In the same vein, how do you prevent companies taking the grants, moving in, and moving on when they run out?
There are no grants. Or there are not necessarily any grants. The idea is to move away from aid through grants. There could be grants if the host or sponsoring nations wanted their to be but grants don’t seem to be expected. The idea is that private firms who want to build a factory finance it on their own. The main selling point for the investors will presumably be that there lots of cheap workers just bursting to walk off the farms into factories and start sewing t-shirts. What attracts the business to invest is a) access to cheaper labour b) but still with the reassurance of robust, functioning legal systems.
This would have implications for free-expression, religious toleration, most of the things which affect private lives. Who polices the city? Host nation, administrator, private police? Ditto for other social services.
Yes it would. I envisage policing being done as a branch of the sponsoring nations police force i.e. Connell City has a Constabulary in the same vein as Lothian and Borders, probably funded in the first instance by Scotland and staffed by Scottish officers until the city was up and running enough to pay for its own policing and hire its own officers (presumably trained in Scotland).
I think the key point is that all of these things are subject to negotiation at the founding stage of the city (and subsequently) and that competition between cities is a key part of making them all behave well. Would Scotland be involved in setting up a city that allowed religious persecution? Certainly not. Would Scotland require that Connell City have socialised medical care? It might not but it would probably hint pretty strongly that it’s a good idea. A charter city set up by Texas (Bush City) would make a different offer. If you were an African peasant farmer thinking about moving to the city which would you chose?
Free states and Interzones have always flourished because of their ability to avoid inconvenient laws, on anything from drug use to import/export duties, and have usually become pretty dangerous places to live for the same reasons.
Definitely recognise the danger that a charter city could become a pretty murky sort of a place. Perhaps no murkier than large parts of Africa or South America or Asia are already. It’s easy to say that people could just leave, but it’s probably much easier to say than to do and where would people go if all of the charter cities turned into shady interzones of convience. It might just bet that the idea ends up moving lots of people from subsistance farming to not great to live in cities. But that appears to be what is happening anyway.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 12:06 pm (UTC)There are no grants. Or there are not necessarily any grants. The idea is to move away from aid through grants. There could be grants if the host or sponsoring nations wanted their to be but grants don’t seem to be expected. The idea is that private firms who want to build a factory finance it on their own. The main selling point for the investors will presumably be that there lots of cheap workers just bursting to walk off the farms into factories and start sewing t-shirts. What attracts the business to invest is a) access to cheaper labour b) but still with the reassurance of robust, functioning legal systems.
This would have implications for free-expression, religious toleration, most of the things which affect private lives. Who polices the city? Host nation, administrator, private police? Ditto for other social services.
Yes it would. I envisage policing being done as a branch of the sponsoring nations police force i.e. Connell City has a Constabulary in the same vein as Lothian and Borders, probably funded in the first instance by Scotland and staffed by Scottish officers until the city was up and running enough to pay for its own policing and hire its own officers (presumably trained in Scotland).
I think the key point is that all of these things are subject to negotiation at the founding stage of the city (and subsequently) and that competition between cities is a key part of making them all behave well. Would Scotland be involved in setting up a city that allowed religious persecution? Certainly not. Would Scotland require that Connell City have socialised medical care? It might not but it would probably hint pretty strongly that it’s a good idea. A charter city set up by Texas (Bush City) would make a different offer. If you were an African peasant farmer thinking about moving to the city which would you chose?
Free states and Interzones have always flourished because of their ability to avoid inconvenient laws, on anything from drug use to import/export duties, and have usually become pretty dangerous places to live for the same reasons.
Definitely recognise the danger that a charter city could become a pretty murky sort of a place. Perhaps no murkier than large parts of Africa or South America or Asia are already. It’s easy to say that people could just leave, but it’s probably much easier to say than to do and where would people go if all of the charter cities turned into shady interzones of convience. It might just bet that the idea ends up moving lots of people from subsistance farming to not great to live in cities. But that appears to be what is happening anyway.