[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":616},["ShallowReactive",2],{"content-body-oliver-porter-the-man-who-privatised-an-american-city":3,"transcript-oliver-porter-the-man-who-privatised-an-american-city":186},{"body":4,"extras":148,"nextStep":163},[5,17,37,56,75,94,102,110,140],{"_key":6,"_type":7,"children":8,"markDefs":15,"style":16},"4bcd74a17cb4","block",[9],{"_key":10,"_type":11,"marks":12,"text":14},"1db7c5267fec","span",[13],"strong","How do you start a city for nearly 100,000 people with just two employees?",[],"normal",{"_key":18,"_type":7,"children":19,"markDefs":33,"style":16},"fc3220e1430d",[20,24,29],{"_key":21,"_type":11,"marks":22,"text":23},"2dbff4046f56",[],"Sandy Springs was already an Atlanta suburb when it became a city in 2005. The mayor and council would set policy and budgets, but ",{"_key":25,"_type":11,"marks":26,"text":28},"dbf646fe187d",[27],"1a80e235c26c","private firms would deliver most services",{"_key":30,"_type":11,"marks":31,"text":32},"a3e7b5e1fb12",[],". Oliver Porter tells Timothy Allen how the new government got ready to open before anyone could sign a contract on its behalf.",[34],{"_key":27,"_type":35,"href":36},"link","\u002Ftopics\u002Fprivate-governance",{"_key":38,"_type":7,"children":39,"markDefs":53,"style":16},"17e186c66f23",[40,44,49],{"_key":41,"_type":11,"marks":42,"text":43},"f58d4003e7bf",[],"Porter chaired the city's charter commission and served as volunteer interim city manager. Speaking in ",{"_key":45,"_type":11,"marks":46,"text":48},"d1d155cd2792",[47],"57e8d988eb12","Próspera",{"_key":50,"_type":11,"marks":51,"text":52},"9beb1d67b435",[],", where he serves on the council, he follows the model from its hurried launch through the day Sandy Springs began bringing services back in-house. What did residents gain, and what does it take to carry the same idea into a place that is still being built?",[54],{"_key":47,"_type":35,"href":55},"\u002Fprojects\u002Fprospera",{"_key":57,"_type":7,"children":58,"markDefs":72,"style":16},"10528b296e7a",[59,63,68],{"_key":60,"_type":11,"marks":61,"text":62},"9c5fb3e24f90",[],"Sandy Springs residents had spent decades trying to establish a local government separate from Fulton County's administration. Porter says one of the strongest motives was control over zoning: residents wanted decisions about what could be built to be made closer to home. The ",{"_key":64,"_type":11,"marks":65,"text":67},"8e55a25e5303",[66],"563cc966654f","city's history",{"_key":69,"_type":11,"marks":70,"text":71},"9e4f162df737",[]," records that 94 per cent voted for incorporation in June 2005. Eva Galambos became the first mayor.",[73],{"_key":66,"_type":35,"href":74},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sandyspringsga.gov\u002Fcity-history\u002F",{"_key":76,"_type":7,"children":77,"markDefs":91,"style":16},"5a381a678101",[78,82,87],{"_key":79,"_type":11,"marks":80,"text":81},"5538146942a8",[],"Winning the vote still left the work of opening City Hall. Porter put volunteer teams to work on the services the city would need. He asked prospective suppliers an awkward question: would they commit people, equipment and money before the city existed and could legally give them a contract? The city's ",{"_key":83,"_type":11,"marks":84,"text":86},"235dd3ef958d",[85],"c1926f9c07ab","account of the partnership",{"_key":88,"_type":11,"marks":89,"text":90},"e2a403c0af93",[]," names CH2M Hill as its principal contractor from 2005 to 2010. Porter also recalls using a $10 million loan to bridge the gap before the first year's tax receipts came in.",[92],{"_key":85,"_type":35,"href":93},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sandyspringsga.gov\u002Fpublic-private-partnership\u002F",{"_key":95,"_type":7,"children":96,"markDefs":101,"style":16},"b2f17350a2b9",[97],{"_key":98,"_type":11,"marks":99,"text":100},"be41daaddd83",[],"Porter describes three layers: elected officials set policy and the budget, a city manager puts their decisions into effect, and a workforce delivers the services. Sandy Springs substituted contractors for most of that third layer. He describes what residents saw on the ground, from a faster permitting queue to road repairs ranked by condition and traffic signals that could be adjusted from a control room. Police and fire followed a different route: he recalls initially buying those services from the county while the city built its own capacity.",[],{"_key":103,"_type":7,"children":104,"markDefs":109,"style":16},"e20e602ade42",[105],{"_key":106,"_type":11,"marks":107,"text":108},"14ed85f07048",[],"The city eventually split the original contract among several suppliers. In 2019 its council moved a range of general services onto the city's own payroll and kept some private providers. The city says it expected the 2019 switch to save about $14 million over five years against the proposed contract costs. Porter argues that separating services lost some of the efficiencies of running them together. Timothy asks what would count as a fair comparison as the city grows, takes on new projects and makes different choices about debt and pensions.",[],{"_key":111,"_type":7,"children":112,"markDefs":135,"style":16},"78f6e597344d",[113,117,122,126,131],{"_key":114,"_type":11,"marks":115,"text":116},"a95e4b4ef743",[],"Porter sits on the Próspera council and describes how the team approached him after reading his work. Sandy Springs had a population and infrastructure before it became a city. Próspera has had to develop land and buildings as well as arrange services. The conversation compares that approach with ",{"_key":118,"_type":11,"marks":119,"text":121},"427903d9676c",[120],"bf735621d80d","Massimo Mazzone",{"_key":123,"_type":11,"marks":124,"text":125},"d61ffdb1beb5",[],"'s ",{"_key":127,"_type":11,"marks":128,"text":130},"0db687628ebd",[129],"555f7b2b8212","Ciudad Morazán",{"_key":132,"_type":11,"marks":133,"text":134},"1d094428dcd6",[]," near Choloma, then asks what happens when founders step back. Porter explains why even a short visitor form can shape how a place is seen by its neighbours.",[136,138],{"_key":120,"_type":35,"href":137},"\u002Fpeople\u002Fmassimo-mazzone",{"_key":129,"_type":35,"href":139},"\u002Fprojects\u002Fciudad-morazan",{"_key":141,"_type":7,"children":142,"markDefs":147,"style":16},"915381a4477b",[143],{"_key":144,"_type":11,"marks":145,"text":146},"1c19be040b2c",[],"Enjoy the conversation.",[],{"pullQuote":149,"keyTopics":150},"We actually started the new city of almost 100,000 people with only two employees. Everything else is contracted out. All services, all administration is contracted out and primarily to private industry. And that was a totally new concept at that time.",[151,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162],"Why Sandy Springs wanted local control over zoning","What elected officials and contractors each decide","Opening a city before it could sign a contract","Covering the gap before local tax receipts arrived","Permits, potholes and the traffic control room","Why police and fire followed a different route","The shift from a single contractor to a hybrid model","What taxes, debt and pensions reveal about city budgets","What Próspera can take from an established Atlanta suburb","How Ciudad Morazán approaches housing and employment","What survives after a founder steps aside","Visitor contracts and trust with neighbouring communities",{"entity":164,"items":169},{"kind":165,"slug":166,"name":167,"path":168},"person","oliver-porter","Oliver W. Porter","\u002Fpeople\u002Foliver-porter",[170,179],{"kind":171,"slug":172,"path":173,"title":174,"date":175,"label":176,"image":177,"imageAlt":178},"article","johannes-kaiser-interview-free-cities-libertarian-chile","\u002Fjohannes-kaiser-interview-free-cities-libertarian-chile","Johannes Kaiser Interview: Free Cities in Libertarian Chile","2026-07-29","Blog","https:\u002F\u002Fcdn.sanity.io\u002Fimages\u002Fzx5379j4\u002Fproduction\u002F5d7911f6dbff82d3e9f8fcd607b91b82f355394b-1672x941.png","Two men at the Free Cities Foundation stand in front of a Freie Privatstädte banner",{"kind":171,"slug":180,"path":181,"title":182,"date":183,"label":176,"image":184,"imageAlt":185},"the-autonomous-upside-autonomous-cities-investment-thesis","\u002Fthe-autonomous-upside-autonomous-cities-investment-thesis","The Autonomous Upside: Autonomous Cities Investment Thesis","2026-05-11","https:\u002F\u002Fcdn.sanity.io\u002Fimages\u002Fzx5379j4\u002Fproduction\u002F6ec1dc5446c51d7879bc9060305483783a5b1d6e-1672x941.webp","Illustration of a prosperous waterfront city with domed civic buildings, a marina and a suspension bridge at golden hour",{"slug":187,"turns":188,"note":615},"oliver-porter-the-man-who-privatised-an-american-city",[189,192,195,197,199,201,203,205,207,209,211,213,215,217,219,221,223,225,227,229,231,233,235,237,239,241,243,245,247,249,251,253,255,257,259,261,263,265,267,269,271,273,275,277,279,281,283,285,287,289,291,293,295,297,299,301,303,305,307,309,311,313,315,317,319,321,322,324,326,328,330,332,334,336,338,340,342,344,346,348,350,352,354,356,358,360,362,364,366,368,370,372,374,376,378,380,382,384,386,388,389,391,393,395,397,399,400,402,404,406,408,410,412,414,416,418,420,422,424,426,428,429,431,433,435,437,439,441,443,445,447,449,451,453,455,457,459,461,463,465,467,469,471,473,475,477,479,481,483,485,487,489,491,493,495,497,499,501,503,505,507,509,511,513,515,516,518,520,522,523,524,526,528,530,532,534,536,538,540,542,544,546,548,550,552,554,556,558,560,562,564,566,568,570,572,574,576,578,580,582,584,586,588,590,592,594,596,598,600,602,604,606,607,609,611,613],{"speaker":190,"text":191},"Timothy Allen","Whereabouts in the South are you from?",{"speaker":193,"text":194},"Oliver Porter","Well, the Atlanta area. The city we started is on the northern boundary of Atlanta.",{"speaker":190,"text":196},"Right. Like I said earlier, I wouldn't call it a deep dive into Sandy Springs but I've given myself just enough information to know roughly what it was and what the contract city model is. Obviously, maybe you could introduce yourself first just for people that won't know you. I've got a little biog here, but I'd quite like to hear it from yourself, if you don't mind.",{"speaker":193,"text":198},"Okay. Well, Oliver Porter, originally from South Carolina, now reside in