What if we could redesign society from scratch? The promise of charter cities
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ค. 2024
- Improving a nation's institutions and governance can be a powerful way to boost economic growth and lift millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, governance change is difficult and slow, and we don't have easy ways to experiment with new forms of governance. But Nobel Prize economist Paul Romer had an idea: what if we could build semi-independent cities with their own rules and legislations, where people can freely move to? This is the core idea of charter cities.
#chartercities
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Paul Romer's Charter Cities Ted Talk: • Paul Romer: Why the wo...
Paul Romer's Essay on Charter Cities: www.files.ethz.ch/isn/113646/...
Prospera - A Charter City in Honduras: www.prospera.co/
Prospera Overview by Astral Codex Ten: astralcodexten.substack.com/p...
Charter Cities Institute Research: chartercitiesinstitute.org/ca...
Introduction to Charter Cities: chartercitiesinstitute.org/in...
Charter Cities Podcasts: chartercitiesinstitute.org/ca...
Global Startup Cities Map: www.startupcitiesmap.com/map
The Financial Times on Itana: www.ft.com/content/7a0419bf-e...
Criticism and issues of charter cities:
- devpolicy.org/why-charter-cit...
- nationalpost.com/news/year-in...
Economic Inequality Data: ourworldindata.org/global-eco...
Singapore's GDP Per Capita: data.worldbank.org/indicator/...
Life Expectancy in Singapore: www.macrotrends.net/countries...
Education and Its Role in Singapore's Success: thesocialtalks.com/blog/educa...
Why Nations Fail - Wikipedia Overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nat...
Nigeria's Electricity Grid Issues: theconversation.com/why-niger...
Debt Crisis in Nigerian Electricity Companies: guardian.ng/news/discos-face-...
UN Report on Urban Population Growth: www.un.org/en/desa/around-25-...
Risks of Rapid Urbanization in Developing Countries: www.zurich.com/en/knowledge/t...
Population Growth in Lagos: www.macrotrends.net/cities/22...
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You are too many to fit in the description, so we've put you here: docs.google.com/document/d/1X...
Thanks to all of you!
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Directed by:
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Written by:
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Producer:
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Plan:
1. Start a TH-cam channel.
2. Get enough subscribers to start a charter city.
3. ???
4. Take over the Virgo Supercluster.
(By the way, you can support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/rationalanimations )
Noice 🙂
Just buy a small country.
1. Start youtube channel
2. Gain several million subscribers
3. Invade a large city/small country
4. Take over the virgo supercluster
I pledge allegiance to the great city of Rationalia
Why stop at the Virgo Supercluster, I say, think bigger, Laniakea.
In practice a lot of charter cities end up being tax havens for rich people. If you get common goods from one country/community but then as soon as you reap the fruits of those common goods you remove yourself from the redistributive programs that make the common goods possible, you can essentially be freerider, which undermines the common goods that generated the social welfare.
Then don't let people be free riders??
Not to mention that if charter cities take off and become common, you inherently get a race to the bottom effect. You see that right now with our 200ish countries, with companies moving resources around to get the best tax rates and cheapest labor. Which is of course good for the companies, but not necessarily good for society as a whole. And because all these countries are competing, it is incredibly hard to get everyone to agree to stop the loopholes, or coordinate on global problems like carbon emissions. If the world gets even more fractured with thousands of charter cities, each with their own legal codes, global coordination becomes absolutely impossible.
It is a very libertarian techbro attitude towards politics and economics, where the underlying assumption is that what is good for the agents within the system, must be good for the system as a whole. Which simply is not the case. A charter city can become strong and powerful by fucking over the rest of the planet through resource hogging, negative externalities, or undercutting global cooperation. The incentive structure is not aligned with global wellbeing.
@harmenkoster7451 It's not a race to the bottom, it's a race to the top. Imagine thinking competition is bad because groups are then compelled to provide optimal services
Exactly. The version of charter cities he discusses here is reliant on and fully embedded in a capitalist formulation of local and global economies. Profit motive is a good enough heuristic to guide development from the industrial to information age, but now that we're here we need something better.
@@aidanaldrich7795 A situation where a bunch of charter cities are competing for investment, company offices, and skilled labor while having control over their own legislation is inherently a race to the bottom. You can try to put lipstick on a cow, all you want, but it'll still be a cow.
Hell, the US states with their own legislation are probably the closest real world example we have of widespread useage of charter cities and they spend roughly 50 billion annually on corporate wellfare in an attempt to poach businesses from each other. To the detriment of the taxpayers.
EPCOT started like this. It was meant to be the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", generating its own food, power, and effectively running a closed loop ecology. Then Walt Disney died and the Disney company decided his vision of building a new kind of city was too expensive, and turned the place into a theme park instead.
American Arcadia is a game with that as it's setting
lol that's pretty much disney in a nutshell
"hmm, this is clearly better, but this makes more money. let's go with the latter."
And would have been dystopian as hell with the residents essentially being a human zoo for fancy new technology that would become dated quickly.
Least it didn't turn into a Henry ford town
Aldo it was a pretty bad design, it was a chatter city idea.
Sounds like the obstacles that prevent charter cities from working are also the ones that give them a reason to exist. If the national government is fair and effective, there wouldn't be a need for charter cities. And if they they weren't they wouldn't let charter cities exist
Not the case in that there are also social issues these can solve as well. The whole "governance competition" thing is not the biggest deal, its more about what kind of social environment you can get for yourself. More accepting of this or that lifestyle, focused on specific issues more, etc.
should tell people a lot about what a joke our current civilization is set up like
100% this.
The US is not letting charter cities exist 😮😢
This mechanism kind of recalls the institution of Imperial Free Cities in the holy roman empire. A move that was at first was beneficial for both parties, but that ultimately resulted in the fragmentation of political power within the same state. After all, why would a city with different laws, taxes and customs care about the wider state, if not to ultimately gain more independence from it in the long run?
and what is wrong with that?
@@jelek_pl nothing necessarily, but knowing history that also can cause a bureaucratic nightmare at best and a civil war at worst. Not all independence movements are the same, and many of them end up serving the interests of the local elite, not the common folk. Again, what stops a city with an economical advantage from weakening the country's overall economy and eventually strong arm the state to give preferential treatment? Wouldn't that be more oppressive than a single state?
Politicians already favor capitals and economic hubs to the disappointment of rural and post-industrial towns, let's not exacerbate that.
calling hthe HRE a state at all is a bit of a misnomer imo
@@thezipcreator it was at one point, and although free cities came at a much later time of its history, similar mechanisms were employed throughout it's history as rewards of fealty. The HRE was for some time the most stable institution since the Roman Empire, that disintegrated throughout the millennium due to preferential treatment of certain parts of it by subsequential emperors.
@@QSBraWQ it's deja vu all over again
Build one of these underwater and you've basically reinvented Bioshock.
You don't need to build underwater to get the hideous consequences of this kind of development.
You don't need to go underwater. Some crazies have actually mooted doing effectively that via their own sovereign ocean liners stationed far out in international waters.
People should be allowed to build bioshock if they want to. You should also get to choose whether you live in the bioshock city or not.
I assumed bioshock was about a charter.
@@spaceprior Slippery concept, choice. How do you ensure people are ACTUALLY allowed to come and go as they wish?
To be fair, Singapore has too good a geographical position that its experience just might not be relevant to most countries. Factors like this are also significant for any country''s success.
India has an excellent geographic position, too, and hasn't grown nearly as much.
Or have a look at Shenzhen: excellent position, too, but could only come into being once Mao was dead.
While Singapore's location is advantageous, many nations with bad locations do well (New Zealand, Finland) and many nations with very good locations do poorly. Yemen being a great example. Culture is a bigger factor than location.
