charter cities ctd.
Here’s a thought. Preventing immigrants from coming to the United States to work essentially creates a barrier to exit. Immigrants are forced to remain within the monopoly of their native state. Removing the barrier to enter the United States is effectively a trust-busting measure. Simply by granting citizens of other nations the freedom to exit (by granting them the freedom to enter) would thus have as profound an effect on foreign nations as any potential financial aid, trade policy, or military effort we could implement. In this sense, freedom of labor is as important or perhaps even more important than free trade.
This then leads back to the discussion Arnold Kling and Will Wilkinson were having a while back about autonomous city-states, or charter cities, which would be allowed to govern independently of their host nations – a la Hong Kong. Such city-states would indeed free up the movement of labor, tearing down barriers to exit in host nations that were previously only removed vis-a-vis illegal immigration to the United States. (They would also be economic and political laboratories/test tubes for their host nations, but that’s another story.)
Indeed, a Mexican Hong Kong, privately and independently managed without the suffocating influence of the corrupt, bankrupt Mexican government might even lessen the demand for illegal immigration into the United States. Several of these polities spread throughout Latin America and modeled after Hong Kong might substantially reduce that demand, especially if host nations began adopting the practices observed in the charter cities. Immigrants would be able to choose between the United States or Hong Kong Mexico or Hong Kong Columbia, and so on and so forth. Choice would also increase for high-skilled workers in the host nations and around the globe.
I don’t think decreasing the illegal labor pool is the point here, either. It’s by and large a good thing for Americans to have cheap, reliable labor available. Problems with crime stemming from illegal immigration are usually related to the War on Drugs or second-generation immigrants who are disenfranchised directly by the bungled process of integration into the United States that their parents faced. If anything, this increased choice would benefit the immigrants themselves the most – perhaps even to the detriment of American consumers. Then we might have an illustration of the benefits of illegal immigration, and may need to decide whether to reform in order to become once again a competitive labor destination.
See also: Bryan Caplan with a very important question.
This is probably as crazy as birtherism, but…
Has anybody given serious thought to going the British route and doing exactly that with Guantanamo Bay? That way the right could stop whining about how closing Gitmo means releasing terrorists on American soil since it would be combined with something else they love (entreprise zones). Not to mention it would be a pain in Cuba’s ass, something else conservatives love.Report
That’s an interesting idea, actually. I’d be all for it alongside increased freedom of trade and travel with Cuba.Report
So a Mexican Hong Kong would be free of its bad government. Would the drug cartels also just stay out, therefore leading to wondrous things? It’s easy to be a new Hong Kong when you start with all the advantages of the real HK.Report
I’m pretty sure Hong Kong has lots and lots of drug-related problems.Report
The problem is that the majority of such labor is “unskilled”. The vast majority of people who take such jobs are people who can’t get better ones… or people who see such jobs as a huge step up from what they could otherwise get.
I reckon the latter have less of a morale problem than the former… which, if all other things are equal, will result in the latter being hired more often than the former. Eventually, this may result in positive feedback.Report
Unskilled labor is usually required locally, to boot. If I am going to work some books as an accountant, I can do that pretty much anywhere (today, anyway). All I need is an internet connection and I can provide anything from accountant help to reading x-rays to unix tech support… all from a thousand miles away. If, however, a bed needs making, a tomato needs picking, a nail needs hammering, a table needs bussing… that needs to be done right here.
A city a hundred miles away won’t give me what I need unless it’s full of knowledge workers.
And we have one of those. It’s called Southeast Asia.Report
I’d imagine part of the goal is to create a concentrated place in which to raise new human capital. (Yes I realize that sounds vaguely orwellian) Good public administration is as much a function of the civil service as it is of politicians. One of the things a colonial administration that requires the use of a well trained set of local bureaucrats is that it raises exactly that sort of public administration strata. Having that sort of people in control would then make a city more attractive to foreign investment and keep local talent in place, which I suppose hypothetically would mean there’d be better service jobs for unskilled labor.
That said, the point does seem to boil down to: is there a competitive advantage (outside of any potential moral considerations, just purely on an economic scale) to establishing charter cities for anyone other than colonized state?Report
So how many cities in latin america exist that have been occupied as colonial trading outposts by a major economic power and have all the bureaucratic and governmental functions as well as the human capital creation tools (education structures) that could sustain such a functional government?
