Próspera was supposed to be a privatized, Silicon Valley-funded paradise — but it’s a hard sell for the neighbors.

But where the business inducements enter unprecedented terrain is health and safety regulation. Próspera won’t impose rules so much as curate prix fixe and à la carte menus of rules.

Delgado has held talks with a controversial gene-therapy startup, Minicircle, to open a clinic in Próspera. It will be funded by a “network of crypto investors,” according to its CEO, Machiavelli Davis. Davis runs in biohacking circles, a set best known for self-administering untested gene therapies.

  • RandyLahey [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    so this sort of shit fascinates me and i did a bit of googling

    as far as i can tell from everything ive looked at this little building from the article and two others next to it are the only actual buildings theyve built at the place. even on their own website theres only a couple of photo ops of this building (featuring *cough* german ambassador) and a bunch of ridiculous renders of what they expect it to look like, and google satellite view supports that idea

    the fancy buildings shown in the article seem to be from the resort thats just next to it that they bought, and i suspect that the gigantic fucking golf course is where the actual villages water has all been going

    and if you look at the space available to the libertarian town, its tiny and right next to the village, of course theyre gonna try and annex the village itself

    also found e-residencies that only allow 180 days physical access a year, im sure those will be used for totally legitimate purposes

    edit: lol review on google maps from some canadian guy "What a scam. Wasted 100kUSD."

    from their reddit (lol of course they have one):

    In my opinion the biggest issue with prospera is the immigration restrictions. Absolutely abolish all immigration and let foreigners (Americans, Europeans and Asians) that have small, but valuable amounts of capital come and invest their time lives and money in the place.

    Everyone (Peter Thiel and friends) always forget about the importance of the established middle class. Let the petit bourgeois come en masse and the working class and investors will follow.

    holy shit this reddit thread:

    Considering the minimum wage is what, US$1.25/h, this will potentially yield a LOT low-wage jobs. Want to hire a software developer at USD$100k but can't find a Honduran? Well, hire a non-Honduran software developer at USD$75k instead, but hire them a personal butler, nanny, chef, bartender, as well as one each of those for you, each at a salary of USD$2600/year, and you're covered to hire the foreigner.

    Because 9 Honduran workers at minimum wage cost $23,400 a year, if your average additional foreign hire gets paid $100k it's like a 23% tax. Now if you were going to hire 5 Hondurans per foreign hire anyway now the 'tax' on getting an extra foreign worker falls to just $2600*4 = $10,000. Not insignificant, but it seems manageable.

    • Creakybulks [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      rofl holy shit. i thought your quote was going to be how disgusting it would be to hire 5 necessary people at bare minimum wages so that you can treat some software dweeb like a fucking count, but no, it's about cost efficiency.

    • Owl [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      abolish all immigration and let foreigners (Americans, Europeans and Asians)

      Weirdly specifying which continents foreigners can come from, just to exclude Africa.