In parallel with what you’ve proposed, there has been a lot of growth in the number and size of special economic zones/free zones, and (overall) greater freedom in them thanks to increased tax and regulatory competition.

Opportunities exist to accelerate moves in the directions you’ve described — by building in success-sharing sysems that generates early wins as well as enormous long-term gains for the sponsoring areas.

Initial benefits, following formation of a (privately developed) free area, can include access to new learning and eHealthcare resources in the surrounding communities through microvoucher programs. Experiences of Kyrgyz eCenters and the Horizon Lanka school in Sri Lanka show how rapidly microvouchers can be implemented and scale up.

Longer term alignment of interests can be assured through progressive “Build-Operate-Transfer” (BOT) concessions in which private developers convey equity in the zone development venture to pre-designated stakeholders in the community.

In such concession agreements, an alignment of interests is established — the more that private investors/developers are freed of political predation, the more valuable are the assets conveyed to local stakeholders.

The sharing of asset gains from the free zone concessions can lead to steady enlargement of the free areas. The BOT partnerships can vesting workers in early stages as co-owners of later stage BOT development oncessions. This can produce political support for concentric growth of the initial free zone oncession areas.

Scenarios for this approach are explored at http://www.openworld.com and http://www.athousandnations.com .

Best,

Mark Frazier
Openworld
@openworld (twitter)

I would go slow on the anti-HIV medications as a desirable item of exchange. Look for some other possibilities.

Anti-HIV medications are on their way out. As we find out that HIV was never properly isolated and that Aids is probably not a viral illness at all, the highly toxic “anti-HIV” meds look more and more like a bad deal.

If you want to look into that controversy further, start on my health site

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/

by searching AIDS and/or HIV in the archives. There are numerous articles that would tend to confirm what I just said about the value or rather lack of it of anti-HIV medications.

Otherwise – great idea.

http://anthropik.com/2006/07/a-pirates-life-for-me/

http://anthropik.com/2007/05/a-pirates-life-for-me-ii-opening-the-map/

Two great pieces on maps, closing and opening.