I think I’m halfway with you. A city is a people and a culture more so than a location (with some fuzzy recursive causality there) and these seem to be attempts to build structures not cultures.
On the other hand, I think we’ve reached a compute limit in our current structures so it’s good people are trying. I’d like to see someone who is as practical as a farmer take a crack. Conservative utopians seem to just converge on “there should be a king” and liberals on “what if everyone just had sex with everyone else?” Which both bore me as ideas.
>I think I’m halfway with you. A city is a people and a culture more so than a location (with some fuzzy recursive causality there) and these seem to be attempts to build structures not cultures.
This hasn't described western country cities in a long time. Cities in the west today are people with little uniting them besides economic interests. They aren't *a* people and they aren't *a* culture. They're multiple peoples with multiple cultures that by no means have anything in common beyond wanting to live in an urban environment. A charter city would be composed of a much more congruently cultured population than New York or London would.
"Conservative utopians seem to just converge on “there should be a king” and liberals on “what if everyone just had sex with everyone else?” Which both bore me as ideas."
The former at least has some hope of producing something of value
First part is a bit complicated but I kind of agree. There’s definitely a lot to the idea we have non geographical nations inside of our phones. I’m looking forward to the Balaji book.
Second part, this is a theory vs practice problem to my mind. Certainly kingdoms have produced enormous value in the past but I just can’t see the steps you take from what we have where a guy says “I should be a king” and gets a bunch of people to say “yes you are wonderful” and then they all get together in a healthy productive nation.
To be clear I *want* to see a better world work out. But I think what we need is something closer to a new religion for people to glom onto.
Not to be self promotery but there are some answers to this on my substack. For some value of nation, I think the big things you could get are adjudication, coordination of resources, and status. Eventually I think physical nations have to become digital nations rather than digital nations becoming physical nations, though. So I think based on what I know of him, I’m opposite of Balaji there.
The main things nations have always provided and always will is protecting you from other nations with big sticks, and using those same big sticks to resolve/arbitrate/enforce disputes within the nation.
Everything else is secondary to that.
If I am a member of "prosperity coin nation" which gives me a job and a community and a currency, if it also cannot protect me from my neighbors what on earth good is it? At that point it is just some hyper advanced club or MLM scheme.
I am a member of nation A, my neighbor of nation B. I don't like where he put his shed, it is 4 ft on my property. My nation is helping me how here?
Keep slinging those slogans. I'm sure the horror of expropriation will be palpable amid all the peace and prosperity. See, I can do it too!
Seriously, and to comply with the comment policy, my understanding is that the land was uninhabited and of minimal value to anyone, which is exactly why it was chosen. That's not to say there will be no conflicts, nor anything done wrong by either Prospera or the Honduran government in pushing the project, nor anyone left behind, but every policy has tradeoffs. Given the uneven success of traditional states the world over, trying something new seems like a good idea.
Specifically as to whether anything was expropriated, I truly don't know and honestly don't much care. The reality is that the land is part of Honduras, and the Honduran government disposed of it in a manner they saw fit. Such is the law in virtually every nation. As far as I know, excepting those which still retain allodial title in like noble families, the state is the actual owner of all land. Landowners merely own it at the sufferance of government. I forget the exact property law term for it, but such is the case even here in the United States. As long as the government pays you, it can force you to sell. I don't know what procedures Honduran law demands for this kind of compulsory purchase, but if they were followed I'd probably be satisfied. If they weren't, those wronged should sue the Honduran government. Probably, you could shame Prospera into shelling out.
It wasn’t long? It was more than 250 years of dense history (often featuring native princes using the colonizers as pawns in their own internecine struggles) before, for instance, the EIC went bankrupt and the kingdom annexed the company’s Indian territories. The superficial similarities of events appear to be blinding to almost everyone. Just like how in foreign policy it’s always 1938, in trade policy it’s always 1600.
And the European India companies were always public-private, mostly owned by the state from the inception. If prospera is associated with any government, it’s Honduras’ own. More than that, it intends to make worthless land valuable by the industry of its people and the dynamism of its government, not by its control of natural resources or proximity to markets. The colonizers sought the best and most developed land for their first acquisitions, or if they could not get such, as close as they could. Plus promising spots along the route between Europe and Asia to provide infrastructure (watering and provisioning, or later coaling) for trade and expansion.
None of whom live on the site. Lots of people right here at home object strenuously when new housing or a new train station elevator is to be built in their neighborhood. I wonder if there’s a name for such people... Nope. Can’t think of it. But they’re a menace, holding back development, making everyone (even themselves) poorer, and fostering endless conflict.
I’m sure the Honduran government that authorized is it was corrupt, just like I’m sure the new government that has walked back ZEDEs is corrupt. That’s the reality in Honduras. When they do the right thing, I think we should regard it as an improvement, not as sinister.
I think that makes a good slogan, but that the real-world choice is: is it worth letting some people experiment with a small patch of unoccupied land nobody was using anyway, if it might lead to thousands of people being lifted out of poverty and given otherwise unattainable levels of safety and freedom. It really surprises me how much people who aren't even Honduran are willing to sacrifice for the principle of Honduran sovereignty being undiminished over a patch of land that didn't even have any people on it to appreciate it.
Yes. Democracy is only worth anything to the extent it leads to greater prosperity or individual freedom than the alternative.
Moreover, in this case, people can vote with their feet. People are only subject to a ZEDE if they choose to move to one, or to accede to one, or possibly if their landlord accedes to one, in which case they can move out.
Didn't a democratic government set up the ZEDE legal framework? What's undemocratic about it? You realize in a democracy 51% of people could vote themselves all your stuff any time they want, right?
Applying this principle to America, every legal change for the last fifty years ought be rolled back because of the influence of special interest groups (military industrial complex, pharma, tech, police union, teacher union). Or am I misunderstanding?
Honduras' GDP is about $2,400 per capita. If someone can double or triple that number, even just in a particular city, I don't know that I'd care who was sovereign and who wasn't.
Okay, I'll take up the conspiracy theory challenge. Here we go.
If you draw a straight line between Auroville and Epcot, it goes *right through* the Sahara desert. If you were an alien species trying to set up a worldwide communications grid, wouldn't you start with two giant multi-faceted metallic balls that are far enough apart for proof-of-concept, but don't have a lot of humans in the way? ALSO, wouldn't you just use long-distance mind control to convince already tripped-out artist-y/mystic-y people to build the prototype grid so you wouldn't have to actually drop these golf ball things on the planet yourself (embarrassing!) Yes, you would.
If you'll settle for a combination religious movement/interpretative dance troupe, the Shen Yun folks already have a compound on ~400 acres in upstate NY with apparently a few hundred permanent residents.
In a sense it's a very well built up and securely defended model city, if the model is a very generous interpretation of pre-communism Chinese culture.
There was an unused prison for sale remarkably cheap in Saratoga county I think. Unfortunately, the sale had to be approved by specific government officials.
I vaguely hope that Disney tries to make Storyliving be something other than "a planned community." Like, they have been doing some innovative things with immersive experiences in the Star Wars portion of the park and the hotel.
Living in a community that Disney tried to weave some kind of entertainment experience through the basic experience of just living there would probably not be for me, and I expect it would end up being not really for anyone, but it would be interesting, and it's not like anyone is getting hurt.
Like, just as a pretty low-key example, they could develop a fake "history" of the town with an interesting narrative, and have a few semi-hidden spaces and maybe some plaques or something, maybe a once-every-few-months appearance by some cast members to seed clues, and the people who live there might enjoy unravelling "what happened at the founding of our town" and finding some cool designed public spaces they could hang out in.
It wouldn't be anything revolutionary, of course, but maybe it'd be a little shared experience that could kindle a connection with your neighbors.
Maybe this has been discussed before, but legally could someone form a charter county or other sub-national entity, within the United States? Like, pick out a plot of rural land and get the feds to exempt it from state laws- allowing a sort of special economic zone here in the US (yes, federal laws are burdensome, but in practice federal regulators can't be everywhere, and at least you're not covered by the state bureaucracy too).
If it's not workable within the lower 48, maybe picking an island territory that the US controls could be a viable option- Samoa, say, or the Virgin Islands (or even Puerto Rico!) A free trade economic zone with lower taxes and less burdensome regulations, that openly attracts foreign capital
I'm just speculating here, but I think in the US you'd probably have the best chances of doing something by convincing some native Americans to do it on their land?
I think there's something in the Constitution about not splitting states up, which I think this would do, since AFAIK all land in the States is part of some state already.
I wonder if you could get a US charter city by renting half of an Indian reservation (the Indians keep the other half) from a friendly tribe who agree that the laws on your half are whatever you want.
> Step four is “a[n] extensive system of charter cities akin to Singapore or Hong Kong”.
Singapore and Hong Kong are both cities full of people of well above average intellect, founded by people/governments who were capable of creating and running successful nation states. Without these things, there's absolutely no reason to imagine this will work.
Africa has a much smaller pool of high intellect people to draw upon than China/East Asia, so even if you manage to cobble together enough of them for a potentially functional city state like this, you will have deprived the rest of Africa of people it desperately needs. Just as in regular immigration advocacy, the people who ostensibly care most about helping Africa are the ones most vigorously advocating for brain drain that it cannot afford.
There was a very concerted attempt in the case of Hong Kong to not be subject to local conditions that made trade difficult. That's a pretty charter-city notion of have thought?
Modern Singapore is often seen to have started in 1819. British Hong Kong started in 1841.
When do you want to stop the clock?
I'd say at the latest you can say that they are significant today. That's about 200 years for Singapore. Not sure whether that qualifies as 'a few centuries"?
