

Hackertopia: Creating a City as a Startup - bokonist
http://intellectual-detox.com/hackertopia-a-better-city/

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NHQ
The service industry will commute 60 miles via underground tunnel to and from
the utopia. All citizen shall agree in writing to disagree on principles.
Criminals, and would-be criminals, will not be allowed to enter the city. The
women will be very pneumatic.

~~~
bokonist
This comment is neither funny or related to the article. I was hoping the top
rated comment would be something that thoughtfully engaged or critiqued the
original post.

~~~
jacques_chester
It's a satirical comment. It recreates the style of the article and mixes in
some suitable rhetoric to highlight how ... well ... _utopian_ your scheme is.

------
kes
I disagree with most of his ideas, but I love the beginning idea: starting a
new city from the ground up.

EDIT: If we're going to make new and arbitrary rules for this place, wouldn't
it be cool if there was a cap on business that only allowed for them to employ
30 people or less? Small businesses that are highly specialized working
together instead of large corporations who have huge amounts of divided
workforces.

~~~
simonjoe
You would be importing a LOT of stuff necessary to keep your city going.

------
abeppu
Am I the only one that takes issue with the whole "democratic municipal
governments can't work" stance? Corporations shouldn't be run as democracies
(with their employees as voters) because the goal of a company is to profit,
not to make its employees happy. But cities _should_ have a primary goal of
furthering the wellbeing of its residents, and without democratic checks, the
city government can create policies that serve only its own coffers.

Imagine you're running the corporation that governs the city. Your aim is to
maximize profits. You do this by under-serving and over-taxing your residents,
but not so much that they're pushed to move away. Because moving, buying
property, and changing jobs or schools is time-consuming, expensive, and
stressful, once you've got residents, the amount of tax-hikes or service cuts
people are willing to tolerate before leaving your city might actually be
quite high. This sounds like a _terrible_ place to live.

~~~
bokonist
As a profit maximizing CEO, I would have to mollify your concerns, otherwise
no one would move to the city and I would make no profits.

When buying property in Hackertopia, the tax _rate_ would be fixed at the time
of purchase. The property valuation (and thus the total amount of taxes) could
fluctuate of course. The valuation would be set by a variation of the old two
people dividing the pie trick. One party (perhaps the homeowner) would set a
valuation for the house. The other party (the city) would have the option of
buying back the property at that price.

The property ownership contract would also guarantee that the provision of
vital services (electricity, gas, water, etc) be provided at non-extortionate
prices (perhaps the contract would specify that the price could be no greater
than cost plus 30%). Thus city government would be contractually banned from
charging $1k a month for water as back door property tax.

Since the city is making money off of property values, it has an incentive to
provide common services such as roads and parks that increase property prices.

A company that screws over its customers or makes promises it then revokes
will not be a highly profitable company for long. For a city to be profitable,
and to maintain high property, it must continually attract new residents. If
the city gains a reputation for screwing its residents, demand for property
will plummet, property prices will drop, tax revenues will fall, and profits
will fall.

The more the city government thinks about long term profits rather than short
term profits the better life will be for the residents. Ideally, the corporate
charter would have some tweaks to make the corporation even more future
oriented than most corporations. For instance, all stock in the company could
be restricted stock that is nontransferable until the owner has owned it for
ten years. Executives would also receive dividend paying, non-transferable
stock instead of stock options or a pension.

------
gnubardt
Jane Jacobs is essential reading for anyone interested in city planning. A lot
of the physical layout and design of 'hackertopia' (layouts encouraging people
to interact, emphasis on multi-modal development, de-emphasis on cars) seem
influenced by her work. _The Death and Life of American Cities_ is a good
place to start.

