Why on earth would anyone support charter cities? Cities are a community of people and should be owned, operated, legislated by and accountable to the community, not outsiders.
This is not even a new idea, and it ended really poorly last time - see the Concessions in Shanghai. [1] Having a huge disparity in the power of the so-called guarantor country as compared to the local host country is just a new take on colonialism.
[edit] However the biggest issue seems to be that it was found unconstitutional, then the judges were evicted and replaced (in what the UN described as an attack on democracy), and then all of a sudden it was constitutional. Telling the locals you know better than they do about how their region should be administered, while giving yourself the ability to exploit the living crap out of them thanks to your privileged position of being a foreigner is roughly how colonialism was carried out.
[edit] It's particularly relevant that Paul Romer proposed this at a Ted talk and then talked the Hondurans into it - citing Hong Kong as an example of a well-run charter city. Remember what happened there two years ago through present? [2] If that's your contemporary flagship... Yeah, that's pretty much what's going to happen to all of these soon-to-be-catastrophes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_International_Settlem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city_(economic_develop...
This is not even a new idea, and it ended really poorly last time - see the Concessions in Shanghai. [1] Having a huge disparity in the power of the so-called guarantor country as compared to the local host country is just a new take on colonialism.
[edit] However the biggest issue seems to be that it was found unconstitutional, then the judges were evicted and replaced (in what the UN described as an attack on democracy), and then all of a sudden it was constitutional. Telling the locals you know better than they do about how their region should be administered, while giving yourself the ability to exploit the living crap out of them thanks to your privileged position of being a foreigner is roughly how colonialism was carried out.
[edit] It's particularly relevant that Paul Romer proposed this at a Ted talk and then talked the Hondurans into it - citing Hong Kong as an example of a well-run charter city. Remember what happened there two years ago through present? [2] If that's your contemporary flagship... Yeah, that's pretty much what's going to happen to all of these soon-to-be-catastrophes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_International_Settlem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city_(economic_develop...