Disney is discussed on The Bob Zadek Show in two unrelated contexts: as a source of pirated entertainment in North Korea, and as the private builder and governor of a Florida municipality.
Pirated Disney media in North Korea
In an episode with North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, Bob Zadek observed that her generation was the first to have access to outside information because of the internet and because the government could not stop it. Park agreed, and described how pirated DVDs and USB drives circulated outside information inside North Korea. People could watch outside movies, she said, naming Titanic, 007, WWF pro wrestling, and Hollywood and Disney movies. Through this, Park said, people were getting into Western culture and starting to open their eyes to the bigger world, realizing why they were poor and coming to believe the government had to open the country to the world Yeonmi Park – North Korean Defector: “Juche” Die, Markets Rise (2014).
Disney World and the Reedy Creek Improvement District
A later episode with political scientist Richard Foglesong traced how Disney World came to be. Foglesong began with Disneyland in California, which emerged as an amusement park in 1955—a word, he noted, that Disney people find offensive. Walt Disney, he said, wanted a place to take his grandchildren where there would not be carny-type workers. In Anaheim, the company disliked dealing with the city, did not want to depend on the municipality of Anaheim for public services, and did not want to be regulated by Anaheim—citing building inspections for the “black boxes” that housed rides and carried fire danger. Disney thought Anaheim was not competent to inspect such buildings Disney World’s Model for Cities of the Future (2022).
Foglesong recounted that the company learned only 10% of Disneyland visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, prompting the idea of an “East Coast Disneyland.” At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Disney tested the theory and was the star of the fair, having figured out how to use electronics to make figures move and talk. On November 22nd, 1963—the day John Kennedy was assassinated—Disney flew from Tampa Bay over Central Florida, saw fertile unused land and the crisscross of Interstate 4 and Florida’s Turnpike, and decided that was where they would go. Foglesong said the company flew on to New Orleans, saw people crying in the street, and learned from the cab radio that Kennedy had been assassinated. He called it a fateful day for the nation in a bad way and for Orlando and Florida in another way, since that is when the Orlando theme park began, and Orlando became the number one tourist attraction in the United States.
Zadek framed the company’s aversion to regulation as a matter of design intrusion rather than a desire to be reckless or to build cheap, unsafe buildings. Foglesong agreed, saying Disney absolutely believed in regulation but wanted to do it himself, and did not want government to intercede with his company. He cited Cinderella’s Castle at 178 feet tall as not the sort of thing government could easily regulate, given the threat of fire, and said Disney thought designing and making such a building safe was a job for expertise rather than a county government that did not know what it was doing. The same applied to providing public services: water, police, fire, sewer, and infrastructure generally.
Foglesong said it was unclear whether Walt Disney really wanted to build a city; he clearly wanted a theme park. From the Disney archives in Burbank, Foglesong found documents going both ways—some showing a desire to create something city-like, not necessarily a city, with self-control as the main thing. He described a company attorney explaining to Walt Disney that they could not exactly escape democracy; Disney asked his aides whether he could build an experimental monarchy, which was laughed off. Attorney Paul Helliwell explained that they had to comply with democracy but could maybe escape from it. What they did was create a two-tier government: two municipalities, Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, and above them the Reedy Creek Improvement District, embracing the whole property, a land area about the size of Manhattan.
Foglesong described the two cities as phony, with an elected government and, between them, 52 residents who are all long-term Disney employees in executive positions, not eligible to belong to a labor union. They elect a government and create a planning and zoning commission, and those two governments have essentially the same powers as the city of Orlando. The Reedy Creek Improvement District would also have a government, but elected on the principle of one acre equals one vote. The powers given to the two municipalities were given over to the district, so the company could have it both ways: a non-elected government with powers originally granted to the two phony cities. Foglesong called the district a “Vatican with mouse ears,” like the Vatican within Italy but with its own independent powers—an entity controlled by the company, with commissioners elected on what he called that fine capitalist principle of one acre equals one vote, but with powers originally given to a democratically elected government.
Zadek noted that the country has tens of thousands of districts—water districts, sewer districts, improvement districts, beautification districts—that ignore city, state, or county lines and are independent, so the concept is not foreign. He asked what one can conclude about the model of a private enterprise building a political subdivision from scratch and having total control over it. Foglesong said he could argue it both ways as to whether democracy is the best way to build a city. Asked why American cities are so unattractive and do not work well, his answer some days is that they were the first cities in world history built under the conditions of capitalism and democracy—what is sometimes called liberal government in the old sense—whereas European cities like Paris were built under authoritarian rule, Napoleon III, with most of the land in the heart of Paris owned by the crown. America has fragmentation: lots of municipalities inside a county and inside the state, and fragmented land ownership. Disney is like Paris was, with centralized land ownership and a centralized government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Foglesong called that in many respects the virtue of the Disney city, made possible by money, by the artistic ability and creativity of the Disney Company, and in particular by centralized ownership and control. He said most places where people meet and interact are like Disney World—cruise ships, shopping malls, sports arenas. Zadek added gated communities, and Foglesong agreed.
