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Comment by eastbayjake | Hacker News Reader

Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) liked a tweet this week where someone proposed a charter city for Hong Kong in Colorado - the thread shows why that's probably a bad idea, but clearly surprising levels of support outside the Libertarian think tank world for charter cities in the US: https://twitter.com/ariarmstrong/status/1264628307586248704

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Omg, that’s awesome! Please do it Governor Polis!

New Hong Kong City, Colorado. I like the sound of that.

Colorado, would become the new Mecca of delicious Cantonese cuisine and Dim Sum eateries. As well as, all the technical, math, financial, and medical talent, that you can extract from the Hong Kongers. Their children would become the future engineers and doctors in America.

It would unleash a new golden age for Colorado! And bring in massive amounts of tax revenue too!

I think the major moral objection people have to charter cities is that they feel exploitative of the host nation. Proposals seem to take the form "we'll take some rich Westerners, and put them in a host nation where they don't have to follow the local rules, and the host nation will benefit because the Westerners will hire them for labor" - it's very hard to distinguish this from colonialism. Few people think it's a bad thing to have e.g. Indian tribal governments, which are indistinguishable from what a charter city would be.

Charter Cities sounds like the old Open Door policy but with extra steps https://blog.prepscholar.com/what-was-the-open-door-policy-c...

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