Silver in New Hampshire

There are many advantages of living with people who think as you. Especially if people who think like you value trade. Sometimes people forget about the wealth that trade brings. It is trade that allows the division of labor. This is the simple idea that a shoemaker can excel at making shoes and a potato farmer can excel at growing potatoes, and through trade both the shoemaker and farmer can have both shoes and potatoes. This specialization allows for more wealth creation than the farmer making shoes, or the shoe maker growing food.

People wishing to guard their wealth from inflation may buy gold and silver. Once bought it makes more sense to trade it then to sell it back for paper money. I will describe the extent that this has happened in New Hampshire.

Not everyone in New Hampshire accepts silver, but some do. Some people accept silver for rent. The result is demand for silver. This demand, makes silver more liquid. Specific people offer good prices for silver buying and selling. People here are acting as their own bank, buying silver when there is money to save and selling it when they need money. I have traded silver for books, bookshelves, food.

The rewards for people who have bought silver have been outstanding! The price has more than doubled since 2009. This has been a big boon for silver bugs. As USD prices go up, silver prices are going down.

Now you may not be able to get all of your needs taken care of with silver. However we are creating a nice pocket of a world where silver trades with those that will take it. For example at porcfest there was one individual who refused to use federal reserve notes. He made it just fine through porcfest. An interesting dynamic that happened at porcfest was the dynamic involving Shire Silver.

Shire silver is a laminated card that contains one or five grams of silver. At porcfest gram silver pieces were selling for about $2. Some people would only accept them for spot (around $1.20 at the time.) This setup created an interesting dynamic where some vendors were getting more business because they accepted a gram as $2. You could even get a gyro for three grams and a piece of baklava as change. Porcfest is like the rest of the year in silver transactions compressed into one week.

Other silver we trade include: one ounce fine rounds, half and tenth ounce rounds, U.S. mint silver dollars, old 90% silver U.S. mint coins, including laminated dimes, shire silver, shire gold. For big items gold can be traded.

To think that only one thousand people have officially moved. As people continue to move at an increasing clip, the Free State Project is already an interesting experiment and will only become more so.

Free state review

Last year I wrote about my moving to New Hampshire. I would like to provide an update to interested parties.

I have heard some criticism of the free state project, mostly from people who don't live in New Hampshire. I was chatting with a friend when I was surprised to hear that a person who moved for the project was disappointed and was moving away. I joked with my friend: "was he not having fun?" We struggle for liberty in New Hampshire, we win, we loose, but we also have fun.

There are many aspects to the freedom and fun that we enjoy in New Hampshire: 1) Social 2) Agora 3) Political 4) Edification. Now you might not consider the political fun, but we have all types.

The social aspects of the project are absolutely wonderful. You meet some of the most dedicated folks. There is an amazing feedback loop. Your friends encourage you when you do good activism, and in turn spurs more activism. Ideas are tossed around, and good ones find support. In another post I'll give an example of the Manchester Freedom league, and how different people have spurred this idea at different times. People who have the respect of the community have a lot of resources in their friends.

With the strong friendships comes the agora. The agora refers to exchanging goods or services without the government being involved. This means no permits and no taxes. Ignoring the drug trade, the gross product of the free state agora is probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. We're on the cusp of being able to support full-time employees. A funny thing about the agora is that we have to teach each other how to be free. The state really kills creative thought, and together we spur each others' creativity.

The political activism has been slow to show rewards, but they do come. One clear victory that can be sited is the reduction of the state budget. The state budget that passed is $700 million smaller than last year. Seven hundred million in absolute terms, not a cut to some projection that can be manipulated. This represents a cut of six to seven percent. The payouts of this move will be in the years to come. There were also other victories which help change the environment in New Hampshire. Change the environment so that it is even more friendly to liberty in the future. If all successes were listed here, this article would be nothing but successes.

Edification has also been big in my life. Moving to New Hampshire has expanded my freedom. This yields the question: what will I do with this freedom? I plan to make my life better so that I can be the best person I can be. Freedom removes any excuse I may have not to be my best.

Family Travels

I was very apprehensive to leave a little pocket of libertarian heaven that we've created here in New Hampshire. A desire to see my family tore me away. Not willing to submit to anyone commanding me to remove my belt or shoes I felt that holiday travels to my family would be impossible.

Luckily I thought of a solution, the train. Now I cursed the radio when I heard that random TSA style checkpoints were set up at a train stations. Having already bought my ticket I crossed my fingers and hopped aboard. My silent goal of traveling across country without being threatened. Now, near the end of my travels I felt that I have achieved my goal.

Don't get me wrong, coach on a train is not the lap of luxury. The train does take longer, and visits some train stations only at inconvenient hours. However, the seats are bigger, and there is a lounge car; you can stretch your legs.