the city of Sandy Springs, on the northern boundary of Atlanta. Background-wise, I have an engineering degree from the University of South Carolina and an MBA from Georgia State. I have retired. I actually have been retired longer than I worked. That's rather unusual, but I retired as a vice president of AT&T with responsibility for 14 states as we set up the new company after the government broke us up. And before that, I was in one of the Bell operating companies and moved through engineering, planning, the regulatory arena, finance, and ended up in marketing, which is vice president of marketing, which is a terrible thing to do to a good engineer. But maybe I wasn't that good an engineer. I don't know. But that's where I ended up. And I've had an extensive background in charitable work. I was a national chairman of the National Kidney Foundation, health organisation, and actually founder of Combined Health Appeal of America, which was a federation of major health agencies. So that's kept me busy all through my career.",{"speaker":190,"text":200},"Sounds like what I'd call an illustrious career to me. I like the fact that you've been retired more than you've worked. That says something. That really does say something. I mean that really is quite incredible when you think about it. What have you been doing in your retirement then? I doubt that someone like you would really actually retire per se, if you know what I mean.",{"speaker":193,"text":202},"Yeah, for about three years I ran the health charity, the Combined Health Appeal. After we founded it eight years earlier it had not done well. We were competing, for those of you who are from the States, with the United Way, which is a very powerful organisation working with employee giving around the country. So they were not allowing our health agencies to be a part of them. So we had to go out and form our own, but it was a tough competition. And so after eight years, it hadn't been doing well. So when I decided to retire from my corporate life, I met with the board of that group and said, if you all will let me close it down and move it to Atlanta, I'll bring in some ex-corporate executives who know how to approach employees. And so short story, I told them I would give them two years, and if it wasn't working any better, we'd close it. I actually gave them three years, but at that time we were doing $50 million a year in annual giving. So I felt quite good about being able to step aside. After that, I helped a young man who was a friend of a friend to help start a company. He was an inventor and had a product he wanted to take to market, so I gave him a year of free service just for a piece of the company. Then I guess the next big thing was getting involved with the starting of the new city of Sandy Springs. In between those parts, I'm an amateur artist, painter, and have become an author. Never thought...",{"speaker":190,"text":204},"As I can see, you've got a book there. What kind of art, out of interest, what kind of things? Landscapes, that kind of stuff? You said you're an artist as well. What kind of stuff?",{"speaker":193,"text":206},"Yes, primarily in oils, but I'm very eclectic. I do landscapes, I do still lifes, and I do portraits.",{"speaker":190,"text":208},"Let me tell you what I understand about Sandy Springs and then you tell me, you know, take it from there, basically. First of all, it's worth noting: is it true you sit on the council of Próspera?",{"speaker":193,"text":210},"I am, and in addition I'm on the board of directors of NeWay, the parent company.",{"speaker":190,"text":212},"Right. Because when I first started looking into this, I'd never heard of Sandy Springs until someone put me on to you. And when I looked at what Sandy Springs is, or was, it seems that Próspera is kind of like a turbocharged version of Sandy Springs, in a way.",{"speaker":193,"text":214},"Exactly. I look at Sandy Springs as a forerunner of a portion of the effort in Próspera.",{"speaker":190,"text":216},"Right, okay. So that's a good starting point, then. I wanted to make sure it was correct. Can you just break down for us what the contract city model is, which is the model that you used at Sandy Springs?",{"speaker":193,"text":218},"Yeah, I'd be very glad to. Basically, typical, well, almost unanimously across the country, we have bureaucratic local governments. That is, the council, the leadership hires all of the employees to provide the services. Sandy Springs differs 180 degrees from that. We actually started the new city of almost 100,000 people with only two employees. Everything else is contracted out. All services, all administration is contracted out and primarily to private industry. And that was a totally new concept at that time. So we call it a contract city or a public-private partnership. I prefer contract city because public-private partnerships of different types have gained some degree of opposition from some people. But this one was totally looking to private industry to start the city, put it on its feet and get it running.",{"speaker":190,"text":220},"Now, for those that aren't familiar, and I wasn't, it took me quite a while to work out how you privatise a city to begin with, that part. I mean, it wasn't that I just Googled it and it told me quite simply. But, okay, break it down, because it's not a simple thing. It's not. And it's been done since, am I correct? But why don't you break down what actually happens? Like, what is the city to begin with?",{"speaker":193,"text":222},"Let me describe that. It is an existing community that's been there for over 100 years growing. It's part of Fulton County, which is the largest county in Georgia, stretches about 60 miles, and we were at the very near the northern tip of it. We had been seeking, if I could go ahead and give you a little background on that, seeking to become a city, to be incorporated for over a quarter century. The legislature in Georgia controls cities. They can make them, break them, change them.",{"speaker":190,"text":224},"Before you go on, can I just ask a question? What's the difference between a city and a non-city then? Is it to do with how big it is? Is it to do with what?",{"speaker":193,"text":226},"No, it has to do with whether it's incorporated or not. You're a county. Everybody in Georgia is in a county. All cities are in counties. But you can then break down to the next level, you might say, of government and become a city or an incorporated entity. That is controlled by the state legislature.",{"speaker":190,"text":228},"Another question. Sorry, I've got to get this straight in my mind first before I ask too many questions. So the term city doesn't denote anything to do with the size or what's going on there, whatever. It's already a city in that sense.",{"speaker":193,"text":230},"It's a community.",{"speaker":190,"text":232},"It's a community, right. But if I was to visit before you got city status, would I have thought I'm in a city? Did it seem like it was a city? Was it big enough?",{"speaker":193,"text":234},"You might very well have thought you were. You pass through Sandy Springs, the next one north of us is Roswell. It's been a city for 100 years.",{"speaker":190,"text":236},"Roswell.",{"speaker":193,"text":238},"Yeah.",{"speaker":190,"text":240},"As in New Mexico.",{"speaker":193,"text":242},"Roswell. Yeah, but Roswell, Georgia.",{"speaker":190,"text":244},"Oh, right, okay. So no UFO connection.",{"speaker":193,"text":246},"Right. So we wanted to basically separate from Fulton County in a sense. We're still in Fulton County. We still pay them more taxes than we paid to our city, and they provide a minimal amount of services, but we want it to be on our own.",{"speaker":190,"text":248},"Right. So that's the main incentive to get city classification in this sense is to take control of where the money goes. Do you get a cut of the taxes in return or anything like that? Or do you get to choose where they go yourself? How does it work?",{"speaker":193,"text":250},"Well, before we became a city, we were 11% of the population of the county. But we paid 22% of the taxes. So we often said you could hear the swoosh as the money left town, and no services came back. We were very poorly served, very heavily taxed. We wanted autonomy. We wanted to control our future. But the main reason we wanted autonomy was to control zoning. The county would let anything be built that would pay them some taxes. They didn't care what it did to our community, and our people really wanted to get control of our future. So that was a long-winded way to say, now, what is a city? A city basically in the States is normally composed of three levels. The, you might say, top level is the elected officials, a council and a mayor. They set policy. They establish the budget. The next layer down is a professional layer, a city manager or city administrator, who then carries out those policies. And in the normal bureaucratic city, then you have all the employees that are the workforce. That's the third level. All we have done is substitute for that third level, instead of an employee workforce, a private company contractor. The top level still sets all the policies. You still have a city manager to carry those out. He manages basically the contract. And then the workforce, which is this huge amount of people, is done with private industry. That's the innovation.",{"speaker":190,"text":252},"And I suppose that that innovation is driven by the fact that you don't, without needing so many employees, then bringing the free market in means that you get better services cheaper with less people. Is that roughly speaking?",{"speaker":193,"text":254},"That's a good way to sum it up. It's free market. It's competition because we have competition for these contracts. And then you get a level of service that's well beyond anything that goes on in the bureaucratic cities.",{"speaker":190,"text":256},"In the UK, I think everything the government wants to create or pay for, they have to put it out to tender. Are you saying, is there potentially competition there? They're building something. I think probably, if I'm honest, there's a lot of nepotism going on in that realm, but you could say the same thing for a free market as well. Yeah. So talk a little bit to