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> Cities are a community of people and should be owned, operated, legislated by and accountable to the community, not outsiders.

Isn't that exactly what a charter city is? A city that's accountable to its own community, not to outsiders in the rest of the country.

> It's particularly relevant that Paul Romer proposed this at a Ted talk and then talked the Hondurans into it - citing Hong Kong as an example of a well-run charter city. Remember what happened there two years ago through present? [2] If that's your contemporary flagship... Yeah, that's pretty much what's going to happen to all of these soon-to-be-catastrophes.

Or you could have a country that respected the rule of law more than the CCP does (not a high bar), and was willing to accept the loss of control in return for the advantages of this kind of city.

Romer's charter cities relevant here [1] are not the same as for instance US charter cities [2], they just happen to share the name.

Per Wikipedia:

  A charter city is a type of city in which a guarantor from a developed country would create a city within a developing host country. The guarantor would administer the region, with the power to create their own laws, judiciary, and immigration policy outside of the control of the host country.

Think Fordlandia, in Brazil. [3]

  The town had a strict set of rules imposed by the managers. Alcohol, women, tobacco and even football were forbidden within the town, including inside the workers' own homes. Inspectors would go from house to house to check how organised the houses were and to enforce these rules. The inhabitants circumvented these prohibitions by paddling out to merchant riverboats moored beyond the town jurisdiction, often hiding contraband goods inside fruits like watermelons. A small settlement was established 8 kilometres (5 mi) upstream on the "Island of Innocence" with bars, nightclubs and brothels.

  In 1930, the native workers grew tired of the American food and revolted in the town's cafeteria. This became known as the Breaking Pans (Portuguese: Quebra-Panelas). The rebels proceeded to cut the telegraph wires and chased away the managers and even the town's cook into the jungle for a few days until the Brazilian Army arrived and the revolt ended. Agreements were then made on the type of food the workers would be served.

Or the time the Dutch East India Company owned all of Indonesia and went a-massacrin'. [4]

> Or you could have a country that respected the rule of law more than the CCP does (not a high bar), and was willing to accept the loss of control in return for the advantages of this kind of city.

The question is of course, why? If it were built for the good of the locals it would just be built by the host government without an outside power, through partnerships and investment. When a foreign power looks to create such an exclave its generally because they can't get away with what they're trying to do at home.

If it genuinely is well-intentioned for the "good of the locals" then of course, well-off foreigners coming in and telling the locals what's what has a very long, and very poor track record. See: uh, basically anywhere.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city_(economic_develop...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordlândia

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1740_Batavia_massacre

Your beef then is with the kind of governance within the charter city, not charter city itself. I could make the same argument for nation-state governments, which commonly result in very poor track record for ensuring the "good of the [common] locals."

An egalitarian charter city inside of a brutal autocracy might be great (relatively). The inverse, not so much.

No my issue is with foreign controlled exclaves which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control. This is colonialism, and the world has broadly agreed its a bad idea - even if a handful of colonies worked out fine, and we slap it with a fun new brand. If you disagree that colonialism is a bad idea, we can talk about that, but we should first call it what it is.

> An egalitarian charter city inside of a brutal autocracy might be great (relatively).

As a peer reply stated, its success threatens the brutal autocracy and will be crushed. Like HK.

The incentives are all wrong in this model.

> This is colonialism, and the world has broadly agreed its a bad idea - even if a handful of colonies worked out fine, and we slap it with a fun new brand. If you disagree that colonialism is a bad idea, we can talk about that, but we should first call it what it is.

There are clearly major differences between this and colonialism. Most or all of the agreed downsides of colonialism are not about the existence of exclaves containing foreign people, they're about e.g. people being governed from afar without any local representation.

    A charter city is a type of city in which a guarantor from a developed country would create a city within a developing host country. The guarantor would administer the region, with the power to create their own laws, judiciary, and immigration policy outside of the control of the host country.

> Most or all of the agreed downsides of colonialism are not about the existence of exclaves containing foreign people, they're about e.g. people being governed from afar without any local representation.

That's exactly what Romer is proposing. The foreign guarantor would administer the region and control its laws, judiciary and immigration policy.

These aren't intended to be comprised solely of foreigners. I suspect like past exclaves, they would bring in foreign overseers to enforce their vision.

