Prospera

Experiment: Prospera.

One prediction: institutions determine state competence.

Prediction two:  peasant morality or degeneracy determines state competence

My prediction: lord concentration and lord interference determines state competence. (Though better peasants are better, for some reason. Foreign labour simply isn't as good as European labour.)

 

It is not difficult to come up with a good sociological prediction. That said, it is true that it is impractical to make the prediction non-observational.

When something like Prospera is small, it's not too hard to get enough lords. Though if they fail to get lords (primarily through not realizing the need for competent and responsible management) they'll get jacked, regardless of how sound their institutions are according to Economists. 

If they try to scale up to e.g. all of Honduras, they'll get jacked regardless. There aren't enough lords for hire at any price.

The problem with institutions: they can't make you great, but they can certainly make you suck. If you have enough lords, you can get jacked anyway if the lords aren't allowed to be responsible and own things. Jealously must be viciously suppressed.

Meanwhile, if you have a surfeit of lords, a few puny institutions won't be allowed to stand in their way. They'll remake your country in their image. 

Ultimately institution quality is still a lord quality issue. If you have shitty institutions it can drive off your existing lords. If you have to do the sitting-poolside thing, you do it in one of the lesser shitholes, not one of the greater shitholes. 

Further, if the place scales up to e.g. not-all of Honduras, all that will happen is a lord transfer. They will get richer at the expense of the rest of Honduras, which in extremis will become a giant slum.

 

In short, egalitarianism is a false religion, which means Satanism, which means you get cursed if you follow it.

Naturally the available data on Prospera will never have lordship concentration or any close proxy of lordship concentration. Have to guess. However, as with ncov numbers, there will probably be a diffraction technique that applies.

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Speaking of jealousy, it seems Prospera is specifically constituted not to piss off any powerful country by doing better than they are. Wise for survival, unwise for success. Lots of anti-Lord bureaucracy. Peaks out at knockoff Netherlands or something. 

As I've said many times, the reason the world is a shithole is because it's a Communist American Empire. Prospera may have wiggled out from under Honduras but it's still under America. Communism, as always, is fake and gay, so bend over and get fucked. 

One of the reasons Stalinism sucks so much is because nobody but Stalin can lead. Everyone is supposed to follow. (Even Stalin is supposed to follow, according to Stalin. Though you'll get diced for bringing it up yourself.) In Prospera, everyone is still supposed to follow. The [none of my business] rule does not apply; it is still totalitarian. 

Speaking of anti-lord totalitarianism,
"Próspera goes further: 44% less democracy. The city will be governed by a Council of nine people, of whom five are elected and four appointed by HPI."

It's now impossible to have responsible or honourable leadership. G'work.

Best part: this Trey person clearly knows they've done this. They've created a lot of optics-friendly talking points which in practice are anti-democratic, in the hopes that their irresponsible head council can be properly shackled. (Confirming that optics matter more than property rights; still under America's thumb.) 

"Words like "equitable" get used like they are going out of style. They plan to have "no poverty", "zero hunger", "gender equality", "reduced inequalities", "climate action", etc."
If true, communist. If communist, gonna get jacked.
If not true, liar. If liar...lies are bad, mmmkay.

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Because Yvain is a massive liar, I'm also going to mention some antidotal reality.
"this system we have, the one that's letting all these people starve and suffer violence and die of preventable diseases - I don't care for it. Let's try something else?"

Nobody cares. Pretending you care does enormous harm, because it's a variety of direct worship for Satan. American medicine is dominated by iatrogenic harm, because it's supposed to be compassionate.

"but it's also about trying to fight global poverty by radically changing the rules of the game that makes it possible."

What is Satan's main property? Rebelling against God. Or rather, Gnon.
What's the 'rules of the game' that make inequality possible? Physics. The Pareto distribution is a consequence of statistical mechanics. Prospera isn't going to revoke physics. 

"and the new version is that they'll be governed by a corporation full of visionaries and experts and other hopefully non-corrupt people"

Personnel is policy. Is everyone is still allowing this unprincipled exception?

"What if a regulatory issue can’t be expressed financially? I asked Trey about human genetic engineering. He said that extreme or irresponsible forms of medical experimentation will probably be banned by Honduran law or international law or something."

What counts as 'extreme' and 'irresponsible' is not up to either of you. On the plus side random Honduran towns aren't for medical experimentation. 

"So if I want to prevent my neighbor from building a tower and blocking my view, I can buy the air above his house that the tower would have to pass through; then if my neighbor builds there, he’s trespassing on my property."

I should be impressed, but I'm only impressed that it's 2021 and it's still bizarre and foreign to buy things you wish to own. 

"They're poor because the giant golf resort next door doesn't pay much for their particular skills"

Oh good, it's still impossible to invest in worthless skills. I was so worried my Agarthan Stone Side-Knapping course might not have been worth the money. It's just those evil golf course owners aren't paying my Extraplanetary Asbestos Weaving as much as it's worth.

Or possible, to, you know, be stupid. Luckily, it turns out nobody is stupid. Whew. (Yvain, clearly, being the brain damage exception who proves the retard rule. It's just that he gets paid anyway, golf courses or no. No wonder he thinks America is basically unjust.)

Because Yvain is such a liar, you can be plenty sure this didn't happen:
"When Honduras’ neighbor Nicaragua brutally crushed anti-government protests, their GDP per capita decreased 10% - an unprecedented amount during peacetime"
Which is unfortunate. It does sound like something interesting happened, but I guess I'll never find out what.

I also notice that Yvain, like Moldbug, is incapable of staying on topic. Your black water isn't something I enjoy wading through more of. Get to the point. 

Fun fact: Nick Land indisputably outranks Moldbug but still falls well short of the bar. Don't link to Yvain's crap without containment, seriously. Skip the trigger warnings and add a biohazard warning. It's the drugs talking. Don't listen to the drugs. Not good enough.