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Comment by swframe | Hacker News Reader

I think a "corporate micro-city" might be the solution for poverty in the 3rd world. I think a joint venture with google, facebook, apple, and 1st world governments etc to build a "hong kong/singapore styled city" next to a 3rd world capital could be the catalyst for transforming the country. I don't think providing internet access is enough. You need to break the cycle of poverty from birth to college. And you need a vehicle/brand that the 1st world can invest in/trust. I think you can avoid the obvious pitfalls by creating multiple independent neighboring "corporate mirco-cities" so there is competition for residents.

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>> I think a "corporate micro-city" might be the solution for poverty in the 3rd world.

Funny, I was thinking it contributes to the problem. It clearly creates inequality which can be seen in this article. The company simply doing the minimum to exploit the resources in the area with no spill-over into the larger region. It would be more helpful to the locals if they were vertically integrated right there - producing tires. That would require building more infrastructure and more manufacturing capability and such. But no, they just want to grow the rubber there and keep the higher value stuff elsewhere.

To clarify, I'm not saying "companies=bad" just that companies only have self-interest and are not inherently good for the broader region they inhabit. This is abundantly clear from TFA which I don't think is the message they wanted us to take away.

Interestingly, that's similar to what Firestone did nearly a century ago - built a city in Liberia, and has been the major influence of the city ever since.

I'm not sure about Apple, Google, Facebook, et al (and even less hopeful about the success of building an ultra-modern city right next to an existing, poor-er [by comparison] capital) ... but ... there's a good notion here.

With a large plantation of rubber trees, it makes sense for Firestone. Rather than re-creating silicon valley in the jungle, finding and exploiting an economic resource there - and doing well by the locals at the same time - seems to be a great model to follow.

From the article:

Asked what's needed to turn that around, Flannery says, "More Firestones" — places that have the money, resources and unwavering determination to stop Ebola.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but this sounds like a situation where what we tend to call globalization turns out rather well for all sides.

An idea along these lines is that of the Honduran ZEDEs: http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/startup-city-redux

(I'd link to a less ideological source but libertarians and their fellow travelers are the ones giving them the most comprehensive coverage and the Wikipedia article is atrocious.)

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