Former “Seasteaders” Come Ashore To Start Libertarian Utopias In Honduran Jungle

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-ashore-to-start-libertarian-utopias-in-honduran-jungle

by saalweachter • 14 years ago

139 135 14 years ago

fastcoexist.com

padobson2• 14 years ago

Entrepreneurial solutions to government. Why not?

MartinCron5• 14 years ago

Human rights, mostly.

orthecreedence• 14 years ago

Thanks, someone said it. I see a "Libertarian Utopia" quickly devolving into an oligarchy run off of slave labor. Anarcho-capitalism...yeah, great idea.

mhartl3• 14 years ago

Why would you expect "entrepreneurial solutions to government" to forsake human rights? Were the framers of the U.S. Constitution not political entrepreneurs?

Tichy4• 14 years ago

At least with cities, that kind of thing worked before. For example irc the German Hanse started by creating attractive laws for merchants, which flocked to the participating cities and made them rich. That kind of thing was possible when countries were more fragmented.

Why not try it again? I think even in developed countries there are a lot of struggling cities that could experiment (I guess Detroit, or the whole of East Germany).

padobson2• 14 years ago

Experimentation with government seems to have stagnated. This sucks. According to Sid Meier, we should have come up with some cool alternatives to Democracy by now. What the hell?

objclxt• 14 years ago

"Cool alternatives to democracy"???

Personally I wouldn't conflate a political philosophy, which Libertarianism is, with democracy, a form of government. A libertarian government could be fascist, democratic, or anything in between.

I'm not sure why democracy isn't "cool" in of itself - sure, it isn't a be all and end all, and you can argue that X's implementation is wrong for Y and Z reasons, but fundamentally I can get behind Churchill when he said "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried".

MartinCron5• 14 years ago

Democracy gives you the nice moral feeling that the government's power is legitimate because of the way the representatives are selected by the citizens. Maybe I'm not creative enough, but I don't see anything else that doesn't feel dystopian to me.

darkestkhan• 14 years ago

And what about Technocracy ? It is quite cool alternative to Democracy. Probably too radical for current politics.

erichocean2• 14 years ago

The City of London is also another example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

Note: "City of London" is not the same as "London", where the Olympics were held.

jhuckestein• 14 years ago

Wow, this is exactly what I always tell people I'd like to do one day!

This is very similar to the German city-states that were set up along the baltic and northern sea some 800 years ago. I recall reading a very interesting article about this in some magazine, maybe I can dig it up. This model is a win-win because the settlers get to make their own very liberal rules (that the host state doesn't necessarily agree with) while the host still reaps some of the benefits of wealth and education coming into the area. Excited to see where this goes.

Edit: Found the article. It's called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-poli...

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nostromo• 14 years ago

Funny, my first thought was of German city-states as well, but not the ones that went well along the baltic.

Catherine the Great invited Germans to settle near the Black Sea when she won the territory from the Ottoman Empire. She gave them land in a similar way to the Oklahoma Land Rush: work it and it's yours. The problem came later when Russia changed its mind about being hands-off.

And that's my concern about this plan too. Honduras today is cooperative, but there is no guarantee it will remain that way. In fact, I'm sure it'll end poorly if poor Hondurans see wealthy "Americans" homesteading next door and not paying any taxes.

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

One of the terms of this agreement is that any Honduran citizen has right of residency in any of these cities (provided they agree to the cities rules, of course.)

So, I don't think there will be jealousy that aliens are getting a better deal.

Also, if the cities are successful this will increase business opportunities for Honduran businesses.

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hollerith2• 14 years ago

Paul Romer, who also works in this "space", suggests that some first-world nation, such as Canada, act as a guarantor that the host nation (e.g., Honduras) not renege on the agreement.

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SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

It's a great idea, until Honduras decides it wants a bigger cut of money from the land or somebody comes to power who could care less what the previous government signed up for. This is as applicable to any first-world country as it is to Honduras: the power balance is way out of whack.

Maybe with Honduras it is close enough to equal to make it work. I hope it does, because, as padobson said, "What the hell?"[1].

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4491131

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mahyarm• 14 years ago

Couldn't you say the same about HK, which has been left relatively intact?

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w1ntermute• 14 years ago

No, because HK has a long and established history, as well as powerful backers in the West who don't want to see it fully integrate into mainland China.