that. Are there risks involved in this?",{"speaker":193,"text":258},"People's initial knee-jerk reaction was there would even be more nepotism, more of the bad doings going on. The fact of the matter, and I can explain why, it's far less than is normal. But that was a worry from the beginning. But it has not proven to be a problem at all.",{"speaker":190,"text":260},"And who came up with this idea then?",{"speaker":193,"text":262},"Well, I did.",{"speaker":190,"text":264},"You did?",{"speaker":193,"text":266},"I did.",{"speaker":190,"text":268},"So, I mean, that seems like quite a big ask to sort of approach your county representatives or whatever and say, we'd really like to change what you do. I mean, how do you even go about that? I can understand once the model's in existence, I can understand how it works, but how do you start something like that?",{"speaker":193,"text":270},"Well, as I said, for 25 years, we fought the battle with the legislature and that I did not lead. When I said I did, it was the public-private model that I created. But for so long, the South, for over 100 years, had been controlled by a Democratic Party. In Georgia, the governor, the Senate, House of Representatives were all controlled by the Democratic Party who opposed the idea of the city. And that was because of the heavy political influence of the city of Atlanta who wanted us. They wanted to annex us. We didn't want that. So in 2002, the Republicans finally took the governorship in the House, excuse me, in the Senate. And we thought maybe we'll now get our bill through. It didn't happen. And so, 2004, the Republicans took the final element, took the Senate, and they told us that you're going to be number one on our list of things to do. And they came through, although they were very slow in doing it. So the political battle had waged. No one had ever thought of doing a contract city. We had two extremely significant problems and surprises, that when the draft of the bill came out, they had assigned the date of December 1 of 2005 as a start. Well, by the time we saw the draft, that was less than a year to start the city. But the really tough obstacle was that they gave no one in the new city any authority until the city council was seated, which would be December 1st. So we have no ability to hire anyone, to put in place any equipment systems, buildings, anything, until the council is seated. And at that moment they've got to have a fully operational city around them. How do you get from here to there? If I could just ramble on a minute.",{"speaker":190,"text":272},"You can ramble on as long as you want.",{"speaker":193,"text":274},"In January of that year, 2005, they had asked me, the committee that had worked all these years, asked me to take on the responsibility for starting the city, actually implementing it. To backtrack even further, some years back, when I had first come on the committee, which had been in existence a long time, I asked, you know, what kind of city is it that we are expecting? I mean, how will it be organised? How will it operate? And everyone said, 'Well, we don't know. Haven't thought about that yet. We're just trying to get the bill passed.' So they said, why don't you form a charter commission to establish all of those rules of operation for the city? I did that. I brought in 12 people from all of the areas of the city and asked them to start from ground zero. We had not started a new city in Georgia in 50 years, so we didn't have any model to follow. And they were a great group of people. It was an amazingly interesting task. You could almost liken it to writing the U.S. Constitution. From ground zero, you're putting this thing together. Not quite that grandiose, but it was challenging to us. Worked hard and came up with a charter, which the committee then passed, and it went on ice for several years. Later on, I said, well, okay, we've got a charter, but how are we actually going to start this city? And everyone said, we don't know. So I went home and took out a yellow pad and drew up a plan for starting the city. Brought it in, the committee passed it. Nothing happened that year, and the next year we thought we might get it, and they approved it again, and nothing happened. And then finally we say we're going to get it. So in January of 2005, I formed a dozen task forces, volunteer task forces, numbered about 120 people altogether to work on 12 elements of service that I had outlined, everything from transportation to police, fire, roads, what have you. These task forces worked quite diligently for a couple of months, basically assuming they were trying to design a traditional city. I knew all along we couldn't. There was just no way to get from here to there. So at one point I said, maybe the corporate world is the answer, and I guess maybe my own background maybe led me to do that. Maybe it was my basic feelings about free enterprise and competition and so forth that led me to that. But I began to think about the idea of a contract city. So I, on my own, addressed a letter to 12 major corporations that I thought might have the capability of meeting our needs. And I asked them two simple questions. One, here's a matrix of the services that we need, the 12 services. Where have you done these types of service for any sort of government, federal, state, local, military, whatever? Let me know if you can do that. And the second question was a real doozy, as we say in America. It said, 'Would you be willing to spend the millions of dollars and resources necessary to start our city without a contract?' Because no one can give you one until after the city is formed. And interestingly enough, I got 12 responses. Well, I got, I guess, responses from everyone, but half of them said no. The other half indicated where they had performed some services. Some of them, it was just one service maybe. I had a list of 12. Others, maybe several, multiple. No one had provided all of them, but between them all, I filled in my matrix, and I had someone who could provide all the services. So I moved forward, once again retreated to my basement office and began to draft requests for proposals, RFPs, which asked the companies to propose what they can do for us and what the prices would be and so forth. Spelled out that it was a competitive bid and spelled out what the qualifications we would be looking for and how we would rank them and so forth. And said this is what we will approach the private industry with, this proposal, these RFPs. I could not issue those initially because no one even knew I had written them until the bill got through the legislature, finally House in April, the Senate later in the month, and then the governor didn't sign until mid-April. He delayed quite a while. But even then, we didn't have approval for a city. The bill called for a referendum of the citizens of the community on whether they wanted a city or not, and that would not take place until June 6th. So, still didn't have a go-ahead to do anything almost, except what I was doing in private. The governor did sign. We did have the referendum. We got 94%.",{"speaker":190,"text":276},"Yes. That's amazing.",{"speaker":193,"text":278},"In America, you can't get 94% of the people say the sun comes up the east. I mean, that's a landslide. And we were now authorised to go forward.",{"speaker":190,"text":280},"So I'm still grappling with a few concepts here. Sorry. So you said 50 years ago, 50 years prior, which is the first time that a new city had been founded.",{"speaker":193,"text":282},"Last time, yeah.",{"speaker":190,"text":284},"Right, okay. What were the incentives 50 years prior? Yeah. Because I think what I'm understanding is the innovation that you guys came up with was the private companies.",{"speaker":193,"text":286},"Right.",{"speaker":190,"text":288},"Okay. So 50 years prior, when a city was incorporated, what was the benefit at that point to them?",{"speaker":193,"text":290},"It actually was involved with the Atlanta airport mostly, which is on the southern end of Atlanta. Huge airport, busiest one in the world, I think, at this point. But a lot of pilots were interested in housing and having places that they could get to drive to the airport easily from. So they were a good bit of the impetus for forming a city called Peachtree City, South Atlanta. And they got the corporation and did establish a city. And their city was not, there was not much of a community there. It was more of a greenfields startup sort of situation. So it had done well over the years.",{"speaker":190,"text":292},"But what was the advantage for them in the sense that you talked about these three layers, the council, then the management, then the employees. Are you saying that 50 years prior, when they got city status, they still had a workforce employed by the city? So your innovation was instead of employing however many people needed to be employed, you decided, right, we're just going to put it out to tender to private companies.",{"speaker":193,"text":294},"Right. And of course, it's so much more than just the employees and the systems they bring to bear, the management skills and so forth. But yeah, they were, as I said, a startup, almost truly a startup. And so they had time and their bill didn't constrain them as ours did. They had time to build a traditional city. We had no time. We had no authority.",{"speaker":190,"text":296},"Right. OK. Another question. I like this one because this is one that's come up recently a lot with me when I'm thinking about Free Cities, charter cities, this kind of stuff. You said at the beginning, you were talking about the bit prior to getting the city incorporated, and you're saying, 'Look, we're just trying to get the bill passed.'",{"speaker":193,"text":298},"Yes.",{"speaker":190,"text":300},"Right. The interesting thing is I've noticed that quite a lot with projects, modern-day projects, Próspera included, other places. Their focus, because it's such an uphill struggle and because there's so much opposition, the focus is on just getting the thing you want. And actually, there's far less thought that goes into the point after that. Right. I've seen it with large projects, small projects, and it's just come up recently again in my mind, and then you mentioned it as well