I've really liked your articles in the past but this one lost me.
There's an assertion in it that I took to be the real thrust of why people want to set up their own states:
"It wants a libertarian world where big states and financial institutions can’t dictate who has access to money and who doesn’t, where banks can’t profiteer from their power, where they’re too big to fail, where states overtax their citizens."
Maybe it's a bit too blunt and a bit too cynical to say that these micro-state-chasers basically just want to run away from paying tax and not adhere to regulations that prohibit them from doing whatever they want. But it seems to me the gist of it.
I do want to call out one line which I disagree with: "where financial institutions can't dictate who has access to money and who doesn't". In my mind, this is exactly the scenario that could arise without regulation, not with it. In the UK, where I'm based, the FCA (the financial regulator) mandates that financial institutions must follow the Treating Customers Fairly principle which means banks can't favour certain customers over others, and therefore can't dictate who has access to their services. And using another example to build on this, when you file for bankruptcy, your debts are dissolved, meaning that you don't fall into lifelong debt-traps to other people. I'd suggest here that laws and regulations actually mean that financial institutions don't have the power to dictate and without safeguards like these we could easily see citizens of micro-states being tiered by financial institutions. This could manifest in a very obvious way using your digital nomad example; if everyone's a software developer, where do the cleaners come from? Presumably from the neighbouring country which envelops this microstate. As we see in Dubai, Qatar, etc, these low-skilled workers are basically deprived of human rights.
And onto tax. With a very low tax microstate - which I've inferred will be the case from the "where states overtax their citizens" comment - what happens when one of these digital nomad microstate citizens gets made redundant and receives no severance pay from their employer? Or what happens if they developed a serious illness? Whatever does happen to them, it won't be good - there's no state taxes to pay for their healthcare!
All in all, it would have been great if your article explored what scenarios a lack of regulations or taxes can lead to rather than just fielded the utopian vision of it.
As ever though there was a lot to like in your article and I really loved the Competitive Advantage of Small vs Big Cities section.
I hope that all made sense and apologies for the long comment!
They don't want to run away from all taxes and regulation: All these places have taxes and regulations!
What they want to run away from is EXCESSIVE taxes and regulations.
Which is something that all countries tend towards, because they have a monopoly on their citizens, who don't tend to move. They have raised taxes and regulations for a very long time, seen that their citizens didn't move too much, and continued doing so. To illustrate, in France the share of public spending vs GDP is 60%.
For banking: Note that Canada debanked protesters. International banks consistently deny banking to Americans due to the higher requirements for compliance (FATCA etc). Crypto is designed so that nobody can disallow access to others.
After talking directly with Indians in India and Indians in Dubai, I came very convinced they are much happier in Dubai than India.
When a person working in these cities is made redundant, they don't need severance because they are paying a fraction of taxes, so they saved much more money.
If they develop a serious illness, they use their healthcare insurance.
What you're discussing is a very valid article. It's just not this one. But worth pondering, so thank you.
"Just a century ago, regulations were light... They dream of a better world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens, where they’re treated not as subjects but as customers."
No. We. Do. Not. Full goddamn stop.
We dream of a world where your right to live in peace, safety, and prosperous freedom is NOT dependent on the size of your bank account. Where governments act in the interest of the citizens who elect them to office, and not in the interest of corporations who grease the campaigns of their favorite politicians.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, the U.S. treated its non-millionaire citizens as voters who benefit from the common good, and not as consumers to milk for "rich people play money". The result? Leaps in education, communications, human safety and general health, medical care, technology, infrastructure, rights, modernization, safety and fairness regulations, average income...
But starting in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration and the Friedman doctrine decided that corporations mattered more than citizens, the U.S. has increasingly treated its non-millionaires as wage slaves and "paying customers", who only "deserve" anything if they "can pay for it".
Regulations, public systems, infrastructure, and social nets (which benefit the People) were either torn down or allowed to rot, as politicians and anti-regulation hawks drove money upward toward the already-wealthy, so that they could have even more.
Corporations also began purchasing homes (liquid wealth mobility for the lower 90%) and bulldozed them for apartment complexes (liquid wealth for the upper 10%), turning "owners" with investment into "renters" with nothing to show for it. Software also flipped from something you "own" to something to which you "subscribe", at the whim of the company which publishes it.
Meanwhile, social services (school, medicine, banking) prices went up beyond the ability to afford them, and media transformed from "owned" physical media to "rented" digital, which can be yanked away at any moment for any reason.
