I agree. This is needed. Many people are missing the point, which is that there is no real government in those places. The fact that the entrenched powers are warlords and oligarchs means the gating and exploitation angle people are worrying about already exists in an even worse and more dishonest form. Any such experiment could not possibly make things more broken than they are. That things have settled at such a dismal equilibrium is why so much aid is needed in the first place. Sending aid is attacking the symptom and not the disease.

Something like this would be like a culture attack in Civilization. It would show that something better was possible and not an ocean away, completely destabilizing the status quo. I am not surprised so many African leaders denied it - they would not try something that has such a high risk of eroding their power base and the iron hold hold they have over the path of revenue.

Will this work? Well it either will or it won't. If it doesn't then things are no worse beyond a few bitter people. And if it does? The implications extend beyond Poor countries if the richer ones all of a sudden have to start competing for the flow of talent. If they run slightly different versions in different areas they can even do some optimization on the best features of an economy and government. I can't see this as anything other than a good thing.

I know there are a lot of libertarians around here, and I have some leanings that way myself. Plus, there's the whole startup culture which naturally embraces bold new ideas. So I thought the article was very interesting and understand why others would as well.

But your last paragraph ... Ouch. I had to rewrite this post three times to keep it civil. I guess your point is you think this idea is just that good, but if you take a step back and consider that on the one hand we have a very, simple, proven, and cheap way of saving huge numbers of lives and on the other we have something very ambitious but as yet unproven, you might conclude that they should not be competing for the same dollar.

Money is fungible or, a dollar is a dollar. We know with near certainty that 1600 dollars will save one life if spent on the best mosquito bednet charity. It may be the case that Charter Cities can and will lift millions out of poverty. It seems a plausible idea. If it is true the faster it happens the better. I'm fairly confident they have much less money than they'd like so they can productively put any donation to work.

Really, it's a choice between the near certainty of saving a life and the possibility that one could save many more. It beats donating to the Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies.

I don't know why you are assuming an impact on poverty. This will be little more than a gated community for wealthy libertarians.

More like Shenzhen than a gated community. Thirty years ago Shenzhen was a fishing village of 3,000 people. It was chosen as the site of the first Special Economic Zone in China, based on Ireland's successful experiment in Shannon. Today Shenzhen is one of the richest, most populous cities in China. Millions of people have been directly lifted out of poverty by Shenzhen's success and millions more indirectly because its success made arguing for similar policies elsewhere in China easier. Whoever put their career on the line to propose the SEZ may have done more good for more people than the entire post WW2 aid industry has.

Not true! Many in the charter-cities movement got into it as a way to help poor people in the third world who cannot emigrate to first-world countries. The movement was largely the result of an analysis of third-world poverty that blames third-world governments for not creating "institutions" or "frameworks promoting trust and cooperation" its citizens can use to work their way out of poverty.

I'd like to point out, that if voodoo worked it might also be the most important thing for world poverty. This sort of assuming the conclusion makes the whole thing an empty claim.

From a utilitarian perspective, there's zero proven benefit to sending charity to first world people playing utopia.