If you like Charter Schools, you're gonna love Charter Cities.

[Octafish]

32. Democracy has become a vacuum cleaner of money and power for the Predator Class

Sad to say.

Paul Romer is a brilliant economist – but his idea for charter cities is bad

His wheeze that poor countries swap sovereignty for prosperity smacks of colonialism

Aditya Chakrabortty
Guardian Monday 26 July 2010

EXCERPT...

Trouble is, the idea stinks. With little track record in dealing with poor countries, Romer has come up a grand scheme for lifting Africa and Asia out of poverty. What they need to do, he argues, is give up a big chunk of their land to a rich country. Policy experts from Washington can take over a patch of Rwanda, and invite along GM and Microsoft and Gap to come and set up factories. Poor countries give up their sovereignty in return for the promise of greater prosperity.

His big example is Hong Kong. At the end of the first opium war in 1842, the Chinese were marched on board a British warship anchored off Nanjing and forced to sign Hong Kong away to Queen Victoria. Over the next 150 years, the little island turned into Asia's number one capitalist success story. It was an example that Deng Xiaoping ended up copying on the mainland, in coastal provinces such as Guangdong – to explosive economic effect.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/27/paul-romers-charter-cities-idea

Thank you, Dawson Leery, for the heads-up on Romer and the New Colonialism Neo Feudalism Nuevo Fascisto PNAC pro-Roil BFEE so-and-sos.