That is great... and the irony is beautiful.

I see no reason why Instapundit can't take over Tennessee.

It could never work in any event. Let's imagine that the FSP actually managed to create a majority of liberty-minded folks in some thinly populated state -- Wyoming, Montana, pick one. The first thing to go would be state and local taxation. They'd either be abolished or driven down to some relatively very low level. What happens next?

What happens next is that non-liberty-minded people would flood the state. Some would come as individuals; others would move because their employers had moved. Within a few years, the economic incentives would have reduced limited-government types to a minority again.

There's no way to restore Constitutionally limited government on a local basis. It will take a national revival of the conviction that "that government is best which governs least." Unfortunately -- yes, I'm a libertarian-conservative -- such a revival doesn't seem to be in our near future.

I disagree Francis. Most of the people that benefit heavily from government services neither pay taxes, nor have high paying jobs.

Given that, I fail to see any incentive for them to move to Vermont to take advantage of the tax breaks. Likewise, if they are only making $18,000 a year, they aren't going to move just to keep their minimum wage job.

Steve:
"Government Services" that are afforded by tax dollars include many well-paying jobs, the workers of which pay their fair share of taxes. It sounds like you are thinking only of the small percentage of government spending on welfare programs, while forgetting about services ranging from postal carriers to park service rangers to defense industry employees. All of these jobs ultimately suckle at the teat of a Government fat on tax dollars.

Just out of curiousity, does your new job work from Gov't contracts?

Lovely. Well described. I'm one of those rational communists (finding it pleasant in theory, useless, destructive, and/or dang scary in practice) and feel the same way about much of the libertarian party. I'm a sympathizer, and I support much of what they stand for, but no way do I support much of what they actually do. Largely because I, as well, see the ridiculousness and moderate hypocrisy of things such as the FSP.

I'm just citing Say's Law, R. Jean-Baptiste Say has yet to be proved wrong, over a whole lot of decades of observation.

The population incursion wouldn't necessarily be driven by high-income individuals. I'd think it more likely to be driven by large employers looking to capitalize on lower taxes, lower costs of regulation, and a generally more permissive environment in which to do business. Those could be prodigious advantages over one's competitors.

The disincentive to relocate would be sunk capital, but these days that's less of a consideration than it used to be. Also, a really large corporation moves the way an iceberg does: by growing at one end and sloughing superannuated mass at the other.

Anyway, the federal government would never permit it. They'd find some sort of "equal protection" problem in the idea of a state that didn't tax its citizens or support its indigents. But it would be interesting to watch, until the H-bombs landed.

The Libertarian Party has basically nothing to do with the Free State Project. It is inaccurate to use Libertarian when describing the FSP. Small l, libertarians is the accurate word. There are more than likely a number of Libertarians in this FSP movement thing, but it has nothing to do with the political party. For the record, I don't think it will work either, because I don't believe they will get enough people and even 20,000 wouldn't be enough.