Those that have better Spanish skills than I can correct the title if I made a mistake, I wish to say "The march of libertarianism goes onwards"NOTE: This post is LONG but if you wish to engorge yourself about the nature of 'libertarianism', I recommend you read it.
Yesterday, while I was perusing the internet I came across an interesting blog post on Robin Corey's blog which you can read
here. Now, I'm not the biggest admirer of Robin Corey but the subject did catch my eye and reminded me that I had been long intending to return and renew a
classical thread of mine.
For those that have read some of Corey's blog post, I will now offer a little recap. It concerns the development of 'charter cities' led by a coterie of US based libertarian financiers and intellectuals including many of the usual figures such as Peter Thiel and even Milton Friedman's grandson. What is a charter city, you may ask, well let's first listen to the creator of the idea, the economist
Paul Romer preaching the world at a *sigh* TED Conference last year when the idea was still somewhat in embyro:
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_the_world_s_first_charter_city.htmlSince then things have progressed somewhat as
The Guardianlays it out clearly:
Never before have I considered that J.G. Ballard was actually a writer of on-the-spot realistic journalism from the future until I read that.
Anyway, as you can imagine in a fairly densely populated country like Honduras already with its own population centres and dispersed agricultural communities there might be some difficulty in finding appropriate locations for such places. So, would anyone be willing to guess where exactly they plan to build this city or more precisely, over whose land? Those even remotely familiar with Central American politics** will get no places for guessing...
This is from Global Voices, read:
I suppose we are wondering why removing the indigenous from their land (perhaps with Death squads?) and using it to build massive edifices that will suit the whims of rich white people from other more salubrious parts of the world can be considered a novel investment in strategy in Honduras. Though I suppose those elements in Honduras close to the project are currently trained in business schools to express in perfect American English accents how the cities will release the 'entreprenuerial' aspects of their people leading to greater 'innovation' in their economy. Look out for this at the next TED conference.
Before we leave it, on the murder of Carbera, this is what
HRW says:
Before any criticizes me now, I will add that I don't know whether or not all this violence has anything to do with the
ciudades modelos (as they known in Spanish) plan. But it is hardly a non-factor as global research
explains:
(continues below)