Seasteading offers the possibility for physical separation which increases the difficulty of violently ruling a territory due to the extra cost of projecting force a longer distance. This is unique compared to any form of government on land.

Anyway, I am certainly in favor of an ancap charter city being tried, but it seems unlikely to be accepted by the host government.

Methinks the competition & experimentation between governance systems/firms in one Ancap CC would create much more technological innovation than dozens of vanilla CCs – since Ancap CCs would exhibit the lower-entry-barriers feature of seasteading. WRT customer lockin, like a seasteading module, each plot of land can change its judicial services firm and/or the rules its owner has contracted to live by.

Sure, the host nation would probably freak when the A word is mentioned. But at least it removes the number of governments you have to deal with. Plus it nullifies the whiff of colonialism and condescension. Plus the legal system(s) can mould around the customs of the immigrants. Even if the host nation demands a guarantor country, perhaps they can leave a small portion of the chartered land “stateless”.

Now that Romer’s probably got his host country (Honduras), can’t Patri’s dad gather up a posse of anarchist professors, visit his office and “gently persuade” him that he should get started immediately? No need to search for some meddlesome guarantor nation.

If this has already been discussed somewhere, please point me in the right direction. Thanks.

“Charter Cities can be thought of as a way to bring the current best practices in governance to places that currently have vastly inferior governance technology. “

This has been tried, for example innumerable interventions in Haiti, the recent assimilation of East Germany by West Germany, and so forth. It is apparent that such efforts tend to export what has recently gone wrong with our society, rather than what is right with our society. Mencius Moldbug points out the tremendous success of classic colonialism in bringing liberty, prosperity, personal security, and trains that run on time to the colonized – and the ruinous failure of modern colonialism, indicating that modern colonialists have a very poor grasp of what are the differences that make a difference.

If the US invades Haiti yet again, this time under Obama, then this time around we will probably raise the minimum wage to seven dollars an hour and give them midnight basketball and single payer health care.