Romer is an economist specializing in new growth theory — he’s one of the seminal figures in the movement — and his work says that roughly all economic growth is knowledge growth. Romer is about increasing knowledge to increase growth, which is the only big issue besides violence and war.

Romer also knows that knowledge only increases by trying new stuff — and then he read public choice and saw that government institutions basically don’t change their rules. Hence governments don’t increase knowledge and don’t get better.

Since his obsession is growth, by means of trying new stuff, it’s hardly fair to say he’s only echoing the boring Moldbug hypothesis. He’s far smarter than that, and besides, politically mostly liberal.

His line is that you don’t know what will work best, and neither does he. At best he’s pushing neocameralism for a first try, in order to garner some extra support for his actual radical position of trying lots of different things.

You’re focusing on this subsidiary phasing:

“If the development authority initially owns the unoccupied land, it will capture huge gains as the city grows.”

while the important part of his approach is:

“One possible revenue source is…”

Romer’s line is: we need very badly to try new legal arrangements, because our current ones are ossified, and because abstract theorizing about what will work, without experiment, is a guaranteed path to epic fail.

You’re discussing one specific proposal, not his direction. I’m happy to believe that he is or was temporarily focused on that specific proposal as well, but the specific proposal is irrelevant. What matters is the framework: Try new stuff, don’t use old standard law, experiment with new options.

The state itself may hold an allodial title; it’s truly sovereign.

What Romer mentions but does not emphasize is that the sovereign in a charter city is not a democratically elected government; the people offer their consent to be governed by coming to the charter city.

First colonialism and now serfdom!

Here’s Moldbug on property:

Property is any stable structure of monopoly control. You own something if you alone control it. Your control is stable if no one else will take it away from you. This control may be assured by your own powers of violence, or it may be delegated by a higher power. If the former, it is secondary property. If the latter, it is primary or sovereign property.

The key observation about primary and secondary property is that the two are much more similar than they may seem.

If the structure of property is stable and all transfers are voluntary exchanges, there is no praxeological distinction between primary and secondary property. If it is impossible for an aggressor to profit by unilaterally adjusting property rights in her favor, it does not matter why it is impossible. The aggressor could be prevented because her aggression is physically impractical, because it will be reversed by a police authority, because it will be punished by a nuclear strike, etc, etc. The important distinction is between a system in which aggression occurs, and a system in which no aggression occurs.

Isn’t Romer just giving the charter city primary property rights?