Seems like we’ve entered some sort of post-modern neocolonialism. How do we “fix” the broken countries of the world. The neocons under Bush tried to remake the middle east by invading Iraq.[1] Debated with someone here who felt we just needed more time in Afghanistan so a generation could understand good governance.[2] In this article, the thrust seems to be benevolent foreign powers and businesses will lead the way to prosperity. All seem like colonialism without the name and all seem to totally disregard secondary effects.
Read a great article awhile back on HN that talked about the impulse to fix other people’s problems far away from your own.[3] Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff. Instead my main takeaway from the article is get rich in the startup lottery then proselytize your grand vision and plans from your bubble of prosperity. Sell the dream but don’t look in the mirror.
What Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan was radically different and obviously idiotic. They took over two countries by force and then imposed democracy on countries with no democratic traditions.
The proposed neocolonial plan far less problematic. You are not imposing a rule from the outside, which would naturally cause resentment. You get the country to agree to a voluntarily giving away a chunk of the country with preferably few people.
Then people will have to CHOSE to live and work there by moving there. Nobody there will live under European/American/Japanese or whatever rule without having chosen to do so by moving. We know people are capable of accepting foreign rule if it is voluntarily. People do it all the time when they move to Europe or the US.
It seems to me as a much more attractive option to have people being able to move within their own country to get freedom and prosperity rather than having to move all the way to Europe and America and having to deal with completely different languages and customs.
>> Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff
Speaking as someone who currently struggles financially, one of those three things is not like the other....
Homelessness and unaffordable living are things that could potentially threaten me personally. Rising (income) inequality does not. There are bonuses and fat paychecks being received all the time by upper management in a casino nearby where I live. Those well-off managers are not the sort of things that are worth losing sleep over.
Hope that things work out for you. Definitely agreed there's a difference in immediate existential threat between those categories, but concentration of wealth isn't wholly unrelated. Some would argue it's a cause.
I'm expecting a resurgence in colonialist-like approaches. Especially in the context of the Middle East. It's exactly failures like Afghanistan and Iraq that make some consider solutions involving total governance for much more than just a few years. A case can be made for the US having been morally obliged to basically colonize Iraq (and Afghanistan tho I'm less familiar with that one).
I've lived a while in a sub-par country. The incompetence at every level of society is staggering. Even corruption isn't as big a deal as incompetence.
Plenty of people I talk to agree that having the US or Germany or someone just run the government completely would be a huge step up. Honestly I can't find any realistic objection. Just hopeful stuff about educating them, making it better, etc. Approaches that have been tried a long time and simply aren't working. Apart from pride (which doesn't cure infections, get kids in schools, or feed people), there really isn't a reason for those people to object.
The problems of colonialism tended to be human rights, eh? Are we really concerned that Belgium would start cutting hands off in the 21st century? (It's also sort of funny. China's getting big in Africa. No way they're going to treat people there very well. Can't imagine a 21st century British empire in Africa ending up worse than Chinese business domination.)
I chatted to some educated Afghanis and they thought the period of greatest peace and prosperity in their life times was the Russian occupation which the US went to some effort to end. I sometimes wonder if western policies to bring democracy to Islamic areas by bombing them really do much good. We could perhaps just bribe the dictators to up their human rights a bit.
Syria is an ongoing case where there remain options. I think our tactful new foreign secretary may have the right idea that we should hold our noses and work with "the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy" who looks "a bit like Dobby the House Elf" and the "manipulative tyrant Assad". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
Yea the big problem with "opening up" the colonization game is you'll have people fighting over who's the colonizer (tho it's still sort of happening anyways). No doubt Russia might have been decent for them.
Pretty sure he'll back off from that after getting briefed [possibly by Israel if internally won't be enough]. I'd assume the same for Trump if he wins.
Operation Orchard [0] is a good example that Assad's nastiness wasn't just an internal issue that could be ignored. Unless of course he somehow promises to behave this time.
Everyone realizes the "rebels" could turn out to be even nastier guys so no Western power has a clear interest in letting any of the 3 parties win.
