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Outline
introduction
The History
The New Arrangement
-Free Nation Foundation-Critical Institutions
-Libertarian Nation Foundation
-Internet Sites
Conclusion

The Free Nation Foundation has been split into two separate organizations, as of 28 February 2001. One organization is the Libertarian Nation Foundation (LNF), which will publish Formulations. The other organization is called the Free Nation Foundation–Critical Institutions (FNF–CI). This split is the final product of a long period of controversy within the Board of Directors of the former Free Nation Foundation, which followed Richard Hammer’s resignation as FNF President. As FNF members and subscribers to Formulations, few individuals have been aware of the full scope of the controversy. I will attempt, here, to provide some explanation of what has happened, why, and what might be expected in the future. These observations are my own. Each of the Directors of the former FNF has a unique perspective on these events. As I understand things, the views of some other former FNF Directors may also be presented here in Formulations. Rich Hammer declined a request to contribute his view to Formulations. He did, however, explain the FNF split from his point of view in a letter dated 9 March 2001, mailed to members and friends of the Free Nation Foundation. For the best overview, I recommend that those interested in these issues read all of the accounts or, if possible, communicate directly with former FNF Directors themselves.

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The History

In my view, the interests of the Board members of FNF began to take overtly separate paths when Board members received FNF founder and President Richard O. Hammer’s "Letter of Resignation". That letter was published in the Spring 1999 issue of Formulations. As the letter states, Rich Hammer had come to believe that the rest of the FNF Board did not share his vision of what FNF should be.

FNF came into existence as a result of Rich’s efforts. At the time Rich announced his resignation as President (12/28/98) he had been working to build FNF for several years (since 1993), hoping that others would join him as time went on. Rich had given liberally of his own resources, donating money and labor. Rich had worked as FNF’s only full-time employee for most of the time he was President. Yet despite these efforts, Rich had been able neither to recruit much volunteer labor to assist him, nor raise enough funds to pay himself or a staff. Those of us in FNF who had worked with him began to see Rich become discouraged about the possibilities that FNF would achieve the goals that he wished it to achieve. Indeed, Rich had begun to express concerns that even the assistance he was getting from others was off the mark. At one point he had gone so far as to say at an FNF Board meeting, that "No one here understands what FNF is about."

As Rich’s Letter of Resignation says, Rich finally reached the point where he felt that he could not justify the further investment of his own resources in FNF at such a high level. The letter was sent to FNF’s Board members and others who had made substantial financial contributions, several weeks before it was published in Formulations. Rich announced that he would resign as President, effective at the end of 1999, and would stop performing most of the tasks which he had been doing for FNF. He did not attempt to recruit anyone to replace him, saying simply at one Board meeting, "I don’t know who will be doing these things."

Rich’s letter gave the FNF Board a year to make a series of important decisions, since Rich himself was not making them. Should an effort be made to continue those FNF activities which Rich would be leaving, such as the Forums and Formulations? Who would replace Rich as President? Rich, in his letter, had predicted that FNF would revert to little more than a web site. After some discussion, the Board made a decision to try to recruit enough volunteer labor, largely from itself, to keep all functions going. Most Board members had in fact done very little actual volunteering within FNF. At a series of Board meetings, most of Rich’s tasks were accepted by Board members, assisted by other FNF members such as Robert Mihaly, James Wilson, and later, Jesse Halliday. Bobby Emory was elected to succeed Rich as President. Rich agreed to keep a very few tasks on a temporary basis.

As the re-organization meetings progressed, Rich, though still reserved in his attitude towards the process, assisted the volunteers by describing in detail the tasks he had decided to drop and by providing them the various physical materials which he had used in performing them. At one point he even smiled and expressed his pleasant surprise that people were willing to pledge so much effort to continue what he’d started. But once his jobs had been re-assigned and his resignation took effect, Rich became extremely quiet. While attending all Board meetings, Rich never voted, nor volunteered opinions. His primary interaction with the Board was to make a series of announcements wherein he dropped, one at a time, the few remaining tasks he had still been doing. To many of us on the Board, it seemed that Rich had again become very depressed about the state of FNF.

