This shit is the basis for like 12 different dystopian sci-fi novels.
When I read Snow Crash, I had a hard time getting into it because I though the idea of wholesale privatisation of government responsibilities and territories went a bit too far…
Tech bros really have a hard on for the Torment Nexus.
Technofascism, even…
The word of the day is “technofeudalism”
These zones would allow wealthy investors to write their own laws and set up their own governance structures which would be corporately controlled and wouldn’t involve a traditional bureaucracy.
As if a corporation isn’t just another form of hierarchical organization with departments and redundancy.
The new zones could also serve as a testbed for weird new technologies without the need for government oversight.
Ah, there it is.
They also want to build on Federal land, which is mostly national parks. So obviously conservation is not a part of our future.
And this is just a fucking speed run into a cyberpunk dystopia. Like an extra stupid mix of Snowcrash and BioShock. If the Federal government allows a bunch of technofascists to build independent cities free of Federal regulatory oversight, then what’s stopping them from just not being part of the US at that point? They won’t be paying taxes, they won’t be represented in Congress, and they won’t be subject to Federal law, so why should we allow this?
Hot take: this is not necessarily a bad idea, and worth experimenting with. After all, Disneyland is an existing example of such a setup, and it’s arguably better governed than other jurisdictions within Florida. And when Ron DeSantis flexed the state government power to transfer decision making from Disney back to the politicians, it was not an improvement.
I am a “pro-corporate libertarian”, I can see why a lot of people wouldn’t like this sort of thing, but my response is “If you don’t like it, don’t move there.” They’re not proposing to turn existing cities into these.
It seems quite possible that the Network Staters want to build them in our national parks.
That’s possible in the sense that it isn’t forbidden by the laws of physics, but it’s quite a stretch. The federal government owns over a quarter of all the land in the USA - 650 million acres. National parks cover less than one seventh of that land. There’s plenty of space to build charter cities without having to use the most unpopular possible places to put them.
Sure ignore all the environmental issues arise from these cities when normal cities cant even keep conpanies in check with their dump.
So building these cities close to any national parks is as stupid as your attempt at justifying the push
