Anyone else heard about this? It seems kind of promising. The governement of Honduras is going to allow private investors to create their own cities, a model sort of like Hong Kong. A few points from the article:
The city will have no income taxes, capital gains taxes, or sales taxes
The only tax will be on property
Default laws will be based on Texas law with “more freedom of contract.”
Free market in land with “loose” immigration laws
Private investment firm MKG will build infrastructure, the city government, and security
I’m sure this won’t be perfect but it may be a step in the right direction. Any thoughts? Full article here:
But I mean now that we’re here we can talk things.
Also,
businesses in the city will be required to employ a minimum proportion of native Hondurans – a requirement imposed at the outset by the Honduran government to ensure that the city’s benefits largely go to Hondurans.
That line jumped out at me as well, but then again, what kind of jobs are we really talking about here? I would guess it to be low skilled labor, so using the local Hondurans to provide for this really doesn’t seem like a big deal. It would be the natural way to go about it anyway. Although this agreement isn’t ideal, I guess the investors had to give ground somewhere, it might as well be something trivial like this.
So, why isn’t this a (better) alternative to seasteading? Instead of spending millions of dollars to buy the necessary ships, etc. (and it’s still not clear to me what the base for the economy would be), buy a chunk of land from honduran (or chinese) government, convincing them that they won’t interfere with the internal affairs.
Next, form some sort of “doughnut” minimal government that Roderick Long proposed (also, see Youtube video): a minarchist government for dealing with the “outside” and preventing the situation when the “warlords take over” – the outer part of the doughnut – and the competing private law/protection agencies inside the doughnut’s hole (both “governments” providing competition to each other and keeping each other in check).
The advantage over seasteading seems to be the amount of time to put such a society together, possibly greater willingness for people to move to a chunk of land (as opposed to some oil rig in the middle of the sea), and, potentially, the amount of money to start all of this off. Also, the fact that a chunk of land would provide greater economic possibilities (i.e., you can do things on land you cannot do in sea). Also, recognition of the states throughout the world (and, hence, smaller chance of interference).
The disadvantage seems to be that you’re still in China or Honduras and depend on the good will of the “outside” government…