Here are a few ideas I picked up from the Substack comments:
How volatile is the Honduran government? Can you really bet on future politicians honoring current agreements?
At any point where the Prósperan government relies on the Honduran government, won’t corruption and graft leak in?
What are conditions like for those existing resorts on Roatan? Are they protected from corruption and violence?
It’s too bad that they plan to hew closely to traditional schooling arrangements. If you’re starting from scratch anyway, why not make it easy to unbundle education & childcare?
And here are my own thoughts:
Why haven’t I heard about Próspera already? If it’s so promising, are professional economists buzzing about it? For example what does Tyler Cowan think?
What do we know about Pronomos Capital? Do they have any sort of track record? Is it reasonable to expect them to have about a 10% hit rate, as Raemon suggests?
Cowen doesn’t seem to have written his own thoughts on the matter, but has reported on it at the links below, and seems excited. Until recently the project has kept relatively quiet, as they were shopping around for big early investors. It’s only recently they’ve opened themselves up to the public, and they’re still focused mostly on attracting local Hondurans. I’ve known about the project for a few years, but only because I’m close to people who got in on the early stages. If I had to guess, I figure they want to have more built and have a solid local base before advertising to the foreign public. Just a guess though.
Apologies for the redundancy if you’ve already seen those links.
Roatan is safer than the mainland, both due to its separation from the bulk of drug crime and the local focus on tourism, which shifts the weight onto petty crimes that target tourist’s wallets. But it’s still Honduras, and there was the notable murder of a US citizen a couple years ago. Prospera aims to have private security, instead of depending on the local police.
Prospera also claims to be minimally dependent on the Honduran government, in particular by setting up its own services and courts for most crimes. The deal they negotiated is supposed to be a hands-off affair, where HPI pays them taxes and abides by a portion of Honduras’ laws. Whether this can be done successfully is yet to be seen.
Honduras deciding to take over seems unlikely, but future administrations wanting to increase their cut in violation of contract is a very real worry. Prospera is trying to curb that by setting maximum tax revenue as a portion of GDP in their charter and Bill of Rights, but if the Hondurans did try to force their hand, it’s not clear what they could do.
That’s as much as I can answer for now. I’m going through their materials and intend to ask questions of their CEO. If you have specific questions for him, I may be able to pass them along.
Here are a few ideas I picked up from the Substack comments:
How volatile is the Honduran government? Can you really bet on future politicians honoring current agreements?
At any point where the Prósperan government relies on the Honduran government, won’t corruption and graft leak in?
What are conditions like for those existing resorts on Roatan? Are they protected from corruption and violence?
It’s too bad that they plan to hew closely to traditional schooling arrangements. If you’re starting from scratch anyway, why not make it easy to unbundle education & childcare?
And here are my own thoughts:
Why haven’t I heard about Próspera already? If it’s so promising, are professional economists buzzing about it? For example what does Tyler Cowan think?
What do we know about Pronomos Capital? Do they have any sort of track record? Is it reasonable to expect them to have about a 10% hit rate, as Raemon suggests?
Cowen doesn’t seem to have written his own thoughts on the matter, but has reported on it at the links below, and seems excited. Until recently the project has kept relatively quiet, as they were shopping around for big early investors. It’s only recently they’ve opened themselves up to the public, and they’re still focused mostly on attracting local Hondurans. I’ve known about the project for a few years, but only because I’m close to people who got in on the early stages. If I had to guess, I figure they want to have more built and have a solid local base before advertising to the foreign public. Just a guess though.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/03/charter-city-finally-in-honduras.html
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/a-charter-city-finally-in-honduras-from-mark-lutter.html
Apologies for the redundancy if you’ve already seen those links.
Roatan is safer than the mainland, both due to its separation from the bulk of drug crime and the local focus on tourism, which shifts the weight onto petty crimes that target tourist’s wallets. But it’s still Honduras, and there was the notable murder of a US citizen a couple years ago. Prospera aims to have private security, instead of depending on the local police.
Prospera also claims to be minimally dependent on the Honduran government, in particular by setting up its own services and courts for most crimes. The deal they negotiated is supposed to be a hands-off affair, where HPI pays them taxes and abides by a portion of Honduras’ laws. Whether this can be done successfully is yet to be seen.
Honduras deciding to take over seems unlikely, but future administrations wanting to increase their cut in violation of contract is a very real worry. Prospera is trying to curb that by setting maximum tax revenue as a portion of GDP in their charter and Bill of Rights, but if the Hondurans did try to force their hand, it’s not clear what they could do.
That’s as much as I can answer for now. I’m going through their materials and intend to ask questions of their CEO. If you have specific questions for him, I may be able to pass them along.
Thanks, this is really helpful! I’ll ask more questions if I think of them.