Less conservatively, Hong Kong was already important at least 50 years ago, and also started later than Singapore.
I had misremembered them as being founded a century or so earlier! But still, it’s about a century (probably more for Singapore) before they became significant.
A century to go from "Fishing village of a couple hundred" to "Globally significant centre of commerce and trade." is a very impressive takeoff in my opinion.
If the African versions can achieve the same success on the same timescale, I'd consider that an outstanding accomplishment.
What on earth would they be offering? HK and S were literally outposts of the largest most powerful nation at the time, and had huge catchment areas that were less developed around them.
If this was going to work for Africa, I would imagine like um giving Zanzibar to China National Petroleum or something? That might see Zanzibar significantly more wealthy in 100 years compared to what it would be otherwise?
Africa has a large & growing population, so a small percentage could still form a viable charter city. And then that charter city could benefit its neighbors via trade.
"Muchos resentidos sociales en las redes." means "A lot of social resentment online." He's basically saying, "It's all going well but people are complaining online anyway."
https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ is about the history of Epcot as a whole but includes very detailed research about the Reedy Creek Improvement district. Also, I hate Twitter search so I'm not going to find the link, but the video's creator had a lot of entertainingly harsh words about all of the journalists that became overnight experts on the subject that he spend months researching.
I officially love Afropolitan on Terra Ignota vibes alone. I don't think they'll succeed, but I really hope they do, in part because I want people to see more genuinely innovative and good stuff come out of Africa.
I took a gander at the Minicircle genetic testing NFT. I am not entirely clear where you are supposed to buy one, or for how much, but at current rates it is redeemable for 1ETH=$1176 and requires the owner (test subject) to go out of pocket for 8 DEXA body image skins which seems to be, conservatively, $1600?
Comparing Disney to what’s happening in Honduras is nuts. Because 1) Disney didn’t actually build the EPCOT city it’s just a very large corporate campus with hotels. 2) They decided to pick a very aggressive fight with the host territory on a policy that had nothing to do with their district’s status.
Yeah, it's crazy that a media company, of all things, would try to exercise their right to free speech! Disney has famously never had any interest in tapping into cultural trends, so why would they care about gay rights?
Did Disney do anything aggressive? I thought they just advocated about one minor law, rather than the usual fights about significant things like land or money.
I am still kind of confused how one can make long-term plans for building some large project in a country where a Marxist government can come in and confiscate everything at any moment. I mean yes, theoretically US government could do it to anybody too, but the chances US votes in a (fully) Marxist government for now are very low. Not all countries have such traditions. Whatever the old laws said, the Marxists can always proclaim these laws were passed by corrupt bourgeoisie dogs, and The People can not be bound by such tricks. So I'd imagine the question is less of what some or other law says and more of whether a particular project has some powerful friends which could put pressure on the Marxists to not just confiscate everything and put the founders against the wall (if they don't have common sense to flee in time). If there are no such powerful friends, I don't see how any letter of the law would protect anybody.
Sometimes you've got to roll the dice. If I were braver, I'd be one of them. And if I were Prospera, I'd look into buying a military at some point, but good insurance policies plus White & Case should suffice until there's really a lot to lose.
Buying a military that can keep even a relatively small but determined national government at bay - if you are not another national government - may not be an easy thing to do, though I imagine not impossible, and having historical precedent. But also brings the risk of actual shooting confrontation - which is not what the investors would want to hear, especially if it gets to Western media which would not treat "corporate military shoots poor government troops" very kindly, especially given how many of them are openly or secretly sympathize with anything Marxist.
You'd have to tread lightly, both for the reasons you cite and for fear of doing something yourself which might revoke the ZEDE agreement. If you could be portrayed as the aggressor, it probably wouldn't go well. The PMC would probably be much more valuable as a deterrent than an actual combat force.
Once the Honduran armed forces actually show up to re-occupy the land (like various national armies did with the "diplomatic" territorial adjustments in Europe circa 1937-1940), you'd probably want to admit defeat and rely on the by-now very impressive roster of insurance policies. I'm talking like over a trillion dollars in total insurance against this kind of thing, if Prospera has something like 50,000 residents.
TL, DR: corporation vs. government, in the government's domain of violence, ends in curbstomp victory for even small governments over large corporations. Historically, the only times "megacorporations" have that level of autonomy and/or martial power is when they are acting as agents or partners of a state, e.g. the various East India Companies.
That post doesn't really show that. It mostly discusses that the biggest companies can't take on the strongest countries: East India Company vs. UK, Walmart vs. US. The more relevant comparison here (considering the size of the entities) would be EIC vs. a native Indian state, or Walmart vs. Honduras: Honduras's military spending is ~$200M, or 1.5% of Walmart's net income.
I don't think that a private company taking on a country by force would go well, but that's mostly because, today, the US and other leading powers would side against the company.
What I mean is I expected examples of cool megacorp vs government action, ending with the corporation curbstomped, but the article didn't deliver. Are there any examples of companies fighting governments, other than the chartered companies vs. Indian, Southern African etc. polities?
Not that I know of. Which is sort of the point - corporations are not stupid, and they are not generally run by suicidal people. When governments, even small ones, tell corporations, even large ones, "give us all your stuff and go home", corporations *always* say "OK, I guess we're out of business here, thank you for not putting us in jail" and not "this means WAR!"
They might complain to a more powerful government and hope it intervenes in their behalf, but they know better than to try to fight a war against even a pissant banana-republic government.
Lots of interesting cases in South America to consider. Nacro States? Banana Republics?
That said, there have been plenty of times where states took what a multinational company built and kicked them out. Lots of oil/gas examples, but also things like the controversial shoe/shirt sweat shops. A number of them "ended" after the company had establishing the factory, ran them for a while and then the government kicked them out but still kept/ran/copied the factory themselves.
I always thought there was something of a Catch-22 about charter cities: their best scope for improvement is where the quality of existing governance is low, but low quality governments in the area are thereby less likely to respect the charter. Seasteads are a different story in that they don't start out by depending on any government.
In the end the only thing that matters for *true* sovereignty is how many guns you have. ZEDE isn't much different from Ukraine in that regard. Those with big heavy guns will subjugate those without them. This was the case 10 thousand years ago and it will continue to be the case for as long as humanity exists. All who doubt this basic principle will eventually lose their money and/or their life.
This seems false. Texas now has the ability to set abortion policy that Joe Biden's government in Washington doesn't want. They have this right because America basically follows the rules sort of to some degree, in a way not directly related to how many guns Texans vs. feds have. Honduras also has rules, and although they follow them less, that amount is nonzero. I don't know if that will be enough to protect Prospera long-term, but it doesn't seem like a 0% chance.
But Joe Biden *doesn’t* have enough guns to take on Texas? If he tried, there would be a new Civil War and no one wants to try and fight that again. Not to mention all the US army soldiers who would suddenly revolt if you asked them to go shoot on the streets of Texas.
I agree this is true, but irrelevant. If it helps, sub in "Vermont" for "Texas", even though I don't think there are any existing conflicts between DC and Vermont.
I understand that myst_05 is effectively arguing that enough of the people with big guns (as of now) think Texan government is legitimately able to set abortion policy Joe Biden doesn't like. In other words, as long as that holds, Texans have a sort-of partial "ownership" of those big heavy guns to implement their will. But that is condition on a SCOTUS ruling and the big guns heeding it.
Compare and contrast Czar Nicholas II, who could trust Russian army would execute his commands in 1914, but no longer could in 1917. Nicky lost the legitimacy and the big heavy guns.
The real question is: can a ZEDE trust in the Honduran big guns viewing their claims legitimate or not if there is a conflict with Honduran government? If they can not, the ZEDE exists at the pleasure of Honduran government and is not sovereign.
What can the WTO or whoever else enforces international trade treaties do to Honduras if it reneges on its treaty obligations? I think there would probably be some significant cost to Honduras if that happened. Incentives matter.
>WTO or whoever else enforces international trade treaties
What countries have done in trade disputes: raise customs duties, issue sanctions, embargoes, start a war.
All of those measures ultimately require ability to inflict controlled violence to enforce them. And if the independence of your country depends on other countries to enforce measures against a hostile neighbor, your sovereignty sounds limited. And we are not talking about a defensive pact or genuine security guarantees by great powers, but a WTO trade policy.
I agree that a combination of legitimacy and guns is important, I'm just trying to argue that legitimacy is important!
More specifically: legitimacy, if defined as "legitimacy among a group of people who has guns", screens off any reason to worry about how many guns different people have directly. In a functioning government like the US, since the military has much bigger guns than anyone else and is pretty committed to respecting legitimacy, legitimacy matters more than guns. In Honduras, things are more complicated, but it looks like part of what would happen if they shut down Prospera is that it would break a treaty that countries with strong notions of legitimacy are also party to, and those countries would take some of Honduras' stuff in exchange.
Don’t Vermont and the federal government have some big disagreements about marijuana legality and immigration law? (DC has those same disagreements with the feds.)
If Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016, Texas would have exactly as many guns as they do now (if not more). But Texas wouldn't have the ability to set abortion policy.
You claim that the number of guns is the "only thing that matters". But I think it's absurd to suggest that the number of guns that Texas has is the "only" reason Biden isn't sending the army to shoot on the streets of Texas. It absolutely does not logically follow from "Biden disagrees with Texas's abortion policy" that "Biden wishes to coerce a change of policy through military force, and the only thing stopping him is gun ownership rates in Texas." Texas's sovereignty, like the sovereignty of other states with fewer guns, is protected by a lot of other things before the right to bear arms would become relevant.
