Welcome to Belle Isle: A Proposed “Commonwealth” in Michigan

The “Commonwealth of Belle Isle” is the brainchild of Michigan real estate developer Rod Lockwood.  The concept is to raise one billion dollars in order to purchase the uninhabited 982-acre Belle Isle situated between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario and then create an independent self-sustaining community.  According to the project’s website they aim to:

Build a supercharged community with its own laws, customs, transportation systems, taxation and currency, transforming Belle Isle into the “Midwest Tiger,” rivaling Singapore and Hong Kong as an economic miracle.  Served by a monorail, Belle Isle is a walking community, with restricted hours for vehicles.  With emphasis on great planning and architecture, people from all over the world come to Belle Isle, to be part of its freedom and opportunity culture.

So I have read the FAQs on Belle Isle on the project’s website and I have two primary concerns.

First, I really dislike the idea that all of the 35,000 citizens expected to populate the island must pay $300,000 to buy-in.  While I understand the need for funding, I also think that a community of people that have already accumulated that much wealth will not be particularly dynamic or interesting.  I would personally have maybe 50% of the island populated in that manner, with the remaining spots available to those that have a particular skill, intellect or creativity to offer the community irrespective of their age or bank account.

*Correction:  A reader brought to my attention that 20% of Belle Isle is to consist of citizens with reduced or no citizen fees.  I still think 20% is low, but this alleviates some of my concerns.

Second, the question that addressed what the primary businesses of the island will be states: “The primary industries are expected to be finance, insurance and investments.”  I understand that such a small space is conducive to such industry, but really?  In a world where finance and banking are already too large, complex and intertwined, this does not sound particularly appealing.

Those concerns aside, I do think we should all encourage experiments like this throughout these United States to see what works and what doesn’t.  Different “commonwealths” can decide for themselves what sort of economic or social compact they want to live under.  If they decide they don’t like it, they can move to another one.  Any experiment that offers a high degree of decentralization and freedom for people to live as they want is something I am in favor of, as I outlined in my Mission Statement for 2013.  After all, that is what this country was founded on and we have totally lost sight of it.

I like one passage in particular from Detroit New’s coverage of the project:

But would the federal government support the establishment of this new commonwealth?

The typical first reaction is probably not. Too big an idea. But then big problems need big ideas, as well as men and women of vision and courage. Hopefully, there are a few of those left in an America, itself born of vision and courage.

For more information on this project, check out their website here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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7 thoughts on “Welcome to Belle Isle: A Proposed “Commonwealth” in Michigan”

  1. Hi Mike,
    I think this would be a grand experiment. Regarding one of your complaints, see this from their FAQ:
    “That said, Belle Isle will be a place where high earners and people of wealth will want to live. But so will people of modest means and they will be welcome. Twenty percent of Belle Isle residents will be invited to live on the island with reduced or no citizen fees.”

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  2. Finance – Same old same old.

    Insurance – Insurance is a scam. Mandatory insurance is a bigger scam. Same as finance. Companies saying they will insure when there is never enough money for real insurance.

    Investments – What kind of investments are these going to be in this new world?

    If they say banks on the island can only lend money that currently exists, then ok. If the insurance companies only insure what their backing is on a 1-1 basis, then fine.

    Sounds like a group of rich people want a new island to populate, want to write their own laws and need 20% servants.

    If they want to really redefine how we live they need to do better than just wanting to become a new Singapore or Hong Kong. Their thinking is just more of the same old same old and that’s something we need less of in the future.

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  3. this smells of a ponzi scheme to me

    “cities” are an organic function`of an econimy you can not simply “create them” any more than gooberment spending can create jobs you will have better luck pushing a string.

