Guest post: by Mattheus von Guttenberg

Not too long ago, I got back from a week long camping trip in New Hampshire at the Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest), hosted by the Free State Project. The Free State Project, for those unaware, is an organization made of thousands of freedom-lovers of all types to encourage libertarianism in the state of New Hampshire. They espouse the philosophy that the “maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property” and they encourage people to move to New Hampshire to participate in grassroots activism as well as change through the New Hampshire political channels. PorcFest is the Free State Project’s annual camping event in Lancaster, New Hampshire. By the end of Porcfest, there were over 1,700 people gathered in tents, RVs, and for some fortunate ones, nearby hotels.

Prior to this trip, I had no direct knowledge of what lay in store for me. I was not a Free Stater nor was I current with their news and events. Having attended the week-long Mises University twice, and a few days back in February with the Students for Liberty folks at their international conference in D.C., I would have told anyone who asked that I had experienced a wide range of libertarians, and for this very reason I didn’t think PorcFest would bring anything new to me. My knowledge of “active” libertarian types was limited to (1) bowtie-wearing Austrian bibliophiles, and (2) College age or young-adult libertarians engaging in political and social activism around their respective schools.

The general feeling of attending other libertarian venues (week-long or not) is that one comes away with better arguments or positions with how to convince or persuade others. I’ve studied Austrian economics and praxeology for years in the hopes that I can convince fellow economists and philosophers of their Keynesian or anti-libertarian errors – and in so doing slowly bring them around to a more civil position on society, ethics, etc. For the same reason, I’ve studied the social and economic effects of various types of state intervention and I appeal to people’s decency and rationality when I explain the terrible effects of money printing or occupational licensing laws, or what-have-you. I’ve studied these things in the hopes that I can talk and bring around regular people in my life to a more peaceful, libertarian resolution to their perceived social ills. I enjoyed attending both, and I think both types of work are necessary. But they are certainly not sufficient. If the Mises University is represented as intellectually advancing libertarianism, and groups like Young Americans for Liberty and SFL are represented as politically or socially advancing libertarianism – then PorcFest is about advancing libertarianism through direct action.

Attending PorcFest is nothing but an exercise in direct action. The “theme” of PorcFest, if one could refer to anything, would be a general desire to practice agorism. Agorism is the philosophy of living as much as possible outside the state; to encourage non-compliance, civil resistance, and “opting out” of state-run services. Instead of explaining freedom and trying to make it sound beautiful, we should create freedom, and people will come later. As they said, people will become attracted to freedom when they see it. Thus, the whole atmosphere at PorcFest was an atmosphere without a trace of police or state involvement. People were happy to do business with merchants they knew were unlicensed, to buy silver from a loud tattooed man with a rifle on his shoulder, to listen to Ernie Hancock on “Declare Your ndependence” in the morning preaching the many and various injustices committed on regular, peaceful people in the name of “law.”

These people were committed to establishing the “new channels” of commerce and exchange – without the purview of the state regulatory boards or food inspection thugs or Bernanke’s whim. Of course, a not-small contingent of these “agorists” were left-libertarians; “hackers” some might say for advancing the use of encryption and anonymity software, “socialists” some might say for desiring more localized production instead of huge corporate monoliths dominating the economic scene in Randian fashion.

Some people practiced home-schooling or, the more radical variant, “unschooling.” While homeschooling seeks to “bring the public school to the home” in terms of workload, curriculum, etc., unschooling represents a more laissez-faire approach to education where the emphasis is on growth and development of interests instead of efficiency at standardized tests. Unschooling, unfortunately, flies in the face of a thicket of local, state, and federal laws regarding public education, homeschooling, compliance with teaching laws, etc. Practicing unschooling – taking your children out of government schools and seeing to their development yourself – is another way to advance libertarianism by example.

Many more people were united against the injustices being committed to our foods and medicines. The fluoridation of water, the food cartel strengthened by Monsanto and the USDA, the over-medication of pharmaceutical drugs especially to children, the outlawry and subsequent raids on owners raw milk and cannabis, the ubiquitous presence of genetically modified organisms that a majority of Americans consume – these are all legitimate and often-heard complaints against the state-sponsored monopolization of agribusiness and pharmaceuticals.

