A brand-new experimental “City of the Future” is being built from the ground up in Abu Dhabi, financed primarilyâ??over 80%â??by private investors:
“We want it to be profitable, not a sunk cost,” says Khaled Awad, who is directing the development of the city. “If it is not profitable as a real-estate development, it’s not sustainable. Then it will never be replicable anywhere else.”
“We will no longer have to guess what the city of the future looks like. In Abu Dhabi, we will be able to see it with our own eyes.”
This is a striking example of an accelerating social-evolutionary shift, first identified in the early twentieth century by inventor and philosopher Spencer Heath, from the traditional non-proprietary (political-coercive-bureaucratic) administration of communities and societies, towards the proprietary (economic-voluntary-entrepreneurial) administration of communities and societies.
Looks like Mulligan’s Valley is gradually becoming reality, and in some of the most unexpected places. On April 15, 2008 libertarian and PayPal founder Peter Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute co-founded by Patri Friedman, son of economist David D. Friedman and grandson of economist Milton Friedman.
Further examples include the explosion of private residential communities, private industrial parks, private entertainment worlds (such as Disney World and Las Vegas entertainment complexes), etc. which now number in the tens of thousands. What is more, these fledgling proprietary communities are increasing in scale and becoming fully generalized communities that provide the full spectrum of community infrastructures and services. The bottom line: traditional not-for-profit bureaucratic political administration is gradually being crowded out by for-profit entrepreneurial economic administration.
Suggested further reading: “The Quickening of Social Evolution” by Heath’s grandson Spencer Heath MacCallum.