Plan: 1. Start a KZfaq channel. 2. Get enough subscribers to start a charter city. 3. ??? 4. Take over the Virgo Supercluster. (By the way, you can support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/rationalanimations )

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.

EPCOT started like this. It was meant to be the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", generating its own food, power, and effectively running a closed loop ecology. Then Walt Disney died and the Disney company decided his vision of building a new kind of city was too expensive, and turned the place into a theme park instead.

Sounds like the obstacles that prevent charter cities from working are also the ones that give them a reason to exist. If the national government is fair and effective, there wouldn't be a need for charter cities. And if they they weren't they wouldn't let charter cities exist

This mechanism kind of recalls the institution of Imperial Free Cities in the holy roman empire. A move that was at first was beneficial for both parties, but that ultimately resulted in the fragmentation of political power within the same state. After all, why would a city with different laws, taxes and customs care about the wider state, if not to ultimately gain more independence from it in the long run?

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.

To be fair, Singapore has too good a geographical position that its experience just might not be relevant to most countries. Factors like this are also significant for any country''s success.

Build one of these underwater and you've basically reinvented Bioshock.

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.

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.

You know why Singapore did well? Housing. The solution is universal basic services, food, housing, healthcare education and transportation services. And democracy, especially in the workplace. UBS pays for itself exponentially, and democracy in the workplace increases pay, retention and even helps survive price shocks. It's not difficult, but the problem is interenched power indeed and the interenched intrest in profit focus economies rather than progress based, which would come from UBS

Beyond the inumerous critics pointed, I very curious how all these "independent" cities would coordinate with each other without ending in endless chaos, with conflicts about resources, and economics interests, specially giving the advanced means of destruction humanity are about to have, ranging from AI to biotechnology..

okay, okay, but what about the MOLOCH? like maybe setting up a system where everyone competes to be the best tax haven could be, bad

We tried this. They were called company towns, and they sucked. Removing external oversight from a society can only benefit those who went in with more resources and power.

One if the major issues is that a charter city may end up occupying economically viable locations, relegating the hinterlands to the wider state, thus causing the charter city to be able to exploit the collective resources of the wider society while leaving tbe maintence and tax burden upon the state while keeping the wealth generated for itself.

I admit I am very skeptical when it comes to charter cities. They smack of techbro-ism to a very strong degree. But worth trying at least.

It's crazy to me, that in this time of ever growing corporate exploitation, you all would think it was a good idea to let a small group of powerful "founders" decide what laws they should be subject to. Especially when the explicitly stated goal is "economic growth", which is just code for the rich enriching themselves further.

As already pointed out by many, I can't see charter cities as presented in the video being something else than tax heavens and a ghettos for rich people. The tax heaven problem can be partially resolved by strengthening the international cooperation against such practice, but for the rich getho, allowing a charter city to make their own immigration law inside a sovereign nation is by essence the recipe to redo what we are already witnessing in rich citiy states like singapore, which use cheap labor from the poor country nearby to prosper. That doesn't look utopian at all. At least I can give credit to the concept for the social innovation. We as a civilisation are very conservative about social changes. The pace of our thechnogical innovation and economical grow is insane, but we are sooooo slow to make even some minor adjustments to our laws or social order to better the society.

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

Corruption is usually the insurmountable problem. I do wish these places the best of luck & won't hold me breath....

Francis fukuyuma writes a lot about how institutions are fundamental in lifting up a nation

This is feudalism inc.

im wondering just how many legal headaches would come from these which laws apply within a charter city vs outside of it? which existing systems interact with the rest of society and which dont? also, what happens if the charter city harms more than it help, turning into a cancerous-like annoyance? how do you pull the plug on a society without making everyone mad, or screwing over their lives?

I believe the garden City with a density high enough for public transit (10,000 people per square mile) hand having each one of them be a district with a tram and expanding out and having an express subway stop at each end of every district would be ideal Along with making rooms into halls and apartment halls into circular communal areas and shared backyards (and shared collective roof for multi story buildings) would allow for socializing (unlike American design that has the least amount of 3rd places)

You guys are super underrtated, amazing animations and always so many interesting topics!

I’d like to say for starters I love the animation style and secondly I love the ideas of charter cities and yes they arent perfect (as nothing in the world can be) but the point is that they give people opportunities I feel a lot of people have missed the point in that they are ment to be one of many different ways that could bring prosperity to the people. I’m a Lazze-Fair capitalist and I think giving people more freedoms and completion is amazing. Thanks for your hard work and sharing ideas you think could change the world for better. I for one find it amazing!

