This reads like an email or news message you find on random computers in dystopian computer games like Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077.
Ah, corporate run cities?
“It’s a fine day, full of opportunity!”
“If it took more than one shot, you weren’t using a jakobs.“
“Hyperion would like to take this opportunity to say: cha-ching!”
“Anyone can live. Have the courage to die!”
“Just remember, you died doing what you loved! And what you were told to do!"
Those already have a name - company town.
They failed the last time they were tried and will fail again.
But before they failed, they stole a ton of labor/profit from the residents.
I mean, they can only steal so much / so quickly WITHOUT building them…
Right. They worked very well for the companies!
And what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…
I’m always torn between this version and the Johnny Cash one.
They didn’t just fail on their own. They were very successful until the labor movement decided to meet violence with violence.
Now that’s a tradition I wouldn’t mind we go back to, seems like the only way we ever got labor protections in this country
America is truly going back to its roots. American towns, ethnic cleansing of native populations, all that’s missing is chattel slavery (of course we still got that modern slavery). This crumbling empire deserves to collapse, and collapse quickly
Ask Appalachia about company towns. Folks here at least ought to know better.
Severance / kier. 😁
It’s more insidious than that:
https://piped.wireway.ch/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no%3Fsi%3Dfev-OzgZmzcUfsPW&t=1
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
So they basically want to bring back the company towns from the gilded age, but more dystopian thanks to the possibilities of modern technology. Characteristics of company towns often were: “controlling and/or exploitative”.
Control: If your employer does something unethical, will you dare go against it, if it means that not only will you lose your job, but you and your family will be also be kicked out of your house, school, town, … Very few would.
Exploitative: where can the company town residents shop and find services? In the company shops of course. This constrained supply also leads to subpar service for high prices. And if company sales are down, the company will spend less on wages, but keep the company shop prices the same since the shoppers have no alternative anyhow.
Add in modern technology, and some of those towns will be like Brave New World, while others will evolve into 1984. Dystopian.
guns
Ah, so Peter Thiel’s crazy ass ideas are spreading. This is the same shit Musks’ granddad dreamed of - a technocracy with governors…
Technocracy
noun
the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts.
No mate, this is plutocracy. Technocracy implies knowledge, expertise, and facts dictating policy and direction. What you have is greedy rich fucks wanting yet more.
There is a fundamental difference.
This is why he bought Vance…
guns
I just wish they would be honest with their naming schemes. Stop with the “freedom this” and “freedom that” nonsense. They don’t give a good goddam about freedom and we all know it. They are just trying to build “company towns” with touchscreens. We’ve already been down this road. You can slap all the lipstick you want on it, but it’s still a fucking pig.
Its spelled Freedumb now.
These zones would allow wealthy investors to write their own laws and set up their own governance structures which would be corporately controlled and wouldn’t involve a traditional bureaucracy.
Why do I read this as incel rape cities?
In September of last year, the podcast Behind the Bastards did a two part series on right wing blogger Curtis Yarvin, his connections to Peter Theil, and his influence on JD Vance. I highly recommend these episodes for anyone who wants to know where this is all headed.
Yarvin has, for years, pushed the notion of RAGE (retire all government employees), and his dark enlightenment movement centers on dismantling democracy and installing a neo-feudalistic system of government in which oligarchs rule as kings.
This is not some crazy new proposal that will be ignored by the people in power. This is the endgame. The oligarchs and right wing fascists Trump has surrounded himself with have been pushing this for years, just waiting for their moment.
If you don’t think this is a big deal, then you probably won’t realize until it’s too late.
Thank goodness we had a corporate media that not also did nothing to instruct on this, but played lots of stupid bothsiderist games for the horse race.
Not to mention lots of so-called leftists telling Americans to either sit out or do a protest vote because something something Gaza, BidenSoOld and KamalaSameAsBiden.
Yeah I got called a bootlicker because of saying that business as usual was far better than the unmitigated disaster we are facing now. I hate being proven right.
Hey now, don’t you know that the biggest sin is agreeing with liberals? There’s practically no difference between liberals and fascists because I read somewhere that “if you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds” and my takeaway from that was that liberals and fascists are literally identical and both sides are the same. I am very smart. (/s)
Those people never read Lenin’s “Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder” apparently.
Truuuue
How does one push their elected to a desired position, if there’s nothing backing that push?
Remember: Our vote is like the only tool we have to hold electeds to account.
If you don’t think this is a big deal, then you probably won’t realize until it’s too late.
American history in one sentence.
God Bless Robert Evans
It’s chilling that this article is from October and basically lays out how the overthrow of democracy would take place - exactly what’s been happening since then.
The speed at which we’re descending into the dark enlightenment period is beyond alarming.
Thanks for the heads up, I’ll give it a listen. I’ve been hearing about the network state since I saw someone link this here a few months ago.
This is what happens when you let white people read Atlas Shrugged in college. smh.
“ You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store “
Don’t forget “A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong”
Damn. Beat me to it!
Why are billionaires such free loaders? Build your own shit with your own money!
They tried a couple times but people just don’t really want to move to the middle of the ocean of a jungle compound in South America
That’s silly, if they do that they’d have less money. While if they do it with your money, you’re the one with less money.
Friendly reminder that company towns and company scrips are the industrial revolution’s take on micro transactions.
Well put
I guarantee those execs think they will be building Star Trek / Federation level society. But the comment above is right, it will be Cyberpunk just with shittier technologies driven by “the invisible hand of the market” or some other drivel.
Oh they know exactly what kind of cities they want to build. The wealthy have been wanting their slaves back since 1865.
Literally Snow Crash, each burb is a independent corpocity state
With a side of Jennifer Government.
I believe the federation in Star Trek doesn’t even use money
They do, they don’t inside the federation because it’s in practice largely post scarcity. Outside of federation space they use federation credits (likely based on stores of rare hard/impossible to replicate materials) and specifically around ds9 the currency was gold pressed latinum.
Also voyager with replicator rations and Holodeck time.
Yeah, they only had that in Voyager because they couldn’t just pop back in at the nearest gas station and fill er up, they were basically siphoning gas out of cars (or, well, nebulas) the whole way across the galaxy.
True enough but the same applies to non federation expanse space.
they only allowed it on ds9 space station , when dealing with other races. in the form of latinum. also barring the marque colonies.
DS9 just threw the whole concept of a utopia out all together. With some pretty great results, so I’m OK with it.
I guarantee those execs think they will be building Star Trek / Federation level society
Nah, they know they will just be building the Ferengi Trade Empire.
I’m leaning more towards Halcyon and less like Night City