The DeSantis conflict and the bondholders
Zadek asked who got the better deal in the agreement that gave Disney World its power over the large swath of undeveloped land. Foglesong said Disney clearly got the best of the deal, because Disney was a big deal and wanted to come to Florida, while local officials said things like “We just can’t believe that he’s coming here.” He attributed that line to the publisher of the local paper, the Orlando Sentinel, naming him Martin Anderson, who was disbelieving that it was Disney buying up all the land. What Disney got were the powers to provide public services themselves, tailored to their precise needs, and self-regulation, institutionalized in the Reedy Creek Improvement District so that when local government might have taken control and regulated them, those powers could not be taken away Disney World’s Model for Cities of the Future (2022).
Foglesong said he did not think Governor Ron DeSantis was really bothered by Disney’s powers; he was mad at the Disney Company because it disagreed with him about issues of LGBTQ rights and did not like Disney challenging him on those woke principles. Zadek asked whether the deal was at the expense of the state of Florida or the Orlando region. Foglesong said Disney pays taxes and has the largest tax bill in Orange County because it owns the most and richest land, but also has exemptions—for example, from impact fees that developers pay to build roads and fund initial public infrastructure costs. Universal Studios, a competitor, does not have that exemption and has to pay those fees, which makes people angry. People are also unhappy about low wages paid on Disney property; Disney pays a higher wage than other tourism and leisure businesses but still lower than other kinds of businesses in Orlando, and wages are lower than in other municipalities in the state.
Zadek said there is nothing unusual about a government rewarding companies to induce them to move, citing sports stadiums and the competition to attract Amazon’s second headquarters, and said Disney may have perfected the process. Foglesong disagreed on one point: most economists would say there is no good economic reason to reward a business for coming someplace where it was going to come anyway, and that is wasting public resources. He cited roads, bridges, and highways built for businesses already dug in, which would not create new investment that would not have occurred otherwise.
On the current state of affairs, Foglesong said he did not think DeSantis was particularly concerned about Disney’s privileges but was revengeful because they are contrary to his political messaging, and predicted Disney would still have its powers. He said DeSantis is in a problem place because someone has to retire the bonds Disney is able to sell, and he did not think Orange County and Osceola County homeowners wanted to pay an extra couple thousand dollars in municipal bonding just to satisfy the governor. Mechanically, Foglesong explained that Disney taxes itself to pay bond costs, which is how it borrows money: people buy Reedy Creek Improvement District municipal bonds, and Disney taxes itself to retire them. If Reedy Creek goes away, it would no longer have the ability to tax itself to retire the bonds, so someone else would have to compensate bondholders. The law says it would need to be a general-purpose local government—Osceola County and Orange County. Foglesong said that would be him, as he pays property taxes in the county, and he did not think DeSantis could get re-elected if he allowed that tax burden to fall on residents.
Asked what citizens learn from the Disney experiment in totally autonomous privately owned municipalities, Foglesong said there is something to be said for this form of government with concentrated land ownership, deep pockets, and the powers of a company to self-provide public services, and that there is reason to reconsider whether democracy is the best way to build a city. Asked whether there is anything to fear in this 21st-century company town, he said the valuable things about democracy are civil rights and freedoms that do not really touch upon what businesses are allowed to build, and that it is important to consider the virtues of democracy that are much needed alongside the virtues of big entities that build city-like places such as cruise ships, sports arenas, and theme parks.
Across episodes
The two episodes do not argue the same question. The 2014 episode treats Disney only as a brand of pirated media that circulated in North Korea; the 2022 episode treats the Disney Company as a municipal government builder in Florida. The excerpts show no development between them—the earlier treatment is a passing reference by Yeonmi Park, and the later treatment is a full interview with Richard Foglesong.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the legal outcome of the DeSantis dispute, whether the Reedy Creek Improvement District was dissolved or reconstituted, or the terms of any legislation. They do not give the founding date of the Reedy Creek Improvement District or the statute that created it, and they do not say which amendment or constitutional provision any case turned on. The excerpts also do not state the current population, boundaries, or tax status of the district beyond what Foglesong describes.