In theory I'm always open to new ideas or new implementation of older ideas, however in reality, I have to be cynical. These do really just sound like company towns or towns that work great for the tech elite but not so great for everyone else. I'm willing to allow others the opportunity to try it out, but I'm rather pessimistic at first blush. I think alternative social models should be tried. I think we always should be trying to improve on the current status quo. There's a lot to complain about regarding our current institutions. However, experience has shown that these communities can easily be corrupted. How are the social services in this utopia? Would the disabled, the old, or the sick be welcomed, or would it only be a shining city on the hill for the beautiful, the smart, or the capable?? How would public goods be provided? Would there be a limited judicial system?, because disputes will inevitably arise. I'm all for a less oppressive more democratic society, but the devil is always in the details. Look I'm even willing to try benevolent dictatorship because I think in the short term it can be useful, but we have to take a long look at all of these alternative propositions with a weathered eye. Everything can sound wonderful on paper. The proof is where the rubber meets the road. If a group thinks they can start a new town to function as a mostly autonomous city-state that will be positive and desirable to all, then by all means I would be open to seeing it tried and I hope they succeed. I just hope it doesn't degenerate into problems. If one thinks a new town can function more smoothly and in a superior to other given towns based on the principle of looser restrictions on business entities then by all means let's try it out, but I'm skeptical. I mean most US towns have always bent over for business especially big business and we have the highest and growing rates of poverty in the last 100 years. Was that a strong social safety net and at least some social programs I don't see how this wouldn't repeat itself in this new utopia. The only way I could see this being prevented is if only healthy people were allowed to take part in this experiment. But for how long would that be kept up? Perhaps for some time but how would it be enforced if indeed that was the agenda? I'm willing to consider any reasonable alternative to our current models but I'm not so sure if the primary team who is behind this idea has truly thought through all the possible complications. On one hand I'm curious and so I'd like to see if some encouraging progress could be made but on the other hand I'm also skeptical. Ideas can sound great but I really need to hear the nitty gritty before I feel more comfortable giving my personal seal of approval.

Brilliant video on a really interesting topic! Maps with blue land and green water was really confusing though!!

The problem with this idea is pretty fundamental, in that the advocates lack information about the countries that they view as "successful". China is an authoritarian country where factory workers are treated like garbage for slightly better wages than they got when they were agrarian workers. Singapore is placed in one of the most navigated straits in the world, so all they had to do was place tariffs on ships. While South Korea is a dystopia ruled by oligarchic aristocracies, which constantly ranks in the global top for suicide and childlessness rates. None of these are social success stories. They might be PR success stories, since they control their media (either the government does it or it is done by monopolies) to make themselves look good to the outside world, whereas more democratic countries have journalists who are free to (and really love to) complain about every little thing. And their governments being more or less authoritarian also means protests are rare, which gives the appearance that everything is right, whereas again, people in free democracies block the roads and make a scene for the pettiest of reasons. People might make more money overall in these places than they did before, but they also work longer (so not sure how much they gain in pay per hour), and their traditional familial ties were broken by industrialization, which besides psychological support also offered financial support in times of need. It is simplistic to say that they just "got better". They mega rich did get a sweet deal out of this, that's for sure.

Political science needs the experimental method. I'd support this on that basis alone.

We tried this before, and it lead to Gary, Indiana, along with a plethora of dilapidated and abandoned corporate towns littering the United States. It seems bloated, inefficient, and wasteful to do this when we have perfectly good cities lying around, many of which have underdeveloped, car dependent areas ripe for redevelopment into transit oriented communities of retail, office, business, residential, and industrial. Maybe the ideal "charter city" would be to refurbish old industrial towns for new industries after siting basically dormant for half a century. A better Idea is maybe the surrounding suburban municipalities of metro regions developing their own dense, walkable cores that directly compete with the main center city while offering a different rage of businesses and services. An example would be Metro Vancouver's Surrey or Sydney's Paramatta - you build a second CBD within an hour's drive of the first with it's own local laws and goals independent from the main city, while sharing important infrastructure goals, and as it develops, all the major town centers in between all dynamically respond to a shifting metropolitan fabric, which then influences the development of both cities back and forth, especially when factoring in mass transit and TOD. This is a better idea, as the primary purpose of a city is as commerce and logistics hubs built in the most geographically opportune areas possible, and deviating from them makes no sense. Another idea is just studying other cities to see what's successful without having to build an experimental project city - learn about mass affordable housing from Singapore or Vienna, learn about mass transit from Tokyo or Hong Kong, and learn about proper urban design from Amsterdam or Copenhagen. A lot of great recent development in Seattle, from the Link Light Rail, to the new waterfront, to recent building developments have been directly inspired by what Vancouver has done up the road.

