https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera
The above article is a prospectus on the concept of a new utopia sent to me by Bobby. This is my response to it.
I must start with my objection to utopias. The problem with Utopia is it always matches one person’s vision of what’s perfect. That individual may convince others to follow along, but only by surrendering their own visions and subjugating their dreams
to those of the leader.
Utopians always believe in the perfectability of mankind. If only everybody would do exactly what I say, think exactly how I think, and live exactly how I tell them to, the world would be perfect!
The reason that this particular proposal is better than most is that it allows individuals to express individual action and individual freedom without blind conformation to a rigid structure set by Great Leader. That’s unusual for Utopias.
Perhaps the greatest flaw of this proposal is that it requires that someone else manage a non-utopian state within which the utopia can operate as a subdivision. That is to say, an established government must provide all the things that utopia cannot, such as financial stability, security, and a general societal structure. Nevertheless, at least it provides islands of individuality and self-expression. At least m, it does so as long as the powers that be allow it to do so.
However independent this plan can become, ultimately it is completely dependent upon the structure of the larger society in which it is embedded. A change of government could completely destroy everything which the utopia has carefully built, even if it has been successful for a period of decades.
Let’s assume, for the sake of this discussion, that it is so successful that the larger society comes to depend upon it. I must note that that is not a guarantee of safety. Look at Hong Kong. China to came to depend very heavily upon Hong Kong’s freedom as a cash cow. Nevertheless, China is doing all it can to butcher that cash cow and sacrifice it upon the altar of government control and societal stability.
This is arguably self-destructive behavior on the part of the Chinese communist government,but they are doing it and they are doing it quite successfully.
However, let us consider the utopia as somehow maintaining its stability and actually having a chance to function effectively. Would it work under those ideal conditions?
Like many Utopias, it is indeed an attempt to truly change the system. My former mother-in-law Dr. Tye, in one of her books on education, pointed out that the reason education reform always fails in America is because we never change the deep structure of the system. We make minor cosmetic changes without actually altering the way we educate children. This utopia intends to actually make deep changes in the structure of society. This at least gives it a glimmer of hope for success.
The idea of an established wealthy government helping out a Third World nation by providing guidance and assistance and in return receiving a portion of taxes sounds suspiciously like colonialism. Does the Third World country agree with the reforms? Does it fit their culture? Can we trust the country assuming this protectorate status to take out only a fair fee in taxes?
I have serious doubts.
This is, after all, the basic structure of protectorates throughout history. Those being “protected” felt exploited and abused more often than not. Still, the suggestion here is a much more libertarian structure and we need to consider that, assuming it could actually be worked out in reality.
We need to only look at the situation described in the article in its first attempt to establish the system in the Honduras. The attempt destabilized the government that already existed and created havoc.
It is ironic that the author points to Hong Kong as an example of the success of such a system even as Hong Kong is being brutally crushed by the dictatorial government which formerly nurtured it. It is possible that the success of such a group guarantees its own failure. That success makes the rest of the government look very bad to the citizens in general and that becomes a threat to the power structure. Whatever benefits it brings, if it threatens the power of the elites, they will shut it down without hesitation.
The author points out the corruption problem of the society at large is brought about primarily by greed and the concentration of power. Yes. That is exactly correct. The concentration of power is exactly what the masters want to possess. The most essential idea, the essential ingredient of this utopia, is to eliminate poverty. But how much will the ultra rich benefit from the poor becoming less poor? When you look at America, you see that throughout our entire history as a nation, the ultra wealthy have done everything they could to guarantee that there is a large class of serfs to keep them in luxury.
Again, I must point out that the idea of a semi autonomous sub government largely exempt from the rules of the larger government does not sound like a stable situation to me. It sounds like a rivalry. I am surprised Honduras is continuing to attempt this after all the disruption the proposal caused initially. This situation becomes even less stable, as the author himself points out, when he indicates that it is up to the sub government to ensure that no destabilizing proposals are made. But what if they fail to catch one? What if a clever con man slips one through? What if the leaders of the utopia turn greedy?
Who are we to trust with this much power?
The author indicates that the utter lack of interest on the part of Switzerland led to the abandonment of the original concept and had it replaced by, “the new version is that they'll be governed by a corporation full of visionaries and experts and other hopefully non-corrupt people...”
I’m trying not to be cynical, but a corporation that is not corrupt? Visionary people who aren’t tempted by power? I think my hesitations are very well expressed with the statement, “hopefully non-corrupt”. Sorry, I know I know I am coming off as very cynical indeed, but I personally don’t want to trust people who are merely hopefully non-corrupt. I don’t have that much hope.