there. What do you think about that? Is there truth to that?",{"speaker":193,"text":302},"There is. I am the point after that. All of our committee was so heavily focused on the political side of the thing that they just really had not delved into, 'What is it going to be, and how are we going to implement it and then manage it?' So that's the important thing, really.",{"speaker":190,"text":304},"So you, but you, before you started thinking about that, were you just going to go down the normal government route?",{"speaker":193,"text":306},"Absolutely, because we did not know the time constraints until the draft of the bill actually came out. We had no idea that there would be, we'd have so little time to start it. Remember, after the referendum, we had only five months to actually start the city, and nothing basically had been done except our task force work. So, yeah, it's very difficult to conceive yourself being in that situation with no authority in the time. I used to tell them that every tick of the clock sounded like thunder to me because the time was so short.",{"speaker":190,"text":308},"But, I mean, there was, in a way, in a free market, you kind of want that kind of pressure, really. I mean, that's what gets the job done. I mean, it's the opposite of government in a sense.",{"speaker":193,"text":310},"We could have taken two years to do the RFPs and the selection process and contract negotiation after that. In fact, you know, easily could have used that amount of time. We just didn't have it.",{"speaker":190,"text":312},"So, all right, then. So you've got your contractors, I take it. I mean, I made that sound quite flippant. I'm sure it wasn't that easy. But you got them, and I take it the budget for doing what was previously done by a government office was a lot less. I mean, the amount you spent, sorry, the budget hopefully was the same.",{"speaker":193,"text":314},"I had a budgeting finance committee, and they did a marvellous job, far better than I would have expected. In Georgia, the tax situation is such that you get about three quarters of your revenue, your whole year's revenue in the last quarter of the year. So you're very lean through the first quarter. And we, starting with a balance of zero, it's pretty difficult to get through those first eight to nine months. But we budgeted, and one of the RFPs additional that I wrote was for banks to have our business. Six banks issued bids. Part of what I wrote into the RFP was they had to loan us $10 million day one. Well, actually not day one, one month after that. In Georgia, another strange law is if you borrow for operating purposes, you have to pay it back December 31st. Even if you borrowed it December 30th, you have to pay it back December 31st. We have a lot of strange laws. So we waited until January 1 to borrow the money so we'd have the full year to pay it back. But we'd done such a really fine job of budgeting that we were able to take that money and spread it out over the first nine months. And in August, basically that money we thought would run out, and then our new money would be pouring in. Worked almost to the dollar. It was a beautifully done budget. And so we were able to survive on borrowed money for the first nine months of the year, paid back that $10 million on December 31st and have never borrowed again.",{"speaker":190,"text":316},"And your average person living in Sandy Springs at that time, did they notice a change during the change? I mean, in two ways, I suppose. One, did they notice the services get better instantly or did they notice a time period where it was a bit chaotic? You know, that kind of stuff.",{"speaker":193,"text":318},"They noticed immediately in some ways. In other services, slower. But for an example, permitting had been a terribly difficult process going through the county. It was just laborious. You'd wait for months. I happened to go over to the offices we'd set up the second day of operation. I walked into the permitting section. There were about six people sitting there. We had served them coffee. They were smiling. And they didn't believe that they were actually going to be serviced that quickly. And that was typical across the board of services. The contracting company, roads were a difficult problem. The county would have a pothole, and they'd send out six guys, and five of them would stand around, one would dig, you know, and so forth. And the contracting company surveyed every road in the city with laser-mounted, on the bumper, laser-mounted devices that characterised the need for work there, characterised them into five different categories. The ones that were worst, we have fixed immediately, and then it went down. That even worked to the benefit of the elected officials. Because they're always getting complaints from everyone about potholes and problems, and they were able to say to them, look, we have you on the list. You're a priority three, so it will be three months, maybe whatever. We were saying priority, but it gave them an ability to not just have to smile at people and say, oh, yes, we'll fix that. It gave them an ability to give an answer to it.",{"speaker":190,"text":320},"It sounds a bit too good to be true when you think about it. That when the government did it, very inefficient, very expensive. When the private sector did it, it got done.",{"speaker":193,"text":238},{"speaker":190,"text":323},"Right, okay. Now, we all believe in that, we all know that, but is it really that simple? Like, how is it that a government service, like, take your example of the people doing the roads. Why is it that you get four people watching one person work? And why do you not get that in the private sector? Well, or maybe you do get it in the private sector. I don't know. Maybe you don't.",{"speaker":193,"text":325},"All right. No, because it's a profit motive. That's the key to the whole thing. There is a profit motive. The company is driven to be more efficient. It has a fixed contract. If it can be more efficient, it can be more profitable. If it can be A1 in service, the people like it, it's going to get its contract renewed. If it's not, we're going to find someone else. It was an annual contract, by the way, for six years, renewable for six years. But they had to be reviewed each year and told, you still have a contract. So, no, and by the way, we finally did agree to pay for the contract three weeks after the city was started. They had trusted us to do it that much.",{"speaker":190,"text":327},"Presumably you knew these people, did you, or were they friends of, I mean, in communities on the whole?",{"speaker":193,"text":329},"No, not at all. No, they were a company that was headquartered out in Colorado, which is a long way from Sandy Springs, an engineering firm. And we developed immediately a good relationship with them. They were one of the three finalists. I actually had, if I can digress a second, after issuing the RFPs, and I need to tell you who did finally approve those, but after issuing them, the company moved in immediately and started doing a number of things that would improve [unclear]. We had surveyed our population, and the biggest issue in the population, 34% of the people said, was zoning. I mentioned that earlier. We've got to get control over zoning in this area. The next two, and there were 12% down the line, were traffic problems and public safety, police and fire. So the zoning issue was primarily in the hands of the elected officials. But the other things, police, fire, traffic. Traffic was a wonderful example of how they improved service. As soon as they got the contract, they began looking at all the traffic signals in the city. Traffic was a mess. Shouldn't have been. 72% of the controls for those traffic signals were either inoperative or parts were even missing out of the boxes. They would just turn it on and off, but no timing of it or anything. They not only fixed that, they put in place a world-class traffic management centre where people sat, looked at all the intersections, could monitor them, changed them from the office to allow traffic flows to go, allow for emergency vehicles, all of that. But it was truly probably, among cities, the best in the country initially. And that saved a lot of money. It didn't have people always going out trying to fix the lights. But most importantly, it saved our residents' time. The traffic flow improved immediately. They solved that immediately. So, yes, they did see improvements across the board.",{"speaker":190,"text":331},"One of the ones you mentioned there was police and fire, like public safety. Am I right in understanding that you left those with the previous setup? You didn't use a privatised police force, let's say.",{"speaker":193,"text":333},"At the beginning, day one, we didn't have the money to create a police force or a fire. So we had to go back to the county, hat in hand, and ask for a contract for them to continue providing police and fire service. They were not particularly kind to us at that point about that, but they did have to do it according to the state constitution, and we did get a contract with them. To show you, again, what changed for the population, the county had been providing four policemen on duty at any time in a city of almost 100,000 people. It was just like no service. So that meant with shifts, three shifts a day, 12 people in total were being provided. When we got to the point of building up our resources enough to do it, which was six months, our initial police force was 35 people, three times what they'd done. It now numbers about 135. So we have dramatically improved our police service. Fire, it took us a year to get to the point we were ready to do our own fire. Had to contract with the county for six months and then an additional six months, and paid through the nose. We had three and a half fire stations. One served us and an adjoining community. The county wanted us to pay millions of dollars for those fire stations. We said no. We've been paying our taxes, too much taxes all along. We owned those things. Finally had to go to court, and the court ruled against us. We would have to pay a dollar for each station. We sucked it up and agreed to do that. So initially we did, and the reasons for not, it was possible maybe to