As the bold “TED” logo dissolves into a flurry of red dots, a slightly nasal voice asks us to examine a picture and consider the puzzle it presents.^[1] ‘These African students are doing their homework under streetlights at the airport in the capital city because they don’t have electricity at home.’ He singles one out and gives him a name, ‘Nelson.’ Then he wagers, ‘I’ll bet Nelson has a cell phone’. There lies the puzzle: ‘Why is it that Nelson has access to a cutting-edge technology, like the cell phone, but doesn’t have access to a 100-year-old technology for generating electric light in the home?’ 

Paul Romer has the answer. ‘In a word, the answer is “rules”.’ According to him, bad rules can block the kind of win-win solutions that allow new technologies to reach people like Nelson. In Romer’s view, government regulations force electric companies to sell subsidized energy at a loss. Unlike privately run cell phone providers, these utilities have little incentive to expand and provide electricity to Nelson’s home. The real challenge, he argues, is figuring out how to change these rules. “Are there rules we can develop for changing rules?” he asks.

To illustrate his point, Romer displays a world map, highlighting bright and dark areas—where electricity flows and where it doesn’t. He zooms into Hong Kong, a beacon of prosperity compared to the darker mainland China. He credits the British administration for Hong Kong’s economic success and explains how China, upon embracing market-driven reforms, replicated its model to create free-market zones. The key, Romer suggests, is allowing people to “opt in” to better governance, attracting foreign investment and fostering innovation. Small villages lack the scale to create prosperity, while entire nations are too unwieldy. The solution to both Nelson’s predicament and global poverty, Romer argues, is to establish Charter Cities.

Romer’s project depends on lawiness. 

Mathiness and Lawiness 

Lawiness derives from the concept of ‘mathiness’, a concept introduced by Paul Romer.^[2] Romer shot to fame in 1990 when he published his theory on ‘endogenous growth’, essentially, the idea that growth derives from internal causes, like ‘ideas, knowledge and innovation’.^[3] Later, Romer proposed the idea of mathiness to explain why ‘growth theory has made no scientific progress towards consensus’.^[4] To reclaim growth theory and economics as a science, he argues that: 

mathiness lets academic politics masquerade as science. Like mathematical theory, mathiness uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in natural versus formal language and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content.^[5]

Mathiness involves ‘broad verbal claims that are disconnected from any formal analysis’ and ‘incentives in these models motivate neither discovery nor diffusion, agents exchange ideas in the same way that gas molecules exchange energy—involuntarily, through random encounters’.^[6]

Like mathiness, lawiness lets political economics masquerade as a type of unbiased, neutral and reasonable view about law and government. It blends words and concepts in a way that feels authoritative, but instead of drawing precise connections, it blurs distinctions – shifting between common and technical language, or between theoretical claims and empirical reality. By offering an oversimplified model of law, history, colonialism, and global dynamics, lawiness sacrifices nuance, values, and collective decision-making for the illusion of economic progress. It is the oversimplification of lawiness that makes such political-economic views so compelling.

While lawiness relates to ‘neoliberal legality’,^[7] it operates differently. Lawyers undeniably play a role in advancing neoliberalism, but lawiness primarily stems from how political economists discuss law, rules, and governance – relying on vague, oversimplified, alluring concepts. It marks the divide between thoughtful legal analysis and superficial, partisan arguments that serve to preserve or gain power that conceal more than they reveal.

Good rules facilitate choice

Lawiness is most easily demonstrated when people claim that good laws provide choices and bad laws involve coercion. The Democracy Fund uses this type of lawiness to describe vaccine mandates.^[8] To make this point, they rely on a fanciful hypothetical: 

Imagine a robber asking you to choose between your money or your life. You give the robber your money because you want to live. Are you being forced to give the robber your money? Yes or no….[T]he consequences of not turning over your money is so terrible, the robber coerces you to do so. Mandates amount to coerced choice.

The hypothetical robber scenario is then juxtaposed to supposedly real, empirically sound scenarios that uphold the ‘ethical concept of free choice’: in law and medicine,‘[n]on-consensual (including coerced) medical treatment can even be an assault or battery’.^[9]

This argument leans on two overly simplistic hypotheticals, overlooking nuance and complexity. It dismisses public health concerns and fails to justify why individual choice should take precedence over collective well-being or other important values. Worse, it disregards the best available scientific evidence on vaccines. Building weak, oversimplified scenarios reinforces a false binary between coercion and consent – an appealing but ultimately misleading narrative.

