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polymathwannabe comments on Open thread, Jan. 25 - Jan. 31, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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High quality infrastructure and community services are expensive, but taxpayers are reluctant to relocate to the new community until the infrastructure and services exist. It's a bootstrap problem. Haven't you ever played SimCity?
Then how are new cities ever founded? How did Belmopan, BrasÃlia, Abuja and Islamabad do it? Look at the dozens of new cities built just in Singapore during the past half century.
The OP's proposal to build a city in the middle of the desert strikes me as similar to the history of Las Vegas. What parts of it can be replicated?
Well all of these are deliberate decisions to build a national capital. They overcame the bootstrap problem by being funded by a pre-existing national tax base.
Again, government funding is used to overcome the bootstrap problem. Singapore is also geographically small, and many of these "cities" would be characterized as neighborhoods if they were in the US.
Well, wikipedia says it began life as a water resupply stop for steam trains, and then got lucky by being near a major government project - Hoover dam. Later it took advantage of regulatory differences. An eccentric billionaire seems to have played a key roll.
There seem to be several towns that exist because of regulatory differences, so this seems a factor to consider - at least one eccentric billionaire seems fairly serious about "seasteading" for this reason. Historically, religious and ideological differences have founded cites, if not nations, so this is one way to push through the bootstrap phase - Salt Lake City being a relatively modern example in the US. Masdar City - zero carbon, zero waste - is an interesting example - ironically funded by oil wealth.
By traditional mythology, the reason Las Vegas exists is because the mob (mafia) wanted to have a playground far far away from the Feds :-)
Or because it's the place closest to San Francisco where gambling was legal.
San Fran is not that special :-P
Besides, gambling was legalized in the entire state of Nevada and there are certainly places closer to SF in there (like Reno).