Here’s an interesting piece in New Founding (emphasis added):
Asheville, NC is now a top ten city for violent crime, having lost more than a third of their police force since “defunding” the department. Like many college and tourist towns, being about 90,000, it is politically far-left.
If history is any indicator, the rich leftist will flee to the next idyllic or picturesque small or midsized town. This is already happening, particularly with jobs that can be done remotely (college educated primarily). Thus, small-towns are becoming a sign of “privilege.” Rest assured, as this ramps up, more small cities will be lost to leftism.
However, the town they abandon can potentially (if they’re bad enough) be lucrative for vulture investing. By this, I mean…
Buy up large tracts of real estate for pennies on the dollar and then move large contingents of right wingers into those regions… probably by offering really good deals (such as rent to own after ten years so that they don’t just flip it), including helping young people who want to start families and so on. If the town is small enough, a thousand voting age people might be enough to swing a city-council overhaul, which would afford us a few years of political control to shore up our position by bringing in more right wing people and businesses.
Read the comments underneath, too.
That makes me think very hard about moving to a small town.
I lived about an hour west of Asheville for a few years. Absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the country. Sad to hear it has gone downhill.
The Libertarians started their Free State Project and chose NH for their supporters to move. They believe that they can impact the politics at the state level to bring about a Libertarian utopia. They’ve been running it for several years now. They have a conference/festival called PorcFest in July each year I think. So far the “refugees” from Taxachusetts are moving in such numbers to offset the work of the Free Staters. I don’t think they’ve made much progress. Some of their ideas are good but other Libertarian policies are far too extreme.
JQ
After looking at the two idiots that ran for Pres/V.Pres on the Libertarian ticket, I doubt ANYONE would bother to consider that party as a real choice. After that bit of idiocy, I was a bit embarrassed that my nominal party is the same. Must try to remember to change that, although I don’t think any of them is worth the powder to…