So if, for the time being, we can’t conquer space, maybe we can conquer Delaware. According to Brian Doherty at Reason Online Hit and Run (I hope I’ve got that roughly right), there’s a plan for libertarians to descend en masse on Delaware and take the place over and generally let utopia erupt.
According to the Delaware News-Journal:
If successful, by 2010 an army of 20,000 will move in, ascend to power and eliminate virtually all taxes – along with nearly all government programs and regulations. No public schools, no health, welfare or social services, no liquor laws, no gun control or land use laws. Smoking would be allowed nearly everywhere, as would almost all forms of gambling and prostitution.
The free market would run riot.
Doherty reports all this without really saying whether he thinks it makes much sense.
For me, this scheme is almost the definition of how not to try to do things. The right way to do things is to combine long-term background education with short-term opportunism. You read and write and propagandise. And, you grab that job on the local paper that someone offers you, or grab control of that local committee that suddenly seems grabbable and do what you can with that. You see the chance to become President of Portugal, and you take it. Nigeria comes up for sale and you can afford it. What you do not do is make big, public, medium-term “plans” like this one, which depend on 20,000 libertarians all agreeing about what plan they’re all supposed to be following, before anything of any value can be achieved.
This is not to say that something like this won’t happen. But if it does happen, it will happen naturally, with each step making sense for its own sake. A few libertarians will gather in some little spot for some particular reason or other, and then they’ll make a nice place and attract more libertarians (perhaps because they’ve set up an attractive propaganda operation which can use and will appreciate more talent), and suddenly, without any big shared plans that anyone has been stressing and straining over, they find that they can have a lot of local influence without any great fuss, so they duly have it.
But don’t plan it. Just let it happen. And in the meantime try to increase the odds of things like this happening everywhere, somewhere, but nowhere in particular.
This piece is in reference to the Free State Project, which is looking at a number of states. Depending on which criteria one looks at, New Hampshire (state motto: “Live free or die”) is actually much higher on the list of possible targets than Delaware.
Though I think the whole idea is simply the kind of propaganda you suggest is necessary, the plan has a precedent — Vermont underwent a similar concerted “invasion” by hippies and assorted liberals in the 1970s that led to a lot of the “progressive” policies in place there now. The only openly socialist mayor in the country was elected repeatedly in Vermont in the 1980s.
And yet, they have no gun laws whatsoever. Go figure.
“Do not plan it, just let it happen”.
A cynical person might say that is why libertarians never achieve anything.
There is an old mistake of thinking that “plan” means state plan or statism in gereral. Actually, (of course) people can make plans and act on them without a government – nor do private plans have to be about ad hoc groups. For example the Du Pont corporation has been making plans (sometimes bad plans, most times good plans) for centuries.
This does not mean that I think that this “take over Deleware” plan is a good one – 20, 000 libertarians would have difficulty taking over Kettering Northamptonshire let alone the State of Deleware, but I can see the idea.
Libertarians believe that getting rid of taxes and regulations would be good for themselves (as individuals), but they can not get rid of these taxes and regulations as isolated individuals so they cooperate together in order to do so.
Relying on “cultural evolution” (or whatever) is a sure road to defeat (as the other side make plans and act on them) and is silly. Unless one has decided that this culture-civilization is doomed and it is a waste of time trying to defeat the statists in the world as it is – which may well be correct.
Paul:
I’m not against all plans, but I am against a lot of effort going into stupid plans that involve a huge number of libertarians all having to do what they’re told.
Tim:
Your response on the other hand, is a good defence of this “plan”, i.e. it wasn’t really a plan at all, just someone thinking aloud about what might happen, and then it was misunderstood by a journalist (or maybe just a headline writer) as a more organised (and hence far more ridiculous) notion than it really is. Point taken.
Paul (again):
Of course “let it happen” could easily be misunderstood, eg by you, as meaning no purposive actions of any kind. What I meant, as in the phrase “spontaneous order”, was purposive actions by individuals and small groups of individuals being allowed “just to happen”, and to aggregate into effective collective action. I’m not against combined action; I am against trying desperately to whip it up, to tell others what they should be doing by telling them to “support the cause” of liberty, and to feel guilty if they don’t, etc. etc.
Or to put it another way, plan only what you can yourself control. We, you and I, can make plans about what we’re going to write on Samizdata (although personally I find that pretty much of a waste of time also, but let that pass), because we can control what we write. But we can’t give each other orders, and would only annoy each other if we tried to.
Of course the rules of planning are very different in the more obviously productive economy, where people are being paid and can be told to do this or that, which is where a lot of this sort of bad tactical stuff comes from.
