It will allow us to decouple “successful, because located on a trade route” from “successful, because of libertarian environment”.
Other comments have mentioned that it may be difficult to distinguish between “this business exists because Prospera is so awesome” and “this business already existed, but moved to Prospera because of lower taxes”. Or perhaps, for businesses that do not exist today, between “this business started because of Prospera” and “this business would have started regardless, but pays lower taxes because it is in Prospera”.
That is, data about successful businesses that will appear in Prospera will not necessarily tell us what would have happened otherwise. And will not allow us to predict what would have happened if we had fifty Prosperas instead—would we have fifty times as many successful companies, or just the same number of companies, and fifty cities competing for them by offering even lower taxes… maybe also reducing employee rights, etc.
It will allow us to decouple “successful, because located on a trade route” from “successful, because of libertarian environment”.
Other comments have mentioned that it may be difficult to distinguish between “this business exists because Prospera is so awesome” and “this business already existed, but moved to Prospera because of lower taxes”. Or perhaps, for businesses that do not exist today, between “this business started because of Prospera” and “this business would have started regardless, but pays lower taxes because it is in Prospera”.
That is, data about successful businesses that will appear in Prospera will not necessarily tell us what would have happened otherwise. And will not allow us to predict what would have happened if we had fifty Prosperas instead—would we have fifty times as many successful companies, or just the same number of companies, and fifty cities competing for them by offering even lower taxes… maybe also reducing employee rights, etc.