This has left everyone else to scrounge for what their diminishing paychecks (in real currency value) could afford. And it has enshittified everything; from families to workplaces to media to products to cities, ensuring that governments become focused not on the good of the People, but the good of their own pocketbooks.
Bonus: Seemingly "successful" places such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Singapore rely on heavy censorship and restrictions on general democratic freedoms for anyone in the lower 90%. Because, you know, if the "poors" rise up, the ultra-wealthy who keep these cities lookin' good can't drink their champagne in peace.
It sounds like you are not part of the group who dreams of a world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens, where they’re treated not as subjects but as customers. But there certainly are many people who do!
On the topic of taxation, you might be referring to the top marginal tax bracket, which used to be higher. However, taxes as a share of GDP are substantially higher than they used to be. It is likely one of the big causes why paychecks are so low (aside from the high cost of real estate, which is due to hyper regulation).
Please do help me understand how education, finance and healthcare have gone more expensive. I believe public education is pretty similar, healthcare quality is much better (and free for the poor and elderly), and finance is definitely cheaper.
"who dreams of a world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens"
A properly-functioning government is operated by people elected to their office by citizens who share the official's ideals on how government is run, how laws are crafted, and how money is spent. The citizens are represented in good faith by those they elect, and can vote out those who do not conduct themselves in a manner in which the citizens find acceptable.
Good government does not "impose all of its answers on its citizens", but enacts and enforces laws, regulations, treaties, and budgets which they create or uphold, and which reflect the will and desire of the majority of the citizens. If we find those laws to be fair, we as citizens vote for those who will keep those laws. If not, we will vote for those who propose to change them.
But the United States, since Citizens United passed, has been beholden to corporations who pay for the campaings of those who decide that what benefits the corporation (more often than not further Conservative than the public) is more important than what benefits the pubic (further Liberal than corporations).
I am in favor of "Socialism to support all (not 'lavish', but 'support'), and Capitalism for those who want even more." Ensure that your population does not fall through, and incentivise for those who have the time, energy, and vision to go higher.
But a nation or society should not punish people for not being able to "get ahead" or even "make ends meet". Not everyone is born lucky enough to always be financially stable and prosperous without outside help.
I myself am financially, economically, and employement-wise responsible. And I have encountered several periods in my life, where I was grateful for government-based financial support. I was not lazy during these periods (they were grindingly boring), but sought employment as quickly as I could. Nevertheless, I was thankful for the financial help, which I was promised by unemployment income.
As Odo of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" once said: "What better way to gauge another race, than to see how it treats the weak and vulnerable?" (5x12 - The Begotten)
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"taxes as a share of GDP are substantially higher than they used to be. It is likely one of the big causes why paychecks are so low"
- Paychecks are low because corporations have repeatedly lobbied to keep them that way, to funnel income toward investors and the top 10% (or...1%), rather than to the bottom 90%. Repeated "tax cuts for the rich" have benefited those at the top rather than at the bottom.
Further, real-dollar wages for most Americans has stagnated since the 1980s, again through efforts of corporate lobbyists to ensure that their money is funneled, not to employees, but to investors.
Also note that when I lived in the U.S., I took home 75% of my pay after federal taxes, social security, and insurance. And only through spending frugally was I able to save enough money to successfully leave the country (which is increasily hostile to it's middle- and low-income workers), and move to Europe to be closer to my family. Life in Europe is not perfect, but I feel far more secure and joyful than I did in the States. (Europe's own economic, political, and social issues are for another day).
I was able to save by: not being married (lower taxes and spending), not having children (lower taxes and spending), not having pets (lower spending), not owning a new car (lower taxes and spending), not buying a house (lower taxes), and paying off my credit card and school debt.
Marriage, children, home ownership, new car... Once part of the "American Dream", but now things to be avoided, lest you be punished through excessive, possibly untenable, costs.
I am in favor of higher taxes. Especially on the wealthy. Taxes go into a common good from where rightly-elected officials disribute (locally and nationally) to all in shared services (roads, water, fire, police, education) where all benefit.
A gallon (or liter [litre?]) of milk always costs the same. It won't hurt millionaires and billionaires to pay more to help the rest of us. Plus, the lower 90% will then plough it back into the economy.
Except that we don't have that...$80 Trillion, that was taken from us for 45 years, to spend.
"help me understand how education, finance and healthcare have gone more expensive."