@emingunay2673 You could partition India into lots of small states with small populations, if that helps.
@there's a lot more than culture here. Population, for example, and the country's history (aka which flavor of colonialism and imperialism it experienced/experience)
Singapore had a good geographical position when it was poor too... Japan has a really bad position in several aspects and yet it also had an economic boom when they embraced economic freedom
This entire idea seems extremely vulnerable to colonialism/external interests/comedically high levels of corrupt abuse that look like “company towns”. I’m sure that there is a genuine, noble ambition here, but I don’t see it working out in the majority of cases.
Crabs in a bucket mentality
I tend to agree.
@@aidanaldrich7795 how's that?
New ways of governance? In reality just new ways of exploitation...
@@aidanaldrich7795 how so?
Maybe im missing something, but I dont see how charter cities would avoid fallong into the same traps of corruption and incompetence that we already see in so many governments. Only without a constitution or political checks and balances to keep the worst offenders in check.
This is the crypto-boom idea disguised as governance. "deregulate and decentralize" I think we've seen clearly why crypto was a complete and utter disaster that only ended up harming people more than helping them.
Even if the Charter cities were immune to creating their own corruption, they would be extremely vulnerable to corruption from the government of the nation at large. As long as they're subject to the laws and politicians of the rest of the country, they will inevitably be corrupted by the corrupt politicians of the nation.
The parent state garuntees freedom of movement. And people can move away from the corrupt cities to the non corrupt ones. Then the corrupt one loses land value.
One idea is to emulate Singapore.
@ be built in a geographically advantageous area and develop industry at the start of the boom before other countries have caught up so you can reap the most benefit out of the boom and then ride that out?
I feel like your argument at 9:04 is exactly why Charter Cities cannot work within an existing polity. It's not just a government that would be threatened by a rival internal entity, but the broader demos would also feel unfairly excluded, and also subject to extortion by the Charter City (ultra-low wages for menial work to boost profits of those within the city).
Singapore used to be part of Malaysia, it was only when it was fully separate that the new Nation-City of Singapore could embark on its radical reforms. The government and the demos were part of the one state.
South Korea did not need to pilot good governance in a city to progress, the country moved away from military dictatorship and both the people and the institutions embraced democracy & economic development.
I think moving a whole country is plausible (and agreeably difficult) - though that country can also be a breakaway city / province (as per Singapore, Monaco, Hong Kong, East Timor), but it has to be a whole country.
Monaco is/was not a breakaway city/province, FWIW.
I think it is hard to argue South Korea is a genuine Democracy. It is perhaps the closest to a corportacracy that exists in the world. Literally every successive government is undermined by corruption of the major Chaebols.
American style Federalism cuts both ways. Cities have the power to create stricter laws or better public programs. In theory, they can do whatever they want for things that aren't mentioned in the constitution or state law, but in reality the Federal Government has a lot of power to stop cities from doing things they don't like. Same for other countries like Nigeria that borrow from US and UK systems of government. I believe they even have US style counties they just call them something different. The point of these cities is to change from the status quo. Not to pick on thm cause plenty of countries have issues, but I just can't imagine the ruling political faction allowing these cities to adopt the oppositions policies and give them a chance to become effective and popular.
"the people embraced economic development" doesn't mean anything. You need to specify what is it that they embraced which produced economic development. Democracy helps create that scenario, but democracy by itself doesn't create wealth. What creates wealth is people working in freedom in order to make a profit. In short, capitalism.
okay, okay, but what about the MOLOCH? like maybe setting up a system where everyone competes to be the best tax haven could be, bad
not as bad as the current system where there is minimal competition and so countries can offer terrible products at high prices. I agree there will be some negative Molochian effects, but this is like the move to capitalism - the benefits far outweigh the costs.
oh, so the least amount of money will go to the most ineffecient and incompetent entity in world history?
What's the MOLOCH?
They could just as easily compete for the lowest rents and highest ubi
You know why Singapore did well? Housing.
The solution is universal basic services, food, housing, healthcare education and transportation services. And democracy, especially in the workplace. UBS pays for itself exponentially, and democracy in the workplace increases pay, retention and even helps survive price shocks.
It's not difficult, but the problem is interenched power indeed and the interenched intrest in profit focus economies rather than progress based, which would come from UBS
Easy for Singapore to do well for housing, when it's nothing more than an island that can't quite expand outward.
As already pointed out by many, I can't see charter cities as presented in the video being something else than tax heavens and a ghettos for rich people. The tax heaven problem can be partially resolved by strengthening the international cooperation against such practice, but for the rich getho, allowing a charter city to make their own immigration law inside a sovereign nation is by essence the recipe to redo what we are already witnessing in rich citiy states like singapore, which use cheap labor from the poor country nearby to prosper. That doesn't look utopian at all.
At least I can give credit to the concept for the social innovation. We as a civilisation are very conservative about social changes. The pace of our thechnogical innovation and economical grow is insane, but we are sooooo slow to make even some minor adjustments to our laws or social order to better the society.
Beyond the inumerous critics pointed, I very curious how all these "independent" cities would coordinate with each other without ending in endless chaos, with conflicts about resources, and economics interests, specially giving the advanced means of destruction humanity are about to have, ranging from AI to biotechnology..
Which nations are Hong Kong, Singapore, Lichtenstein, or Luxembourg at war with? City states can coexist and prosper along side eachother
All these cities are historically, culturally, geopoliticaly and economicaly subsided by big states. Mess with Hong Kong or Singapore (giant tax havens), and you're risking an large scale conflict with United States.
You must be kidding comparing an situation where cities like that accounts for an small part of world global power and another where there is hundreds or even thousands of them, fully autonomous.
@@obladioblada6932 Singapore very much did not count on the US to save their bacon. That's why they built up their own armed forces so frantically when they gained independence; and still conscript nearly all males for two years.
The US did not save Hong Kong from being taken over by the PRC. (And if anything, wouldn't you want to talk about Britain as the subsidising nation, not the US?)
If the US was so keen on tax havens, they could just lower their own taxes. They are a sovereign country last I checked.
"From 1965 to 1975, the United States offered significant economic assistance to stabilise Singapore as a key segment of their containment of communism during the Cold War, and Singapore's economy industrialised through providing repair and transshipment facilities for the American forces in Vietnam.[8]"
We tried this. They were called company towns, and they sucked. Removing external oversight from a society can only benefit those who went in with more resources and power.
This is pretty different from a company town. This is city building as a service and no one would be forced to live there
When you let capitalism become the government you end up with a feudal shit hole.
What if the external overseer isn't benevolent? This is of course situational and it's more true for a place like Nigeria than the US.
@@aidanaldrich7795 No one was forced to live in a company town. You don't have to work for that company...
@@Jay_Johnson and how were company towns bad then?
One if the major issues is that a charter city may end up occupying economically viable locations, relegating the hinterlands to the wider state, thus causing the charter city to be able to exploit the collective resources of the wider society while leaving tbe maintence and tax burden upon the state while keeping the wealth generated for itself.
The problem with this idea is pretty fundamental, in that the advocates lack information about the countries that they view as "successful". China is an authoritarian country where factory workers are treated like garbage for slightly better wages than they got when they were agrarian workers. Singapore is placed in one of the most navigated straits in the world, so all they had to do was place tariffs on ships. While South Korea is a dystopia ruled by oligarchic aristocracies, which constantly ranks in the global top for suicide and childlessness rates.
None of these are social success stories. They might be PR success stories, since they control their media (either the government does it or it is done by monopolies) to make themselves look good to the outside world, whereas more democratic countries have journalists who are free to (and really love to) complain about every little thing. And their governments being more or less authoritarian also means protests are rare, which gives the appearance that everything is right, whereas again, people in free democracies block the roads and make a scene for the pettiest of reasons.
