Praxis, the Iron Pill advocates who want to start a neoreactionary charter city. Funded by friend of mankind Peter Thiel, of course
A Peter Thiel-linked startup is courting New York scenesters and plotting a libertarian paradise
i think these are the same guys thiel was trying to astroturf as the Dimes Square neoreactionary podcast Urbit crew
it’s actually surprising how many of these I’ll be scrolling through and then see that either FTX or Alameda threw a few million at them shortly before imploding. Sam was really trying to speedrun the whole illegal internet banking to real-life Bond villain career arc that assholes like Thiel and Musk pioneered, wasn’t he?
You can outrun a cop but you can't outrun a radio extradition treaty.
Is it wrong to hope they manage to realize one of these libertarian paradise fantasies? I'd really love to see how quickly it devolves into a Mad Max Thunderdome situation.
every real life galt’s gulch situation devolves into thunderdome so quick! see this convenient list of attempts on rationalwiki for comedy gold
The article links to this blog post from when these lads made a notorious attempt to set up a city in Ghana. It's pretty good value.
For the record, Dr. Bawumia is an economist and a banker, and so how two white boys with no capital or credentials were able to get a meeting with him to discuss an urban planning project is anyone’s best guess. Perhaps Dr. Bawumia harbors a secret obsession with Minecraft that the nation is of unaware of.
"Dryden Brown" is the sort of villain name a strike-breaking LLM script generator would come up with.
Isn't he from Fighting Baseball?
No location picked let alone land bought or planning permission approved but they've already announced they're building a city. You can just say anything I guess if you're a hip right-winger.
tbf this is how charter cities have worked so far. See also seasteading.
"worked" seems like an overstatement. This wikipedia page is great, just a catalogue of grand plans that never got off the ground. It's easy to see why. They're effectively asking the host government to create a breakaway state within their own country which will get all the foreign direct investment and do all the economic activity. That is a recipe for a power struggle and a civil war which could end with the racist techmen as dictators of a banana republic.
While this is a dumb idea it's a great article, and led me to some enjoyable wikidives on Ceuta and San Marino.
Frankly, the gall of someone imagining they can carve out a piece of a country around the Mediterranean , an area that's been contested since the literal dawn of history, is breathtaking.
Or it's just a grift, which makes more sense.
Look up the Phoenix Foundation. Its been tried before.
A powerful earthquake has struck Morocco, so I guess the homesteaders are revising their plans as we speak.
https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-marraskesh-7f4a503009dede0dec0208c08d6b100b
Off-topic, I really hope the country gets the help it needs to save as many lives as possible.
Having a hard time thinking about what books could have been in this collection. You could say it’s my struggle.