    @ mike how will this enclave function in a system that is in the prosess of enforced balkanization?
    because make no mistake call it “defacto sucession”. fedral contraction , balkanization OR decentralisation moving forward we will be increasingly isolated and dependant on LOCAL farming with VERY short suply chains
    you should read up on what j h cunsler is saying about devloping yet more suberbian enclaves at this point :”they are a dead end” “they have NO future” are the kindest coments he has on the subject , and i doubt the walkable cityscape will change his opinion in this case , way too litle WAY too late!

    most of the EXISTING cities in the US of A will DIE the second that “just on time suply chain” goes up in flames. and that will be VERY soon , far sooner than people understand .
    peak oil is causing the fuel suply chain to consume its self in order to sustain delivery at prices that result in “demand destruction” and a positive feedback cycle of price spikes and consumer pullback is litraly resulting in explosions and refinery fires NO new equipment is being purchased and old equipment being run hard and geting just enuff maintainence to keep it running ……..untill it explodes resulting in a price spike that restarts the cycle……….that my friend is an industry with BOTH feet in the grave.

    the funny part is that so called capitalists forgot that a “price” is ONLY what the market will bare NOT what “profiters” gouge it up to. the market is and has been saying over and over again that it will NOT accept 80$ to 100$ a barell oil as an energy source , demand destruction is now graphing out as a VERTICAL drop. soon the fuel will be spoiling in the tanks and stations wil be closing down as the market denies them acess to even the minium cash flow required to stay open and just like that “just in time” is GONE and long distance acess to food with it and there are NO stored suplies PERIOD, lmao “food storage is THE main reason for society to even put up with “gooberment” in the first place and they botched it up as bad or worse than bablon egypt and the myans combined and the result will be identical but on a global scale…………for better and far worse in this case we feed a hell of a precentage of the planet off the us industrial farm model , and what we dont provide is still at the end of a suply chain some where and far from where it is consumed.
    .

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  4. Seems to me that 20% a is really low percentage for support people. Think pyramid, 1 wealthy guy at the top. A couple of business owners below, then a whole lot of service people to clean, wait tables, store clerks etc.. Good luck getting them to commute from the mainland.

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  5. First, the idea of an “Anti-Corruption Group” already sounds like they’re building corruption into the government from the outset. Oversight committees do two things: It gives committee members power and it removes their accountability. How do you legally define corruption? Sure bribing is bad. What about campaign donations? What about soft corruption? How do you lawfully and consistently prevent that?

    Second, the nature of a limited government does not include strict architectural standards, mandates on languages, and restrictions on how people travel. Belle Isle have already determined there is a market need for a monorail before the city has even been built. This is the very hubris that the U.S. federal government has!

    What’s worse, they dictate that their education system is going to be two private schools competing with one another. What if one goes bankrupt? Who get’s to be the next school owners? For that matter, who picks the first owners? What if a third school thinks they can do it better? Will the state stop them? Who says “schools” are the best market solution for education?

    Third, they speak about how this city believe in this and that. At some horrifying point the government will realize that they can’t control what social principles people value. Then the decision will be made whether or not to abandon some of their limited-government principles to preserve the rest. I’ll let history advise you how that choice will go. I can already hear the argument “Well, so many of us live on a tiny island. Sacrifices need to made to maintain order.”

    Finally, something very Orwellian caught my eye here, and I think it really represents the doublethink going on:

    “Actually, the word “Government” is discouraged and replaced with the word “Service” in the naming of buildings.”

    Are we so lost that we have forgotten what liberty truly is? We cannot let things like this be the standard bearers of freedom! When this fails spectacularly to the whims and wiles of corrupted power brokers (and it will) we cannot let others think that this was the example of liberty.

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  6. A few things.

    First, since when does that pesky little piece of paper called the Constitution have anything to do with anything, besides, I heard its outdated.

    Second, it appears island admission will be similar to Ivy League college, name, net worth, country club affiliation. Bring your capital, huh Rod. Does that include funds from an Casey Serin “I can fog a mirror” liar loan special?

    Third, I get the gut feeling author Rod Lockwood might prefer the title of Czar or Prefect of the new island oasis. Maybe his outfit can handle the land development or brokerage for a small handling fee. Maybe his children can sit on the Anti-corruption Oversight committee, where neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing with any fines paid (cost of doing business) to be split among committee members.

    Better yet, I’ll simply quote former Pres. George W. Bush “if this were a dictatorship it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator”. Same crony-capitalism concepts to perpetuate the Ponzi (aka FIRE economy) as we have now, only dressed up in a new Canali suit! Sounds like a wonderful utopia to live in so long as you are Rod Lockwood or a blood relative.

    HD
    Prudens Speculari

    Reply

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