Rich’s concerns were understandable, in at least two ways. One factor was the clear change of policy which FNF was undergoing. During an FNF Forum held just before Rich’s resignation took effect, Rich had been asked to explain what it was about his FNF Workplan "few persons understood". At that time Rich had replied that he believed that FNF should focus almost all its attention on what Rich called "critical institutions", which he then defined as "constitutions and systems of law". The Forum discussion moved on, but later, at an FNF Board meeting, Rich was asked to reconcile his concept of the FNF Workplan with the very broad FNF Statement of Purpose (which Rich had written, and which appeared on the FNF web site and in each issue of Formulations). Rich replied that the Statement, which the Board had never previously discussed, was just a very loose approximation of FNF policy–intended only for public consumption, not as a real FNF policy. Most of the Board members were both surprised and disappointed by this interpretation of the Statement. [I for one feel that Rich had engaged in an intentional deception.] Soon after, the Board approved an explicit policy which affirmed the philosophy of the Statement, which contrasted with Rich’s much narrower vision for FNF.

The second factor which caused Rich concern was that FNF’s new volunteer labor force was having considerable difficulty maintaining the level of activity which Rich had maintained as President. While many more people were now involved with FNF, they were providing, collectively as part-timers, far fewer hours than Rich had provided as a single full-time FNF worker. Further, the tasks when performed by Rich alone had been easily coordinated (Rich coordinating only with himself). But the many volunteers, some of whom were hundreds of miles from the North Carolina FNF base (where most of us live), were not regularly in contact with one another, and did not always have a full understanding of what each other were doing or should be doing.

At first, Rich was quiet about these concerns. But later Rich explicitly (and rightly, in my opinion) criticized the new volunteer arrangement for failing to keep the schedule of production of Formulations and the Forums. He followed his criticism with an "offer" to accept all responsibility for FNF and all authority within it, at which point he would formally cease production of Formulations and the holding of Forums, and would assume full control of the web site. This was not well received by most of the other Board members. The ensuing debate inside the Board became intense.

A short time later, Rich rephrased his polite "offer" as a firm demand, based on a claim of legal and moral rights as "owner" of FNF. His resignation as President, Rich insisted, had no effect on these "rights", which he based on the labor he had previously contributed. This position was received even less enthusiastically by most Board members. They pointed out that Rich himself had established FNF as a non-profit corporation with a governing Board of Directors, not as a proprietorship. Rich had never mentioned the notion of a sole proprietorship during his entire time as FNF President—including the time, over a year earlier, when the Board had been forced to decide on how to proceed without him. Despite this, Rich has alleged that the actions of the Board since his resignation as President should be interpreted as a personal promise made by each Director to Rich himself, as sole proprietor of FNF, to pursue Rich’s own objectives in a "professional" manner—a promise which Rich felt was broken. To my knowledge no other FNF Director takes this view, though most felt that Rich should be given an opportunity to own an organization which formally derives from the FNF tradition. And one Director asserted that Rich was and had always been the sole "owner" of FNF.

For several months the debates became increasingly heated, as ideas about responsibilities and authorities within FNF were discussed. Generally, Board members have followed an informal policy that this debate be kept within the Board. But this has had a serious disadvantage, in that neither FNF members nor the general public have been aware of the controversy. By contrast, it has appeared to many non-Board members that FNF was slowly dying. It is my intention here to correct that false impression. To paraphrase Mark Twain: the rumors of FNF’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

The current splitting of FNF is the result of an agreement between all parties, intended to settle the dispute. Probably the most positive aspect of the Split Agreement will be for the energies which have been spent on internal disputes at the FNF Board to be re-channeled into productive functions at the two new organizations. The problems experienced at FNF in this last year have at least in part been caused by the arguing which has occurred inside the Board. Little productive business was conducted.

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The New Arrangement

The two primary visions of FNF will now have clear separate homes in the two new organizations. By the terms of the Split Agreement, the two "daughter" organizations are to be considered equally derived from the original FNF. The new LNF, will continue to support a wide variety of activities, consistent with the FNF (now LNF) Statement of Principles. The new FNF-CI will focus on Rich Hammer’s Workplan. FNF members will, to the best of my understanding, be considered members of both new organizations unless they indicate another preference.