Texas' sovereignty is protected by respect for the law at state and federal levels, which depends on whether everyone think the rules for establishing law have been followed closely enough, and which in turn dictates which direction all those guns are pointed in. So if SCOTUS had continued to uphold RvW in 2022 and Texas tried to pass an abortion ban, everyone thinks the Texas state government followed fewer rules than the fed did, and most of the guns end up pointed at those upstart Texas legislators.
If SCOTUS overturns RvW and Texas passes the same ban and Biden tries to stop it, things get "interesting" in the proverbial Chinese sense, because a lot of people will think the Biden administration followed the fewest rules, but an awful lot of other people still seem to think SCOTUS is the one not following rules, therefore Texas also isn't, and Biden is, so... some unknown number of guns gets pointed at those upstart Texans and also at that activist Biden.
I mostly agree with you, but I think "Biden tries to stop it" is still ill-defined in this scenario. Biden does what, exactly? Sends the army to depose the governor/legislature? I don't think any serious person could think that's a plausible possibility. If it's something more like "Biden withholds federal money from states with abortion bans"...well, I don't think that's particularly likely, but it's more plausible and probably would not lead to guns coming out.
I was being vague, yes. The only point I was trying to make above is that following the rules breeds respect for said rules which motivates which way the guns point. To put it another way, I think myst_05 was being overly simplistic... but the guns do matter. And the specifics of what Biden does don't really make a difference on that point.
So, where those guns go will hinge on which rules are followed and how carefully and what everyone thinks everyone else's intent is, which is why things get "interesting" rather than "obviously everyone is going to take the same side". In your scenario, I agree, Biden's not likely to depose the state government... but maybe he just sends the National Guard in escort ladies to the clinic? He gets a nice Brown v. BoardOfEd-esque photo op, and the state can't do much about that without looking horrible, but someone on Biden's staff will be running the calculation of how many Democrat voters that will drive to the polls, vs. voters angry at the fed stomping on state sovereignty plus the usual voters angry that they didn't get their abortion ban.
Or he takes the easier option and announces withholding of funds. Same calculation; different inputs. And someone will be asking whether tying funds to previously-overturned-federal-policy-that-the-current-executive-still-wants-to-enforce is against the rules.
You are right that it would probably come down to financial transfers if a state decides to get disobedient (and actually has clear support of its population). The Fed government would threaten to stop sending money, the state would threaten back. And it would be interesting to see where it went from there, but it would start with money.
This part "gotten in touch with the governing body of the Central American-US free trade agreement" is mistaken: what happened (and what the linked article said) is that they engaged in consultations with the Honduran government itself, as a preliminary step to initiate arbitral proceedings under the CAFTA-DR agreement (a free trade agreement of which the US and Honduras are party).
This is very typical of these kind of investment treaties, and usually lasts up to six months, and then their counsel (White & Case is indeed one of the top firms in this field) should be able to start the arbitral proceedings. And then give it a good five years before an award comes out - by which time the government might have changed already.
(For context, I am a specialised journalist/academic in the field, happy to answer further questions about all this. We are monitoring this case closely, it's an unusual one.).
I have to admit I'm confused by this. Is the idea that if Honduras breaks any of its previously-written rules about Prospera, they've violated a trade agreement? What happens if you violate a trade agreement? Do Honduras' trade agreement partners care enough to pressure them over this?
Possibly. Trade policy is used to push back against all kinds of political developments that the stronger trade partner doesn't like, with variable results. The USA is vastly Honduras' largest trade partner, 35% export and 40% export. Their next largest partners are Germany (8% export) and Guatemala (10% import).
If Honduras is seen to be flip-flopping on domestic reforms (such as the ZEDE), and ones that are designed to improve the ease of doing business which the USA is expecting will improve the competitiveness and growth of the Honduran economy, that could bring consequences generally, both in terms of how the US does trade policy, and in terms of how private companies operate in the nation.
If it's a violation of an international agreement, it could possibly lead to forfeiture of some of the benefits of the agreement, such as most favored nation status or tariff exemptions or preferential trade zones, or just the loss of the economic opportunities created by the agreement. It seems like these treaties are often made simply for the purpose of facilitating foreign direct investment, and essentially the recipient state will grant certain special rights to enumerated private investors to improve their ability to operate in the recipient state. I have no idea, in this particular case, whether the repeal of the ZEDE law amounts to such a breach of any of the no doubt many treaties that govern trade between the USA and Honduras.
Of course, the US has to tread carefully in how it pressures the Honduran government, if it does at all, for fear of looking neocolonialist. Also, and for that same reason, a Democratic administration will likely be less willing to exert such pressure. Probably, in the end, Prospera is just too small a fish for the government to make a stink over. As Damien says, they can pursue arbitration if need be.
The 'trade' here is deceiving; in fact, CAFTA-DR is part of a generation of trade treaties that includes a chapter on investment protection - this chapter is being invoked here.
Investment protection treaties/chapters have two main attractive features: strong (because vague) protections against mistreatment, including uncompensated expropriation; and access to international arbitral proceedings, to obtain a judgment (called an award) in the investor's favour (which can then executed nearly everywhere against the state's foreign assets).
States win most of these arbitrations, though, and investors don't necessarily recover most of what they asked for - but that's still attractive, and it's likely that a third party financer is being involved in this case (e.g., financing the arbitration legal costs, typically a few millions USD, against a cut of the final award).
I took a look at Minicircle's therapies. Most of them seem plausible (long-term delivery of antibodies/growth factors) but the "GENE THERAPY FOR LOW TESTOSTERONE" could go horribly wrong if they don't pay close attention to hormonal feedback loops. Also depending on how they do the hTERT therapy it may have a risk of cancer.
Unfortunately they don't provide any details on the actual design of their gene therapies.
The whitepapers got passed around the biohacking community a while back, and as an investor I could almost certainly look into it for ya. Idk if they'd say yes though, those details are their valuable intellectual property
Sure. The obvious "low testosterone gene therapy" would be LH and I'm particularly worried that they've overlooked the fact that LH needs to be released in pulses to be effective; constant LH production shuts down the HPG axis.
OOH, I understand that making working and living spaces pretty is mostly a matter of will and vision. OTOH, I have a hard time taking seriously a "factory" whose main feature is a terrace with what looks like a bar.
Have the people making those designs ever been in a factory of any kind? Those places are loud, dirty and smelly. The best way to make a good resting/eating area is to put it far away from all of that, not fancy sloped roofs.
Yeah, I REALLY wish he had survived a few more years. He had so many mad social scientist plans. I'm sure most or all of them would have gone terribly (designing better social systems is actually very hard), but we'd have a ton more data on how some interventions work.
I mean, 'lots of interesting data' is the realistic scenario, which is already pretty good.
But I was thinking more along the lines of 'EPCOT works well, grows into an international empire of charter city/theme parks, Disney becomes a quasi-country and major geopolitical player, maybe adds a defense/aerospace division'... That sort of thing.
The amazing thing is that a version of EPCOT the city actually was being developed as late as the first OPEC Oil Embargo in 1973. See this article for more about the plans for Lake Buena Vista:
If you go to Lake Buena Vista today, you will find a giant retail dining and entertainment complex called Disney Springs served by three Reedy Creek-owned parking structures and a six lane arterial with dedicated bus lanes. Until yesterday, this was going to be the future stop on a regional inter-city passenger train system commenting Disney Springs to Tampa, Orlando International Airport, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.
Ford also did a lot of really weird social stuff but from what I've seen, there's only really mention of him greatly increasing wages of assembly line workers (and often wrongly about to get them to sell more cars than the more tame to improve turnover rates).
That's just because the innovations Ford had that WORKED are already "in the water supply", so to speak. They don't seem like really weird stuff any more. His model for factories ended up dominating a significant portion of the manufacturing world and are the distant ancestor of much of the manufacturing structure we have. Some of his more terrible ideas (like his notions regarding eugenics and the jews) were entertained, even tested to some degree, and rejected. Indeed, this points at the downside of walt having free rein; there's always a chance some dictator is influenced or emboldened by you and your friends and takes your idea in a terrible, oppressive direction. But the upsides of heterodoxy is the big wins that lift the world. Henry Ford had a couple, and so is generally well-regarded in spite of his big losses.
You know, all of these model cities kind of seem like harebrained attempts to give ultramodern street cred to Moldbug, except he wouldn't want them anyway, because for him the throwback aesthetic is kind of the point.
With that, I propose The City of Old, to be founded somewhere in the western US:
1) Make a multi billion dollar software company in a nice city, but hold most of it under a single owner
2) Buy a huge tract near that city, not unlike Disney World
3) Found a new city called Old on the tract
4) Move the company offices to Old
5) The charter for Old:
5a) Old will be ruled by a solo autocrat vested with all the authority legally allowed by the surrounding territory (so, the United States, or any successor state)
5b) The autocrat will serve a fifteen year elected term
5c) Is it legal to call the autocrat a King or Queen? If so, the autocrat will be called King or Queen of Old
6) The requirements to reside in Old:
6a) A degree or equivalent qualifications in liberal arts or classics AND
6b) A degree or equivalent qualifications in a STEM field
6c) Pass a test of erudition and comportment
6d) Residence is conditional on support from the existing residents of Old, who may remove a citizen (other than the autocrat) by supermajority vote on the grounds that the citizen is not virtuous or fails to uphold the classical aesthetic of the town
6e) While this power is implicitly granted by 5a, the autocrat is also explicitly granted the power to remove citizens
I imagine funding and distribution of wealth in Old to be similar to Switzerland, with the multibillion dollar company playing the wealth engine role that Swiss Banks play.