As my response has gone on long enough, the following is a selection of reading material which supports my statement. To sum it up: Neo-liberalism has infected U.S. institutions, flipping the ethical and moral obligation of these institutions from "serve the People, and empower them to strengthen the economy" to "serve the investors, and drain the people into economically powerless debt."
We want a world without government OR corporate tyranny.
I have personal experience with the tyranny of corporations. My utility company has been continuously raising electricity rates and investing the profits in stock buy backs. When catastrophe struck and the grid failed they wanted a government handout to repair and upgrade the grid - even though they'd made many times that cost in profits. They just invested it in the stock market instead of better quality service! Electricity isn't something you can boycott if you're unhappy with the service.
Public education in the US has been in stark decline since 2013 (see 2013 vs 2025 NEAP results). A lot of this is due to wokeness and crappy fad curriculums making effective teaching impossible.
Im not sure i share such a rosy image that fully vertically-integrated experiences = happy customer-people. The idea of a cruise company thats also selling people their own excursions on their own islands kinda sounds like a nightmare to me. I cant put my finger on precisely why, but maybe its "captive audience"-type pattern? Like how movie theater /sports game / festival concessions are priced absurdly high because you cant get that stuff anywhere else while you're at that thing. As a customer of that event, i do not feel good being charged $10 for a $2 bottle of water, but im sure the business loves it! And its not like that upcharging is gonna prevent me from going to a festival...
So the company is incentived to offer the cheapest-cost possible option at every price tier, while attempting to charge the maximum for that tier that they can "get away with", with minimal intention or desire to create an actual "good" experience.
"But wait", a rebuttal might counter, "if those vertically integrated cruise experiences suck, the market will correct for it! Ppl wont go!" Idk if thats so true. The reviews ecosystem can easily be gamed, and nevermind all the people who in practice can't or won't deepdive (ha) in researching the full experience. Surely the cruise company itself is incentived to do all it can to sell only the positive sizzle of the entire experience... And with minimal regulation, whats to stop them from resorting to all sorts of con artist-style tricks to mislead people? Up to and including misdirection and shifting blame for their shitty experience to gaslight the customers into thinking that the reason that excursion sucked was (for example) "outside of the company's control" ?
Call me cynical and burnt out from dealing with soulless mega-corps who do not seem to have any customer interests at heart and only care about what will or won't bother someone enough to not pay. And as the direct -corellation line between deal-breakers and shitty experiences gets further and further, (eg, companies market themselves as offering some opt-in service "included", only once youve already purchased, you find that you have to jump through many many hoops of friction to collect this "included" benefit, hoops which were very intentionally designed to minimize the actual number of people whom the company would have to make good on this offer to), companies enshittify more and more to offer less to maximize profits per head.
I'm not saying all regulation is good but i fear there's a very realistic corp-sploitation side that isn't even being acknowledged here. We have seen writ very very large across the modern era that the market does not and will not "automatically" correct predatory corporate practices.
I agree with you: I hate overpaying in concessions!
But there’s a logic to it that would need to apply to cruise cities.
Stadium supply is limited: there’s only so many seats, making more is expensive (and the city might not be able to carry more), and there’s only so many interesting games. So they overcharge in price.
An intelligent cruise company would understand that there’s much more money in a populous city than a small one where there’s a few people overpaying for everything.
Paradoxically, I’ve found some of that criticism valid in existing new jurisdictions.
More in general, the current exploitation is real because people can’t move easily. Corporations could also do it, but their early clientele being so mobile, they are exposed to very intense competition, which makes it hard for them to be bad for long.
In all fairness, Dubai is a souless Vegas-style monstrosity in the desert... While Tokyo and Singapore work for Asians, but few Westerners can adjust long term. We have NYC, but again, density, and like the popularity of SUVs, Americans want their space.
Americans would love many more New Yorks, and they don't have them because of the prevalence of cars.
I agree that Dubai missed an opportunity with cars, but plenty of cities around the world are car-centric, and Dubai is better than most.
You can have big apartments if you build them as such, the problem is you need to build in height, and NIMBYs have prevented this from happening in the US, in big part for race reasons
Eventually there might be AIs that take over at the last second if an accident is imminent, and those might be mandated somewhat soon. With grandfathering of old cars. Then in a much longer time maybe we do get banned. And even then there might be a carve out for those who want to drive for fun in specific places.
> This is not relevant for married couples, but hyper relevant for single nomads.