As such a ground invasion makes little sense if you have to cede power eventually - there's no guarantee some "good guys" will magically emerge, they won't.
That's were establishing an international colony comes in. Or as some suggest just an international safe zone on some portion of Syrian territory.
We'll see. The UK doesn't have much power in the region compared to the US, Turkey, Iran, Israel et al so what Boris thinks probably won't affect things much. Still a US, Turkey, Assad Putin deal could probably bring some sort of peace and we could still bomb Assad if he tries to get nukes.
I got the opposite impression. My impression is that he's addressing our own problems. And that countries with less evolved rules and, yes, poor, might be the best partners.
Shorter version: Create corporatist deregulated cities in corrupt third world countries and assume that rather than enriching multinationals via lax oversight the project will make poor people less poor. Hard to see what could go wrong with that plan.
Well, it sort of works: massively increasing the wealth of any third world country will shift it from "if you're poor then you starve and die" to "if you're poor then you are begging on the street and sometimes working a lousy job for little money".
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.
I guess it's all a matter of your idiolect. It works, for some values of "works". Maybe it works for the macroeconomist studying national GDP growth rates? Sadly, there are also barbers and truck drivers.
> Well, it sort of works: massively increasing the wealth of any third world country
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).
To be fair, the failings there had to do with the source of wealth being natural resources, rather than innovation per se. I'd also add Russia and Brazil to that list, but there are others. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
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.
I'd say more, lightly regulated cities controlled by another country modeled on Britain running Hong Kong. While HK worked well, they are having problems finding countries to do the Britain role benevolently. HK was set up at gunpoint to facilitate the Brits opium pushing operation which probably wouldn't fly these days.
What do you think will go wrong? Please be concrete.
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.
That thinking works in a perfect world with perfect information, 100% rational agents, and frictionless movement. It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty, culture and a myriad of other practical considerations from food to roads to family preventing them from take the 100% rational actions that you expect them to take.
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.
This is very similar to an argument that libertarians make about their opponents. As long as the government is made up of benevolent geniuses with perfect information about every individual citizen, then socialism is a great idea. In reality, individual preferences are unknowable, and government workers are fallible and have motivations of their own.
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.
I'd guess very few of libertarianism's opponents believe in socialist utopias, and what the article suggests is about as far from an incremental step and one can possibly get...
> I'd guess very few of libertarianism's opponents believe in socialist utopias
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.
"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."
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.
>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?
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".
I count it as failed if the government is spending money from the budget on unnecessary items while any social problem is still unresolved. That includes homelessness, poverty, health-care for the poor/needy/elderly, etc. Same goes for crime, road-fatalities, and a multitude of other things we expect of the government. These should be largely solved problems by now, especially with the technology available these days.
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.
Precisely because of what I said: people aren't 100% rational beings with full information. People, especially in third world, war-torn, poverty-ravaged countries don't have the power to make the "best decision" in to a libertarian free-market approach as you suggest. Some things aren't solved by capitalistic competition.
Again, what bad decision will they make regarding charter cities due to being irrational? Why do you think that Hondurans will make choices so terrible w.r.t. charter cities that they should be forbidden from having that choice?
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.
Failing to coalesce and maintain political support from the host government is just about the most predictable failure mode imaginable.... no true scotsman, indeed.
So basically, any project which politics cancels can then be assumed to be completely unworkable? Basic income can now be rejected since the Swiss considered it then rejected it? Ok.
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.
That's not what he's proposing at all. There is a whole paragraph in the article about how Romer is not a libertarian and recognizes the importance of rules. But some rules are good and some are bad. The electric utility example is a good one: price controls are very popular in third world countries, but just about the worst way to meet whatever objective you want.
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.
Which just sounds like the author trying to make the proposal palatable to non-libertarians (or more precisely, ideological opponents of libertarians) by framing Romer's views as anti-libertarians. Rules are absolutely important to libertarians.
