It’s been fifteen years in the making – the official move for the Free State Project will be kicking off this week! With fewer than 150 signers to go, the FSP has reached 99% of its goal of convincing 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire and get active.
Once 20,000 is reached this week, the early mover phase ends and the official move begins. The 20k will have a five year window to get here and get active.
I’ve you wanted to wait until the last minute to see if we’d make the goal, it’s now the last minute. It’s clear now at around 50 signers per day, the FSP is happening! Don’t miss out on helping make history. If you love liberty, you should join the Free State Project now and start planning your move!
If you thought the activism here was awesome and record-setting, you are right, but just wait until thousands more join us! The fun has just gotten started. As shown clearly in the excellent documentary, “101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire“, we have a liberty community unlike anywhere else in the world.
Questions still remain. What will happen to the FSP organization after the 20k goal is reached? Will they continue to recruit signers past the goal? Will the organization dissolve after five years? Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest on the coming mass migration of liberty activists to the Shire.
After more than a year of providing the community with bitcoin in the Keene area, the Shire Free Church has now launched another Bitcoin Vending Machine, this one in Manchester!
Say hello to the “General Bytes” brand Bitcoin Vending Machine, now operational at Murphy’s Taproom! As with our Keene unit, the Shire Free Church’s goal is to bring bitcoin to the community at the lowest possible price, in furtherance of our mission of fostering peace. As a result, you’ll find the fee to be just 5%. (Though, it could be as high as 10% during a crazy spike in price – we’ve only had to do this once for a very short time in a year of operation in Keene.)
Murphy’s and the BVM are open seven-days-per-week, 11:30a-1a.
Murphy’s Taproom on Elm St. is host to the new Manchester BVM.
Special thanks to Murphy’s Taproom owner Keith Murphy for being willing to host this new unit after the less-than-stellar performance of the previous unit located at Murphy’s by a company called PYC. PYC was not based in NH and now appear to be out of business. The previous unit in the Taproom was a Skyhook brand, which in my experience, is the worst possible unit to have in public.
This new General Bytes unit should be much more reliable, as it has a much higher quality bill receiver unit than the Skyhook. Plus, it naturally comes in its beautiful yellow-and-black color scheme! It’s also the second publicly accessible Bitcoin Vending Machine in New Hampshire, and in fact all of New England & Upstate NY, according to visitors to the Keene BVM and CoinATMRadar.com.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue to connect more people with bitcoin at an excellent rate. Please bring your bitcoin wallet and give the new BVM a try, any day of the week! To learn more about bitcoin, visit bitcoin.com.
Christopher David is a busy man. Within six months, he’s gone from a civil disobedience driver for UBER to the founder of a concept that could be UBER’s (and Lyft’s) downfall: Arcade City.
Chris has blown past his original goal of signing up 100 drivers for Arcade City by the end of the month, with now over 1,100 drivers signed up internationally! All 1,100+ are highly-rated UBER or Lyft drivers, which means they’ve already passed background checks and driving record checks. The growth has been unexpected and tremendous. Arcade City has clearly touched a nerve with frustrated UBER and Lyft drivers who are sharing recruiting links all over social media.
The press has taken notice and Arcade City is again in the headlines in NH and elsewhere:
Chris told the Portsmouth Herald, “it’s still ludicrous that recording a conversation on a public sidewalk could land me in jail at all… Under that same logic, thousands if not millions of videos on YouTube represent potential misdemeanors. Why single me out? I think we all know why.”
The wiretapping statutes in New Hampshire are one of the worst parts of the state. NH is one of only a few states where all parties must consent to the recording, which prevents people from being held accountable for their actions. In many other states, people with undercover cameras can record their conversations in businesses or with government. Here, doing that will get you a possible jail sentence.
Christopher David of Free UBER, Courtesy Coin Telegraph
Monday’s Concord state house committee hearings included a late-afternoon hearing for the “UBER” bill, HB1697-FN and I was there to speak and record the hearing. The bill proposes state regulations for “Transporation Network Companies”, which is legal-speak for companies like UBER, that provide connections between people who want to share rides.
While the ideal “level playing field” is to have zero regulations for transportation across all of NH, we can’t expect these politicians to do that at this point. So, having one set of regulations for the entire state would be better than a patchwork of them across the different towns and cities, which would make compliance for companies like UBER very difficult. If that ends up happening, UBER may just decide jumping through various hoops for each town isn’t worth it, and pull out of NH entirely.
Whether UBER pulls out or not, the bill proposes a fee of $5,000 for any TNC be paid to the “Department of Safety”. This fee will definitely be a barrier to entry for new companies who want to compete with UBER. Not only that, but technology quickly outpaces government, as UBER has show, and Arcade City is going to continue to prove. As I point out in my testimony, the newly announced Arcade City is not going to be a corporate entity, so how is government going to get their precious fee from a computer program?
Of particular note in the video is the apparently dishonest testimony from David Weeks, the owner of Concord’s D&B Taxi. Weeks claims he took multiple experimental UBER rides in Manchester – one allegedly didn’t show up, the next driver couldn’t speak English, and the third driver had a bottle of beer between his legs.
David Weeks, Owner of D&B Taxis, Lies to Committee About UBER
On his fourth and final alleged UBER ride, he claims the driver, when asked, quoted a fare of $27 and asked for a tip or told him to get out! Even if Weeks were telling the truth about his first few rides, his fourth story drips of dishonesty. Now, I’m a newer UBER driver, but as far as I know, the driver isn’t presented with the amount the ride is worth in advance. We only decide to accept the ride based on their pickup location.
Second, though this alleged UBER driver in question could have been breaking the rules, the UBER training video makes it CLEAR that UBER does not require tipping. Yes, drivers can accept tips, but UBER riders are well-aware that tips are not required with UBER, so it would be stupid for an UBER driver to demand one.
Amusingly, in the beginning of his testimony, Weeks claims he doesn’t have an axe to grind! Anyone paying attention knows at the very least, that’s not the truth.
The last time I posted to FreeKeene.com I shared my excitement of traveling back to the ‘shire with my partner Amanda B. Johnson. In that post I concluded, “There is no perfect, yet we can strive for it.” That aim is what motivates me to discuss a situation that occurred shortly after we returned. It’s my hope that transparency and discourse bring accountability and growth.
At the center of this conversation are the concepts of property rights, aggressive versus defensive force, and personal responsibility. This is admittedly a lengthy post — it allows for those involved to share their full recount of events in their own voice. If anything is unclear, please comment. Better yet, reach out to those involved to inquire of them directly.