This is not necessarily true. You might tap into all sorts of interesting network effects if you market your new city as explicitly polyamory-friendly.
Great article man. Below I have created a manifesto for a charter city for Bangladesh. It's mandate is more narrow and even in the best case scenario wouldn't scale to the size of a university town. But it solves a real world problem and is written from the POV of a nationalist and not a libertarian.
Meh. Dubai works because it's got essentially slave labour. Without those the amenities will be much worse than in other developed countries. Only the truly rich would accept to pay non-slaves, but they will move to Monaco, not Dubaï. Largely true for Singapore also, works because of poverty nextdoor and a mass non-citizens doing the jobs the citizen don't want for cheap.
The people in the currently fashionable industries tend to think they don't need the rest of society, that they see as a drag. That's not new. Ignorance of all the labour and services one depends on. That's the fallacy these new cities are built on. Won't last.
What I find most analytically interesting is the identification of healthcare as the sleeper vertical for new city formation.
Real estate and crypto are the obvious bedfellows of libertarian jurisdictions, but healthcare regulation is where the genuine economic distortion lies.
The regulatory cost curve for drug development has become so steep that it’s simply crowding out innovation that the market otherwise wants to fund. A jurisdiction that offers a sensible, science-based approval framework (rather than just a lax one) could attract serious pharma capital, provide high-skill jobs, and generate a self-sustaining employment base. This is the supply side that all these digital nomad communities are conspicuously missing. The gender imbalance data is also a sharper strategic constraint than most founders seem to appreciate.
Worth reading if you care about institutional economics, urban dynamics, or just the audacious business of building something from nothing.
Could you elaborate on this: I’ve talked with several leaders in the field and they’re understandably wary of intentionally attracting women to their cities, but personally, I think it’s quite natural, logical, and moral. They should do it!
I could think of a few scenarios that might cause wariness but would welcome your perspective on what you heard and learned.
Not just that, but the general pattern for these places is an enclave of people (aka men) with relatively high Western salaries, surrounded by a much poorer populace, and the general pattern is for all the hottest local girls to end up over there to pair up with impossibly better millionaire equivalents. You see this all over SE Asia, for example, and it causes a fair amount of resentment amongst the local people if handled badly or too openly encouraged.
"Today, I’m putting everything I know in one piece, to help them—and you—think about this problem. Hopefully, this will accelerate the process and we’ll have hundreds of new jurisdictions in the coming decades. Maybe it will inspire you to move to one."
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Your vision is clouded!
In the not distant future, we will be ruled by an AI and all work will be done by the AIs robot workers. As such, there will not be any need for commerce, politics, economics and all other human constructs that presently exist to make human existence manageable.
In this near future, there will not be countries, national boundaries, individual governments, politicians, money. Everyone will speak and write one language. Everyone will be able to live anywhere they choose with the AI managing issues such as providing living spaces, housing, transportation and so forth. You will be able to study whatever you want, be an artist, hopefully travel in space, perhaps live in a city a mile below the ocean and so much more.
This will be the post-scarcity, unlimited abundance envisioned by Iain M. Banks’ in his SF Culture series of novels.
China, which has built hundreds of cities recently, is showcasing Xiong An New Area, 100km from Beijing, pre-populated with campuses exclusively selected from the world's top ten universities.
Then there's the ongoing drive to turn conurbations into mega-cities. A complex, sophisticated operation with immense productivity upsides.
I've really liked your articles in the past but this one lost me.
There's an assertion in it that I took to be the real thrust of why people want to set up their own states:
"It wants a libertarian world where big states and financial institutions can’t dictate who has access to money and who doesn’t, where banks can’t profiteer from their power, where they’re too big to fail, where states overtax their citizens."
Maybe it's a bit too blunt and a bit too cynical to say that these micro-state-chasers basically just want to run away from paying tax and not adhere to regulations that prohibit them from doing whatever they want. But it seems to me the gist of it.
I do want to call out one line which I disagree with: "where financial institutions can't dictate who has access to money and who doesn't". In my mind, this is exactly the scenario that could arise without regulation, not with it. In the UK, where I'm based, the FCA (the financial regulator) mandates that financial institutions must follow the Treating Customers Fairly principle which means banks can't favour certain customers over others, and therefore can't dictate who has access to their services. And using another example to build on this, when you file for bankruptcy, your debts are dissolved, meaning that you don't fall into lifelong debt-traps to other people. I'd suggest here that laws and regulations actually mean that financial institutions don't have the power to dictate and without safeguards like these we could easily see citizens of micro-states being tiered by financial institutions. This could manifest in a very obvious way using your digital nomad example; if everyone's a software developer, where do the cleaners come from? Presumably from the neighbouring country which envelops this microstate. As we see in Dubai, Qatar, etc, these low-skilled workers are basically deprived of human rights.
