt than today with regard to the general libertarian response to the Free State Project. On August 1, 1776, less than a month after the Declaration of Independence had been signed and published, Adams said these words in a speech to a packed house: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Is it any wonder that the flame of freedom flickers and sputters in America today?

Back to Essays

Libertarianism and Land Value Taxation

NOTE: The opinions and commentary expressed in this essay are those of the author and are an exercise of free speech. They do not necessarily represent the views of Free State Project Inc., its Directors, its Officers, or its Participants.

Libertarianism and Land Value Taxation

By John H. Beck
Professor of Economics
Gonzaga University

1. LIBERTARIAN FOLLOWERS OF HENRY GEORGE

For some libertarians any tax is illegitimate (Feser 2000). However, one tax that has received some support from libertarians who advocate a limited government financed by taxation is a tax on land values. The most famous advocate of land value taxation is Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty (1879). Yeager (1984) identifies several libertarian views shared by Henry George, including his opposition to protectionist trade policy, his rejection of socialism, and his defense of natural rights including property rights. Several prominent libertarians in the early twentieth century were influenced by Henry George, including Albert Jay Nock, author of Our Enemy the State (1935), and Frank Chodorov, who became the director of the Henry George School of Social Science and editor of the Freeman in 1937 (Nash 1996, 11-14; Raimondo 1993, 114-129). Maurice Allais, one of four future Nobel prize winners attending the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, declined to sign the society's Statement of Aims because its defense of private ownership of land conflicted with his Georgist ideas (Hartwell 1995, 42). This illustrates that Georgist ideas about land ownership and taxation have frequently been divisive among libertarians. Yeager (1984, 160) notes that Murray Rothbard rejected George's moral and economic arguments for land value taxation, although Rothbard applauded George's discussion of patents and copyrights as well as his advocacy of free trade.

2. ARGUMENTS FOR LAND VALUE TAXATION

There are both equity and efficiency arguments for land value taxation. The equity argument is that land is given by nature and the value of the land was not created by human effort. Furthermore, increases in the value of land are caused by public services and economic development in the neighborhood, not by the effort of the landowner. For example, the construction of an interstate highway will increase the value of land near a highway interchange as this becomes a more desirable site for business development. Therefore, it is argued, because the landowner has done nothing to deserve the gain from his ownership of land, the government should capture this gain through taxation and use it for the benefit of all members of society. However, as discussed in section IV below, there are also equity arguments against replacing the current system of property taxation with a tax only on land values.

The efficiency argument for land value taxation is that, unlike almost all other taxes, it does not discourage productive activity or distort choices among consumer goods. A tax on wages discourages work effort. The property tax on improvments discourages construction and other improvements. Tariffs on imported goods discourage international trade. But the supply of land is fixed, given by nature. A tax on the value of land (based on its potential use), will not discourage the landowner from making the land available. The owner must pay the same tax regardless of what he does or does not do with the land. It should be noted that the method of assessing land values is crucial; changes in the market value of land attributable to permanent improvements to a site should not be included in the taxable land value.

3. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Advocates of any tax reform proposal need to consider likely sources of opposition and support and to devise strategies to minimize opposition and build a coalition of supporters.

Opponents of land value taxation have often charged that this would shift the burden of taxation to farmers, who own large areas of land (Peirce 2003, 6). Although in fact family farmers might benefit from an increase in the tax rate on land value offset by a reduction in the tax on improvements (Wenzer 1999, 239-268), a reform strategy assuaging farmers' fears would have greater chance of success. Limiting land value taxation to urban areas rather than adopting it as the "single tax" for all state and local government revenues would eliminate opposition from farmers.

Environmentalists are not often allies of libertarians, but land value taxation is one issue which both might support. Environmentalists support replacing the property tax on improvements with land value taxation in urban areas because it would encourage more development in urban centers and discourage sprawl (Durning and Bauman 1998, 57-65; Wenzer 1999, 205-223).

4. IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

"An old tax is a good tax." This adage does not merely reflect the fact that people prefer the taxes to which they have grown accustomed to new, unfamiliar taxes. The implementation of any tax reform affecting the taxation of durable assets raises serious equity issues, and land is the most durable of assets. This is due to the phenomenon of "tax capitalization." The value of an asset reflects the present value of the expected future income to be derived from that asset. Anticipated future taxes reduce the expected future income and thus are "capitalized" in the value of the asset.

