A Libertarian Walks Right into a Bear: Creator Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling on the Free State Venture

Each ideology produces its personal model of fanatics, however there’s one thing particular about libertarianism.

I don’t imply that as an insult, both. I really like libertarians! For essentially the most half, they’re enjoyable and fascinating individuals. However in addition they are typically cocksure about core ideas in a approach most individuals aren’t. Should you’ve ever encountered a freshly minted Ayn Rand fanatic, what I imply.

And but one of many issues that makes political philosophy so amusing is that it’s largely summary. You may’t actually show something — it’s only a endless argument about values. Each from time to time, although, actuality intervenes in a approach that illustrates the absurdity of specific concepts.

One thing like this occurred within the mid-2000s in a small New Hampshire city referred to as Grafton. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, creator of a brand new e book titled A Libertarian Walks Right into a Bear, says it’s the “boldest social experiment in fashionable American historical past.” I don’t know if it’s the “boldest,” nevertheless it’s positively one of many strangest.

The experiment was referred to as the “Free City Venture” (it later grew to become the “Free State Venture”), and the aim was easy: take over Grafton’s native authorities and switch it right into a libertarian utopia. The motion was cooked up by a small group of ragtag libertarian activists who noticed in Grafton a singular alternative to appreciate their goals of a superbly logical and completely market-based neighborhood. Evidently, utopia by no means arrived, however the bears did! (I promise I’ll clarify under.)

I reached out to Hongoltz-Hetling to speak about his e book. I wished to know what occurred in New Hampshire, why the experiment failed, and what the entire saga can educate us not nearly libertarianism however concerning the risks of loving concept greater than actuality.

A evenly edited transcript of our dialog follows.

Sean Illing

How would you describe the “Free City Venture” to somebody who doesn’t know something about it?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

I’d put it like this: There’s a nationwide neighborhood of libertarians that has developed over the past 40 or 50 years, and so they’ve by no means actually had a spot to name their very own. They’ve by no means been answerable for a nation, or a state, or perhaps a metropolis. And so they’ve at all times actually wished to create a neighborhood that may showcase what would occur in the event that they carried out their ideas on a broad scale.

So in 2004, a gaggle of them determined that they wished to take some motion on this deficiency, and so they determined to launch what they referred to as the Free City Venture. They despatched out a name to a bunch of loosely affiliated nationwide libertarians and instructed everybody to maneuver to this one spot and located this utopian neighborhood that may then function a shining jewel for the world to see that libertarian philosophies labored not solely in concept however in apply. And so they selected a city in rural New Hampshire referred to as Grafton that already had fewer than 1,000 individuals in it. And so they simply confirmed up and began working to take over the city authorities and eliminate each rule and regulation and tax expense that they may.

Sean Illing

Of all of the cities in all of the world, why Grafton?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

They didn’t select it in a vacuum. They really performed a really cautious and thorough search. They zeroed in on the state of New Hampshire pretty shortly as a result of that’s the “Reside Free or Die” state. They knew that it might align properly with their philosophy of individualism and private accountability. However as soon as they selected New Hampshire, they really visited dozens of small cities, searching for that good combine of things that may allow them to take over.

What they wanted was a city that was sufficiently small that they may come up and elbow the prevailing citizenry, someplace the place land was low-cost, the place they may are available and purchase up a bunch of land and type of host their incoming colonists. And so they wished a spot that had no zoning, as a result of they wished to have the ability to reside in nontraditional housing conditions and never should undergo the rigamarole of constructing or shopping for costly properties or preexisting properties.

Sean Illing

Wait, what do you imply by “nontraditional housing”?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Because the individuals of Grafton quickly came upon, a nontraditional housing scenario meant a camp within the woods or a bunch of delivery containers or no matter. They introduced in yurts and cell properties and fashioned little clusters of cabins and tents. There was one location referred to as “Tent Metropolis,” the place a bunch of individuals simply lived in tents from everyday. All of them united underneath this broad umbrella precept of “private freedom,” however as you’d count on, there was lots of variation in how they exercised it.

