Forest City is a sort of boondoggle new town development in southern Malaysia, just across the border from Singapore. I think the idea was that people and companies would want to live there cheaply and commute or do business in Singapore. It hasn’t lived up to its promise.

Anyway, what caught my eye in this Los Angeles Times article was a tech entrepreneur setting up yet another seminar on the whole charter cities libertarian enclave city-state idea.

They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase Inc. executive and “The Network State” author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they’re conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan’s vision of “startup societies” defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation…

Nearly 400 students, many of them entrepreneurs, have so far made the journey to Forest City to study everything from coding to unconventional theories on statehood. They’re building crypto projects, fine-tuning their physiques and testing whether a shared ideology — rather than just shared territory — can bind a community. The price starts at $1,500 per month, including lodging and food, for those who opt for a shared room…

“We’re all getting jacked,” said Prad Nukala, a student at the school and founder of crypto startup Sonr, which describes itself as a “blockchain for decentralized identity.”

If there is any doubt, “jacked” here is a reference to weight lifting.

$1500 per month doesn’t sound bad at all for an all-inclusive month-long vacation.