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wmf3• 14 years ago

Like a startup, a charter city probably needs to "get big fast" so that it can convince or buy off the parent country before the novelty wears off.

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goggles99• 14 years ago

Wow.. why didn't anyone ever try this before??? :P (it's Friday and some people will never study history)

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ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

This does seem a lot more practical than trying to create a habitat in the open ocean first. And it seems like most of the players seem to be pretty on top of the challenges of economic dominance in a nation state that is challenged to grow. I hope it is successful, a new and different kind of Singapore (which is too authoritarian sounding to my taste).

And perhaps it will provide some foundation knowledge to guide the governance of a Lunar 'city/colony' which, if it is too closely aligned with a single nation state might create more problems than it solves.

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caseydurfee• 14 years ago

Hey, it worked just fine in The Mosquito Coast, Fitzcarraldo, Into The Wild and Apocalypse Now!

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danneu• 14 years ago

And The Beach.

I'm a supporter, though. The difficulty of gathering like-minded people and starting a new sovereignty without having to modify entrenched, monolithic, slow-moving institutions is tragic.

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erichocean2• 14 years ago

Thankfully, military governments have a near flawless record.

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drcode• 14 years ago

Two words:

Kool Aid.

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hashset• 14 years ago

Seeing the support for this in these comments, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

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cobrausn• 14 years ago

If these people can bring wealth and prosperity to a place and succeed where their governments have failed them, why would you not support them?

They might fail miserably, but (as pointed out by others) this kind of thing has succeeded in the past.

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lhnn• 14 years ago

I know. It's stupid to think we should try having a revolution in government policy and function in the 21st century. Twerps.

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ubasu2• 14 years ago

This is like scrapping old code and starting from scratch, the problem of course being that all that cruft in the old code was there for a reason.

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wmf3• 14 years ago

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up." — G. K. Chesterton

But once you understand the reason you may realize it's a bad one. Many countries seem to be getting crushed by cultural and political path dependence.

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pbreit2• 14 years ago

I don't like that advice at all. So many fences have been installed for lousy reasons. And the results might be hard to predict so better to actually experience them. If you make a mistake, you can always re-install.

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stickfigure2• 14 years ago

Having experienced the joy of Honduras' "cruft" firsthand, I can assure you that it serves no noble purpose.

Try importing a piece of equipment through customs. The process is truly Kafka-esque. It's like the government is actively working to prevent its citizens from acquiring the tools to, you know, lift themselves out of poverty.

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ubasu2• 14 years ago

That is true - I was thinking of places with a functional government where the people have participated in its building. ;-)

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jeffool• 14 years ago

I genuinely don't see why there isn't more political migration in the US. I mean an effort by large companies like the credit card companies have done by all HQing in Delaware.

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daveman• 14 years ago

Our republic was originally designed to work like this, but the federal government has taken so much power that differences in freedom and self-governance no longer vary that much between states.

At the same time, there's also a dynamic where desirable states (those with thriving economies, liveable cities, talent pools from top Universities) end up taxing more and more, simply because they can. For many companies and individuals, the benefits of operating and living in high-tax states still seem to outweigh the costs. Although in the last decade New York and California have been losing people (partly due to companies leaving, partly due to cost-of-living and real estate prices).

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philwelch5• 14 years ago

Just to keep score, people have tried to start libertarian utopias in New Hampshire, the middle of the ocean, and now Honduras.

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

The Free State Project never got the 20,000 signatories that the idea needed, and so it dissolved. Some people, not liking this failure, decided to move to NH anyway, and have perpetuated the "free state project" for the past decade by ignoring the fact that the math doesn't work. Plus the FSP wasn't viable from the beginning: even if they took over the state government, they couldn't overrule federal laws.

Minerva was more of an eccentric joke than anything serious. I mean what kind of libertarian is going to build an island and then let the Tongan "navy" take it over because he had no guns. IF you're building a country and you have no guns, you aren't really building a country. Hell, Sealand, has successfully put off a german invasion, and, having been recognized by the UK and still standing for decades now counts as a success.

Honduras is in the starting stages. But unlike the FSP they have the endorsement of the federal government. Sure it has its risk- no joke- but I'm glad to see they are trying.

I count Sealand as a win, disqualify minerva, and claim the free state project recognized it wasn't viable and didn't try.

