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Government is an area of little innovation, ripe for a market upset.
Forming new, better systems of governance is where I intend to make my mark on the world.
As I explained in a recent video, the days of the nation-state are numbered.
In this video, I’ll outline my basic design, but certainly not the only design, for a free private city which could replace the nation-state.
Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and the little bell next to it if you want to be part of my journey towards building the free private cities of the future.
First step is deciding where to locate the city.
Let’s assume we are building one of the first free private cities, so we have to find an existing government willing to cede some of its jurisdiction, to a type of special economic zone.
We want to find interested governments willing to bid for our business.
That way, we only go where we are wanted. It’s sort of like how Amazon decided where to put its new headquarters based on the tax benefits it could get, and pulled out of NYC when the residents protested against the headquarters being built there. Another example is the cities which competed to capture Tesla’s business when it moved from California.
So we’ll negotiate the terms of a special economic zone with the government that gives us the best deal. We’ll demand the power to set most of our own laws and rules, including tax rates and business regulations. In exchange we will pay the host jurisdiction either a fixed rate or a percentage of the city’s revenue– but the individual citizens will NOT owe taxes to the host government.
Based on the current proliferation of special economic zones, there should be no shortage of invitations to build our city in a friendly host country.
I think small, relatively poor nations are a promising prospect.
For example, many Caribbean countries currently offer citizenship by investment. For a couple hundred grand or less per person, you can become a citizen of St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and others.
This is a good revenue stream for them, and I think in the close future, they will be willing to sell other benefits that currently only sovereign nations can offer.
The second step is fulfilling a market need.
It’s actually relatively hard to get people to uproot and move their whole lives– even for no taxes and a free market.
Therefore, the angle for the first free private city I build will be starting it as an alternative to college– an entrepreneurship and innovation incubator.
College is currently extremely expensive and often doesn’t train students to earn good money or achieve their goals in the information age.
College aged people don’t have a family or house holding them down. They are more likely to take advantage of an opportunity to move far away from their home towns, to live in an exciting new type of city-state, amongst other like-minded young people.
They will get the best education currently available, for a fraction of the cost of college.
Here’s how it will work. There will be three main types of citizens– students, mentors, and residents.
Students will pay for room, board, and tuition, and will have the option to work for the free private city to earn money.
Depending on their skill level, this could be a basic service job, an internship, or an apprenticeship. For example one student may do landscaping to pay the bills, while another may do landscaping as a starting point to studying the ecology of food forests, because they want to start a business building food forests for customers.
Others will land internships as an assistant to a real estate investor, or online marketer.
During the admission application, students will pitch a specific project or goal they are working on, as opposed to choosing a vague major. Students will then be paired with a mentor based on their specific pursuits.
Mentors will be successful experts in various fields like investing, starting businesses, building apps, and other more specific productive skills. Each mentor will work with individual students matched to them to help the students achieve their goals, complete their projects, and obviously learn important skills in the process.
Mentors will also hold classes, which all students can attend.
Mentors will be compensated by reduced or free room and board, and perhaps other financial incentives as needed– but remember, the whole city will be a great location for successful people to park themselves and their capital.
Residents will enjoy the high energy growth oriented environment this creates. Some may be investors or businessmen looking to scout talent and new opportunities, while others may be location independent digital nomads.
Some may view themselves as unofficial students, and pay a la carte for mentors’ classes, while other may see themselves as unofficial mentors with expertise and guidance available for the right person.
The dynamic of the free private city will create an entire society geared around personal and economic growth.
It will produce collaborations and startups. And it will expose a lot of young, inexperienced people to expertise that will allow them to start a business, find funding, or meet an amazing person to work for.
Young entrepreneurs receive expert guidance and advice from people who have actually accomplished similar things.
Mentors receive free or reduced price living in an amazing jurisdiction. Mentors and residents get to scope talent and share their knowledge with proteges.
Everyone will be selected on an application only basis. The entire point is to curate an exclusive society where everyone, even the inexperienced students just starting out, are value creators.
How the city earns money.
There will be no taxes, the city will earn its revenue through rent.
The city will build storefronts, apartment buildings, office spaces, and event centers to rent to citizens.
The city will also operate businesses as it chooses, but will NOT monopolize any business.
Obviously I can’t answer all your questions on this very important subject in one short video, so throw me a comment.
I’ll certainly talk more about this in the future so definitely subscribe. But in the meantime, if you want to do the deep dive to understand all the basics of how this type of society would function, check out the book Free Private Cities by Titus Gebel (Amazon affiliate link).
