Your Next Government?

Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations
By Tom W. Bell
Published in October 2017
286 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

This may be the first time that I review a book where I know the author. I met Tom W. Bell in 2014, nearly 8 years ago, and have known him as a professional colleague and acquaintance since then.

I only read the first third before I got bored; but I think that others might get more out of it. To me, almost nothing was new.

Tom W. Bell’s discussion of SEZs is pretty good, especially when he covers US FTZs. He also has a neat little segment where he talks about Fordlandia. However, he focuses way too much on highly theoretical projects like Seasteads. This makes his writing seem like an academic fever dream rather than a practicable solution. This is too bad because there are many very real and tangible case studies - the Holy Roman Empire, Delos, Dejima, Shenzhen, Dubai Multi Modal Commodity Center, the Hanseatic League (which he briefly mentions), the Geneva Freeport, etc…

So far I haven’t found a single book that covers the very real and very useful examples of charter cities; most tend to naval-gaze. I need to write that book.