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stcredzero3• 14 years ago

> ...have perpetuated the "free state project" for the past decade by ignoring the fact that the math doesn't work.

Ignores the numbers...sounds like politics as usual.

> I count Sealand as a win,..."

I observe that the bar for "win" is very, very low.

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philwelch5• 14 years ago

> The Free State Project never got the 20,000 signatories that the idea needed, and so it dissolved

There wasn't a deadline or anything; the FSP is still active.

Sealand doesn't count since it wasn't a libertarian, just an eccentric who wanted to call himself a prince. And he succeeded in persistently squatting on an abandoned fortification in the English Channel, not creating a new society.

I didn't know about Minerva--I was talking about the Seasteading Institute, actually.

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waterlesscloud2• 14 years ago

Half the history of the United States has been about establishing utopias of one sort or another.

Some aspects have worked out better than others.

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aero142• 14 years ago

One question I still haven't seen answered. Are these new zones prohibited from running a drug based export economy? Perhaps knowledge that the US wont' allow it to exist that way will prevent them from doing so.

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saalweachter• 14 years ago

This is one thing I don't get -- I don't know why people think they can escape the US government by going to the middle of the ocean, let alone Honduras.

You might be able to avoid taxation, if you renounce your US citizenship, or a handful of little laws like personal drug use if you hermit up, but I don't see what's stopping the US government from just doing whatever the hell they feel like if you piss them off by exporting things they don't want exported or even running a data haven.

Seal Team Six wasn't authorized by anyone but the US government, but that doesn't make Osama bin Laden any less dead.

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Nrsolis2• 14 years ago

Word.

Any nations ability to operate independently is a function of their conflict with other nations in the same sphere of influence.

International law is largely a joke of a construct since the only way to hold a nation accountable if they violate some "law" is via sanctions or military action. Even then, a nation doesn't have to bother itself with seeking approval for its actions against another if none of the others cares enough to make a stink about it.

Right now the US is straight-up executing people in foreign lands via drones. They sent a team of foreign soldiers to Pakistan and conducted a raid deep within their territory. What did Pakistan do? What did the international community do?

Nothing.

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

They are prohibited because every person who is serious about doing this knows that this would be a stupid idea.

Plus, there's no reason to create a charter city just to try and export drugs--- you have competition from people all over the world who are doing it without being a very public charter city, and you have no competitive advantage.

The competitive advantage of a charter city is only worthwhile to legitimate businesses.

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wmf3• 14 years ago

A related thought-provoking rant from Mencius Moldbug on charter cities and colonialism: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...

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neofeudal_serf• 14 years ago

Another proof we are approaching New Feudalism: city-states. Not saying it's a bad thing. City-states were the only places of freedom and progress in the Middle Ages (think Florence). Just pointing out that after socialism going bankrupt ideologically and the Western civilization with capitalism being on the edge of bankruptcy - the world will start moving into Feudal model. Which has been happening already for a while - think of 90% serfs (defined as born in debt and dying in debt) and 10% superclass (modern day aristocracy) living their lives above the law or changing the laws to suit them. Globalism, single global ideology ( instead of religion) which basically is liberal democracy, etc. are all characteristics of feudal society. And now city states. Google for "neofeudalism"... You will be shocked to see how many parallels between middle ages and current times there are...

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philwelch5• 14 years ago

So much that you made a whole novelty account about it?

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

Is Hong Kong a "Libertarian Utopia"? In some ways, yes, but it probably isn't what people think of when they see that phrase. But that's the idea here-- to import the models that work elsewhere into a new location and let it grow.

I hope they are successful. If their offering ends up being competitive with the alternatives, we'll locate our startup there (I already have talked it over with my cofounders.)

We're currently engaging in jurisdictional arbitrage to find the best home for us, as we can do what we do from anywhere that has the internet. So, we're choosing from a list of countries based on what kind of environment they will provide us.

The problem so far hasn't been finding a country that is more hospitable than the USA, but in selecting from the dozen or so who are more hospitable, and trying to figure out which one is the most hospitable.

Imagine that-- we're struggling with too many choices for good places to locate our business, all of whom offer at least one key benefit over the USA, and most of whom offer many such.

