Libertarians get a Central American playground


When last we heard of Patri Friedman, he was hustling folks to help him launch a libertarian floating city off the California coast, beyond the twelve-mile limit, a government-free, tax-free paradise for the one percent.

Friedman’s what we call a “professional relative,” meaning somebody who trades on being related to somebody else. Call it gilt by association.

The relative in question is Milton Friedman, former Federal Reserve boss, Ayn Rand acolyte, and Father of Disaster Capitalism, the guy whose acolytes destroyed Chilean socialism and won the love of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Well, seems that the guy with the notable patrimony has found a new way to make some Patri-money.

Maju of For what we are… they will be brings us up to date:

If someone thought that the right-wing ‘libertarianism’* that is flourishing in some socio-political sectors in the USA has anything to do with liberty, i.e. freedom, he/she is very wrong.

And guess where his new game is:

Honduras.

And guess what his new game is:

Call ‘em Enterpise Zones by a new name.

Maju writes that

the main “development” project of the US-sponsored dictatorship in Honduras is the construction of chartered cities (free trade zones by other name), business that are sponsored by two US-based companies: Future Cities (previously The Seasteading Institute) and Grupo Ciudades Libres (very hard to find online, except that they owe $150).

The owner of the first one is Patri Friedman, grandson of ultra-liberal (i.e. anti-regulation) economist Milton Friedman, with a mere two-year career in some backwater college, occasional programmer, poker player and investor of Pay-Pal. He and his mentor and associate Peter Thiel (founder of Pay-Pal) are clearly fascist as they argue in the far right magazine Cato Unbound, one rejecting democracy altogether and the other arguing that freedom (meaning Capitalism) and democracy are incompatible.

These are the kind of investors (plunderers) for whom the totalitarian regime of Porfirio Lobo is  selling off the country with the chartered cities scheme.

Like adventurer William Walker or his late follower Sam Zemurray “the Banana Man” (who controlled much of Central America and the Caribbean with his all-powerful United Fruit Company, now Chiquita), these filibuster-adventurers of today aim to plunder once again the country of Honduras… and use their alleged “libertarian” (neo-fascist) ideology as a pretext with a varnish of ideological legitimacy.

Read the rest.

Guess them Friedmans just can’t keep their hands off Latin America.

Oh, and his nifty, bloody little graphic from Maju’s post.

The message: Honduras for sale

a moment for trade,

a time for speculators.

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