If that's your claim, then you should say that explicitly, and make it clear what your criticism is, rather than making it look like you failed to read the article. "While the intent may be ..., the end result will almost certainly be ..."
All we have to do is figure out how to replicate the efficiency and relative lack of corruption of the British civil service, the relative military superiority of their Navy, the untapped economic power of China, and the political ability to kick the project off with a racist narco-trafficking based trade arrangement enforced with weapons, and just sit back and watch as we yield great benefits in about 100 years.
Why third world? We have tons of ailing dying rust belt and Midwestern cities.
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.
Lower cost of living makes possible economic modes that the already relatively high economic floor in St. Louis makes prohibitive. Plus, the relative benefit of pouring X dollars into an area with lower per capita gdp is much higher: going from 20 cents to $2.20 a day is a much bigger life change than from $10 to $12.
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.
I think your St. Louis Free Economic Zone might get too many people coming for the free money and health care and not enough coming to pay tax for the books to balance.
Seems like it could easily backfire due to gentrification.
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?
What you're describing as "fluff", most people describe as "long-form writing." If you're reading purely for brrt-brrt-clank-insert-information-into-meatbot-head, you're missing out.
Different learning styles and purposes. Even people I know who enjoy descriptive detailed writing when reading a novel like to-the-point list of facts/arguments when reading news and essays.
With few exceptions the long-form articles posted here are all normal articles padded with bullshit, not very in-depth articles. I wouldn't want to read them either.
This idea is brilliant. The problem of finding outside countries to run the cities is perhaps less difficult that it seems. The Hanseatic League and Lombard League cities prospered in large part because they were free from feudal control and could develop local, non-agrarian industries.
The cities need enough outside control to allow the economy to develop but not necessarily complete sovereignty like Hong Kong.
As for making it economically worthwhile for the "overseer" nation and particularly individuals, perhaps that could be solved by sharing in the high economic growth rates that successful charter cities would achieve. If you get that right there would definitely be takers give the current low growth rates in most industrialized nations.
(Paul Romer is one of my favorite economists of all time so maybe I'm biased.)
Against the odds, Honduras was actually willing to give the "charter city" model a go, but the project turned into a disaster before it even got started. Mostly because Paul Romer is an egotistical, antisocial control freak and nobody could work with him.
There's a lesson here for silicon valley types: Being a genius with a great idea doesn't count for anything if you can't work with other humans to bring your idea into reality.
This is character assassination. I've met Paul Romer and have followed his work for decades. People ignore his ideas at their peril. You can't blame him for not being an outstanding administrator at the same time.
It does not really sound as if this project would have worked under any circumstances due to the political issues.
That's a fair criticism of Romer's idea and one that deserves careful scrutiny.
It does beg the question, however, exactly what political problems stopped the Honduras project from going forward. The Podcast cited above focused on the personalities and personal resentments but there was clearly more going on behind the scenes. Romer himself was very circumspect about what actually happened.
For example in the Atlantic article Romer suggests driving things through non-US countries. This might not be pure coincidence.
I remember hearing that podcast and feel the same way. I find it excruciatingly frustrating to hear about smart people who fail to realize when they are undertaking something about which they might seek advice. For instance, did Romer ever even just google "how to persuade people in developing countries" or "working within government bureaucracies"? Doesn't seem like it.
Thanks for linking to the podcast, it was eye opening! Many people commenting here should listen to this before spouting off the same things repeatedly.
It's so frustrating watching people ignoring history and then passionately agreeing with like minded people into tunnel vision solutions.
> WHEN ROMER EXPLAINS charter cities, he likes to invoke Hong Kong. For much of the 20th century, Hong Kong’s economy left mainland China’s in the dust, proving that enlightened rules can make a world of difference.
Charter cities are only possible because they concentrate capital, trade and workforce from mother country. It can not be done globally, entire China can not turn into Hong Kong
China's government is far from perfect, but ever since Deng took over, it has been been implementing policies that resemble British Hong Kong more than they resemble Maoist China -- and it's working just fine.
Life is not a zero-sum game. Rich places get rich not by stealing the cream, but rather by being less evil and stupid as other places.
