Greenwich recently celebrated its birthday. The town is either 367, 342, 335, 321 or one billion years old, depending on when you start counting.

The official date commemorated last week was July 18, 1640 when two settlers, representing the New Haven colony, bought Old Greenwich from Native Americans for "twenty-five coates." Much like the famous purchase of Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets 14 years earlier, it's not clear if sellers were actually the people who owned the land or were merely the ones who happened to occupy it at the time.

Anybody can found a town. It's like discovering a model. There she is! But the next step is making sure no one else can claim her.

It wasn't until May 11, 1665 that the Hartford General Assembly declared Greenwich a separate township. For years, they had tried to make it part of Stamford. The modern-day state income tax and often proposed wealth and millionaire's taxes are a continued attempt to essentially do the same thing: make the wealthy property owners pay more than their fair share.

The area of Greenwich called Horseneck, and including its famous Tod's Point beach, didn't become part of the town until it was purchased from the increasingly real estate-savvy Native Americans in 1672. But that was just the contract date. The closing on the land took place in 1686.

So just how old is Greenwich? There are already four possible dates from which to judge: the founding, the declaration as a township, the purchase date of the remaining tract and the date the title actually transferred.

Or the date the land was formed. If I read the inscription right at the geological exhibit in Greenwich's Bruce Museum, there's a type of rock called the Fordham gneiss that is over a billion years old—dating from the time, if I understand correctly, when Connecticut was still connected to Africa. The Fordham gneiss occurs nowhere else in the state of Connecticut except for one little corner of northwestern Greenwich.

The word "gneiss" is an old mining term meaning decayed, rotten or worthless material. You might think it is insulting for Connecticut's poshest town to be built on such a rock. You'd be wrong. It is actually quite flattering.

The genius of humanity comes from taking the apparently worthless material around it and making it into something useful. The genius comes from trade and an unwavering dedication to providing value to others on a voluntary basis. Allowing that genius to shine as brightly as possible is nearly the definition of libertarianism.

Is Greenwich the state's most libertarian town? It headquarters a litany of hedge funds, one of the two greatest creative industries in existence today, the other being the internet. Why those two? They have among the least regulation. It's hard to be creative in health care when you have to get the approval of so many layers of government.

What is the political structure that tends to result in such libertarianism? What features does it share with the United States in general, still basically the freest country in the world despite the fact that it is much less free today than it was before?

I think one feature is the number of people in government. With power concentrated into the hands of a few, oligarchy and effective dictatorship are not far behind.

Greenwich's Representative Town Meeting has 230 elected officials, making it the fifth largest legislative body in the United States. Only Congress itself and three state legislatures have more.

So many eyes mean two things, both beneficial: more gridlock and less sneaky maneuvering. It becomes harder for government to do anything that doesn't have widespread appeal among a variety of supermajorities. And it becomes harder to slip things past the voters when there are so many people watching what happens. Almost anything that makes things harder for government to control your life is a good thing.

So happy birthday, Greenwich, however old you are.

phil@maymin.com