People might make more money overall in these places than they did before, but they also work longer (so not sure how much they gain in pay per hour), and their traditional familial ties were broken by industrialization, which besides psychological support also offered financial support in times of need. It is simplistic to say that they just "got better". They mega rich did get a sweet deal out of this, that's for sure.
This is not really a problem with this idea, as you do not need to copy the approach of any particular country completely. You may dislike the way a country does something but ultimately the question is whether you believe there is anything to learn from it at all. For example, you are right that Singapore has a highly advantageous location but that simply fails to explain some of the socioeconomic outcomes like how it spends about 4.5-5% of its GDP on healthcare while UK spends more than 8% and US more than 16%, that is despite having similar health outcomes. Nobody is saying you should replicate Singaporean military draft but their healthcare system has some desirable features and so does their education system. Even then, we are free to select some parts of a policy and not others. The point of a charter city is to give you the freedom to choose something brand new which cannot be realistically done on a national scale - eg you can mix parts of an Australian, French, Japanese and Singaporean healthcare to get better results.
However, you did raise an interesting issue indirectly - whether it is realistic to think that any country (people and government) would be willing to acknowledge that another one has a superior system in anything. It may be fine for a politician in US to say that America has a bad healthcare system but I am not so sure they could get away with saying another country has a better healthcare system. Somebody will almost certainly misconstrue their words as saying 'country x is better than US' to mislead/manipulate the public. They would say 'look how bad country x is because they have *any random problem here*' as if it is somehow relevant to the question of who has better healthcare.
Also, going off on a tangent, you are right that economic transformation in many countries was not without its costs, but I think it is undeniable that their citizens are better off than if their countries remained impoverished and agrarian. In 1957 South Korea, more than 108 in 1000 live births ended in death, today this number is less than 2 in 1000. I cannot possibly imagine how much suffering this expunged from the world, how many parents did not have to suffer the fate of losing their children. This is true in many other areas of life too. Hence, while I think SK may not have such a 'great' social success story, it is a success story nevertheless.
Chinese factory workers get paid a lot more now than peasants got fifty years ago. (Compare the growth or relative lack thereof in India.) Singapore does not derive its income from 'tariffs on ships'. Your sentence about South Korea makes no sense: assuming for the sake of argument that it is true, that doesn't explain why South Korea is successful. Otherwise, North Korea would be very successful by that metric. It is truly a dystopia there.
The countries you mention might (or might not) control their domestic media. But they can't control international media.
Singapore is very, very keen on traditional family ties. Where did you get your information about them being broken from?
Which country do you think is a social success story then?
@@distendedmist5840 Switzerland. It is rich, democratic, has low inequality and corruption, and they did this without depending on natural resources or geography like, for example, Norway did. It also implements elements of charterism like the video argues for, since each canton has its own elected legislature, government, laws and taxation. However, the federal government keeps local governments in check, upholds the constitution and redistributes money taken through federal taxes from wealthier cantons to poorer ones, to keep inequality low. And the later part is important, since, as Reagan has taught us through example, wealth does not trickle down.
Francis fukuyuma writes a lot about how institutions are fundamental in lifting up a nation
Corruption is usually the insurmountable problem. I do wish these places the best of luck & won't hold me breath....
I donr think its insurmountable, but getting rid of it is a painstakingly slow process....
I admit I am very skeptical when it comes to charter cities. They smack of techbro-ism to a very strong degree. But worth trying at least.
That's fair and Effective Altruism (which is the movement this channel is based around) definitely needs rational outside critique if it is to continue making the world better
The ideas are older then the cypherpunks and explictly not the cpytro delusion that "smart contracts" will be just great and prefect and instantly replace lawyers
If you think nfts are stupid, surely this is a reaction to that critism by becoming more grounded?
Yeah as a moderate Agrarian and architectural traditionalist I'm cautiously curious about this one.
@@supernukey419 Tbf effective altruism didn't come from the techbros. It was a genuinely altruistic movement. The techbros adopted it later cos it offered them a convenient way to argue against govts. and nonprofits while ostensibly championing themselves as looking out for the collective good. Charter cities also do have genuine goodwill behind them, although they too end up catering to the techbro fantasy.
TESCREAL cultists have way more power and influence than the traditional name of "techbro" or "effective altruist" would suggest. This very video is part of the PR engine trying to paint their ideas in the best light possible without being outright jingoist propaganda.
The problem with Charter cities, much like Charter schools, is that those who pay the taxes and work in the region do not get the benefit from the elitist status
What? How do people who pay taxes not benefit from charter schools?
as long as taxpayers outside the cities aren't paying into them in any way I see no real issue with it in terms of economic relations between the two.
this is the same issue I have with private schools trying to take public money under guise of school choice.
@@barrybee6498 They act as suction centers. Unless there's regulation to prohibit it, charter schools for instance end up drawing in all the brightest students and hence appearing far more successful, while the actually difficult children are all left together in public schools, dragging their average performance down even more and making them seem like failures.
Well yeah this is a concern I have as well. As long as everyone in this charter city did benefit from the products that they produced or trade for then I guess I would tentatively not have an issue.
But it comes down to the same argument we have now-is everything going to be left to the private market with all of its shortcomings, or will there be some social supports in place?
I'm willing to consider a charter city as an option but these are the questions that need to be decided.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn It's even more sinister than this. The "difficult" children are overwhelmingly those who have experienced abuse, are neuroatypical, and/or from presently marginalized backgrounds. So all the people who need real help, or just need a different approach, in order to be the best they can be, get stuffed into the most rigid and prison-like "educational" system. One which prepares them only for actual prisons. Which feeds directly into the "statistics" racists and other fascists use to justify their monstrous policies, while also further entrenching the divides caused by centuries of this bullshit. And it all gets wrapped up as "good experimental education" and sold to the public as choice, when it's really just eugenics made palatable to the modern taste.
It's crazy to me, that in this time of ever growing corporate exploitation, you all would think it was a good idea to let a small group of powerful "founders" decide what laws they should be subject to.
Especially when the explicitly stated goal is "economic growth", which is just code for the rich enriching themselves further.
There is no reason that a charter city couldn't be held in trust by all members of the community
Economic growth means lifting people out of poverty. It is a good thing (that admittedly can sometimes get Goodhart's Law'd).
@CocolinoFan I would rather be homeless in a first world nation today than rich 2000 years ago. Increasing wealth helps even the most disadvantaged
@@AZaqZaqProduction define "economic growth".
@@aidanaldrich7795 It does, it also takes power away from the disenfranchised, wealth inequality has real impact and not just for funsies
This is feudalism inc.
Compare and contrast en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Software is the biggest new fiefdom, CEO and shareholders are the new lords, influencers and wanna be influencers like RationalAnimations are the new clergy.
It is coming everywhere, more and more, these chartershities just look like a local shortcuts. There is an incredible problem that with higher automation the need for commodified peasants like You and me become obsolete. The solution to problem will be made for us, not by us, it might be stairway to heaven or just a cliff, both are horrible. @
In theory I'm always open to new ideas or new implementation of older ideas, however in reality, I have to be cynical. These do really just sound like company towns or towns that work great for the tech elite but not so great for everyone else.
I'm willing to allow others the opportunity to try it out, but I'm rather pessimistic at first blush.
I think alternative social models should be tried. I think we always should be trying to improve on the current status quo. There's a lot to complain about regarding our current institutions. However, experience has shown that these communities can easily be corrupted.
How are the social services in this utopia? Would the disabled, the old, or the sick be welcomed, or would it only be a shining city on the hill for the beautiful, the smart, or the capable?? How would public goods be provided? Would there be a limited judicial system?, because disputes will inevitably arise.
