Honduras Ratchets Up Battle with Crypto-Libertarian Investors

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

by bertman • 2 years ago

47 56 2 years ago

anyone else find this style of writing hard to follow?

Yes. Adding "narco-" in front of any previous leader or official the author apparently doesn't like doesn't do much to help with clarity.

Hard to tell what's going on from this article in that the author seems so biased against Prospera. Sounds like they made an agreement with one government that for various reasons lost power and that the new government wants to cancel the deal.

ks2048• 2 years ago

You can argue how often "narco-" should be used, but it's more than just someone "the author apparently doesn't like". The ex-president and his brother are literally convicted drug traffickers.

crotchfire• 2 years ago

i think the readability would be improved if the author tossed in the prefix "crypto-" a few dozen more times.

yieldcrv2• 2 years ago

The actual statements from the parties involved - The Prospera ZEDE and the executive branch - are at the bottom and far more coherent and cordial than the rest of the article suggests.

The rest of the article is hyperbolic trash. “Immense bipartisan pressure from the US to maintain the Honduras charter cities” = “2 US senators writing a … letter”

blackhawkC17• 2 years ago

It's typical for some journalists. They just mash words together to make something look suspicious, but they don't really have a point to make.

picadores3• 2 years ago

Libertarian ideology colonialism attacking a souvreign nation state. Thing you do not see every day.

classified• 2 years ago

As I understand it, the previous govt invited the conquistadores and let them buy free reign.

picadores3• 2 years ago

And the souvreign changed his opinion on that. Corruption is not a trapdoor function, you can get rid of that.

voldacar2• 2 years ago

This was a shockingly biased and information-sparse article. Really disappointing

chabes5• 2 years ago

Team-based politics cause bad feels when you see your team being criticized

EraYaN• 2 years ago

I mean if your team are the drug lords of the previous government, then whelp. Maybe you picked the wrong team.

voldacar2• 2 years ago

I'm not on a team. I have never been to Honduras and have no strong feelings about either side. The whole article is just a journalist describing a conflict between two groups of humans, while constantly using morally and emotionally negative language against one group and never sharing their perspective, while doing the opposite for the other group. This journalist doesn't even accurately describe the origin of the conflict, which the top comment here does. It's a fun mental exercise to read the article and count sheer number of Russell conjugations.

This is not the kind of document you write to inform your reader about the state of the world.

pie_flavor• 2 years ago

The version of the story without all the fnords: Honduras solicited investment in the form of charter cities, where corporations could buy pockets of land and run them however they wanted. Then a more socialist government came into power, reversed the law allowing them to exist, and refused to give them their money back. The biggest, Próspera, is suing to get their money back.

Worth noting, this is a standard risk in Latam and the government that introduced them made it a constitutional amendment with a ten-year reversal process, since they wouldn't get any investors otherwise. The primary complicating factor here in Próspera's lawsuit is that they have not actually lost their investment yet; nine years to go.

But Honduras's response is to withdraw from the court system and legal framework that Próspera's suing them in, the ICSID. If they actually go through with this, that's going to be the end of most foreign investment in Honduras at all, charter city or otherwise. The ICSID is there to ensure that your investment stake won't be confiscated by the government when political winds change; Honduras is withdrawing because it wants to do exactly that, and no investor will risk that happening to them.

Also despite the article saying 'crypto' a dozen times their only relation to crypto is accepting it as legal tender, same as neighboring El Salvador. Instead of 'DAOs avoiding the FTC' one should think 'biotech avoiding the FDA'.

archerx• 2 years ago

I wonder if all the huge manufacturing factories near San Pedro Sula/Cortez will pack up and move to either El Salvador or Guatemala in response to this?

chabes5• 2 years ago

Honduras solicited investment in the form of charter cities, where corporations could buy pockets of land and run them however they wanted. Then a more socialist government came into power, reversed the law allowing them to exist, and refused to give them their money back.

No mention of democratically elected government being ousted by US-backed coup, or the fact that this single company is asking for a third of the country’s GDP.

On crypto: you seem very confident about your position, yet if you talk to actual people on the ground, you’ll get a different story than you are proposing. Crypto advocates are bragging about this very subject. It started with El Salvador, but goes well beyond one country now.

And for the record… I am not anti-crypto. I have been involved with bitcoin for 9 years.

acdha2• 2 years ago

A “US-backed coup” is a bit misleading: Zelaya refused to follow the law, but the US didn’t back him - they tried to keep it from turning into a war before an election he was excluded from so the Honduran people could settle it democratically. I don’t like the realpolitik in avoiding recognizing his coup attempt as such but that’s not the same as backing him.

hhshhhhjjjd2• 2 years ago

"Political winds change" like a US backed coup in 2009 that put the guy in power who made these laws? What international institution protects against that? Are countries bound by law if it was made by an illegitimate government?

idiotsecant• 2 years ago

Did you make an account just for this post?

ch4s33• 2 years ago

The only US involvement in ousting Zelaya was the State Department asking neighboring countries not to intervene. The Supreme Court of Honduras issued the arrest warrant for him on their own. It was an entirely internal affair until after they tossed him onto a plane. And on top of that, the guy was trying to illegally change the constitution.

temp123789246• 2 years ago

TIL what “fnord” is. I think that is a perfect way to describe much of this article.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

_The Illuminatus Trilogy_ , where I learned this word, is a fantastic read.

medo-bear4• 2 years ago

When Ukraine told Russia it was not going to pay back loans (prior to invasion) the West applauded.

