Keith's reader's digest version is probably accurate enough to go by. What I'd like to do is this:
There's a network effect making certain things desirable to do only if a whole lot of other people do them too. Sites such as
Kickstarter and
IndieGoGo successfully solve this problem. They make it possible for people to donate or invest small amounts of money to a large project, but only on the condition that a whole lot of other people do too. The money is only collected if the required threshold of pledges is reached within a given time-frame.
The Free State Project (FSP) attempted to solve the network problem in exactly the same way. Unfortunately, it suffered from some major design flaws. I don't want to criticize the FSP; it's terrific. It's doing great things. Being the first attempt at something of its kind, it's understandable and in fact predictable that it would have problems.
Problem 1 was that the rules were not set in stone, as they are on Kickstarter (and other sites like that, but I'll just refer to Kickstarter for simplicity). They were not cut-and-dried. Or, perhaps it would be better to say that they were cut-and-dried, but then that was changed arbitrarily. On Kickstarter, there are two limiting conditions: that a certain
amount of pledges be made, and that that happen within a
definite time limit. The FSP had two similar limiting conditions: a certain number of pledges to move, within a certain time limit. To quote:
Q. What is the time frame for the Free State Project?
A. The Participation Guidelines state that a signature on the Statement of Intent becomes void, and must be renewed by the signer, if three years pass before we reach 5,000 members and select the state. The Participation Guidelines also state that once we reach 20,000 members, everyone has five years to move to the selected state. The Participation Guidelines do not specify a requisite time period between reaching 5,000 members and reaching 20,000 members. However,
the assumption has always been that if 20,000 is not close at hand within five years of the launch of the Free State Project (officially September 1st, 2001), the Project will fold. To get
20,000 signers by September 2006, we will need approximately 15 new signatures per day on average. In the month of September 2002 we averaged 7 new signatures per day, while in August and October we have averaged about 20 signatures per day, compared to 4 per day in February and below 1 per day before then. As we continue to expand our publicity and advertising efforts, a constant average of 15 per day should be well within reach.
There were not 20,000 signers by September, 2006, of course. Not even close (7,291). However, the project did not fold. One reason goes to an important feature of Kickstarter not shared by the FSP: separation of powers. Oversight. In the FSP, the curator/rule-enforcer and the project management were one and the same. Not so on Kickstarter. How often has a US President issued an executive order to imprison himself for violating the Constitution? Exactly.
Problem 2 was that the "which state?" vote was held too early. Much of the interest and forum traffic on the FSP site centered around the advantages and disadvantages of the various state candidates. Once the vote results were in, interest and enthusiasm died away quickly. In 2003, it was impossible to be active in the internet libertarian community and
not be aware of the Free State Project. The idea was viral. Things were on fire. It was a principal -- probably
the principal -- focal point of the movement. Then, in 2005? Not so much. By 2007? Barely a blip on the radar screen. And then the radar screen got bigger. Tens of thousands have come into the liberty movement since, due mostly to Ron Paul and the grassroots campaign we ran around him, and many (most?) of them are completely unfamiliar with the FSP. Virtually none of them have gotten actively involved in it. In retrospect, FSPers will agree that we jumped the gun on the vote. If the state vote had been delayed until the target number of pledges had been met, excitement and intensity and urgency would have been more likely to have been maintained.
Problem 3 was that there was too little skin in the game. There may have been 5,000 instances of pledges on the website. OK. How many of those were real people? How many were duplicates? Anti-liberty jokers? Even of the ones who were actual liberty-lovers, who pledged in good faith, how many could actually be counted on to move? 75%? 50%? These percentages were completely unknown (and still are). They're a total black box. To address this, more commitment should have been required, and more verification of seriousness. An annual meeting should have been held, where pledgers could meet one another. If a man isn't willing to come to a meeting for a few days for the cause, is he really going to be willing to permanently relocate his entire family? I wouldn't count on it. I'd say that's doubtful. If there are ten thousand pledgers but only 10 people are showing up to the annual convention, that tells you something -- bad news. If there are ten thousand pledgers and eight-to-twelve thousand are showing up, that tells you you're on the right track. You've really got something and it's going to work. There also should have been a monetary requirement. In order to pledge, you would have to pay some amount. Perhaps $20. This would probably largely eliminate "joke" and duplicate sign-ups.
Others here may be able to think of other measures that could be used to verify reality of commitment from the pledgers.
Problem 4 was that too large of a chunk was bitten off. A state turns out to be too large, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons. Why start out large when you can start out small and then scale? It seems only wise and prudent. There may not be twenty thousand liberty-lovers willing to relocate to geographically concentrate themselves. There don't seem to be. There certainly aren't that many that the FSP knows about. And twenty thousand may not be enough to effectively control the politics of a state with a million, or even half a million, residents. There are a lot of unknowns. A lot could go wrong. A lot almost certainly will go wrong, as it always does with new start-ups. This geographical concentration idea has no real track record of any successes. It's unproven. So let's start small and succeed. We can prove the concept. We can work out the bugs.
So, I propose to re-boot the geographical concentration concept. It is a wonderful model, and one with a very good chance of success, if done right. We will learn from all the mistakes of the FSP (and of the other initiatives Keith mentioned, for that matter) and build upon that foundation. We will get firm commitments, from real people. We will get the project on a Kickstarter-like platform that can enforce the rules and be independent of us, so that participants can rest assured the rules will be followed. We will target a small jurisdiction in which we can be confident of being a decisive factor, and we will choose it only once we already have enough people ready to mobilize and become that factor.
