On the city on the hill – Kojo Koram in TLS:

‘Our historical vision has been trained to recognize the ebb and flow of national sovereignty over the course of the twentieth century, and this has obscured our ability to track new capitalist relations of production. It is a sign of broad-minded erudition to be able to name all 193 United Nations member states, or the presidents of the Economic Community of West African States, but not, equivalently, to identify the special economic zones of China or the CEO of an investment manager such as Vanguard. The allure of sovereignty projects an image of homogenous political power, captured in the narrative of the nation state. In this vision all territory is enfolded within the nation and every nation is represented by the singular state. Every person is a citizen of a state and has a pathway towards exercising their democratic will. Of course, such a cosy parable of political representation is far from the whole truth. Refugees, asylum seekers and communities from disputed or unrecognized territories fall through the cracks of the nation-state model in one direction, while flags of convenience, golden passports and offshore bank accounts take advantage of them in another.’

(…)

‘With old Europe drowning in welfarism and much of the rest of the globe quailing before the rise of the developing world, Hong Kong stood as a city on the hill: a rare example of how state power could be used to stop the masses from interfering with the business of making money. Its prioritization of economic over political freedoms created a lucrative context for foreign investment, and Hong Kong became a model of development to be rolled out everywhere from South Africa to London’s Docklands.’

(…)

‘What, ultimately, happens when (as happened in Chicago) a city cannot construct cycle lanes because it is contracted not to undertake any action that might constrain the income generation of parking meters owned by Morgan Stanley?’

(…)

‘Was the world of nations the apotheosis of human political organization? Not for the ideologues we encounter in Crack-Up Capitalism and Our Lives in Their Portfolios. Their dream is of a world in which sovereignty and citizenship are for sale, and in which microstates bid for companies and investors to be allowed to move into their jurisdiction and take over operations that were once the preserve of public entities and elected politicians. The point of carving out these gaps in public authority is to fix the market, not to free it; to gamify the economy so that a return on investment is guaranteed whether the investor performs well or not. Perhaps capitalism does indeed work best under authoritarianism. For liberalism implies open competition and, as the Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel famously said, “Competition is for losers”.’

Read the article here.

Peter Thiel might be fascist, but he has a sense of humor.

Here’s my article on Thiel, alas only in Dutch.

Citizenship for sale is not the problem, the problem is the price.

Or is the happy or unhappy accident we call birth a better way to distribute citizenship?