To understand how tax capitalization may create inequities when unexpected tax reforms are implemented, consider an unanticipated shift from a property tax applied at the same rate to land and improvements to a tax on only land value that yields the same total revenue. Compare the effects of this change on the values of two properties, a parking lot and a parcel with a ten-story office building. Almost all of the value of the parking lot is the land value, but most of the value of the parcel with the office building consists of "improvements." The market value of the office building will increase as the anticipated future taxes fall, and the value of the parking lot will fall as the tax rate on the land value increases. When the current owners of these properties purchased them, they each paid a price that reflected the expectation that the old property tax system would continue into the future. The unanticipated tax reform causes a "windfall gain" to the owner of the office building and a "windfall loss" to the owner of the parking lot. Many people consider such windfalls "unfair."

One method to ameliorate such windfalls is to implement tax reforms gradually. For example, rather than immediately abolishing the property tax on improvements and imposing a tax on land values sufficient to raise all the desired revenue, a "split-rate" property tax might be adopted. Under this system the land component of property values is taxed at a higher rate than the tax rate on improvements.

5. EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF LAND VALUE TAXATION

Pittsburgh, along with a few smaller Pennsylvania municipalities, has had a "graded" or "split-rate" property tax for several decades. Prior to 1979, the city of Pittsburgh taxed land at twice the rate applied to structures (although county and school district property taxes applied the same rate to land and improvements). After 1980, the city of Pittsburgh raised its rate on land to about five times the rate on structures. This policy change provides an opportunity for researchers to test empirically whether land value taxation really does have the beneficial effects ascribed to it by theoretical analyses. Oates and Schwab (1997) analyzed building activity in 15 "rust belt" cities from 1960 to 1989 and found a significant increase in building activity in Pittsburgh after the 1980 tax reform. Of course such empirical studies are plagued by the difficulty of measuring the effect of a change in one variable when other variables that might affect the outcome are changing as well. In the case of Pittsburgh, the increase in taxes on land was accompanied by large tax abatements on new structures although there was no decrease in the property tax rate applied to old buildings. Oates and Schwab conclude that the revenue raised by the land tax increase allowed the city to grant tax abatements on new building and to avoid raising other taxes that would have discouraged economic activity in the city. Additional studies showing the effects of the split-rate tax in Pennsylvania are Bourassa (1987 and 1990) and Cord (1983).

Cord (1983, 172-173) briefly mentions evidence of the effects of land value taxation compared to the conventional property tax on land and improvments from Australia. A more extensive study of the Australian experience was done by Edwards (1984), who found that the value of new housing and the housing stock was greater in Australian communities that taxed land at a higher rate than improvements than in communities with a uniform property tax on land and improvements.

6. CONCLUSION

For libertarians who believe markets generally allocate resources efficiently, the best tax is one which creates the least distortion of market incentives. A tax on the value of land meets this criterion. Furthermore, the benefits of local government services will be reflected in the value of land within the locality. Therefore, it may be deemed fair that landowners pay taxes to finance these services in proportion to the value of the benefits they receive. Although Henry George advocated a tax on land values as the "single tax" to replace all other taxes, a tax on land value seems especially appropriate for municipal governments. If a complete shift from the current property tax to a tax on land value alone seems too radical, municipal governments might reduce the property tax rate on improvements while imposing a higher tax rate on the value of land.

Land value taxation has been under consideration in several eastern European countries. As reported by Youngman and Malme (1999), Estonia adopted a tax on the market value of land in 1992. Nations considering a tax structure fostering a market economy in the post-communist era may present one of the most promising opportunities for implementing land value taxation.

REFERENCES

Borcherding, Thomas E.; Patricia Dillon; and Thomas D. Willett. "Henry George: Precursor to Public Choice Analysis." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 57 (April 1998): 173-182.

Bourassa, Steven C. "Land Value Taxation and New Housing Development in Pittsburgh." Growth and Change 18 (Fall 1987): 44-55.

Bourassa, Steven C. "Land Value Taxation and Housing Development: Effects of the Property Tax Reform in Three Types of Cities." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 49 (January 1990): 101-111.

