Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

The slant of the article is that there's brain drain from Bhutan. But the meat is more interesting. Apparently, Bhutan is building a charter-like city:

"A Bhutanese team is collaborating with experts around the world, seeking investors to help build the city, the cost of which is likely to run in the billions. The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI."

I like this sentence in particular, which showcases an admirable pragmatism:

"When we say we follow the principles of Gross National Happiness, we do not mean we are happy with less… We also want to be rich. We also want to be technologically high standard."

There has been some buzz around charter cities lately, particularly Prospera in Honduras which has been seized by the government. Bhutan seems like the perfect place for this kind of experiment because it is peaceful, politically stable, and English is taught in schools.

There's a chance that we see more city-states like Singapore, Dubai, etc. These places offer something the US can't: social orderliness. Bhutan seems intent on preserving its national identity, which is also draw. Conversely, Dubai (and Neom, if it actually gets built) strike me as a bit soulless.

Singapore has 8-9x more people than Bhutan, so you'd think Bhutan could become rich fairly quickly as a city state. It doesn't have a port, and it is pretty hard to get to, so I don't think it can be particularly populated unless they manage to flatten a few mountains to build a big airport.

It is also one of the sources of the Shangri-La myth, it would be cool if they actually called a city that (China technically renamed Zhongdian Yunnan to Shangri-La, but that is very much a gimmick).