I'm all for a less oppressive more democratic society, but the devil is always in the details. Look I'm even willing to try benevolent dictatorship because I think in the short term it can be useful, but we have to take a long look at all of these alternative propositions with a weathered eye.
Everything can sound wonderful on paper. The proof is where the rubber meets the road.
If a group thinks they can start a new town to function as a mostly autonomous city-state that will be positive and desirable to all, then by all means I would be open to seeing it tried and I hope they succeed. I just hope it doesn't degenerate into problems.
If one thinks a new town can function more smoothly and in a superior to other given towns based on the principle of looser restrictions on business entities then by all means let's try it out, but I'm skeptical. I mean most US towns have always bent over for business especially big business and we have the highest and growing rates of poverty in the last 100 years. Was that a strong social safety net and at least some social programs I don't see how this wouldn't repeat itself in this new utopia. The only way I could see this being prevented is if only healthy people were allowed to take part in this experiment. But for how long would that be kept up? Perhaps for some time but how would it be enforced if indeed that was the agenda?
I'm willing to consider any reasonable alternative to our current models but I'm not so sure if the primary team who is behind this idea has truly thought through all the possible complications. On one hand I'm curious and so I'd like to see if some encouraging progress could be made but on the other hand I'm also skeptical. Ideas can sound great but I really need to hear the nitty gritty before I feel more comfortable giving my personal seal of approval.
Imagine your ideal society.....
Now realize that the best way to achieve it is on a small scale. That's the beauty of charter cities is that they are micro nation test grounds for all types of political systems
@@aidanaldrich7795 yeah....
Well I'm skeptical but I'd be interested in seeing the results. Regardless of the agenda if somebody wants to start a new city or a commune first they need land and that means they have to find a place somewhere that they can buy from whoever currently claims ownership of it and will let them operate. Since a project like this is going to be rather large it would take the the permission of local, regional, or state authorities. Higher authority usually sucks but unfortunately they have the organized force so there's not much you can do about it.
@@aidanaldrich7795 yeah....
Well I'm skeptical but I'd be interested in seeing the results. Regardless of the agenda if somebody wants to start a new city or a commune first they need land and that means they have to find a place somewhere that they can buy from whoever currently claims ownership of it and will let them operate. Since a project like this is going to be rather large it would take the the permission of local, regional, or central govts.
People keep saying that oh they are gonna end up as cities for the rich but thats not the point, the point is that its going to give people a choice if you dont think you are being respected in the city of the rich then leave the whole point is giving people alternatives they can range from techbro technocracy to hivemind communism and everything else inbetween(as long as they dont violate the constitution and harm anyone) and people can choose if the city doesnt support disabled people then just go to a city where they mandated it by law for each and every building to be built with disabled people in mind
@@aidanaldrich7795 I don't know what's going on but I'm not typing anything weird and TH-cam will not let me reply to you no matter what so just letting you know.
im wondering just how many legal headaches would come from these
which laws apply within a charter city vs outside of it? which existing systems interact with the rest of society and which dont?
also, what happens if the charter city harms more than it help, turning into a cancerous-like annoyance? how do you pull the plug on a society without making everyone mad, or screwing over their lives?
On the other hand, a charter city that offers better governance and regulation over a tyranical, despotic and incompetent regimes is an atractive choice for millions.
Hmm woyls need to do it in 2 locations at different times and then let it run and consider and remedy the problems as they arise
I am sorry to say, but for once this is a bit of a nonsensical video. I would be very surprised if any good lawyer was involved in creating this. The video implies that "giving cities the right to write their own legislation" is a groundbreaking new idea, when in fact almost every city I know (and almost every municipality in rural areas, too, for that matter) writes its own legislation. This is the basic principle of "subsidiarity", where laws are made at the level closest to the citizen. Only where it is necessary for better efficiency and cooperation, laws are made at a "higher" level, such as provincial, state, or federal level (or even "Union" level, for the European Union). Of course you can give certain cities the competence to make laws in areas that would normally be made at a "higher" level, but this also has certain downsides (such as e.g. incompatibility with the laws in force everywhere outside of the city). In any event, and this is my main point, cities having the power to legislate is hardly a new idea.
I think you are missing the point of charter cities. It's not extraordinary that they make localized law, it's that they are not beholden to outside law
What you write is factually wrong, at least according to the video. As it is said at minute 3:25, even "charter cities" would absolutely have to follow "outside law".
@@HappyHater It's either the cities fully follow the country's laws as per the video, and then it's just a regular city, or they want exceptions from the country's laws and then it's never going to happen (both because it might require vast changes up to the constitution, and because the government won't agree). I really don't see the point of charter cities.
@@MaskedDeath_ "they want exceptions from the country's laws and then it's never going to happen" tell that to the UK government's Freeports initiative. It will happen if Party donors want it to. Plenty of powerful people want to be excluded from labour, environmental and standards legislation.
They would to a lesser degree than a normal city, that's the point... it seems obtuse on your part not to recognize this.@@HappyHater
Brilliant video on a really interesting topic! Maps with blue land and green water was really confusing though!!
Yes, the contrast is funny too, usually water is darker on maps than land (probably in part because blue is perceived as darker) :))
I’d like to say for starters I love the animation style and secondly I love the ideas of charter cities and yes they arent perfect (as nothing in the world can be) but the point is that they give people opportunities I feel a lot of people have missed the point in that they are ment to be one of many different ways that could bring prosperity to the people. I’m a Lazze-Fair capitalist and I think giving people more freedoms and completion is amazing. Thanks for your hard work and sharing ideas you think could change the world for better. I for one find it amazing!
The first thing I think about helping people in developing countries: asphalt/good roads. These people often have a lot already (even if they don't know it), except for the road infrastructure to get certain goods that we consider essential to the people, like food, medical supplies, but also teachers and other types of essential workers basically. Instead they try to drive lorries across dirt or sand roads, not going anywhere at a snails pace, or they only drive cross bikes because that's less susceptible to getting stuck on those roads.
Ok, but if you let rich people do this, you end up with 10 lane highways between the two prosperous cities, and fuck all for the people.
@@ernststravoblofeld That might still be an improvement over the status quo.
@ Improvement for a few rich people.
Even better: trains!
@@ernststravoblofeld Nothing prevents the rich from adopting a better style of urban planning, and even then you'd be delusional to think that even the worst highways in the US are worse than the barren destitute shantytown dirt paths that make up African infrastructure
I believe the garden City with a density high enough for public transit (10,000 people per square mile) hand having each one of them be a district with a tram and expanding out and having an express subway stop at each end of every district would be ideal
Along with making rooms into halls and apartment halls into circular communal areas and shared backyards (and shared collective roof for multi story buildings) would allow for socializing (unlike American design that has the least amount of 3rd places)
You might like www.nlb.gov.sg/main/article-detail?cmsuuid=a7fac49f-9c96-4030-8709-ce160c58d15c
'Garden City' was one of the long time guiding visions for Singapore urban planning. (They changed it to 'City in a Garden' for some reasons.) We do have a lot of lush greenery here. We have about 22,254 people per square mile at the moment. (When they adopted the 'Garden City' vision it was probably closer to the 10k you mention. The city's land area grew by about 10% since then, but our population tripled.)
We don't really have trams. Our trains either run on pylons or underground to save space. But there's plenty of public transport. I just wish we had fewer 'stroads'.
Basically good old Hong Kong before the fire nation attack.
Hong Kong is still a really great place overall for working professionals and not much of day to day life has gotten notably worse for the general populace
@@PKNproductions Rents and cages would suggest otherwise. If you're rich I'm sure it's great but the working class are economically crushed by foreign money.
