9 ms·

A Private Tech City Opens for Business in Honduras

40 points by andyjohnson0 6y ago

caspper69 6y ago
Unfortunately, this is probably what lies ahead for civilization very long term (500+ years or more). As people "pop" like popcorn all over the world (becoming worth vast sums of money), they are going to become rapidly disincentivized from living in high tax jurisdictions. They will ask why they pay so much in taxes when they could join a commune with other ultra high net worth individuals and buy better services than they would ever receive in a big city. Once you can get to anywhere on the globe in under 3 hours for a reasonable sum of money, this will likely become the norm. The wealthy will just take their stuff and go somewhere else.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  So while I agree that microstates/citystates will become much more prevalent in the mid-long term I disagree about the rationale and whether it'll just be for the wealthy. I think we would have seen much more of that in the U.S. already between high and low tax jurisdictions (e.g. California and Nevada) if it was as simple as tax optimization. I think for the ultra-wealthy there are other considerations than just taxes including visa agreements between nations and stability/rule of law (I know Henley & Partners does a brisk business selling citizenship to Chinese/Russians because they want to have citizenship in a place that won't throw them in prison or take all their money if they say the wrong thing). All that said, I do think that we'll end up with something like what Malka Older posited in her books with rather small Singapore style jurisdictions all over the world but probably catering to a range of people (e.g. the talent city in Nigeria currently in planning, manufacturing hubs, tourism/remote work hubs, etc.)
- toyg 6y ago
  If that happens, “regular” democratic countries will take countermeasures. The market will remain where the masses are, after all. Someone has to buy those iPhones.
- refraincomment 6y ago
  Sounds awesome. Citizens don't owe anything to the government, we shouldn't be born with a liability towards the government, we should be born free and be in total control of our finances, and be free to choose the hosting city that offers us the most.
  - newsclues 6y ago
    Sounds less awesome if you aren’t wealthy
    - refraincomment 6y ago
      Why? Nobody, poor or wealthy, need to be a servant of any government.
      - atlasunshrugged 6y ago
        Agreed, if anything more migration opportunities would be much better for those who are poor. A semi-recent article put the value of free movement globally at an additional $78 Trillion for the global economy https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...
      - WJW 6y ago
        Indeed! Powerful individuals should be free to exploit their fellow man without any interference from the plebs banding together! There's a Galts' Gulch in Chile that you might be interested in. They have no government at all there.
        refraincomment 6y ago
        Use the terminology you like. If it makes you feel better this set of words, it's fine by me! No individual owes anything to the bigger group. That's the principle. In practice you see a lot of abuse, sadly.
- unishark 6y ago
  To avoid taxes they need to relinquish ownership of the land. At which point, how does them having lots of stuff and good times on their island affect the rest of us?
- pessimizer 6y ago
  This sounds like end-of-history talk. In 500 years, the world will not look like now + sci-fi tech. There may not even be money in 500 years. It's also strange that getting places in 3 hours rather than 2-3 days is the radical change you predict. If people can get anywhere quickly and cheaply, the posited ultrarich would have to spend an awful lot on security, which will bring up their travel times/costs.
  - curation 6y ago
    There is no money now. What is the definition of money? A timed deposit? An entry? It's a relationship, an IOU. That's why we need PR people (Central Bankers) to keep the faith. They don't control 'money' because what is it? Where is it? The Eurodollar market is not even calculable.
- luckylion 6y ago
  You don't need to be a billionaire to find that attractive. Work remote, have a nice climate and a city that runs efficiently? I'm guessing you'll have lots of people find attractive (I'm one of them). The question will be mostly whether it's an actual state or more of a vacation/work travel location. If it's an actual state, they'll have to deal with all the annoying stuff, like running their own prison system, running whatever level of welfare programs they want. If it's not, they can just "deport" people and let their home countries deal with them.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    Banishment from the city state is a convenient and humane punishment so long as it’s not abused. If a portion of your assets are invested in the city it also makes for an effective bond against criminal activity.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That's true, as long as there's something else surrounding the city that is happy to take those people of the city's hands. If there isn't, you can really only banish them by driving them outside the 200 mile zone and abandoning them there. The "humane" part kind of falls away in that case.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  It's going to happen much sooner. Generations > millenials and overworked immigrants won't be subsidizing aging boomers' pensions and real estate wealth forever. They 'll either move elsewhere or turn many european countries to tax havens Btw the wealthy have already taken their stuff, live in their yachts or multiple houses around the world.
