Let’s put some numbers on it. The average US worker is backed by tens of thousands of dollars in physical capital, there’s no other way to achieve high productivity. Multiply that by the number of people in the proposed country, and you’ll get a sum that even a government won’t spend willy nilly. It’s a far cry from “let’s donate our vacant land to refugees, they will become highly productive for free”. A better analogy would be “let’s build a vacant city—housing, roads, power, water, stores, warehouses, factories and all the rest, for a million people—and invite a million refugees to fill it”.
Building a country on vacant land requires a lot of capital per person, but refugees don’t have much capital. Where will it come from?
Most plausibly, a mixture of private charity or investment and/or some sort of loan or “donation” by the host country.
Let’s put some numbers on it. The average US worker is backed by tens of thousands of dollars in physical capital, there’s no other way to achieve high productivity. Multiply that by the number of people in the proposed country, and you’ll get a sum that even a government won’t spend willy nilly. It’s a far cry from “let’s donate our vacant land to refugees, they will become highly productive for free”. A better analogy would be “let’s build a vacant city—housing, roads, power, water, stores, warehouses, factories and all the rest, for a million people—and invite a million refugees to fill it”.
When you put it like that the city sounds like state-built housing for the poor which is notorious for being an awful place to live.