# Crack-Up Capitalism *Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy* (2023) is historian [[Quinn Slobodian]]'s history of the "zone": the [[Special Economic Zone]], free port, tax haven, charter city or gated enclave where a country's ordinary rules are suspended for the benefit of capital. The world had 176 such zones in 1986 and more than 5,400 by 2018. Slobodian's subject is the people who looked at them and saw a political program: a way to have capitalism without democracy. It is the history that *[[The Network State]]* leaves out. The dream of exit did not begin with [[Balaji Srinivasan]] or [[Peter Thiel]]. Slobodian's central point, as reviewers summarize it, is that the zone is not an escape from the state. It is something states build. ## What the book covers | Part | Chapter | Subject | |---|---|---| | I. Islands | 1. Two, Three, Many Hong Kongs | Colonial [[Hong Kong]] as the libertarian ideal. [[Milton Friedman]] held it up in his 1978 television series *Free to Choose* and in 1990 called it the right model for Eastern Europe. It was also the template for China's first zone at Shenzhen | | | 2. City in Shards | London. [[Margaret Thatcher]]'s government created 11 enterprise zones and then [[Canary Wharf]], nicknamed "Hong Kong-on-Thames," while abolishing London's elected council. See [[City of London]] | | | 3. The Singapore Solution | [[Singapore]] as proof that a market economy can thrive under tight political control, and as a model British conservatives kept citing | | II. Phyles | 4. Libertarian Bantustan | [[Ciskei]], an apartheid "homeland" that libertarian advisers led by Leon Louw tried to turn into a low-wage export zone in the 1980s | | | 5–6. The Wonderful Death of a State; Cosplaying the New Middle Ages | The secessionist and neo-medieval strands of libertarian thought, from the neo-Confederate South to nostalgia for the fragmented politics of the Middle Ages | | | 7. Your Own Private Liechtenstein | [[Liechtenstein]] under Prince Hans-Adam II, a tax haven whose monarch won sweeping powers by referendum | | III. Franchise Nations | 8. A White Man's Business Clan in Somalia | Dutch libertarian Michael van Notten's 1990s scheme for tax-free zones in stateless Somalia | | | 9. The Legal Bubble-Domes of Dubai | [[Dubai]]'s free zones, each with its own rules: a kit of legal modules that can be set down anywhere | | | 10. Silicon Valley Colonialism | Charter cities in Honduras, from [[Paul Romer]]'s proposal to [[Próspera]]. See [[Charter City]] | | | 11. A Cloud Country in the Metaverse | Srinivasan's [[Network State]] | ## The argument Three claims run through the book. 1. **Zones are made by states.** They are carved out by governments, usually strong ones, and they depend on police, courts and borders. The market radicals who praise them are not against the state. They are against the voters. 2. **The admirers are not fringe.** Friedman, Thatcher's ministers and a generation of think-tank economists praised places with economic freedom and little or no democracy. Thiel's 2009 statement that freedom and democracy are no longer compatible is the tradition speaking plainly, not a break from it. 3. **The model came home.** A device first tried in colonies and poor countries was brought back to London, and is now proposed for the United States as [[Freedom Cities]]. ## Reception Reviewers on the left praised it; *The New Republic* called it incisive. Political scientist Henry Farrell recommended it highly while faulting it for lumping very different places together and for not asking why some zones succeed. The conservative journal *Law & Liberty* objected to the book's dismissive tone toward its subjects. ## Why it's on the map This is the best single source for reading the projects on the [[Network State Experiments Roster]] as the latest round of an old game, and for testing their claims against a record: every zone in the book rests on a host government, and several ended when the host changed its mind. ## See Also - [[Quinn Slobodian]] — the author - [[Muskism]] — his 2026 book with Ben Tarnoff - [[City of London]] — one of the oldest precedents - [[Charter City]] — the Honduras chapter's subject - [[Exit over Voice]] — the strategy the book historicizes - [[Neoliberalism]] — Slobodian's larger subject