michaelscott 6y ago
It feels like the world is in a weird place at this point in history. We've left a world of city-states (mostly) where laws, wealth and society were hyper-localised and conflict was probably more frequent, but we're not quite at a point where the whole planet is represented by a single government. I imagine this will happen when we are properly multi-planetary and our ability to defer governmental roles to machines is sufficient, given the already visible cracks in the cultural seams that larger sovereignties create (I'm thinking situations like Catalonia, Hong Kong, Scotland etc.). Until then we're at a point where governments are too small for us to have free movement across continents and truly beneficial globalisation, and too large to represent minority cultures adequately. I think this reversion to city-states will continue to grow across the world as governments struggle with their size and powerful individuals who are not politically linked chafe at the legal bit. Can't really tell whether it's a good or bad thing yet.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Small is beautiful. Small things dont blow up and cause huge collateral damage. Restaurants go out of business all the time. 1 collapse doesn't do anything. However, 1 monster entity collapsing (LTCM, Lehman, AIG, any pharma today, or Amazon, Google, or 1 ship blocking a key waterway, etc) and its pandemonium. City states may have warred more frequently, but they never led to the type of destruction that you saw with WWI, WW2 or the french wars of revolution. Its wise to have resiliency by decentralizing central power, even if it costs a bit of convenience to the individual.
  - michaelscott 6y ago
    I tend to agree with you. I think on the whole moving to more city states and fewer monoliths probably suits the way humans operate both as individuals and communities more. I also think we're probably at a point now where doing so won't lead to small scale wars city states experienced in the past, or at least far less frequently.
- beckman466 6y ago
  > when our ability to defer governmental roles to machines is sufficient This baffles me. I’m genuinely curious what this would look like to you. Would you please describe how you imagine this to look like? What makes it beneficial to give governance power to machines? What fundamental changes (technological, social or otherwise) have to happen to get us there? And lastly, what components make up the plumbing of a system like this?
mark_l_watson 6y ago
This reminds me of both the non-fiction The Sovereign Individual, people moving to lower tax rate jurisdictions, and also, William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels where mega corporations set up archologies where people live and work and governments are irrelevant. My wife and I considered several years ago moving to a low cost tropical area and decided not to because the US government makes it very difficult to do banking while living elsewhere, and we decided to not be so far away from family and friends.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  If you enjoyed those books I highly recommend Malka Older's Infomocracy series which talks about micro-states and an overarching government authority which controls 'information' As a fellow American I agree it's a bit of a pain to move and do taxes in several places (and potentially be liable for taxes in multiple jurisdictions depending on income) but with a good accountant it's not that bad and getting bank checking (not savings) accounts abroad isn't too hard.
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    Thanks, I bought Infomocracy a few years ago, and set it aside. I just downloaded it again and will give it another try.
leephillips 6y ago
The article left me with many questions about the legal situation. How much autonomy do they have? Abortion is a crime in Honduras, under any circumstances. Can someone step onto this land and have an abortion, free from the jurisdiction of Honduran federal law? And what about security? This is a country where land is sometimes taken by force by gangs, who bribe officials to transfer title and occupy it with their own guard forces.
- lastofthemojito 6y ago
  As far as I understand, it's a city with laws. The city is in Honduras, so national laws apply as well as city laws. The Próspera laws[0] don't mention abortion, so the Honduran ban on abortion would still seem to apply. [0] http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code-TOC-v11.10-Compressed-Protected.pdf http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code...
  - leephillips 6y ago
    The article seemed to say that they can set their own tax and minimum wage rates, which means that they are exempt from some federal law. I was wondering about the limits of this sovereignty.
  - atlasunshrugged 6y ago
    My understanding is that basically much of the criminal code will remain the same, I watched a few of the founder interviews a while back but don't have exact quotes. They have a little reddit which has many other links though https://www.reddit.com/r/Prospera/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Prospera/
beckman466 6y ago
https://archive.is/2paor https://archive.is/2paor
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Full archived version https://archive.is/2paor https://archive.is/2paor
Zdup 6y ago
This is like the city of Rapture!
curation 6y ago
Techno-feudalism.
csomar 6y ago