Free Nation Foundation–Critical Institutions

The non-profit corporation operating under the name FNF-CI will be organized according to a very different model from FNF. Rich Hammer has written a new set of Bylaws for FNF-CI. Rich has included in the Bylaws a method he has designed for employing the Labor Theory of Value at FNF-CI. Credit, for labor contributed either to the old FNF or to FNF-CI, is to be used to assign votes within the FNF-CI Board of Directors. Rich himself has endeavored to calculate the initial assignment of this labor credit, but only for those who had served as Directors in the old FNF Board. Initially four of the eight Directors of the old FNF have agreed to accept this assessment of labor credit and become Directors at FNF-CI–Richard Hammer, Roderick Long, Chris Spruyt, and Robert Mihaly. While the arrangement still takes the form of a corporation officially, Rich has assigned himself the vast majority of the votes and the power to reassess all future vote allocations. Thus, FNF-CI is designed to function indefinitely not only under the control of, but as the personal property of Richard Hammer. Hopefully, potential FNF-CI members will be made overtly aware of this.

FNF-CI’s objective will be, I assume, to follow Rich Hammer’s "FNF Workplan" as closely as possible. It has not, to my knowledge, been decided whether or not FNF-CI will officially abandon the "FNF Statement of Principles". But as a practical matter, it can probably be assumed that FNF-CI will strictly adopt the notions stated in Rich’s "Letter of Resignation" as FNF President. The key statement about the Workplan in the letter is, as I read it:

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Libertarian Nation Foundation

The Libertarian Nation Foundation holds that a libertarian nation, conceived as such from its beginning, ought to exist and should be created. LNF develops formulations for the institutions and social arrangements of a libertarian nation. LNF will continue to provide the arena for discussion which had characterized FNF from the beginning. LNF will continue to display the (formerly FNF, now) LNF Statement of Principles on its web site and in issues of Formulations. As such, LNF will try to create an atmosphere which encourages the development of ideas about all of the voluntary social institutions which might manifest themselves in a libertarian society. LNF, as an organization, will not attempt to determine that some of these institutions are vital while others are not, allowing authors and audiences to make such appraisals for themselves. While financial donations towards this work from anyone who believes in it will be welcome, LNF is not focused on the recruitment of wealthy patrons.

LNF will sponsor the continued publication of Formulations, hopefully getting back to a regular schedule soon. An effort to reorganize Formulations and recruit new participants is now underway. The fate of the Forums has not been so clearly established, though it is possible that there will be fewer of them and that they will be less formal in character, than was the case at FNF. The e-mail FNF Discussion List, a private enterprise owned by Roy Halliday, has been replaced by Roy with another list associated with LNF. Other ideas have been discussed as well.

LNF is organized as a non-profit corporation (as of this writing still applying to the government of the USA for 501(c)(3) tax status). The LNF Board of Directors has adopted a set of Bylaws which is very similar to that of the FNF Bylaws. LNF Directors include President Bobby Emory, Secretary Roy Halliday, Treasurer Jesse Halliday, plus Wayne Dawson, Roderick Long, Robert Mihaly and myself. The FNF Bylaws were used as a model for the LNF Bylaws, with some modifications. The Statement of Principles is explicitly included in the Bylaws. Directors will be assumed to be aware of the activities of the organization, and to be expressing any serious concerns that they have. There is now a provision allowing for responsibility and authority regarding specific projects to be decentralized.

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Internet Sites

Each "daughter" organization will have its own new Internet site. LNF’s site ("www.libertariannation.org") will initially duplicate (except for organizational name changes as appropriate) the existing material at the old FNF site. The Archive located at the LNF site will continue to add issues of Formulations, as they become available. The FNF-CI site (www.fnf-ci.org) may, by the terms of the Split Agreement, use any of the content from the old FNF site. I am not aware of the details of Rich Hammer’s plans for that site, however.

The original Internet site for FNF, "freenation.org" will be reduced in scope considerably. At "freenation.org" an individual surfing the Internet will find only a brief description of the split of FNF into two organizations, and two links out to each of the "daughter" sites. Links will exist at each "daughter" site to the other "daughter" site.

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Conclusion

The splitting of FNF will come as a surprise to most FNF members. It may appear to some that they are being encouraged to "take sides" in a dispute. This was not the intention of those involved in writing the Split Agreement. The idea behind the agreement was to allow the distinct visions for FNF, which had been held by those involved, to be pursued independently without further conflict. This will we hope, allow more opportunity for all—especially for the membership of the former FNF. We urge the FNF membership to explore each organization and to become involved in either or both as seems appropriate. It’s supposed to be a positive sum environment. D
 

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