Red state Blue state

[I Shrugged]

That map points out the compromises we have to make if we want to live in a freer state. It's not my mission to denigrate any given states, but for me personally, I'm not interested in living in South Dakota, Alaska, or Oklahoma. Probably not New Hampshire either, although it's been so long since I've been there that I don't have strong conviction. Indiana is basic midwest. At least it's more prosperous and populated than the first three.

Back to the point of the original post, I guess there is not too much interest in or expectation that one's life would feel more free by moving within the US. It's more about culture, cost, and weather. Small sample size, I realize. I asked because I hoped there would be a state where individual liberty is highly valued by the majority of its citizens. Probably not, not really. It's probably better to either stay by your friends and family, or find someplace that offers the other things you like.

[MWKXJ]

Prescott ( "Press-kit" ), AZ. Cooler weather, plenty of history, fair share of left-leaning inhabitants in a "Red" state.

St. George, UT. Hotter weather, good demographics (like much of Utah), mix of left and right-leaning inhabitants. Butted up against Zion and Bryce national parks.

Logan, UT. Cold weather, great demographics, left and right-leaning inhabitants. Gorgeous mountain scenery.

Grand Junction, CO. Cold and hot weather, great demographics, mix of politics, generally leaning right. Rivers. Mountains close at hand.

All can be expensive for their respective states, but cheap compared to the gigalopolii crammed with technocratic fad-followers on the costs.

[Kriegsspiel]

MG, I'm on my own vision quest walkabout. Right now I'm stopped in Portsmouth, NH and I am very impressed. The housing prices aren't completely outrageous from a quick perusal, and the downtown is fantastic. It reminds me of the UK. While I've been here the weathers been fantastic, I don't think it's too extreme.

It's a beautiful city. I lived down in Kensington in a past life. Make sure you go through a winter before you buy the house.

I don't plan on buying ANY coastal property that's only 20ft ASL! I like to think that after living in the Midwest most of my life I could hang with a New England winter, but maybe I'm underestimating it? I did notice that New England seems to single-handedly keep Subaru in business.

[Kriegsspiel]

It's a beautiful city. I lived down in Kensington in a past life. Make sure you go through a winter before you buy the house.

I don't plan on buying ANY coastal property that's only 20ft ASL! I like to think that after living in the Midwest most of my life I could hang with a New England winter, but maybe I'm underestimating it? I did notice that New England seems to single-handedly keep Subaru in business.

I think you'd be ok in NE winters if you've lived in the Midwest. I wasn't there long enough to experience a really bad winter, but it seemed similar to the midwest.

I really wanted to love NH, and there's a lot to like: Driving around with "Live Free or Die" on your licence plate is fun. There's no state income tax or sales tax. You have the Free State project folks running around. But there were a couple things that were a turnoff to me. The culture is interesting ... people seem depressed and unfriendly. I was told repeatedly by other migrants to NH that people are just that way in the area. And the big thing I didn't like about NH: the PROPERTY TAX. Ugh, it's my least favorite kind of tax, and in NH it's pretty huge. So you can be hunkered down in your paid-off house, with no taxable income, and still have a massive tax bill. For low cost living, I actually prefer a state with a relatively low income tax, in combination with reasonable property tax.

Yea, I agree. I saw that you can get around the property tax in NH if you own an agricultural property, which explains the plethora of Christmas tree "farms" here, and the general ruralness. But if I wanted to buy a city house there doesn't seem to be a way around it. Ah well.

They also don't put their "R's" in the right place when they speak. They leave off the R at the end of words that have an R at the end, but then place a R at the end of words that don't have on (like "idea"). I called it "conservation of R's," because they used the same number of R sounds as midwesterners do, they just place them in words that aren't spelled with an R.

Hah! I described downtown Portsmouth to my peeps as the UK with a Good Will Hunting accent.

[MachineGhost]

The culture is interesting ... people seem depressed and unfriendly.

Obviously they're all depressed from a lack of sunlight and Vitamin D production (which wouldn't be an issue for me, of course), but this seems to be a trend. Vermont is expensive, muddy and depressing. New Hampshire is depressing but full of Christmas Tree farms and honestly, probably too rural for me if everyone are depressing fucks. And Maine??? What I've seen so far was shockingly decrepit real estate properties going for cheap (as in $5K for a small hotel which obvious means foundation problems) and rather horribly slow cable internet speeds in the interior fir the price assuming the service was actually available at the location in question. Maine sounds economically depressed.

[MachineGhost]

That map points out the compromises we have to make if we want to live in a freer state. It's not my mission to denigrate any given states, but for me personally, I'm not interested in living in South Dakota, Alaska, or Oklahoma. Probably not New Hampshire either, although it's been so long since I've been there that I don't have strong conviction. Indiana is basic midwest. At least it's more prosperous and populated than the first three.

Back to the point of the original post, I guess there is not too much interest in or expectation that one's life would feel more free by moving within the US. It's more about culture, cost, and weather. Small sample size, I realize. I asked because I hoped there would be a state where individual liberty is highly valued by the majority of its citizens. Probably not, not really. It's probably better to either stay by your friends and family, or find someplace that offers the other things you like.

