There are other upsetting passages in this story in Mother Jones about Pax Silica, our imperial government’s latest colonialist project, but this bit about one of Network State’s autonomous zones in Honduras really stood out to me:
Adjacent to the zone sits Crawfish Rock, an indigenous village of the GarĂfuna people whose residents told the Guardian in 2022 that PrĂłspera’s creators had originally pitched it as a “real estate and community development project.” Only later did the GarĂfuna discover the plans to create an autonomous city where the amount of acreage landowners hold determine what they’re allowed to vote on. In 2022, the villagers became embroiled in disputes with PrĂłspera over drinking water; that same year, Honduran President Xiomara Castro made moves to end the project. PrĂłspera’s backers sued the country for $11 billion, roughly one-third of the country’s GDP.
The amount of acreage a landowner holds determines what they’re allowed to vote on.
JFC.
We keep reliving the same shitty stories, over and over again without end, because we continue to allow a few people to own everything. Whether that kind of wealth (and the power that comes with it) naturally attracts the shittiest of us or makes even the best of us shitty, or both—it’s probably both—we end up with a bunch of evil shitheads running everything.