That hope is further dimmed by the fact that the Seasteading movement was the inspiration for this. Those “nations” proved to be corrupt, self-destructive, and fell apart with very good reason. The fact that cryptocurrency creators and venture capitalists are heading the new movement weakens my faith even more. Still, I suppose one could hope that they are non-corrupt.
The author then points out that they have been successful in some other ventures. Such as creating self-sustaining cities in Dubai. Dubai. One of the wealthiest nations in the world. So the program worked there so we can really be confident it will work in one of the poorest, most corrupt nations in the world? OK.
I am unfamiliar with Sandy Springs and the other example, so I really can’t comment there.
I am also deeply concerned with the overwhelming desire to make government small. Historically, small government simply means that the more powerful individuals (almost always the wealthy) lord it over everyone else. I don’t see any reason to believe that the situation will be any different in this glorious vision.
Small government, large government; I don’t really care. What I care about is effective, efficient government to protect people’s rights. Small government historically does a very bad job of accomplishing that, but this is not an ideological opposition on my part, simply an observation of reality. A very small engine in a very large car usually does not function very well. I am not inherently in love with large engines, nor am I inherently opposed to small engines. Nevertheless, I want effectiveness and efficiency.
The ultra low tax system also troubles me. Yes, this would certainly boost the success rate, but it means that they won’t actually be able to pay for proper services and functions. In other words, they will have people who are not part of their community and who must dwell in the larger nation providing them with a kind of welfare so that they can live well off other people’s taxes. Sounds great to me, as long as I am one of the people who only has to pay 10% of taxes and still get 100% of the benefits. Come to think of it, isn’t that what we do with the ultra wealthy here in America? Many of the richest corporations in the world pay zero dollars in income taxes.
This proposal attacks the American system suggesting that unlimited debt is a terrible thing. Indeed, unlimited debt would be devastating, but in America we have great deal of money so that, arguably, what we owe is not impossible. This is the libertarian concept that you must never be in any debt but must always have a balanced budget. Which would mean that most Americans could never own a car, never own a house, never use a credit card etc. It’s an ideological position that simply makes no sense. We can debate about how much debt is reasonable and we csn discuss where to draw the line, yet the idea of living debt-free is simply impossible in a modern world. Again, I know that simply because they plan to pay a tiny percentage of taxes doesn’t mean that the government as a whole won’t need much more tax revenue than they will provide. That larger government, that larger society, will need to get those taxes from somewhere… How about the poor? That’s what I think will happen.
10% taxes will not pay for an army. Will not pay for a mint. Will not pay for all the government services upon which they will depend. This is Utopia, for those who can afford to buy into it. It sounds like hell for everybody who can’t afford it.
Also, I am troubled by the assumption that they will become so wealthy that 10% of their taxes will be a huge amount. They simply develop the land, which will make the land worth more money, which will allow them to develop more land, which will… It sounds an awful lot like a pyramid scheme.
A good deal the article is spent on describing how beautiful the architecture is. I like pretty buildings. However, pretty buildings do not make a stable society.
I also cannot resist pointing out the Frank Lloyd Wright designed some truly beautiful houses, many of which were very difficult to maintain. Architecture is more than simply beauty. It is also utility. They do propose some cheap housing for the blue-collar workers. This is sounding more and more like a pre-gentrified society. Although, I must concede, it does plan to have the blue-collar workers allowed to live in the same neighborhoods as the wealthy. That is rather shocking, but I must wonder how many of the wealthy really want that.
Their concept of education is vague and indeterminate. Every student will advance at their own rate. What does that mean? How will it be determined? Will standardized testing be part of the program? Will there be school boards? Will there be local control? Who will set the curricula? This reminds me of Donald Trump saying things like “It’ll be great. It’ll be the greatest ever.“ And that’s all the detail you ever get.
I like the idea of complete medical reciprocity in which licensed physicians are allowed to be locally licensed even if their license is from a different nation, but there are still some questions. Are the licensing standards really equal in various other nations? Will alternative medicine be as respected as actual scientific medicine? The American system of requiring doctors from foreign nations to serve four years of residency all over again is surely a foolish one, but saying, “Well whatever standard your country has her good enough for me m!” may be even more foolish.
Also, any drug approved anywhere will be approved here? So if person falls ill we can grind up some dinosaur bones, call them dragon bones, and give that to the patient? It’s approved in China. So why not?
