But they implicitly assume a 100% chance of generating a charter city with better institutions than the host country, given a certain amount of effort on their part. I’d be eagerly donating to them if I believed that. But I expect most countries have political problems which will cause them to reject any charter city effort that comes from outside their country.
I’ll estimate a less than 5% chance that any US based charity will catalyze the creation of a charter city in another country, and if such a charter city is created, I’ll estimate maybe a 50% chance of it having better institutions than the host country. So I’m dividing their expected impact estimates by about 50 or 100.
As a precedent, the micronation of Liberland was established in Gornja Siga in 2015, which prior to that was terra nullius.
That a territory is unclaimed by existing sovereign states, however, seems like a poor reason for establishing a charter city there. In a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen, urban planner Alain Bertaud noted that
Cities need a good location. This is a debate I had with Paul Romer when he was interested in charter cities. He had decided that he could create 50 charter cities around the world. And my reaction — maybe I’m wrong — but my reaction is that there are not 50 very good locations for cities around the world. There are not many left… cities like Singapore, Malacca, Mumbai are there for a good reason. And I don’t think there’s that many very good locations.
Also, seems like full-on state-building—which is presumably what would need to happen in terra nullius—is a different (harder?) task than a charter city. As I understand things, charter cities typically rely on many services/institutions of their host polity.
Most of their analysis looks right.
But they implicitly assume a 100% chance of generating a charter city with better institutions than the host country, given a certain amount of effort on their part. I’d be eagerly donating to them if I believed that. But I expect most countries have political problems which will cause them to reject any charter city effort that comes from outside their country.
I’ll estimate a less than 5% chance that any US based charity will catalyze the creation of a charter city in another country, and if such a charter city is created, I’ll estimate maybe a 50% chance of it having better institutions than the host country. So I’m dividing their expected impact estimates by about 50 or 100.
Maybe it’d be helpful to build the charter city somewhere like here?
As a precedent, the micronation of Liberland was established in Gornja Siga in 2015, which prior to that was terra nullius.
That a territory is unclaimed by existing sovereign states, however, seems like a poor reason for establishing a charter city there. In a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen, urban planner Alain Bertaud noted that
Also, seems like full-on state-building—which is presumably what would need to happen in terra nullius—is a different (harder?) task than a charter city. As I understand things, charter cities typically rely on many services/institutions of their host polity.
The 100% P(success) is especially unreasonable given the failed attempts by Paul Romer in Honduras and Madagascar.