Creating a new city from scratch (with Erick Brimen)

Feb 5, 2025 1h 23m 15 insights Episode Page ↗
Spencer Greenberg speaks with Eric Bremen about Prospera, a new city in Honduras designed to catalyze prosperity through innovative governance models. They discuss how private sector involvement and a competitive regulatory environment can attract investment and improve services.
Actionable Insights

1. Design Governance First

When creating a new city on a greenfield site, prioritize designing the intangible dimension of governance before physical infrastructure to enable a more productive and competitive environment. This allows for a regulatory framework that attracts innovation and investment.

2. Enable Jurisdictional Exit

To ensure competitive governance and prevent monopolies, design systems where individuals and businesses can easily switch their governance service provider without physically relocating, creating powerful competitive pressure.

3. Adopt Objective Regulation

Shift from prescriptive regulations (telling companies how to operate) to objective regulations (setting clear standards for outcomes, e.g., pollutant levels) to increase degrees of freedom and ease of doing business without sacrificing safety or preventing harm to non-consenting third parties.

4. Align Governance Incentives

Consider injecting a profit motive into governance services, aligning incentives with attracting and retaining investment, providing high-quality services, and maintaining low operating costs to drive productivity and citizen satisfaction.

5. Optimize Commercial Regulation

To catalyze wealth creation and human prosperity, focus on creating an optimal regulatory environment for commercial activity, while taking a step back from meddling in social or cultural choices.

6. Increase Competing Jurisdictions

Advocate for a significant increase in the number of competing jurisdictions globally, optimally designed to deliver governance as a service with a profit motive, to foster innovation and sustained competitive improvement.

7. Apply Intrapreneurship to Governance

Instead of creating entirely new countries, apply an ‘intrapreneurship’ model where existing nation-states host autonomous, innovative governance zones, benefiting from their successes and pushing the productivity frontier.

8. Utilize Private Governance Partners

Countries can leverage private partners to import and deploy international best practices of good governance, allowing for the creation and operation of successful economic zones without direct government investment or expertise.

9. Improve Governance, Boost Real Estate

Recognize that real estate value is a derivative of the economic activity permitted on it; therefore, better rules and regulations that safely enable high-value activities will substantially increase real estate appreciation.

10. Implement Single Tax Authority

To simplify compliance and minimize friction for businesses and residents, establish a single tax authority for all tax obligations, even if revenue sharing agreements are in place with a host government.

11. Differentiate Laws for Opt-In Zones

When designing new jurisdictions on greenfield sites, it’s easier to create highly differentiated legal constructs because initial inhabitants are not affected, and future residents knowingly and willingly opt into that specific legal structure.

12. Aggregate Global Medical Best Practices

For medical treatments and devices, allow the aggregation of regulatory approvals from multiple OECD countries, enabling access to the best available worldwide technologies and practices without being restricted by a single national framework.

In innovative industries like healthcare, prioritize informed consent and shared liability, ensuring full disclosure to patients and increasing personal liability for providers if these standards are not met.

14. Implement Decentralized Enforcement

Create a system where any resident can initiate legal action (e.g., arbitration) against a party failing to comply with regulatory frameworks, allowing for preemptive and proactive enforcement of standards like no fraud or negligence.

15. Apply “Loser Pays” Principle

Implement a ’loser pays’ principle in legal proceedings, where the party bringing an unjustified or ill-intentioned action is liable for all legal costs and potentially damages, balancing the right to enforce compliance with preventing frivolous claims.