This looks like material for a political campaign (we are doing tech stuff!) with the benefit of making money at consulting/building stuff at tax payer expense. There are several pain points for people who want a remote, independent and flexible setup. 1- Residency: Visas and residency are a big headache. Almost every country makes it difficult to move there, and also unpredictable. 2- Passports: People moving from disadvantaged countries (poor) are often for the look out for an alternative passport. 3- Low taxation: Preferably close to 0 with direct taxation for infrastructure. 4- Online Infrastructure: Can you make a company online? Is English available? Are there services that make companies, take care of accounting online? 5- Banking: Can I open a bank account? A merchant account? Online options for banking. As it stands, this program (or private city) provides nooone of that. It is just a 3.560 pages[+] of Spanish (or Portuguese?) that probably have nothing to do with your business or professional/life situation. [+]: http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code-TOC-v11.10-Compressed-Protected.pdf http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code...
- simtel20 6y ago
  It's definitely english and spanish based on a spot check. But 3000+ pages... Wow
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  If you mean material for a political campaign for a national Honduran party, I don't think so. They've been involved in charter city stuff basically since Romer posited the idea years and years ago. On basically all the other points I agree, I really wish they were solving for residency/passports which are a nontrivial component of choosing where to live (especially for a long time). I pinged them about residency and citizenship options for people in Prospera some days ago and the answer was essentially that they're looking into it. Other countries have citizenship by investment programs (which I know have some ethical implications but at least provide clarity on legal pathways to becoming enfranchised in domestic politics).
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  you could solve for 1 and 2 , via some kind of airport or helipad, or even a port. I would think that would be far easier than a VISA / RESIDENCY rule change. Those things are usually deeply interwebed with the bureaucracy, and there's bound to be someone dissatisfied with a "special people" not subjected to the red tape everyone else is subject to.
happy_path 6y ago
As per several news pieces[1], and human rights and internal organizations[2][3], Honduras looks like one of the last countries I would consider to move. Political unstability, rampant violence, and poverty. I would not like to live there. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/the-spiralling-crisis-pushing-hondurans-to-flee-north https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/the-spiralling-cris... [2] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/honduras https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/hondu... [3] https://freedomhouse.org/country/honduras/freedom-world/2020 https://freedomhouse.org/country/honduras/freedom-world/2020
- leephillips 6y ago
  You may also want to avoid the United States. Several national governments and organizations such as Amnesty International have issued warnings against travelling there due to several factors, including corrupt and violent police, level of violence in general, dangerous prison system, etc. Also, border control routinely denies entry for obscure reasons.
  - random5634 6y ago
    Have amnesty traveled internationally? Corrupt police overseas are routine- ie, almost every interaction involves cash pmt on spot usually w no receipt for various fines and fees. I’ve been stopped plenty of times by cops in US and have never had to pay a spot fine in cash
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Survivorship bias: you have not yet been murdered by a US policeman.
      - random5634 6y ago
        I think you are confusing corruption (which amnesty supposedly claims US police are leaders in) and violence. I've actually traveled internationally and worked in tough areas. US police / customs etc are not corrupt (relative to developing countries I've traveled in). This really makes me lose confidence in Amnesty unfortunately. The US is relatively violent compared to developed peers and has some insane pockets of violence (east st louis etc). No question about that. This is stark when traveling to Asia or Western Europe - even "bad" areas in places like Germany are ridiculously safe relative to "bad" areas in the US. And that includes interactions with police (often unarmed overseas vs jumping on your back with a gun in the US).
unholythree 6y ago
My Grandma is from this island Roatan, the history of it is kind of interesting: The “native” islanders are largely descended from cayman islanders and long considered themselves British, although their opinion on the matter counted for little. It was a back water until it became a popular dive location relatively recently due to it’s proximity to some beautiful reefs.
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
its been said that one of the most interesting policy proposals -that has never been tried- would be to subsidize people voting with their feet. It works as follows: For anyone living in a high-crime ,or high unemployment,or failing public school zone, offer : - A paid one-way trip(bus fare to any destination and a prepaid debit card to buy 2 luggages), for each member of the household. - Limit 3 free trips per taxpayer household. - Limit 1 household trip , every 365 days.

