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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