'good old Hong Kong' was never the utopia some people like to imagine it was 'before the fire nation attacked'. Prior to being handed over to China, Hong Kong was NOT a democracy - it was a colony, run by a colonial administration. It only started moving towards being a democracy under the last colonial administrator, when the UK knew they'd be handing it back soon. Even that 'democracy' was flawed, as it was highly corporatized. Economically it was also a terrible place to live if you weren't rich, with some of the highest real estate prices in the world. And that's modern Hong Kong - it was even worse in the actual 'old days' (after being leased out) when the British managed it much more harshly. Indeed it can be argued that Hong Kong got better in large part by simply gentrifying away all the people who couldn't live there anymore, leaving it as a paradise for the rich.
@@guitar2935 Hong Kong was never a good place for the working class. It pushed those people out over time. Indeed it contrasts interestingly with Taiwan, as it lost almost all its manufacturing in favour of complete financialization. Asianometry has a great video about this process, and its negative consequences.
The white man's evil never rests
You guys are super underrtated, amazing animations and always so many interesting topics!
How do you respond to all the counter examples in the comments? Surely these occurred to you when making the video, or have been studied by proponents of this idea?
We tried this before, and it lead to Gary, Indiana, along with a plethora of dilapidated and abandoned corporate towns littering the United States. It seems bloated, inefficient, and wasteful to do this when we have perfectly good cities lying around, many of which have underdeveloped, car dependent areas ripe for redevelopment into transit oriented communities of retail, office, business, residential, and industrial. Maybe the ideal "charter city" would be to refurbish old industrial towns for new industries after siting basically dormant for half a century.
A better Idea is maybe the surrounding suburban municipalities of metro regions developing their own dense, walkable cores that directly compete with the main center city while offering a different rage of businesses and services. An example would be Metro Vancouver's Surrey or Sydney's Paramatta - you build a second CBD within an hour's drive of the first with it's own local laws and goals independent from the main city, while sharing important infrastructure goals, and as it develops, all the major town centers in between all dynamically respond to a shifting metropolitan fabric, which then influences the development of both cities back and forth, especially when factoring in mass transit and TOD. This is a better idea, as the primary purpose of a city is as commerce and logistics hubs built in the most geographically opportune areas possible, and deviating from them makes no sense.
Another idea is just studying other cities to see what's successful without having to build an experimental project city - learn about mass affordable housing from Singapore or Vienna, learn about mass transit from Tokyo or Hong Kong, and learn about proper urban design from Amsterdam or Copenhagen. A lot of great recent development in Seattle, from the Link Light Rail, to the new waterfront, to recent building developments have been directly inspired by what Vancouver has done up the road.
lol
Yup, as the video mentions, building whole new cities makes a lot more sense in rapidly-urbanizing countries like Nigeria, instead of places like the USA or much of Europe, where the total population living in cities is stable or declining, and we just have problems because people are moving out of some cities (leaving them with dilapidated infrastructure, too-low tax revenue to cover basic expenses, etc) and crowding into others (leading to high housing costs and sprawl and other problems when those "superstar cities" don't want to build enough new housing to fit all the new arrivals).
Totally agree that in the USA or Europe, it would probably work better to try and reinvigorate existing post-industrial towns, or find ways to expand on existing cities like with Vancouver/Surrey (maybe "California Forever" is sort of trying to do this for the San Fransisco bay area? it indeed talks a lot about walkability, mixed-use zoning, etc).
Company towns are ruled by one company... A charter city (could) be run by democracy and a council
Valid for a first world reality.
For third world conditions, full autonomy and loc governance is the selling point.
@@XxLIVRAxX I've been to cities in the third world without any taxes and next to no regulation. Iquitos, Peru comes to mind, and it's not exactly the image of prosperity. Yeah, you can buy an apartment for a song and you won't have to pay taxes for it, but the infrastructure is really haphazard to the point that there are occasional blackouts, potholes the size of farm animals, boil water advisories at all time, and unreliable internet. This makes business a lot harder than Lima, with it's established infrastructure and consolidated wealth. Iquitos, being in the middle of the Amazon, has no access to logistics networks, international commerce, existing markets, or steady financing. Thus, Iquitos has more or less stagnated in third world conditions for decades regardless of the fact that the business laws are infinitely looser and there are pretty much no taxes. A large part of a city's success is purely due to its geography.
Political science needs the experimental method. I'd support this on that basis alone.
I have been thinking that we need to give the republicans, democrats, libertarians, and green party an area of some government land somewhere (we have plenty) and let them create their own political experiments. We swing back and forth between the 2 main parties so often, we really don't know what a society would look like if one of the parties had complete control (and no idea about the 2 minor parties that never get elected) Giving them a small 'charter city' where they can implement their policies to their hearts content, and then show off that policy to the rest of the country seems infinitely better than our current election cycle of endless promises and no delivery.
We'd get a lot of ... er, "counterexamples", I think. But if that's what people want to do, it would be interesting to watch.
@@Pbleadhead Is that not just what the states are? I'm from a unitary not federal state but the US states have their own legislatures. Isn't California just a democrat example and Texas a republican example? Hell, De Santis' whole schtick was that he was going to implement laws rolled out in Florida first nationwide
@@Jay_Johnson Sort of not exactly. First, no 3rd party is anywhere close to running a state, so we are missing that. and second, perhaps the states used to be that way, but as it is you cant experiment with messing with... pick a topic... say social security/UBI A state cant mess with that stuff cause it is all federal. A proper political science experiment city would, should, and needs to be able to mess with that stuff. And finally, as weird as this is to say, states have elections... which means parties can lose power if they do poorly. Which is usually a good thing, but for this has 2 side effects of 1. a focus on short term planning, and 2. if your state starts flipping political parties... you aren't experimenting any more, you are back to swapping policies and blaming the other guy. does that make sense?
@@Pbleadhead your idea is really good but I have concerns that because politics and humans are involved they will sabotage the other charter cities so their ideas look like they are the better option
Some feedback: the muted color choices for the maps made it very confusing to figure out what they were depicting, in particular what was land and what was sea. (As an example, the "US started out as a Constitutional Republic" map highlighted the original 13 states. I was trying to figure out why what looked like California was highlighted before the animation grew to encompass the rest of the continental US.
Places I was less familiar with (or less familiar at that scale) fared much worse.
Singapore was not a charter city, it was a country that was expelled from the Malaysian Federation because their huge Chinese population threatened the Malay aristocracy.
I mean.... that sounds like a charter city to me
Cities usually develop in spite of being designed.
Please, never give up the live animation you use! I enjoyed every frame. I’m so sick of soulless motion graphics and zombie characters being moved in After Effects.
A couple of suggestions: try to experiment with variable stroke width. Ideally, with textured brushes as well, but I know those cause problems with compositing. More painted backgrounds.
Despite the fact that I despise cats and dogs, I really enjoyed the whole film. Many thanks for your work! Your animation team is very lucky to have a project like that. I wish I could work on something similar or better.
This channel should really have millions of subscribers. These videos go into so much depth with so much research.
Removing and preventing dictators is a necessary first step.
Singapore, the main example highlighted in this video, was literally built up to its prosperity by an effective dictator - Lee Kuan Yew. And is still highly autocratic to this day, and said leader admired both at home and abroad. South Korea, another example mentioned in the video, also developed under autocratic rule, only switching to democracy when its growth was well underway.
"in order to run an experiment aimed at learning new form of policies that improve freedom and growth, we must first grant freedom and growth" bro are you for real? The whole point is to find ways to prevent bad forms of government from arising, we don't have a way to prevent dictators yet
@@yaafl817 We do, just none of us want to do it because "imperialism bad." To be fair, I really don't seen any countries of the world not treating conquered territories badly or fucking it up somehow like the US did in Afghanistan.
