I admire the Free State Project movement in many ways, and think it is a fabulous way to realistically improve liberty. However, I have serious doubts about how much they will be able to do. Here is why.

The larger a government is, the worse it works. The smaller it is, the more accountability there is, the more people can connect to it, etc, so the better it works. The larger it is, the harder it is for a political movement to change, the smaller, the easier. The problem here is that the FSP is targeting change in exactly those portions of government which need it the least! They are targeting state and county level change - when the federal government is the real problem. They have picked a state with very small population, which is receptive to their beliefs - which means it already has a much more efficient state government than most. Political bodies of the size which the FSP can influence are small enough that they already work relatively well.

Now, the FSP has picked a political level which it believes it can actually influence. This is great. This is much better than the nationwide Libertarian Party, wasting its efforts for a meaningless few percent of the vote. Realistically, even if your influence is likely to be modest, it surely must be correct to try to change that which you can actually change. And even small governments are often very non-libertarian, and have lots of room for improvement. So I am not criticizing their approach - merely expressing worry that the impact will be limited. (A limited impact is still an impact).