Again your beef is that there isn't local representation. There isn't some law of the universe that a charter city can't allow the locals to influence policy of the guarantor. You have an issue that government doesn't always work the way you want it, and it's a valid concern that governments often (if not always) are bad for the locals.

You can't point at North Korea and say "Look, when you have a nation-state everyone ends up with essentially zero influence by common locals." But this is essentially what you're doing with charter cities.

>foreign guarantor

Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

My beef is with a system that allows foreign guarantors.

> Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

Do they surrender their home country nationality? If not...

Understood

>No my issue is with foreign controlled exclaves which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control.

It's interesting that I could swap "foreign controlled exclaves' with 'federal government' here and suddenly many would be outraged. Your argument fits in pretty neatly with anti-federalism and anti- other structures that serve to dilute the power of locals.

It's a valid point to be concerned about loss of local power. I'm skeptical that there is any practical difference here for exploitations of locals (charter-city vs non-charter-city) other than an OPPORTUNITY for competing governments models to prove themselves in a way that lets those in a constrained geographic area compare many governance models to see which works. I can see using charter cities to INCREASE local power, by creating a 'foreign guarantor' that is actually a representation of the locals, ousting much federal power.

> which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control.

Yes you're taking issue with a form of government inside the charter city that you would disagree with, not charter city itself. Government structures of course may take locals into account, and they may not.

> success threatens the brutal autocracy and will be crushed. Like HK.

HK wasn't crushed until it was no longer a charter city. You're actually proving the point that at least there was some window of time when there was a charter city that things were better.

HK is as much a Chinese charter city today as it was a British charter city before. PRC nationals need an entry permit to visit HK.

[edit] They also have their own passports (HKSAR passports), speak their own language (Cantonese vs. Mandarin) and have their own script (Traditional vs. Simplified). [1] ... and their governance did not change. Basic Law has been the law of the land in HK since 1997 at the point of the handover. Sovereignty and nationality and so on are complicated things. At some point 20 years in, the guarantor decided they didn't like how things were going.

HK folks weren't 'Chinese' nationals for over 150 years until 1997.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Special_Administrati...

HK is definitely not a Chinese charter city, that doesn't even make sense. China is not 'foreign' to China.

>HK folks weren't 'Chinese' nationals for over 150 years until 1997.

Yes until they were no longer inside of a charter city.

>They also have their own passports (HKSAR passports), speak their own language (Cantonese vs. Mandarin)

Does that make American Samoa a charter city?

> and their governance did not change

Lol

The point is that HK became much less of a charter city in 1997 (today it's not so much a "Chinese charter city" as a "Chinese regular city") and this is closely correlated with it becoming a lot worse for its residents.

Most forms of governance have horror stories as well as success stories (you've already mentioned Hong Kong; Irvine was also a corporate-planned city and by all accounts that has made it a very nice place to live). Unless you have a controlled analysis showing that locally administered cities are less effective on the whole than national administration, I don't think historical anecdotes (as terrible as they are) add up to much.

> If it were built for the good of the locals it would just be built by the host government without an outside power, through partnerships and investment.

There are plenty of reasons a host government might want or need to credibly commit to noninterference. Areas with endemic corruption have had success appointing judges or administrators from far away who don't have local family/clan ties. Countries with weak credit that want to attract foreign investments will often issue debt in foreign currency and/or under foreign law. Countries with major divisions may invite foreign peacekeepers. Etc.

> If it genuinely is well-intentioned for the "good of the locals" then of course, well-off foreigners coming in and telling the locals what's what has a very long, and very poor track record. See: uh, basically anywhere.

Local government in these places also has a long and poor track record.

I'm sure there are good and bad charter cities, but I don't see any reason to think the concept is inherently terrible.

> I'm sure there are good and bad charter cities, but I don't see any reason to think the concept is inherently terrible.

Has there been a good charter city? I can't think of a single one. So, with that in mind, what has changed?

The proposed governance model is a foreigner gets control over a section of domestic soil, domestic individuals, makes the laws, and can bring in their overseers. This sounds like every other attempt at colonialism.

I'm just advocating for a government accountable to its people. A government not accountable to its people, sounds to me like an inherently poor idea.