Choice is backed by legal coercion

I say to a man, “Pay me a thousand dollars, and when I meet you on the road walking I will use sufficient care to stop my car or to steer it so that it will not hit you; otherwise I will do nothing about it.” Is that a “threat” or a “promise”?^[10]

Over a century ago, Robert Hale challenged the idea that law can cleanly separate choice from coercion. Laws define property ownership, determining who controls resources and who is excluded. By granting property owners the right to exclude others, the legal system ensures that those without property must work for wages to survive—effectively coercing them into economic dependence. Contracts, too, are upheld by law, but because property owners start from a position of advantage, they can dictate terms that favor them. Workers, lacking alternative means of survival, have little choice but to accept lower wages and unfavorable conditions. Yet, mainstream economic thought continues to frame coercive legal structures as protectors of individual choice, property rights, and labor freedom.

Despite Hale’s insights being widely known for over a century, they are often ignored for political convenience. Overlooking them paves the way for “lawiness” – the tendency to promote appealing but oversimplified legal and economic narratives that obscure deeper systemic realities.

Romer’s Lawiness

Romer’s lawiness is on full display in his Ted Talk. His arguments rely on oversimplifications and misleading metaphors that obscure deeper political and economic realities. Take, for instance, the image he presents of “Nelson,” a student studying under streetlights. That photo actually comes from a BBC article titled Fuel for Thought in Guinea,^[11] which tells a different story. The article identifies the students as Mamadou and Lamarana, two boys reading outside because of energy shortages. It does not mention cell phones. Romer conveniently frames this as a failure of public utilities, ignoring the broader complexities of Guinea’s economic struggles to make his vision of privatization seem appealing.

Guinea’s troubles are complicated. After a bloodless coup, General Lansana Conté turned to international financial institutions (IFIs) for economic support, leading to the implementation of a structural adjustment program (SAP).^[12]Conté wanted to build hydroelectric dams, but IFIs deemed the project financially unviable. Instead, SAPs instituted a neoliberal agenda, pushing Guinea toward austerity and a mining-based extractive economy. When global commodity prices fell in the early 1990s, Guinea’s mining revenues plummeted. Mining companies then renegotiated tax rates, further reducing state revenue.^[13] By the early 2000s, the country was in crisis. The image of Mamadou studying under streetlights is, in part, a direct result of SAP failures. 

Ignoring that complexity and history, Romer reinforces his argument by comparing Guinea and other “dark spaces” to Hong Kong. In doing so, Romer repeats Milton Friedman’s and other neoliberal myths about Hong Kong.^[14] He recycles these myths and mixes them with the failures of neoliberal SAPs to advance an even more extreme, privatized version of neoliberalism, charter cities. Although he is doubling down on failed ideas, it appears new and novel because it supposedly provides choices, an ‘opt-in’ model, for leaders and individuals. 

Romer’s lawiness sounds intuitive and appealing, but – unlike mathiness – it has real-world consequences. Romer is a good salesman, and after shopping his idea around the world, a charter city project stalled in Madagascar.^[15] Then, a new opportunity arose following a coup d’état in Honduras.^[16] Newly installed President Porfirio Lobo Sosa did not seek out advice from IFIs – he sought our Romer. In a later Ted Talk, Romer describes their initial meeting where he began explaining the value/cost of cities and showing the ‘scientific’ evidence, but he was quickly stopped and asked to show his TED Talk.^[17] Chuckles from the audience. This ‘very convincing TED talk’ ultimately helped sell the idea of Región Especial de Desarrollo (REDs), or special development regions, to the Honduran Congress.^[18]

Although Romer eventually stopped working with Honduras, his idea took on a life of its own. REDs led to the creation of Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (ZEDEs or zones for employment and economic development) and then a venture capitalist-backed charter city, Honduras Próspera. Following a nationwide anti-ZEDE movement, Honduras’s new President Xiomara Castro and Congress unanimously repealed the ZEDE law and began removing Próspera tax-exempt privileges.^[19] The company and its affiliates have filed a $10.775 billion lawsuit in the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The suit, worth nearly two-thirds of Honduras’s government’s budget, remains unresolved.

Who knew choice is always backed by legal coercion? 

