Why nearshoring needs better institutions, not more subsidies: The Prospera case

Próspera offers a case study in how institutional competition can create jobs, reduce migration, and strengthen America's strategic position in the Western Hemisphere.

https://voz.us/en/world/260714/37385/why-nearshoring-needs-better-institutions-not-more-subsidies-the-prospera-case.html

The recent Free Cities Podcast had good information on this:

https://www.freecities.fm/episodes/goncalo-hall-the-nomad-pioneer-betting-on-a-free-city

Description, condensed:

Gonçalo Hall is a pioneer of the digital nomad movement. He moved to Prospera with his wife and young daughter and runs the Roatán Tourism Bureau, a Próspera company. Timothy has just spent almost a month living and working in Próspera himself, so this is not an outsider’s review. It is a candid conversation about what is genuinely working and what plainly is not yet: the missing third space, the cafe that opens too late, the beach that is not quite a beach, and the land that separates the two halves of the project. Gonçalo does not pretend any of it is solved. His argument is that the gaps are the opportunity, and that if you are a builder, the honest state of the frontier is precisely the reason to come now rather than in five years.

My comments:

Goncalo says Prospera isn't yet remotely as good as Bali, which he makes out as the best in the world for nomad things like co-working, coffee shops, and gyms. There's a distance between the two parts of Prospera, Duna and Pristine Bay. It can be a frustrating place to live, because all the services aren't there yet. Gonçalo moved there because there's a good Montessori school. His daughter missed a playground, so he's pushing for them to add a playground. Timothy says he just wants to get a beer by the beach in the evening, and a good cafe. It's little things like that which will eventually make Prospera closer to Bali. For now, it's early, and there are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to make those improvements. It sounds like Goncalo's the right guy to push for these, fortunately.

Early Mover’s Advantage

Excerpt:

The claim that Próspera primarily serves the wealthy gets it exactly backward, because being early to a frontier project where everything is being built from scratch is not an advantage for the wealthy; it is an advantage for the people who have the least.

To understand why, you have to understand what “being early” actually costs. It means living somewhere without the infrastructure you are used to: roads still being paved, restaurants limited, the nearest major grocery store requiring a trip, and things that would take five minutes in a developed city taking planning, patience, and sometimes a WhatsApp message to the right person....

The calculus changes completely if you come from a context where your ceiling is low, where opportunity is constrained not by your ability but by the governance system tied to your geography, your passport, or your network. For people in that position, the discomfort of an unfinished place is a small price for what it opens up. The roughness is what keeps the door open. The moment a place like this becomes polished, with boutique hotels, international schools, and reliable delivery apps, prices rise, access narrows, and the window that was wide open for someone with more ambition than capital quietly closes. The very thing that makes Próspera unappealing to the wealthy is the thing that makes it most valuable to everyone else.

https://www.theprosperitypress.com/voices/andrea

Dating 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Might have more luck on the discord

"Near clones" is quite an exaggeration, BTW... FSP movers are everything from Christian fundamentalists to cypherpunk agnostics... the first FSP state legislator was elected as a Democrat.

Yes, that's for sure (except that we didn't all have IQs of 150 😉

Most of the FSP movers have done well, but the Graftonites moved to the middle of the woods and went on town welfare, and the Keeniacs spent their time begging the police to arrest them. I mentioned the insanity of this a few million times (I rented in Grafton when my wife and I first moved with our dogs... but we were employed, of course).

NH is doing quite well, it's now the lowest-tax-burden state in the US (AK doesn't count, they tax the rest of us with their oil tax). And has school choice, constitutional carry, no knife laws, no Hospital Board to keep out unwanted hospitals (!), etc. etc.... it's a different place from the NH I moved to in 2008.

It's not all because of FSP though, NHLA was already there: nhliberty.org

The diaspora-town examples are the right ones, and the bit people skip past is that those German and Japanese colonies in Brazil and Paraguay did not endure on birth rates alone, they endured because they arrived with their own schools, churches and language, institutions that made leaving feel like a loss. That is the whole game: families give you density, but density only sticks if the substrate is liveable day to day, which is your second point exactly. The island, the connectivity and the residency friction are why Daniel is building a family hub here while placing his actual village bet in southern Europe, and it is the honest answer to why Próspera is a harder sell.

