A new lobbying group, dubbed the Freedom Cities Coalition, wants to convince President Trump and Congress to authorize the creation of new special development zones within the U.S. These zones would allow wealthy investors to write their own laws and set up their own governance structures which would be corporately controlled and wouldn’t involve a traditional bureaucracy. The new zones could also serve as a testbed for weird new technologies without the need for government oversight.
↫ Lucas Ropek
I mean, just in case you weren’t convinced yet these people are utterly insane.
This is the kind of nonsensical libertarian Ayn Rand-inspired wank material dystopian fiction draws a lot of inspiration from, and it never ever ends well for anyone involved, especially not for the poor and lower classes inhabiting such places, because they’re supposed to be warnings, not instruction manuals. The fact that this insipid brand of utter stupidity is even considered by a president of the United States in this day and age should be all the proof you need that he and those around him have the moral compass of the rotting carcass of Margaret Thatcher.
I can’t believe we have to tell these Silicon Valley “geniuses” that lawless corporate towns are bad. In 2025.
Wow, some people really got the wrong message from Bioshock.
Or Robocop (OCP)
On the other hand they got exactly the intended message from Ayn Rand. Or is her deal more that society should give the Engineering Geniuses everything they need (and uncritical adoration) so they don’t take their ball and go home?
Years back this same private satellite city concept was debated and modelled, the concept ultimately dies a death very quickly because eventually no matter how it starts out a privatised city becomes wholly dependant on a privatised supply chain, so you get bastards with a monopoly dependant on bastards with a monopoly. Control of it becomes a political battle to become the ultimate gatekeeper.
Aren’t there multiple Hollywood movies based on the problems with this private island ideology?
Some call is a sect!
You’ve just described the backstory of “Rollerball” (1975) by Norman Jewison and starring James Caan.
Them: “Ignore all the other times it failed. This time it will work!”
Get ready for the slave plantations.
You can see what it would be like to live in one of these “Freedom Cities” by looking at the homepage image at NeWay Capital (the force behind the Freedom Cities Coalition.
https://www.newaycapital.com/
So… basically the FOQNEs (Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entities) from Snow Crash?
Good take, I was exactly thinking of Snow Crash when I read this.
Difficult for me personally to see this as much other then neo-fuedalists looking to create a new serf class. These fine folks need to consider historical precedent. Tell me again how it went for the French?
This does seem the closest historical analog – the anger from below is starting to reach a boiling point that the elites are only very very recently becoming aware of. It’s going to get interesting.
In the 19th century, this happened with mining cities. Wonder how that worked out?
The UK has a long history of these kind of cities/towns owned and run by the employer.
Rowntree and Cadbury both built whole towns that not only were linked to your employment but also stipulated religious observation and moral codes.
Bournville (Cadbury) for example enforced Quaker rules.
P.s. nearly 200 years later the town is still there and one of the most desirable to live in in the country
Also UK has a long history of passing laws restricting what this company controlled cities can do. Not all the cities of this type in the UK remain either.
Also remember government oversight this one is important. Bournville (Cadbury) has Quaker rules this is true but the UK government rules still apply so still have government oversight. Like they cannot go and print their own currency and pay their staff in that these days.
There are a lot of historic UK mining towns that are no more in the UK that disappeared fairly much as soon as it was made illegal to pay people in a town/zone only currency.
Adurbe being in a town owned by your employment this is normal for most mining towns around the world. But most of these towns are over government regulation where they cannot setup their own currency and they cannot prevent competition businesses setting up shop.
Big problems normally start once you start saying in here is not covered by government regulations.
There is precedent for America granting powers to issue own currency that is exclusive, but can be bought and sold against the USD.This is true for Disneyland and how many casinos operate (a $1 chip is not actually worth $1 but can be spent as such).
Depending on the option they go down, what’s being proposed is probably closer to declaring more independent states in terms of powers. Or “free ports” that currently operate in the UK. I dont think any of the options I’ve seen is calling for leaving US rights systems (eg like Guantamo Bay).
But never know!
“”There is precedent for America granting powers to issue own currency that is exclusive, but can be bought and sold against the USD.This is true for Disneyland and how many casinos operate (a $1 chip is not actually worth $1 but can be spent as such).””
Adurbe the USA government regulation here forbids Casinos and Disneyland and other for paying staff wages in these items. Also enforced that they can be bought and sold against USD.
Yes also notice you said bought and sold against the USD this is not a town/zone only currency. Town only/zone only currency has not legal route to trade to another currency. Yes you have to buy items with that town only zone/ only currency then hope to barter and if that your wages and you need something from outside this is going to horrible.
“”Depending on the option they go down, what’s being proposed is probably closer to declaring more independent states in terms of powers. Or “free ports” that currently operate in the UK.””