Cord, Steven B. "Taxing Land More Than Buildings: The Record in Pennsylvania." In The Property Tax and Local Finance, pp. 172-179. Edition by C. Lowell Harriss. New York: The Academy of Political Science, 1983.

Durning, Alan Thein, and Yoram Bauman. Tax Shift: How to Help the Economy, Improve the Environment, and Get the Tax Man off Our Backs. Seattle: Northwest Environment Watch, 1998.

Edwards, Mary E. "Site Value Taxation in Australia: Where Land Is Taxed More and Improvements Less, Average Housing Values and Stocks Are Higher." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 43 (October 1984): 481-495.

Feser, Edward. "Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft." The Independent Review 5 (Fall 2000): 219-235.

Gaffney, Mason. "Equity Premises and the Case for Taxing Rent." American Economic Review 82 (May 1992): 274-279.

George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. New York: Walter J. Black, 1942.

Hartwell, R. M. A History of the Mont Pelerin Society. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995.

Horton, Joseph, and Thomas Chisholm. "The Political Economy of Henry George: Its Ethical and Social Foundations." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 50 (July 1991): 375-384.

Martin, Thomas L. "Protection or Free Trade: An Analysis of the Ideas of Henry George on International Commerce and Wages." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 48 (October 1989): 489-501.

Nash, George H. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996.

Netzer, Dick. "On Modernizing Local Public Finance: Why Aren't Property Taxes in Urban Areas Being Reformed into Land Value Taxes?" American Journal of Economics and Sociology 43 (October 1984): 497-501.

Nock, Albert Jay. Our Enemy the State. New York: Free Life Editions, 1973.

Oates, Wallace, and Robert Schwab. "The Impact of Urban Land Taxation: The Pittsburgh Experience." National Tax Journal 50 (March 1997): 1-21.

Peirce, William S. "The Progressives and the Property Tax: Ohio's Constitutional Convention of 1912." Paper presented at the Public Choice Society meeting, Nashville, TN, March 2003.

Raimondo, Justin. Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993.

Teti, Dennis. "The Socialist Idealism of 'Supply Side' Economics -- Henry George's Progress and Poverty." The Political Science Reviewer 14 (Fall 1984): 195-228.

Wenzer, Kenneth C. (ed.), Land-Value Taxation. M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

Whitaker, John K. "Enemies or Allies? Henry George and Francis Amasa Walker One Century Later." Journal of Economic Literature 35 (December 1997): 1891-1915.

Yeager, Leland B. "Henry George and Austrian Economics." History of Political Economy 16 (1984): 157-174.

Youngman, Joan, and Jane Malme. "Issues in Land Taxation and Property Taxation in Central and Eastern Europe." In Proceedings, 91st Annual Conference on Taxation, pp. 137-143. Washington, DC: National Tax Association, 1999.

The Free State Project: An Introduction

NOTE: The opinions and commentary expressed in this essay are those of the author and are an exercise of free speech. They do not necessarily represent the views of Free State Project Inc., its Directors, its Officers, or its Participants.

From the LP of Minnesota Newsletter "Minnesota Libertarian" Volume 29 Issue 6, December 2001

The Free State Project: An Introduction

How much is liberty worth to you? Try to quantify it: what would you give up in order to secure real liberty, the kind we Libertarians have imagined everyone would enjoy in an ideal society? Would you move to another part of the U.S. if it meant you could enjoy that kind of liberty, and participate in building it? If so, the Free State Project may well be for you.

The Free State Project (FSP) is a plan whereby 20,000 libertarians, classical liberals, and other advocates of strictly limited government will move to a single state of the U.S. to set up a free society. We will do this by working within the electoral system, starting by eliminating unjust state and local laws and practices, like asset forfeiture, zoning, state drug and gun laws, socialized schooling, and so on. We could also end state police cooperation with federal agencies in enforcing unjust federal laws. Then we would bargain directly with the federal government over achieving sufficient autonomy in other areas; in Canada, for example, the provinces have won the right to opt out of different federal programs in exchange for a tax rebate. We will continue to pursue decentralization until we have created an essentially free society.