Would you be ok with a CCP run charter city in the Nevada desert to mine for minerals? How about a CCP state-run enterprise controlled charter city in the Nevada desert? Or a Russian Gazprom controlled charter city in Alaska? How about one put up by a Russian oligarch? Each with their own immigration policy where the state and federal governments have limited oversight. Why is it distasteful here? I'm sure they would each argue the governance in rural America doesn't have the best track record.

> Has there been a good charter city? I can't think of a single one.

This precise kind of charter city is a new kind of thing, but plenty of the closest existing or historical analogues have been successful, in as much as they've been more prosperous and more pleasant places to live than comparable cities that don't have such special treatment. Hong Kong. West Berlin. Danzig. Singapore. Shenzen. Shannon.

> The proposed governance model is a foreigner gets control over a section of domestic soil, domestic individuals, makes the laws, and can bring in their overseers. This sounds like every other attempt at colonialism.

If an unaccountable foreign entity really was running it as a possession, I agree that would be just as bad as you say it is. The positive version is if the city has first-class representation in that foreign governance. Compare somewhere like la Reunion, which is more prosperous and a better place to live than its comparable neighbours, because it's part of France, in a sense that I think is not usually understood as colonial (at least, one that is seen by its residents as positive, in a way that colonialism generally isn't).

> I'm just advocating for a government accountable to its people. A government not accountable to its people, sounds to me like an inherently poor idea.

I agree that accountability is important. I don't think central governments in developing countries are particularly good at it, to the point that I find it very plausible that a foreign-involved charter city could end up with better accountability.

> Would you be ok with a CCP run charter city in the Nevada desert to mine for minerals? How about a CCP state-run enterprise controlled charter city in the Nevada desert? Or a Russian Gazprom controlled charter city in Alaska? How about one put up by a Russian oligarch? Each with their own immigration policy where the state and federal governments have limited oversight. Why is it distasteful here? I'm sure they would each argue the governance in rural America doesn't have the best track record.

They would argue that, but they'd be wrong, wouldn't they, at least relatively speaking. The reason those examples are distasteful is, as hard as it is to make this argument without sounding naive, that the CCP and Russia have a poor track record of running governments for the benefit of their citizens, worse than rural America. Sometimes the details matter and we have to actually make a judgement about which actors are good and which are bad. I'd be perfectly OK with e.g. Norway or Switzerland sponsoring a charter city in Nevada.

I think you make a lot of interesting points.

Minor quibble re: Singapore, it wasn't exactly a model until it was kicked out of Malaysia (gaining sovereignty against its own will for what I believe is the first and only time ever) and was catapulted into modernity by Lee Kwan Yew.

> I'd be perfectly OK with e.g. Norway or Switzerland sponsoring a charter city in Nevada.

I think you'll find that a very unpopular opinion. America's dead set on not ceding Point Roberts after all - a tiny chunk of nothing accessible only via Canada that happens to be American due to a penmanship artifact. They get water from Canada and use the Canadian fire department. [1] Let alone carving out a portion of the contiguous states for the Norwegians.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington

All of Canada started out as a charter and to this day that shows in how Canadians are effectively boxed in on all sides in a continent sized corporation. Canada is rife with 'company town' like constructs including a whole raft of artificially created monopolies.

... right, a colony. That's the whole point I'm making, that charter cities are colonialism redux. And if you'll recall it didn't go well for the people already there at the time - the other point I'm making.

I am also aware of several Vancouver businesses (some of which are technically in other cities like Delta) that would also strongly oppose Point Roberts being ceded. It makes it easy to offer non-international shipping to US customers, by way of driving into it, dealing with customs in person (which can be less headache then the customs broker services offered by post or parcel services), and then finally sending from the post office, or one of the couriers in the US itself.

The same system can also be used in reverse, for people who live nearby. This is especially useful for buying things from company that won't ship internationally at all, or who charge excessive fees for shipping internationally.

I'm not sure the UPS store is the one holding it back. There have been off and on bilateral negotiations for 100 years.

> I'd be perfectly OK with e.g. Norway or Switzerland sponsoring a charter city in Nevada.

-Oh, Norway's already got Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Minnesota sorted - not to mention parts of Washington.

(It was surreal first time I found myself in Minnesota and a shop clerk accidentally toppled the bag she was filling with my purchase. -'Uffda!' she exclaimed, and I quizzically inquired, in Norwegian, whether she spoke Norwegian.