And here we are again with medical standards. Pick a nation and use their standards. Many nation’s standards are substandard, but if I want to open a medical practice, I can choose to use the most substandard regulations available and no one can demand that I use higher standards. This is like corporations all wanting to register in Delaware, because it’s laws are most favorable to corporations and least protective of consumer rights. This sounds like an extremely bad idea.
It gets even worse when they point out that if you want to register as a medical doctor to practice medicine, you can register as a Nigerian doctor under Nigerian rules. Then, if there any complaints, they must be settled by Nigerian law. So we have to go to Nigeria to settle it? Or do we import a Nigerian judge? This is unworkable.
I certainly do not want to go to a doctor who follows the medical standards and medical laws of a Third World country. And what if all the doctors decide, like so many corporations do with Delaware, to register in those countries which give them the least responsibility for their actions and the least accountability for their errors? Then you have no choice. You must go to those doctors. They are the only ones around.
Their answer to this? You can always sue a physician under common law. Whose common law? Honduran common law? English common law? American common law? They’re all very different.
And once again you have to trust the subgovernment provided insurance, Or you can shop around. Whenever there’s a problem they solve it be declaring, “or you can shop around”. This works really well for the wealthy members of the community, but I don’t think those blue-collar workers won’t be able to do quite so much with quite so much freedom and so much less cash on hand.
Then they point out that if you have an ultralight and crash into somebody’s house, no law will have prevented you from doing that. It’s supposedly prevented by the high cost of insurance. But what if you get cheap insurance from a cheap insurance company that goes bankrupt instead of paying out the debt? Furthermore, if you do crash in to somebody’s house and kill the family, no amount of insurance will make up for it. Government regulation is not a luxury, it is not inherently a burden. Good regulations save lives. Libertarians don’t seem to understand such things.
And what about these “air rights”? Basically what this is saying is if you’re rich enough you can do whatever the hell you want and the hell with everybody else. Do you want it and you’ve got enough money for it by it. If you don’t have the money you lose. Typical libertarian ideology. I’ve got the gold so I can do whatever I want, too bad for the rest of you. You’re weak and helpless because you chose to be poor. Bad choice on your part.
You’ve got a really love the proposal to create a government with 44% less democracy. Let’s let the plutocrats rule. Oligarchies are so much better than democracies...for the oligarchs.
The other details of government allowing for major changes to the charter sound not entirely dissimilar from the ability to amend the constitution. My complaint is not that the system is unchangeable, but that it is so very badly designed from the beginning.
And then the legal system gets ludicrously complicated. The author casually says oh well you could just get a judge from here or a judge from there. Note that they thought they could just get Switzerland to support it all, snd Switzerland didn’t like the idea. Oops! As the author pointed out rather sympathetically:
> I don’t envy the PAC if they have adjudicate disputes involving, say, a doctor who has chosen to be regulated by the medical code of Norway suing her office building regulated by the laws of Houston, Texas. But they’re trying to rise to the occasion: their arbiters include a former Arizona Supreme Court judge, the head of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, and “the first Chilean lawyer to obtain permission from the Berlin Bar Association to act as a legal advisor in Chilean law in Germany”, which I guess sounds like the level of convolutedness you would need to be experienced in to make this work.<
You don’t envy them trying to make it work? I don’t envy them for even beginning to dream that it could possibly work. It isn’t just complicated, it’s ludicrous.
I just love the idea that once you join a group, you can sub schism and break away from that group. This is anarchy. What happens if your neighbor wants to build up and has bought the air space to do so which will block your beautiful view so you just sub schism and say well my rules now so he can’t block my view. Which rules rule? What if we can’t decide on which arbitrator to choose? The builder wants to choose his cousin, Vinny. You want to choose your wife.
Maybe they could ask the Pope to come over from the Vatican to do it?
And finally he brings up the Hong Kong situation which he used earlier to support the position. He says that this can’t happen in Honduras because it’s a based on a constitutional amendment, so couldn’t another amendment happen? Like the amendment that made it all possible? Also, we have seen time and again in Third World countries the constitutions don’t really matter a whole lot. In fact, we seen it really doesn’t matter a whole lot in America in the Trump era.
The author destroys the entire basis for his argument if this is a good idea. > Sure, if push came to shove, they could take over the ZEDE by military force. But that would be killing the goose that lays golden eggs. China didn’t take over Hong Kong because they wanted its money. They already had as much of its money as they cared to take. They took over Hong Kong because they wanted to maintain autocratic rule, and having a successful democracy inside their borders was too awkward.<
But Honduras wouldn’t do that because… Why not?