40 points by andyjohnson0 6y ago

Unfortunately, this is probably what lies ahead for civilization very long term (500+ years or more). As people "pop" like popcorn all over the world (becoming worth vast sums of money), they are going to become rapidly disincentivized from living in high tax jurisdictions. They will ask why they pay so much in taxes when they could join a commune with other ultra high net worth individuals and buy better services than they would ever receive in a big city. Once you can get to anywhere on the globe in under 3 hours for a reasonable sum of money, this will likely become the norm. The wealthy will just take their stuff and go somewhere else.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
So while I agree that microstates/citystates will become much more prevalent in the mid-long term I disagree about the rationale and whether it'll just be for the wealthy. I think we would have seen much more of that in the U.S. already between high and low tax jurisdictions (e.g. California and Nevada) if it was as simple as tax optimization. I think for the ultra-wealthy there are other considerations than just taxes including visa agreements between nations and stability/rule of law (I know Henley & Partners does a brisk business selling citizenship to Chinese/Russians because they want to have citizenship in a place that won't throw them in prison or take all their money if they say the wrong thing). All that said, I do think that we'll end up with something like what Malka Older posited in her books with rather small Singapore style jurisdictions all over the world but probably catering to a range of people (e.g. the talent city in Nigeria currently in planning, manufacturing hubs, tourism/remote work hubs, etc.)
toyg 6y ago
If that happens, “regular” democratic countries will take countermeasures. The market will remain where the masses are, after all. Someone has to buy those iPhones.
refraincomment 6y ago
Sounds awesome. Citizens don't owe anything to the government, we shouldn't be born with a liability towards the government, we should be born free and be in total control of our finances, and be free to choose the hosting city that offers us the most.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Sounds less awesome if you aren’t wealthy
  - refraincomment 6y ago
    Why? Nobody, poor or wealthy, need to be a servant of any government.
    - atlasunshrugged 6y ago
      Agreed, if anything more migration opportunities would be much better for those who are poor. A semi-recent article put the value of free movement globally at an additional $78 Trillion for the global economy https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...
    - WJW 6y ago
      Indeed! Powerful individuals should be free to exploit their fellow man without any interference from the plebs banding together! There's a Galts' Gulch in Chile that you might be interested in. They have no government at all there.
      - refraincomment 6y ago
        Use the terminology you like. If it makes you feel better this set of words, it's fine by me! No individual owes anything to the bigger group. That's the principle. In practice you see a lot of abuse, sadly.
unishark 6y ago
To avoid taxes they need to relinquish ownership of the land. At which point, how does them having lots of stuff and good times on their island affect the rest of us?
pessimizer 6y ago
This sounds like end-of-history talk. In 500 years, the world will not look like now + sci-fi tech. There may not even be money in 500 years. It's also strange that getting places in 3 hours rather than 2-3 days is the radical change you predict. If people can get anywhere quickly and cheaply, the posited ultrarich would have to spend an awful lot on security, which will bring up their travel times/costs.
- curation 6y ago
  There is no money now. What is the definition of money? A timed deposit? An entry? It's a relationship, an IOU. That's why we need PR people (Central Bankers) to keep the faith. They don't control 'money' because what is it? Where is it? The Eurodollar market is not even calculable.
luckylion 6y ago
You don't need to be a billionaire to find that attractive. Work remote, have a nice climate and a city that runs efficiently? I'm guessing you'll have lots of people find attractive (I'm one of them). The question will be mostly whether it's an actual state or more of a vacation/work travel location. If it's an actual state, they'll have to deal with all the annoying stuff, like running their own prison system, running whatever level of welfare programs they want. If it's not, they can just "deport" people and let their home countries deal with them.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  Banishment from the city state is a convenient and humane punishment so long as it’s not abused. If a portion of your assets are invested in the city it also makes for an effective bond against criminal activity.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That's true, as long as there's something else surrounding the city that is happy to take those people of the city's hands. If there isn't, you can really only banish them by driving them outside the 200 mile zone and abandoning them there. The "humane" part kind of falls away in that case.
cblconfederate 6y ago
It's going to happen much sooner. Generations > millenials and overworked immigrants won't be subsidizing aging boomers' pensions and real estate wealth forever. They 'll either move elsewhere or turn many european countries to tax havens Btw the wealthy have already taken their stuff, live in their yachts or multiple houses around the world.