The way it works is that the FSP will collect 20,000 signatures from people willing to move. Once 5,000 participants have signed up, the whole membership will vote on the state to which we will move, following extensive research on the candidate states. Our preliminary research indicates that 11 states are theoretically small enough for 20,000 activists to win most state-level elections: Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, Rhode Island, Idaho, and New Hampshire. Don?t want to move to, say, Alaska or Wyoming? No problem: when you sign the Statement of Intent, you may indicate which states you reserve the right not to move to. The move only begins after 20,000 people have signed up.

What will make the FSP succeed where similar projects have failed is that: 1) we are researching the best place to go, rather than picking some arbitrary location; 2) we are relying on the decision of the membership, not one person?s fancy; 3) we are collecting signatures before the move.

The last is important because it means that there is no risk to signing up. If we don?t reach 20,000 signers, the move never happens. But if we do reach 20,000 participants, we will be on the brink of an achievement of historical significance.

To see if the FSP might be right for you, take a look at our website at www.freestateproject.org – and let us know what you think!

A Porcupine's Worth His Price

NOTE: The opinions and commentary expressed in this essay are those of the author and are an exercise of free speech. They do not necessarily represent the views of Free State Project Inc., its Directors, its Officers, or its Participants.

A Porcupine's Worth His Price
by John T. Kennedy

This article is reprinted from the No Treason web site with permission of the author

"The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price.." - Hobbes

Government is a predator. Those who seek to secure their liberty face the problem of how to avoid being prey. Some look at the leviathan state and despair that they will never have sufficient force at their disposal to defeat such a predator. They need to learn from the porcupine.

The lesson the porcupine teaches is that you don't have to be strong enough to defeat a predator to avoid being that predator's lunch. It suffices to be an expensive meal.  Predators tend not to dine on porcupines because a serving of porcupine tends not to be worth the mouthful of quill that it costs.

In Price Theory David Friedman writes:

"... the essential objective in any conflict is neither to defeat your enemy nor to make it impossible for him to defeat you but merely to make it no longer in his interest to do whatever it is that you object to ."

Why do nations seek overwhelmingly to resolve disputes peacefully rather than by force? Because war is usually more expensive than it is worth to the party that initiates it.  The reason that Communist China doesn't take Taiwan by force is not that it cannot do so, but rather because China judges Taiwan will cost more than it is worth to take by force. Taiwan does not need to be anywhere near as powerful as the predator to survive, it just needs to be more expensive than it is worth to the predator.

Those who fought for American independence understood the lesson of the porcupine.  One of the most powerful symbols in the war for independence is seen in the Gadsden flag.

The message of the Gadsden flag is not that we can defeat all predators, but that we will cost them dearly. The colonists did not seek to be more powerful than the British, they sought simply to be too expensive for the British to rule.

Some advocates of anarcho-capitalism think that to achieve liberty from government we need to convince a majority or some critical number of people that anarcho-capitalist society will be better for them than governed society.

The porcupine teaches a different lesson - that men will be free from government whenever they become too expensive to govern.

This is the crucial insight which makes me optimistic about the chances for anarcho-capitalist society. I'm not optimistic about converting masses of people to accept anarcho-capitalism through any sort of rational evangelism. I'm not optimistic about persuading large numbers of people to be more moral or to use better judgment. But I am optimistic that in the long run people can be made too expensive to govern.

My Last Date in the Nanny State

NOTE: The opinions and commentary expressed in this essay are those of the author and are an exercise of free speech. They do not necessarily represent the views of Free State Project Inc., its Directors, its Officers, or its Participants.

My Last Date in the Nanny State

by Dada Orwell

Okay I will come clean here right off the top. There's some bait-and-switch in the title of this article. Yeah sure, I did have a date last week, and yes it did involve the usual blank stares when I brought up the subject of freedom. But I'm referring more to a date on the calendar: July 14. It's my last business day at work before moving to New Hampshire. My last day to witness, in its full hideous glory, the bizarre NannyWorld into which we have all sunk.

Before I start let me say I have a high opinion of the people I work with, even the people I work *for.* They're great folks and a generally decent company. The dysfunctions I'm about to recount are not entirely their fault, not by a long shot. But they serve to remind us why we are evacuating our current homes in favor of the Live Free or Die State.

I work for a TV station, editing the pictures that enable producers and reporters to tell their stories. Since government offices are open this day, that is what half the stories are about. And today, like most days, no one seems to question the ever-rising waves of authority that wash over our state. Each report seems relentlessly submissive to "full-figured government."