@@Ryanowning The US treated Afghanistan a lot better than eg Russia treats its conquests. (No judgement implied on whether the US treated Afghanistan well in an absolute sense.)
@ If one looks at outcomes, say, economic development, literacy rates, human rights and so on and ignores such moral concepts as "fair treatment (by the people invading you? as if...)" it becomes clear that global (US-led) intervention is exclusively positive. Even Iran and Iraq were forced to enable a higher percentage of their citizenry to learn to read, write, and were thusly left capable to set up productive enterprise, which may be a surprising fact to many considering how/when the pullout of the forces was conducted.
I'd move to rat-topia. I think we'd probably be a bit heavy on software devs and crypto speculators, and a bit light on tradies though.
Why would this hypothetical city be light on tradies?
@@aidanaldrich7795 Just going by the people I've met in this community
@@aidanaldrich7795 i assume tradies are traditionalists so they wouldnt have people who arent into tech
@@mylesvmiles7571 Tradies aren't Amish luddites lmao
This channel is good fun, thanks
Great channel! My only criticism us that you should try to make your map graphics more consistent. Use blue for water.
Regarding the stuff in the description, would a Role-Playing Game not be sufficient to experiment with governing systems?
Night City is a charter city…
You can get some interesting feedback from, eg, MMORPGs, but ultimately it's very hard to model the complexities and pressures of the real world.
Stakes change decisions
the original idea for the Ephemerisle festival was to experiment with governing systems for a week a year, but it ended up being more of a party 🤷🏻♂
This is just the plot of bioshock.
Modeling reality based on fiction is a category error, the embracement of delusion. Bioshock is a fun fantasy which means nothing about the real world.
Some big problems with Rapture that might have been moderated if it followed the charter city model more closely:
1. Rapture was fully independent, so it wasn't subject to any kind of consitutional / international-treaty limits. In Rapture, even crazy kinds of exploitation and absurd forms of punishment were allowed, but a normal charter city would still have to obey constitutional limits and use a normal set of criminal/judicial laws.
2. Rapture eventually cut off its citizens' ability to leave, which obviously destroys the whole concept of governance competition and giving people more choice! A normal charter city wouldn't be allowed to do this, because its mother country wouldn't let it (plus, it's easier to prevent people from leaving when you're thousands of feet under the ocean...)
I love the animations (seriously, its so fun to just witness, so well made) and choice of unique facts, reminds me of prime kurzgesagt (however you write their name).
We've also seen a charter city in video games. It's name. Night City.
While I'm hopeful still i see it going very much the same way.
everything from writing to animation was at a top-notch level. you made this fairly complex idea seem incredibly easy to understand and made it sound very much possible, which is both insightful and inspiring. and the animation is on a whole another level - high quality and simple visualization of the ideas spoken helped tremendously and everyone involved did their absolute best and it shows. masterfully done, i hope your channel will continue growing.
Would be great with colonisation new planets. Imagine this space neoliberal decentralised communism on Europa
I can't say that Singapore is great example - exploitation of people is extreme there
Ah yes Neo-liberal space Communism. I see absolutely no contradictions.
@@stevenorrington473 def new Conception : Joke
I would like to see a charter city running on the council-manager form of government.
Your content is actually awesome 😎
Great stuff 👍, hope for future video of Humanit triumph alien invaders then what aftermath be like scenario? 🤔
History Nerd here the result would absolutely be: Global Meritocratic Military Dictatorship led by literally the Greatest Battle-Proven Generals ever and their Fanatically Loyal Blood-Stained Combat Veterans that shoves all resources into Military and Science in a desperate fear to be prepared for future invasions. If conflict continues then Dictatorship will remain as everyone would be more concerned with survival from existential foreign threat than little things in comparison such as Human Rights or Welfare State. (See Roman Republic awarding Dictatorships in times of Crisis)
If Alien Catgirl Federation comes to offer Alliance and Economic support to reform our Completely Justified Species-Wide Autocratic Genocidal Xenophobia PTSD Traumatic Survival Instinct Reaction then after a few Generations of Peace the Dictators and their Veterans would lay down their Absolute Powers of Life and Death and would lay the Framework for a Global Federation Republic Senate where the most Powerful States have the most Seats. All countries pretty much would be downgraded to have the many of the same powers and rights of "regions/provinces/states".
The new "United Nations Senate" would get the same Powers that Federal Governments do and would write a binding Global Constitution that would restore Human Rights. The Alien Catgirl Federation would have alot of influence over Earth and we would be "Junior Partners" or "Vassal-State" until we get close to their Technological Level were if they are benevolent we would then become equals (and if not as in Human History the power imbalance would result in us being puppeted but we wouldn't rebel as long as we had lots of Automaty so our Survival and Livelihood is not threatened so people would not risk their life unless the Federation started to become poor or instable).
The Military Dictators though fearing for the worst will ensure that our new Global Democratic State is always decently Militarized and have deliberately designed the Political System to limit foreign influence such as possibly having a Non-Democratically Elected Global Supreme Court that is appointed for Life by Executive Branch or Senate itself. (And has power to Veto any decision by the Senate or Executive as long as they have Legal Basis. See Founding Fathers deliberately including Non-Democratic mechanisms in US Constitutional Law in order to provide a check against People making stupid Tyranny of Majority Votes and to prevent Foreign Influence).
Even if "The Goddess of Everything Else" a purely benevolent being was like "Oh you poor Traumatized Humans have been through enough already! You need to include your new Alien Friends in the Platonic Planetary Government System used by everyone else in the Federation!" Our Military Dictators would tell Her to fuck off right in Her Platonic Face saying. "We just Won the Greatest War Ever. So we will make sure we do not lose the Greatest Peace Ever by your Foreign Influence!"
She then would be like "Oh you Military-Species are always so paranoid. I guess you will achieve Platonic Utopia in 10000 years instead of 1000..."
And then the Military Dictators would summarize our entire Mentality in this situation:
"Okay so be it you Majestic Space Worm, we the literal Saviors of the World who actaully fought and defeated these Demons through actions rather than mere words would prefer to spend time rather than risk our Extinction or Enslavement blindly following your requests. It does not matter what Technological Bribery nor Optimistic Seductions, we as a body of the Greatest and most Powerful Men who ever lived have Overcame Hell itself. So any other milder suffering now pales in comparison. Do you have any further Diplomatic Business here on Mother Earth?"
Its my belief that the future optimal form of government is a global federation or regional elected representatives of city states. I hope this works out well. I think a lot of the times it will just be some Dubai Billionaire with no sense and too much cents. But if some modern fundamental engineers, scientists and economists can make some changes for the benefit of all people they can hopefully make some beautiful and self sustaining cities.
The issue with that is the fact that the current levers of socioeconomic power are in the hands of folks who will either shut down such an idea or use it to their advantage like the Dubai Billionaire thing you mentioned. The only way the world could go about a radical transformation is a popular revolution, but most workers aren't looking for a Europe of a thousand Lichtensteins. Any kind of libertarian world federation is technically possible, but it requires a social revolution from below so the concept isn't corrupted by oligarchs and autocrats.
@@vaaccuummcleaner9214 I think you can create systems of control that are so ingrained that even the powerful will have no choice but to follow along.
It could be even the case that a lot of higher positions in society are also replaced by the AI worker. Maybe replacing them first is more beneficial and makes more money. Maybe when laws have an AI component to them, the rich and powerful know that if they step one step out of line, it won't be soft bribable friends that show up, but bots seeking to enact a programmed version of justice that is publicly and freely visible.
It is the case that the rich today are more beholden to the common persons opinions now. A lot of them hide away to avoid this, but a lot also grow intoxicated with the public's approval. They self regulate as much as their sinful hearts can and when they slip up they are destroyed socially and emotionally. What if there were more eyes everywhere, automated reports on industries pointing out the problem in every board meeting. Automated revolving doors of top executive positions based on market positions.
