Charter Cities

Listened to an episode of People I Mostly Admire which featured economist Paul Romer. Tonight was better than average, there is plenty to read up on now.

One premise was related to trying new social organizations by creating full cities within nations that have their own political and social structures. Hong Kong is the quintessential example if you ignore the colonial aspects. Bring a group of people together with a charter form of government, the structure and power of the government defined in the charter.

He was somewhat successful in getting a couple of governments interested in providing charters. Getting people and economic entities on board turned out to be much more difficult. It makes me wonder how Elon Musk’s plan for colonizing Mars is going to work out. Governance is one of those problems that has to allow everyone to benefit, the alternative is totalitarian rule through absolute power.

I think we can still form governments that allow individuals to thrive, while also controlling individual consumption of resources. Treating wealth as a collective resource and freedom as an individual resource, we may be able to demilitarize social responsibilities. No one person is responsible for the harvest, everyone toils and benefits. We feed and care for each other, we shelter each other. We can also support each other.