contract for companies to provide police and fire. But it's not been very successfully done. And we felt that our citizenry really wanted us to have those under our wing as city functions.",{"speaker":190,"text":335},"I mean, according to you then, are there any services that shouldn't be put out to the private sector, do you think? Like, had you been able to, would you have done private police and private fire?",{"speaker":193,"text":337},"Probably would have, because the concept just makes so much sense. It works so well, but you also open companies up to liabilities if they're providing those things. It's going to make them very hesitant to give you a really good bid. They would want a lot of risk premium to provide those services.",{"speaker":190,"text":339},"Are there any examples of that in the States? Are there any private police forces in the States?",{"speaker":193,"text":341},"There are private police forces, but nothing on the magnitude of a city of 100,000.",{"speaker":190,"text":343},"So they're more like security forces.",{"speaker":193,"text":345},"Yeah, they'd have to build it. And they'd have to build in a risk, as I said, for themselves.",{"speaker":190,"text":347},"And what, you think it would end up being too expensive?",{"speaker":193,"text":349},"I do.",{"speaker":190,"text":351},"Some kind of insurance policy against someone getting shot, someone getting whatever.",{"speaker":193,"text":353},"Yeah, you can't imagine.",{"speaker":190,"text":355},"How does it work then with the government police force?",{"speaker":193,"text":357},"Well, the government is protected by itself. It passes its own laws that protect them from those sorts of things.",{"speaker":190,"text":359},"You can still sue the government. You can still sue the police force, though, can't you?",{"speaker":193,"text":361},"Yeah, you can sue it, but you're going to have a hard time collecting.",{"speaker":190,"text":363},"Right, okay. Is it as simple as that? You're thinking in the free market, it's just far more fluid, far more easy to operate. So do you think that there won't be private police forces?",{"speaker":193,"text":365},"I think probably not, again, just because of the risk factor. I don't see it proliferating.",{"speaker":190,"text":367},"It's interesting, because in the UK, they started as private. They were all private, weren't they?",{"speaker":193,"text":369},"No, I don't know. I didn't know that. Now you're telling me something.",{"speaker":190,"text":371},"This is something I'm remembering from primary school here, when being a small child, but the first police forces in the UK were the Peelers, and I think the guy, somebody Peel was the guy.",{"speaker":193,"text":373},"Yeah, I do remember that.",{"speaker":190,"text":375},"And they were all privately funded.",{"speaker":193,"text":377},"Yeah, yeah.",{"speaker":190,"text":379},"And, you know, so, well.",{"speaker":193,"text":381},"We ask so much more of our police today than yesterday. They've become tremendously versatile in all the services they have to provide.",{"speaker":190,"text":383},"Yeah. Okay, so really, given the choice, you would say there should be nothing given out, nothing that shouldn't be given out to the private sector. If you were designing, like Próspera for example, if you were designing a city from ground up, you would privatise everything.",{"speaker":193,"text":385},"Yes, and in fact we are on our way to doing that in Próspera. I wrote the RFPs for Próspera to bid out for private services.",{"speaker":190,"text":387},"Before we get on to Próspera, because obviously I want to talk about Próspera, there's a kink in the armor of this story, isn't there? Because in 2019, the city's status was reversed. Is that right?",{"speaker":193,"text":238},{"speaker":190,"text":390},"So what's going on there then? Does it disprove the model or does it What happens?",{"speaker":193,"text":392},"Well, first of all, let me say that after Sandy Springs, in the next several years, about three years, there were six additional cities came online, all following the Sandy Springs model. I know that because I was a principal advisor for all six of them. Since then, there are a total of 13 new cities in Georgia that have come online basically following the model. So the model hasn't disappeared, but Sandy Springs went through a period of change of elected officials. The initial elected officials were all on board with what we did. Didn't necessarily understand it, but they liked it. As time wore on and people sort of forgot what had happened and new people came on, They would say, 'Well, maybe I ought to pull road paving out of the contract, or pull parks and recreation out and give it a separate. We think we can do better with a single contract.' And so they began to whittle away at the total contracting concept And as you did that you lost a lot of the efficiencies, the synergy that had given you your efficiencies. As you peel off pieces, that bundle of synergy, you get smaller. So that process of whittling away went on for about a period of another five or six years, and then they had finally gotten down to the point, 'Well, we might as well take it all. We can do it.'",{"speaker":190,"text":394},"But was there anything about that that you thought was, you know, underhand? Or was that, what do you think? It was well-intentioned?",{"speaker":193,"text":396},"I do. I think it was well-intentioned. I think it was people who had always grown up in bureaucratic cities themselves and were just a little dubious of the idea of contracting. And over time, new ones were elected and they had new thoughts. And it just, again, no, I don't think there was anything underhanded. I think they meant well. I think they were wrong. One of the things I sort of promised myself when I did that year of work to create a city was that I was going to step away then. The elected officials were responsible. No more of my business. So I did step away from it. And maybe if I had stayed more involved, it maybe would have been a different decision. But I think I did the right thing. They were the ones that people had trusted to run the city, not me. And I think it has still done well. Could I tell you why I think it's done as well as it did? After 10 years, we had not increased tax rates one penny. We had improved services across the board, as I've already mentioned. We had accumulated a surplus of $40 million, and we had zero long-term debt and liabilities. One of the major liabilities in the States is for unfunded liabilities for pensions. It's a terrible problem at state, federal, local level. Some cities have unfunded liabilities that exceed their annual budgets. And they're just as much debt as if they'd borrowed from the bank, but they don't carry it on the balance sheet. So people don't know what bad shape they're in. There was an existing city, South Atlanta, that asked me to come in and consult with them about the potential of shifting to the model. And one of the first questions I asked them was, what are your unfunded liabilities for pensions? And the mayor said, well, I don't know. Actually, she didn't even know what I was talking about. Referred me to the acting city manager, and when I asked him the question, and he did know what I was talking about, but he didn't know how much they were. Turned out they were almost as big as their annual budget, and so huge future problems. That's the sort of thing that exists across the country in cities that are not managed by professionals.",{"speaker":190,"text":398},"Well, also in governments in general.",{"speaker":193,"text":238},{"speaker":190,"text":401},"I mean, I think probably it's the downfall of... If you actually look at the way that governments set up currently, because they have to generate income from somewhere. And if tax isn't enough, they're going to issue debt. It's a self-perpetuating myth. And many governments around the world, I think the UK, my own included, the debt they're servicing is a phenomenal amount of their budget, which literally wouldn't be there in a private business. Most governments in Europe would be out of business, would have gone out of business a long time ago. And it's a very important incentive.",{"speaker":193,"text":403},"Well, it's almost $40 trillion in the United States. It's unbelievable. We're going to have to face it someday.",{"speaker":190,"text":405},"Well, you can't face it, really. And in fact, now, because it's so large, it affects everything that they do because they have to be careful that the price of their bonds don't go up too high because they literally can't service them then. So now they're doing all this nefarious activities, trying to reach into the market to say, 'Change this and change that.' It's all pulling of levers that is just causing a complete mess, you know. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I've not thought of it on those terms before, that the debt part of all this could be one of the most important things to get right in the first instance because it compounds and after 10 years, you might have 40% of your budget disappearing before you've even done anything.",{"speaker":193,"text":407},"Exactly.",{"speaker":190,"text":409},"And what do you get for it?",{"speaker":193,"text":411},"Nothing.",{"speaker":190,"text":413},"So, you know, it's really interesting. Can I ask a question? Did taxes go up after the regime changed again?",{"speaker":193,"text":415},"No. Not a dime.",{"speaker":190,"text":417},"So how can you prove it was a success? Obviously, it was a success in the first instance. What's happened since? So since it's gone back to the old model, have you seen it drift back to the old ways, or is it better or worse?",{"speaker":193,"text":419},"I can only say this. We ran the original city with a contract for $40 million. $5 million of that was startup costs. So basically an ongoing budget is $35 million. Today that budget, this year's budget, is $101 million. That's significantly worse than it was. Now you might say, well, there's been inflation. Well, I've calculated it out since the city. Inflation has gone up 65% over the 20 years. So that $40 million would have been $60-some-odd million in today's dollars, but it's really $101 million. So they're not doing it at a lower cost. Fortunately, the growth of the city has been such that even at the fixed rate that we had originally, not increasing it since the growth in that which is taxed has been such that it's produced the additional revenue that we have needed to offset it. So it's working well. We did finally, after about 10 years, incur a long-term debt. We had no real city centre. If you went to the main street of Sandy Springs, you'd think it was built in the 40s or 50s, maybe 60s. There was no real city hall, any city centre. So we have built a city centre that houses the city hall, the police, arts, very nice art centres, parks, and so forth. And so we did borrow money to build that. But we had achieved such a wonderful financial rate. I'm told one of only 19 cities in the U.S. That has a AAA bond rating. Now, I have not confirmed that. That's what I'm told. But we do have it.",{"speaker":190,"text":421},"All right.",{"speaker":193,"text":423},"And to borrow money to build this city.",{"speaker":190,"text":425},"So when you borrow money, you're not issuing your own debt, are you? You're borrowing from, right, okay. Not like a bond or anything.",{"speaker":193,"text":427},"But the rate you have to pay relies upon that bond rating.",{"speaker":190,"text":286},{"speaker":193,"text":430},"So we hit it at a wonderful low time anyway and had a wonderful bond rating. So the funding of that Civic Centre is only at about 2.5% interest rate, which is phenomenal.",{"speaker":190,"text":432},"Wow. But, okay, let's move on to Próspera then. Because, first of all, did Próspera notice Sandy Springs and then come and contact you? Or did you notice the ZEDEs and then come this way?",{"speaker":193,"text":434},"They contacted me. I'm really not quite sure. There was an economist on staff at that time who was the first to contact me. He had read my book, and he had researched it, and he asked me to come on board as an advisor to the parent company, NeWay. And I was happy to do that. I found it a very interesting concept and was happy to do that. And after about four months, they said, well, we'd like to have you be on the board. And I've been on board ever since. Was far prior to Próspera actually being more than a gleam in our eye, maybe. So as we then invested in and began Próspera, they asked me to serve on the Council of Próspera, which is interesting because I don't speak the language of about half the people down here and all that, but it's been quite a ride. It has taken me into consideration and approval of a number of issues that I never even knew existed from a legal standpoint.",{"speaker":190,"text":436},"Such as?",{"speaker":193,"text":438},"Oh, almost everything. You know, we had to pass all of the statutes, the resolutions and regulations. For instance, we're very conscious of the environment here and wanting to maintain it at first rate. So we had to pass laws that had to do with cutting of reefs and that sort of thing, which I definitely would have thought of existing. We'll be dealing with an issue at the board meeting Saturday having to do with the approval of very long-term trusts. People who invest often would like to invest through a trust and they want long intervals. So we're dealing with back and forth about how long. I never thought I would be even talking about such an issue. So it's just, you name it, it's been an interesting ride.",{"speaker":190,"text":440},"Have you noticed anything that you learned from doing Sandy Springs that isn't working here? Or are they doing it differently here and you think it should be another way? As a sort of council member, have you ever come up with a proposal and been sort of outvoted?",{"speaker":193,"text":442},"I have. I probably shouldn't even say about it, but I have a fundamental problem with minimum wages. I think it's a terrible concept.",{"speaker":190,"text":444},"Yeah, I agree.",{"speaker":193,"text":446},"As a free market person, you know, I think that employers should be able to seek the best employees again for whatever price they negotiate.",{"speaker":190,"text":448},"And they've got one in Próspera, haven't they?",{"speaker":193,"text":450},"We do.",{"speaker":190,"text":452},"That's probably more, I'm going to guess here, that's a PR move probably sometimes. I mean, you know, Próspera deal with a lot of bad PR. And things like minimum wage seem like, to the average person, seem like a really nice thing to do for your employees. I think if you're an economist, maybe like myself, we don't necessarily believe that. But I think on the surface, it looks quite good.",{"speaker":193,"text":454},"Yeah, I agree with you that it is a communications issue, a government relations issue, a PR issue. But just fundamentally, it goes against my grain. So I abstain from voting in those things rather than even vote against it. Because I agree with you, it probably from a PR standpoint is the thing to do. But it's not necessarily more humane. I think to get the employees you need, you can pay, if you were, a free-ranging wage and still do it and be fair to everyone. But you asked for an example of when I had been outvoted. That's one that just pops into my mind.",{"speaker":190,"text":456},"What about the model itself? I mean, like I alluded to earlier, it seems like Próspera is what you were doing in Sandy Springs times by 100 with more options to do more privately, to have more control over what actually happens in that place. I mean, because you're the council too, as well as being the person that looks for the services, etc. You get to choose which services are needed, which aren't, etc.",{"speaker":193,"text":458},"Well, to be specific, I don't do that. We have an operating company, another operating company that does manage all the services. And, yes, Próspera was far-ranging in that, for instance, we had to buy land. I didn't have to buy land for Sandy Springs. We have to build buildings. I didn't have to build anything for Sandy Springs. People fall all over themselves to build things. So it is a more far-ranging group of services than we had there. But fundamentally, the 12 services that I outlined will all eventually be here and will be privately provided. Plus, like construction of buildings and that sort of thing.",{"speaker":190,"text":460},"What do you think of, presumably, you know about Morazán and what Massimo's doing here. What do you think about his model?",{"speaker":193,"text":462},"Well, I think it seems to be working all right. I understand that it's quite a different model, of course, built around the old mill company, textile mills in my own country.",{"speaker":190,"text":464},"[unclear], they call it.",{"speaker":193,"text":466},"Yeah, and I understand that a lot of the private property homes that were provided by the ZEDE there are now being bought by people who just view them as really good investments in housing for themselves, not as outside of the mill people themselves.",{"speaker":190,"text":468},"But they can't buy them, though. They give them a long-term lease, I think.",{"speaker":193,"text":470},"Yes, absolutely.",{"speaker":190,"text":472},"Yeah, but that in itself is an interesting phenomenon, and actually because that's kind of what it's supposed to be. I think the point of a ZEDE is to create a better scenario within the ZEDE than you find outside. And Morazán are obviously doing that, and as a result, people want to go from the outside to the inside, regardless of whether they're working in one of the companies in there. Unfortunately, that's what a libertarian utopia is. It shouldn't probably have any libertarians in there. It should probably just be people moving to a better place, which is, that's the idea. You give the freedom within the zone to have services run better, you know, competition, have all these things that we all agree are great, and the result is people move there, which is what you're seeing, I think.",{"speaker":193,"text":474},"Yeah, and that's a good thing. But I would say that the ZEDE is more than that. We took it as our long-term objective to provide development to Honduras and to provide employment to Honduras. Morazán definitely provides employment, but beyond that, it's sort of self-contained, and it's not an outreach type of development as we would hope to be here. So it's a little different model.",{"speaker":190,"text":476},"I suppose one way to look at it might be that it's a sandbox in a way. Morazán's a sandbox and probably, I mean, take Choloma, because it's the closest city nearby, which is by all accounts quite a dangerous place compared to, well, at least compared to Morazán. As people watch the sandbox working and try and move there and it gets full, Presumably it spreads out. Presumably, I suppose that's the idea that fits your model there.",{"speaker":193,"text":478},"Absolutely. We would love to be all over the world in undeveloped countries. And we've had a good number of contacts with other countries. Erick Brimen, who you will talk with, the CEO, and really the guiding light of all of this, can share what he can share. He's not in confidence about that. But we've had a number of contacts with other countries in which we've tried to develop memorandums of agreement and so forth to build Próspera-type facilities.",{"speaker":190,"text":480},"Something I just thought of about the Sandy Springs model, and I think I've read that, or I can deduce this as well, that the point of the Sandy Springs model is to take away the individuals, in a way, from steering something slightly in the wrong direction. Is that fair to say? It's more like you don't have a bunch of individuals in the government forcing a place in the wrong direction. Is there an element of that in it?",{"speaker":193,"text":482},"I suppose. I don't think we sort of organised around that as a concept. But let me tell you where we went from. Fulton County, as I mentioned, is the largest county in Georgia. And we had one representative on the commission for every 180,000 people in the county. Most cities within the county didn't have a representative who even lived there. We didn't at one point in Sandy Springs. After we created the city, incorporated the city, we had one council person for every 12,000 people. And nobody lived more than two miles from their representative. And I used to say frequently that