Galt's Gulch, Chile | Atlas Mugged

[Ego]

http://www.vice.com/read/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10

The challenges of building a utopia with a bunch of strong willed people.

[Chad]

I would like to see a decent sized country (can't be small like a Monaco type country, as the size is the main advantage in that situation) go full libertarian. It would be a nice experiment to see if certain ideas are valid. Though, I wouldn't want to be part of it, as I don't think it would turn out well. It would at least provide the test case that Russia, China, Cuba, etc. have done for us with communism.

[Chad]

New Zealand is fairly libertarian.

The Free State Project moves closer to 20k people every day.
https://freestateproject.org/

True, the FSP is not an entire country. However, the politics of New Hampshire are definitely being impacted by how many Free Staters are politicians.

I wouldn't classify New Zealand as libertarian.

New Zealand may not be a socialist country, but the welfare system in the country is very wide ranging, offering support for housing, unemployment, health, child care, and education as well. Therefore, New Zealand has many of the characteristics of a socialist country, even while remaining officially free market.

New Hampshire may have a large libertarian leaning population, but they are still heavily impacted by Federal law as a state. Not enough leeway for any state to become libertarian. Nor would it be a good place to experiment with it (see below).

The reason I said decent sized country, as it would need to be a place that would have all the problems a real country has. Monaco, Luxembourg, etc. don't have the same issues, as their scale gives them advantages that could make up for any disadvantages of their political/economic system.

The location of these small countries also gives them an advantage. They get to trade with a much larger and fairly wealthy area, while getting to use certain pieces of infrastructure they don't have to maintain. These larger areas also provide military protection for no cost.

[Chad]

Well reasoned.

I stopped being libertarian during my senior year of college, so NZ pretty much sounds wonderful to me. YMMV. I prefer for children not to starve to death and also have access to healthcare, but that's me.

After reading about Peter Thiel bringing venture capital into NZ, I thought that it was a good place. http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-th ... and-2011-1

I agree. I wouldn't be classified as libertarian by libertarians. I would just like the country to exist, so it could fail and we could put this extremism behind us, like we have communism.

[Dragline]

There's a reason why some things have never existed, or not for very long. It was no surprise to me that they accused each other of being sociopaths, though. Objectivism encourages and upholds a lack of empathy as a central value.

One of the books recommended by jacob, Haidt's "Righteous Mind", observes that voluntary communities such as this never survive very long unless they are based on some kind of religious principle that binds them. This goes for both libertarians and hippies. Why that is the case is still subject to debate.