"But also, some people are taking them seriously. VCs including Balaji Srinivasan has invested $2 million. "
I wonder if he actually did it(crypto grifters getting high on their own supply) or if it was just virtue-signaling.
"You get socialists in power, they dissolve charter cities. You get conservatives in power, they also dissolve charter cities. All I want is one government that doesn’t dissolve charter cities! Is that too much to ask?"
Yeah, pretty much. Perhaps corporations shouldn't have decided to alienate the group previously most favorable to them.
Considering the crime rate in Honduras, I wonder if Honduran charter cities will end up primarily as unproductive residential areas for wealthy Hondurans.
Do the charter city founders have some goal other than return on investment? Or are they content if aspiring industrialists can't buy land because wealthy Hondurans will pay more to simply live on that land?
I think Ciudad Morazan pretty deliberately billed itself as a low-crime kind of residentially area, although I think they also argued they weren't just for wealthy people (who already have gated communities) but were trying to create somewhere where anybody could live crime-free.
I think Prospera's and Ciudad Morazan's founders are ideological libertarians (probably some of them would object to this and say it's more subtle, but I think it's directionally true), and Orquieda's founders are just interested in ROI.
Hi Scott, Massimo here, thanks for your continuos coverage.
You are right, security is one of the main selling proposition. As you point out, privately-produced, effective security for the rich already exists, it is the poor that suffer the most the consequences of violence and weak policing. The rent for the houses in morazan.city is 120$ per month, and it is focused on the middle-lower class of blue-collar families that work for the huge “maquila” industry in Choloma (labour intensive light manufacturing for export, especially textile). The rent is about 30% of the minimum salary available in the area, but in most cases families have two salaries.
However, www.morazan.city ambitions go beyond that. I believe that an “entrepreneurial community” (eg: with a single owner that rents the real estate) is the most efficient way of providing a lot of the governance needed for society (some pieces, like armed forces or criminal justice, are arguably outside of the scope of the model).
There are at least four areas where the economics of an entrecomm are clearly superior of those of a subdivision like a traditional city: 1) production of public goods, 2) resolution of conflicts, 3) flexibility in the use of real estate, and 4) creation of a harmonious community.
For those interested, there is a small booklet by Calvin Duke, “Entrepreneurial communities, the theories of Spencer Heath and Spencer MacCallum” that goes in some detail. It is available in Amazon. Ciudad Morazan economics and institutions are modeled on those described in the book, although the project does not have the same political objectives advanced in the book.
Tangentially related: do you have a specific exobrain component for tracking predictions, reminding you to grade them when they're due, etc.? This is one of the bigger issues which has kept me from doing more comprehensive calibration tracking.
This is what prediction market websites (like PredictionBook/Metaculus/Manifold/etc.) are supposed to be for. But maybe Scott is disciplined enough to grade all his predictions on his own.
My understanding that the new law dissolving Reedy Creek takes effect in 2023, so there's a possibility that after the 2022 elections, the next legislature could change its mind. I don't know enough about Florida politics to know if anything is likely to change next year, though.
The most interesting thing I've read about the StoryLiving community is probably the 24 acre lagoon / pool, which is controversial because California is rather short on water.
They are using "crystal lagoons technology" and it's not clear what that is if anything, but they claim that it doesn't use that much water:
"The construction costs for a lagoon with Crystal Lagoons technology are very low, even lower than those of a park of the same size. In addition, operating costs are very low, due to the efficient use of safe additives and energy. This revolutionary technology also stands out for its low water consumption, as it operates in a closed circuit, needing only to replace the water that is lost through evaporation. In comparison, a 1 hectare lagoon consumes only 50% of the water required for the maintenance of a park of the same size, and a lagoon of average size consumes around 30 times less than a golf course."
One thing they claim in the next section of that page is that they're able to keep the water clean (clean-ish?) with 1% the normal amount of water additives used by conventional pools, by, apparently, doing like precisely calculated little bursts of additives in specific areas. They paint a picture of having sensors in a lot of places in the lagoon and having proprietary additives that somehow do this.
I think we should be fairly skeptical that this *really* works.
But if it is true, then some of the lower water use might plausibly come from just being more able to reuse and recirculate water that doesn't get fouled as easily.
That sounds like 100% bullshit. I live in a much more humid environment than that, and standing water even out of direct sun absolutely evaporates faster plants need watering.
A golf course is ~150 acres. They are claiming the lagoon is using 5 times less water than a golf course? Is it fully enclosed? Or is the "average lagoon" smaller than the 24 acre lagoon?
Insightful coverage here. Those interested in learning more about Próspera, including purchasing residences or investing can contact me or visit us at Prospera [dot] HN!
The lawsuit re: "some debts" involves legal precedent from SCOTUS and separately the Florida State Constitution.
> Both the U.S. and Florida constitutions place strict limitations on the government’s ability to impair its own contracts. Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose. As early as 1866, the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a local government issues a bond based on an authorized taxing power, the state is contract-bound and cannot eliminate the taxing power supporting the bond. The Florida Constitution provides even greater protection from impairment of contracts.
The thrust is that Florida would have to pay off all the outstanding bonds if they want a legally straightforward way of "sticking it to Disney". Can DeSantis convince everyone that it's worth 1 Billion Dollars?
I think you can thank the Monroe doctrine for that.
Oh, they exalt violence/war as a positive and denounce government by elections?
This seems like something like noncentral fallacy.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2007/12/the_oldfashione.html
I think I’m halfway with you. A city is a people and a culture more so than a location (with some fuzzy recursive causality there) and these seem to be attempts to build structures not cultures.
On the other hand, I think we’ve reached a compute limit in our current structures so it’s good people are trying. I’d like to see someone who is as practical as a farmer take a crack. Conservative utopians seem to just converge on “there should be a king” and liberals on “what if everyone just had sex with everyone else?” Which both bore me as ideas.
>I think I’m halfway with you. A city is a people and a culture more so than a location (with some fuzzy recursive causality there) and these seem to be attempts to build structures not cultures.
This hasn't described western country cities in a long time. Cities in the west today are people with little uniting them besides economic interests. They aren't *a* people and they aren't *a* culture. They're multiple peoples with multiple cultures that by no means have anything in common beyond wanting to live in an urban environment. A charter city would be composed of a much more congruently cultured population than New York or London would.
"Conservative utopians seem to just converge on “there should be a king” and liberals on “what if everyone just had sex with everyone else?” Which both bore me as ideas."
The former at least has some hope of producing something of value
First part is a bit complicated but I kind of agree. There’s definitely a lot to the idea we have non geographical nations inside of our phones. I’m looking forward to the Balaji book.
Second part, this is a theory vs practice problem to my mind. Certainly kingdoms have produced enormous value in the past but I just can’t see the steps you take from what we have where a guy says “I should be a king” and gets a bunch of people to say “yes you are wonderful” and then they all get together in a healthy productive nation.
To be clear I *want* to see a better world work out. But I think what we need is something closer to a new religion for people to glom onto.
What would a nation in your phone offer you? Insurance? And what recourse would you have if they didn't provide it? Your actual nation.
Not to be self promotery but there are some answers to this on my substack. For some value of nation, I think the big things you could get are adjudication, coordination of resources, and status. Eventually I think physical nations have to become digital nations rather than digital nations becoming physical nations, though. So I think based on what I know of him, I’m opposite of Balaji there.
The main things nations have always provided and always will is protecting you from other nations with big sticks, and using those same big sticks to resolve/arbitrate/enforce disputes within the nation.
Everything else is secondary to that.
If I am a member of "prosperity coin nation" which gives me a job and a community and a currency, if it also cannot protect me from my neighbors what on earth good is it? At that point it is just some hyper advanced club or MLM scheme.
I am a member of nation A, my neighbor of nation B. I don't like where he put his shed, it is 4 ft on my property. My nation is helping me how here?
Only the former has hope of producing something of value? C'mon man, don't harsh my yum! I value my sex life!
Keep slinging those slogans. I'm sure the horror of expropriation will be palpable amid all the peace and prosperity. See, I can do it too!
Seriously, and to comply with the comment policy, my understanding is that the land was uninhabited and of minimal value to anyone, which is exactly why it was chosen. That's not to say there will be no conflicts, nor anything done wrong by either Prospera or the Honduran government in pushing the project, nor anyone left behind, but every policy has tradeoffs. Given the uneven success of traditional states the world over, trying something new seems like a good idea.
Specifically as to whether anything was expropriated, I truly don't know and honestly don't much care. The reality is that the land is part of Honduras, and the Honduran government disposed of it in a manner they saw fit. Such is the law in virtually every nation. As far as I know, excepting those which still retain allodial title in like noble families, the state is the actual owner of all land. Landowners merely own it at the sufferance of government. I forget the exact property law term for it, but such is the case even here in the United States. As long as the government pays you, it can force you to sell. I don't know what procedures Honduran law demands for this kind of compulsory purchase, but if they were followed I'd probably be satisfied. If they weren't, those wronged should sue the Honduran government. Probably, you could shame Prospera into shelling out.
It wasn’t long? It was more than 250 years of dense history (often featuring native princes using the colonizers as pawns in their own internecine struggles) before, for instance, the EIC went bankrupt and the kingdom annexed the company’s Indian territories. The superficial similarities of events appear to be blinding to almost everyone. Just like how in foreign policy it’s always 1938, in trade policy it’s always 1600.
And the European India companies were always public-private, mostly owned by the state from the inception. If prospera is associated with any government, it’s Honduras’ own. More than that, it intends to make worthless land valuable by the industry of its people and the dynamism of its government, not by its control of natural resources or proximity to markets. The colonizers sought the best and most developed land for their first acquisitions, or if they could not get such, as close as they could. Plus promising spots along the route between Europe and Asia to provide infrastructure (watering and provisioning, or later coaling) for trade and expansion.
