"Housing development gone bad after being handled poorly. They also happen to be libertarians." Nan, that doesn't sell well...
"How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart"
Oh wow, much better!
"How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart"
Oh wow, much better!
1. This was an obvious bad idea to anyone who has been in Chile (such as myself) given its location. Namely they wanted to build a "farm" and sustainable development midway between Santiago and Valparaiso, along a main highway, in an area that is borderline desert, yet which has a fair amount of development already, housing neighborhoods, businesses, olive pressing plants and the like... meaning effectively the chilean version of suburbs (convenient to the big city yes) and not a rural farm appropriate area.
Alas, one thing americans do too often[1], especially when buying real estate outside the country, is they want to fly in, buy the property over a long weekend and fly out. I think it's too easy to project american standards for property transactions onto other countries. Any time you're spending thousands of dollars, do your due diligence, and if that means buying a retirement property in another country, spend at least a summer there to make sure you like the country! Chile is really wonderful in many ways, but like everywhere else it has its things that are annoying.
2. It never got off the ground. There are thousands of terrible real estate deals that never got off the ground in the USA, especially after 2008. But no sensationalist articles about them. Why? Because the purpose of this article is purely political... it's to give the people commenting in this thread an opportunity to spew their hate.
3. There is, actually, a libertarian "paradise" in chile. Not only is much of the country pretty close to that definition on a lot of scores, but there's a successful sustainable housing / real estate development there which predates this effort by several years. (I'm not going to mention it by name because they deserve their privacy.)
But of course, you'll never hear about that operation on the pages of Vice or Salon, or any other leftist rag. Unless, of course, they become well known enough and need to be "taken down a few notches", like Ayn Rand seems to every few months, despite being dead for nearly 40 years. (such power to reach out from the grave! If only people felt the need to make up stuff to write 2,000 word articles to bash me with 40 years after I'm in the ground!)
[1] as reported in a variety of expat forums and magazines, and based on the way some of these "gringo focused" operations market themselves. For example, the same property in many central and south american countries is listed online at one price much higher (but with a full service real estate agent attached) online, than it is listed in the local listing services. OR pay dollars and pay twice to three times as much when you buy with pesos.
Secondly, if you have an example of that happening, please, do present it.
IF you're referring to this article, well, you believe what you read in hit piece hatchet jobs?