Jason Sorens is a political scientist who appears in The Bob Zadek Show in two distinct roles: as the founder of the Free State Project, described by host Bob Zadek in a 2009 episode on seasteading, and as a guest in 2022, when he and William Ruger discussed their Cato Institute study “Freedom in the 50 States.” Seasteading (2009) Which State is the Most Free? (2022)
The Free State Project
In the 2009 episode, Bob Zadek introduced Sorens as “a college professor in Buffalo” who was encouraging libertarians to commit to move to New Hampshire once they had 20,000 people. Zadek listed the reasons Sorens picked New Hampshire: the lowest state and local taxes in the country, the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending, a citizen legislature whose statehouse representatives had not raised their $100-a-year salary since 1889, the lowest crime level in the US, a strong economy, a culture of individual responsibility, no seatbelt laws and no helmet laws, and the license plate motto “Live Free or Die.” Seasteading (2009)
Zadek framed the project as an alternative to leaving the country: Sorens’s argument, as Zadek restated it, was that libertarians need not move offshore but could move to New Hampshire, take over the state, and make it a libertarian paradise, with citizens voting with their feet out of New York, Connecticut, California and Ohio. Seasteading (2009)
Guest Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute responded that such a strategy works only to a degree, because most spending and most regulation are at the federal level. He noted that New Hampshire’s tax burden is lower because it has no state income tax, but that most taxes are federal, and he cited a study finding that people move from high-tax states to low-tax states roughly two or three times more often than the reverse. In Friedman’s assessment, even with 20,000 people in New Hampshire the freedom the Free State Project could obtain would be very limited, and most of the benefit would lie in freedoms gained immediately and in joining a community of like-minded people rather than in what activists could win. He added that Supreme Court cases had not been very good for federalism or state autonomy. Seasteading (2009)
Zadek returned to the project later in the episode, describing it as a concept started by a professor in Buffalo named Jason Sorens, who had identified New Hampshire as the target state and promoted a commitment by 20,000 libertarians to move there and assume political control. Zadek presented it as an example of experimenting with different lifestyles, while granting that the federal government would remain a strong presence. Seasteading (2009)
Freedom in the 50 States
By 2022 Sorens was appearing as a guest. Bob Zadek introduced him as the Director of Research and Education at the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, and as co-author, with Will Ruger, of the Cato Institute’s annual 50-state survey comparing freedom across the states using hundreds of weighted variables. Zadek described the survey as a means of understanding foot voting—whether one’s choice of where to live is the right one—and noted pointedly that Sorens’s professional base was in New Hampshire. Which State is the Most Free? (2022)
In the companion episode Zadek gave the same introduction, naming Ruger as president of the American Institute for Economic Research and Sorens as Director of Research and Education at the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, and again raising the relationship between the subject of state freedom and where Sorens had hung his professional shingle. Ranking Freedom in the 50 States (2022)
Findings on state freedom
Sorens told Zadek that the study now had 20 years of data going back to 2000, with 2020 the latest year because of a lag in data availability. Overall, freedom at the state level had declined, but he called that misleading because the figure includes the impact of federal policies; excluding those, freedom had increased significantly over time. The biggest factor, in his account, was Obamacare, an example of Congress taking over something previously done at the state level and increasing federal regulation, so that all states now have to conform to a much higher level of health insurance regulation. States’ own policies, by contrast, had been increasing freedom over time, especially since about the Great Recession and especially in some of the more red states—which he offered as reason for optimism, since states left to their own devices were trying to increase freedom and those that did were reaping benefits in stronger economies. Ranking Freedom in the 50 States (2022)
Sorens generalized the pattern: when Congress gets involved and federalizes a policy, it decreases freedom—Obamacare being the biggest example, along with cases such as GMO labeling, where Congress imposed a nationwide regime and preempted state laws. When the courts federalize something, he said, it tends to increase freedom, especially personal freedom, citing Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell. What he wanted, he told Zadek, was an engaged judiciary upholding constitutional limits on government at all levels in the interest of individual rights, combined with a Congress and executive branch held in check. Ranking Freedom in the 50 States (2022)
Across episodes
The two treatments are thirteen years apart and differ in kind rather than in argument. In 2009 Sorens was not a guest; his Free State Project was described by Bob Zadek and assessed skeptically by Patri Friedman, who doubted how much freedom a state-level takeover could deliver given federal centralization. In 2022 Sorens appeared himself, and the same underlying question—how much freedom a state can secure while federal policy bears down on it—was addressed through the Cato study’s finding that state-level freedom declined overall but rose once federal policies were excluded, with Obamacare named as the largest single federal intervention. The excerpts show no development in Sorens’s own position across the two episodes; they show a change in venue, from a proposal described at second hand to a research program reported by its author. Seasteading (2009) Ranking Freedom in the 50 States (2022)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Sorens’s academic field or training, his date or place of birth, or when the Free State Project was founded or how many people ultimately signed its pledge. They do not say what became of the project after 2009, nor whether Sorens moved to New Hampshire or when. The 2022 excerpts break off before the discussion of methodology and rankings develops, so the study’s specific state rankings and its definition of liberty are not available here.