Today the West is seriously considering expropriating external Russian property. Also apparently there is nothing wrong with this.

But when a small country in what is "rightfully" the US' playground threatens to protect its sovereignty from US corporations, apparently this is a whole different story.

etothepii• 2 years ago

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. --Thucydides

red-iron-pine3• 2 years ago

Honduras solicited investment in the form of charter cities, where corporations could buy pockets of land and run them however they wanted.

Bioshock: Jungle Edition

yardie• 2 years ago

I read about these charter cities a few years ago [0]. All the theory around them seemed to have this libertarian zeal about it that kind of put the foreign investors ahead of the local, voting population. And basic government functions (voting, taxes, police) were simply ignored or not fully explained.

BTW, for the Americans, there are lots of charter cities going up in Puerto Rico. And they are also unpopular because rich foreigners pay lower or no taxes compared to a PR citizen.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-pol...

cpursley• 2 years ago

Not all of them, these have led to real non-tourism job growth in PR. And PR is US territory, the tax breaks are for citizens who move from the mainland - not foreigners. It’s actually a great setup for software companies who are required to hire some locals.

Loughla• 2 years ago

Is this the latest incarnation of disaster capitalism? In the 00's, companies were content to just capture the government and make it into what they wanted. Now it's an explicit agreement that they can do what they want?

Those are real questions and not just snark, regardless of how snarky I actually feel about this entire thing.

roenxi2• 2 years ago

I am cautious in supporting these particular cities, since democratic primacy is a critical right that empirically leads to better results. That dealt with, there is a frame here where democratic power is preserved. The idea is that voting is done with the feet. There are a lot of obvious ways that is worse than voting by vote, but it is a much more powerful action.

In the long term that sort of charter city would need to transition to either a more standard model or something like the City of London - eventually becoming a tightly controlled geographic area where not a lot of people actually live. It worked well for the UK, I imagine it would work well elsewhere. If anything, corporate control runs the risk of being too effective and ending up as the command structure of some sort of colonial superpower.

namlem• 2 years ago

Hopefully Prospera wins and the socialist president loses. Honduras would benefit from more foreign investment. She's not doing her people any favors.

foobarxyzzy• 2 years ago

Crypto is [mostly] for crime, laundering, etc. When will the tech industry get past this?

alphazard• 2 years ago

Snapchat is mostly for porn? Signal is mostly for drug dealers? Tor is mostly for pedophiles?

The early adopters of a technology are the users that need it the most, and have the highest opportunity cost from not using it. You can think of them as beta-testers for the "nothing to hide" folks. You are looking at the beginning of a technology and criticizing the beta-tester population.

pavlov2• 2 years ago

The beginning? It’s been fifteen years. Hundreds of billions have been invested. We’ve been through several massive hype cycles.

If there is any potential for mainstream adoption of crypto, what exactly is holding it back at this point? It’s not new; it’s not obscure; and it’s certainly not underinvested.

Of course the crypto promoters will never admit that because the only reason to invest in crypto is this narrative — “it’s something brand new, very few people understand it, you can get in on the ground floor and be part of a revolution, etc.”

red-iron-pine3• 2 years ago

when was the last time you bought anything with crypto?

like you drove to 7/11, got gasoline, a soda, and some chips, and paid with BTC?

how many people do you know bought a house with BTC? Not a BTC investment that they cashed out into USD, but just BTC?

Snapchat can be used for non-porn; BTC isn't used for anything.

yieldcrv2• 2 years ago

Never?

Its a far more efficient "bug bounty" system than the tech industry has ever created. Far easier to get paid far more with far less liability.

Its the ultimate PvP game. far more efficient game against people for resources than walled garden finance or society has previously created. It will always attract participants.

And that's before even getting to the relativity of your nation's laws. Are you suggesting we care about some other country's capital controls because crypto use gets around those ... too? Is our go to response "wait, that's illegal laundering to move that much money... in China"

Its only confusing if you don't think about it.

medo-bear4• 2 years ago

Banks still [probably] have their place. But so does technology which gives me complete sovereignty over my assets.

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

By that argument we should also eliminate the internet, yes?

ogogmad2• 2 years ago

It is. That said, I know a bunch of people who use it to buy ADHD medication, who can't otherwise afford to get a prescription in a timely manner. And I don't even know that many people! I suppose there's many downsides to enabling crime, but there's some silver lining.

Honduras Ratchets Up Battle with Crypto-Libertarian Investors

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