The New Zealand Initiative was out this week with a new report, In the Zone: Creating a Toolbox for Regional Prosperity.
If I’ve understood correctly their proposal, local authorities would be able to seek approval from central government to run policy experiments in their own areas (freeing up the Overseas Investment Act, legalising drugs, prohibiting prostitution, banning private schools, introducing capital punishment, banning immigration – or the reverse of each of these).
Frankly, it seemed to be a solution in search of a problem. I’m all in favour of a bit of localised regulatory competition – the sort of thing that was, for example, possible in respect of building and land supply in Auckland before the ACT Party leader legislated to merge all the councils in the Auckland region into a single body. The authors rightly cite the advantages the US federal system offers – data on all sorts…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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