Jason Sorens

Mark:What if I told you that thousands of people moved to one state and actually made it dramatically freer? Not in some distant future, but right now with measurable results that you can see today.

Jason Sorens:Sounds great. It's good to be here, Mark.

Mark:I've been trying to do a lifestyle show. I am sick and tired of libertarian theory. I've heard it all, and I know what it's all about. What I really want to do is teach people how to live free in an unfree world.

Jason Sorens:Yeah. I mean, the idea was always that they would get active in the political process and help create liberty in our lifetime.

Mark:Yeah, I think some people probably didn't like the idea of getting active within the political process. They thought there were other routes. And there's plenty of people who moved to New Hampshire who aren't really terribly involved. They may vote. They may not vote. Maybe they just enjoy the relative freedom that New Hampshire has compared to its socialist neighbors.

Jason Sorens:That's right. We welcome those folks, too. And there are all sorts of ways, broadly speaking, to get involved, whether it's getting involved in media or education or entrepreneurship, promoting crypto, promoting self-sufficiency. All those sorts of things are ways to help make New Hampshire a better and freer place.

Mark:New Hampshire is considered by the Cato Institute and the Freedom in the 50 States, which you are an author of. Not exactly the most unbiased opinion here. As the founder of the Free State Project, you declare New Hampshire the freest state in the union.

Jason Sorens:Yeah, that's right. And so you have states that have particular freedoms that New Hampshire doesn't have. But New Hampshire is really the only state that has a really broad range of freedoms across the board. No income tax, no sales tax, marijuana decriminalization, even if not legalization, virtually no gun laws, universal school choice. You go down the list and New Hampshire has got a wide range of freedom on just about everything.

Mark:Let's go over that universal school choice and what that means for parents. There's no government program that means freedom to me, but we can certainly agree that some are freer than others.

Jason Sorens:Yeah, that's right. And really, the idea that justifies school choice is that the government is taxing you anyway to provide schooling. So why not give you back some of the money that you're paying and allow you to put it to your kids' education, whether it's homeschooling or private schooling or even going to a public school outside your district school?

Mark:I think in the long run that hampering the government indoctrination centers is really a giant leap forward for liberty. And I wouldn't want to understate that. I think that it is a real big jump forward. And I'm very excited about it.

Jason Sorens:Yeah. So there's been a lot just this year. And if you go back a few years, the list is much more significant. But just this year, and I will get to the housing stuff, we also got rid of the last gun law that New Hampshire has. It's tracked by pro-gun control organizations and also the last gun law that's in the Freedom in the 50 States database.

Mark:Imagine that you still need a federal license to sell guns.

Jason Sorens:Sure. You still need the FFL, right? So we haven't gotten out from under federal laws there yet. And at this time, that is not possible. So we're just trying to make it as free as we can.

Mark:That's right. And there are some tougher things on our list that we'll get to once we've taken care of business at home. A lot of people critique New Hampshire for things like you've got Democrat senators or you still have the FFL law. And the original idea that you had was move 20,000 liberty-loving individuals to one state and we'll see what happens. Will it be positive? And I think that we can say that what it's been has been positive. Kind of invigorating what's been done.

Jason Sorens:That's right. So if you're the type of person who really celebrates every win, who enjoys seeing more real-world freedom for yourself and for others, New Hampshire is offering that more and more every year. If you want heaven on earth, then you're not going to be pleased with New Hampshire or anywhere else.

Mark:I don't understand. If I could complain just for a second, Jason. I do not understand somebody who lives in Maine, Vermont, upstate New York, Massachusetts -- I don't mean Buffalo upstate, but I mean that sort of pointy-uppy part of New York, Albany, that kind of area -- that claims to be a libertarian and doesn't move for the Free State Project. I just don't get it.

Jason Sorens:Wow. I didn't realize. 35 miles. That is close. Yeah. I mean, New England's very drivable. You can get just about anywhere pretty quickly. You've got mountains. You've got beaches. You've got lots of jobs close by. Lots of schooling options for your kids.

Mark:Yeah, I would agree with that completely. I lived near Keene, New Hampshire for about 15 years. And in the different places I lived, I was involved in local government to some extent. And I knew about the crime that went on in my local towns. And generally that crime centers around people who don't seem to have a lot of problem with crime. Whatever happens, it kind of happens to the folks that are doing that kind of thing. The biggest problem we had was dog calls. Hey, I don't know this dog. It's on my land. It's running around. It killed my chicken. If that's your biggest crime problem, that's a pretty good thing.

Jason Sorens:Right. And the risk of stranger crime is especially extremely low.

Mark:Let's get back to some of the other wins from this year because it's pretty exciting. We could talk about the budget.

Jason Sorens:So New Hampshire is facing a revenue shortfall. And they fixed it by raising zero taxes. No taxes were increased. Cutting spending exclusively. The general fund was cut by 7% in the next fiscal year compared to this year. And the university system budget was cut by 17%.

Mark:It's a great idea. I imagine there are some listeners that will have that experience straight away. They'll know what the benefits are.