Many people think the USA is hospitable to business, and assume that there's something shady about what we're doing that we don't just go to the bay area and be done with it. Well, here's our "Crime" in the eyes of the USA: one of our founders is from Britain while the others are from the USA. This means, while we can spend up to 6 months in Britain, and 3 months in the USA, neither country will let all three of us live there to do our startup without a great deal of hassle.

Contrast that with Chile which gave us a year of residency without any more hassle than showing up at a consulate with an application, some passport photos and a fee. We can renew that for another year, and after that first renewal, we could renew it for a final time-- and have permanent residency in Chile!

And chile is a perfectly fine place to run a business. It is a first world country, with a much more pro-business government than the USA. We'd be comfortable staying here and running our business for the next several decades.

So, I hope that Patri and the competitors to his company are all very successful -- lets make honduras one of the competitors. Already we've seen Panama grow dramatically as the best and the brightest fled Venezuela after Chavez took over.... there's still huge opportunity for jurisdictions that offer good terms.

Mobility is only going up over time!

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nodemaker• 14 years ago

Yeah I agree with this. US is not very friendly to immigrant entrepreneurs at all. Where can I read some more about getting Permanent Residency in Chile?

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

Alas, my source for info is a private wiki so I can't link directly. I did read up on the application in the recent past, and the hardest part was the requirement to get letters from Chileans saying you've made a contribution to the country. As part of Startup Chile we've made contacts within the government so this likely wouldn't be too difficult for us. (and if you're doing an early stage startup, Startup Chile is one way to get a good immersion into Chile.)

But here's some links: http://www.spencerglobal.com/chile-immigration-law/32/120-ch... http://www.allchile.net/chilewiki/index.php?title=Immigratio...

Here's a good forum to ask questions about Chile: http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/

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da022• 14 years ago

What other countries in your research have come close to Chile? Any in Europe or SEA?

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greghinch• 14 years ago

I find this very interesting and welcome news. How do you find the talent pool though as you expand your business? Are you hiring locals, or remote workers (primarily a question relating to developers but interested in the process of filling other positions as well)?

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

Our time in South America has been very enlightening. For instance, Chile has a pretty sizable middle class, and thus software developers and designers and other qualified people we could hire. I've heard from others that this is also the case in many of the other south american countries.

But I don't think we need to find people local. I believe in telecommuting, and I think that talented people want to live in nice places. For instance, I know one american company that has several employees in Thailand and asia, simply because that's where the employees want to live.

I think letting people telecommute will be a competitive advantage for us in hiring. The office is such a mind numbing place to work, they seem designed to kill productivity. (we don't have an office, the founders share an apartment, having a larger apartment is still cheaper than having a separate office.)

But we're also working on businesses with a great degree of leverage. I think many businesses see themselves as mostly selling the product of their employees productivity, and thus more employees=more business. We're selling the product of ingenuity... and so a lot of places where other people would hire employees, we will outsource. For instance, when we can't do support in house, we'll have an employee or two who is in charge of customer service, but the primary front line customer service people would be employees of a customer-service-as-a-service provider.

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spitfire3• 14 years ago

Could you write more about the countries you're looking at, and their benefits and downsides? I'm looking at a similar approach to you, and dubai looks good to me. (warm, tax free, cheaper than where I am now).

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

I'm advocating a mindset, I think, more than the claim that specific countries are right for people. I think the first step for most people is getting it into their heads that the country they were born in is not the greatest place in the world, and being open to the possibility that other countries are better.

But which country is better depends very highly on your preferences... for instance, Dubai and Singapore are good climates for business, but a gay person might not feel comfortable in either. (and we've considered both, fwiw.)

It also depends on your nationality- a treaty between the USA and the Netherlands gives us an opportunity to get residency in the netherlands much easier than it would for others.

So, any list I might give is going to be a bit too personal to our specific interests.

But people should consider chile. Panama has a new program which gives residency for anybody from certain countries (and there's a long list) who starts a business in Panama. (Panama City is the new miami- the cultural and financial hub of the region, or so I've been told.) Costa Rica has a lot to recommend it, such as a culture very supportive of americans, and no national military (if that's your thing). Nicaragua is poor, and thus your costs would be really low there, akin to thailand or cambodia. Thailand is really nice, but you can't easily get residency so you're border hopping to keep your visa up to date. Cambodia, though, I hear has a new residency program, but I don't know the details. Paraguay and Uruguay are also ones to consider, as relatively inexpensive and relatively pro-business countries. For some people estonia might be the right choice and for others it might be shanghai, even though china has aspects that others wouldn't like.