And onto tax. With a very low tax microstate - which I've inferred will be the case from the "where states overtax their citizens" comment - what happens when one of these digital nomad microstate citizens gets made redundant and receives no severance pay from their employer? Or what happens if they developed a serious illness? Whatever does happen to them, it won't be good - there's no state taxes to pay for their healthcare!
All in all, it would have been great if your article explored what scenarios a lack of regulations or taxes can lead to rather than just fielded the utopian vision of it.
As ever though there was a lot to like in your article and I really loved the Competitive Advantage of Small vs Big Cities section.
I hope that all made sense and apologies for the long comment!
Thanks!
They don't want to run away from all taxes and regulation: All these places have taxes and regulations!
What they want to run away from is EXCESSIVE taxes and regulations.
Which is something that all countries tend towards, because they have a monopoly on their citizens, who don't tend to move. They have raised taxes and regulations for a very long time, seen that their citizens didn't move too much, and continued doing so. To illustrate, in France the share of public spending vs GDP is 60%.
For banking: Note that Canada debanked protesters. International banks consistently deny banking to Americans due to the higher requirements for compliance (FATCA etc). Crypto is designed so that nobody can disallow access to others.
After talking directly with Indians in India and Indians in Dubai, I came very convinced they are much happier in Dubai than India.
When a person working in these cities is made redundant, they don't need severance because they are paying a fraction of taxes, so they saved much more money.
If they develop a serious illness, they use their healthcare insurance.
What you're discussing is a very valid article. It's just not this one. But worth pondering, so thank you.
Got it. Thanks for the reply!
"Just a century ago, regulations were light... They dream of a better world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens, where they’re treated not as subjects but as customers."
No. We. Do. Not. Full goddamn stop.
We dream of a world where your right to live in peace, safety, and prosperous freedom is NOT dependent on the size of your bank account. Where governments act in the interest of the citizens who elect them to office, and not in the interest of corporations who grease the campaigns of their favorite politicians.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, the U.S. treated its non-millionaire citizens as voters who benefit from the common good, and not as consumers to milk for "rich people play money". The result? Leaps in education, communications, human safety and general health, medical care, technology, infrastructure, rights, modernization, safety and fairness regulations, average income...
But starting in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration and the Friedman doctrine decided that corporations mattered more than citizens, the U.S. has increasingly treated its non-millionaires as wage slaves and "paying customers", who only "deserve" anything if they "can pay for it".
Regulations, public systems, infrastructure, and social nets (which benefit the People) were either torn down or allowed to rot, as politicians and anti-regulation hawks drove money upward toward the already-wealthy, so that they could have even more.
Corporations also began purchasing homes (liquid wealth mobility for the lower 90%) and bulldozed them for apartment complexes (liquid wealth for the upper 10%), turning "owners" with investment into "renters" with nothing to show for it. Software also flipped from something you "own" to something to which you "subscribe", at the whim of the company which publishes it.
Meanwhile, social services (school, medicine, banking) prices went up beyond the ability to afford them, and media transformed from "owned" physical media to "rented" digital, which can be yanked away at any moment for any reason.
This has left everyone else to scrounge for what their diminishing paychecks (in real currency value) could afford. And it has enshittified everything; from families to workplaces to media to products to cities, ensuring that governments become focused not on the good of the People, but the good of their own pocketbooks.
Bonus: Seemingly "successful" places such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Singapore rely on heavy censorship and restrictions on general democratic freedoms for anyone in the lower 90%. Because, you know, if the "poors" rise up, the ultra-wealthy who keep these cities lookin' good can't drink their champagne in peace.
Hi Mike, thank you I appreciate your thoughts.
It sounds like you are not part of the group who dreams of a world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens, where they’re treated not as subjects but as customers. But there certainly are many people who do!
On the topic of taxation, you might be referring to the top marginal tax bracket, which used to be higher. However, taxes as a share of GDP are substantially higher than they used to be. It is likely one of the big causes why paychecks are so low (aside from the high cost of real estate, which is due to hyper regulation).
Please do help me understand how education, finance and healthcare have gone more expensive. I believe public education is pretty similar, healthcare quality is much better (and free for the poor and elderly), and finance is definitely cheaper.
