Drake Bennett of The Boston Globe writes about Paul Romer’s city of dreams, the charter city:
Central to Romer’s proposal, no matter what the exact structure, is the belief that the developed world has lessons to teach poorer countries about how to deter violence, spur trade, incorporate new technologies, and train a workforce, and that we shouldn’t let political correctness blind us to that fact. Along with the land, a charter city’s labor would mostly come from the host nation, but, as in colonial Hong Kong, the laws would be based on those that have worked elsewhere.And like charter schools, charter cities would work in part by showing up their neighbors, drawing workers and business away from existing cities and forcing them to adapt and modernize.
“It’s about choices,” Romer says. “No one would have to move to a charter city, but the point is we want to provide people with the sort of choices that many in poor countries currently don’t have.”
If charter cities act like charter schools, shouldn’t we expect the same resistance from Third-World dictators that we see from Teachers’ Unions?