El Otro Sendero

by Peter Saint-Andre

2003-09-25

I've been following the Free State Project for over a year. It's a fascinating concept -- encouraging many freedom-loving people to move to a single U.S. state -- and they are on the verge of announcing which state has been chosen by FSP members. But reading articles like this one makes me wonder how free any U.S. state can be. Perhaps it would be better to move to another country, such as New Zealand or Costa Rica. NZ is far from the madding crowd, and scores high on personal and economic freedom (at least compared to other countries). Costa Rica has no army (!) and an active libertarian movement whose members make up 10% of the national congress. Granted, both have socialistic features galore, but the "land of the free" isn't much better and the trend in the USA is toward a more authoritarian government. It's extremely hard to turn around the ship of state in a nation of 270+ million people (which is why the FSP has chosen to concentrate on a state with less than 1.2 million people). But New Zealand and Costa Rica each have less than 4 million residents. Costa Rica is especially intriguing given the success of libertarian ideas there. In recent days I've read "reports" from two libertarians on Costa Rica: one from Jacob Hornberger, the other from Jacqueline Passey. I used to email with a guy of libertarian proclivities named Al Tucker, who moved to Costa Rica years ago and loved it. Maybe those FSPers need to keep one eye on CR and NZ in case things don't work out up north...


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