After blogging about it yesterday, I’ve been taking Kent McManigal’s challenge, “What would YOU do if you woke up in liberty?”

My first thought was, “Not much different than I’m already doing.” After all, I’ve been consciously pursuing (and preaching) freedom for a long time. I’m out here in the hills, doing pretty much what I want, with people I want to be with. I live in a place where you can strap a gun on and go downtown (such as downtown is) and nobody will give you a second glance. A place where the neighbors are self-sufficient and helpful — and nice, besides. A place where we can legally do stuff like this in our very own backyard:

(And yes, that’s a suppressed, full-auto, and completely legal Mac-10 being fired by one of our visitors on one of the two firing ranges here at Last-Chance Gulch. He’s on a hill above the pistol range. There’s also a 600-yard rifle range.)

Who could ask for more?

But then …

A year ago, I was taxed out of a home that I owned free-and-clear, a home I built. Because government remains the ultimate owner of all our property.

I’m here in the desert — which is not my natural environment — living in a friend’s fifth-wheel trailer in part because it was the only place I could afford to go. I’m grateful for it. Very. But now I’m faced with other choices. I’ve been kicking those choices back and forth across my brain for about two months now and only just now realized that whatever decision I eventually make will be formed largely by government dkitats, government avoidance, or my fears of what government might do.

By the end of this summer, I have to move out of where I am now. I’m fortunate enough to have three interesting choices:

1. Less than a mile from here, on a windswept hilltop, sits an empty, fully furnished single-wide whose aging owner built it for Y2K and never set foot here after that turned out to be a non-event. Our neighbors have right of first refusal on the property, but they’re interested only in the land. If they can buy the place, they’ve offered to rent the dwelling to me quite reasonably.
2. I’ve also looked at a couple of rather cool little houses in a distressed area of my beloved northwest. These houses can be gotten for less than many people pay for their cars. They’re beaters, of course. “Handyman specials” as they say. But they’re cute, affordable — and just sitting there in a market that has flat-out died.
3. Finally, the — believe it or not — most budget-minded option is to go back to Panama, where I have a line on a small, furnished apartment. Even when I factor in the airfare and paying a friend a nominal sum to care for my dogs for a few months, this option will cost even less than moving less than a mile across the valley. (It would be temporary, however; I don’t qualify for residency in Panama and don’t know whether I’d want to.)

So again … that all sounds good. Three options — and not one of them a bad choice. That’s a type of freedom, isn’t it?

Each option has its own natural (that is, non-governmental) pros and cons.

Option 1 lets me stay near good friends, live in glorious open spaces, and not have the burdens of ownership. But, oh the thrice-damned-desert winds! And really, it’s not certain whether my sweet neighbors will be able to purchase the place.

Option 2 gets me back up north and closer to my friends there. It puts me in a nice small town within walking distance of stores, and gives me the joys of ownership (I can paint the house black with purple stripes if I want to because it’s mine, mine, mine). But it means a major move and all the costs and responsibilities of home ownership.

Option 3 means being gloriously warm all winter, living amid the beauty of a rain forest, and experiencing another culture. But my dogs won’t be with me, I’ll be far from friends, and my hablo-ing of Espanol is pretty feeble.

I could sort through those choices and consider myself lucky. It’s the governmental complications that hurt my brain.

What if I rent the single-wide, then the feds create hyperinflation and I’m stuck with payments that escallate beyond my means? I’ll end up not just homeless, but hopeless. Guess I’d better buy.

And every time I read something like this I think, “This country is getting too damned scary. (The FAA is feeling pressure because of the “need” — the NEED??? – for Predator drones to be flying over the U.S.???) I should just get out.”

But if I go to Panama, I know darned well they have random (and not-so-random) ID checks there. And if I stay beyond 90 days at a time, I’ll become an “illegal.” And geez, when they have their census, you can’t even have fun evading the government snoop; you actually have to stay in your house on a certain day until somebody comes and gives you a permission slip saying you’ve complied. And I’ll have to learn how to bribe petty government officials. Oh god, and to get there and back, I have to submit to TSA assault … No, I’ll just stick it out in the U.S. no matter how bad it gets.

But still … I’d really rather own a home, even with all those potential drawbacks. And there’s going to be hyper-inflation, you just know there is. So buying really is better. And up in the northwest it’s easier to grow your own survival garden so that when the fed finishes trashing the dollar …

Sorry to go on so. Maybe this is all “just me.” Friend Jim calls this “Hamleting,” and I do admit that even in the best of times I’m prone to sit in thick muddles of indecision (until I suddenly make my choice and act so abruptly that my friends think I’ve leaped onto the back of some wild impulse).

But if governments in general — and the threat of onrushing, government-caused, economic chaos in particular — weren’t so omnipresent, virtually every big life decision would be a whole lot easier.

So what would I do if I “woke up in freedom”? In this particular instance, I’m not sure. What I think is that, if I had been living in freedom all along, I never would have felt the need to limit my income so sharply. I’d be more prosperous. I would never have been driven out of Cabin Sweet Cabin by taxers. It would be possible actually to own one’s own home. Houses and everything else would be more generally affordable because they wouldn’t be loaded with hidden taxes and costly regulations. And in all probability I could buy a house (which wouldn’t be owned by a bank because the government wouldn’t have wrecked the economy), rent a weekend place if I wanted one, and jet off to Central America for a few winter months.

But that’s wishing.

What I’d do if I woke up tomorrow and all stupid tax- and inflation- and tyranny-related obstacles were removed is … um … let me think on that.

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