The least costly solution

Guthrum, at Old Holborn, on the idea of a ‘free state’, concluding:

The Welfare State has sucked the life, morality and culture out of British way of life, and thrown it to the dogs of the far right and far left. In the ensuing political collapse, perhaps we have to accept that to escape the possibilities of becoming a slave of the state, we may have to separate of the from the rest of British State run by alternating Darien Governments blue or red, to achieve any freedom in our lifetime.

The question is where to set up this alternative free state. This is not a flight of fancy Jersery has a population only 84 000.

I’ve never been to Jersey, but a friend of mine once lived there, while working for someone who really lived there, and her account of the machinations undertaken by the people who really live there to prevent anyone who doesn’t already really live there from ever really living there went on for quite some time.

On this basis, perhaps not Jersey. A little too close for comfort, in any case. I imagine much the same goes for the Isle of Man. In any event, a drastic change in the status of these two places could so easily be blamed upon ‘an EU directive’ that it cannot entirely be ruled out.

The same does not go, I believe, for New Hampshire, but I suppose that this is ruled out because it remains federally a part of the USA, and the ability of its state legislature to be libertarian is thereby limited.

There have been a few suggestions here and there that libertarians should club together, hire some mercenaries and invade some idyllic and underpopulated tropical paradise currently barely scraping a living from what might turn out to be short-lived tourism. There have been some quite detailed analyses of this proposal, none of which seem to take into account the ethical question of whether one ought to invade someone else’s country simply because one feels that one would make a better job of running it, a habit which we generally condemn in others, and the practical question of how, despite being able militarily to transcend any number of people armed only with coconuts (or I suppose it might be pineapples), one is expected to prevent the USA, which is well known for its addiction to the above disagreeable habit, from making up a story about how one was mad, and preparing to attack US targets with nuclear coconuts (or, as it might be, biological pineapples), waffling on telly about ‘regime change’ and invading the place once again, with a view to replacing one’s government with something more agreeable to itself (the Grenada Procedure). Having lost New Hampshire to its own libertarians, the US administration is hardly likely to relish the thought of another example elsewhere in the world.

It is possible to live at sea, like libertarian icon Captain Nemo. Readers who are as terminally anoraxic as I am will doubtless relish the thought of repeating my own feasibility studies, using information from such sources as this, this and this. Demonstration of the difficulty of finding a port to tie up in the fees of which are an economic alternative to sailing endlessly to and fro at a rate of several tons of diesel a day is left as an exercise for the student. Of course one might simply anchor somewhere, returning to port only to replenish; the state of everyone after a few years of this would with luck be described by Evelyn Waugh; without it, perhaps Géricault.

Then again, one might consider a fixed installation in international waters. Something like a marine oilfield’s accomodation platform, perhaps; these are sometimes available secondhand. One could probably find some international waters shallow enough for it somewhere in the world. It’s the same thing as the ship, really, if anything with less space, but with the added amusement of watching the legs rust.

I’m afraid that the correct solution is, as one might expect, the most expensive: one simply has to buy an entire country. Not, I hasten to add, merely an entire island, such as those Scottish ones which squillionaries occasionally acquire, which are still part of the UK whoever ‘owns’ them, but the totality of a recognised sovereign nation. One of the living-scraping, coconut/pineapple type would be the most affordable. This would involve buying all of the land and buildings from their existing owners, including the island’s government.

While depressingly costly I feel that this is the only feasible solution likely to result in relative stability and safety. Even this does not allow for the outrage likely to be felt by all statist nations at this highly visible example of how to manage without them; as well as saving up for the country we might also have to save up for an entry-level nuclear deterrent.

The least costly solution is to win an election in this country, thereby saving all the business with steamer-trunks and finding new homes for the gerbils. Even if one cannot win the election outright, one should aim to hold the balance of power in such a way as to force the government of the day to deal with one in order to get things done; a bit like the Ulster Unionists, perhaps.

I am not doing any more feasibility studies about the free-state thing but I am now carrying a supply of LPUK cards at all times, and trying to engage people in conversation. Most of them seem to regard Libertarianism as the desperate choice indicated by desperate times rather than as their own political ideal, but provided that they still vote for it this fine distinction is immaterial.