Independent states are not above government oversight.
https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/topics/freeports
Freeports under Uk law are not above government oversight they are a special tax zone. Other than the Tax alterations all other UK government regulations apply.
Adurbe freeports in the UK do make sense like why apply import duties on items that are going to be used to make items that will be exported where the input duties in future will have to be refunded to allow fair oversea competition. Freeport in the UK its submit a document with the requested altered rules for the area for government approval. Yes the government does have over-site and can come back and be sorry these rules are not working they need to be corrected.
Please note I am not saying their should not be special law zones. You need to be careful doing this so you don’t end up with a lack of over-site problem. Government approved with government over-site for review special zones can be ok.
History says letting companies do this without oversite people working for the company in charge of the area end up screwed over. There was only one of these in the last 20 years with an Australian cattle property that got away with doing their own unique currency for quite some time until the tax man caught up. Yes staff turned out to have been majorly ripped off.
But many of those concerns you raise (while independently valid) are not actually what is being proposed. There is a valid slippery slope argument. But none of the proposals include payments in different currency nor to supercede national laws.
“””But many of those concerns you raise (while independently valid) are not actually what is being proposed. “””
Adurbe Not quite.
https://www.freedomcitiescoalition.com/policy-options
As you go through this.
“”Executive Order Approach””
This is not workable at all. Because Executive Order can be changed when ever and really don’t have as much power as Trump thinks they do as the courts are starting to show.
“””Interstate Compact Approach”””
This one is very dangerous.
“Can modify both state and federal law”
So yes this one is nasty because we can create our own currency and hey lets say that capital crimes committed by ruling class are not crimes…..
But this is not where you see nightmare.
“”Federal Enclave Approach””
This is the fairly safe option.
“Cannot exercise general police powers”
Notice something here. That Interstate Compact Approach has control over police powers as well as the power to possible say police office or anyone of power shooting you dead is legal..
Yes look at what is proposed and if you can work out that you legally can make Town only/zone only currency and pay wages in it there is normally a risk that you can do worse way worse.
Adurbe think about it for testing self driving cars would it not be ultra useful to make it that every killed pedestrian is a legal killing with zero punishment possible.
Interstate Compact Approach is dangerous. If they were pushing for “”Federal Enclave Approach”” there would be limited risk. Yes lot of the regulation requirements and approvals are government oversight. Yes the problem “Complex jurisdictional issues” of the “”Federal Enclave Approach”” is dealing with oversight.
The hard reality it would be safer to make a completely new USA state(yes states have been cut up before) than doing “”Interstate Compact Approach””.but doing a state they would have to let the population vote.
A good test for any of those proposals is their a loophole here where I can create my own independent currency and pay the people in it and if this is not a country/zone where the people inside can control what going on. you are in trouble..
Yes you can speed up R&D if you throw all requirements to care about human life out the window and pay the people in a currency that effectively worth nothing.
That’s all Peter Thiel and the Paypal Mafia crew beliefs. That part of the US needs to be removed from power and from money, because they’re too dangerous. They believe in corporate monarchy, and they don’t care about people who can’t make more than $300k a year (to be able to afford their conclaves). They are segregating the world, just so the powerful can have Nero-level “freedom”. They are scum.
Not to be the “that person”, but there is precedence and it is actually quite good.
The City of Irvine in California is built by the Irvine company and is managed by a city council. It is a “planned city”, unlike the neighboring Los Angeles, which has a growth compared to “cancer” (no I am not joking, there is actually scientific research that likens the two)
Anyway, you can look it up all here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California
(So, this, if done correctly, can be highly successful and be great for the residents).
Planned is not the same as corporate run.
Yes, but…
Up until 1971, what is known today as City of Irvine was Irvine Ranch, and fully managed by the Irvine Company.
After they incorporated as a city, the company still holds influence, and also owns significant portion of land, and public areas.
Obviously, and new development should follow a similar path, and slowly move to local independent (semi independent) government over time.
(There are other successful cities like Kohler here, or Jamshedpur in India)
Company Towns
To be fair, much of US industry would not have existed without those corporate towns. Do they have a place today? Nah. The UK did the same in late industrial revolution before they found it more profitable to just send the poor overseas to their colonies. (also note that that most colonies never made a profit and was a burden on the empire as a whole)
Most have missed the point here. This isn’t anti-democratic. In the United States, there is no democracy, and hasn’t been for decades. This is anti-capitalist. The only reason to set up a corporate town, with corporate law, is to avoid competition. This is technofeudalism. Yanis Varoufakis nailed this one.
There is at least one other reason: to give the employers more control/leverage over their workforce — much harder to say “no”/quit/etc when your housing, access to basic essentials from the “company store,” etc are tied to your employment.
