The Honduran president who championed the so-called “special economic zones” legislation that allowed Prospera’s development sits in a US prison, convicted of drug trafficking. His successor has assailed the project as the shady creation of a “narco-regime.” The nation’s highest court has ruled the law underpinning it was unconstitutional.

oops

He’s also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying Washington lawmakers, portraying the project as a bulwark against socialism in Latin America. Dozens wrote letters to the Biden administration, calling for sanctions and an end to US aid if Honduran President Xiomara Castro doesn’t halt her attack on Prospera.

Wow, dozens?

His plan called for “Prosperity Zones” where laws and regulations would be “reset” and governmental powers like taxation, eminent domain, and policing would fall to a private corporation that ran the zone. Locals would opt-in to create such districts, and districts across state lines could make independent agreements.

Sounds really really bad

They appointed a 21-member body in charge of the ZEDEs, called the Committee for the Adoption of Best Practices (CAMP). It included three close associates of [then-Honduran President] Hernandez as well as libertarian thinkers such as Morton Blackwell from the Republican National Committee, anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, and Michael Reagan.

This is where the scary music starts

They targeted like-minded business titans and investors, including Peter Thiel, who’s backed similar projects like the Seasteading initiative, which seeks to build floating countries in international waters. In the end, they collected more than $120 million in startup funds.

Wow this whole thing is really shaping up to be everything wrong possible.

Companies operating in any of 10 regulated industries in Prospera —including healthcare and medical service providers — could pick a regulatory framework from a list of 36 countries that best suits their needs. Registrants could even write their own industry regulations and submit them for approval. All would have to buy liability insurance in lieu of securing permits and licenses.

Seriously, is this a joke?

Instead of imposing top-down regulations, he said, the Prospera model relies on the market to decide how risky any particular business practice is and regulate itself.

Ah, The Market. Yes.

Well, it’s clearly the griftaculous republiQans-who-don’t-want-to-be-called-republiQans and their techbro messiahs playing incompetent god and making every expected mistake along the way. It’s not like any of this is new.