I've found a great deal of useful information in Sovereign Man: Confidential, and his free email list you can join at http://www.sovereignman.com

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recuter• 14 years ago

Interesting.

> The problem so far hasn't been finding a country that is more hospitable than the USA, but in selecting from the dozen or so who are more hospitable, and trying to figure out which one is the most hospitable.

Can you list the dozen you are considering if not the complete thought process? Are you considering perhaps places in Asia like Thailand and Singapore?

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nirvana12• 14 years ago

My list will be different than yours. I do recommend Chile. Thailand and Singapore I haven't visited, but both have their appeal. Thailand's limit is that you can't easily get residency (as I understand it) and so you have to do the border hop every 90 days. Singapore is efficient and by the book, which means if their residency programs work for you, then they could be really good. The country is a bit rigid, so might want to visit to make sure its right for you.

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warmfuzzykitten• 14 years ago

In what ways is Chile much more friendly to business? Aside from the free $20K? :)

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meric• 14 years ago

As someone who grew up in Hong Kong, please don't associate Hong Kong in 2012 with the phrase "Libertarian Utopia" at all.

The government has been trying to pass this bill: http://www.ipd.gov.hk/eng/intellectual_property/copyright/co...

It means that satire of existing works are now illegal if done without the express permission of original copyright owner. And even more worryingly, the law allows the government to take action on the copyright owner's behalf, if the government can obtain permission from the owner. If you are a licensed television station and the government comes to you secretly threatening allow more television licenses, of course you will give the government permission.

Also, read about government's attempt to introduce "education" about the Chinese Communist Party in primary school. The textbook contains only praises of China's authoritarian regime with barely a mention of atrocities in the 50's, 60's and 70's. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19472918 http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/04/world/asia/hong-kong-natio...

"The contents of the booklet inflamed longstanding fears of Beijing's encroachment into Hong Kong's affairs and freedoms by stating that China's ruling party is "progressive, selfless and united," and ignoring major events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre."

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aristus• 14 years ago

Popular ideas about faraway places lag reality by a half-generation or more. I've talked with people who still think Medellin and Beruit are hellholes, when in fact they are now the safest places in their regions.

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stcredzero3• 14 years ago

> Rule of law, fairness, and a lack of corruption leads to more economic growth than low taxes.

Yes, but the ease of paying for government cooperation and special privilege may be better for established large multinationals. Once the "tenants" become as big as or bigger than the holders of sovereignty, there is a sea-change in the relationship, if not an outright reversal.

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pbreit2• 14 years ago

This seems like a more prudent approach. While you still have a host country to deal with, I doubt being out at sea would offer much incremental insulation.

I followed "Laissez Faire City" which was trying to do something like this (a "Gault's Gulch") in the 90s and 00s in Costa Rica and Nicaragua but I don't think got too far.

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Zakharov2• 14 years ago

It would be interesting if, alongside this charter city, people would set up a liberal-socialist city-state, an authoritarian-capatilist city-state, and an authoritarian-socialist city-state.

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wazoox• 14 years ago

The authoritarian-capitalist city state exists: Singapore.

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rdtsc• 14 years ago

"Rapture's going to hell...and why? Because of them. Always behind the scenes...at the Lyceum, at the galleries in SoHo, even down here in this so-called Utopia...the doubters."

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mhartl3• 14 years ago

The article makes it sound like Patri, et al., have forsaken seasteading, but this is not true. In particular, Patri is still chairman of the board of The Seasteading Institute (http://www.seasteading.org/about/staff-board-advisors/) and emceed the recent conference. More generally, most seasteaders are interested in improving governance generally, and view seasteading as only one possible route to achieving this goal. (Charter cities is another.)

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Eliezer• 14 years ago

I'd just like to note, because nobody else seems to actually be saying it out loud, that this is potentially the most important thing for world poverty that we've heard about in the last 10 years.

If this model works, and more countries see it working and adopt it, it's an incremental path to trustworthy courts and healthy entrepreneurial environments for dozens of poor countries around the world. That's what it takes to end extreme poverty, and now there's a new contending path to it. If this model works, Paul Romer and Patri Friedman could be the new Norman Borlaugs.