Most things work better than Maoist China... Getting away from actively sabotaging your industrial and agricultural output with ideologically, rather than reality-based five year plans is a good start. Leaves a lot less dead bodies, too.
I'd say that's not the case with Hong Kong. It didn't rely much on capital or workers from the UK if that's what you mean by the mother country. It flourished mostly as a sensible governed base for Chinese entrepreneurs at a time then China was governed terribly. China has been turning into Hong Kong in many ways.
Assuming this ever worked, and produced good results, what happens when ten or fifteen years later, the corrupt local dictator takes over, all of the administrators flee before the mobs take their lives or nationalize all of their property, and all of the expertise and institutions that kept things going evaporate. Because we have a lot of examples of that happening.
Its a good point. To put it another way, Romer focusses heavily on the system of rules in place, and that is no doubt import in attracting migrants and capital investment, but what about defense? Nobody is going to want to build factories, ports, and the like, unless they are well defended.
The reason Hong Kong worked well wasn't merely the system of rules, it was also the presence and backing of the British military. In the charter city setup, the risk of changing regimes in the host country, and the bad press if the governing country were to intervene, is just too great.
And the British civil service, which regardless of what you think about colonialism have a deserved reputation as one of the most efficient and least corrupt administrative organizations in history.
Maybe the solution is to locate them in countries that are sufficiently weak militarily that they cannot take over the charter cities easily. A lot of places currently meet that criterion.
Medieval cities had walls which were generally enough to keep the feudal overlords out. They were individually quite weak militarily. In Italy at least they succumbed quickly to foreign powers like France after 1494. It's probably bigger outside powers you want to worry about.
Your scenario doesn't seem to be a flaw unique to charter cities. It seems like Venezuela is an example of this happening at the level of an entire sovereign state.
Is giving up sovereignty of a city not the politic speak way to say that a foreign government will rule it with military might? Seems like a toothless leasing of brand name if not. Being able to say "a corrupt dictator won't steal your factory if you build it here" and have it believed is half the point, no? Can't do that without military presence.
The losses from that would probably still be a lot lower than the development aid wasted today. Anyway the locals might actually want to defend their city as they might recent their countries corrupt dictator more than a benevolent foreign power.
Interesting to see this actually advocated as this is exactly the thing I tell my wife when we solve world problems at the kitchen table.
The Syrian refugee crisis got me thinking. Why on earth should so many people travel so far to get to European style rule and safety. If that is what they want, why could we not provided it where they already are?
The current system of dealing with refugees doesn't scale. There ought to be a way where you can allow in a lot of poor people without bringing severe economic strains on a rich country.
The problem when Syrians come to a rich country in Europe is that so many of their valuable skills can not be utilized even marginally, much due to different traditions, language requirements, procedures etc. However if there was a European enclave in Syria which they could move to, that could function using Syrian language and customs combined with European rule at the top.
Obviously Syrians would not naturally want to be ruled by Europeans but that is what they volunteer to when they move to Europe. A European enclave in Syria would be the same. You don't have to move there, but if you do, you have to accept European rule. The benefit is that, while not democracy it means freedom and rule of law.
Hong Kong was never a democracy but people there had freedom. Freedom and democracy is frequently mixed up, but they are not the same. By Freedom I mean that there is a free press, independent courts which apply the same law to all people, not just for the benefit of the rich and cronies of the rulers.
The idea if carried out, likely would work, I think, but would be fraught with many issues centered around power and influence.
This neocolonialist idea would likely not sit well with lots of the same people who have issues with capitalism and historical colonialism. The specter of European colonialism would be hard to escape.
Then there is power and influence. These new cities would who up the host country and would be the envy of the non neocolonial zones. And further has to potential of subverting local culture for a western, Chinese or Japanese one, in a more immediate manner.
So, I feel there are too many cultural factors we would find hard to ignore, even if in practice, the result would be a net positive for the local population. In other words, politics would get in the way of practicality.