Then refers to Ciudad Morazán, But all he says about them is they make a lot of really great promises. Promises are nice. Still, they don’t fill the stomach, and they don’t make the neighborhood safe. He concludes by pointing out just how ridiculous the efforts in Ciudad Morazán are. Whose side is he on? Please remind me again.
Then he notes that Prospera is trying to avoid these tactics. That’s nice. Nice try. He goes on at length about how Prospera has not actually expropriated any land. Well, apparently they haven’t done so… Yet. I just don’t share his glowing trust in his fellow man, especially men who are deeply involved in cryptocurrency and venture capitalism.
His arguments that Prospera will respect human rights are extremely weak. Human rights will still be protected. Sure. Just like they are in Hong Kong. Attacking human rights will cost money. Yes. Just like it’s costing money in Hong Kong. Final argument? “So if you've read enough Matt Levine, you know where I'm going with this: if anything bad ever happens in Próspera, you can probably sue them for securities fraud.”
Sue them in what court? Can you afford a lawyer? And what about arbitration? I thought every single problem was solved by arbitration m, as soon as you could agree upon an arbitrator.
I really love this quote, “Meanwhile, every week the regular government of Honduras does worse things than anyone in a ZEDE has ever done to anybody, and nobody cares because they’re not libertarians so it doesn’t count.” Poor baby. Are people picking on you because you’re a libertarian? Or are people pointing out but your ideas are for facile, silly, and do not work in the real world?
Also, I love, “Well, whatever we do those guys are worse!” Kids usually learn pretty quickly that that argument does not work with their parents. Libertarians, however, just don’t seem to have ever gotten there.
He gets even more whiny. “The territorial integrity of Honduras is the most important thing possible! It would be better for everyone to die than to see even one inch of Honduras get governed by institutions that foreigners had a hand in designing! “
National sovereignty is a critical reality. Trying to laugh at it doesn’t make it any less serious. I just makes you sound even sillier. Maybe the sky is writing this article for Monty Python’s Flying Circus? Are they making a comeback?
Let’s apply national serenity metaphorically to your house. Hey! You’ve got a huge mansion with 17 bedrooms and eight bathrooms. So why does it bother you so much that that homeless guy moved into one of those spare bedrooms? Is it really so important?
Then he keeps whining even more! “But accepting for the sake of argument that anything bad is much worse when libertarians do it, this is one of the possible bad things.” Maybe he should sit out in the garden and eat some worms? After all, everybody hates him! (Because he’s a libertarian, of course.)
And what about the point of gentrification? Well he says if they super gentrify and surround the poor town of desperate people who can barely make a living, “If you own property there, I guess you’re now super-rich.”
That isn’t what happens with gentrification. People who can’t pay their property taxes don’t become super rich, they lose their homes. If they’re lucky the ultra rich surrounding them by their property at cut rate prices to take advantage of their desperation. They are not lucky the home gets confiscated and sold at auction for virtually nothing. Oh! I’m sorry. I forgot we are dwelling in the land of libertarian fantasies. I’m sure Bilbo will share some of his fabulous treasure with them.
He talks about the middle case scenario and the best case scenario but he never talks about the very highly likely worst case scenario, except to dismiss it as mindless anti libertarian hate speech.
He does have a point though. As we all know, things always work out for either the middle best possible scenario or completely best possible scenario; never anything less in the real world.
“To my biased eye, Próspera’s institutions aren’t just better than Honduran institutions. They might well be better than the institutions of America, Europe, and the rest of the developed world.” At least he admits he is biased. Also, I have a really good ophthalmologist I think he needs to visit.
He makes weird claims like the following, “Never underestimate embarrassment as a driver of progress. When the US was dragging its feet on COVID vaccines, Israel vaccinated its population quickly and safely, and that embarrassed us enough to get the ball rolling.”
That isn’t what happened. We only got the ball rolling because we had an election that threw out the orange clown and replaced it with a competent president.
Irvine, it’s planning and its execution, do not even vaguely resemble what is proposed here. it is a totally invalid example.
He even admits this, “Próspera is a lot more ambitious than Irvine - not just planned streets and utility grids, but planned government and law code. It doesn’t just want to be the #X Nicest City, it wants to declare war on global poverty and win.”
I really enjoyed this article! I’m glad you sent it to me. I hope you see my comments as coolheaded and rational rather than bitter and cynical, but I’d love to discuss it with you either way.
It was an interesting trip to fantasyland but I think I’m ready to get back to hard, solid reality by reading the light novel Isekai I’ve been into lately. It’s a much more realistic view about a young man who happens to be the older brother of the demon lord… Well, it’s kind of boring compared to the wonderful fantasy of Prospera.
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