"What if we could redesign society from scratch? The promise of charter cities." [Rational Animations video]

Unfortunately, the game of power is about ruling a territory, not improving it. It took me many years to internalize this idea. "Surely the elite would want to improve things?" No. Putin could improve Russia in many ways, but these ways would weaken his rule, so he didn't. That's why projects like Georgism or charter cities keep failing: they weaken the relative position of the elite, even if they plausibly make life better for everyone. Such projects can only succeed if implemented by a whole country, which requires a revolution or at least a popular movement. It's possible - it's how democracy was achieved - but let's be clear on what it takes.

The comments are almost nothing but great takedowns of the idea. Eg:

In practice a lot of charter cities end up being tax havens for rich people. If you get common goods from one country/community but then as soon as you reap the fruits of those common goods you remove yourself from the redistributive programs that make the common goods possible, you can essentially be freerider, which undermines the common goods that generated the social welfare.

or,

I feel like your argument at 9:04 is exactly why Charter Cities cannot work within an existing polity. It's not just a government that would be threatened by a rival internal entity, but the broader demos would also feel unfairly excluded, and also subject to extortion by the Charter City (ultra-low wages for menial work to boost profits of those within the city). Singapore used to be part of Malaysia, it was only when it was fully separate that the new Nation-City of Singapore could embark on its radical reforms. The government and the demos were part of the one state. South Korea did not need to pilot good governance in a city to progress, the country moved away from military dictatorship and both the people and the institutions embraced democracy & economic development. I think moving a whole country is plausible (and agreeably difficult) - though that country can also be a breakaway city / province (as per Singapore, Monaco, Hong Kong, East Timor), but it has to be a whole country.

or,

This entire idea seems extremely vulnerable to colonialism/external interests/comedically high levels of corrupt abuse that look like “company towns”. I’m sure that there is a genuine, noble ambition here, but I don’t see it working out in the majority of cases.

or,

The problem with Charter cities, much like Charter schools, is that those who pay the taxes and work in the region do not get the benefit from the elitist status

or

Maybe im missing something, but I dont see how charter cities would avoid fallong into the same traps of corruption and incompetence that we already see in so many governments. Only without a constitution or political checks and balances to keep the worst offenders in check.

This doesn't work because it doesn't actually solve the incentive alignment issues that cause multinational corporations to be misaligned optimizers. If there was a version that did, it might be promising - but it would need to be specifically designed to prevent big interests from benefiting, and would therefore likely get attacked by them. the biggest problem with starting your own thing is that you either get big from toxic funding - or you don't get enough funding.

Some things that might be components of a version that actually has some shot at working:

• https://www.grassrootseconomics.org/ is a currency system specifically designed to be hyper-local and not connected long distance, unlike typical alternate currency systems like global cryptocurrencies, because this disconnection limits international interests' incentive to manipulate the currency for their own powerseeking. interesting videos about the motivation and design on https://www.youtube.com/@WillRuddick/videos - importantly it's intended to be a secondary currency used in small groups where another currency is also in use.
• https://www.actu-environnement.com/media/pdf/ostrom_1990.pdf or https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Governing_the_Commons or https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ostrom+governing+the+commons - there's solid research on designs for organizations that do not rely on the typical libertarian individualist approach and could use something more peer to peer and cooperative. I have a high opinion of many libertarian principles, but the "everyone is completely separated and nothing is managed through resource sharing systems of any kind, it's all assumed to be one-gatekeeper-per-resource" seems like a recipe to get all the resource holders hodling at the expense of non-resource-holders, which is the core issue anticipated by commenters.

if you want to defend this idea further, I'd suggest integrating some of this into the next video on the topic, so that it can head off criticisms from many perspectives, not just criticisms from liberal and libertarian perspectives, which seem to be all that the current one has discussion of. I'd suggest you watch most of the videos from https://www.youtube.com/@unlearningeconomics9021 to get a sense of what another perspective might look like that you'd need to defend against, because almost all the comments seem to be people who understand the left's criticisms and the video doesn't seem to be made with those criticisms in mind. (Note that I do not generally believe the old fashioned left have solutions, just good criticisms. Only specific slices of the modern left have actual ideas for how to implement stuff that might actually work. and for clarity, left != liberal. left here is anything left of liberal.)

In general, the idea that "faster growth" is in any way good for the common person is considered propaganda for corporations at this point. If you want to change that, you'd have to show a mechanism for it to be different.

They’ll still need to follow their mother country’s constitution, criminal code, and international treaties, but should otherwise be given the freedom to design their own legal code to encourage the growth of new industries

This seems to be a show stopper.

Couldn't the country's Supreme Court just decide anyways one day that the existing 'legal code' apply regardless of what the original intentions of the founders are or what the founding documents say? 

It would need a constitutional amendment to credibly enshrine its special status. But why would a supermajority of the politicians and citizens from existing political boundaries ratify that? 

In China's case it was clear, they had nothing left to lose in 1978 after hitting rock bottom, but I highly doubt most countries would even exist after 120+ years of the deepest misery and suffering, in order to reach rock bottom.

Noting that additional authors still don't carry over when the post is a cross-post, unfortunately.