This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 17th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown.

Prospera is a special economic zone in the country of Honduras,

but it gets to shed a great deal of the regulation

that otherwise would govern that area, and its proponents like J Robertson call it the freest

city in the Western Hemisphere.

We spoke in Memphis last month.

When people think about cities or counties or states,

they think, oh, well, there's lines on a map

and the rules are different. Just by virtue of the fact that the line is there

on the map that there are different people who run things but it takes so it takes a little

while to get your head around the idea of a project like Prospera.

So can you describe that as quickly as possible?

I've spoken with your colleague, Joel Bumgar, quite a while back back people can dig that episode up if they want to but if you

had to describe it quickly what is it how does it work?

Absolutely so we've partnered with the government of Honduras to create a special economic zone that is

structured in Honduran law much like a municipality, except it has much broader legal

autonomy than most municipalities.

You can think of it like a city with all of the powers that are usually

delegated to the federal or state level, also governed at the local level.

And we've created a new model for governance

built on free market principles

...