It's not much of an aspiration, but it is, strictly speaking, an improvement. It's also not a hypothetical: supply-side economic demonstrably works, to some extent. It just doesn't work very well, and we should be able to do better.
Personally, I think it's the difference in mentality between lottery winners and builders of successful products (who often work within difficult constraints and have to become very good at problem solving to succeed). There's a reason why lottery winners do not typically compound their success.
Things are more complicated in real world, because even if massive wealth is created (say, a boom of a certain industry), it doesn't necessarily go where it's supposed to.
Here [1] there is a real-world example of how, in a country with a strong mining industry, the "colonialists" get all the money, and the "colony" gets the crumbs (of course, that doesn't imply that this is always the case).
[1] Published long ago on HN: https://psmag.com/why-is-zambia-so-poor-f44dfeedd5ed
If such cities suck worse than the alternatives, no one will move to them.
The real worry I think many have is that charter cities will be successful and will demonstrate (by being successful without it) that a lot of existing socially favored regulation is harmful.
I.e. exiting Honduras is easier if a charter city is right next door.
The problem with you libertarians is that everything you say works with spherical objects in a frictionless vacuum, so to speak. But the real world isn't such a place. Outside your idealistic worldview everything collapses.
Similarly, because Hondurans are irrational, should they also be forbidden from entering Mexico and the US? Similarly, Brexit is good because Europeans and Brits might irrationally make the wrong choice on where to live?
Pointing out that people are irrational is not a magic argument against all policies that sound "too libertarian" to you. You still need to actually make an argument (presumably using irrationality as an underlying premise), which you haven't.
In reality, neither utopia is particularly achievable in the world as it currently is, but that doesn't mean that incremental steps in one direction or the other can't improve the situation.
Just as most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. My point is that you don't need to believe in the utopia (in either direction) to believe that a smaller move would be positive.
> what the article suggests is about as far from an incremental step and one can possibly get...
In terms of total impact, drastically changing the rules in a region where no one currently lives could certainly be a smaller step than slightly changing the rules for millions of people, which is what most political arguments are about.
Remind me again how big the death-toll from government wars is?
Or perhaps simply how badly it is failing at taking care of the sick, the poor, and the needy in almost every single 1st world country?
You are right, outside of our idealistic view of the world, everything does collapse. I am watching it collapse right now, on the state's watch.
>"It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty"
Luckily, those people have noble individuals such as yourself to tell them what to do, and fix their problems for them. Because you deem them unfit to do so for themselves.
That's quite a bold claim to make. I'm afraid I can't quite see what you mean by that. What I can see is that the countries with the most regulation and state "babysitting", as you like to call it, are the ones best placed in any poverty, development, health or well-being index. I really don't see what you can possibly mean by "badly failing at taking care of the sick, the poor, and the needy in almost every single 1st world country".
Either way, yes you are most likely statistically right. Spending on healthcare, poverty, and disabled individuals probably directly correlates with their well-being. You were presenting a case against a hypothetical ideal, and claiming it would not be able to fix social problems in a non-idealized setting. The counter-claim to that is that those very same things are not resolved in a society almost-exclusively run by state-governments, either. Whether 1st world or otherwise.
I eagerly await your "no true Scotsman" response.
"The problem with [obviously unworkable governing system] is of course that it's never been given a proper chance!"
Incidentally charter city like policies have been tried. Hong Kong. Singapore. Gurgaon. But I guess all the successes should be ignored because Honduras cancelled their project.
Getting the government out of the way can also help in countries that have ingrained cultures of low-level corruption. One of the things that drove my dad to leave Bangladesh and move to the other side of the world was having to pay a bribe to a functionary for the phone company to hook up a new phone line in our house.
Of course. But it's almost certainly the end result.
Welcome to the St. Louis Free Economic Zone.
My politics are weird though. I would combine it with a basic income and single payer health care. I think the best current system we could create would be a strong but non invasive social safety net combined with total at will employment and business deregulation.
Still could be helpful, and I think we do see it often in some form or another, but is also subject to regulatory arbitrage: two cities pitted against each other to provide the best situation for companies, or Walmart flexing their power to get more favorable deals.
But in anycase what puzzles me, is why would first world countries allow this? If Sealand and such other projects failed because they lacked soverignity, why would a corporate city in Honduras be any different?
If someone would write an article that long without offtopic infos that would be cool.
most of this text is just fluff to stretch out the whole thing without adding anything...