The Liberty City | Hacker News Reader

The Liberty City

npr.org

35 pointsdanso24 comments

I'm on the board of directors for the Free State Project (https://fsp.org) mentioned in the article, which aims to concentrate those who support liberty in one place (NH) for greater effectiveness.

If anyone has questions about the Free State Project, you can ask them here or email me personally at kauffj@gmail.com. I'm always happy to assist fellow hackers that are interested in the FSP.

Best of luck to you! I hope that there is more success in the future for taking control of NH.

How close are you to actually having any effect on the politics of NH? To having a controlling effect?

There are 15 reps in the state house and a much larger number in local positions. There are some well developed machines to help people get elected. Perhaps most importantly, I think NH is relatively established as the Schelling point for concentration.

Is there a descriptive article or blog post about FSP? Something "deeper" than the website, but not extremely complicated or too long to read?

There are a few documentaries, e.g.: https://youtu.be/vxCNeK97_C8

This isn't very unique, it's called a suburb. It's just a little more extreme and poorly governed.

A common suburbia pattern is to build a shopping hub in a county or other subdivision on an interstate adjacent to a bigger community and exploit the increased revenues. The community starts keeping costs down by leeching on state and county level resources for police, allowing undesirable business etc.

There are variants in different states because of how land in allocated. For example, New York doesn't have unincorporated land, you're always in a town or city.

Suburban areas that become incorporated cities aren't unique. But AFAIK, Von Ormy is unique for its aversion to taxes. Here's another story about it from 2017: https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-frees...

It sounds like their preferred method of financing city government (being a speed trap on I-35) goes back at least 50 years - here's an interesting article from 1974 about Selma, TX, which is on the other side of San Antonio, but also on I-35.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-perfect-speed-trap...

Relying on speed traps seems a terrible way of financing a city. I can’t imagine this being stable. If people start speeding less (which should be the purpose of speed traps) what are they going to do?

Yes, everyone hates speed trap towns (rightfully IMO.)

The schadenfreude of small government failing to produce a thriving city with that particular cherry on top is why this is on the front page.

If this city had connected to the sewer, got a Walmart and become a normal and forgettable suburb other than its tax rate nobody would be interested in its story but because the insistence on low taxes and small government created what many here would consider bad results it is of interest.

Yes, and it deserves to be pointed out, no?

>I can’t imagine this being stable

That doesn't seem to be their concern, since the mayor planned on removing the property tax completely and then relying solely on sales tax.

Find some other pretext to commit literal highway robbery? Plant drugs, charge victims court "user fees", etc.

They might have a moral leg to stand on if they actually had build the road themselves, rather than just grifting an existing interstate.

Reading the article, my alarm bells went off as soon as they bragged of parking a broken cruiser on the highway, as if that is a worthwhile endeavor for small government. There seems to be some unfortunate corollary whereby pushes for freedom end up attracting the worst types of authoritarians seeking a blank slate for their own rules.

The link is a transcript of this NPR Planet Money podcast: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771371881/episode-945-the-lib...

TL;DR: A rural city was afraid of being taken over by San Antonio, they decided to become a city to defend against this. They wanted to keep city taxes low, and the plan was to attract big chains, to monetize the traffic on the Interstate via sales taxes. None of the chains would build because there was no sewer system. Residents generally feel the "liberty city" experiment is failing them, but the guy behind it feels it is succeeding because they have very low taxes. Now, however, they are starting to make money off speeding tickets.

(from memory, listened to it yesterday or the day before)

I highly recommend Planet Money, it's one of my favorite podcasts.

>None of the chains would build because there was no sewer system.

They also spent quite some time negotiating with San Antonio to connect them to their sewer network. The final deal would've had San Antonio covering most of the costs, but the mayor of Von Ormy refused to raise taxes or take a loan to cover the deal.

So you’re saying it’s everyone’s third game of Cities: Skylines, but brought to life in excruciatingly real time?

They want to increase the revenue from speeding tickets from 60 kUSD to 250 kUSD. That sounds promising, wasn't there a town in North Florida that got slapped with a consent decree because it relied on traffic fines as well for revenue and went completely overboard with speed traps?

Farming motorists for revenue really does wonders for the perception of law enforcement.

Here's a recent dive into the problem: https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/gov-addicted-to-fin...

Thank you. It was a pain trying to piece that together from the transcript.

This sounds redolent of the saga of (recently revived by court order) Damascus, OR.

I hope they eventually look into cooperatives for sewer/water/energy. They’re a great way to manage larger projects on a consensual basis.

This is an interesting case because it is the city that benefits from having the sewer (through sales tax revenue of attracting big stores), and the individuals who'd be served by the cooperative already have septic systems. I guess the individuals would indirectly benefit via the improved city services.

I would seek to bring in several new stores as the initial members, and borrow against the agreed-upon future revenues. No city borrowing, efficient infrastructure development, and if the project fails somehow the city has no obligation to act.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com