“Do they own the land in the country, though? If it is unoccupied, by your standard it should be fair game, no? Occ/use? Why not advocate anarcho-communist communes in Africa?”
Because I don’t live in Africa and I believe in autonomy. If there are African Anarchists out there then they have my solidarity and I support them. If not, I’ve got my plate full at home. There’s no need for cultural imperialism.
Wheylous, do you know anything about the first world’s involvment in Africa?
Autonomy of the governments of Africa?
Yes. There’s been extensive aggressive involvement in Africa.
"Autonomy of the governments of Africa?
Yes. There’s been extensive aggressive involvement in Africa."
No, autonomy of the people. Unless I get a fucking golden ticket and a postcard that says, “Hey! We really want you to come to Africa and settle down! Signed, every-fucking-African,” I don’t intend on messing around with the land and law of the local peoples. I don’t intend to potentially fuck up hunting grounds or fertile soil with agriculture when there are plenty of indigenous living just fine off of their “unoccupied” land. Furthermore, I have absolutely no interest in supporting another western corporation extracting resources from Africa and its people for profit at home while the vast majority of Africans starve due to a debt crisis the first world created.
What makes you think corporations will get it right this time?
I don’t intend to potentially fuck up hunting grounds or fertile soil with agriculture when there are plenty of indigenous living just fine off of their “unoccupied” land.
Hm, seems more of a georgist view than occ/use…
So you’re implying that, unless you’re a georgist, your philosophy is that any land in any time and any place is yours for the taking?
My argument is not that land in Africa cannot be legitimately acquired. My argument is that it’s unethical to practice imperialism whether its private or public.
How the hell is it imperialism if no one is using the land? No hunting ground, no growing, no water usage.
“How the hell is it imperialism if no one is using the land? No hunting ground, no growing, no water usage.”
Is that the case? Why would you want land with no vegetarion or watter supply? And, once again, why Africa? That really is the best question, seeing as how it would be just as easy to set up a chartered city in the US. When there are sufficient options for such a thing much closer to home (and much less expensively considering travel) one really must ask why another corporation must go to Africa and use land that could be used by the African people, most of whom do not have the luxury of being able to travel to another country to live in a chartered city.
And if the cities are actually for African people, I ask again, what’s the difference between that and any other state? A foreign entity entering a third world country and extracting rent from the local people who slave for (probably another western corporation) barely enough to eat: how does that not sound like imperialism?
Misesians here must find it both unsurprising and amusing that leftists ITT are disgusted by sincere proposals that would very likely lead to an incredible increase in quality of life for millions of relatively impoverished human beings. Like the freer market and freer trade reforms in China from the 1970s to 2000s or the capitalist corporatism of 1980s West Germany: see our leftist boogeyman “neoliberalism” naked in full view! Who cares about consequences for the actually-existing poor? Neoliberalism is pure evil!
If I remember correctly The Philippines did something similar (though in smaller scale) with the area where the US military base of Subic Bay was located. Surprisingly it was the people of the area who had the idea of converting the base into a “free economic zone” and even more surprisingly (and much to its credit) the government in Manila decided to go along with it. Of course this doesn’t mean Subic Bay is an anarcho-capitalist commune, but it’s a workable (and highly successful) model of free-trade oriented charter city.
In fact the idea is so successful another similar “charter city” has been authorized on the site of the former Clark Air Base near Angeles, though there are some practical issues needing to be addressed.
Yes, heaven forbid capitalism were actually given the chance to pull people out of poverty, lest the leftists be left with nothing to bitch about, their self-identity as anticapitalists wavering and their their collective self-esteem plummeting like the population of North Korea after a glorious famine. Someone should do a chart comparing Singapore/Hong Kong and North Korea (or hell, why not North Korea and South Korea); as close to an empirical proof as one can get that capitalism works.
Oh, I found one: http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/SG/KP. Apparently, If North Korea were your home instead of Singapore, you would:
Wow, just look at that cheap healthcare; 99.93% cheaper, maybe socialism isn’t so bad afterall! And to anyone who’d say that this argument is a strawman, and that no statist/leftist advocates North-Korea style socialism nowadays, my reply is: have you seen many statists arguing for a smaller State/less State intervention? Chances are the answer is no. Hence if they had their way, and the State just kept on growing and growing and growing, you know what you have eventually? North Korea! (Albeit sans the sexy, sexy dictator.)
The problem I have with the idea - as posted - is that the charter city would still be a state. I see no difference between this proposal and the one promoted by Anemone in this forum, except that the latter thinks international waters or outer space would be a more viable venue.
However, I actually have a similar proposal. It would simply involve purchasing land from a national government under allodial/sovereign title. The national government would thus be relinquishing all ownership of the land in question. At that point, what I would do is sell and rent smaller pieces of that land to others, along with developing what I have left. Those who I sold them to would then have allodial/sovereign title of that piece. In other words, now I have relinquished all ownership of those land parcels.
The result would not be what I’d call a unified community. Instead, it would be a patchwork of privately-owned areas of land. Where’s the state in that?
A lot of libertarians oppose the state as an end in itself, and these are exactly the responses you would expect to see as a result.
I would object that the states authority hasn’t been abolished, it’s simply transfered to private owners. The state had done nothing to homestead that land, therefore it didn’t own it, therefore it had no right to pass ownership over to you, therefore your claim to property over the island is just as dubious as the state.
While that’s true, presumably said state would oppose me - violently - if I simply went and homesteaded that land. Who do you think already owns it, if anyone?
I don’t quite understand the meaning of this. Can you please explain?
No one is the rightful owner, in the sense that it is unused, unimproved land as such no one should be able to exclude people from it. I should point out that if you were to buy the land from the state and then release it to whoever wished to homestead it I would have no issue with this.
I wasn’t reading carefully and wsa skipping over posts, so I thought Cal was saying that a lot of posters were opposing the idea of charter cities even though they are huge improvements over the current material conditions of those areas. The posts weren’t nearly as opposed as I thought they were.
A lot of libertarians oppose the state as an end in itself, and these are exactly the responses you would expect to see as a result.
While I am strong in my belief in a free market society, I find it foolish to not take an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people without coercion. Fight the intellectual fight against the state in the developed world, help build the rest of the world through whatever free market we can get to them.
“I find it foolish to not take an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people without coercion.”
A number of questions come to mind.
Did these people ask for their lives to be “improved” and do their wishes matter at all in the situation?
Is the primary goal of charter cities to make a profit with “improvement” as a side effect, or improvement despite the cost?
What if such a city is not an improvement for the vast majority of the populus, but is also profitable and justified by proprietarian theory?
Have similar enterprises really “improved” things in any subjective way for the majority of the population of other locations, or must one drop the subjectivity involved in libertarian theory and resort to empiricist and positivist measurements like GDP or standard of living to make the case that most people’s lives have “improved”?
I guess I didn’t make sufficiently clear earlier that, once I’ve paid off the government, I and those with me would homestead that land. So maybe the way to look at it is that I’m not paying the government for the land - since I agree with you that they don’t rightfully own it in the first place - but that I’m simply bribing the government so that it won’t attack me once I start homsteading the land. I wouldn’t consider myself to actually own any of the land until I homestead it.
Does that make sense?