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Shorter version: Create corporatist deregulated cities in corrupt third world countries and assume that rather than enriching multinationals via lax oversight t
by CPLX 10y ago
Shorter version: Create corporatist deregulated cities in corrupt third world countries and assume that rather than enriching multinationals via lax oversight the project will make poor people less poor. Hard to see what could go wrong with that plan.
- rayiner 10y agoThat's not what he's proposing at all. There is a whole paragraph in the article about how Romer is not a libertarian and recognizes the importance of rules. But some rules are good and some are bad. The electric utility example is a good one: price controls are very popular in third world countries, but just about the worst way to meet whatever objective you want. Getting the government out of the way can also help in countries that have ingrained cultures of low-level corruption. One of the things that drove my dad to leave Bangladesh and move to the other side of the world was having to pay a bribe to a functionary for the phone company to hook up a new phone line in our house.
- CPLX 10y ago> That's not what he's proposing at all. Of course. But it's almost certainly the end result.
- rayiner 10y agoThat wasn't the end result in Hong Kong.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- CPLX 10y agoAll we have to do is figure out how to replicate the efficiency and relative lack of corruption of the British civil service, the relative military superiority of their Navy, the untapped economic power of China, and the political ability to kick the project off with a racist narco-trafficking based trade arrangement enforced with weapons, and just sit back and watch as we yield great benefits in about 100 years.
- Sniffnoy 10y agoIf that's your claim, then you should say that explicitly, and make it clear what your criticism is, rather than making it look like you failed to read the article. "While the intent may be ..., the end result will almost certainly be ..."
- aminok 10y agoWhich just sounds like the author trying to make the proposal palatable to non-libertarians (or more precisely, ideological opponents of libertarians) by framing Romer's views as anti-libertarians. Rules are absolutely important to libertarians.
- asuffield 10y agoWell, it sort of works: massively increasing the wealth of any third world country will shift it from "if you're poor then you starve and die" to "if you're poor then you are begging on the street and sometimes working a lousy job for little money". It's not much of an aspiration, but it is, strictly speaking, an improvement. It's also not a hypothetical: supply-side economic demonstrably works, to some extent. It just doesn't work very well, and we should be able to do better.
- whyenot 10y agoTwo counter examples to your first statement about positive benefits of massive increases in wealth: Nigeria and Venezuela.
- oldmanjay 10y agoThat's two out of how many countries where it was successful? You almost certainly live in one.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoTo be fair, the failings there had to do with the source of wealth being natural resources, rather than innovation per se. I'd also add Russia and Brazil to that list, but there are others. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse Personally, I think it's the difference in mentality between lottery winners and builders of successful products (who often work within difficult constraints and have to become very good at problem solving to succeed). There's a reason why lottery winners do not typically compound their success.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jakub_h 10y agoI guess it's all a matter of your idiolect. It works, for some values of "works". Maybe it works for the macroeconomist studying national GDP growth rates? Sadly, there are also barbers and truck drivers.
- lumberjack 10y agoSeems like it could easily backfire due to gentrification. But in anycase what puzzles me, is why would first world countries allow this? If Sealand and such other projects failed because they lacked soverignity, why would a corporate city in Honduras be any different?
- bane 10y agoSo basically...put into motion our cyberpunk future?
- briholt 10y agoThank you. I just couldn't force myself to read through articles that are so padded with fluff.
- eropple 10y agoWhat you're describing as "fluff", most people describe as "long-form writing." If you're reading purely for brrt-brrt-clank-insert-information-into-meatbot-head, you're missing out.
- dorfsmay 10y agoDifferent learning styles and purposes. Even people I know who enjoy descriptive detailed writing when reading a novel like to-the-point list of facts/arguments when reading news and essays.
- jedmeyers 10y agoOthers might also describe it as "getting paid by the word count".
- rhizome 10y agoYou're high if you think that The Atlantic is some Demand Media/About.com/wikihow content spoo.
- k__ 10y agobullshit. If someone would write an article that long without offtopic infos that would be cool. most of this text is just fluff to stretch out the whole thing without adding anything...
- rhizome 10y agoWhich parts are offtopic?
- tomjen3 10y agoWith few exceptions the long-form articles posted here are all normal articles padded with bullshit, not very in-depth articles. I wouldn't want to read them either.
- xchip 10y agothanks for the summary!
- api 10y agoWhy third world? We have tons of ailing dying rust belt and Midwestern cities. Welcome to the St. Louis Free Economic Zone. My politics are weird though. I would combine it with a basic income and single payer health care. I think the best current system we could create would be a strong but non invasive social safety net combined with total at will employment and business deregulation.
- tim333 10y agoI think your St. Louis Free Economic Zone might get too many people coming for the free money and health care and not enough coming to pay tax for the books to balance.
- pbh101 10y agoLower cost of living makes possible economic modes that the already relatively high economic floor in St. Louis makes prohibitive. Plus, the relative benefit of pouring X dollars into an area with lower per capita gdp is much higher: going from 20 cents to $2.20 a day is a much bigger life change than from $10 to $12. Still could be helpful, and I think we do see it often in some form or another, but is also subject to regulatory arbitrage: two cities pitted against each other to provide the best situation for companies, or Walmart flexing their power to get more favorable deals.
- tim333 10y agoI'd say more, lightly regulated cities controlled by another country modeled on Britain running Hong Kong. While HK worked well, they are having problems finding countries to do the Britain role benevolently. HK was set up at gunpoint to facilitate the Brits opium pushing operation which probably wouldn't fly these days.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoWhat do you think will go wrong? Please be concrete. If such cities suck worse than the alternatives, no one will move to them. The real worry I think many have is that charter cities will be successful and will demonstrate (by being successful without it) that a lot of existing socially favored regulation is harmful.
- Natanael_L 10y agoYou're forgetting inertia in multiple levels. Moving away from such a place could prove harder and costlier than moving in.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoThe same is true of the surrounding dysfunctional country (e.g. Honduras). Charter cities add more options, and generally make exit easier. I.e. exiting Honduras is easier if a charter city is right next door.
- andrepd 10y agoThat thinking works in a perfect world with perfect information, 100% rational agents, and frictionless movement. It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty, culture and a myriad of other practical considerations from food to roads to family preventing them from take the 100% rational actions that you expect them to take. The problem with you libertarians is that everything you say works with spherical objects in a frictionless vacuum, so to speak. But the real world isn't such a place. Outside your idealistic worldview everything collapses.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoOk. How does it fail in reality? Please be specific.
- andrepd 10y agoPrecisely because of what I said: people aren't 100% rational beings with full information. People, especially in third world, war-torn, poverty-ravaged countries don't have the power to make the "best decision" in to a libertarian free-market approach as you suggest. Some things aren't solved by capitalistic competition.
- pbreit 10y agoThe short version is Hong Kong which has worked out spectacularly. So I'm not sure I understand the source of your negativity.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]