
Interview with Paul Romer On Hong Kong, Charter Cities and Growth Theory (2015) - nabla9
https://medium.com/econexplainer/interview-with-prof-romer-on-hong-kong-charter-cities-and-growth-theory-85b4c0353cf0
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bayesian_horse
The only way to build economical and cultural (by which I mainly mean
education) wealth is by exponential growth. There are no short-cuts. Invest
(=risk) a too large amount of capital and you get a collapse. Invest too
little, you go nowhere. Put in too much capital from the outside and it can't
be used efficiently.

These kind of charter cities are essentially colonialism. They are supposed to
run on a legal system imposed from another country. Which doesn't work without
a large contingent of police officers, judges, civil servants from that
country. Because, again, just hiring local people doesn't work because as a
population they didn't grow into that mindset yet (but they might in the
future).

And good luck defending a wealthy city, or even a shabby one with wealthy
foreigners, in Somalia from Al Shabab.

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wjossey
[http://www.econtalk.org/romer-on-charter-
cities/?highlight=%...](http://www.econtalk.org/romer-on-charter-
cities/?highlight=%5B%22charter%22,%22cities%22%5D)

For lovers of econtalk.