"who dreams of a world where the government doesn’t impose all its answers on its citizens"
A properly-functioning government is operated by people elected to their office by citizens who share the official's ideals on how government is run, how laws are crafted, and how money is spent. The citizens are represented in good faith by those they elect, and can vote out those who do not conduct themselves in a manner in which the citizens find acceptable.
Good government does not "impose all of its answers on its citizens", but enacts and enforces laws, regulations, treaties, and budgets which they create or uphold, and which reflect the will and desire of the majority of the citizens. If we find those laws to be fair, we as citizens vote for those who will keep those laws. If not, we will vote for those who propose to change them.
But the United States, since Citizens United passed, has been beholden to corporations who pay for the campaings of those who decide that what benefits the corporation (more often than not further Conservative than the public) is more important than what benefits the pubic (further Liberal than corporations).
I am in favor of "Socialism to support all (not 'lavish', but 'support'), and Capitalism for those who want even more." Ensure that your population does not fall through, and incentivise for those who have the time, energy, and vision to go higher.
But a nation or society should not punish people for not being able to "get ahead" or even "make ends meet". Not everyone is born lucky enough to always be financially stable and prosperous without outside help.
I myself am financially, economically, and employement-wise responsible. And I have encountered several periods in my life, where I was grateful for government-based financial support. I was not lazy during these periods (they were grindingly boring), but sought employment as quickly as I could. Nevertheless, I was thankful for the financial help, which I was promised by unemployment income.
As Odo of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" once said: "What better way to gauge another race, than to see how it treats the weak and vulnerable?" (5x12 - The Begotten)
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"taxes as a share of GDP are substantially higher than they used to be. It is likely one of the big causes why paychecks are so low"
- Paychecks are low because corporations have repeatedly lobbied to keep them that way, to funnel income toward investors and the top 10% (or...1%), rather than to the bottom 90%. Repeated "tax cuts for the rich" have benefited those at the top rather than at the bottom.
- https://www.urban.org/data-tools/american-affordability-tracker
- https://www.lisep.org/tlc
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/
Further, real-dollar wages for most Americans has stagnated since the 1980s, again through efforts of corporate lobbyists to ensure that their money is funneled, not to employees, but to investors.
- https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america/
Also note that when I lived in the U.S., I took home 75% of my pay after federal taxes, social security, and insurance. And only through spending frugally was I able to save enough money to successfully leave the country (which is increasily hostile to it's middle- and low-income workers), and move to Europe to be closer to my family. Life in Europe is not perfect, but I feel far more secure and joyful than I did in the States. (Europe's own economic, political, and social issues are for another day).
I was able to save by: not being married (lower taxes and spending), not having children (lower taxes and spending), not having pets (lower spending), not owning a new car (lower taxes and spending), not buying a house (lower taxes), and paying off my credit card and school debt.
Marriage, children, home ownership, new car... Once part of the "American Dream", but now things to be avoided, lest you be punished through excessive, possibly untenable, costs.
I am in favor of higher taxes. Especially on the wealthy. Taxes go into a common good from where rightly-elected officials disribute (locally and nationally) to all in shared services (roads, water, fire, police, education) where all benefit.
A gallon (or liter [litre?]) of milk always costs the same. It won't hurt millionaires and billionaires to pay more to help the rest of us. Plus, the lower 90% will then plough it back into the economy.
Except that we don't have that...$80 Trillion, that was taken from us for 45 years, to spend.
- https://medium.com/civic-skunk-works/the-new-cost-of-american-inequality-80-trillion-e05a4a52024f
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"help me understand how education, finance and healthcare have gone more expensive."
As my response has gone on long enough, the following is a selection of reading material which supports my statement. To sum it up: Neo-liberalism has infected U.S. institutions, flipping the ethical and moral obligation of these institutions from "serve the People, and empower them to strengthen the economy" to "serve the investors, and drain the people into economically powerless debt."
Higher education:
- https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
- https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has-increased-from-1988-to-2018.html
- https://theconversation.com/another-kind-of-student-debt-is-entrenching-inequality-274142
- https://jacobin.com/2023/08/us-university-neoliberalism-exploitation-financialization-debt-jobs
Healthcare costs and medical debt:
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12687089/
- https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/16/1104969627/medical-debt-upended-their-lives-heres-what-it-took-from-them
- https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/
- https://www.kff.org/health-costs/health-policy-101-health-care-costs-and-affordability/
Financial fees:
- https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/are-banks-the-bad-guys-overdraft-fees-are-crushing-low-income-customers
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/atm-fee-cfpb-fdic-checking-account-low-income-overdraft-fee/
- https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/RI_Business-of-Bank-Fees-Economic-Participation_Brief_202406.pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1049007818302057
- https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1247&context=elj
We want a world without government OR corporate tyranny.
