By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
The news is full of stories of Detroit, and understandably so. It’s an unmitigated disaster. But I know how to fix it.
Seriously, I do!
I have a plan that would cost the state of Michigan nothing – not a cent. It wouldn’t cost DC anything either, and it would turn Detroit into the most thriving city in North America. As a bonus, it would give the remaining property owners in Detroit a financial windfall.
Here’s the plan:
- The federal government (in writing) forbears taxes, regulations, laws, and impositions for a hundred years to the area of the current municipality of Detroit and to all persons and commercial entities resident there.
- The government of the state of Michigan forbears taxes, regulations, laws, and impositions for a hundred years to the area of the current municipality of Detroit and to all persons and commercial entities resident there.
- All municipal government agencies within Detroit are disbanded.
- All state and federal offices within the city of Detroit are disbanded.
- The federal government guarantees that entry and exit to/from Detroit will remain unchanged from the current conditions, and that no obligations will be placed upon residents of Detroit in any other place.
- Federal and state governments immediately cease all payments to residents of Detroit. (They may resume payment to those persons if and when they are no longer resident in Detroit.)
The final legal document would be more complex than this, but those are all the main points necessary.
What this plan does is to return Detroit to its natural state – to the way it was managed when the first settlers arrived. (In other words, not managed at all.)
And think of the money that will be saved by Michigan and the feds. Billions per year.
And Then…
And then we have a free for all… and a good one. Think of Hong Kong, but easy to get to.
Businesses would begin to relocate the next morning. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. The people who still owned and lived in their homes would be offered lots of money for their properties.
Libertarians and conservatives, disgusted by the gang in DC, would load up and drive to Detroit. Productive former residents would return. Thousands of opportunity-seekers, anarcho-capitalists, and pot-smoking hippies would be gathering their money and buying property.
Detroit would, within only a few years, become the coolest city on the planet – by FAR.
But, But…
“But there won’t be any police!”
“There won’t be any courts!”
“It will be non-stop murder, death, and mayhem!”
You wanna bet? Do ya? (And you don’t think Detroit has non-stop mayhem already?)
The people who come to Detroit would be coming to escape from their chains and to be productive. These are precisely the kinds of people who clean up a town. And with no taxes to pay for a hundred years, they’d have plenty of extra money to spend on whatever services (security or otherwise) that they wanted.
The Truth
The truth, of course, is that the state and fed guvs will never agree to a plan like this one, for a single reason:
Because they fear it would succeed.
They’ll let every last person in Detroit rot before they’ll let a group of producers live free of their chains.
Detroit returned to its natural state would expose the great lie of the government game – that we can’t survive without them.
[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]
My first choice would be about 10,000 daisy cutter fuel air bombs
Actually that’s a lot more complicated than my 2 step solution.
1. Mandatory assembly in Detroit of all leading national political and civilian progressive leadership for the express purpose of correcting the problem in Detroit and growing nationwide.
2. Drop quantity 2 MOABS in center of convention. Problem solved….
The population of Detroit would dispers into neighboring cities (where they still get welfare) and start the process of “Detroiting” them.
I would propose the opposite solution:
1. Increase welfare benefits to residents of Detroit until they are the best in the nations.
2. Build more cheap housing
3. Encourage welfare recipients to move there
It would be like a welfare preserve. Sacrifice one doomed city to save a hundred others.
I know OH, IL, IN wouldn’t like all the business that would escape to Detroit. I wonder how far away the effect would be felt?