Hong Kong is the way it is now because of a hundred years of British colonial rule and deliberate cultivation as a center of trade. Not only that, it’s importance has suffered markedly since it returned to Chinese control even with the continuity in government. Do we really think someone could pull off a social engineering project of that size in the US? Really?Report
I’m confused. These charter cities would be in Latin American countries – not in the U.S. And they would be, in essence, voluntary colonial cities, managed by outsiders – much like the colonial Brits managed Hong Kong. The idea is to replicate Hong Kong – voluntarily – in Central and South America.Report
Err sorry. I meant “in Latin America.” Not the US.
I tend to think such a project wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell precisely because they ARE colonial projects and social engineering on a grand, grand scale. This seems to me as utopian and unrealistic as the “greeted as liberators” and “tide of democracies” idea that deluded much of the interventionalists pre-Iraq.
The expenditures required to actually start up such a charter city would be immense. Who would manage this money? Where would you get the administrators? What sane country would ever give up sovereignty over its own soil? What people would actually accept any colonial rule?
Moreover there’s simply no public policy training available with current crops of public servants and bureaucrats to even think of establishing a project of any sizable and useful scale. This seems like an idea with so many potential horrendous unintended consequences that it seems very very odd for libertarians to consider it seriously.Report
You don’t start a charter city from scratch. You take an existing city, and make it a charter city. Now, as to the “what sane country would ever give up sovereignty over its own soil?” that’s a legitimate question. I think the best possible answer is the U.S. I for one would be willing to let true ians somewhere start their own gig as a proof of concept.
Future considerations included, assuming that humanity doesn’t find a way to wipe itself out or get nuked by some random gamma ray burst, you’ll see a charter city the first time we actually colonize some other planet or the moon. It’s entirely impractical to believe that a nation can truly have sovereignty over something that isn’t even connected to the same local gravity well, but there will be obvious tightly coupled relationships with the mother country for life supporting supplies, so the relationship will be not unlike a charter city.Report
I can imagine this happening, but as company towns, owned and operated by multi-national corporations.Report
This is all most intriguing. I think Jaybird is on the right initial track. “Cloud” data storage already presents a virtual charter city for information services. Actual cities may not be too far (relatively) behind. Anyone read Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age or his Data Heap ideas in Cryptonomicon?Report
I actually keep meaning to read some Stephenson, but for whatever reason I just never get around to it….Report
Stephenson’s books look huge but read fast and are constructed so that the many internal stories can be followed independently. Diamond Age posits communities of like values which also are capable of independence through their economies. The author structures the city states as corporate. Cryptonomicon has a subplot involving the storage of data away from the prying eyes of national governments – a sort of Swiss Banking system of information, finance, commerce, etc. The protagonists set up their system on a tiny, independent Pacific island whose government provides infrastructure and security. Basic labor comes from the local population. The idea isn’t that farfetched. Co-opting the present Fijian junta could be possible. Other archipelagos exist throughout the south Pacific. By the way, I think the example of Singapore as a city-state is as good a present example as Hong Kong. Raffles set it up specifically as an economic free port.Report
” Preventing immigrants from coming to the United States to work essentially creates a barrier to exit. Immigrants are forced to remain within the monopoly of their native state. ”
That’s not what happens. The barrier does not have the efect of keeping illegal labor out; it has the effect of giving employers and effective tool to intimidate workers inot accepting pay at half or les the going rate.
“Now, as to the “what sane country would ever give up sovereignty over its own soil?” that’s a legitimate question. ”
If the money is right, a sane county might very well go for it. If the effects of proximity worked in its favor, a country might go for it. If enough corrupt officials made enough money off the deal, even an insane country might go for it.
“You don’t start a charter city from scratch. You take an existing city, and make it a charter city. ”
Panama City is evolviong in this direction already, and has been for a awhile. There was time when it aspired to be the Hong Kong to the cocaine cartles in the same way that Hong Kong was the Hong Kong of the opium trade.
“I tend to think such a project wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell precisely because they ARE colonial projects”
Colonial projects tend to succeed very well, at least for a few decades, maybe a century – look at our whole Middle East/oil policy. That’s the problem.Report