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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

This American Life & Planet Money did a follow-up on this idea three years later: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/483/s...

Against the odds, Honduras was actually willing to give the "charter city" model a go, but the project turned into a disaster before it even got started. Mostly because Paul Romer is an egotistical, antisocial control freak and nobody could work with him.

There's a lesson here for silicon valley types: Being a genius with a great idea doesn't count for anything if you can't work with other humans to bring your idea into reality.

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This is character assassination. I've met Paul Romer and have followed his work for decades. People ignore his ideas at their peril. You can't blame him for not being an outstanding administrator at the same time.

It does not really sound as if this project would have worked under any circumstances due to the political issues.

It's basically a political project, so political issues seem like a fundamental problem, rather than some external factor to blame.

That's a fair criticism of Romer's idea and one that deserves careful scrutiny.

It does beg the question, however, exactly what political problems stopped the Honduras project from going forward. The Podcast cited above focused on the personalities and personal resentments but there was clearly more going on behind the scenes. Romer himself was very circumspect about what actually happened.

For example in the Atlantic article Romer suggests driving things through non-US countries. This might not be pure coincidence.

Indeed, if you remove the governing-related problems from his government recommendations they are pretty much flawless.

I remember hearing that podcast and feel the same way. I find it excruciatingly frustrating to hear about smart people who fail to realize when they are undertaking something about which they might seek advice. For instance, did Romer ever even just google "how to persuade people in developing countries" or "working within government bureaucracies"? Doesn't seem like it.

Thanks for linking to the podcast, it was eye opening! Many people commenting here should listen to this before spouting off the same things repeatedly.

It's so frustrating watching people ignoring history and then passionately agreeing with like minded people into tunnel vision solutions.

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