New Mutations 

In 2023, former President Trump ‘proposed building up to 10 futuristic ‘freedom cities’ on federal land.^[20] Although not articulated in detail, schemers, like the Charter Cities Institute executive director Mark Lutter, see ‘freedom cities’ as charter cities.^[21] A commentator for the American Enterprise Institute views Freedom Cities as a means of achieving ‘Homesteading 2.0’, a scheme to unlock development by deregulating federal lands. Where the Homestead Act of 1862 facilitated the westward expansion of the United States and manifest destiny provided the ideological justification, here, lawiness is the justification. It is a new version of manifest destiny. This venture-capital-backed version is also fuelling President Trump’s interest in annexing Greenland.^[22]

Lawiness acts as a justification. It enables political economists to put forth controversial (and quasi-legal or illegal) schemes as though they are well-reasoned and natural ideas about law and government. To do so, they oversimplify legality and the world by mixing technical and common languages alongside a mixture of theoretical (as well as fanciful) ideas with empirical claims. Left unchecked, it will facilitate the re-colonisation of the third world, the privatisation of public lands, and new expansionism in the quest for new capital accumulation and exploitation. It will dispossess many to ensure that a few generate wealth.

Choice is always backed by legal coercion. We cannot just use ‘good laws’ to create choice. Instead, it is always a question of whose choices arise from particular legal arrangements. If billionaires, techno-fascists and anarcho-capitalists rally behind a particular legal idea, like charter cities, you can be sure that they will benefit from that arrangement. By contrast, if we want those who currently do not have choices to have choices, then we will need to change, re-define or re-distribute property ownership to include those who have been excluded. We will need to ensure that individuals are not dependent on wages or forced into abusive labor conditions. We will have to re-balance negotiating power between those who have economic power and those without. This would, as a whole, increase the number of people who have choices. Lawyers have known this since, at least, Hale pointed it out a century ago. It remains difficult to argue against oversimplified notions, but we can start by re-appropriating their concepts and using them against their projects. 

Stephen M. Young, Associate Professor, University of Otago, Faculty of Law: Stephen.young@otago.ac.nz. 

^[1] Paul Romer, ‘Why the World Needs Charter Cities’ Ted (July 2009) < https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_charter_cities?subtitle=en>.  

^[2] Paul M. Romer, ‘Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth’ (2015) 105(5) American Economic Review 89, 89. 

^[3] Nina Ebner and Jamie Peck, ‘Fantasy Island: Paul Romer and the Multiplication of Hong Kong’ (2021) International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26, 30.

^[4] Romer (n 2) 89. 

^[5] Ibid. 

^[6] Ibid 91. 

^[7] Honor Brabazon (ed), Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of Law in Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2016). 

^[8] The Democracy Fund, ‘Choice vs Coercion’ (2023) < https://www.thedemocracyfund.ca/the_difference_between_choice_and_coercion_in_relation_to_vaccine_mandates>.  

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Robert L. Hale, ‘Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State’ (1923) 38(3) Political Science Quarterly 470, 476. 

^[11] Paul Romer, ‘Students Studying Under Streetlights’ Marron Institute of Urban Management (8 August 2009) < https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/blog/students-studying-under-streetlights>; Alhassan Sillah, ‘Fuel for thought in Guinea’ BBC (25 September 2007) < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6990034.stm>.

^[12] Bonnie Campbell and Jennifer Clapp, ‘Guinea’s Economic Performance under Structural Adjustment: Importance of Mining and Agriculture’ (1995) 33(3) Journal of Modern African Studies 425, 431. 

^[13] International Monetary Fund, Guinea: Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix (January 2008) < https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2008/cr0820.pdf> [19], noting that one company also renegotiated a lesser rate in 2000. 

^[14] Ebner and Peck (n 3) 32. 

^[15] For more on Honduras Próspera, see Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Penguin, 2024) Ch 10. 

^[16] Harry Hobbs and George Wiliams, Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty (OUP, 2022) 63-4.

^[17] Paul Romer, ‘The world’s first charter city?’ Ted (March, 2011) < https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_the_world_s_first_charter_city>.

^[18] Tom W. Bell, ‘No Exit: Are Honduran Free Cities DOA?’ Foundation for Economic Education (26 November 2012) < https://fee.org/articles/no-exit-are-honduran-free-cities-doa/>.

^[19] Rachel Corbett, ‘The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down’ New York Times ( 19 September 2024) < https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-honduras-crypto.html>.  

^[20] Eric Bradner et al, ‘Trump proposes building 10 “freedom cities” and flying cars’ CNN (3 March 2023) < https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/donald-trump-freedom-cities-flying-cars/index.html>.

^[21] Mark Lutter, ‘Freedom Cities Could Transform U.S. Innovation’ City Journal (5 February 2025) < https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-freedom-cities-innovation>.

^[22] Rachel Levy and Alexander Ulmer, ‘Freenalnd “Freedom Cit”? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up North’ RNZ (11 April 2025) < https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/557818/greenland-freedom-city-rich-donors-push-trump-for-a-tech-hub-up-north>.