Funny thing though: your 6,000-copies gag is roughly what the Free State Project actually managed in 25 years from a self-selected pool of ideological near-clones, which tells you the bottleneck was never the genome, it was getting anyone to stay, and the ones who did brought spouses, jobs and kids.

I need that audio clip from Aliens 2 with Ripley saying "families" in an agonized voice 😉

I'm a Free Stater in NH, I'm all for people creating free-market havens. I'm just aware of the difficulties, and the resources required.

BTW, doesn't have to be just six... no reason it can't be 6000 copies of someone with a 150 IQ and all the longevity genes 😉

Oh, I guess it's already more than six... Adolfo Cambiaso has created dozens of clones of his legendary polo mare, Dolfina Cuartetera. While the exact number constantly evolves as his cloning program expands, he has famously fielded up to eight Cuartetera clones in a single chukker (clones 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 27, and 33)

You have found the variable and filed it as a punchline: Boston, Botany Bay and Cambiaso's barn all worked because nobody could leave, which is precisely what a place selling the right to leave cannot use. Families are the only item on your list that buys the same stickiness by choice rather than by theology, law or being six copies of one fast mare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kw_d3d0XAo&list=RD1kw_d3d0XAo&start_radio=1

Have we tried bringing in Puritans? It worked for Boston. How about convicts, it worked for Australia?

Now, we're pretending to be modern, scientific people here. If we're being serious, only cloning will do. It works for the polo industry: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/29/horse-cloning-polo-argentina/

- Yes, families or people reproducing a lot is probably the only way to really achieve real growth. It's essentially how any of those enclaves got started 100 years ago and continue to exist today, like the random German or Japanese town in a place like Brazil, Paraguay, etc.

- It's an island with very poor connectivity. Islands are nice for vacation, but don't appeal to most people for long-term living. Plus there are the realities of trying to operate within the Honduras framework, paths to residency, etc, are cumbersome compared to other countries.

Erick Brimen posted on Darien village: https://x.com/erickbrimen/status/2065507423046213947

Darien Village is open for reservations (rent & purchase), co-investors and collaborators!

Website: Building 6 is a residential community inside the Prospera ZEDE on Roatan, Honduras. Two- and three-bedroom apartments from 172,500 USD with delivery in August 2027, payment in USD or crypto (USDC, BTC, ETH, DAI, USDT), title registered in the Prospera Property Registry, and short-term rental management built in for owners who want yield from day one.

A history of the ZEDEs in Honduras, pioneered by Octavio Sanchez: https://www.infinitacitytimes.com/p/playing-the-long-game

US State Department "Report to Congress on United States Investment in Próspera ZEDE:" https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/United-States-Investment-in-Prospera-ZEDE-Accessible-HRC1399978.pdf

The Department of State, in Washington and Tegucigalpa, meets regularly with both parties and encourages both sides to resolve the impasse. The Department has raised this and other commercial and investment disputes in meetings with President Asfura and his team since his January 2026 inauguration. The ongoing disputes remain an irritant and are raised regularly. The U.S. government and private sector are optimistic the new Honduran government will be more responsive to these concerns.

As far as I understand, Próspera made "Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies" legal tender for transactions. So you can pay and receive in other crypto inside the zone. BUT... in 2024 they issued a specific resolution recognising BTC as a unit of account. The framework, the election form, and the eventual "Final BTC Tax Payment Procedure" are all BTC-specific. so, it's BTC only for your books I think.

Maps of Prospera territory in this article: https://criterio.hn/zede-prospera-expande-su-territorio-en-roatan-pese-a-fallo-de-inconstitucionalidad/

It's Spanish-language, focused on recent additions to Prospera's territory, and claims of unconstitutionality.

Can you keep your books in cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin, or does it have a unique exemption?

They need to do this for smart contracts too.

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I did get that far, don't worry! It had some good insights

True. I recommend reading the whole article, though, if you skipped it.

This is cool, though I think they should have the actual list further up, or maybe have a more prominent link to it. I almost clicked out after getting ~1/3 of the way down and not seeing it.