I seriously think that anyone currently sending money to Africa for insecticide-treated mosquito nets (previously Givewell's top recommendation for efficient philanthropy) should consider switching to sending money to this instead, from a utilitarian perspective.

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ahi• 14 years ago

I don't know why you are assuming an impact on poverty. This will be little more than a gated community for wealthy libertarians.

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barry-cotter2• 14 years ago

More like Shenzhen than a gated community. Thirty years ago Shenzhen was a fishing village of 3,000 people. It was chosen as the site of the first Special Economic Zone in China, based on Ireland's successful experiment in Shannon. Today Shenzhen is one of the richest, most populous cities in China. Millions of people have been directly lifted out of poverty by Shenzhen's success and millions more indirectly because its success made arguing for similar policies elsewhere in China easier. Whoever put their career on the line to propose the SEZ may have done more good for more people than the entire post WW2 aid industry has.

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hollerith2• 14 years ago

Not true! Many in the charter-cities movement got into it as a way to help poor people in the third world who cannot emigrate to first-world countries. The movement was largely the result of an analysis of third-world poverty that blames third-world governments for not creating "institutions" or "frameworks promoting trust and cooperation" its citizens can use to work their way out of poverty.

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Steko• 14 years ago

I'd like to point out, that if voodoo worked it might also be the most important thing for world poverty. This sort of assuming the conclusion makes the whole thing an empty claim.

From a utilitarian perspective, there's zero proven benefit to sending charity to first world people playing utopia.

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aptwebapps• 14 years ago

I know there are a lot of libertarians around here, and I have some leanings that way myself. Plus, there's the whole startup culture which naturally embraces bold new ideas. So I thought the article was very interesting and understand why others would as well.

But your last paragraph ... Ouch. I had to rewrite this post three times to keep it civil. I guess your point is you think this idea is just that good, but if you take a step back and consider that on the one hand we have a very, simple, proven, and cheap way of saving huge numbers of lives and on the other we have something very ambitious but as yet unproven, you might conclude that they should not be competing for the same dollar.

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barry-cotter2• 14 years ago

Money is fungible or, a dollar is a dollar. We know with near certainty that 1600 dollars will save one life if spent on the best mosquito bednet charity. It may be the case that Charter Cities can and will lift millions out of poverty. It seems a plausible idea. If it is true the faster it happens the better. I'm fairly confident they have much less money than they'd like so they can productively put any donation to work.

Really, it's a choice between the near certainty of saving a life and the possibility that one could save many more. It beats donating to the Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies.

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Dn_Ab• 14 years ago

I agree. This is needed. Many people are missing the point, which is that there is no real government in those places. The fact that the entrenched powers are warlords and oligarchs means the gating and exploitation angle people are worrying about already exists in an even worse and more dishonest form. Any such experiment could not possibly make things more broken than they are. That things have settled at such a dismal equilibrium is why so much aid is needed in the first place. Sending aid is attacking the symptom and not the disease.

Something like this would be like a culture attack in Civilization. It would show that something better was possible and not an ocean away, completely destabilizing the status quo. I am not surprised so many African leaders denied it - they would not try something that has such a high risk of eroding their power base and the iron hold hold they have over the path of revenue.

Will this work? Well it either will or it won't. If it doesn't then things are no worse beyond a few bitter people. And if it does? The implications extend beyond Poor countries if the richer ones all of a sudden have to start competing for the flow of talent. If they run slightly different versions in different areas they can even do some optimization on the best features of an economy and government. I can't see this as anything other than a good thing.

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JabavuAdams• 14 years ago

So, how do you defend it?

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JVIDEL• 14 years ago

Did anyone tell these guys that that president Lobo is the result of a coup? and that the previous one was a recalcitrant pro-cuba guy? or that Honduras already had a serious problem with marxist guerillas in the '80s?

All I'm saying is that if this guy Lobo makes a mistake and gets himself thrown out of office and replaced by another old-school communist then things are going to get really ugly really fast, just check Venezuela and tell me I'm wrong.

And besides you can't "lead by example" because that doesn't works in politics, demagogy does! which is why all the hardcore leftists that are dead-against libertarians are going to use the old formula of "we are poor because they are stealing from us!". I know that's not always true, but you go tell them and see if they even want to hear you.