None of whom live on the site. Lots of people right here at home object strenuously when new housing or a new train station elevator is to be built in their neighborhood. I wonder if there’s a name for such people... Nope. Can’t think of it. But they’re a menace, holding back development, making everyone (even themselves) poorer, and fostering endless conflict.
I’m sure the Honduran government that authorized is it was corrupt, just like I’m sure the new government that has walked back ZEDEs is corrupt. That’s the reality in Honduras. When they do the right thing, I think we should regard it as an improvement, not as sinister.
So just to be clear, you would rather Houndorans be poorer in the name of some symbolic victory over evil capitalists?
You're using 'Democracy' here in such a vague and expansive sense so as to be meaningless
Though it's easy for you to discount the value of prosperity if you're not an impoverished honduran.
I think that makes a good slogan, but that the real-world choice is: is it worth letting some people experiment with a small patch of unoccupied land nobody was using anyway, if it might lead to thousands of people being lifted out of poverty and given otherwise unattainable levels of safety and freedom. It really surprises me how much people who aren't even Honduran are willing to sacrifice for the principle of Honduran sovereignty being undiminished over a patch of land that didn't even have any people on it to appreciate it.
Yes. Democracy is only worth anything to the extent it leads to greater prosperity or individual freedom than the alternative.
Moreover, in this case, people can vote with their feet. People are only subject to a ZEDE if they choose to move to one, or to accede to one, or possibly if their landlord accedes to one, in which case they can move out.
Yes, prosperity is definitely worth a lot.
If you look at whence and whither people migrate, you can see that this sentiment is widely shared around the world.
Didn't a democratic government set up the ZEDE legal framework? What's undemocratic about it? You realize in a democracy 51% of people could vote themselves all your stuff any time they want, right?
Applying this principle to America, every legal change for the last fifty years ought be rolled back because of the influence of special interest groups (military industrial complex, pharma, tech, police union, teacher union). Or am I misunderstanding?
No need to stop at fifty years past.
I think democracy has zero value inherent in it; so yeah, prosperity has at least more value than zero.
Though to be fair, democracy tends to make many other good outcomes in countries more likely than eg despotism.
Since I think "the consent of the governed" is worth far more than "50%+1 get to rule the 50%-1," then yes, absolutely.
Prosperity is worth more than democracy, the primary value of democracy is that it has a great track record of increasing prosperity.
Democracy is of extremely minimal value compared to most material goods.
Last I heard wasn't Prospera denying there had been any expropriation? I'd be interested to see your source there.
From whom was the land expropriated?
To whom is sovereignty sacred, and why?
> Here's hoping that the expropriated land is returned
This is already vacuously true: there was zero expropriated land, so all of it has been returned.
What makes the government of Honduras a better than the charter cities?
Also what do you mean by restoring sovereignity? Honduras always had full sovereignity.
Just like the US has full sovereignity over Disneyland.
Honduras' GDP is about $2,400 per capita. If someone can double or triple that number, even just in a particular city, I don't know that I'd care who was sovereign and who wasn't.
Okay, I'll take up the conspiracy theory challenge. Here we go.
If you draw a straight line between Auroville and Epcot, it goes *right through* the Sahara desert. If you were an alien species trying to set up a worldwide communications grid, wouldn't you start with two giant multi-faceted metallic balls that are far enough apart for proof-of-concept, but don't have a lot of humans in the way? ALSO, wouldn't you just use long-distance mind control to convince already tripped-out artist-y/mystic-y people to build the prototype grid so you wouldn't have to actually drop these golf ball things on the planet yourself (embarrassing!) Yes, you would.
Of course, the aliens have a bronze giant golf ball for receiving communications from Earth
Wouldn't a line through the Pacific avoid even more people than a line through the Sahara?
Obviously you don't have a clear understanding of hypometaspacial communications.
Exactly. Sheesh.
There would be dolphins in the way, and those are even bigger problem than humans.
It's easier to build pyramids in the desert than in the ocean. I'm reliably informed that pyramids somehow help with the general effort.
Wouldn't a straight line between them run through the center of the Earth?
Oh sorry, I was referring to a geomapped straight line. You know, like alien communications normally go...
I thought the earth is a hollow sphere and we are living on the inside?
A straight line from one side of the earth to the other would run through the center, which is over our heads.
Not if the Earth is flat.
Just exactly!
The whole point is that the Earth is flat, but only in the number of dimensions that the aliens live in.
What to do I need to do to start a corporate autocracy in, say, upstate NY?
No, people from Albany insist that upstate is still north of them
"Capital Region," please.
Albany is a state owned autocracy, not corporate.
If you'll settle for a combination religious movement/interpretative dance troupe, the Shen Yun folks already have a compound on ~400 acres in upstate NY with apparently a few hundred permanent residents.
In a sense it's a very well built up and securely defended model city, if the model is a very generous interpretation of pre-communism Chinese culture.
Hmmm – that might be a good (practical) model.
I guess I would just, e.g. apply to the county/state to incorporate as a municipality at some point.
I just checked my notes and I'd already thought of this (apparently) about 4.5 years ago.
Time to look for some cheap land!
There was an unused prison for sale remarkably cheap in Saratoga county I think. Unfortunately, the sale had to be approved by specific government officials.
The "autocracy" bit was a joke!
That's good to know. The best religious movements always incorporate interpretive dance.
A combination religious movement/interpretative dance troupe in upstate New York? It must be a new Era of Manifestations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Manifestations
First, have a billion dollars, maybe 10 billion. Try a kickstarter?
Meh – I think I'll start with a nice 'compound' in some rural area and then work towards incorporation (as a municipality)!
I don't actually have any particular ideas at the moment :)
I vaguely hope that Disney tries to make Storyliving be something other than "a planned community." Like, they have been doing some innovative things with immersive experiences in the Star Wars portion of the park and the hotel.
Living in a community that Disney tried to weave some kind of entertainment experience through the basic experience of just living there would probably not be for me, and I expect it would end up being not really for anyone, but it would be interesting, and it's not like anyone is getting hurt.
Like, just as a pretty low-key example, they could develop a fake "history" of the town with an interesting narrative, and have a few semi-hidden spaces and maybe some plaques or something, maybe a once-every-few-months appearance by some cast members to seed clues, and the people who live there might enjoy unravelling "what happened at the founding of our town" and finding some cool designed public spaces they could hang out in.
It wouldn't be anything revolutionary, of course, but maybe it'd be a little shared experience that could kindle a connection with your neighbors.
And just think about the wealth of fictional data for future archaeologists!
First prize goes to the first resident who can figure out they've actually been sent to The Bad Place.
Cosplay City. I like it!
Maybe this has been discussed before, but legally could someone form a charter county or other sub-national entity, within the United States? Like, pick out a plot of rural land and get the feds to exempt it from state laws- allowing a sort of special economic zone here in the US (yes, federal laws are burdensome, but in practice federal regulators can't be everywhere, and at least you're not covered by the state bureaucracy too).
If it's not workable within the lower 48, maybe picking an island territory that the US controls could be a viable option- Samoa, say, or the Virgin Islands (or even Puerto Rico!) A free trade economic zone with lower taxes and less burdensome regulations, that openly attracts foreign capital
In a previous charter city post, Scott linked to this https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/nebraska-lawmakers-reject-pitch-to-create-sovereign-city/, which I think comes pretty close to what you're describing.
I'm just speculating here, but I think in the US you'd probably have the best chances of doing something by convincing some native Americans to do it on their land?
There's a lot of extra federal red tape for outsiders to set up a business on a reservation, even if the tribe is all for it.
Hmm, probably true.
Well, I never said it was a good chance. Just that it was your best chance..
Any better ideas?
I think there's something in the Constitution about not splitting states up, which I think this would do, since AFAIK all land in the States is part of some state already.
The reservations might not be, IINAL.
Not sure about the territories either.
Notwithstanding Federal land, that is. There's amazingly little Nevada in Nevada.
If anything, you might have a better chance doing something through the feds on Federal land (Interior controls vast swathes of the West).
Don't Indian reservations work like that? (I am guessing, I know next to nothing about them).
I wonder if you could get a US charter city by renting half of an Indian reservation (the Indians keep the other half) from a friendly tribe who agree that the laws on your half are whatever you want.
> Step four is “a[n] extensive system of charter cities akin to Singapore or Hong Kong”.
Singapore and Hong Kong are both cities full of people of well above average intellect, founded by people/governments who were capable of creating and running successful nation states. Without these things, there's absolutely no reason to imagine this will work.
Africa has a much smaller pool of high intellect people to draw upon than China/East Asia, so even if you manage to cobble together enough of them for a potentially functional city state like this, you will have deprived the rest of Africa of people it desperately needs. Just as in regular immigration advocacy, the people who ostensibly care most about helping Africa are the ones most vigorously advocating for brain drain that it cannot afford.
There was a very concerted attempt in the case of Hong Kong to not be subject to local conditions that made trade difficult. That's a pretty charter-city notion of have thought?
I don't think Singapore started out with exceptionally smart people.
You brain drain narrative sounds suspicious. Do you want to lock up people in underperforming countries instead of allowing to move to prosperity?
(There's some indication that availability of migration opportunities boosts education efforts btw.)
Didn’t it take a few centuries for Hong Kong and Singapore to become significant?
I guess it depends on when you start the clock?
Modern Singapore is often seen to have started in 1819. British Hong Kong started in 1841.
When do you want to stop the clock?