we will be able to get our hands around their necks because you're close to them in proximity. There are not that many. You can get to your council person and voice a concern or even praise maybe, but it's a far different relationship with individuals than it had been before. We looked at the county commission as being this far-off thing that didn't like us.",{"speaker":190,"text":484},"And why is that then? Why would that be a function of the former system versus your system? Just because they're literally further away geographically?",{"speaker":193,"text":486},"And in population, so many, so many, so few representatives per person. So we have fixed that. Our people feel they have good access to their leaders, and they use it. They really do.",{"speaker":190,"text":488},"Do you think something like Próspera could ever happen in the States, then? In this degree? I mean, like I say, as it being a Sandy Springs-type scenario.",{"speaker":193,"text":490},"I think it's highly unlikely. As I answer it, our focus is on underdeveloped countries, where we can bring development and employment that they need. With all our faults in the States, we're a pretty well-functioning society, and there's not the same need for a Próspera there. But we have had conversations.",{"speaker":190,"text":492},"That's interesting because I would say that I agree that the States is a good well-functioning place. But I also think that the sort of the ZEDE model, for example, or the free market model, or whatever you want to call it, the charter model, that is a good model, actually. And it's actually better than a sort of possibly the centralized government model that you find in the States.",{"speaker":193,"text":494},"I agree.",{"speaker":190,"text":496},"So why wouldn't it arise there?",{"speaker":193,"text":498},"It just would face so much of an inertia of people who... One of the things, my second book was about the conversion of existing cities to the model. Not starting cities, but here's an existing city. Why don't you adopt the model? Because it's more efficient, better service, lower cost. There's probably just an underlying fear. The existing leaders are in a position, they were elected, some of them have been elected many times, they don't want to rock the boat. Some of them are crooks, a small percentage, but there is corruption, and some of them would be very afraid that that would be brought to light. But I don't want to emphasise that. That's a small percentage. But most just are sort of satisfied that they don't want to take a chance. It's a risk.",{"speaker":190,"text":500},"That's probably a function of the democratic system as well. One of the faults, like you say, is part of what drives you as a politician creating new regulation or whatever is that you want to stay in power. And you don't have that issue in the same way within a charter city. What you're scared of is people leaving, not you losing favour necessarily in the traditional sense.",{"speaker":193,"text":502},"But even the most good-hearted and well-meaning leader sees it as a risk. It's something so different. They're going to have to sell it. They're going to have to stick their necks out to sell it. People are going to be dubious about it. And I think it's just that fear, risk, what have you, that I've done studies for a number of other cities and counties to determine the viability of the contract model in those cities. And invariably, it shows that they could do it at less cost, 10 to 40 percent in some cases less cost. But even with that in hand, and of course, it's concerned about who is this guy coming in here to do this? And is it in his best interest for us to do it, not ours? But with those sorts of savings and efficiency, you would think government officials would be jumping all over themselves to do it. And they're not.",{"speaker":190,"text":504},"Yes, they're not. Which brings me to another point, actually. Do you think projects like Próspera and Sandy Springs need a sort of obsessive person running them, if you see what I mean? Well, no, do you know what I mean? Because there's another thing I notice. I do notice this, right? You could say Erick's that guy. You could say you were that guy when it came to Sandy Springs. What happens when those people go? You know, because a lot of people have an issue with that as well. I mean, especially in this world that we're in, one of the things people like is decentralising all that stuff and getting rid of leaders and favouring the market, for example. But you can't help noticing that a lot of these projects have one pretty obsessive person that's really pushing them along.",{"speaker":193,"text":506},"It's true. And it will require that in a city that wants to convert. It would require it if someone were trying to start up a greenfield Próspera. It would require a lot of obsession.",{"speaker":190,"text":508},"Do you think in the Sandy Springs case that the decline of the private model, was that anything to do with you being too exhausted to run it or people, the obsessive people that were running it, monitoring it, you know, etc.?",{"speaker":193,"text":510},"If I had chosen to take a public stance on it and try to fight the thing, it might have come out differently. But I had by then stepped well aside.",{"speaker":190,"text":512},"If you don't mind me asking.",{"speaker":193,"text":514},"Why did I?",{"speaker":190,"text":238},{"speaker":193,"text":517},"Well, I guess the beginning, almost everyone assumed I would take an elected office. Not the mayor, because we had a wonderful lady who had chaired this committee for 25 years. The most determined person, talk about obsession, most determined person I know, PhD in economics, great person. She wrote her own book and I suggested the title ought to be Bulldog and Lace because she was just that. Enough. But she was destined to be the mayor. Everyone knew it. But people thought I would run for council. I am not psychologically attuned to being a politician. For me, there is right and there is wrong. And this idea of horse trading or compromise on every issue that seems to occur in politics is just not something I want to be a part of, won't need to be a part of. And so I did not. And I made the promise to myself. I'm not going to try to be backseat driving this thing. These are the elected officials, not me. And I did basically step away from it. But I was also stepping into these other cities that I've talked about that followed right on the heels.",{"speaker":190,"text":519},"So maybe there is an element of truth in that. Maybe if the obsessive person who really believes in the thing steps to the side, the tendency for something like that will be to drift back towards the political.",{"speaker":193,"text":521},"I think so.",{"speaker":190,"text":238},{"speaker":193,"text":521},{"speaker":190,"text":525},"Do you think that's true of Próspera as well, then? Do you think if someone like Erickk, or, I know, I suppose Erick is the, he is that guy. I know that there's lots of other people involved, like Gabe and everyone, but really, when you look at it on face value...",{"speaker":193,"text":527},"I don't think you need to apologise for saying.",{"speaker":190,"text":529},"Yeah, that's so. Right. So do you think if someone like that decides to sort of move away a little bit, then when the decentralised power comes in, it's not as effective? And it might start drifting towards a different incentive model actually. It's what it is I suppose.",{"speaker":193,"text":531},"Possibly, but I don't think so. I think we have built a foundation, a tremendous legal foundation. We're still building in the political foundation but with the current administration it's far far more favourable and easy to deal with. We're working things out there. So I think and And then physical. This is quite a property, particularly now that this Duna building is the biggest building in maybe, I don't know, in Honduras or not.",{"speaker":190,"text":533},"It certainly is. In Roatán.",{"speaker":193,"text":535},"Yeah, and other beautiful properties. I'm writing a book, by the way, about Próspera.",{"speaker":190,"text":537},"Oh, right.",{"speaker":193,"text":539},"And I call it a tropical paradise, and I don't think I'm stretching that a bit. So I think we've built a financial base, a political base, and a legal base that would carry on beyond the current leadership.",{"speaker":190,"text":541},"Something I was thinking this morning when I was thinking about, I was going to talk to Erick, I was trying to work out what we might talk about. And it did occur to me, going back to what I was saying about, earlier we were speaking about obsessing over just getting permission or getting the legislation or getting whatever. I often wonder whether Próspera will survive its success, if you see what I mean, not its failure. Most people are looking at how it might fail. I think about that, the success of Próspera. Say hundreds of thousands of people come to live here. What does that place look like then? Are the same incentives still operating with that many people? You know, that's what I actually wonder about, and I don't know what the answer is. I mean, I think, like in the case of Sandy Springs, you said that, you know, the political part of it was always trying to claw its way back in, if you see what I mean. Yeah, you kind of have to hold it at bay. So what happens in a place like Próspera? I don't know.",{"speaker":193,"text":543},"I guess I hadn't thought of the glass being that full yet. We're still trying to work through all of these in Próspera.",{"speaker":190,"text":545},"Yeah, in Próspera, sure. I agree with that, but I do think that you have to, as a thought experiment.",{"speaker":193,"text":547},"Yeah, well, I think in reality, you know, it can't handle it. One of the things is we would intend, if we're having that much success, and Honduras is going to benefit from that success, that we would expand outward from where we are now. It could be in other areas of Honduras and all. It wouldn't have the same beauty as this, probably, but all of the employment and development could be there. You know, we do have a property on the mainland that we're reserving for heavy industry, not wanting to disrupt the tourism and fishing and so forth