BTW "neoliberal" is a dirty word over there, don't describe you as one.

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sgentle• 14 years ago

Whether or not this particular experiment goes well, I think the super-cool thing is that it's being tried. I think there are probably a number of models that could lead to a stable and useful society, but existing governments are so entrenched that they've lost the ability to experiment. Their laws are mostly filled with legacy code and compromises made for a time and a political context that's long gone.

What would it look like if we could throw everything out and start over in the age of the internet? Laws under version control? Online direct democracy? GetSatisfaction for local government? One thing I can guarantee is that many, even most, of these ideas would be terrible and ruin the hard-won stability that most democracies currently enjoy.

So what's a large and slow-moving organisation to do? You want the benefits of a fresh slate, of innovation and iteration on all the crazy ideas your best and brightest can come up with, but you don't want to lose what you already have.

So in the time honoured tradition of generations of risk-averse innovation seekers before it, Honduras is starting a skunkworks. The Honduran government skunkworks. Damned if that isn't the coolest idea I've heard in a while.

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snitko4• 14 years ago

I think you're missing the point about laws and democracy. Libertarianism assumes you have the least possible government and preferably none at all. You don't really need democracy when you can vote instantly with your wallet and you don't need a centralized law-making body when everybody implements their own laws on their own property and various property owners are in competition with each other as to whose laws work better and generate more profit.

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Aloisius• 14 years ago

It always confuses me that on a site like HackerNews how ideas are promoted without serious thought into how they could be exploited, especially when they've been exploited over and over and over throughout history.

The model you are talking about is terribly easy for anyone with a sufficient lust for power to control. You see it all the time in Africa and the Middle East. Warlords gain a bit of power and start taking over territory and eventually build a small army. With said army, you take over transportation or simply rape and pillage.

Even without physical violence, economic control is equally possible with a sufficient monopoly (which, with no regulatory system to prevent dumping, tying, etc., isn't that hard to build). Control shipping, an important bridge, a major highway, waste disposal, etc. and you can effectively blackmail any of your neighbors' "sovereign" lands.

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mmphosis• 14 years ago

Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, suffers from extraordinarily unequal distribution of income, as well as high underemployment. While historically dependent on the export of bananas and coffee, Honduras has diversified its export base to include apparel and automobile wire harnessing. Nearly half of Honduras's economic activity is directly tied to the US, with exports to the US accounting for 30% of GDP and remittances for another 20%. The US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) came into force in 2006 and has helped foster foreign direct investment, but physical and political insecurity, as well as crime and perceptions of corruption, may deter potential investors; about 70% of FDI is from US firms. The economy registered sluggish economic growth in 2010, insufficient to improve living standards for the nearly 65% of the population in poverty. The LOBO administration inherited a difficult fiscal position with off-budget debts accrued in previous administrations and government salaries nearly equivalent to tax collections. His government has displayed a commitment to improving tax collection and cutting expenditures, and attracting foreign investment. This enabled Tegucigalpa to secure an IMF Precautionary Stand-By agreement in October 2010. The IMF agreement has helped renew multilateral and bilateral donor confidence in Honduras following the ZELAYA administration's economic mismanagement and the 2009 coup.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

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Czarnian2• 14 years ago

The thing that immediately jumps to mind after reading this article is my grandfather's stories about the old mining towns. These were places where the local employer (the mining company) had so much political clout that they became de facto dictators and pretty much did whatever they wanted with impunity. The lack of accountability led to business practices that were devastating to the locals. Miners were doing dangerous work in ridiculously unsafe conditions. When they weren't working, the company used various tactics to manipulate them into not leaving. The most well-known being the Company Store, which sold goods at prices that were just beyond what the miners could afford (surprisingly easy when the owner of the store is the same company who signs the paychecks.) But they were very willing to give credit. Nobody complained because that would earn a visit from some thugs in the mood for breaking fingers and kneecaps.

This arrangement strikes me as the Company Town on a massive scale. Without a legal framework that exists outside of their own best interests, I don't see how this kind of thing doesn't devolve into the Company Town.

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qwertzlcoatl• 14 years ago

I think its fascinating that Honduras even amended its own constitution to allow for this sort of experiment. I've been to Honduras several times and I have to say I'm intrigued!

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