I agree with your three variables though I would reorder it to weather, cost and then culture. Culture is a little tricky to define in the USA because it such a huge monoculture of red zone suburbanism-cum-shopping malls along with the obligatory blue zones that only the upper class rich elite can really afford to live in. If it wasn't for the post-Emancipation migration of blacks, do we really need to pause to doubt that there would NOT be a permament poor underclass in those blue zones? They would have stayed in the Deep South.

We're all the richest top 1% of the planet so it's a little bit nitpicking to be worrying about intra-country "freedom" when we're probably have an order of a magnitude of increased overall freedom above everyone else, if not in deed, then certainly economically and historically. But make no mistake, the absolute shittiest states to live in are not at all surprising: California, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, New Jersey and DC which are all liberal loony basketcases with no fiscal discipline and solidly entrenched career politicans and unelected bureaucrats that care only about themselves and not the people. It's also a great shame that 99% of New York is ruled by the insanity of a little island.

[Pointedstick]

Back to the point of the original post, I guess there is not too much interest in or expectation that one's life would feel more free by moving within the US. It's more about culture, cost, and weather. Small sample size, I realize. I asked because I hoped there would be a state where individual liberty is highly valued by the majority of its citizens. Probably not, not really. It's probably better to either stay by your friends and family, or find someplace that offers the other things you like.

Legally, I think the differences between U.S. states are frequently overstated. You're not going to find a whole state that seems legally like North Korea or Galt's Gulch. There are legal differences of course: tax rates and structure, gun laws, ease of getting an abortion or homeschooling your kids, whether you can buy booze on Sunday or weed at all, etc. But for the most part, at the state level there are way more legal similarities than differences.

The strongest Libertarian Zone I ever personally found was in rural Nevada. Back in 2011 I got the crazy idea to buy land in Nevada and build a house there, driving up on the weekends. My wife and I made many trips to the area and we always got a very strongly Libertarian vibe (I was myself a raging Libertarian at the time so I recognized what I was seeing). However, it's worth mentioning what that vibe actually means: a concern mostly with privacy occasionally bordering on paranoia, coupled with a love of guns and vehicles. Here's what people's properties looked like:



That stuff in the distance on the right side is debris (mostly junked cars) constituting a wall around the house. It's just like Fallout. And lots of privacy! No one to tell you what to do! The man in this house values his freedom immensely! I know because he came out and yelled at me for nosing around, threatening (ironically) to call the police.

People who live in places like this understand correctly that the only true way to have individual freedom from being constrained or oppressed by others is to be far away from them. And indeed, those people are very free using that yardstick--even legally-speaking. Nobody knows or cares what they're doing out there. There are no licenses, permits, or building codes--they don't exist or aren't enforced. They can gamble and smoke whatever they want. They could do target practice with fully-automatic weapons in their backyards. If they had kids, they could educate them with no government interference. Nobody's gonna hassle them for building a shed, collecting rainwater, or pooping in a composting toilet. Property taxes are near-zero for their 40-acre parcels.

These areas feel lonely, weak, isolated, vulnerable, and poor, probably because they are. They're not very friendly, outgoing, or community-oriented. Not very suitable for women and there are usually zero children. It's depressing.

These kinds of places are also full of eerie mysteries. Take a look at this Google Maps image:



Huh, what's that? Let's get a little closer:


Odd. Here's what it looks like in person:








Inside the car was a ripped-up Marine Corps jacket. It has now been there for 15 years. Google Maps shows that the site looks completely undisturbed since we discovered it in 2011.

Just some scenes from a place where "individual liberty is highly valued by the majority of its citizens." Fun place to visit, but the trip that resulted in those photos was the one that made me realize that maybe I didn't want to live like that.

[MachineGhost]

Just some scenes from a place where "individual liberty is highly valued by the majority of its citizens." Fun place to visit, but the trip that resulted in those photos was the one that made me realize that maybe I didn't want to live like that.

I guess we have to include those zones too, but I can't imagine they amount to more than 1% of culture. Humans are social creatures. We need to see people (as in visually) every day at the bare minimum just to stay healthy (TV will do the job). Also, it's a fine line between Faux-Libertarianism and In-The-Closet-Republicanism when we talk about such people in these zones. Perhaps they're like the homeless and technically mentally ill?

Although given that these places do exist, I'm awful curious why serial killers, pedophiles, etc. haven't taken advantage of it. It would seem like a free lunch, no?

BTW, how far was this place to Elko, Nevada? That's the epicenter of a precious metals mining renaissance going on right now.

[I Shrugged]

Terlingua, Texas is just like that. But it includes a pretty cool little town as well. People there definitely value and respect freedom. But, you have to live in the middle of nowhere. It's so remote that even though it's on the Mexican border and the river is about 6 inches deep and 6 feet wide, there are no illegal immigrants trying to cross there.