michaelscott 6y ago

It feels like the world is in a weird place at this point in history. We've left a world of city-states (mostly) where laws, wealth and society were hyper-localised and conflict was probably more frequent, but we're not quite at a point where the whole planet is represented by a single government. I imagine this will happen when we are properly multi-planetary and our ability to defer governmental roles to machines is sufficient, given the already visible cracks in the cultural seams that larger sovereignties create (I'm thinking situations like Catalonia, Hong Kong, Scotland etc.). Until then we're at a point where governments are too small for us to have free movement across continents and truly beneficial globalisation, and too large to represent minority cultures adequately. I think this reversion to city-states will continue to grow across the world as governments struggle with their size and powerful individuals who are not politically linked chafe at the legal bit. Can't really tell whether it's a good or bad thing yet.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Small is beautiful. Small things dont blow up and cause huge collateral damage. Restaurants go out of business all the time. 1 collapse doesn't do anything. However, 1 monster entity collapsing (LTCM, Lehman, AIG, any pharma today, or Amazon, Google, or 1 ship blocking a key waterway, etc) and its pandemonium. City states may have warred more frequently, but they never led to the type of destruction that you saw with WWI, WW2 or the french wars of revolution. Its wise to have resiliency by decentralizing central power, even if it costs a bit of convenience to the individual.
- michaelscott 6y ago
  I tend to agree with you. I think on the whole moving to more city states and fewer monoliths probably suits the way humans operate both as individuals and communities more. I also think we're probably at a point now where doing so won't lead to small scale wars city states experienced in the past, or at least far less frequently.
beckman466 6y ago
> when our ability to defer governmental roles to machines is sufficient This baffles me. I’m genuinely curious what this would look like to you. Would you please describe how you imagine this to look like? What makes it beneficial to give governance power to machines? What fundamental changes (technological, social or otherwise) have to happen to get us there? And lastly, what components make up the plumbing of a system like this?

mark_l_watson 6y ago

This reminds me of both the non-fiction The Sovereign Individual, people moving to lower tax rate jurisdictions, and also, William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels where mega corporations set up archologies where people live and work and governments are irrelevant. My wife and I considered several years ago moving to a low cost tropical area and decided not to because the US government makes it very difficult to do banking while living elsewhere, and we decided to not be so far away from family and friends.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
If you enjoyed those books I highly recommend Malka Older's Infomocracy series which talks about micro-states and an overarching government authority which controls 'information' As a fellow American I agree it's a bit of a pain to move and do taxes in several places (and potentially be liable for taxes in multiple jurisdictions depending on income) but with a good accountant it's not that bad and getting bank checking (not savings) accounts abroad isn't too hard.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  Thanks, I bought Infomocracy a few years ago, and set it aside. I just downloaded it again and will give it another try.

leephillips 6y ago

The article left me with many questions about the legal situation. How much autonomy do they have? Abortion is a crime in Honduras, under any circumstances. Can someone step onto this land and have an abortion, free from the jurisdiction of Honduran federal law? And what about security? This is a country where land is sometimes taken by force by gangs, who bribe officials to transfer title and occupy it with their own guard forces.

lastofthemojito 6y ago
As far as I understand, it's a city with laws. The city is in Honduras, so national laws apply as well as city laws. The Próspera laws[0] don't mention abortion, so the Honduran ban on abortion would still seem to apply. [0] http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code-TOC-v11.10-Compressed-Protected.pdf http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code...
- leephillips 6y ago
  The article seemed to say that they can set their own tax and minimum wage rates, which means that they are exempt from some federal law. I was wondering about the limits of this sovereignty.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  My understanding is that basically much of the criminal code will remain the same, I watched a few of the founder interviews a while back but don't have exact quotes. They have a little reddit which has many other links though https://www.reddit.com/r/Prospera/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Prospera/

beckman466 6y ago

https://archive.is/2paor https://archive.is/2paor

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

Full archived version https://archive.is/2paor https://archive.is/2paor

Zdup 6y ago

This is like the city of Rapture!

curation 6y ago

Techno-feudalism.

