Free State Project

Information longs to be free, but statists gonna state

by on August 13, 2012 @ 6:36 pm · 0 comments

in Legal System, Police Statism, Statism, Technology

It is the tendency of the state to compile as much information as possible about its subjects, but to persecute individuals who collect and divulge information about its agents and the way they operate. The state and its supporters want to keep tabs on you, but angrily (and violently) protest when you try to keep track of state actors. In the news today we saw two examples of this:

  • WikiLeaks has fallen victim to a major distributed denial of service attack for which the regime apologists at Anti-Leaks have taken responsibility (though there is speculation about this being a state-sponsored action). The attack, now more than a week in duration, coincides with the whistle-blower site’s recent release of the lastest dump of documents gleaned from the Stratfor intelligence leak. Recently released documents detail a privately administered domestic intelligence-gathering operation called TrapWire. According to PC Magazine and Russia Today, the leaks reveal that the TrapWire program is designed to compile information on targets across the United States from a network of surveillance cameras, incorporating vehicle locations and behavioral data in order to detect patterns that may signal that someone is involved in undesirable activity. The companies behind TrapWire, Abraxas and Stratfor, are reportedly chock full of former U.S. intelligence officials still serving their former masters.

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Daily Anarchist Interviews Walter Block

by on September 6, 2010 @ 7:33 am · 1 comment

in (Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Education, The Basics

The Daily Anarchist has posted a nice, short interview of Walter Block by Seth King, touching mostly on Block’s history in the libertarian movement and his thoughts on the prospects for liberty and the tactics and strategy libertarians employ. A few interesting excerpts:

Seth: Would you mind explaining to me exactly what Anarcho-Capitalism means to you?

Walter: The first part of this phrase, Anarcho-Capitalism, means that there shall be no government. Private firms will undertake all supposed government functions, such as protection from foreign and domestic enemies, adjudication, supplying supposed public goods such as light houses (in a by gone era), flood control, education, welfare, health, money, etc. The second part means that the law will support private property rights, money, etc., in contradistinction to left wing or socialist anarchism.

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Future of Freedom Fund

by on May 6, 2010 @ 2:28 pm · 6 comments

in Anti-Statism, Education, Private Security & Law

Besides traditional activism such as politics and writing and speaking, on occasion intellectual entrepreneurs try to find more innovative and creative ways to work for a free society. Examples  include various forms of “new libertarian nation” projects (like Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute, and the Free State Project), as well as the idea of subscription-based patrol and restitution advanced by Guillory and Tinsley, or Stephen Fairfax’s ingenious proposal presented at Austrian Scholars Conference 2010, “Returning Gold to the Consumer Marketplace” (discussed here).

Along these lines, I’ve been fascinated with an idea I got when I read about an utterly fascinating legal squabble way back in 1996 or so when I lived in Philadelphia. This concerns the infamous Holdeen Trusts, and a series of cases and legal disputes centered around same. An article about it in the Philadelphia Inquirer caught my notice because it concerned the efforts of an eccentric millionaire New York lawyer, Jonathan Holdeen, to set up a series of trusts that would one day totally wipe out taxes, at least in Pennsylvania (see also The Holdeen Funds, by Rajan Mylavaganam, below).

Holdeen set up a labyrinth of trusts in Pennsylvania in the 1940s and 1950s, lasting for hundreds of years, with the accumulated trillions of dollars to be eventually used to endow and completely fund the operation of the government of Pennsylvania. He chose Pennsylvania, believing that that state’s laws were most favorable to the validity of such trusts. Holdeen “modeled his plan somewhat after that of the thrifty Benjamin Franklin who limited himself to two hundred years (1790-1990).” (Holdeen v. Ratterree, 270 F.2d 701 (2d Cir. 1959); see also Holdeen v. Ratterree, 190 F.Supp 752 (N.D. N.Y. 1960); In re Trusts of Holdeen, 486 Pa. 1, 403 A.2d 978 (1979).)

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