But even in the world of commerce, the effectiveness of direct orders can be severely exaggerated. Even there, the people at the top of the (severely flattened) corporate pyramid often find that it works better to proclaim a general attitude, a “mission statement” or some such, and then just … (guess what!) … “let it happen”. Or, as they say in France …
On the other hand, now that I’ve actually looked at the Free State Project site you link to, Tim, it does look ridiculous in just the way I describe. They really are looking for a plan, and the rest of us are going to have to pay the price, by moving to the place they say, even if we otherwise wouldn’t have. Count me out, and count out any other libertarian with half a brain, unless, for his or her own good and personal reasons, s/he really does want to move to Delaware, or wherever.
It will all end in tears, mark my words. Good news: quite soon.
There’s no “have to”, it’s voluntary. Of course they can’t roust you out of your comfortable home and send you to New Hampshire or wherever! But they can make it an attractive proposition by creating a rapid influx of libertarians to wherever is chosen. There would not be enough to simply outvote the locals; there *would* be enough to change the tone of local politics, and massvely speed up the localized propaganda effort.
Brian:
Let me clarify — perhaps the founders’ purpose is “serious” (might “earnest” be more apt here?), but its true effect is propagandistic.
The debates that the FSP has stirred up in U.S. libertarian circles about the various social and economic parameters necessary for freedom are leading toward a common framework. It doesn’t really matter whether the 2,500 people who have already signed on with the project will actually ever converge on Concord, New Hampshire, to take over — much more important and relevant is that the idea of a minimally invasive state is taking root all over the country.
Brian has a good point. A better idea for a long term libertarian “plan” would be the sort of “long march through the institutions” that has given the left dominance over academia and the media in the US. If libertarian voices were heard the way leftist voices are people would come to share libertarian assumptions they way they now share statist ones.
The libertarians would have to say sensible things, of course. Leftists have a hard time now convincing many students in the US, who no longer take their lefty profs seriously, because they see the profs as barking mad moonbats.
if the whole thing isn’t someone’s idea of a joke, then it just seems very silly. What they will be doing in the unlikely event that such a thing ever comes to pass is removing themselves into the margins. Perhaps they can set up cultural ties with the Amish.
I thought the idea was to defend the individual within society, not retreat into a laager of denial.
Well I hope that the top people in a corporation (even if, in this degenerate world, they are not the owners of the corporation) do more than issue a “mission statement”.
If the plan is “let it happen” the result will be bankruptcy.
Some companies can indeed produce the same products, in the same way and sell them to a few customers year after year.
Most companies can not (and even doing the same thing every year involves a lot of management – mission statements are of no use). Certainly employees may well come up with various ideas – but which ideas should be followed?
Certianly I agree with you that silly plans are to be avoided (this is true by definition), but making plans for only what we ourselves control?
Well perhaps you are quite right. We can control our own resources (or what we are left with after taxes and regulations) and the left (under whatever party label) will control the political process.
But is this not a council of despair? More worthy of me than you.
Is it not at least POSSIBLE (not more than that) that free market types might (say) work within the Republican party to adopt and elect candidates who really want to reduce the size and scope of government?
Resources we control can include political resources. I am not against libertarians getting intelligently involved in politics. I don’t think that this Free State Project thing is intelligent. I think it will involve a lot of grief to a lot of people, if a lot of people take it seriously. As I say, the best thing about it is that few will. It will then, as Tim Haas notes, and despite the grandiose intentions of its projenitors, serve as one more titbit of propaganda, a small sparkle of light for a large expenditure of energy.
What I propose is not a council of despair, it is about achieving economies of scale. If you do propaganda that applies to lots of different situations it is extremely likely to be acted upon, in some of those situations. If you stress and strain on some quite big plan which only applies to one little place, any resources you use are likely to be wasted. The internet is of course ideally suited to such widely applicable ideas.
I’ve already explained my use of the phrase “let it happen”, and will not repeat myself. I will merely say that Paul seems to have an oddly low opinion of the possibilities of humans acting freely yet cooperatively in accordance with their shared attitudes and missions.
Also, Paul misreads various words, such as “often” which he read as “always”, and “exaggerated” which he read as “believed in when it is actually complete rubbish”. I did not say that top managers never plan, or else how why would I be claiming that the world of commercial management has provoked the tendency of libertarians to plan rather too obsessively? I just said that even top managers also use other more laissez faire methods.
I first found their website a little while ago via Samizdata’s very own links page (weirdly, the “Free State State Project” link is just to the left of a picture of Brian looking very disapproving ….)
I must admit that when I went to their site, I found the whole idea hugely romantic. I even looked up Delaware and Wyoming on a map to see where they were. I still think it is a very romantic and not entirely silly idea. If it worked (which is not so impossible, given that the State which is selected will be one in which 20,000 people could make a real difference) it would give us all an example in the present day to point to. At the moment, all we can do is point to examples from a 100 years ago.
Also, didn’t the U.S. get started with a bunch of like-minded people leaving their homes to start a new life in freedom?
(Oh dear, I feel tears coming on …)
David