csomar 6y ago

This looks like material for a political campaign (we are doing tech stuff!) with the benefit of making money at consulting/building stuff at tax payer expense. There are several pain points for people who want a remote, independent and flexible setup. 1- Residency: Visas and residency are a big headache. Almost every country makes it difficult to move there, and also unpredictable. 2- Passports: People moving from disadvantaged countries (poor) are often for the look out for an alternative passport. 3- Low taxation: Preferably close to 0 with direct taxation for infrastructure. 4- Online Infrastructure: Can you make a company online? Is English available? Are there services that make companies, take care of accounting online? 5- Banking: Can I open a bank account? A merchant account? Online options for banking. As it stands, this program (or private city) provides nooone of that. It is just a 3.560 pages[+] of Spanish (or Portuguese?) that probably have nothing to do with your business or professional/life situation. [+]: http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code-TOC-v11.10-Compressed-Protected.pdf http://pac.hn/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Prospera-Legal-Code...

simtel20 6y ago
It's definitely english and spanish based on a spot check. But 3000+ pages... Wow
atlasunshrugged 6y ago
If you mean material for a political campaign for a national Honduran party, I don't think so. They've been involved in charter city stuff basically since Romer posited the idea years and years ago. On basically all the other points I agree, I really wish they were solving for residency/passports which are a nontrivial component of choosing where to live (especially for a long time). I pinged them about residency and citizenship options for people in Prospera some days ago and the answer was essentially that they're looking into it. Other countries have citizenship by investment programs (which I know have some ethical implications but at least provide clarity on legal pathways to becoming enfranchised in domestic politics).
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
you could solve for 1 and 2 , via some kind of airport or helipad, or even a port. I would think that would be far easier than a VISA / RESIDENCY rule change. Those things are usually deeply interwebed with the bureaucracy, and there's bound to be someone dissatisfied with a "special people" not subjected to the red tape everyone else is subject to.

happy_path 6y ago

As per several news pieces[1], and human rights and internal organizations[2][3], Honduras looks like one of the last countries I would consider to move. Political unstability, rampant violence, and poverty. I would not like to live there. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/the-spiralling-crisis-pushing-hondurans-to-flee-north https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/the-spiralling-cris... [2] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/honduras https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/hondu... [3] https://freedomhouse.org/country/honduras/freedom-world/2020 https://freedomhouse.org/country/honduras/freedom-world/2020

leephillips 6y ago
You may also want to avoid the United States. Several national governments and organizations such as Amnesty International have issued warnings against travelling there due to several factors, including corrupt and violent police, level of violence in general, dangerous prison system, etc. Also, border control routinely denies entry for obscure reasons.
- random5634 6y ago
  Have amnesty traveled internationally? Corrupt police overseas are routine- ie, almost every interaction involves cash pmt on spot usually w no receipt for various fines and fees. I’ve been stopped plenty of times by cops in US and have never had to pay a spot fine in cash
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Survivorship bias: you have not yet been murdered by a US policeman.
    - random5634 6y ago
      I think you are confusing corruption (which amnesty supposedly claims US police are leaders in) and violence. I've actually traveled internationally and worked in tough areas. US police / customs etc are not corrupt (relative to developing countries I've traveled in). This really makes me lose confidence in Amnesty unfortunately. The US is relatively violent compared to developed peers and has some insane pockets of violence (east st louis etc). No question about that. This is stark when traveling to Asia or Western Europe - even "bad" areas in places like Germany are ridiculously safe relative to "bad" areas in the US. And that includes interactions with police (often unarmed overseas vs jumping on your back with a gun in the US).

unholythree 6y ago

My Grandma is from this island Roatan, the history of it is kind of interesting: The “native” islanders are largely descended from cayman islanders and long considered themselves British, although their opinion on the matter counted for little. It was a back water until it became a popular dive location relatively recently due to it’s proximity to some beautiful reefs.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

its been said that one of the most interesting policy proposals -that has never been tried- would be to subsidize people voting with their feet. It works as follows: For anyone living in a high-crime ,or high unemployment,or failing public school zone, offer : - A paid one-way trip(bus fare to any destination and a prepaid debit card to buy 2 luggages), for each member of the household. - Limit 3 free trips per taxpayer household. - Limit 1 household trip , every 365 days.