Minarchy and The Last Frontier

With me being the FNG (Fairly New Guy) and this my first contribution to the American Free News Network, I thought I would tell the readership a little bit about where I am, why I am there, and how that dovetails into my personal philosophy, that of a minarchist libertarian.

We live in a country where governments, at all levels, grow more and more intrusive by the day.  As Ronald Reagan once astutely pointed out, if it moves, they tax it; if it keeps moving, they regulate it; and if it stops moving, they subsidize it.  Barely a day goes by without some government lackey, at some level, proposing some new way to bring the citizenry to heel with some new tax, new law, or new regulation.  Read the news, and it seems there is always some new outrage. 

But there are places where the people have managed to keep such overzealous government at least somewhat in check; at least, the state and local governments.  I live in one of those places.

Alaska.

Not Anchorage or Juneau, mind you.  Plenty of red states have their blue dots, and Anchorage and Juneau are ours.  If you look at a map, you’ll see plenty of blue in the North Slope as well, but that’s offset by the fact that very few people live up there.  Here in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, we form the main red counterpart to the blue Anchorage bowl and the state capital.

In fact, out here ‘in the borough,’ as the locals describe our rural Susitna Valley setting, we’re operating with pretty minimal government.  You might almost say, a minarchy.  Plenty of people live out here because they want to be left alone, and you can count me and Mrs. Animal among that number.  Let me explain how all this works.

Taxes

As noted above, Alaska is organized not into counties but boroughs.  The boroughs up here have very little authority; ours, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, runs the schools, the emergency services, does road service – and very little else.  And over half the state (Reminder:  You can drop three Texas into Alaska three times and have room left over for a Delaware or two) is in what is called the “Unorganized Borough,” meaning, there is no borough government at all.

Most of our firefighters are volunteers.  Ditto ambulance crews.  Out here in the Mat-Su, there are no sales taxes.  Our property taxes are low because the Borough doesn’t spend much.  The state likewise has no sales tax and no income tax, instead relying in large part on oil and gas leases to fund the state government.  Alaska did have a state income tax until 1980, and efforts on the part of local pols to bring it back have been fruitless.  We aim to keep it that way.  In fact, due to Permanent Fund disbursements, we have a sort of negative residency tax; we get paid to live here, as each resident receives an annual share from the Permanent Fund.

In fact, Kiplinger rates Alaska #6 among the most tax-friendly states for middle-class families.  We like it that way just fine.

Utilities

In many of our major cities and even smaller towns, utilities are effectively a monopoly, granted by the government, or even run directly by those governments.  Here in the Great Land, things are a little different.

Our telephone and internet services are run by a local co-op.  Every subscriber is a part owner in the private business that provides these services.  The electrical service is the same way.  Heating oil is delivered by one of several private companies who compete to fill our oil tanks.  Propane, if you’re using that method of contributing to “climate change”, works the same way.

The borough does provide a waste disposal service, but they won’t come to your place and pick up the trash.  What they do offer is something called a transfer station.  Here you will find an attendant standing watch over several large roll-off dumpsters.  For $2 per standard 33-gallon black trash bag, you can deposit your household trash in one of the dumpsters.  When they are full, the borough hauls them to the landfill at Palmer.  There are also private companies that will come to your property.  If you’re close enough to Wasilla or Palmer, you may be able to get a standard trash can; if you’re too far out in the borough for that, you’ll have to pay ~$125 a month for a small dumpster.

Our utilities run with minimal government involvement, and it works just fine.

Law Enforcement

The nearest badged law officers to us are the Alaska State Police barracks in Wasilla, about 35 miles away.  While some of the towns (Wasilla, Palmer, Big Lake) maintain municipal police departments, the borough does not.  There is no equivalent to the county sheriffs you see in the Forty-Eight.  Out here in the woods, we’re on our own.

Oh, the state police will answer 911 calls, as will the fire and EMP services.  But we all know it may be close to an hour before the police get here (the fire and EMT are much closer) and so it’s kind of understood that if someone breaks into an occupied dwelling out here, they’re going to become shot.  Alaska is a Castle Doctrine, stand your ground state, as well as being a Constitutional-carry state and very open-carry friendly as well.  In fact this is the only place other than parts of Wyoming that I’ve ever engaged someone in conversation over their sidearm, as in “hey, is that a Vaquero you’ve got there with the bird’s-head grip, or is it one of those Uberti replicas?  How do you like it?”

Try to invade someone’s house here, and you’ll become shot.  Try to start a “peaceful protest” with some vandalism and arson, and you’ll become shot.  Try to carjack someone, and you’ll become shot.  Even the hippies out here in the borough have guns, and we all know how to shoot.  So, as you might expect, these kinds of crimes are as rare as honest politicians.  Out here in the woods, we’re on our own, and we’re handling it just fine.

Provisioning

Grocery prices have been much in the news of late, and here Alaska is kind of a mixed bag.  Produce coming from the Forty-Eight can be expensive and is very seasonal.  But if you’re an Alaska resident, there are compensations.  Alaska’s fish and game laws are still very much in line with the state’s status as the Last Frontier.

Here in our game management unit, with just a general hunting license and the free harvest tags as required, we are each allowed to take one caribou, one moose, one grizzly bear, three black bears and five wolves.  Small game abounds; spruce grouse are especially toothsome, and the bag limit is fifteen per day.  Fishing is beyond compare, and for a few days during the salmon run each summer residents can partake of the “personal use fishery,” known as the dipnet fishery, where at certain defined places you can literally shovel salmon out of the rivers.

Further, what crops can grow here – and there are a good number – grow well.  Our summers are short but make up for it with long, long days.  Truck crops, like potatoes, cabbages, root crops like carrots, all do very well.

So with a bit of work, it’s possible to sustain yourself just fine.

The Great Land

Colorado was our home for thirty years, but Colorado isn’t the place it was thirty years ago.  For some years, we knew it wasn’t going to be where we would spend our golden years.  My wife and I had our sights set on the Great Land for twenty years or so before we moved here.  We worked, we saved, we scrimped, we came up and looked at areas and properties at every opportunity.  Finally, in late 2020, we found a property that suited us.  In January of 2021, only a few weeks after a highway-blocking riot a few miles from our Denver-area home, we moved, and we’ve never looked back, not even once.

We’re fond of telling visitors, while showing them the grandeur of this place, that “…for most people this is a once or twice in a lifetime vacation.  We live here.”  And it’s impossible to understate how much we love Alaska.  It’s not just the political element, although the ever-increasing looniness of Colorado hastened our departure.  We would have come here even if Colorado had stayed as red as Wyoming.  Alaska is like no other place in the United States; it’s vast, beautiful, clean, wild and free.

Granted, Alaska isn’t for everyone.  If you like sunny skies and warm weather, it’s probably not the place for you.  Our winters are long and cold, we get snow measured in feet, and around the winter solstice we only see about three and a half hours of daylight.  In the short, mild summer, we have plenty of sun – up to about twenty-one hours – along with which comes mosquitoes that show up on air traffic radar.  And, on occasion, an 1800-pound moose or a 700-pound grizzly may decide to get fractious.  (I don’t go out in the woods without a good sidearm, and by “good” I mean .45 caliber.)  But if you like to hunt and fish, want to be left alone, and be as self-sufficient as it’s possible to be in these troubled times – and, by the way, to be well out of the way as our major cities in the Forty-Eight continue to disintegrate – Alaska may well suit you, as it does us.  For a minarchist libertarian, it’s as good a place as you’re going to find.

Now, if we could just get the Federal government out of our hair

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