Kinross

Last month I joined the Free State Project in an attempt to achieve greater freedom.

The first stage of the FSP is to select a state in which 20,000 classical liberals will move into to vote together for libertarian principles. There are ten states to choose from, selected for their small population so that 20,000 people will have influence.

One state has clearly risen to the top as the most classical liberal state in the union. That state is New Hampshire. Oddly enough New Hampshire is also one of the greatest states in the union and I will use it as a case study on why libertarianism is the best political system.

How is New Hampshire a Libertarian state?

Its state motto is "Live Free or Die"
It has a revolutionary constitution protecting the right of the citizens to revolt against the state.
It has the weakest governorship in the nation.
It has best representation in the nation with a 400-member house.
It has a true citizen representation with a total pay of representatives of $100 / year.
The state constitution does not mandate state funded schools.
It has a strong tradition of local control through town meetings.
Budgets are voted on line by line.
Has one of the lowest percentages of government employees.
It actively seeks to reduce the size and scope of its government.
You can voluntarily pay more taxes if you wish.
Its government is the most transparent.
It has the cleanest elections with paper ballots.
Education is funded at the local level.
It has the highest number of elected Libertarians.
No income tax.
No sales tax.
No capital gains tax.
No inventory tax.
Open carry and "shall issue" CCW permits.
No helmet laws.
No seatbelt laws.
No mandatory insurance laws.
Very business and entrepreneur friendly.
Has many free trade zones.

I hope this shows that New Hampshire is as close to the libertarian ideal as they come.

So how does New Hampshire stack up to the less libertarian states in the union?

Violent crime is one of the lowest in the nation ranking 46

With no seatbelt or helmet laws there must be a lot of traffic deaths. Nope 48/50 in traffic deaths.

I bet those libertarians waste a lot of energy. 40/50 and its a cold state.

There must be a ton of people living in poverty. Actually it has the fewest

But what about the children? Look at that they are ok too. Even at birth.

The economy must be terrible. Actually the unemployment rate was at 3.9% in May while the nation was at 6.1% and it never went above 5.0% during the entire recession. It also ranks as one of the highest in investment capital.

So there you have it. Libertarianism simply works.

theyeti

You should move to Connecticut or New Jersey. They each beat out New Hampshire in most categories, but they're not very libertarian.

theyeti

Kinross

What catagories would that be, other than energey consumption?

Add to that they both have worse unemployment rates and have combined income and sales tax between 10-12%.

MortalWombat

Does that mean that other countries with low violent crime, low infant mortality, low traffic accident mortality, low energy consumption, and low poverty levels are by default libertarian too?

Kinross

No, but if you get the same or better results without have 40% of your income extracted from you why would you want to go that route?

The opponents of libertarianism cry that poverty will rise, government will corrupt, crime will shoot through the roof. This has just been systematically proved false.

So then issue becomes would you rather live under a large intrusive government that takes a large portion of your property or a limited hands off government that allows you to use your property as you see fit.

theyeti

Per capita personal income, median household income, education levels, teacher pay, and doctors per capita, among other things.

Their unemployment levels are barely worse; they're still among the lowest in the nation.

And yeah, they do have higher income and sales tax rates. Which goes to show that libertarianism is apparently not the reason for good economic statistics.

Northeastern states in general have much better statistics than the rest of the nation. By picking a state from that region and comparing it to the nation at large, you're engaging in the sort of spurious cherry-picking that libertarians are notorious for. If you compare New Hampshire to the rest of the region, it's not that impressive. To make matters worse, New Hampshire is one of the smallest states in the nation, and isn't necessarily comparable to larger states with major urban centers, which tend to get hit hardest by things like unemployment. An informative study would compare libertarian vs. non-libertarian policies while controlling for regional and other differences.

theyeti

theyeti

Oh? Where has this systematically been proven false? I don't think I've ever seen a worthwhile Cato or other lib study that actually tried to do a systematic survey rather than cherry-picking an atypical "case study" that didn't have any relevance to the world at large. (Or otherwise terrible examples like Pinochet's Chile.) The only systematic attempts I've seen have been debunked as laughably flawed.

theyeti

Kinross

Can you show me a catagory were New Hampshire scores poorly?

If NH can rank well across the board without an intrusive statist government which it has had since day one, why exactly do we need large intrusive statist government which can not do significantly better?

theyeti

It appears that my last two posts were wasted.

I guess I'll have to assume there is no systematic evidence for libertarianism's superiority, as opposed to a single cherry-picked example then?

theyeti

JERDOG

The yetti, the greatest period of economic growth in this nation was during a time of small government. Theres your "systematic proof".