If a society is massively productive it will be noticed and become the "new" Singapore every economist tries to explain. If it out competes other countries they will replicate false half hearted attempts at the same society. If this society welcomes others in copying their designs and gives them advise/education on creating this system, they can seed other countries with their ideas until its too late for oligarchs to attempt to seize control.
we need to do away with hierarchies all together. If there is enough power collected in any one position to the extent that it CAN be abused, then eventually it WILL be abused. We need a system that limits the damage that can be done when that abuse occurs, and find ways to distribute the efforts required so that each individual within the system is not incentivized away from that role.
@@kezia8027 My lord! An actual anarchist in the wilds of the Internet? Good tidings.
@@vaaccuummcleaner9214 ha shh don't say the A-word or you'll scare off all the people who secretly are but don't realise it ;p
Your video style is neat
I imagine some may either fear or otherwise see these cities as a possibility to break a country into smaller pieces. Imagine a city makes laws so different, it wants to split from the main country. The central government may fear this happening. Another country may see this as an opportunity to fund a city more friendly to them than the main government, which could become a new, separate, allied country later on, or even an unofficial(or even official) colony.
I'm glad you're talking about Nigeria.
Our economy needs to change.
Man I love tax havens so much
great video. I will try this when I take over.
lol me to
This is giving words to ideas I already had.
Thinking that countries wich are developed today gained all their wealth trough technological development is so silly. Most of them gained it by exploiting their own population and trough colonialism, and in some cases, such as South Korea, mostly trough aid and investment from an already wealthy country for political reasons, in korea's case it was the US.
Something similar could be said about the quality of life in those nations, where after the industrial revolution, technology mostly served the interests of the ruling classes. It became a tool to extract more value from workers, and only trough class struggles, reforms, revolutions, concessions from the ruling class and social movements, quality of life improved in most cases.
I really love this channel, but the research is so biased and shallow when it comes to political, sociological and historic topics. I really think it should focus more on natural siences
They gained wealth through capitalism
Your comment is great.
Even a good channels produce a dumb video once in a while a cursory history lesson about city creation grow would have toss this video to the bin, and I may add that is supossed as AI etjical reasearch your knowledge of goal alignment should have found a lot of hole in this whole, even more your previous video in wishing machine can be applied here.
very interesting, this seems to converge with the ideas of seasteading and arcologies
GIFT CITY, India is a very accurate example of a charter city.
This is probably why Switzerland works so well -the canton system where each has significant tax and regulations authority means it's a nation made up of 26 charter cities.
YEAH NEW VIDEO 🎉🎉❤
For a moment I thought you were kurzgesagt
Pretty inspirational, thank you
Great Video
There is no Nobel prize of economics! It was never intended by Alfred Nobel and you can guess that he never wanted something like this. There are accounts of family members speaking out against the misuse of the name Nobel for this.
Only a backwards Neanderthal would be opposed to economic research
Why not experiment virtually online first?
As a politologist and sociologist I see this basically as the first building stone on getting enterprise owned states (without the bought and corrupt politicians in the middle)
Nice video. Though a bit of a shame that you didn't bring up Lübeck and the cities that followed her charter.
So the answer to poverty is places where the rules don't apply?
Places that make their own rules
I like that you essentially parroted Argentina's new president Javier Milei in stating that essentially all we need is more freedom.
Freedom leads to prosperity is his motto.
I've also seen good evidence that power leads to prosperity by which it is meant the physical quantity. In other words switching from windmills to fossil fuels is what lead to industrial revolution and great prosperity, expanding further by making nuclear cheap would presumably have a similar effect, the best evidence for this second point is how right now in Europe energy became slightly more expensive and absolutely everyone suffers greatly the economic consequences.
I've heard of an attempt at a place like this, but the gov asked one of the members (I think the leader?) to keep an eye on his neighbors and report back to them. When he refused, they wiped out the whole town.
I don't remember the name of it, but that's definitely... a big obstacle. :/
The blind spot in this video is discussion of counter-examples and failures of this idea. Discussion about Neom and The Line and California Forever?
The Libertarian fever-dream of 'If only we give one group the power to make all important choices, then they will make the right ones.'
The Libertarian / Anarcho-capitalists dream. It might kick-start an economy but the path and consequences of this kind of thing are demonstrated by South Africa. Recent Egyptian dictators have tried to create private government enclave-cities in the desert, The Line I think is another example.
Where has this been tried in Africa?
The Line is the first thing that came to mind for me too. Yikes.
The biggest factor of what it's like to live in a country, is where the value is extracted.
If your country grows bananas as the biggest source of extracted value, you can have slave labor, or the capitalist equivalent of starving wages. This means that the people in power dont have to invest in infrastructure and healthcare and education. Those things would only serve to threaten the system of value extraction. The form of government will be a dictatorship. There is a small owning class and a slightly larger military class. Those people have some quality of life, paid for by the value of those bananas.
If your country has oil, it is much much worse. While the value extraction requires skilled workers, it's entirely possible to just allow a foreign nation to extract the oil for you and pay you for the privilege. And while some infrastructure is required, it comes down to a road to and from the airport/harbor. where the oil gets shipped. This means you can ignore your population entirely and you don't even need that big of a military class. Your people can be left entirely ignored. While this is disadvantageous for them in some ways (they will never escape poverty) they are at least free to forage of farm their own food and survive largely ungoverned.
If your country has no natural resources, your resource is it's people. So most value is extracted as labor. Factories built by foreign nations are filled with workers with zero civil rights.
This however necessitates some investment in the population. You need some education so the workers can follow commands and perhaps read instructions. You need some healthcare to keep your workers alive, you need some roads and infrastructure like powerplants etc.
This also allows your population to become a threat to its government. Dictators in countries like this sit a little less comfortably as regime changes happen more easily. Political unrest under the exploited population allows usurpers to exploit said population as a tool to seize power.
Once your country has fully grown into an economy where the value is in the minds and skills of it's workers, a dictatorship becomes a lot less tenable and most countries switch to a democracy at this stage. A dictatorship is untenable because of how quickly it would repeatedly get overthrown and violent revolutions will destroy a lot of the value that a government would wish to extract from its people. So democracies form and the different voting blocks manouver to have their interests represented.
At that point the system starts to slide of subverting that democracy to try and stripmine the value of the nation in a race to the bottom. The interests of the people come to blows with the interest of the owning class who want to extract all value as quickly as possible and pull out to do the same elsewhere. Democracies that work manage to curtain those owning class parasites and find ways to represent the citizens, protecting their value and maintaining it, or even investing in it further.
The problem that then arises is the effect of money in politics. When dollars vote, those with the most dollars get to have the most votes. once interest groups consolidate they can wield their influence and hedge their money as leverage to subvert the system to allow them to extract more value than they lost buying their influence. There is a snowball effect once a certain threshold is crossed and wealth consolidates more and more at the top while the political system stagnates and positive change becomes impossible. The programs that invest in the value of the citizens slowly get broken down so those funds can be funneled into the pockets of the owning class who, like rats on the sinking ships, are stuffing their bags for the exodus once the corpse of the nation is picked clean.
So to improve the living conditions of people, it is important to change the socioeconomic circumstances, so that the value is extracted from their knowledge and skill, rather than their hard labor or by digging it out of the soil. Once that is achieved continued investment in the value of these people needs to be safeguarded and the influence of the owning class must be limited staunchly.
Anything else is just a race to the bottom.
