The Wisdom of Crowds
The main hosts of New Hampshire-based syndicated talk program (heard on over 170 radio stations coast-to-coast), Free Talk Live made a major decision tonight. On the FTL blog we announced our release of the Free State Project from our long-standing broadcast agreement. It was a long time coming. Over the years, Mark and I have been a loving thorn-in-the-side of the FSP. While we were its most successful recruiter, we were also never afraid to criticize the organization publicly. It was a relationship that came close to ending a few times over the years.
Recently a group of FSP early movers have been putting social pressure on the FSP board to disassociate from Free Talk Live, LRN.FM, and Free Keene. While a petition by the in-crowd of haters struggled to reach 100 signatures over several days, including fraudulent signatures, the anger and social pressure is real. We at FTL no longer wanted to play any role in making the FSP board choose one side over the other yet again. I am grateful we were able to work together for so long in promoting the best idea for liberty in generations, the Free State Project.
Schisms are healthy, even if the people who stoke them aren’t. In my experience, it’s always best to embrace the schism rather than fight it.
There are no hard feelings on my side. I have not revoked my membership in the FSP and I still think that libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-loving anarchists should move to New Hampshire, ASAP.
Here’s the official statement from Free Talk Live’s website:
Free Talk Live would like to formally congratulate the Free State Project on reaching 20,000 signers. Until February 3rd, 2016, the FSP was an organization primarily focused on getting 20,000 liberty-minded people to pledge to move to New Hampshire and get active for freedom. Now the FSP is refocusing on encouraging those signers and other interested libertarians to make their move. This is a goal of Free Talk Live as well, but experience shows us that when any group gets large enough there will be schisms. There are some that feel that there is no place in the FSP for Free Talk Live and with the recent change in goals of the FSP, we at FTL can see their point of view.
We formally decry those that are demanding FTL’s head as collectivists who are attempting to undermine the work of the rest of FTL and LRN.FM’s hosts, simply to get at Ian Freeman for his opinions about age of consent and that a man accused of propositioning a young woman should get a fair trial before he is tried in the court of public opinion. We further decry their actions as irrational, but humans are irrational creatures and we understand that.
Thus, we, Free Talk Live, do hereby and henceforth release the Free State Project from any and all agreements that they have willingly entered into with FTL and LRN.FM. We don’t want to burden them in any way and wish them godspeed in their mission to encourage libertarians to move to New Hampshire and hope they wish us the same in our mission to educate people of the world about peace, liberty and rationality.
