X-Message-Number: 5158
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 16:47:34 -0800
From: (Christian Eyerman)
Subject: LFCity
Abridged fax reprint
THE SUNDAY TIMES
News: page 6
HEADLINE: Laissez Faire City: Queue forms for capitalist utopia
2 July 1995
By Jason Burke and Tim Rayment London Sunday Times
The advertisement in The Economist that roused interest: "Laissez Faire
City Ayn Rand wondered what would happen if an underdeveloped host country
were to lease an area of one hundred square miles to one thousand free
market individuals and give them a fifty year free reign to administer the
area without goernment rule"
LADY THATCHER would love it: John Redwood might need it. Their dream of a
tax-free paradise where greed is good and entrepeneurial freedom guaranteed
is being founded somewhere among the jungles of South America.
Unhappy capitalists are invited to escape the nanny nations fo
Europe for a community where they can hop about by helicopter and do
business as they please. British investors are among 60 people trying to
borrow a chunk of land from a poor country to create the ultimate enterprise
state.
The scheme, advertised in The Economist, is to lease 100 square mile
of territory and build Laissez Faire City. If Tony Blair takes over
Britain, the nation's lost Thatcherites will be able to flee to a place
dedicated to the open market and free of all government for 50 years.
"It is an amazing adventure, aimed at freeing the potential of the
world's entrepreneurs from the vice of collectivism," said Sonny Vleisides,
a computing consultant who is among the founders. "If you want to dig a well
on your property and provide yourself with water, then you dig a well.
There's nobody to tell you your well is too deep, too wide, or interferes
with the water table."
The project's Costa Rica-based trustees hope to begin building
within three years. Last week the post brought an enthusiasic response from
Britain: business people, students, pensioners, a trainee surgeon and a
barrister were among those who could see their future in a libertarian
Utopia without taxes, customs regulations or red tape. The aim is to
emulate Hong Kong, an area of barren rocks when China granted a lease to a
British consortium in 1898.
For most of us, used to a society that tries to protect people
against illness and exploitation and offers a few basics such as water and
roads, Utopia might come as a shock. To begin with, Laissez Faire City will
be just a hotel. You need to choose a plot of land by helicopter because
there will not be any roads.
"Beyond that stage, free-market economics come in and swoop downd
and build the most wonderful infrastructure you have ever seen," Vleisides
enthused. "if there is a need, it will be built. That is the whole principle."
So a big private hotel is expected to go up next to the founder's
little hotel. Its guests will create businesses that employ thousands of
people from the surounding "host country", allowed in on work permits. For
half a century the little city will grow. And then, like Hong Kong, it is
handed back.
"When you look at mounting bureaucracy from Brussels and our own
government's constant interference in business, the attraction of investing
in something like Laissez Faire City is obvious," said Peter Nichols, 65,
from Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, who recently sold his mult-million
pound food business and was struck by the advertisement. "It is something I
will be looking into further."
"I'm very ecited," said an Oxfordshre investor who asked not to be
named. "It is time to create this new society. I would very much like to
be a part of any such scheme."
The project is based on the principles of the late Ayn Rand, a
novelist and political theorist. The Fountainhead (1943), her best-known
work, made into a film starring Gary Cooper, depicts an architect-hero whose
genius prevails over sightless social conformity. In Atlas Shrugged (1957),
frustrated western businessmen set up a dynamic city state in the mountains
of South America.
"When Laissez Faire City becomes a reality," investors are told,
"Rand's spirit will undoubtedly become one with the rays of sun which shall
shine down on what may become known as the miracle city of the 21st century."
Unfortunately, the facts may not match the hype. Questioning of the
founders reveals plans for the land use fees. A flow of money is needed for
the host country, not least to encourage it to hand over land to a bunch of
foreigners. The cash will come from property leases.
Economists are sceptical. professor Charles Bean of the London
School of Economics, saw the idea as potty. "You can create very successful
areas with trade incentives," he said, "but the notion that you can create a
self-sustaining capitalist nirvana contradicts the fundamentals of economics."
Sir Alfred Sherman, a Thatcherite guru, said: "My job is trying to
find ways of making our imperfect society work, not create new ones."
Sir Benjamin slade, the right-wing shipping magnate who never deals
with countries that have green in their flag or where people do not wear
overcoats in winter, thought he would stay in Britain: "This doesn't really
have anything to offer the international businessman. not unless you do it
on the Isle of Wight."
Laissez Faire City has an internet address at :
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5158