
Former “Seasteaders” Come Ashore To Start Libertarian Utopias In Honduran Jungle - saalweachter
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-ashore-to-start-libertarian-utopias-in-honduran-jungle
======
jhuckestein
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...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-
incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/308134/*)

~~~
nostromo
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.

~~~
nirvana
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.

~~~
r00fus
The Euro experiment about a completely mobile and unhindered workforce is very
very unpopular in western Europe (esp. the UK).

The same principal is the enemy of the Honduran policy to allow autonomous
zones within the country. Either the agreement to guarantee Hondurans
residency within these enclaves will be ignored/suppressed, or there will be
clashes if the enclave is successful - people without jobs move to where there
are jobs - just so they can eke out a living.

Possibly the end-sum will be like the rich neighborhoods in US ciites which
basically use the nearby poor areas as cheap labor pools and crime sinks.

~~~
grimboy
I think that's an unfair characterisation of public opinion of the Euro
"experiment". (North America did federated states a while back though,
remember?) I mean maybe if you get all your information from the Daily Mail.
Definitely got the scare quotes and odd wording going. Yes, there are groups
that are opposed to it, although the most vocal all to often are later
revealed to be complete bigots, but there are many groups in favour. It helps
that even though there are poorer and richer member states the wealth and
employment gap isn't _that_ large. Certainly it's smaller than between
Honduras and US immigrants. The common currency has been much more of a
problem.

~~~
ricardobeat
You're clearly not a foreigner. You can see and feel that opinion everyday all
over western europe, specially the UK, even if you're just a tourist. Even
Paris seems cosy and friendly after being in England.

~~~
msh
Huh, i have been to England many times and except for the hostile airports I
haven't encountered this.

------
Eliezer
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.

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

~~~
barry-cotter
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.

------
sgentle
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.

~~~
snitko
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.

~~~
Aloisius
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.

~~~
snitko
You are assuming government is immune to all of the exploitation desires that
businesses are not, and that is not true.

~~~
saraid216
It's not immune, but governments tend to be formed with the mandate to prevent
those exploitations. This makes them more resistant to those desires. The more
people in that government, the more social pressure there is to keep those
exploitations minimal so that they can remain undetected.

That's what the difference between a government and a business is. They are
otherwise the same.

~~~
snitko
I don't see how staying in the office for 4 years practically indefinitely,
makes you more resistant to exploit the opportunities it provides. On the
other hand, when business does something customers don't like, it loses
customers, money and goes out of business very quickly (unless it is bailed
out by the government!).

~~~
saraid216
> I don't see how staying in the office for 4 years practically indefinitely

I don't see how this is a necessary requirement of government. Instead of
answering you directly, I'd suggest reading this: [http://www.amazon.com/The-
Origins-Political-Order-Revolution...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-
Political-Order-Revolution/dp/0374227349)

------
Tichy
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).

~~~
padobson
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
"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".

~~~
waffle_ss
Libertarian government is pretty much an oxymoron. Libertarianism applied in
that sense is anarcho-capitalism, where everyone is free to do as they please
and the only controlling force (i.e. the law) is the free market - no gov't at
all. There are some people like David Friedman who have tried to make the case
for how such a system could realistically work, but I'm still unconvinced
(largely because the wealthy will have a monopoly on force).

I'm more a fan of his father, Milton, who was very pragmatic and not totally
against gov't.

~~~
Zakharov
Extreme libertarianism is anarchy, but the vast majority of libertarians are
not anarchists.

~~~
5teev
Do you mean "anarchy" in the sense of "chaos" or "absence of government"?

------
ChuckMcM
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.

------
SoftwareMaven
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>

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

~~~
w1ntermute
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.

~~~
001sky
Yes, HK was british protectorate, sucessful in trade and established in law.
Arguably, the rule of law and institutions was the underpinning its business
success (and weath). While south and central america, had a bad experience
with outside influences.

------
neofeudal_serf
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...

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

------
Czarnian
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.

------
wmf
A related thought-provoking rant from Mencius Moldbug on charter cities and
colonialism: [http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-
cr...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-
romer-and-back-again.html)

------
mhartl
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.)

------
ubasu
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.