Sean Illing

What did the demographics of the group seem like? Are we speaking largely about white guys or Ayn Rand bros who discovered one another on the web?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Effectively, we’re speaking about a whole lot of individuals, although the numbers aren’t all that clear. They positively skewed male. They positively skewed white. A few of them had some huge cash, which gave them the liberty to have the ability to choose up roots and transfer to a small city in New Hampshire. Plenty of them had little or no cash and nothing preserving them of their locations. In order that they had been capable of choose up and are available. However most of them simply didn’t have these household conditions or these 9-to-5 jobs, and that was actually what characterised them greater than the rest.

Sean Illing

And the way did they take over the native authorities? Did they meet a lot resistance?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Once they first confirmed up, they hadn’t instructed anybody that they had been doing this, excluding a few sympathetic libertarians throughout the neighborhood. And so rapidly the individuals in Grafton woke as much as the truth that their city was within the strategy of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians. And so they had been pissed. That they had a giant city assembly. It was a really shouty, very offended city assembly, throughout which they instructed the Free Towners who dared to return that they didn’t need them there and so they didn’t admire being handled as if their neighborhood was an experimental playpen for libertarians to return in and attempt to show one thing.

However the libertarians, despite the fact that they by no means outnumbered the prevailing Grafton residents, what they discovered was that they may are available, and so they might discover like-minded individuals, conventional conservatives or simply very liberty-oriented people, who agreed with them on sufficient points that, regardless of that offended opposition, they had been capable of begin to work their will on the levers of presidency.

They couldn’t go a few of the initiatives they wished. They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the varsity district and to fully discontinue paying for street repairs, or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, a few of the outlandish issues like that. However they did discover that lots of current Grafton residents could be joyful to chop city companies to the bone. And they also efficiently put a stranglehold on issues like police companies, issues like street companies and fireplace companies and even the general public library. All of these items had been lower to the bone.

Sean Illing

Then what occurred over the following few years or so?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

By just about any measure you possibly can have a look at to gauge a city’s success, Grafton acquired worse. Recycling charges went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The city’s authorized prices went up as a result of they had been continually defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The variety of intercourse offenders dwelling within the city went up. The variety of recorded crimes went up. The city had by no means had a homicide in dwelling reminiscence, and it had its first two, a double murder, over a roommate dispute.

So there have been all types of detrimental penalties that began to crop up. And in the meantime, the city that may ordinarily need to handle these items, say with a sturdy police drive, as an alternative discovered that it was hamstrung. So the city solely had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he needed to arise at city assembly and inform people who he couldn’t put his cruiser on the street for a interval of weeks as a result of he didn’t have cash to restore it and make it a protected car.

Principally, Grafton grew to become a Wild West, frontier-type city.

Sean Illing

When did the bears present up?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

It seems that you probably have a bunch of individuals dwelling within the woods in nontraditional dwelling conditions, every of which is managing meals in their very own approach and their waste streams in their very own approach, then you definitely’re primarily educating the bears within the area that each human habitation is sort of a puzzle that must be solved in an effort to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears within the space began to take discover of the actual fact that there have been energy obtainable in homes.

One factor that the Free Towners did that inspired the bears was unintentional, in that they simply threw their waste out how they wished. They didn’t need the federal government to inform them learn how to handle their potential bear attractants. The opposite approach was intentional, in that some individuals simply began feeding the bears only for the enjoyment and pleasure of watching them eat.

As you possibly can think about, issues acquired messy and there was no approach for the city to take care of it. Some individuals had been taking pictures the bears. Some individuals had been feeding the bears. Some individuals had been setting booby traps on their properties in an effort to discourage the bears by ache. Others had been throwing firecrackers at them. Others had been placing cayenne pepper on their rubbish in order that when the bears sniffed their rubbish, they might get a snout stuffed with pepper.