Jason Sorens:Yeah. In housing and zoning, this is one thing I work on. I started working on this about a decade ago because New Hampshire had relatively high housing costs. And that reflects demand for housing. People like to live in New Hampshire. So there's good demand. But it also reflects constrained supply. And it was one of the few areas in Freedom of the 50 States where New Hampshire was actually below average. And it was by far the most significant area where New Hampshire was below average.

Mark:The supply of it or something else?

Jason Sorens:Below average in terms of their regulations on housing. So through zoning laws especially -- we can also talk about building codes, which are different, that tell you construction standards and how you build. But zoning tells you how you can use your land, what types of dwelling units or commercial uses you can put on your land.

Mark:I wouldn't imagine you've solved the problem either. But moving in the right direction, I think, is what people really are looking for.

Jason Sorens:Yeah, absolutely. And part of the problem is that these people really are not experienced in what they are ruling on. And we rely on volunteers at the town level, and that's great in some offices. I think for setting budgets and managing departments, it's great that we don't have a big professional political class at the local level.

Mark:That's exactly what it comes down to. I mean, you hear them over and over again. It's basically, if it's anything more than a single family unit on five acres, you're trying to turn New Hampshire into Massachusetts.

Jason Sorens:The irony there is Massachusetts has just as strict zoning regulations as New Hampshire. So how well did that work for them? If anything, Boston might be the most tightly regulated city in America, even worse than San Francisco in terms of being able to build.

Mark:So yeah, I think I saw a statistic the other day that 99% of what is built in Boston is technically illegal. It's illegal under the current zoning ordinance. It just means you've got to pay somebody off.

Jason Sorens:That's right. It's all discretionary. They can issue a variance, but you've got to pay to the city councilman's preferred nonprofit. So yeah, it opens avenues for corruption when you strictly limit what people can build.

Mark:That's right. And the towns would never -- they're too cheap. They don't make their own money like the U.S. government does. And they'd never be able to pay this. It would have to be terribly important. And I don't know of any zoning laws that are terribly important at this point.

Jason Sorens:Well, yeah, I mean, it's just an indication that they're not worth the value they're destroying.

Mark:New Hampshire had, how many did you say? Laws that passed that limited this sort of local control recently?

Jason Sorens:Yeah. So I count about 16 laws that have been signed by the governor that in some way ease development, in some way reduce the regulations on development. And some of them are more significant than others. But some of these are very significant.

Mark:And then the town wins.

Jason Sorens:Yeah. This drastically reduces the cost and uncertainty associated with building that ADU. It also says they can't require you to build more than one parking space per unit. So they can do that. They can require you to build an extra parking space. But that's it. We had some towns that require you to build four parking spaces for a 750 square foot apartment with one bedroom. It's just ridiculous.

Mark:And I really like this. In fact, I think we should get rid of all parking minimums because they make no sense. I imagine there's a lot of people out there that are saying to themselves, but I need parking where I live. So shouldn't the government mandate this? It's a classic issue of the seen and the unseen from Frederic Bastiat, right?

Jason Sorens:Parking isn't free. The more parking you build, the less room you have for yard, for nature, for buildings. You have to roll out some blacktop and some sort of paved surface. That costs money to do that. It also takes away other things you can build.

Mark:Ultimately, there will be some manner or another to park.

Jason Sorens:That's right. If you end up having on-street parking that you charge people for, so much the better. Little revenue source for the town. It's a market solution where you can say, well, we'll charge people more during peak hours than off-peak hours. Maybe it's free when it's off-peak. And so that allows you to allocate parking to the people who value it the most. We should rely on the free market to provide parking is my bottom line here.

Mark:Look at towns that try to limit parking in whatever way. They're always running up against difficulties. Who wants to park all day in a given spot? Who's just a renter who's living upstairs versus somebody who's coming to eat lunch? It's difficult. I think the market will best solve parking problems.

Jason Sorens:Absolutely. And I'm also against parking maximums, by the way. We are starting to have some towns that are enacting parking maximums. The state hasn't done anything about that. But I think those are probably less harmful but also still harmful.

Mark:They did it in Keene. And I think that's great.

Jason Sorens:We also have now passed a law that virtually eliminates any municipal technical amendments to the state building and fire codes. What that means is towns cannot make the building code stricter than it already is.

Mark:We're at the end of our time here. If folks are just so excited by hearing about all the freedom in New Hampshire and they want to move, I would recommend freestateproject.org. Anything else you want to plug, Jason?

Jason Sorens:If you are interested in the housing issues and following my work, you can find some of that at AIER.org. That's the American Institute for Economic Research. It's been great to chat with you, Mark, talking about all the great new freedoms that Granite Staters enjoy after this year's legislative session.

Mark:I will definitely have you back on, Jason. Thank you.

Jason Sorens:Thank you, Mark.

Mark:If this conversation got you thinking about what's possible when liberty-minded people actually concentrate their efforts, I encourage you to check out the Free State Project at freestateproject.org. The progress Jason outlined today didn't happen by accident. It happened because people decided to stop complaining and start moving.