Tyler Cowen, the man who wants to know everything

By John Phipps

At the end of the worst road on the impoverished Honduran island of Roatán lies Próspera, an aspiring libertarian city-state “designed for entrepreneurs to build better”. Last January Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University in Virginia, found himself being ushered into an open-air co-working space beneath the attractive tropical chalet that serves as the city’s headquarters. A few digital nomads stood up to greet him, smoothing down their shorts. One of them began telling Cowen about the regulatory system in Próspera, which is partly autonomous from the Honduran government. Cowen listened politely, then looked out to where two brown birds were hovering above the shoreline. He asked what vultures were called on Roatán. Someone told him. “You use the Nahuatl word,” he replied admiringly.