I'd say at the latest you can say that they are significant today. That's about 200 years for Singapore. Not sure whether that qualifies as 'a few centuries"?
Less conservatively, Hong Kong was already important at least 50 years ago, and also started later than Singapore.
I had misremembered them as being founded a century or so earlier! But still, it’s about a century (probably more for Singapore) before they became significant.
A century to go from "Fishing village of a couple hundred" to "Globally significant centre of commerce and trade." is a very impressive takeoff in my opinion.
If the African versions can achieve the same success on the same timescale, I'd consider that an outstanding accomplishment.
What on earth would they be offering? HK and S were literally outposts of the largest most powerful nation at the time, and had huge catchment areas that were less developed around them.
If this was going to work for Africa, I would imagine like um giving Zanzibar to China National Petroleum or something? That might see Zanzibar significantly more wealthy in 100 years compared to what it would be otherwise?
Which is why it would be really impressive if they could match HK or Singapore's growth.
More likely, you might be able to get some "Detroit when it manufactured stuff" cities popping up.
Africa has a large & growing population, so a small percentage could still form a viable charter city. And then that charter city could benefit its neighbors via trade.
"Muchos resentidos sociales en las redes." means "A lot of social resentment online." He's basically saying, "It's all going well but people are complaining online anyway."
https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ is about the history of Epcot as a whole but includes very detailed research about the Reedy Creek Improvement district. Also, I hate Twitter search so I'm not going to find the link, but the video's creator had a lot of entertainingly harsh words about all of the journalists that became overnight experts on the subject that he spend months researching.
Half the people in the Afropolitan photo are also wearing clothing that wouldn't look out of place in 2454.
I officially love Afropolitan on Terra Ignota vibes alone. I don't think they'll succeed, but I really hope they do, in part because I want people to see more genuinely innovative and good stuff come out of Africa.
"Achille Mbembe" cannot possibly be a coincidence.
I'm almost tempted to get involved just to see where things go, but I'm not exactly African, though I lived there for a bit.
Is there some meaning to that name I'm not grasping? Or is it just a cool name?
It is phonetically very similar to a character from the same book
Black Hammer is doing alright for themselves. They’re fighting American imperialism, one pro Putin demonstration at a time.
https://blackhammer.org/2022/04/25/vladimir-putin-shouts-out-black-hammer/
Somebody should send this to the contingent of pro-Putin people who endorse racism and film their reactions.
I took a gander at the Minicircle genetic testing NFT. I am not entirely clear where you are supposed to buy one, or for how much, but at current rates it is redeemable for 1ETH=$1176 and requires the owner (test subject) to go out of pocket for 8 DEXA body image skins which seems to be, conservatively, $1600?
A legal intervention is one that can be carried out with little risk of legal intervention.
Comparing Disney to what’s happening in Honduras is nuts. Because 1) Disney didn’t actually build the EPCOT city it’s just a very large corporate campus with hotels. 2) They decided to pick a very aggressive fight with the host territory on a policy that had nothing to do with their district’s status.
Yeah, it's crazy that a media company, of all things, would try to exercise their right to free speech! Disney has famously never had any interest in tapping into cultural trends, so why would they care about gay rights?
Did Disney do anything aggressive? I thought they just advocated about one minor law, rather than the usual fights about significant things like land or money.
I mean, we do call it a "Culture War" it's hard to take a position on it without the side you aren't backing considering it an "aggressive act".
I am still kind of confused how one can make long-term plans for building some large project in a country where a Marxist government can come in and confiscate everything at any moment. I mean yes, theoretically US government could do it to anybody too, but the chances US votes in a (fully) Marxist government for now are very low. Not all countries have such traditions. Whatever the old laws said, the Marxists can always proclaim these laws were passed by corrupt bourgeoisie dogs, and The People can not be bound by such tricks. So I'd imagine the question is less of what some or other law says and more of whether a particular project has some powerful friends which could put pressure on the Marxists to not just confiscate everything and put the founders against the wall (if they don't have common sense to flee in time). If there are no such powerful friends, I don't see how any letter of the law would protect anybody.
Sometimes you've got to roll the dice. If I were braver, I'd be one of them. And if I were Prospera, I'd look into buying a military at some point, but good insurance policies plus White & Case should suffice until there's really a lot to lose.
Buying a military that can keep even a relatively small but determined national government at bay - if you are not another national government - may not be an easy thing to do, though I imagine not impossible, and having historical precedent. But also brings the risk of actual shooting confrontation - which is not what the investors would want to hear, especially if it gets to Western media which would not treat "corporate military shoots poor government troops" very kindly, especially given how many of them are openly or secretly sympathize with anything Marxist.
You'd have to tread lightly, both for the reasons you cite and for fear of doing something yourself which might revoke the ZEDE agreement. If you could be portrayed as the aggressor, it probably wouldn't go well. The PMC would probably be much more valuable as a deterrent than an actual combat force.
Once the Honduran armed forces actually show up to re-occupy the land (like various national armies did with the "diplomatic" territorial adjustments in Europe circa 1937-1940), you'd probably want to admit defeat and rely on the by-now very impressive roster of insurance policies. I'm talking like over a trillion dollars in total insurance against this kind of thing, if Prospera has something like 50,000 residents.
In that case, it would probably make economic sense for the insurance company to fund a coup against the Marxist government.
Bret Devereaux on megacorporations: https://acoup.blog/2021/01/01/fireside-friday-january-1-2021/
TL, DR: corporation vs. government, in the government's domain of violence, ends in curbstomp victory for even small governments over large corporations. Historically, the only times "megacorporations" have that level of autonomy and/or martial power is when they are acting as agents or partners of a state, e.g. the various East India Companies.
That post doesn't really show that. It mostly discusses that the biggest companies can't take on the strongest countries: East India Company vs. UK, Walmart vs. US. The more relevant comparison here (considering the size of the entities) would be EIC vs. a native Indian state, or Walmart vs. Honduras: Honduras's military spending is ~$200M, or 1.5% of Walmart's net income.
I don't think that a private company taking on a country by force would go well, but that's mostly because, today, the US and other leading powers would side against the company.
What I mean is I expected examples of cool megacorp vs government action, ending with the corporation curbstomped, but the article didn't deliver. Are there any examples of companies fighting governments, other than the chartered companies vs. Indian, Southern African etc. polities?
Not that I know of. Which is sort of the point - corporations are not stupid, and they are not generally run by suicidal people. When governments, even small ones, tell corporations, even large ones, "give us all your stuff and go home", corporations *always* say "OK, I guess we're out of business here, thank you for not putting us in jail" and not "this means WAR!"
They might complain to a more powerful government and hope it intervenes in their behalf, but they know better than to try to fight a war against even a pissant banana-republic government.
Lots of interesting cases in South America to consider. Nacro States? Banana Republics?
That said, there have been plenty of times where states took what a multinational company built and kicked them out. Lots of oil/gas examples, but also things like the controversial shoe/shirt sweat shops. A number of them "ended" after the company had establishing the factory, ran them for a while and then the government kicked them out but still kept/ran/copied the factory themselves.
I always thought there was something of a Catch-22 about charter cities: their best scope for improvement is where the quality of existing governance is low, but low quality governments in the area are thereby less likely to respect the charter. Seasteads are a different story in that they don't start out by depending on any government.
In the end the only thing that matters for *true* sovereignty is how many guns you have. ZEDE isn't much different from Ukraine in that regard. Those with big heavy guns will subjugate those without them. This was the case 10 thousand years ago and it will continue to be the case for as long as humanity exists. All who doubt this basic principle will eventually lose their money and/or their life.
This seems false. Texas now has the ability to set abortion policy that Joe Biden's government in Washington doesn't want. They have this right because America basically follows the rules sort of to some degree, in a way not directly related to how many guns Texans vs. feds have. Honduras also has rules, and although they follow them less, that amount is nonzero. I don't know if that will be enough to protect Prospera long-term, but it doesn't seem like a 0% chance.
But Joe Biden *doesn’t* have enough guns to take on Texas? If he tried, there would be a new Civil War and no one wants to try and fight that again. Not to mention all the US army soldiers who would suddenly revolt if you asked them to go shoot on the streets of Texas.
I agree this is true, but irrelevant. If it helps, sub in "Vermont" for "Texas", even though I don't think there are any existing conflicts between DC and Vermont.
I understand that myst_05 is effectively arguing that enough of the people with big guns (as of now) think Texan government is legitimately able to set abortion policy Joe Biden doesn't like. In other words, as long as that holds, Texans have a sort-of partial "ownership" of those big heavy guns to implement their will. But that is condition on a SCOTUS ruling and the big guns heeding it.
Compare and contrast Czar Nicholas II, who could trust Russian army would execute his commands in 1914, but no longer could in 1917. Nicky lost the legitimacy and the big heavy guns.
The real question is: can a ZEDE trust in the Honduran big guns viewing their claims legitimate or not if there is a conflict with Honduran government? If they can not, the ZEDE exists at the pleasure of Honduran government and is not sovereign.
What can the WTO or whoever else enforces international trade treaties do to Honduras if it reneges on its treaty obligations? I think there would probably be some significant cost to Honduras if that happened. Incentives matter.
>WTO or whoever else enforces international trade treaties
What countries have done in trade disputes: raise customs duties, issue sanctions, embargoes, start a war.
All of those measures ultimately require ability to inflict controlled violence to enforce them. And if the independence of your country depends on other countries to enforce measures against a hostile neighbor, your sovereignty sounds limited. And we are not talking about a defensive pact or genuine security guarantees by great powers, but a WTO trade policy.
I agree that a combination of legitimacy and guns is important, I'm just trying to argue that legitimacy is important!
