Will Private Cities Allow Tech Billionaires to Escape the U.S.?

Draft script:

People with a lot of money get that money by a variety of means. They work hard, they invest wisely, they take advantage of other people, and/or they steal the money from others. Lacking a conscious, these people become millionaires or billionaires by any means necessary.

From Futurism on 9 December 2025 comes an article titled Tech Billionaires Are Starting Private Cities to Escape the United States. The subhead: “Can you imagine being that rich and that miserable?” Here’s the lede, along with another short sentence to complete the opening paragraph: “As economic discontent grows throughout the world, the world’s techno billionaires are heading for the promised land. But first, they’ll have to build it.”

What’s the point? A former chief technology officer of Coinbase shared his perspective at the Network State Conference in Singapore. He referred to the United States as “failing” and called the escape from the U.S. as the “ultimate exit.” He said, “I think it’s fair to say, …, we have a movement.” The movement refers to the startup societies—the ultimate startup company—comprised of “a pro-corporate, anti-government coalition of tech magnates, libertarian idealists, and neoliberal economic theorists.”

The article at Futurism continues with seriously bizarre rationale: “As the Financial Times notes in new reporting on the phenomenon, the movement is indeed growing. What once was the stuff of dystopian fiction like the Bioshock franchise is now the task of some 120 startup societies throughout the world, each scrambling to erect specially-built cities to court billionaires who feel maligned by organized society.” Wait, what? Billionaires feel maligned by organized society? How do you think they became billionaires? That’s right, by relying on an organized society that allows, and even encourages, the ability of wealthy people to accumulate more wealth. You’ll know when the U.S. becomes a socialist state. The U.S. is already a fascist country. I doubt it becomes a socialist country before our species falls into the abyss of extinction.

The article at Futurism describes the relatively recent history of startup societies: “Why tech billionaires and venture capitalists are throwing an ungodly amount of fuel on the fire, startup societies aren’t a new fad.

For decades, libertarians have been dreaming of ways to break free of the bonds of organized society. One notable example is Prospera, a libertarian ‘charter city’ which functions as a free-for all tax haven on the island of Roatán in Honduras. Prospera has courted over $100 million in investments from techno-libertarian figures like Peter Thiel, Adam Draper, and Marc Andreessen.

Though Prospera was originally billed as a private, for-profit-city with low tax rates and extremely lax regulations, the experiment is now circling the drain following the arrest of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández in the US. Though Hernández and his regime allowed Prospera a unique legal foothold in the country, his successor … has made kicking Prospera to the curb a key pillar of her platform.”

The article at Futurism quotes a Nobel-prize winning economist who was instrumental in developing the idea of a charter city in 2012. He criticized Prospera as “living in this libertarian fantasy that … they can be free of the government. That’s not gonna turn out well.”

The bottom line of the story in Futurism is provided by a researcher in cyberlibertarianism at New Zealand’s University of Otago: Can you imagine begin that rich and that miserable? They think they are the grand solutionists that can fix all the problems, but it’s so insular. But just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it won’t inherit the Earth.”

I couldn’t agree more. The wealthiest people are not the most intelligent. The most intelligent people are not the wealthiest. There is more to life than money—much more—and the pursuit of money has personal and societal costs.

I’m not suggesting that poverty is pleasant. My recent personal experience indicates otherwise. However, the rabid pursuit of money is no way to live. It illustrates the difference between surviving and living, the latter of which offers rewards that count, even if those rewards cannot be used to hire others to complete mundane tasks.