Basically good old Hong Kong before the fire nation attack.

This is probably why Switzerland works so well -the canton system where each has significant tax and regulations authority means it's a nation made up of 26 charter cities.

I am sorry to say, but for once this is a bit of a nonsensical video. I would be very surprised if any good lawyer was involved in creating this. The video implies that "giving cities the right to write their own legislation" is a groundbreaking new idea, when in fact almost every city I know (and almost every municipality in rural areas, too, for that matter) writes its own legislation. This is the basic principle of "subsidiarity", where laws are made at the level closest to the citizen. Only where it is necessary for better efficiency and cooperation, laws are made at a "higher" level, such as provincial, state, or federal level (or even "Union" level, for the European Union). Of course you can give certain cities the competence to make laws in areas that would normally be made at a "higher" level, but this also has certain downsides (such as e.g. incompatibility with the laws in force everywhere outside of the city). In any event, and this is my main point, cities having the power to legislate is hardly a new idea.

The first thing I think about helping people in developing countries: asphalt/good roads. These people often have a lot already (even if they don't know it), except for the road infrastructure to get certain goods that we consider essential to the people, like food, medical supplies, but also teachers and other types of essential workers basically. Instead they try to drive lorries across dirt or sand roads, not going anywhere at a snails pace, or they only drive cross bikes because that's less susceptible to getting stuck on those roads.

Please, never give up the live animation you use! I enjoyed every frame. I’m so sick of soulless motion graphics and zombie characters being moved in After Effects. A couple of suggestions: try to experiment with variable stroke width. Ideally, with textured brushes as well, but I know those cause problems with compositing. More painted backgrounds. Despite the fact that I despise cats and dogs, I really enjoyed the whole film. Many thanks for your work! Your animation team is very lucky to have a project like that. I wish I could work on something similar or better.

We've also seen a charter city in video games. It's name. Night City. While I'm hopeful still i see it going very much the same way.

This channel is good fun, thanks

Removing and preventing dictators is a necessary first step.

How do you respond to all the counter examples in the comments? Surely these occurred to you when making the video, or have been studied by proponents of this idea?

Your content is actually awesome 😎

I'd move to rat-topia. I think we'd probably be a bit heavy on software devs and crypto speculators, and a bit light on tradies though.

This channel should really have millions of subscribers. These videos go into so much depth with so much research.

Pretty inspirational, thank you

Your video style is neat

everything from writing to animation was at a top-notch level. you made this fairly complex idea seem incredibly easy to understand and made it sound very much possible, which is both insightful and inspiring. and the animation is on a whole another level - high quality and simple visualization of the ideas spoken helped tremendously and everyone involved did their absolute best and it shows. masterfully done, i hope your channel will continue growing.

I love the animations (seriously, its so fun to just witness, so well made) and choice of unique facts, reminds me of prime kurzgesagt (however you write their name).

Some feedback: the muted color choices for the maps made it very confusing to figure out what they were depicting, in particular what was land and what was sea. (As an example, the "US started out as a Constitutional Republic" map highlighted the original 13 states. I was trying to figure out why what looked like California was highlighted before the animation grew to encompass the rest of the continental US. Places I was less familiar with (or less familiar at that scale) fared much worse.

This is just the plot of bioshock.

great video. I will try this when I take over.

This is giving words to ideas I already had.

I would like to see a charter city running on the council-manager form of government.

GIFT CITY, India is a very accurate example of a charter city.

good vid!

I imagine some may either fear or otherwise see these cities as a possibility to break a country into smaller pieces. Imagine a city makes laws so different, it wants to split from the main country. The central government may fear this happening. Another country may see this as an opportunity to fund a city more friendly to them than the main government, which could become a new, separate, allied country later on, or even an unofficial(or even official) colony.

