I think the reason people go to a city is for work and not for community. Many people actually leave their friends and family behind for the city. So competing using community is not a viable strategy unless you're just looking to be a tourist destination.
Since a city is just a labour market first and a community as secondary feature, you should probably focus first and foremost on getting investment. This would provide large anchor employers which will attract workers. Hence its probably more important to cultivate relationships with manufacturers, universities, hotel chains etc. that with some random larpers on the internet.
I know this is cringe to libertarians (I'm also a moderate one BTW) but just having low regulations and decent courts aren't enough. You probably need to give special favours to the first generation of businesses. So you might have to start out being more corporatist model and then transition into a free market model once you hit critical mass.
In fact, other projects do it more this way (e.g. Ciudad Morazan, Nkwashi).
The reasons for the above approach instead are:
1) Honduran politics deters investment of more traditional businesses
2) Therefore, the kind of investment Prospera needs is risk-prone capital
3) Risk-prone capital is looking for high-upside potential
As a result, I focused my work on attracting high-risk, frontier technology startups and founders. It's challenging of course, but it could work - as they are less deterred by the political risk (their main risk is regulatory, and that may as well be lower there).
Vitalia residents were not just internet larpers, but there were 30+ serious businesses that came out of it (50% in biotech) or are open to move operations there.
I couldn't agree more with "Go IRL from day 1". This should not be a contrarian view - it should be the basic litmus test for any intentional community project. A project that wants to start a charter city but cannot even put together an IRL meetup isn't going to be very successful, and it's better to find that out sooner rather than later.
Going IRL from day 1 also allows for a "soft landing" in the event the core mission of a project doesn't work out. Even if they don't succeed at their original goal, they will still have built up a community that can work on other things together. Compare this with projects that spend years making big plans online and delay going IRL - if the plans don't work out, all that effort was for nothing.
Hey. I'm just a guy on the internet and you're the one actually building the charter cities. Even if I disagree with the approach, I still have mad respect for you.
I think the reason people go to a city is for work and not for community. Many people actually leave their friends and family behind for the city. So competing using community is not a viable strategy unless you're just looking to be a tourist destination.
Since a city is just a labour market first and a community as secondary feature, you should probably focus first and foremost on getting investment. This would provide large anchor employers which will attract workers. Hence its probably more important to cultivate relationships with manufacturers, universities, hotel chains etc. that with some random larpers on the internet.
I know this is cringe to libertarians (I'm also a moderate one BTW) but just having low regulations and decent courts aren't enough. You probably need to give special favours to the first generation of businesses. So you might have to start out being more corporatist model and then transition into a free market model once you hit critical mass.
This is a fine comment.
In fact, other projects do it more this way (e.g. Ciudad Morazan, Nkwashi).
The reasons for the above approach instead are:
1) Honduran politics deters investment of more traditional businesses
2) Therefore, the kind of investment Prospera needs is risk-prone capital
3) Risk-prone capital is looking for high-upside potential
As a result, I focused my work on attracting high-risk, frontier technology startups and founders. It's challenging of course, but it could work - as they are less deterred by the political risk (their main risk is regulatory, and that may as well be lower there).
Vitalia residents were not just internet larpers, but there were 30+ serious businesses that came out of it (50% in biotech) or are open to move operations there.
I couldn't agree more with "Go IRL from day 1". This should not be a contrarian view - it should be the basic litmus test for any intentional community project. A project that wants to start a charter city but cannot even put together an IRL meetup isn't going to be very successful, and it's better to find that out sooner rather than later.
Going IRL from day 1 also allows for a "soft landing" in the event the core mission of a project doesn't work out. Even if they don't succeed at their original goal, they will still have built up a community that can work on other things together. Compare this with projects that spend years making big plans online and delay going IRL - if the plans don't work out, all that effort was for nothing.
Hey. I'm just a guy on the internet and you're the one actually building the charter cities. Even if I disagree with the approach, I still have mad respect for you.