Thoughts on Prospera

Some of you may be aware of the conference/pop-up city called Vitalia (https://vitalia.city/) that is currently taking place in a charter city in Honduras called Prospera.

Curious if anyone is actually there, as well as what the general attitude toward charter cities is here.

It seems to me that establishing semi-autonomous city states in the third world is a pretty good way to experiment with governance futurism. A community can govern themselves through their own software network for some time, but eventually one needs to build on physical land.

I guess Honduras was selected by Prospera due to the legal groundwork that had already been laid out by Paul Romer, when he tried to organize the development of a charter city there in the early 2010s. It is now legal to establish a Zone for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDE) in Honduras, which serves as the legal basis for Prospera.

From what I understand, Prospera has its own laws, security services, immigration restrictions, and uses Bitcoin as official tender.

IMO I think its possible that Honduras expels Prospera. Seems like the government there is too left-wing populist at the moment and they are targeting Prospera pretty hard. Having an example of good governance nearby is always dangerous for incompetent regimes.

That being said, I think charter cities could absolutely work in some other states, especially in more authoritarian regimes that are pro-development (Morocco, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, etc). I guess you could also just set up some weird commune in the jungle of Brazil or something but it would always be more legally precarious. I would generally be warry of any democratic regime with this kind of project, given that democracies tend to be either nationalist or envious, both of which are very threatening to a charter city.

The thing with charter cities is that they need the active cooperation of a real sovereign to really work. They are either a colonialist/imperialist project, or some kind of developmentalist project. Palladium wrote about this:

https://www.palladiummag.com/2018/10/08/why-charter-cities-wont-lead-to-decentralized-government/

Building a city *and then holding it politically* is a big job. I'll believe it when I see it, or if me and several thousand of my well-resourced friends are organized as a polis and need somewhere to set up shop we can think more seriously about it. Until then I feel no need to partake in internet meme fantasies about charter cities.

El Salvador and Bukele are more interesting right now IMO. There you also have a place with Bitcoin and law+order, but Bukele is the actual government with actual armed forces and internationally recognized sovereignty. That's a huge leg up besides the fact that they have way more territory and population than any charter city has a prospect of getting.

Philosophers should court and train actual tyrants, rather than dreaming of schemes where merchants can set up cities as legally-backed corporate ventures.

Knowing only the vague outlines of the project, I'm skeptical it's worth the trouble to build from scratch a Caribbean tax haven, especially one that is philosophically and materially incapable of defending itself against the warships and troops of the republic in which it sits. This is an uninformed opinion, though, I admit. And let me admit I'm hostile to the "internet meme fantasies" that have been pitched to me, since they always seem godless and weird.

The most interesting governance experiments defy the libertarian ethos of the charter city. Looking at various autonomous zones around the world, the most successful operate with reciprocal patronage between local government and host, with cash, investment, talent, and ideas being traded for protection.

This is ugly business, unfortunately, that most white men are not willing to deal with. Look at the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, which exists because of Shan State shooters, payoffs to Thai intelligence, and envelopes of cash to Lao People's Revolutionary Party. That is a place that could defend itself, but the need has not yet arisen.

Maybe more people should aim for improvements on Jonestown or Baildon Colony. Promise me that my forty-seven grandchildren will thrive, become even more pious, no longer speak English, and be capable of surviving the end times.

I think it is true that the future is in selling governance solutions directly to despots. That is the first step to carving out an autonomous zone, if that's where you would like to live, and if your solutions can bring in revenue. A purer networked libertarianism, unfortunately, is not particularly marketable. It's hard to come up with an improvement on what actually works, which is already being sold by entrepreneurs backed up by states.

El Salvador is interesting.

>The thing with charter cities is that they need the active cooperation of a real sovereign to really work.

Yes this is precisely why I think charter cities are de facto only capable of being realized in authoritarian regimes. Absolute or semi-absolute monarchies are probably the optimal regime. It is not a coincidence that the arab gulf monarchies are materializing the closest things we have seen to large scale start-up cities. This is also why I suggested Morocco as a potential location.

If a society is willing to have a king (a real king), then they would be willing to accept foreign operations approved by the king. Democracies, and corrupt authoritarian regimes pretending to be democracies, are the political structure most likely to expel or reject a charter city. Explicit monarchical regimes are more stable than other authoritarian systems.

I completely agree regarding El Salvador. It is actually funny that El Salvador is mentioned as an alternative to Prospera because Bukele is connected with the Prospera project, in a way. The same people who chose to develop Prospera also decided to court Bukele (do with this knowledge what you will).

That being said, I think El Salvador will probably come to pass as being more successful, precisely because of the points that have already been made above. IMO the country has a real chance of becoming the Latin American Singapore.

"The Jewish quarter" was in many ways the medieval charter-city-within-a-city. If you read the diaries of medieval Jews, it's striking how they usually have a high opinion of the distant kings and nobles they rely on for protection and patronage, and have a much more ambivalent opinion of the local city elites who are their usual trade partners, but are also imposing discriminatory movement restrictions and taxes, and organizing the occasional lynch mob.

> If you read the diaries of medieval Jews

Any sources that you would recommend, or cities in particular? I see an aristocracy as being a network of families whose product is governance. There are other kinds of family networks, providing, for example, particular crafts, quality food, etc.