In fact I am convinced that this is the only way for a libertarian to travel. The food is expensive, but you can bring your own. The ticket says that I must have I.D., but I haven't been asked to show one. In a world of X-ray scanners, I didn't pass through a medal detector. The spontaneous order that libertarians appreciate so much was even on display as everyone was invited to the lounge car to play instruments and sing. Here I am sharing time with humans, being treated as a human. Nice to know that it is still possible. In a world where fliers are treated like livestock, the human spirit can (and will) proceed unhampered.

Alas, this libertarian joy was squashed. It was a morning in Buffalo when I noticed an armed man on the train. He wore a outfit that was a drab green, the color of a tree when sick. He had a patch on his shoulder that said something like border safety officer. I thought it was strange, the train hasn't crossed any borders. There was no national border that I was crossing.

I put it out of my mind because I didn't see him bother anyone. I mainly thought about the waste of money. Come to find out the passenger in front of me was awakened in the middle of the night, and asked if he was an American citizen. I thought about what would happen if that were me. What If I just kept my mouth shut. Would the armed man claim that I was disturbing the peace while he disturbed my peace.

What do these armed men do to people who remain silent?

My moving story

So I had been checking out this free state project for a while. I fell into the strong version of freedom about four years ago. I made a visit to New Hampshire, even had a job interview, back in 2007. It wasn't until this past summer that I actually made the move. I had a job, it was nice, but I felt that I was stuck in a rut. My job wasn't taking me to where I wanted to go. I fell in love with silver as a currency. It wasn't until I was at a libertarian party meeting that I finally decided that I MUST move. After a nice conversation about freedom in my former stomping grounds I approached the libertarian party chair. I asked him "What's going on with the silver economy around here." The answer threw me. I expected the answer to be "not much." Instead I received an answer that suggested that he did not understand my question. That very night I signed the statement of intent. That night it was official: I was a free state project member.

Since I had moving to New Hampshire in the back of my mind I had been saving up money. Now I was even more motivated to save. Money helps anything, and I wanted to have all the help I could get moving to New Hampshire. Signing the statement helped me set specific savings goals and stick to them.

Since I was sure I was going to make this move. I thought another visit was in order. This time I was going to visit for a week. I spent time on various websites trying to communicate with people already based in New Hampshire. I had to go on forums. I hate forums. After much asking around, and a few dead ends, I met people online suitable to my temperament. I made appointments to have lunch with this person on this day, seacoast liberty meetup on Wednesday, welcome wagon on Saturday, social Sunday in Keene. I got in my car and started to make the two day drive to my new home. I got a flat tire before I left my home state. Luckily that only threw me off an hour. I needed a sign in my back window "New Hampshire or bust." Ohh the anxiety, I remember thinking "these people better show."

My visit went better than I could have imagined, except for getting lost now and then. Not only did I do everything I had planned, I discovered more things to do. By the time social Sunday rolled around I was beat. I remembered all the fun I had, but I had yet to understand the help of this visit.

See I had asked around enough to find a liberty lover in New Hampshire who worked close to my industry. I met him for lunch, and he introduced me to a person who I asked for a job, a similar job to the one I had, just a job. My perspective employer said that he couldn't hire me, but gave me his cell phone number. I was tired of getting rejection letters, and E-mails. A rejection in person to a cold visit was refreshing. The fact that I left with a cell phone number was outstanding. My goal was to have fun, not get a job. I went back to having fun.

Then the big day rolled around. It was the day that I had planned to move. I fit all I could in my car. I left behind furniture, and other physical goods I had acquired. My stuff was not worth the cost of the truck to carry it to New Hampshire. I was in the middle or reading Walden then too. I'm sure that influenced my decision to travel "light." A two day drive stretched into three with a few visits to old friends and I arrived at my new home state. Some people call it "the soon to be free state." I had arranged to stay in a porc manor, a house full of liberty lovers established to help people like me move to New Hampshire. It was beautiful, the people and the pond.

The week before I moved I called the cell phone number that I acquired during my visit. I was told there was still no job but he invited me to stop by his office. My first full day as a resident of New Hampshire I intended to look for an apartment, but finding a job would influence where I would want an apartment so I took the invitation and dropped by his office. Before I left one of my many housemates said "I have an office upstairs, let me know if you need to use it." I actually thought that this was a strange offer, and did not know what I would use an office for. After my meeting with my contact I was begging to use this office. My contact had given me a lead on a job; I needed a resume pronto!

The very next day I went in for a cold visit. I was just going to show up. I had had it with cover letters. My housemate helped me get together a bare bones resume, something quick to read, something without distractions. What happened next is almost enough to make a non-religious man like me wonder. I got an interview, a job, another interview, and a promotion, in that order, all in the span of three days.

So now, six months later, I still can't believe that I'm living in New Hampshire. When I think of my car full of everything that I was going to keep possession of, when I think of leaving a good life behind, it's hard to believe the great life that I now have. It would be easy to call it fate, but some of it was carefully planning and making contacts; Some of it is a welcoming liberty community; Some of it is the expanded liberty which brings lower unemployment to New Hampshire; Some of it was not letting fear hold me back; A lot of it was the hard work that brought me to this stage in my life.

LIVE FREE OR DIE!