What would be the value add of an EA city, over and above that of an EA school and coworking space? For example, I don’t see why you need to eat at an EA restaurant, rather than just a regular restaurant with tasty and ethical food.
Note also that the libertarian “Free State Project” seems to have failed, despite there being many more libertarians than effective altruists.
Mere libertarians may have failed, as anarchists did in similar attempts. But I believe that EAs can do better. An EA city would be a perfect place to apply many of the ideas and polices we are currently advocating for.
Could you elaborate on the policies? And what, roughly, are you picturing—an EA-sympathising municipal government, or a more of a Honduran special economic zone type situation?
I don’t think I will elaborate on policies, given that they are the last thing to worry about. Even RP negative report counts new policies among the benefits of charter cities. Now we are supposed to have effective ways to improve welfare, why wouldn’t we build a new city, start from scratch, do it better than everybody else, and show it to the world? While I agree that this can’t be done without putting a lot of thinking into it, I believe it must be done sooner or later. From a longtermist point of view: how could we ever expect to carry out a rational colonization of other planets when nobody on earth has ever been able to successfully found at least one rational city?
What would be the value add of an EA city, over and above that of an EA school and coworking space? For example, I don’t see why you need to eat at an EA restaurant, rather than just a regular restaurant with tasty and ethical food.
Note also that the libertarian “Free State Project” seems to have failed, despite there being many more libertarians than effective altruists.
Lower cost of living, meaning you can have more people working on less profitable stuff.
I’m not sure 5000 free staters (out of 20k signatories) should be considered failure.
Right, but it sounds like it didn’t go well afterwards? https://www.google.com/amp/s/newrepublic.com/amp/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
Mere libertarians may have failed, as anarchists did in similar attempts. But I believe that EAs can do better. An EA city would be a perfect place to apply many of the ideas and polices we are currently advocating for.
Could you elaborate on the policies? And what, roughly, are you picturing—an EA-sympathising municipal government, or a more of a Honduran special economic zone type situation?
I don’t think I will elaborate on policies, given that they are the last thing to worry about. Even RP negative report counts new policies among the benefits of charter cities. Now we are supposed to have effective ways to improve welfare, why wouldn’t we build a new city, start from scratch, do it better than everybody else, and show it to the world? While I agree that this can’t be done without putting a lot of thinking into it, I believe it must be done sooner or later. From a longtermist point of view: how could we ever expect to carry out a rational colonization of other planets when nobody on earth has ever been able to successfully found at least one rational city?