The word you are looking for is slavery. That’s exactly what this is and anyone who argues otherwise just wishes they could be the ones owning the slaves.
I’d probably describe it as a “soft/lite version of indentured servitude,” but yeah essentially — effecting many of the same goals, but through subtler means.
That opens the door for the possibility of creating communities with a local economy based on cooperation. I say bring it on, our economic model has been failing for a long time now, why not let communities be laboratories to try new socio-economic models?
In my place, we will base our local economy on altruistic principles and compete as a whole.
What kind of community would you build?
LOL – what are you talking about? In a corporate owned town, there is no economy – there is no choice, no market. The corporate overlords dictate not only what you do at work, how, where, all of that – now they get to dictate how you live too, where you buy, what you buy – what you even can buy. This is cooperation to you? This perspective is why we are so utterly fucked.
There is a potential exploit here – if you can use the laws to establish a worker owned coop (like Mondragon in Spain) maybe there’s hope – but guaranteed, there will be exceptions in the law to prevent that. Power is power, and this is a power grab.
Of course it is a power grab, I am trying to push the idea that we can do something else than passively watching It unfolds by exploiting the new laws to do bring back ideology competition in the land of the free.
The problem with power – is power. The question is, how do we take back the power that we’ve gifted the billionaire class? It’s not just how either, it’s what can we expect to happen? It took us more than 50 years to get here. How long will it take to get it back? There are no easy answers. There are some easy to reach for hard answers – but so far, the population hasn’t been receptive. Gary Stevenson is currently my favorite aspiring counter elite though. He’s got a pretty solid rap down. I don’t see anything that tells me things are going to get better in the United States (and maybe the west more generally) any time soon. I suspect they are going to to get much worse than most realize.
Remaking an proven broken wheel is no better than being passive.
Isn’t this similar to China’s Special Economic Zones?
No, not at all – this is more like the establishment of the rest of China in some zones. So you got it exactly backwards. In China, they have basically a 50/50 economy. Half of it is centrally planned, and run by the party, and the other half is open to competition including foreign involvement. The Special Economic Zones are more like little enclaves of western open/competitive markets (which the United States barely even has any more.) It’s in those places that companies try new things, like the dozens of electric car companies they have, all of which are out competing Tesla (which is why there is a 100% tariff on those cars in the United States that BIDEN raised after Trump initially put it in place – people pay so little attention…)
So no – you got it backwards. These corporate towns would be centrally planned by corporate boards. It’s much more similar to having the party plan it in China, except with WAY less accountability. It does make sense for America to try and bring it’s models up to date with the world, which is increasingly using Chinese style 50/50 economic models, but this is the absolute worst way to do it. We are no longer leading the world. BRICS makes up more than half of the world’s GDP, while the G7 only makes up like 27%. We have already lost, we just don’t have a free media, so it’s hard to find the news.
I have been with osnews since the beginning, and am a Patreon contributor. But I do not come here for political rants. I come here to get away from that.
Suck it up Buttercup, the current tech world is forcing politicism down our throats and we need a place to talk about it. Or, stick your head further into the sand and hope they don’t come for you, I don’t care.
Also if you are a Patreon contributor, where is your comment flair? If you must stoop so low as to lie about your contributions in order to make a point, then you have no point to make.
Why would I lie? Have some respect. I don’t even know what flair is or why I don’t have it.
If you really were a Patreon contributor you’d have an indicator next to your username, and you would also know what flair is because it’s listed on the Patreon page where you choose which level of support you want to give.
I don’t know why you would lie, only you can answer that. You’ve also been on OSNews since “the beginning”, though 2019 is about two decades late for that claim, unless you’ve changed usernames.
As for respect, show some yourself. If you don’t like the current trend of articles here, don’t read them. I never comment on articles I’m not interested in because there is no point to that. To come in this thread and only complain about the article being “political” without anything insightful or topical to the actual subject at hand is itself disrespectful, and tactless to boot.
Morgan,
I’m getting major office space vibes. You’re like the flair police, haha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8
Yeah it’s not like I’m asking for 37 pieces of flair. Just one would prove me wrong. 🙂
It’s no different to how a closed/gated community works.
No that not the case the middle option here is not like “closed/gated community” yes the “Interstate Compact Approach” They can alter local laws like lets say murder so that a automated car cannot do it.
closed/gated community has government over-site. They are particularly here trying to create something without over-site and this now comes what is their intended way to abuse this power.
These people see workers as slaves… That’s Curtis Yarvin’s own words. “Everything rots when it has no owner – human beings included.”
https://america2.news/the-four-memos-quietly-rocking-washington/
Don’t assume they’re on your side because they’re techies, because they want radical change, or because they oppose the neoliberal shitshow that’s already been harming you. If you’re not at least a multi-millionaire then these rich bastards see you as chattel.