More specifically: legitimacy, if defined as "legitimacy among a group of people who has guns", screens off any reason to worry about how many guns different people have directly. In a functioning government like the US, since the military has much bigger guns than anyone else and is pretty committed to respecting legitimacy, legitimacy matters more than guns. In Honduras, things are more complicated, but it looks like part of what would happen if they shut down Prospera is that it would break a treaty that countries with strong notions of legitimacy are also party to, and those countries would take some of Honduras' stuff in exchange.
Don’t Vermont and the federal government have some big disagreements about marijuana legality and immigration law? (DC has those same disagreements with the feds.)
Scott's right, I don't think that's relevant.
If Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016, Texas would have exactly as many guns as they do now (if not more). But Texas wouldn't have the ability to set abortion policy.
You claim that the number of guns is the "only thing that matters". But I think it's absurd to suggest that the number of guns that Texas has is the "only" reason Biden isn't sending the army to shoot on the streets of Texas. It absolutely does not logically follow from "Biden disagrees with Texas's abortion policy" that "Biden wishes to coerce a change of policy through military force, and the only thing stopping him is gun ownership rates in Texas." Texas's sovereignty, like the sovereignty of other states with fewer guns, is protected by a lot of other things before the right to bear arms would become relevant.
Texas' sovereignty is protected by respect for the law at state and federal levels, which depends on whether everyone think the rules for establishing law have been followed closely enough, and which in turn dictates which direction all those guns are pointed in. So if SCOTUS had continued to uphold RvW in 2022 and Texas tried to pass an abortion ban, everyone thinks the Texas state government followed fewer rules than the fed did, and most of the guns end up pointed at those upstart Texas legislators.
If SCOTUS overturns RvW and Texas passes the same ban and Biden tries to stop it, things get "interesting" in the proverbial Chinese sense, because a lot of people will think the Biden administration followed the fewest rules, but an awful lot of other people still seem to think SCOTUS is the one not following rules, therefore Texas also isn't, and Biden is, so... some unknown number of guns gets pointed at those upstart Texans and also at that activist Biden.
I mostly agree with you, but I think "Biden tries to stop it" is still ill-defined in this scenario. Biden does what, exactly? Sends the army to depose the governor/legislature? I don't think any serious person could think that's a plausible possibility. If it's something more like "Biden withholds federal money from states with abortion bans"...well, I don't think that's particularly likely, but it's more plausible and probably would not lead to guns coming out.
I was being vague, yes. The only point I was trying to make above is that following the rules breeds respect for said rules which motivates which way the guns point. To put it another way, I think myst_05 was being overly simplistic... but the guns do matter. And the specifics of what Biden does don't really make a difference on that point.
So, where those guns go will hinge on which rules are followed and how carefully and what everyone thinks everyone else's intent is, which is why things get "interesting" rather than "obviously everyone is going to take the same side". In your scenario, I agree, Biden's not likely to depose the state government... but maybe he just sends the National Guard in escort ladies to the clinic? He gets a nice Brown v. BoardOfEd-esque photo op, and the state can't do much about that without looking horrible, but someone on Biden's staff will be running the calculation of how many Democrat voters that will drive to the polls, vs. voters angry at the fed stomping on state sovereignty plus the usual voters angry that they didn't get their abortion ban.
Or he takes the easier option and announces withholding of funds. Same calculation; different inputs. And someone will be asking whether tying funds to previously-overturned-federal-policy-that-the-current-executive-still-wants-to-enforce is against the rules.
You are right that it would probably come down to financial transfers if a state decides to get disobedient (and actually has clear support of its population). The Fed government would threaten to stop sending money, the state would threaten back. And it would be interesting to see where it went from there, but it would start with money.
This part "gotten in touch with the governing body of the Central American-US free trade agreement" is mistaken: what happened (and what the linked article said) is that they engaged in consultations with the Honduran government itself, as a preliminary step to initiate arbitral proceedings under the CAFTA-DR agreement (a free trade agreement of which the US and Honduras are party).
This is very typical of these kind of investment treaties, and usually lasts up to six months, and then their counsel (White & Case is indeed one of the top firms in this field) should be able to start the arbitral proceedings. And then give it a good five years before an award comes out - by which time the government might have changed already.
(For context, I am a specialised journalist/academic in the field, happy to answer further questions about all this. We are monitoring this case closely, it's an unusual one.).
Thanks, I've corrected that sentence.
I have to admit I'm confused by this. Is the idea that if Honduras breaks any of its previously-written rules about Prospera, they've violated a trade agreement? What happens if you violate a trade agreement? Do Honduras' trade agreement partners care enough to pressure them over this?
Possibly. Trade policy is used to push back against all kinds of political developments that the stronger trade partner doesn't like, with variable results. The USA is vastly Honduras' largest trade partner, 35% export and 40% export. Their next largest partners are Germany (8% export) and Guatemala (10% import).
If Honduras is seen to be flip-flopping on domestic reforms (such as the ZEDE), and ones that are designed to improve the ease of doing business which the USA is expecting will improve the competitiveness and growth of the Honduran economy, that could bring consequences generally, both in terms of how the US does trade policy, and in terms of how private companies operate in the nation.
If it's a violation of an international agreement, it could possibly lead to forfeiture of some of the benefits of the agreement, such as most favored nation status or tariff exemptions or preferential trade zones, or just the loss of the economic opportunities created by the agreement. It seems like these treaties are often made simply for the purpose of facilitating foreign direct investment, and essentially the recipient state will grant certain special rights to enumerated private investors to improve their ability to operate in the recipient state. I have no idea, in this particular case, whether the repeal of the ZEDE law amounts to such a breach of any of the no doubt many treaties that govern trade between the USA and Honduras.
Of course, the US has to tread carefully in how it pressures the Honduran government, if it does at all, for fear of looking neocolonialist. Also, and for that same reason, a Democratic administration will likely be less willing to exert such pressure. Probably, in the end, Prospera is just too small a fish for the government to make a stink over. As Damien says, they can pursue arbitration if need be.
The 'trade' here is deceiving; in fact, CAFTA-DR is part of a generation of trade treaties that includes a chapter on investment protection - this chapter is being invoked here.
Investment protection treaties/chapters have two main attractive features: strong (because vague) protections against mistreatment, including uncompensated expropriation; and access to international arbitral proceedings, to obtain a judgment (called an award) in the investor's favour (which can then executed nearly everywhere against the state's foreign assets).
States win most of these arbitrations, though, and investors don't necessarily recover most of what they asked for - but that's still attractive, and it's likely that a third party financer is being involved in this case (e.g., financing the arbitration legal costs, typically a few millions USD, against a cut of the final award).
So, new ZEDEs can't be formed, but are existing ones allowed to expand further? That's pretty important.
Also, it's sure cooler to say "low-cost eco-residences" than "wooden huts".
Good question, I don't know.
I wouldn't call it a hut. More of a shed.
Reactions to predictions:
- long Reedy Creek to 45%
- short afropolitan to 5%
- shor minicircle to 25%
Yeah long Reedy Creek, near zero for others.
I took a look at Minicircle's therapies. Most of them seem plausible (long-term delivery of antibodies/growth factors) but the "GENE THERAPY FOR LOW TESTOSTERONE" could go horribly wrong if they don't pay close attention to hormonal feedback loops. Also depending on how they do the hTERT therapy it may have a risk of cancer.
Unfortunately they don't provide any details on the actual design of their gene therapies.
The whitepapers got passed around the biohacking community a while back, and as an investor I could almost certainly look into it for ya. Idk if they'd say yes though, those details are their valuable intellectual property
Sure. The obvious "low testosterone gene therapy" would be LH and I'm particularly worried that they've overlooked the fact that LH needs to be released in pulses to be effective; constant LH production shuts down the HPG axis.
Suggestion: use https://www.deepl.com/translator instead of Google Translate. Much better results for a smaller set of languages.
Does anyone else suddenly have a blue filter over Scott's posts? Not substack in general, just Scott's posts.
Yes
Scott turned on background colors on the blog so it doesn't look identical to every other substack out there.
I like it, easier on my eyes.
OOH, I understand that making working and living spaces pretty is mostly a matter of will and vision. OTOH, I have a hard time taking seriously a "factory" whose main feature is a terrace with what looks like a bar.
Have the people making those designs ever been in a factory of any kind? Those places are loud, dirty and smelly. The best way to make a good resting/eating area is to put it far away from all of that, not fancy sloped roofs.
> EPCOT was to be a utopian autocratic company town completely controlled by Walt Disney himself ... But Walt died the next year
I am now intensely curious about the timeline where Walt Disney survived.
Yeah, I REALLY wish he had survived a few more years. He had so many mad social scientist plans. I'm sure most or all of them would have gone terribly (designing better social systems is actually very hard), but we'd have a ton more data on how some interventions work.
I mean, 'lots of interesting data' is the realistic scenario, which is already pretty good.
But I was thinking more along the lines of 'EPCOT works well, grows into an international empire of charter city/theme parks, Disney becomes a quasi-country and major geopolitical player, maybe adds a defense/aerospace division'... That sort of thing.
The amazing thing is that a version of EPCOT the city actually was being developed as late as the first OPEC Oil Embargo in 1973. See this article for more about the plans for Lake Buena Vista:
http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2016/06/lake-buena-vista-and-shaping-orlando.html?m=1
And this brochure about the proposed transportation system:
https://www.disneydocs.net/lake-buena-vista-peoplemover
If you go to Lake Buena Vista today, you will find a giant retail dining and entertainment complex called Disney Springs served by three Reedy Creek-owned parking structures and a six lane arterial with dedicated bus lanes. Until yesterday, this was going to be the future stop on a regional inter-city passenger train system commenting Disney Springs to Tampa, Orlando International Airport, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.
