Where is the United States' Hong Kong?
Political, Law, Economics ·Wednesday February 9, 2011 @ 00:05 EST (link)
Hong Kong was a city-state - a colony of the British Empire - on China's south coast. In area, it was tiny: a mere 426 square miles (1104 square kilometers). Yet because of its general adoption of free-market principles, it was extremely prosperous, especially compared to its elephantine neighbor. Being pragmatic communists, when China regained control over Hong Kong they designated it a "Special Administrative Region" and, for the most part, left well alone ("one country, two systems"). Hong Kong has separate visa requirements from China, and while it is relatively easy for foreign visitors to enter, mainland China residents need to go through a "rigorous approval system". (And if you're familiar with L. Neil Smith's works, recall the cloned American towns the Chinese set up to try to duplicate the successes of the free market, copying everything since they weren't sure what the magic ingredients were - even as the US itself fell to communism.)
Where is the US's Hong Kong? Has independence been beaten out of people since the War Between the States? Granted, all the best land - and forget obtaining a port of any kind - has already been claimed. But unincorporated small towns exist all over the place, and surely one or more would have, by now, been founded by people dedicated to liberty: setting up no controlling councils, founded on ultimate respect of individual rights and personal property, deciding that extortion was unnecessary? Of course, there is still state and federal taxation: and not for a moment am I claiming that an unincorporated small town declare its independence as a defensive military act. Nor has the free state project gained much traction. So, what then?
China permits Hong Kong self-rule for the most part, and an economic system entirely different from the mainland. If libertarian town or towns were founded, might it not be possible to persuade the county, state (as in US geographical region) and federal governments to, as an experiment, leave this particular enclave alone - no fees and no benefits? Alright, probably not, since there's profit to be made off of every citizen and the wealthy would flock to such a place (or not - the very wealthy already have a bag of tricks and tend towards brainless socialism anyway). But even floating the idea in public - "Feds Out Of SmallPeacefulLibertarianEnclave!" etc. - might start something, and the fact that they would refuse would speak volumes towards the knowledge that they're not providing more value than they collect.
Such an enclave could function in many ways like an Indian reservation in terms of sovereignty, but without the dependency-creating federal handouts. Since this would be a co-operative measure rather than an attempt at independence, people from the town would be able to travel back and forth (paying gas taxes when they used the roads, and other use taxes), trade (paying sales taxes if buying from states having it, but with no unconstitutional interstate tariffs), and so forth. It could very much be a start to a much freer nation (until the US shut it down like they did the South when it threatened free trade with the world, and made internal improvements (subsidies) unconstitutional). If enough land was available it could grow, or even disconnected areas across the country could become legally part of the same free-trade zone.
There would be a few externalities that would still need to be paid, national defense being the big (only?) one. Ideally a share of the cost of actual defense (not foreign adventure) could be negotiated, but more likely the best possible result would be to just apportion fees according to adult population and the total taxes collected for "defense" (i.e., the department of war). That's about it. Whatever spills over the interface (e.g., pollution) gets handled by the laws and police of that side. If such an enclave could obtain limited sovereignty, they could make their own individual arrangements about trading with other nations - practically, since US shipping would likely be employed, that would be limited to nations that the US was on good terms with.
The trouble is, of course, selling it to the politicians.
Books finished: The Real Lincoln.