I want you to have a seat at my desk for just a moment and see what I am seeing (and sometimes complicit in) this last business day at work. Let's look up at the monitor and take in the news.

For starters, it appears our city is losing a Saint...a giant among men. That is to say, a school superintendent who isn't in Federal prison or suing his own district. Even I can admit this guy is the least wicked of the evil. He'd better be, we taxpayers subsidize him to the tune of $300 grand a year. Anyway, he's leaving the ISD. Wait! They're listing his "accomplishments.." this could get ugly. Yep, there it is...."succeeded in passing largest bond issue (formerly 'tax increase') since the District was founded." Don't let the door hit your backside on the way out, buck.

Next it's time for me to tamely implicate myself in this company-wide crusade for Nanny Rule. I get to edit a story sounding the alarm about our national nursing shortage. Fortunately, the reporter has a solution to pitch: There ought to be a law regulating nurses! No mention of the overregulation that helped bring the shortage about in the first place. By the way does anyone even do stories anymore that don't end with "there ought to be a law?"

Now I slip over to the feed booth and take in a story from one of our bureaus. They may call it news, but this piece is more of a shameless advertisement....not for a company but for a local tax office. Seems they have bought - and are continuing to buy - aerial photos of every house and business in the county, then scanning them for evidence of property tax fudging. Big Brother really is watching! But there is no hint of concern in the report, just the basic admonishment that Government is Powerful and will catch you if you try to keep the money you earned. I shake my head and wonder aloud how this could possibly be considered a good thing. But everyone just stares blankly at me. I'm starting to get used to it!

The day goes on, filled with stories like this. Local animal shelter deserves more funding. GovSchool teacher complains of low pay but botches most of the grammar in her interview. City cops work to fight neighborhood crime though "joint operations" with federal bureaucracies. Whatever happened to my beat cop?

Fortunately the crime reports today are shorter than usual, just a murder or two. The police will get to it as soon as they're done ticketing the seatbeltless and "coordinating" with the Alphabet Agencies, cheer-led by us media hounds.

Be it known that there are no dark mandates from above forcing pliant journalists into today's Orwellian contortions of right and wrong. No conspiracies or political censorship of content. No punishments meted out against dissenters like me who occasionally suggest a different philosophy. And sometimes stories do get on that question the size and scope of government.

But not today. Today our reports favor the Nanny State because our staff is made up of average Americans, and average Americans no longer demand or even recognize freedom. The principle that government should limit itself to the defense of individuals from aggression and fraud...this principle is alien to them. Local viewers never demand it; local activists never push for it. If even one of them did, they'd have a good shot at airtime.

Eventually my day at work ends, after some heartfelt good-byes and kind wishes. I like my co-workers and bosses just as much as I disagree with them.

But my serfdom continues into the night. Waiting for me at home is a half-inch-high stack of papers. Is it a novel? An application for permission to build a rocket lab? No, just the governmental instructions and records I've collected in an attempt to prove my 82-year-old grandmother isn't an Al Qaida hijacker. We simply want her to be able to board a plane, but for that she needs government ID. To get *that* she must have...government ID. And like many old folks, she's lost most of hers. We may not be able to get the right documents in time to prevent a "Rain Man." Actchung! Papers please!

"It's crazy" says one of my other relatives, "It's like she doesn't even exist!" We've spent more hours trying to prove she's not a threat to aircraft than it would take to just drive her where she needs to go. And how much safer are we because of this? The Powers can stop my grandma from boarding, but it takes them two years to give a few pilots permission to arm themselves. And it may take them till the next century to streamline the security bureaucracies.

In any case, it is a fitting reminder of why I am taking this action, voting with my feet. We the descendants of the American Revolution, heirs of men who bled and died to stop a 3% tax, now find ourselves tamely governed by power-worshipping apparatchiks who can spy on our backyards, strip us of our livelihoods and bar us from transportation but cannot perform basic protective functions.

New Hampshire does not have to be a utopia to be an improvement on this. It does not even have to be livable. It just needs to be rightside up. It just needs to know that Slavery is not Freedom, that Big Brother should not be watching me and that my grandmother is not an Osama agent. That's enough.

Back to Essays