I've heard of an attempt at a place like this, but the gov asked one of the members (I think the leader?) to keep an eye on his neighbors and report back to them. When he refused, they wiped out the whole town. I don't remember the name of it, but that's definitely... a big obstacle. :/

Nice video. Though a bit of a shame that you didn't bring up Lübeck and the cities that followed her charter.

very interesting, this seems to converge with the ideas of seasteading and arcologies

I recently heard of the 'GIFT city' in Gujarat, India Though not so autonomous, it's a good middle ground between a charter city and a municipal sity

your channel is criminally underrated. Every video you make is informative and insightful. Keep going, I'd love to see your channel grow!

Regarding the stuff in the description, would a Role-Playing Game not be sufficient to experiment with governing systems?

As a politologist and sociologist I see this basically as the first building stone on getting enterprise owned states (without the bought and corrupt politicians in the middle)

Great Video

The blind spot in this video is discussion of counter-examples and failures of this idea. Discussion about Neom and The Line and California Forever?

Singapore was not a charter city, it was a country that was expelled from the Malaysian Federation because their huge Chinese population threatened the Malay aristocracy.

Cities usually develop in spite of being designed.

There better be a teacher out there showing this to their classes, this is so cool! A dream future

This sounds like asking the government to plant the seeds of what they don't want, instead of changing immediately... Which doesn't _seem_ to make sense, if I assume that it's always the same party in power. But on a changing stage (which would be a step up for some places already, granted), maybe this could work? Since the politicians are going to be out of power anyway when the change comes, it may be easier to choose it?

love this

A vid about this is cgp greys rules for rulers that covers this a bit. It's really good

modern society decreases physical suffering but is plagued by mental suffering

I'm glad you're talking about Nigeria. Our economy needs to change.

No way. Just kept looking for unwatched videos from your channel, and in this lucky moment, I noticed this one is actually new! Cannot wait!

Great stuff 👍, hope for future video of Humanit triumph alien invaders then what aftermath be like scenario? 🤔

you have my attention!

It's not overkill and I'd totally be a person to try out something like a charter city, just sounds neat

Would be great with colonisation new planets. Imagine this space neoliberal decentralised communism on Europa I can't say that Singapore is great example - exploitation of people is extreme there

I've been thinking about something like this for ages

To be completely honest, if a new city popped up depending on an uncorrupted and fair governmental system…it would have to have an AI system with prioritizes for fairness, justice, logistical emotional intelligence, critical thinking, economic intelligence, as well as many other attributes that make up a good and fair leader. Then allow it to make changes or laws and run a judicial system that punishes people fairly within a given set of rules. The reason I state this is because, when a good leader dies, the old leader’s policies and laws could very easily be overturned and corrupted by the new leader. AI would solve this issue as it doesn’t die and there is most likely a good way to keep it self sufficient.

תודה על הסרטון הוא היה מאוד מעניין

Its my belief that the future optimal form of government is a global federation or regional elected representatives of city states. I hope this works out well. I think a lot of the times it will just be some Dubai Billionaire with no sense and too much cents. But if some modern fundamental engineers, scientists and economists can make some changes for the benefit of all people they can hopefully make some beautiful and self sustaining cities.

The colour palette of highlighted land and sea are very confusing! Especially when the darker coloured land looked like the sea 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫.