I have personal experience with the tyranny of corporations. My utility company has been continuously raising electricity rates and investing the profits in stock buy backs. When catastrophe struck and the grid failed they wanted a government handout to repair and upgrade the grid - even though they'd made many times that cost in profits. They just invested it in the stock market instead of better quality service! Electricity isn't something you can boycott if you're unhappy with the service.
Public education in the US has been in stark decline since 2013 (see 2013 vs 2025 NEAP results). A lot of this is due to wokeness and crappy fad curriculums making effective teaching impossible.
Im not sure i share such a rosy image that fully vertically-integrated experiences = happy customer-people. The idea of a cruise company thats also selling people their own excursions on their own islands kinda sounds like a nightmare to me. I cant put my finger on precisely why, but maybe its "captive audience"-type pattern? Like how movie theater /sports game / festival concessions are priced absurdly high because you cant get that stuff anywhere else while you're at that thing. As a customer of that event, i do not feel good being charged $10 for a $2 bottle of water, but im sure the business loves it! And its not like that upcharging is gonna prevent me from going to a festival...
So the company is incentived to offer the cheapest-cost possible option at every price tier, while attempting to charge the maximum for that tier that they can "get away with", with minimal intention or desire to create an actual "good" experience.
"But wait", a rebuttal might counter, "if those vertically integrated cruise experiences suck, the market will correct for it! Ppl wont go!" Idk if thats so true. The reviews ecosystem can easily be gamed, and nevermind all the people who in practice can't or won't deepdive (ha) in researching the full experience. Surely the cruise company itself is incentived to do all it can to sell only the positive sizzle of the entire experience... And with minimal regulation, whats to stop them from resorting to all sorts of con artist-style tricks to mislead people? Up to and including misdirection and shifting blame for their shitty experience to gaslight the customers into thinking that the reason that excursion sucked was (for example) "outside of the company's control" ?
Call me cynical and burnt out from dealing with soulless mega-corps who do not seem to have any customer interests at heart and only care about what will or won't bother someone enough to not pay. And as the direct -corellation line between deal-breakers and shitty experiences gets further and further, (eg, companies market themselves as offering some opt-in service "included", only once youve already purchased, you find that you have to jump through many many hoops of friction to collect this "included" benefit, hoops which were very intentionally designed to minimize the actual number of people whom the company would have to make good on this offer to), companies enshittify more and more to offer less to maximize profits per head.
I'm not saying all regulation is good but i fear there's a very realistic corp-sploitation side that isn't even being acknowledged here. We have seen writ very very large across the modern era that the market does not and will not "automatically" correct predatory corporate practices.
I agree with you: I hate overpaying in concessions!
But there’s a logic to it that would need to apply to cruise cities.
Stadium supply is limited: there’s only so many seats, making more is expensive (and the city might not be able to carry more), and there’s only so many interesting games. So they overcharge in price.
An intelligent cruise company would understand that there’s much more money in a populous city than a small one where there’s a few people overpaying for everything.
Paradoxically, I’ve found some of that criticism valid in existing new jurisdictions.
More in general, the current exploitation is real because people can’t move easily. Corporations could also do it, but their early clientele being so mobile, they are exposed to very intense competition, which makes it hard for them to be bad for long.
In all fairness, Dubai is a souless Vegas-style monstrosity in the desert... While Tokyo and Singapore work for Asians, but few Westerners can adjust long term. We have NYC, but again, density, and like the popularity of SUVs, Americans want their space.
Americans would love many more New Yorks, and they don't have them because of the prevalence of cars.
I agree that Dubai missed an opportunity with cars, but plenty of cities around the world are car-centric, and Dubai is better than most.
You can have big apartments if you build them as such, the problem is you need to build in height, and NIMBYs have prevented this from happening in the US, in big part for race reasons
Humans will be banned from driving within the next 10 years.
Highly doubt it, just because of inertia.
Eventually there might be AIs that take over at the last second if an accident is imminent, and those might be mandated somewhat soon. With grandfathering of old cars. Then in a much longer time maybe we do get banned. And even then there might be a carve out for those who want to drive for fun in specific places.
