• Honduran Supreme Court Kills "Free City" Law

      Posted by John Stossel | October 20, 2012

      I recently reported about an exciting new project in Honduras, which would carve out a small part of the country and allow a private developer to build a city there -- one with a free market government and strong private property rights. (Video here.)

      Unfortunately, the Honduran Supreme Court struck down that law this week .

      Michael Strong, who had a tentative agreement with the Honduran government to build the city, says that the decision leaves "virtually no opportunity for new, innovative Honduran communities envisioned by the [Honduran law.]"

      "We hope and expect that another country will choose prosperity over poverty, but for now advocates of poverty have won in Honduras," Strong says.

      I wish him luck in finding other places to start a "free city." It has worked before. Hong Kong was once just as poor as Africa -- but thanks to a government that enforced property rights but did almost nothing else, it is now even wealthier than the United States.

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      Free Market
      International
      Politics

    • JOHN HAS A NEW BOOK! ORDER TODAY

    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

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