The biggest factor of what it's like to live in a country, is where the value is extracted. If your country grows bananas as the biggest source of extracted value, you can have slave labor, or the capitalist equivalent of starving wages. This means that the people in power dont have to invest in infrastructure and healthcare and education. Those things would only serve to threaten the system of value extraction. The form of government will be a dictatorship. There is a small owning class and a slightly larger military class. Those people have some quality of life, paid for by the value of those bananas. If your country has oil, it is much much worse. While the value extraction requires skilled workers, it's entirely possible to just allow a foreign nation to extract the oil for you and pay you for the privilege. And while some infrastructure is required, it comes down to a road to and from the airport/harbor. where the oil gets shipped. This means you can ignore your population entirely and you don't even need that big of a military class. Your people can be left entirely ignored. While this is disadvantageous for them in some ways (they will never escape poverty) they are at least free to forage of farm their own food and survive largely ungoverned. If your country has no natural resources, your resource is it's people. So most value is extracted as labor. Factories built by foreign nations are filled with workers with zero civil rights. This however necessitates some investment in the population. You need some education so the workers can follow commands and perhaps read instructions. You need some healthcare to keep your workers alive, you need some roads and infrastructure like powerplants etc. This also allows your population to become a threat to its government. Dictators in countries like this sit a little less comfortably as regime changes happen more easily. Political unrest under the exploited population allows usurpers to exploit said population as a tool to seize power. Once your country has fully grown into an economy where the value is in the minds and skills of it's workers, a dictatorship becomes a lot less tenable and most countries switch to a democracy at this stage. A dictatorship is untenable because of how quickly it would repeatedly get overthrown and violent revolutions will destroy a lot of the value that a government would wish to extract from its people. So democracies form and the different voting blocks manouver to have their interests represented. At that point the system starts to slide of subverting that democracy to try and stripmine the value of the nation in a race to the bottom. The interests of the people come to blows with the interest of the owning class who want to extract all value as quickly as possible and pull out to do the same elsewhere. Democracies that work manage to curtain those owning class parasites and find ways to represent the citizens, protecting their value and maintaining it, or even investing in it further. The problem that then arises is the effect of money in politics. When dollars vote, those with the most dollars get to have the most votes. once interest groups consolidate they can wield their influence and hedge their money as leverage to subvert the system to allow them to extract more value than they lost buying their influence. There is a snowball effect once a certain threshold is crossed and wealth consolidates more and more at the top while the political system stagnates and positive change becomes impossible. The programs that invest in the value of the citizens slowly get broken down so those funds can be funneled into the pockets of the owning class who, like rats on the sinking ships, are stuffing their bags for the exodus once the corpse of the nation is picked clean. So to improve the living conditions of people, it is important to change the socioeconomic circumstances, so that the value is extracted from their knowledge and skill, rather than their hard labor or by digging it out of the soil. Once that is achieved continued investment in the value of these people needs to be safeguarded and the influence of the owning class must be limited staunchly. Anything else is just a race to the bottom.

I’m 100% on board

The experimentation that comes with it seems to be the main benefit, but you can run such experiments wothout the need for charter cities. Cool concept, but I feel it can be refined

"What about going beyond just imitating the best practices of developed countries, and instead trying to do even better?" So far I like the dutch method the best. Instead of tons of little laws that create an ever changing mess The Netherlands chose to wipe the slate clean. So little laws it would make a libertarian overjoyed. They then instead created laws based on goals. They also created multiple scientific organizations to do research to make these goals. One such law in The Netherlands is roads have to be safe as possible. If not the road company can face large fines. What is safe as possible? It's an ever changing target. The Netherlands created two organizations that just do day in and day out research figuring out through hard facts (i.e. science) what is the safest way forward. This is a difficult problem to solve so all the time they're coming out with new papers that are a little bit safer. The second organization summarizes the findings from the first making it easy to digest this information. Road companies then read the published booklet with all of the aggregate findings and base their road plans off these ever changing set of rules. When you do this no new laws are needed. Politics have been delegated to hard facts that try their best to achieve goals everyone wants. Instead of politics becoming about how to solve problems it turns into, "What problems are worth solving?" With this policy you don't need charter cities, except when testing a radical idea that is impossible to study. Society can build up without restriction. The USA is democracy 1.0. Most of Europe is democracy 2.0. The Netherlands is shaping up into a democracy 3.0. Anyone can do research and publish a study that determines the future of society. All you have to do is prove your theory about a better tomorrow is correct. No more speculating, just hard facts that all but guarantee a better tomorrow.

Charter Cities sound cool, but I have a some questions. Firstly, how would these cities get the food they need to feed their growing populations? Most agricultural are based in rural areas owned by the government, or by large private business backed by the government. It seems like it would be easy to just cut off food supply to charter cities if they did not like the way things were going. Secondly how would we ensure that charter cities remain fair and equal among the classes? It seems like it would be very easy for a country's wealthiest to move in and avoid paying their taxes while overriding the cities economy with their wealth so that it will work in their favor. Lastly, to what extent would freedom be given to these charter cities? Would they be able to override international law? Who would hold them accountable if they were to do something inhumane? Could they just decide to do things like get rid of minim wage or commit ethnic cleansing? To be fair, I think this idea has a lot of potential, but the idea of "benefiting people' can be pretty subjective.

There are more problems with such ideas that weren't discussed. A: to build and and regulate such a city you would need a large amount of specialists and builders who would be pulled from elsewhere, effectively worsening industrialization nearby. B: The experimentation part could be a huge problem, the effects of laws and regulations are usually seen on the timeframes 10+ years, and probably no less that half a year. Which means that if there is a "failed experiment", it could have huge detrimental effects, because it would have to last for a while to be comfortably dismissed. C: There is no way to safe guard the process of writing the laws for charter cities from vested interest and corruption. You might think you got lucky and found a lot of qualified people eager to work on this, but you wouldn't find out that they are actually just paid and planted by influential figures outside, trying to set up a perfect legal haven for themselves. With these three in mind, i honestly doubt that charter cities are realistic.