I recently heard of the 'GIFT city' in Gujarat, India
Though not so autonomous, it's a good middle ground between a charter city and a municipal sity
Come on guys, you're better than this, this is very close to the actual solution though. Georgism is a good idea for instance. The video idea itself is fine but it's still locked in capitalist realism (fallacy where it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)
Thw solution (like what Singapore did) was garentee basic rights (in Singapores case, housing. It was mixed between high and low income so they hand to live together and all building/land projects are first given to the housing authorities so housing isn't an issue even an a very small and packed place, tho it's not perfect it's really good)
UBS (universal basic services) food, housing, healthcare, education and transportation services are human rights and everywhere they are treated as such they increase standards of living immensely and pay for themselves, together exponentially so.
That and workplace democracy is all we need and we can test different ideas from there by making democracy a part of our everyday lives instead of fake democracy only on election years and spending 8 hours a day in an autocracy with no democracy (the workplace)
Charter cities don't have to be capitalist. If charter cities become commonplace, people will found non-capitalist ones.
@@lordcirth yeah I mean that's the goal of communism/anarchism "stateless, classless, moneyless society" it's called "communism" because it's based on autonomous interacting communities democratically owned and run by the people who live there
Sounds like a libertarian concept of competing jurisdictions, hopefully current endeavors show enough promise to be implemented even in countries with more "posessive" regimes
"Possesive Regimes" Really? This whole concept is a method for the wealthy exploit labour and resources in developing nations 😂. It's basically East India company 2.0.
your channel is criminally underrated. Every video you make is informative and insightful. Keep going, I'd love to see your channel grow!
There better be a teacher out there showing this to their classes, this is so cool! A dream future
65 yo at 1960 appears a lot high than most countries, even today. Also, when the income is mentioned, it didn't take in account how it distributed between citizens. Or the fact that the country is a notorious tax haven... same with industrial revolution: on average, life expectancy have falled, before raise several decades later. It's pitiful for a channel with so many good contents in AI risks, come with such a-historical claims
Oh god not Telosa. The billionaire's fortress against peasants
This sounds like asking the government to plant the seeds of what they don't want, instead of changing immediately... Which doesn't _seem_ to make sense, if I assume that it's always the same party in power. But on a changing stage (which would be a step up for some places already, granted), maybe this could work? Since the politicians are going to be out of power anyway when the change comes, it may be easier to choose it?
I've been thinking about something like this for ages
modern society decreases physical suffering but is plagued by mental suffering
It sounds amazing yet in my opinion it is sadly too ideal for those so called "entreched powers" to allow.
Their good rarely aligns with that of the people under them.
Also it sounds very exploitable
The colour palette of highlighted land and sea are very confusing! Especially when the darker coloured land looked like the sea 😵💫😵💫😵💫😵💫.
A vid about this is cgp greys rules for rulers that covers this a bit. It's really good
wow that's a weird way to call anarchocapitalism
There is no reason a charter city couldn't be socialist
@sebastianlomascolo5169 I'm just making the point that a charter city could adhere to any political ideology.
The reason that it's often described as an anarcho-capitalist city is because that model may perhaps work best
@@aidanaldrich7795 anarcho capitaslism is esentianly extreme decentralisation of government the thing in the video is preety much ancap for normies socialist citries coul exist in anarcho capitalism as well except there would be no fedral government influencing them and preety much every city would be it's own country
00:02 Regarding the ways to help people in developing countries, the first thing comes to my mind is allowing migration of skilled workers from developing countries to developed countries. There was an official paper from one of the international organizations that it was way more productive that the international aid approach.
So when some =body from developing country find a job and works in developed country:
1. He can sustain himself, learn new skills, secure his future,
2. help his family back home by sending money and unconsciously will promote his new country in their eyes(that where the soft power of developed countries comes to play, if theer too many far-right sentiments in the country it's no good)
3. Give hope to his relatives back in home country that they can also move there if they gain the same education, so they will not lean towards criminal activities, but rather try to educate their children and maybe even themselves.
All these promotes education and reduces criminality and also delivering the money directly to those in need, rather than what international aid is usually doing by providing the money to government bodies that are already corrupt and aid ending up in the hands of the warlords.
Can you share it?
It seems an interesting paper
So you want to promote brain drain MORE?! There's already a country that exemplifies this type of economy (several actually, but this is the biggest) - the Philippines. It hasn't exactly worked out all that well. The whole country has basically turned to outsourcing their people and living off of the remittances. By contrast China has done much better. It too send millions abroad, but crucially a large fraction of those people RETURN to their homeland after learning said new skills, instead of settling abroad.
Also the Philippines has a major drug problem. Their last leader was literally elected on an anti-drugs platform. So much for reducing criminality. Criminality is reduced by building prosperity at home, not leeching off of foreign earnings by peoples desperate to leave home. If people are desperate to leave, they'll also be desperate to survive off of criminal activities.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn As far as I remember it wasn't the solution to get country out of poverty, but rather the comparison between the international aid and working abroad, so probably the discussion was about the countries who mainly rely on international aid. But I agree, no single solution on its own would help, it would need also to eradicate corruption etc.
@@agente7766 Hi, sorry, but I don't remember the exact source. I just came across it, and remembered the fact.
UPD: I googled and I think I found the paper, but it seems that yotube is just deleted my comments where I try to put a link to it.
So try to google for "Seventeenth Meeting of the IMF Committee on Balance of Payments Statistics. Pretoria, October 26-29, 2004. Working Abroad: the Benefits Flowing from Nationals Working in Other Economies
"
It's not overkill and I'd totally be a person to try out something like a charter city, just sounds neat
good vid!
Just wait till adam something sees this
I see a lot of comments saying that these cities would just end up as rich people tax havens...but I think I agree with the video poster here. These cities would do a lot of good. Why?
I think that these countries are so poor, that even if a charter city ends up being imperfect, it's still an improvement over the status quo. Additionally, it could be a springboard towards creating a better system later.
Lets say, for example, that the tax haven thing is true. However, local workers are paid a decent wage to construct buildings, clean the roads, etc. They still live in small apartments, but they have clean water and electricity. Is that not an improvement from abject poverty? Lets not let perfection be the enemy of practicality.
@@delusion2987 As I just said, I know rich people would benefit. My point is that the standard of living in some of these countries is so poor, that even the worst jobs in these cities would be an improvement.
I think you're naive. This is the exact same scam as crypto and NFTs. Sure there is theoretical and even some actual tangible benefits, but in comparison to the damage, the abuse, the corruption etc. the benefits are negligible.
If you fail to learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.
@@DrMonty-ng5fo The thing is where is the money going to come from. FDI won't invest without stable government, and if there is a stable government FDI would invest everywhere and if it is State funded more good can be done by promoting unified economic development not focusing on one area at the expense of the rest of the country. That is deliberately increasing regional inequality.
@@Jay_Johnson As the video states, these countries are so mired in corruption that changing them is next to impossible. Would you solution be better? Yes. Is it possible? No. That's the entire point of these cities existing.
Was that a member of adeptus mechanicus at 12:00
Charter Cities sound cool, but I have a some questions. Firstly, how would these cities get the food they need to feed their growing populations? Most agricultural are based in rural areas owned by the government, or by large private business backed by the government. It seems like it would be easy to just cut off food supply to charter cities if they did not like the way things were going. Secondly how would we ensure that charter cities remain fair and equal among the classes? It seems like it would be very easy for a country's wealthiest to move in and avoid paying their taxes while overriding the cities economy with their wealth so that it will work in their favor. Lastly, to what extent would freedom be given to these charter cities? Would they be able to override international law? Who would hold them accountable if they were to do something inhumane? Could they just decide to do things like get rid of minim wage or commit ethnic cleansing? To be fair, I think this idea has a lot of potential, but the idea of "benefiting people' can be pretty subjective.
Study some economics, and you might understand why capitalist countries that import food thrive