~~~
stickfigure
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.

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

~~~
stickfigure
Just to be clear, until 2009 Honduras had one of the most stable governments
in Central America. My experience was in 2008. I found that while Hondurans
are generally warm, anyone I interacted with in an official capacity was
officious and unpleasant. It's like an entire country run by the DMV.

My closing comments when I left Honduras are here:
[http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8366876&po...](http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8366876&postcount=345)

(you can browse a few posts earlier for more pics - sadly I didn't take a lot
during my customs experience)

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not clear you can separate "the people"
from "the government" here. The cruft that is the Honduran civil system just
accumulated over decades - it wasn't imposed by a dictator or anything like
that.

------
stcredzero
_> 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.

------
aero142
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.

~~~
saalweachter
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.

~~~
Nrsolis
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.

~~~
smacktoward
In fairness, it's hard to weep over this particular violation of sovereignty.
The US gave Pakistan _ten years_ to round up bin Laden using their own
internal police and military systems, and it became abundantly clear over that
time that Pakistan had no interest in doing so.

If you're going to shelter the world's most wanted criminal within your
borders, and refuse any chance of bringing him to justice, you probably
shouldn't be too surprised if justice ends up coming to him instead.

~~~
Nrsolis
Hey, I'm not complaining. I think it needed to be done.

But my point still stands: if the sea-steaders thought they could escape into
some "international law" zone, then they were sadly mistaken. It's more like a
"we dont really care...until we do" zone.

IIRC Greenpeace found this out when commandos (French) boarded their ship.

------
mmphosis
_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/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ho.html)

------
padobson
Entrepreneurial solutions to government. Why not?

~~~
MartinCron
Human rights, mostly.

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

~~~
nirvana
Because he thinks government beating people over the head, robbing them, and
then giving the money to him is "protecting human rights", and the idea that
people should be allowed to live in peace, without being subjected to this
violence, is a "violation of human rights".

~~~
MartinCron
Putting words into someone's mouth, especially when they are such a profound
misinterpretation of meaning, isn't the quality of discourse I have come to
expect from HN. We can do better than this.

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

~~~
danneu
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.

~~~
erichocean
Thankfully, military governments have a near flawless record.

------
JVIDEL
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.

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

~~~
nirvana
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.

~~~
philwelch
> 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.

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

No, there was a deadline, and a contract. That deadline passed, and the
contract became null. The FSP is dead, according to its own bylaws. What
continues to this day is a fraud. Of course, since that deadline was almost a
decade ago, and the people running the FSP took down all the info from the
website, and have been pretending otherwise, most people have never heard any
of this.

~~~
philwelch
In any case I still count it as an attempt.

------
Zakharov
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.

~~~
wazoox
The authoritarian-capitalist city state exists: Singapore.

------
pbreit
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.

------
jeffool
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.

~~~
daveman
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).

------
drcode
Two words:

Kool Aid.

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

~~~
cobrausn
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.

~~~
Apocryphon
Foreign enterprises and Central American states don't exactly have the
healthiest history together:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic#Exemplar_republ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic#Exemplar_republics)

Even if this experiment succeeded, it would be under different circumstances
from previous stories. Even though Hong Kong and Singapore were British
colonies, it seems like that rule had greater legitimacy than the current
Honduran government, which arose through coup.

------
qwertzlcoatl
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!

------
rdtsc
"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."

------
JabavuAdams
So, how do you defend it?

------
nirvana
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!

~~~
meric
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...](http://www.ipd.gov.hk/eng/intellectual_property/copyright/copyright_2011_bill.htm)

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...](http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/04/world/asia/hong-kong-national-
education-protests/index.html)

"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."

~~~
aristus
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.

------
goggles99
Wow.. why didn't anyone ever try this before??? :P (it's Friday and some
people will never study history)