Doesn't matter whether you drive yourself or your AI does when you're stuck in gridlock either way.
Gridlock much less likely, as there are going to be fewer cars, and networking them will allow to accelerate them. Most traffic is user issue.
> This is not relevant for married couples, but hyper relevant for single nomads.
This is not necessarily true. You might tap into all sorts of interesting network effects if you market your new city as explicitly polyamory-friendly.
Ha! That's what I said. He left it out of the final cut!
I left it out because it will part of the follow-up!
Great article man. Below I have created a manifesto for a charter city for Bangladesh. It's mandate is more narrow and even in the best case scenario wouldn't scale to the size of a university town. But it solves a real world problem and is written from the POV of a nationalist and not a libertarian.
https://mdnadimahmed888222.substack.com/p/satyapur-the-delaware-of-bangladesh
The manifesto still has a few shortcoming and I plan to write a follow-up manifesto later this month.
Your thoughts on the subject will be highly appreciated.
I’m not equipped to jusge, but these initiatives are great!
Meh. Dubai works because it's got essentially slave labour. Without those the amenities will be much worse than in other developed countries. Only the truly rich would accept to pay non-slaves, but they will move to Monaco, not Dubaï. Largely true for Singapore also, works because of poverty nextdoor and a mass non-citizens doing the jobs the citizen don't want for cheap.
The people in the currently fashionable industries tend to think they don't need the rest of society, that they see as a drag. That's not new. Ignorance of all the labour and services one depends on. That's the fallacy these new cities are built on. Won't last.
What I find most analytically interesting is the identification of healthcare as the sleeper vertical for new city formation.
Real estate and crypto are the obvious bedfellows of libertarian jurisdictions, but healthcare regulation is where the genuine economic distortion lies.
The regulatory cost curve for drug development has become so steep that it’s simply crowding out innovation that the market otherwise wants to fund. A jurisdiction that offers a sensible, science-based approval framework (rather than just a lax one) could attract serious pharma capital, provide high-skill jobs, and generate a self-sustaining employment base. This is the supply side that all these digital nomad communities are conspicuously missing. The gender imbalance data is also a sharper strategic constraint than most founders seem to appreciate.
Worth reading if you care about institutional economics, urban dynamics, or just the audacious business of building something from nothing.
Could you elaborate on this: I’ve talked with several leaders in the field and they’re understandably wary of intentionally attracting women to their cities, but personally, I think it’s quite natural, logical, and moral. They should do it!
I could think of a few scenarios that might cause wariness but would welcome your perspective on what you heard and learned.
I think they fear it could sound like: “let’s get some girls so our boys can bang.” Trying to get to the worst type of spin here.
Not just that, but the general pattern for these places is an enclave of people (aka men) with relatively high Western salaries, surrounded by a much poorer populace, and the general pattern is for all the hottest local girls to end up over there to pair up with impossibly better millionaire equivalents. You see this all over SE Asia, for example, and it causes a fair amount of resentment amongst the local people if handled badly or too openly encouraged.
"Today, I’m putting everything I know in one piece, to help them—and you—think about this problem. Hopefully, this will accelerate the process and we’ll have hundreds of new jurisdictions in the coming decades. Maybe it will inspire you to move to one."
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Your vision is clouded!
In the not distant future, we will be ruled by an AI and all work will be done by the AIs robot workers. As such, there will not be any need for commerce, politics, economics and all other human constructs that presently exist to make human existence manageable.
In this near future, there will not be countries, national boundaries, individual governments, politicians, money. Everyone will speak and write one language. Everyone will be able to live anywhere they choose with the AI managing issues such as providing living spaces, housing, transportation and so forth. You will be able to study whatever you want, be an artist, hopefully travel in space, perhaps live in a city a mile below the ocean and so much more.
This will be the post-scarcity, unlimited abundance envisioned by Iain M. Banks’ in his SF Culture series of novels.
I agree! Every article about the future should start with a caveat: “Provided AI doesn’t change this specific area of life too much.”
China, which has built hundreds of cities recently, is showcasing Xiong An New Area, 100km from Beijing, pre-populated with campuses exclusively selected from the world's top ten universities.
Then there's the ongoing drive to turn conurbations into mega-cities. A complex, sophisticated operation with immense productivity upsides.
https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/are-standalone-cities-obsolete-chinas?r=16k