Imagine, Baja becoming a US state, in a few decades, it could be like New Mexico, not the richest state but a lot better than it is now. Now imagine how locals would take to the idea (even if individually they might like to immigrate into the US). And then how the Mexican government would take to the idea -a non starter.
The concept of smart cities just seems like an excessively convoluted way of adopting more successful countries' institutions, governance and laws. Which can be great of course, but begs the question: is the host country government (current or the set of most influential parties, assuming it's a democracy) interested in adopting this foreign system at all?
Right - it's a little bit like a design for a perpetual motion machine, using some convolution to distract from the simple reasons for it not working.
The things that make cities open and successful are fairly clear to those who study these things, it's not a secret or a mystery. The things that have prevented potential host countries from adopting those practices successfully on their own (political instability, corruption, whatever) will also prevent them from being a good place for anybody to set up a charter city there.
Here's a politically incorrect thought: we don't need to develop Africa.
We shouldn't assume that everyone has to be like us to be happy. We shouldn't try to "civilize the barbarians" - to use a colonial phrase. Let them live as they live and let them develop themselves at their own pace.
Over the next decade, Africa's population is poised to explode. The great wilderness of Africa will all but disappear, and Africa might become just another blob of concrete, mining, and agribusiness. Desirable? Good for the human species? I think not.
1st Problem of this article: How do WE "over here" fix THEM "over there".
You cannot "fix" another group of people in another country. They have to fix themselves and go through the necessary procedures to stabilize, weed out problems and corruption, and change their culture, people, social mindset, and traditions. All the stable rich countries of today were once violence, corrupt, and environmentally dirty during their earlier years, suggesting a sort of "puberty period" that all nations go through.
One group cannot build a country, achievements, stability for another group. If they try it is almost always only a temporary success, followed by complete failure as soon as the original "building" group pulls out. Google "the white foreigner effect" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115... the most horrifying side effect is that natives purposely handicap themselves to signal need to an outside charity. This leads to dependency.
In the short term good is done and hearts are warmed but in the long term a nation doesn't develop an immunity to its problems. A charter city would be no different. People would become dependent on the charity, funds, resources, and achievement coming out of the foreign created character city. What incentive do they have to create their own city? If they tried how could they compete with the foreign city?
2nd Problem: The solution and problem in the article is based on an emotional desire to uplift another group of people. Don't you think they want to lift themselves up? Do you believe they want you to lift them up?
What the article suggests, which is basically "nation creation communism" will actually do more damage to a country than good. Because now the native original people of a country cannot compete with the success, wealth, and power of the "colonizers" who are trying to uplift them out of poverty. This is the same series of ideas that sound good and make you feel good but actually cause damage. Countries grow and mature and stabilize on their own at their own natural rate. Trying to artificially "fix" each country ahead of its time, I believe, is immoral. That's like giving your kid steroids because you want them to hurry up and grow faster.
Your arguments are against the current development model not against charter cities.
The problem with the present arrangement is that western powers are not in charge, they merely give the money. This is causing the dependency you speak of. They are trying to solve the development problem merely with money. That fails for exactly the reasons you quote.
A charter city doesn't need to offer money. The idea of a charter city isn't about pouring money into a foreign country it is about offering western quality rule and regulations. Hong Kong was not an expense for Britain. It was an income. Hong Kong did not prosper because Britain poured money into it but because Britain ran it.
That is a big difference. People would not depend on charity, funds or resources from the charter city because it would not provide any of that. It would only provide the rule of law and uncorrupt government without red tape. That means people can go to the charter city to start a business without being tied down. You know in your average developing country setting up just a simple bakery legally requires over a hundred days of full time work dealing with bureaucracy. That is no joke, you can read Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto about the subject.
Read a great article awhile back on HN that talked about the impulse to fix other people’s problems far away from your own.[3] Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff. Instead my main takeaway from the article is get rich in the startup lottery then proselytize your grand vision and plans from your bubble of prosperity. Sell the dream but don’t look in the mirror.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Life_in_the_Emerald_C...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412172
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840