It was an absolute mess.

Sean Illing

We’re speaking about black bears particularly. For the non-bear specialists on the market, black bears will not be recognized to be aggressive towards people. However the bears in Grafton had been … completely different.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Bears are very good problem-solving animals. They will actually suppose their approach by issues. And that was what made them aggressive in Grafton. On this case, an affordable bear would perceive that there was meals available, that it was going to be rewarded for being bolder. In order that they began aggressively raiding meals and have become much less prone to run away when a human confirmed up.

There are many nice examples within the e book of bears appearing in daring, unusually aggressive manners, nevertheless it culminated in 2012, when there was a black bear assault within the city of Grafton. Which may not appear that uncommon, however, in actual fact, New Hampshire had not had a black bear assault for at the very least 100 years main as much as that. So the entire state had by no means seen a single bear assault, and now right here in Grafton, a lady was attacked in her dwelling by a black bear.

After which, a number of years after that, a second girl was attacked, not in Grafton however in a neighboring city. And for the reason that e book was written and revealed, there’s truly been a 3rd bear assault, additionally in the identical little cluster and the identical little area of New Hampshire. And I believe it’s very clear that, until one thing adjustments, extra bear assaults will come.

Fortunately, nobody’s been killed, however individuals have been fairly badly injured.

Sean Illing

You’re honest, even sympathetic, to the libertarians you profile on this e book, however I do surprise in the event you got here to see them more and more as fanatics.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

You already know, “libertarian” is such a bizarre umbrella time period for a really various group of individuals. Some libertarians are constructed across the concept of white supremacy and racism. That was not the case with these libertarians. A lot of the libertarians that I met had been type, respectable individuals who could be beneficiant with a neighbor in any given second. However within the summary, after they’re at a city assembly, they’ll vote to harm that neighbor by chopping off, say, help for street plowing.

So I assume what I seen is an odd disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political motion. Unsure I’d use the phrase “fanatic,” however positively a bizarre disconnect.

Sean Illing

There’s a lesson on this for anybody occupied with seeing it, which is that in the event you attempt to make the world match neatly into an ideological field, you’ll should distort or ignore actuality to do it — often with horrible penalties.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Yeah, I believe that’s true for libertarianism and actually all philosophies of life. It’s very simple to fall into this lure of believing that if solely all people adopted this or that precept, then society would turn out to be this good system.

Sean Illing

Did any of the characters on this story come to doubt their libertarianism because of what occurred in Grafton? Or was it largely a perception that libertarianism can’t fail, it could actually solely be failed?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

One of many central characters within the e book is a firefighter named John Babiarz. And John had the excellence of working for the governor of New Hampshire on the libertarian platform, and did higher than every other gubernatorial libertarian candidate has ever executed in America. And he invited the libertarians to return in and start the Free City Venture. He was their native connection.

However by the tip of the undertaking [sometime in 2016], he had actually drawn some distinctions between himself and lots of the extremist libertarians who got here to city. He nonetheless considers himself to be a libertarian, and a really religious one at that, however by the tip of the undertaking he was at odds with a lot of the different libertarians. And it reveals that till you even have a libertarian-run neighborhood, it’s very exhausting to say what it’s or what it is going to seem like.

Sean Illing

In the long run, do you suppose these individuals bumped up towards the bounds of libertarianism, or is that this extra concerning the specific follies of a specific group of individuals in a specific place?

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

I believe they bumped up towards the follies of libertarianism. I actually do suppose that there’s a exhausting wall of actuality that exists that’s going to foil any effort to implement libertarianism on a broad scale. And I believe in the event you gave a libertarian the magic wand and allowed them to remodel society the way in which that they wished to, it wouldn’t work the way in which they imagined, and I believe it might break down simply as Grafton did.

Perhaps that’s the lesson.