The most illuminating comments on the ACX article (ie. those that weren’t written by salty leftists) was the ones pointing out that the other instances of “free cities” that worked out were all located by important trade routes or natural resources. Prospera isn’t, which limits the kinds of success it could have.
Or rather, it means that the only industries likely to succeed there are those which aren’t highly dependent on place. The most likely candidates are tech and medical tourism, and it’s not clear whether those alone are enough to sustain the place. (I suppose one should add regular, non-medical tourism, as well, which seems to me the main existing attraction on Roatan.) Nonetheless, I wish them luck.
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.
That’s a lot of the appeal. Roatan was known as a scuba destination before this, and so long as Prospera keeps the waters clean, that should only increase. Medical tourism, as well as medical research, including pharma, is also a big selling point with the full reciprocity and choice of regulatory environment.
One big point I feel should be pointed out is e-residency. Prospera intends to profit not just from activity on-site, but also from people and companies declaring e-residency in Prospera. If the attraction of its regulatory environment works out, it may well have tax revenue disproportionate to physical residents which it actually has to provide services for.
The most illuminating comments on the ACX article (ie. those that weren’t written by salty leftists) was the ones pointing out that the other instances of “free cities” that worked out were all located by important trade routes or natural resources. Prospera isn’t, which limits the kinds of success it could have.
Or rather, it means that the only industries likely to succeed there are those which aren’t highly dependent on place. The most likely candidates are tech and medical tourism, and it’s not clear whether those alone are enough to sustain the place. (I suppose one should add regular, non-medical tourism, as well, which seems to me the main existing attraction on Roatan.) Nonetheless, I wish them luck.
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.
That’s a lot of the appeal. Roatan was known as a scuba destination before this, and so long as Prospera keeps the waters clean, that should only increase. Medical tourism, as well as medical research, including pharma, is also a big selling point with the full reciprocity and choice of regulatory environment.
One big point I feel should be pointed out is e-residency. Prospera intends to profit not just from activity on-site, but also from people and companies declaring e-residency in Prospera. If the attraction of its regulatory environment works out, it may well have tax revenue disproportionate to physical residents which it actually has to provide services for.