The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What If Beck’s Experiment. . .Works?

Posted on | January 26, 2013 | 30 Comments

by Smitty

His proposed $2-billion city would be based on a free-market, limited government model. No location has been pegged down, but Mr. Beck has visited “three possible sites in three different states” and has spoken to two governors, said Mr. Beck’s TheBlaze TV website.
The self-sustaining city would include a ranch for food production, a media centre, a multi-denominational mission centre, a theme park, a research and development centre, a library, parks and baseball diamonds. It would have a communal marketplace that would serve as a public space for conducting small business and sharing ideas. Americans could either live in the city’s residential area or just come to visit.

If Rand’s book is any guide, the public sector will hate this, and every aspect of the Imperial Fed will turn on this and destroy it. Starting with the EPA, and running the gamut. Both as a personal kneecapping of Beck, and as an example for anyone else with the means to explore liberty.

One hopes to be proven in error there.

via NetizenKane

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Comments

  • http://twitter.com/lonelycon lonely conservative

    Intriguing idea, but then I went and read the whole article. Beck was quoted as saying there would be no Gap or Ann Taylor stores. So how would the community be based on freedom if some businesses are ruled out before the city is even formed? That sounds like something liberal mayors would say about having a business like Chic Fil A in their cities.

  • Wombat_socho

    Three gets you five somebody hooked up with Glenn is going to make a killing selling space in the mall on the outskirts of Independence. ;)

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Planned cities have a poor track record. The free market aspect is interesting but it is still subject to federal interference. But good luck…I guess.

  • http://www.facebook.com/fritz.katz.5 Fritz Katz

    It’s already been tried, many times. The Mormons did it with Salt Lake City. Disney did it with Celebration Florida:

    http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2011/08/01/how-disney-s-dream-of-building-epcot-the-city-sank-in-lake-buena-vista.aspx

  • Wombat_socho

    I’m not sure where you get that. Salt Lake City, Reston, Columbia (Maryland, not SC) and Greenbelt have all done moderately well. Brasilia doesn’t seem to have done too badly either.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    We need a whole state.

  • http://www.leftbankofthecharles.com/ Charles

    Under the benign dictatorship of Glenn Beck.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    I don’t see any mention of people being able to own their own piece of property. Take away property rights and you assure yourself of failure.

  • bobbymike34

    The best place to show where free markets and limited government works is in the states. A rich state like Texas has to someday say to the Federal government we don’t need any of your money so we are going to do things on our own.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    While I have sometimes smiled at Glenn Beck’s sudden discoveries of ideas and principles I knew forty years or more ago, much in the way a child’s wonder pleases me, the idea that he could so much as bring the “Vision thing” to a project to build a “self-sustaining city and theme park hybrid” – whatever that even means – is laughable.

    He talks about “freedom” and “American dreams” but no colleges or GAP stores allowed, and the “free” citizens will be funding “learning” centers for public officials from around the country.

    Mr. Beck, you keep using that word “freedom.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

    One area not addressed in the article linked is the financing. I’m guessing he is at least $1.999 billion short of his goal so far, and doubt the pledges he does have are firm.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Lots of towns and cities in the Midwest were planned, too. Outside a small town in Indiana, I had to take a dirt road between corn fields to get where I was going. Driving along, there was a narrower dirt lane cutting off as a cross street into the corn fields. It had a street sign “194th St NW” or something like that.

    There were no shoulders or ditches on the dirt road I was on. But when that cornfield turns into a subdivision in another century or so, they will be ready for it!

  • Wombat_socho

    This is what the Free State Project was supposed to be all about, but the libertarians are having a hard time with the immigrants from Taxachusetts who forget why they left the Bay State the minute they cross the state line.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    **Gasp** no Gap or Ann Taylor!

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Salt Lake City and Glenn Beck…hmmmm, what do they have in common? Do you think Beck can claim victory if he builds New SLC in Texas?

    As for Brazilia, you mean that city planned by a Communist that sat empty in the Jungle for 40 years?

    As for those other places? I am not even sure what they are.

    But if that crazy genius Beck builds Disneyland in Texas, that might work!

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Shawny-Lee/100001989148504 Shawny Lee

    I found this project interesting, but the properties are lifetime lease and I’d like to know more about who actually owns the property.
    http://iiicitadel.com/index.html

  • rightactions

    Mr. Adjoran, you keep abusing that word ‘freedom’…

    If you don’t want to live in Beck Town nobody will force you.

  • Mario Mirarchi

    Glenn Beck — The new Jim Jones?

  • SDN

    Actually, Texas has said that in a number of things, most notably on joining Obamacare. One overlooked aspect of the Roberts decision was the ruling that the Feds couldn’t use the threat of withholding current Medicare / Medicaid appropriations as a club to force Texas to do that. It will be interesting to see if that precedent can be used to knock that mechanism out of other areas…. and what else the states will start saying no to as a result.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Happens every time.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Well put, Adj.

    We also have to remember that the best communities arise out of the uncoordinated actions of individuals. Experience is one of the best teachers. Towns founded in error will inevitably become ghost towns.

    The best thing, for those of us who want to restore freedom and liberty, to do is move to one of several states where there is still a basic assumption in play that The Constitution means something and build enough strength within said states to mount a resistance to the national government, just as the American Colonies did against the British Government.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Any such project that does not allow for people to own, use, and dispose of private property is doomed to fail because property ownership is a pillar of liberty and freedom.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Well…I don’t know if we can go that far, but, since he discovered that he’s going blind, he has started acting messianic.

  • http://twitter.com/ilovegrover Thane_Eichenauer

    And yet many a mall has dozens of businesses few to none of which own their own property. There are plenty of productive doctors and nurses who rent their property until and unless they are ready to buy a residence. The benefit of any given property can be assigned to a renter in a manner than benefits both parties.

  • http://twitter.com/ilovegrover Thane_Eichenauer

    So long as the guard posts at the East Beckistan border don’t shoot escapees I don’t see much need to be concerned.

  • http://twitter.com/ilovegrover Thane_Eichenauer

    As that is needed is enough freedom in any place, shape or form.
    http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/25/honduran-free-city-plan-might-be-alive-a

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    If Disney couldn’t pull off Epcot, I don’t see how Beck can pull this off. The problem will come with the first set of voters who want to vote themselves other people’s labor.

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    Obtuse, much?

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    Brasilia has done well for the same reason DC is doing well right now; it’s a one-company town and that “company” can take wealth from the rest of the country at gunpoint.

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