Developer pitches $1B commonwealth for Belle Isle
Detroit — As the broken city thinks big and radically about
its future, a developer is stepping forward with a revolutionary idea:
Sell the city's Belle Isle park for $1 billion to private investors who
will transform it into a free-market utopia.
The 982-acre island
would then be developed into a U.S. commonwealth or city-state of 35,000
people with its own laws, customs and currency.
Apparently, the idea for this Heaven on Earth comes from the classic book Belle Isle by Rodney Lockwood, Jr. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. I think it's probably self-published. But you can tell what a serious thinker he is just by looking at his publicity photo:
In the Year Two Thousaaaaaaaand. . . .
Here's what he has to say about his book.
Detroit needs a game changer. The 982 acre island of Belle Isle can be that game changer for Detroit. The book Belle Isle is about that vision.
The setting is Belle Isle, 30 years in the future. Twenty nine years
prior (2013), Belle Isle was sold by the city of Detroit for $1 billion
dollars to a group of investors who believed in individual freedom,
liberty and free markets. They formed their own city-state, with
innovative systems of government, taxation, labor and money. People
soon came from all over the world to be part of this culture of
unlimited opportunity.
So the idea is to buy this public park from the city of Detroit, then secede from Michigan and from the US and become a "city-state," which seems simple enough. Then it just stands to reason that folks from all over the world would naturally want to emigrate to this new country. Why wouldn't they?
Belle Isle became the “Midwest Tiger,” rivaling Singapore as an economic miracle. Although numbering only 35,000 citizens, it generated billions of
dollars in desperately needed economic growth and became a social
laboratory for the western world.
Which is totally not an unrealistic assumption. Why wouldn't this tiny little nation generate billions? You can't prove that it wouldn't, can you Mr. Smartypants?
City officials are likely to reject the plan. But on Jan. 21, supporters
including Mackinac Center for Public Policy senior economist David
Littmann, retired Chrysler President Hal Sperlich and Clark Durant,
co-founder of Detroit's Cornerstone Schools, will present the
Commonwealth of Belle Isle plan to a select group of movers and shakers
at the tony Detroit Athletic Club.
So, a member of far-right kooktank Mackinac Center, a failed Chrysler executive, and one of the leading practitioners of the charter school scam? What could go wrong?
Artist's Rendition
And why are they pitching this idea to "movers and shakers" at some fancy private club? It feels like they know that city government won't go for this but they're going to try to do it anyway.
I hope they do it. I want to see how long it takes for this lunatic paradise to turn from Galt's Gulch into Lord of the Flies.
