Utopia Experiments

Why don't we have more Utopian societies?

It strikes me as strange that rich people aren't chartering up countries in islands or otherwise empty geographically isolated locales, running social experiments by having idealist constitutions. Here's the process I propose for doing this type of anthropological research:

1. Write a constitution.

2. Obtain funding and willing colonists.

3. Find a location that isn't currently occupied by anybody.

4. Have constitution ratified by the United Nations to make sure it doesn't violate human rights. Get permission from the country to which the territory belongs to run their Utopian experiment there.

5. Run colony with documentation of all economic and social data. This would be done without an invasion of privacy, but with enough oversight by the UN that they can step in at any time. Defense of the region would be the responsibility of the country that owns

6. Participants are free to leave at any time at no cost to themselves.

7. After a century, if that style of social governance has proven to be stable and reliable, then it can be granted status as it's own nation-state.

There would need to be systems of protection against ethics violations for each of these steps, especially regarding "willing colonists" and defending these territories, but this is a viable system. It would allow humanity to find out what economic structures and social organizations work and which will simply never cater to human participants (*cough* laissez-faire economies). Isolation from society would be a very strict no-go, though, for reasons demonstrated by Andrew Ryan.

Honestly, we need more Oneidas in this world. And more, ethical social experiments. Bring on the science! Otherwise, we'll never get over worshiping modern day deities like "capitalism", or conversely "communism", and "The American Constitution".

Some similar kinds of microcosms already exist today, albeit without the aforementioned purpose.