A second's blank stare followed, before she giggled and asked me whether I had assumed she was Scandinavian. Hence I learned of that Norwegian bit of cultural imperialism, 'Uff da!') [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uff_da

Don't know about the rest, but West Berlin wouldn't have been viable without massive financial support from West Germany. So it was successful because it had to be successful as a showcase of capitalism, but left to its own devices (even without being blockaded by the soviet army) it would have quickly failed...

How about the 99 year long leased city-state of Hong Kong? Seems to have worked out quite well during the lease, not so much after it ended.

Have you actually read Prospera's code? It's available online. Prospera is most definitely accountable.

Hong Kong Island wasn't on lease, it was ceded in perpetuity in the Treaty of Nanjing. It's the New Territories that were on lease. When the lease ran out, it was deemed impossible to consolidate the population from the peninsula onto the island.

> Or you could have a country that respected the rule of law more than the CCP does (not a high bar), and was willing to accept the loss of control in return for the advantages of this kind of city.

Isn't the reason that Hong Kong has been vulnerable to increased mainland China control because it hasn't maintained many current advantages from the national government's point of view? Once mainland China was also full of wealthy and productive cities, the national government had less to lose by cracking down on Hong Kong.

My view is that Hong Kong was still very valuable to the Chinese people, but unfortunately the national government's interests are not so closely aligned with that these days.

> Why on earth would anyone support charter cities? Cities are a community of people and should be owned, operated, legislated by and accountable to the community, not outsiders.

What if the outsiders are better at governance and development than the locals? As a Bangladeshi, I’d rather have Americans administering Bangladesh than Bangladeshis. Though I’d rather have Germans administer America than Americans…

> Telling the locals you know better than they do about how their region should be administered, while giving yourself the ability to exploit the living crap out of them thanks to your privileged position of being a foreigner is roughly how colonialism was carried out.

Hong Kong turned out pretty nicely before China took it back.

> Why on earth would anyone support charter cities? Cities are a community of people and should be owned, operated, legislated by and accountable to the community

You answered your own question. There are many places in the world that have unaccountable governments with terrible legal systems. The idea of charter cities is to have better civic software that what is available locally.

> Remember what happened there two years ago through present?

Hong Kong did fine as long as CCP respected the One Country, Two Systems policy. Things only got bad when they tried to crack down on it. I don't see how it advances your arguments.

In the case described here, a corrupt Honduran govenrment brings in foreign investors to create, govern and by many definitions, exploit areas within Honduras, against the consent of the locals. Doesn't sound that great, but easy to hide with a flag of "good intentions".

There are different kind of charter cities. Concessions in Shanghai you mentioned was ran by the colonist and work for the colonist. The locals were either rejected or not interested in participating. That was the problem.

Hong Kong was successful because it was ran by local Hongkongers. It began as much as like other colony. But Hong Kong become successful because it was cut out of the the colonist UK's control after WW2. It was a territory in the middle of a communist. The governor need local support in order to sustain their power. So they starts to adapt locals into the power structure. At the end, local Hongkongers were highly participating the society. But it become catastrophic in last two years because the new host country China does not like that.

In that sense, I agreed that charter city did not work, because a successful charter city will be doomed to destroy by the host country. It could either become a country or being absorbed. A colonist style charter city were problematic to start with.

But it is a good method to test new governing idea before a full adaptation to the whole country. It is like startup for government. In that sense, it is a good idea, and Hong Kong was a great experiment. China created Shenzhen based on that.

I think that's fair, but there's a lot we're willing to ignore because it 'won't happen here.' Can you imagine the uproar if a Chinese state-run mining company wanted to start a charter city in the Nevada desert with its own immigration policy, own laws, and own system of government? oof. How about a Russian charter city in the middle of England? You know, to dry-run totalitarianist pseudo-communism?

Even Shenzhen doesn't match the Romer definition which involves a foreign benefactor. Shenzhen is in China, administered by the Chinese. That may be why it works.

A Russian or Chinese charter city would be viewed negatively because these are hostile states. A charter city in the US composed of people from Canada would not be viewed in this way. Charter cities will not work in hostile cultural environments. I understand that from your perspective, Americans are hostile foreigners rather than friendly foreigners, and many people obviously share that view. Charter cities are an interesting concept, but the cultural environment is a critical factor in the viability of real-world cases.