There are lots of other examples of company towns and model villages around the world to examine. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_towns and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_village
I haven't seen an analysis of them anywhere, but anecdotally those set up but English quaker industrialists have a lot of charm.
I'm not sure that would been the case.
Ford also did a lot of really weird social stuff but from what I've seen, there's only really mention of him greatly increasing wages of assembly line workers (and often wrongly about to get them to sell more cars than the more tame to improve turnover rates).
That's just because the innovations Ford had that WORKED are already "in the water supply", so to speak. They don't seem like really weird stuff any more. His model for factories ended up dominating a significant portion of the manufacturing world and are the distant ancestor of much of the manufacturing structure we have. Some of his more terrible ideas (like his notions regarding eugenics and the jews) were entertained, even tested to some degree, and rejected. Indeed, this points at the downside of walt having free rein; there's always a chance some dictator is influenced or emboldened by you and your friends and takes your idea in a terrible, oppressive direction. But the upsides of heterodoxy is the big wins that lift the world. Henry Ford had a couple, and so is generally well-regarded in spite of his big losses.
"founding a country based on an especially good essay also sounds like something that would happen in Terra Ignota." <=> happened IRL Der Judenstaat
also you can read the american revolution as the result of several decades of polemics by Franklin, Paine et al
You know, all of these model cities kind of seem like harebrained attempts to give ultramodern street cred to Moldbug, except he wouldn't want them anyway, because for him the throwback aesthetic is kind of the point.
With that, I propose The City of Old, to be founded somewhere in the western US:
1) Make a multi billion dollar software company in a nice city, but hold most of it under a single owner
2) Buy a huge tract near that city, not unlike Disney World
3) Found a new city called Old on the tract
4) Move the company offices to Old
5) The charter for Old:
5a) Old will be ruled by a solo autocrat vested with all the authority legally allowed by the surrounding territory (so, the United States, or any successor state)
5b) The autocrat will serve a fifteen year elected term
5c) Is it legal to call the autocrat a King or Queen? If so, the autocrat will be called King or Queen of Old
6) The requirements to reside in Old:
6a) A degree or equivalent qualifications in liberal arts or classics AND
6b) A degree or equivalent qualifications in a STEM field
6c) Pass a test of erudition and comportment
6d) Residence is conditional on support from the existing residents of Old, who may remove a citizen (other than the autocrat) by supermajority vote on the grounds that the citizen is not virtuous or fails to uphold the classical aesthetic of the town
6e) While this power is implicitly granted by 5a, the autocrat is also explicitly granted the power to remove citizens
I imagine funding and distribution of wealth in Old to be similar to Switzerland, with the multibillion dollar company playing the wealth engine role that Swiss Banks play.
Edit: "The requirements to reside in Old at majority" ie as an adult.
I think the Patrician would end up too busy defending in Civil Rights Act (1968) suits to really enjoy their position.
As long as citizens have exit rights (including their property)... where do I sign?
Shoot, yes, that would need to be in the charter.
Serious question: does Ave Maria, FL count as a model city?
Interesting! Yeah, seems to be the same kind of idea.
"But also, some people are taking them seriously. VCs including Balaji Srinivasan has invested $2 million. "
I wonder if he actually did it(crypto grifters getting high on their own supply) or if it was just virtue-signaling.
"You get socialists in power, they dissolve charter cities. You get conservatives in power, they also dissolve charter cities. All I want is one government that doesn’t dissolve charter cities! Is that too much to ask?"
Yeah, pretty much. Perhaps corporations shouldn't have decided to alienate the group previously most favorable to them.
Considering the crime rate in Honduras, I wonder if Honduran charter cities will end up primarily as unproductive residential areas for wealthy Hondurans.
Entire families might live there, as in gated communities like Guatemala's Cayalá. (Positive take: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/05/17/cayal%C3%A1-effect-guatemala-city) (Negative take: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/09/guatemalan-capital-wealthy-haven-city)
Or it might be considered a safe place for nonworking family members to reside. For instance, Chinese businessmen who occasionally visit their wives and children in Vancouver are known as 'astronauts' (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/world/canada/vancouver-chinese-immigrants.html).
Do the charter city founders have some goal other than return on investment? Or are they content if aspiring industrialists can't buy land because wealthy Hondurans will pay more to simply live on that land?
I think Ciudad Morazan pretty deliberately billed itself as a low-crime kind of residentially area, although I think they also argued they weren't just for wealthy people (who already have gated communities) but were trying to create somewhere where anybody could live crime-free.
I think Prospera's and Ciudad Morazan's founders are ideological libertarians (probably some of them would object to this and say it's more subtle, but I think it's directionally true), and Orquieda's founders are just interested in ROI.
Hi Scott, Massimo here, thanks for your continuos coverage.
You are right, security is one of the main selling proposition. As you point out, privately-produced, effective security for the rich already exists, it is the poor that suffer the most the consequences of violence and weak policing. The rent for the houses in morazan.city is 120$ per month, and it is focused on the middle-lower class of blue-collar families that work for the huge “maquila” industry in Choloma (labour intensive light manufacturing for export, especially textile). The rent is about 30% of the minimum salary available in the area, but in most cases families have two salaries.
However, www.morazan.city ambitions go beyond that. I believe that an “entrepreneurial community” (eg: with a single owner that rents the real estate) is the most efficient way of providing a lot of the governance needed for society (some pieces, like armed forces or criminal justice, are arguably outside of the scope of the model).
There are at least four areas where the economics of an entrecomm are clearly superior of those of a subdivision like a traditional city: 1) production of public goods, 2) resolution of conflicts, 3) flexibility in the use of real estate, and 4) creation of a harmonious community.
For those interested, there is a small booklet by Calvin Duke, “Entrepreneurial communities, the theories of Spencer Heath and Spencer MacCallum” that goes in some detail. It is available in Amazon. Ciudad Morazan economics and institutions are modeled on those described in the book, although the project does not have the same political objectives advanced in the book.
An example of an apparently very successful entrecomm in China, Jiaolong, recently came to my attention in this piece: https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/jialong-sichuans-privately-run-city
If anyone wants to know more about Ciudad Morazan, feel free to drop me a line at massimo@fahorro.biz.
Tangentially related: do you have a specific exobrain component for tracking predictions, reminding you to grade them when they're due, etc.? This is one of the bigger issues which has kept me from doing more comprehensive calibration tracking.
This is what prediction market websites (like PredictionBook/Metaculus/Manifold/etc.) are supposed to be for. But maybe Scott is disciplined enough to grade all his predictions on his own.
I'm trying to post all of them at https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,2268.0.html , and then I'll grade the ones there at some point when I get around to it.
My understanding that the new law dissolving Reedy Creek takes effect in 2023, so there's a possibility that after the 2022 elections, the next legislature could change its mind. I don't know enough about Florida politics to know if anything is likely to change next year, though.
The most interesting thing I've read about the StoryLiving community is probably the 24 acre lagoon / pool, which is controversial because California is rather short on water.
They are using "crystal lagoons technology" and it's not clear what that is if anything, but they claim that it doesn't use that much water:
"The construction costs for a lagoon with Crystal Lagoons technology are very low, even lower than those of a park of the same size. In addition, operating costs are very low, due to the efficient use of safe additives and energy. This revolutionary technology also stands out for its low water consumption, as it operates in a closed circuit, needing only to replace the water that is lost through evaporation. In comparison, a 1 hectare lagoon consumes only 50% of the water required for the maintenance of a park of the same size, and a lagoon of average size consumes around 30 times less than a golf course."
https://www.crystal-lagoons.com/concept-technology/
I imagine a lagoon in the California desert would see more evaporation than Florida, though? I wasn't able to find much about how it works.
One thing they claim in the next section of that page is that they're able to keep the water clean (clean-ish?) with 1% the normal amount of water additives used by conventional pools, by, apparently, doing like precisely calculated little bursts of additives in specific areas. They paint a picture of having sensors in a lot of places in the lagoon and having proprietary additives that somehow do this.
I think we should be fairly skeptical that this *really* works.
But if it is true, then some of the lower water use might plausibly come from just being more able to reuse and recirculate water that doesn't get fouled as easily.
That sounds like 100% bullshit. I live in a much more humid environment than that, and standing water even out of direct sun absolutely evaporates faster plants need watering.
A golf course is ~150 acres. They are claiming the lagoon is using 5 times less water than a golf course? Is it fully enclosed? Or is the "average lagoon" smaller than the 24 acre lagoon?
It does sound very sketchy, but I'm still curious about what they do and how well it works.
Insightful coverage here. Those interested in learning more about Próspera, including purchasing residences or investing can contact me or visit us at Prospera [dot] HN!
Investing in Próspera: https://info.prospera.hn/invest
Back in April, I read a piece on bloombergtax that suggested Florida would in fact have a really hard time unwinding Reedy Creek: https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek
The lawsuit re: "some debts" involves legal precedent from SCOTUS and separately the Florida State Constitution.
> Both the U.S. and Florida constitutions place strict limitations on the government’s ability to impair its own contracts. Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose. As early as 1866, the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a local government issues a bond based on an authorized taxing power, the state is contract-bound and cannot eliminate the taxing power supporting the bond. The Florida Constitution provides even greater protection from impairment of contracts.
The thrust is that Florida would have to pay off all the outstanding bonds if they want a legally straightforward way of "sticking it to Disney". Can DeSantis convince everyone that it's worth 1 Billion Dollars?