A small body of us came as Bitcoin enthusiasts, hoping to spread the use of Bitcoin and the familiarity with digital currency in general. Despite Bitcoin’s large rise in price and its large popularity in libertarian circles, some vendors were either totally ignorant of Bitcoin, and others were slanted against it for one reason or another. The Bitcoin panels were excellent at answering common questions regarding its stability, strength, future use, and other technical characteristics of Bitcoin. At Revolution Coffee, one could even use a Bitcoin ATM to exchange with dollars.

Without law enforcement, PorcFest became a peaceful anarchy. Alcohol and cannabis were consumed openly without pretense or permission needed. Social favor was distributed by reputation and conduct – for this reason, one has an incentive in traveling around and meeting new people to impress. Likewise for the merchants, their business is entirely dependent on word of mouth. The bearded guy that sold Texas chili, the Thai family who sold egg rolls and fried rice, the man and woman who operated the Juice Caboose, even Mandrik the pavilion gyro cook were all dependent on the happiness of their customers. Stations were poised all around the campground with coffee, fruit punch, and lemonade. Other stations included firewood and electrified coolers with bags of ice. All of these operated on an honor system ($1 for refill, $6 for firewood, etc.). There were large printed QR codes in case you wanted to buy with Bitcoin. Such was the level of trust at PorcFest that vendors felt safe leaving their “tip” jars with silver and large bills outside for the whole day.

Of course, for those looking to do more than sit at a smoldering campsite drinking beer or smoking, presentations and events were offered all day. Everything from hula-hooping, to a beginner’s shooting class, to Bob Murphy’s Variety Show were available. There were panels on homeschooling, on natural food production, on libertarian fiction writing, on alternative legal systems, on Remembering Rothbard, on mesh networking, on Bitcoin. There was even an event dedicated to exploring new areas in which savvy agorist entrepreneurs can develop markets and products that don’t exist in today’s state-dominated world.

Even though the overwhelming population of PorcFest were radical libertarian anarchists, by the final few days, even libertarian celebrities and non-anarchists came to show. Peter Schiff came giving an introduction to Gary Johnson, the 2012 Libertarian Party presidential candidate. Only at PorcFest, however, could Gary Johnson get heckled for being a statist. In his plan to slash federal income taxes of all types, people cheered. When he followed with “and I would replace them with a single tax…” it turned into outright booing. Gary lamented that the United States engaged in such atrocious foreign policy and members of the audience shouted at him for using the collective words “we” when describing the actions of the US government. “I didn’t murder anybody!” shouted one man from the audience.

More radical anarchism was to follow the next day with the Soapbox Idol contest, where contestants would compete for the best rant they could deliver. Antonio Buehler was the first ranter to earn a perfect score for his powerful and emotional tirade against the “cowardly” nature of police officers and law enforcement. His rant underscored what a lot of libertarians see day in and day out – the terrible abuse of police officers against peaceful citizens, whether in the form of “no-knock raids” where police accidentally kill the wrong person suspected of having drugs, or when they exercise intimidation to stop people filming or recording their actions. Another woman delivered a devastating poem she wrote about the horrors of drone warfare.

The experience of being at PorcFest, above all, was inspiring. John Bush and others on the peaceful parenting panel were jaw-dropping. One woman told an anecdote describing how she traveled to the local New Hampshire school board and told them that she will not be complying with their edicts and regulations, and she left. At first glance, that seems frightening. What if they come to your house? Take your kids? Frightening, until you realize that the locals in New Hampshire have a large community of non-compliant parents, and the city simply doesn’t have the resources to prosecute them all. Joining a community of non-compliant members is certainly much easier than beginning one yourself, and that applies to parents looking to skirt state law as much as any other agorist enterprise. You want to market and sell natural healing products without licenses and paying taxes? It certainly helps to have customers and like minded business partners that don’t care about licenses or tax evasion.

PorcFest was inspiring because I’ve been talking and thinking about what a free society looks like (or might look like) for years, but I don’t take much action to create it. Living off the grid, learning to produce a portion of your food, earning an undocumented income, keeping healthy – these are all ways to secure yourself from the state and its centralized power structures in society (food, banking, medicine, etc.). PorcFest is a community dedicated to those principles. The Free State Project, and PorcFest too, gets larger each and every year as more and more people are realizing the benefits of creating the “alternative institutions” to replace the state. Libertarians can offer all the intellectual and social arguments for laissez-faire, but when the state comes crashing down (as La Boetie describes) – what will there be to replace it? PorcFest and the Free State Project are excellent reminders to live and act now and to spend energy and time creating the society we all know can exist.

