Honduras is not your playpen

X hosted a fairly good, if slanted, take on what's happening to that ancap utopia on one of those Mosquito Coasts: @GarrisonLovely re Próspera. Someone been readin' the Bard of Avon.

Back in 2009 Honduras had a Leftist President, Zelaya, who was consolidating power to himself in violation against some Forever-Clauses in Honduras' own Constitution. The Honduran Supreme Court and Army - without any help from the American government which itself was one-party Left at the time - threw out Zelaya.

Aside: this is where I quit paying attention to an important Latin American country. I allow this as an oversight on my part. I take solace in how @GarrisonLovely has - also mistakenly, one hopes - omitted any of that.

The new government, Constitutional in origin if not much supported by Hondurans, then did some extraConstitutional activities of its own. Namely, they gave up some territory to "Próspera", headed by Andreessen Horowitz among others. (Razib Khan's X is telling me that Andreessen Horowitz recently took another L at Miami; they're closing that two-year-old office.) We're talking potentially a third of the land. Honduras' new President Xiomara Castro, who is Leftist but pretends not to be Zelaya, wants this land back.

I say "pretends" because X.C. is using blood-and-soil demagoguery... like a Chavez or Maduro. This is clearly an emotive appeal to populism. On the other hand... Texans might not like an "ancap" colony at, oh, Freeport which just-so-happened to be entirely led by Chinese nationals. Certainly one could "ask a Mexican" about how it works when thousands of yanquis move in and take over the economy; they had a whole revolución about it.

Próspera is suing for 2/3 of Honduras' budget. The court is obviously not Honduran; a takeback would be post facto but you know how LatAm courts are. Nah; this is going to the CAFTA-DR treaty court and, we hear, on trade issues the Biden Administration sits to the Obama Administration's Right (and - credit is due - to Trump's Right). In this court, Próspera might win - the judgement would bankrupt Honduras. Why might they win? I suspect because they've sunk a lot of money in infrastructure, and also because X.C.'s rhetoric is annoying the courts. Zelaya had done that at home and look what happened to him.

Much as I distrust X.C., I cannot affirm any more trust in this Próspera adventure. Marc Andreessen and his boys should take the L at Honduras as they have at Miami, and bug out. Honduras is not your lab for "effective altruism" experiments. Improving Honduras has to be done by Hondurans, like El Salvador is best-improved by a Salvadorean.