Does anyone remember a couple of years ago when a couple of clever entrepreneurs decided they were going to create a paradise based on Ayn-Rand capitalism and name it ‘Galt’s Gulch,’ after Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged? They contacted dozens of like-minded investors, collected millions of dollars, and sold a pile of lots in a beautiful desert valley in northern Chile. They flew everyone in, showed them their future property, had a party, and then everything collapsed in a pile of fraud, deceit, and legal troubles.
Turns out that the government told the Libertarians up front that the desert was zoned for 10-acre lots, and when they sold 1.25 acre lots instead, they were straight-up selling something they didn’t actually have. When the time came to try to get the property rezoned, one of the founding members straight up told the government not to do it, and another used a (government-created, government-enforced) legal loophole to wrest complete control of the money and the associated business from the other three.
Yeah, he’s still there, still trying to make Galt’s Gulch a reality. But just this week, he posted a new video on his website explaining that no, he’s not going to respond to any inquiries or get back to anyone anytime soon. He still has over $20 million in investors’ money, and they have essentially no recourse because the vast majority of them relied on handshake deals — you know, why get the big dirty government involved when you can look the man you’re paying in the eye and shake his hand and know, like a character in a Randian novel, just know from the firmth of his grip and the cut of his jib that this is a man you can trust?
(ProTip: Because it doesn’t work that way. People lie, cheat, and steal every damn day, and the more zeros are on the check, the more likely it is that someone will do so. Ayn-Rand capitalism is fictional for a reason.)
Meanwhile, in Honduras, the murder capital of the world (thanks to gang violence literally deported there from the inner cities of the U.S.), the government is practically eating itself alive attempting to promote the dream of ZEDEs. A ZEDE, or ‘Zone for Economic Development and Employment,’ is basically a the height of Ayn-Rand capitalism: an entirely privately-owned city-state that writes its own laws and is responsible for its own governance. No ‘big government’ to get in the way of anything!
The first version of the law creating the Zones for Economic Development and Employment was deemed unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court because it literally gave complete control over the laws to private companies, eliminating Honduran sovereignty over the land.
So the President had four of the judges on the Supreme Court replaced, a bunch of lower judges got assassinated, and lo and behold — their Congress pushed through another version of the law overnight. This one lacked safeguards and oversight to the point that the original innovator of the ZEDE concept, Paul Romer (who had been working with the Honduran government from the get-go) backed out.
Under the new ZEDE law, which has now been incorporated into the Honduran Constitution by the corrupt executive, Honduran citizens living within a ZEDE do not have many of the protections that non-ZEDEite Hondurans do. These include:
- The right to be brought before a judge to determine whether or not your arrest was valid (Habeas Corpus),
- The right to human dignity and bodily integrity (i.e. if your ZEDE wants to force you to give them one of your kidneys, they can) ,
- The right to receive compensation for your labor (Yep, ZEDEs can openly enslave their citizens),
- The freedom of the press (obviously, no one wants their slavery and organ harvesting reported on),
- The freedom of assembly (or people getting together to rebel),
- The freedom of religion (because at this point, why not?),
- The freedom of movement (thus killing the old Libertarian argument, “If you don’t like it here, just leave”), and even
- The right to life.
Yes, you read that correctly — citizens living in a ZEDE can literally be murdered by their private overlords and no one is allowed to say a damn thing. But that’s what “no government oversight” means! (ZEDEs do have to write up their own laws and enforce them, but there’s no telling what those might be.) Oh, and if you live in a low-population-density part of Honduras (basically one entire coastline), you can end up in a ZEDE without any say in the matter, as there is no requirement to inform you that a ZEDE is being set up where you live.
The first ZEDE was supposed to be unveiled back in March of 2015. Then it was June. Instead, it’s now nine months later, and we have…zero ZEDES. Why? Simple: the only private entity that has genuinely studied the potential for setting one up has come to the conclusion that being the government is expensive as hell. In particular, they aren’t willing to build the necessary infrastructure to support their business idea. No profit-seeking entity wants to take on jobs like providing for public safety and maintaining infrastructure. Not even the real-life potential of enslaving locals and working them to death is worth that much of an initial expenditure.
And therein lies the point. Private businesses want to be able to write their own rules, but they don’t want to take responsibility for the backdrop that they all use to get their business done. Without the public sector there to create and maintain currency, develop infrastructure, provide educated workers, and otherwise give private industry the basic needs that they require to get off the ground, there is no private sector.
Ayn Rand was a gifted writer, and had some truly mind-blowing ideas. But they weren’t good ideas, and Ayn-Rand-capitalism has never, and will never, exist in a world made of people who are willing to cheat and businesses who need the government in order to be able to turn a profit.
(Featured Image courtesy of cea via Flickr, shared using a Creative Commons 2.0 license.)