People who live in cities tend to be more economically productive than people who live in rural areas. Though the work done by people in rural areas is very important, as we all still need food. But that's why people move to cities. However any economic growth requires more energy, and the world isn't getting more of that. So good luck.

While I feel like it's a really good idea to help impoverished countries not by continuously keeping them on life support but actually fixing the system so that they can get out of the coma, there's also a lot of risk for corruption in the idea; many other comments cite the potential for charter cities to just become tax havens for rich people. I think that, if done right, charter cities could potentially solve massive problems with the world, but done wrong, could become pocket dystopias that quickly collapse. My idea? Keep throwing ideas at the wall and see what sticks. As long as each charter city develops off of a previous one, growth is a promise. Keep engineering, evolution, in mind, and we can do anything. Also, this might just be the " 'Murica! " in me talking, but could Puerto Rico be a good example of something like this? Also Also, again with the Murica but you have to understand I'm coming from background info in AP US Gov, but the Paul Romer thing sounds very US-State ish.

I know it's not the point of the video but the animations are sooooo amazing

I think the hard part has more to do with that cities and nations that benefit everyone are an unstable equilibrium. I.e. Any deviation from perfection spirals into the very thing they try to fix. What we need is a development of ideas that are self-correcting, and there are parts that were mentioned that would definitely aid in it, but I think they would all eventually decay into a hierarchy, due purely to our nature as humans.

Your voice is really nice

The problem of our current production and distribution model is concentration of resources. Your proposal is basically eliminate mechanisms of distribution of resources as you believe somehow elitist people that owns companies will distribute more efficiently as they're all "good people" and the suggested model magically is not subject to corruption, incompetence and geopolitical interests... Well... It is just Hayek and Misses-like theories which lacks in both logical and cientific cohesion that has already been reproduced to exhaustion and that is precisely why we stopped at the current stage.

Doesn't matter what you do to "redesign society from scratch" or how great it starts out. In the long run it would end up much like it is today. Might as well work with what you have and save the pointlessness of yet another _"restart."_ We have had many of those throughout history. Yet, here we are.

That sounds like a good idea, but perhaps it would be good for the US and the developed world to also try partaking and leading by example. I'm sure if someone built a city in the US that focused on being walkable, offered free healthcare and didn't devote half of its budget to the military a lot of people would flock to it. But then again what would probably happen is corporates would just set up their own fiefdoms and abuse people even harder... I'm still reminded of some small town in Canada AFAIR that didn't have any cars. There are people on 20+ year long waitlists to live there since you couldn't build a city like that these days because everything needs to be car-centric unfortunately...

You had me on boat until the charter-city-part. I'm usually not disliking videos just because I disagree with the content, but in that case, I do since hte video literally felt like a hidden sponsoring for this concept by providing a very one-sided, rosy picture of the concept. Lets start with the fact that both of the "charter cities" you mentioned are literally owned by companies. The people living there are signing a contract with the company. This alone changes the whole foundation from a "society redesigned from scratch" to "a city ruled by company interest". 9:02 shows that perfectly, where you argue that competition would lead to improvement. Meanwhile, if we look at reality, there are plenty of cases where companies where rivalry does not benefit the consumer, but rather lead to a silent agreement between companies that has to be broken apart by regulations. In particular, the city you mentioned, Prospera is under criticism for human rights violations. Plus there are already decent amount of cases within the last 100y where private cities in various ways failed. At the start of the video, you argue that it can be easier to start from scratch, rather than fighting existing power structures. But that is the problem: You literally do so by giving full power to one institution in society that is arguably a significant part of the problem in the first place. I'm not saying there is no way this could work. But the way the video tries to "sell" the idea is dangerous, and does not live up the the standards I'm used to when watching your videos.

Wow I'm amazed to see how far this channel has come since two years ago when someone in Berkeley recommended I connect with you! I just finished organizing a conference in Prospera and am now helping organize a pop up city with Fumba Town charter city in Zanzibar working with CCI team members. This video finally gives a good way to show friends about the idea!

Awesome

Yes, please! The Dutch and the Swedes should try those too.