here in Próspera at all. We're very sensitive to that in trying to bring in industry, the clean industry and things like finance and IT, those kinds of things, medical. So we are building for the future, but the idea of us bursting at the seams, as it were, is not a priority with us now. And we also have an affiliated area on the northern end of the island that's virtually undeveloped yet to be, it could very well grow a great deal.",{"speaker":190,"text":549},"I'm thinking more along the lines of the ideals that are in place in Próspera now. The reason it was set up. Are they going to survive?",{"speaker":193,"text":551},"Those ideals will endure.",{"speaker":190,"text":553},"You think?",{"speaker":193,"text":555},"Yeah, absolutely. I can't see. Every current leader would have to die, and everyone they chose to succeed would have to die, before anyone would begin to whittle away at the ideals of this. I think it's that firmly ingrained in our DNA.",{"speaker":190,"text":557},"What do you think the biggest challenge for Próspera is right now then, according to your experience of this kind of stuff?",{"speaker":193,"text":559},"Probably solidifying the political relationship so that we don't have to go through the type thing we did for the four years of the previous administration. I think that's it. The other is very much a PR issue. We need to have people all over the world knowing about Próspera and what the advantages here are. I think we have not been able, maybe didn't have the resources, but not been able to tell our story as effectively as we might.",{"speaker":190,"text":561},"I don't think it's the resources, I'll be honest. I've worked in the media for 25 years. I've worked at newspapers, I've worked at TV, I've done all that stuff. And I was watching last night, I watched the ABC Australia documentary about Próspera. And I could have told you what the next scene that was coming was. You know what I mean? It was so obvious. But there's an incentive model behind that as well. You can't come all the way from Australia to Próspera and not say billionaire utopia or, you know, like people disenfranchised locals or, you know, whatever. You can't do that. That's how the media works. You can't come here. Well, a few people have actually. A few YouTubers have come here and told the story in a very matter-of-fact way. And shown that it is actually a really interesting experiment that's succeeding. But that's not really easy to sell, especially not if you're ABC or Channel 4 or one of these big companies. There has to be some jeopardy there. There has to be some, you know. I mean, the ABC documentary even ended up tying Trump into it. And it was like, really? I find it annoying as someone who's talked about this stuff for a lot of time now, hundreds of hours, you know. Yeah, I wish people would stop making documentaries that are just, like, fun. They're just, like, they're gossip and this is that. And just go straight to the simple reason why it's here and then address that. That would make me so happy.",{"speaker":193,"text":563},"Well, we need a thousand, a million people like yourselves, I guess, to tell the story, but...",{"speaker":190,"text":565},"People don't want to hear that story, though. Honestly, honestly. I watched, when I watched the ABC one, I understand. It was good telly. It was good TV. Not for Próspera or for ZEDEs or for Freedom or for free markets, but for someone watching ABC, they probably would. Well, I looked at the comments on YouTube, and it's all like, oh, screw these billionaires. You know, it was just like, oh, my God, this is such a mess. You've got a film that's got so many half-truths in it, And you've got a comment section full of even worse. And it's just like, what is, this is just some weird entertainment show. It's not really, you know, because there's a lot of stuff to be mentioned here that is just overlooked because it's boring, basically.",{"speaker":193,"text":567},"Well, I was hit right between the eyes with it yesterday. My family is here with me. We went over to one of these little animal places where they have the sloths and the monkeys and all. I was chatting with one of the managers afterwards for a little time there, and I asked him, 'Are you familiar with Próspera?' Well, they're less than two miles from Próspera, from the Pristine Bay area. And he said, 'No, not really.' He said, 'All we hear is rumours.' And I said, 'Well, like what?' 'Well, like you're doing experiments on human beings and cutting off their limbs and stuff like that.' And I just, I don't know where or how it comes about. But that type, well, I know in part the previous administration fostered some of it. It was to their advantage, they thought. And the media then jumps all over it.",{"speaker":190,"text":569},"But also people love a good story like that. I wouldn't even say there's some kind of conspiracy out here. I've heard some even more outlandish ones, babies being eaten. I've heard a lot, right? But you know what it is? It's a couple of people sitting on a Sunday afternoon going, oh, you never guess what's going on over there. They're doing this, that, and the other. And obviously the cloning human beings thing, you can see where it's come from the biotech stuff. It's kind of like, you know, it's turned into a bit of gossip that's fun to talk about, you know. I mean, I don't think you can stop that. I don't think you can change that.",{"speaker":193,"text":571},"Well, one of our problems is that we are a secure facility, and people have to have a pass to come in and so forth, and that engenders all sorts of concerns. You asked me things that I have been overruled on. That's one of them.",{"speaker":190,"text":573},"Oh, is that right?",{"speaker":193,"text":575},"The legal folks initially presented about a 25-page document that someone had to sign to come in, and I said, you know, we're going to have cruise ship. People aren't going to sign. So we finally whittled it down to a one-page visitor thing, but I wish we didn't even have that. I think that locked door sort of thing just scares the heck out of people.",{"speaker":190,"text":577},"Isn't that, because of the contracts, isn't that a necessity?",{"speaker":193,"text":579},"Yes, that's the problem.",{"speaker":190,"text":581},"Okay, but presumably there's a better way to do it, but at the moment it's kind of contracts.",{"speaker":193,"text":583},"Right now we've come down as far as we could go, I think, in it, but the very idea of you're behind a closed door engenders fear, uncertainty, rumours, all of that. And so that's a bit of a problem, I think, that I don't know how we can get by it at this point.",{"speaker":190,"text":585},"You need to, well, you can't really. But you need a border. You have to, I mean, by its nature, you need a contract.",{"speaker":193,"text":587},"We found that out in the United States. It does help to have a border.",{"speaker":190,"text":589},"I don't know. All right, let's wrap it up. We've been going a long time. Oliver, one last question then. So tell me, according to you, thinking about what you did at Sandy Springs and what's happening here at Próspera now, what lesson have you learned from the Sandy Springs experience, which is the most important thing Próspera needs to think about, according to you?",{"speaker":193,"text":591},"Yeah, in the simplest terms, private industry is the way to go for service. Don't even think about not doing that. And I think that the rest of the leadership has agreed in that regard. But they are very different cities, very, very different. The fact that we existed in advance and we didn't have to build, the problems with having to build and all that goes into that. And even though the local county opposed us, and basically for a long time the legislature, we were never in the kind of political negotiations in Sandy Springs that have had to take place in Próspera. So that's an added burden to work through.",{"speaker":190,"text":593},"Possibly also a positive, though, being able to build from the bottom up.",{"speaker":193,"text":595},"Oh, possible.",{"speaker":190,"text":597},"I mean, there's no, in a way, you're starting, it's a clean slate. I mean, you had a clean slate in many ways in Sandy Springs because you could just, but you didn't start with, you started with a sewage system that probably might not work well.",{"speaker":193,"text":599},"Right, right. Now that's one of the things we had to retain from the county. So yes, you're right.",{"speaker":190,"text":601},"Well, anyway, look, thanks for talking. I'm fascinated. You're obviously thinking very positively about Próspera for the future, would you say?",{"speaker":193,"text":603},"Absolutely.",{"speaker":190,"text":605},"Bullish on Próspera. I mean, I am too. I've been coming here for a while now. This year I actually spent a month here to work, just after the law, you know, just after the government changed. I feel like maybe this year is a big year for Próspera. It certainly feels like it with the changing government, et cetera.",{"speaker":193,"text":407},{"speaker":190,"text":608},"Are you feeling the same thing?",{"speaker":193,"text":610},"Yeah, and there's some significant building projects on the, well, past the drawing board now. They're just about to start building here, several good-sized buildings back behind the Duna building, residential buildings. Everything at this moment seems to be [unclear] in the right direction.",{"speaker":190,"text":612},"Absolutely. Well, thank you for coming. Thanks for being a part of it, in one small or large way that you've helped, you know, create this place. But anyway, Oliver, thanks for coming in. Thank you so much.",{"speaker":193,"text":614},"Thank you.","Speaker turns were inferred from the flow of the conversation, because the source carried no speaker labels. The programme introduction, sponsor messages and outro are not included. Proper nouns were normalised where they could be identified with reasonable confidence. Among those that appear are: Sandy Springs; Fulton County; Roswell; the National Kidney Foundation; Combined Health Appeal of America; Próspera; Erick Brimen; the Duna building; Ciudad Morazán; and Choloma. Three words could not be resolved and are marked [unclear] in the text.",1794256098486]