The comments are almost nothing but great takedowns of the idea. Eg:
In practice a lot of charter cities end up being tax havens for rich people. If you get common goods from one country/community but then as soon as you reap the fruits of those common goods you remove yourself from the redistributive programs that make the common goods possible, you can essentially be freerider, which undermines the common goods that generated the social welfare.
or,
I feel like your argument at 9:04 is exactly why Charter Cities cannot work within an existing polity. It’s not just a government that would be threatened by a rival internal entity, but the broader demos would also feel unfairly excluded, and also subject to extortion by the Charter City (ultra-low wages for menial work to boost profits of those within the city).
Singapore used to be part of Malaysia, it was only when it was fully separate that the new Nation-City of Singapore could embark on its radical reforms. The government and the demos were part of the one state.
South Korea did not need to pilot good governance in a city to progress, the country moved away from military dictatorship and both the people and the institutions embraced democracy & economic development.
I think moving a whole country is plausible (and agreeably difficult) - though that country can also be a breakaway city / province (as per Singapore, Monaco, Hong Kong, East Timor), but it has to be a whole country.
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This entire idea seems extremely vulnerable to colonialism/external interests/comedically high levels of corrupt abuse that look like “company towns”. I’m sure that there is a genuine, noble ambition here, but I don’t see it working out in the majority of cases.
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The problem with Charter cities, much like Charter schools, is that those who pay the taxes and work in the region do not get the benefit from the elitist status
or
Maybe im missing something, but I dont see how charter cities would avoid fallong into the same traps of corruption and incompetence that we already see in so many governments. Only without a constitution or political checks and balances to keep the worst offenders in check.
This doesn’t work because it doesn’t actually solve the incentive alignment issues that cause multinational corporations to be misaligned optimizers. If there was a version that did, it might be promising—but it would need to be specifically designed to prevent big interests from benefiting, and would therefore likely get attacked by them. the biggest problem with starting your own thing is that you either get big from toxic funding—or you don’t get enough funding.
The comments are almost nothing but great takedowns of the idea. Eg:
or,
or,
or,
or
This doesn’t work because it doesn’t actually solve the incentive alignment issues that cause multinational corporations to be misaligned optimizers. If there was a version that did, it might be promising—but it would need to be specifically designed to prevent big interests from benefiting, and would therefore likely get attacked by them. the biggest problem with starting your own thing is that you either get big from toxic funding—or you don’t get enough funding.