------
protomyth
"Any kid over five can be allowed to run around the town like a kid in the
50's"

The reason kids over 5 are not running around town is not fear of cars, it is
the fear of abduction. The abduction does not require a car either.

~~~
bmelton
I think that the average abduction would be significantly harder without the
use of an automobile, with many more opportunities for someone to see /
apprehend / alert of the guy carrying a screaming / unconscious / bound child.

In the US, abductions are also very rare. I think the last average I saw was
800,000 a year. Of those, about half were family abductions. After factoring
in runaways, accidents, etc., the number of abductions was down to a quarter,
or something like 200,000. In a population of over 300,000,000, that's pretty
rare indeed (though I admit, high enough to be concerned with in a
metropolitan area).

~~~
bokonist
Only 21,000 (oops, originally wrote 58,000 which was wrong) were stranger
abductions (<http://www.ygoy.com/index.php/child-abduction-statistics/>). Only
115 were "sterotypical kidnappsings" ( child is detained overnight,
transported atleast 50 miles, held for ransom or intended to be kept
permanently or killed).

~~~
bmelton
Thank you -- I think that's the link I was ad-hoccing numbers from, but I
couldn't find it.

58,000 is indeed a much lower number than I was even putting forth, though
again, as irrational a fear as I know it to be, it's still a consideration for
how far my daughter is allowed to go, and the time of her curfew.

~~~
bokonist
21,000 is actually higher than I thought. Very roughly, the average kid has a
0.5% chance of being abducted by a stranger by the time they are 18. That's
much higher than I would expect, I personally don't know of anyone who was
ever abducted by a stranger as a kid. But maybe it's happened more than I
know, it's not something people will generally talk about.

~~~
bmelton
I got .00007%, actually. But I'm notoriously dumb with simple math.

~~~
bokonist
21,000 stranger abductions / 74 million kids under 18 = .000289 = 0.03% chance
of being abducted per year

(1-.03%) = 99.97% chance of not being abducted in a given year

.9997^14 = 99.6% chance of not being abducted in 14 straight years (from age 4
through 17, assuming kids under 4 are virtually never left alone).

Thus there is a 0.4% chance of being abducted by a stranger by age 18. Of
those <1% suffer injury or death. But about half suffer some form of sexual
abuse. The other half are unharmed. So the chance of having a traumatic
abduction by the time a child reaches 18 is ~0.2% or 1 out of 500.

~~~
bmelton
Ah, you win. Mine was 21,000 out of 300,000,000. Thanks for the prompt
correction.

------
aidenn0
"A house can be built for as cheaply as $70k" Not in california. I looked into
building a house, and was given an estimate of $300-500K just for permits!

~~~
bokonist
A 3-bedroom modular home can be $74k to construct (
<http://www.nhmodularhomes.com/prices.htm> ). But I've just realized that
doesn't include permits, foundation, plumbing, etc, which adds another $75k (
<http://www.nhmodularhomes.com/cost_estimates.htm> ). So that's $150k. Paying
$300-$500k for permits is completely insane. What city is that?

------
idiotb
<http://www.lavasa.com/> is somewhat similar and I have been to this city, it
is just amazing.

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bmelton
How? The city aims to be a low-cost way of living, and Hackertopia a for-
profit entity with a surplus to enable donation to charities. Where does the
city's revenue come from? I doubt the property taxes being levied are going to
generate sufficient revenue for infrastructure, payment of civil servants
(which I didn't see mention of), donations to charities and profit.

Further, if everybody that founds the city brings their own jobs, then who's
going to set up the local economy? What funds the initial city development?
Where does the power come from? How much are the utility bills? Who do I buy
my high speed internet from?

Clearly a lot of thought has gone into this, but I highly doubt that enough
thought has. It effectively claims to be the answer to everything, but nothing
ever is.

~~~
bokonist
Utilities (power/water/internet) would be funded like any other real estate
development.

The cities revenues come from real estate taxes. I do think that most cities
spend their money in a wildly inefficient manner, and if they were run as for-
profit businesses they could provide all the essential services and turn a
profit.

But the major upside for the investors in the city corporation would be if the
city owns far more land than the initial development. If you buy ten square
miles of undeveloped land for $10k an acre, then a city of 25k grows up in one
square mile of it, that remaining nine square miles is far, far more valuable
than the original purchase price.

