Tech Execs Are Pushing Trump to Build ‘Freedom Cities’ Run by Corporations
Tech Execs Are Pushing Trump to Build ‘Freedom Cities’ Run by Corporations
A pro-corporate libertarian movement is attempting to take over the U.S., with Trump's help.
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
You know what? They should approve it. Give all the MAGAts free homes there and they can all suck trumps dick their. Let the rest of us live in an actually productive and healthy society.
Ironically, “Freedom Cities” not free.
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?
And who is stupid enough to move there? Ffs
His everyone seen this?
Holy shit, it's the Burbclaves from Snow Crash.
Or the corporate entities from Jennifer Government.
"techno-feudalism"
Every time an oppressor wants to enslave people, they use "freedom" as an excuse.
Exhibit A: People's Liberation Army. Its not a conquering, its liberating 🤣
Or Exhibit B: Maga
How do people ever get fooled by this? Its so dumb
More people need to play BioShock to understand why this is a bad idea.
Or look at the history of company towns
They've been trying to do this for years
They keep trying this shit even though it never works. (Like there's literally no pictures of this actually, totally existent place. But it's a paradise. Trust me.)
Let them do it, then point and laugh and don't let them back into civilization.
Libertarians do not understand how society works.
The baseline, no. The thinkers are just trying to restablish slavery.
I think it’s hilarious that they are so dumb that a satire movie like RoboCop is regarded as blueprint for the future. How cartoonishly evil do they have to be?
Christ, why did we have to get the Shitty Dystopia versions from Snow Crash, Jennifer Government, and every Gibson novel, but none of the cool and fun shit like flying cars, off-planet living, and advanced medical/cybernetic tech.
Gonna have the corpo company town again. Instead of an online walled garden it’ll be a walled city with it’s own currency that gets traded at a steep loss if you try to go anyplace nicer. Keep you in your place.
These tech libertarians never stop trying to make their own company towns.
Here was a recent failed attempt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Toronto
Also this piece never gets old. https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
This is one of my favorites:
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear
It would be funny if a billionaire shit ass wasn't doing this exact thing on a national level.
Yay! Corporate towns! I look forward to be paid in company script!
Scrip, no t, but there are positive pro community versions of this where cities use their own as a way of circulating money within the local economy.
I agree, it's a novel approach for small towns that are trying to rebuild or boost their local economy.
We can all agree that the Corporate scrip is just a fancy of screwing workers.
Isn't this how RoboCop starts.
Big part of robo cop 3 I think.
It's also like Chapter 4 in Parable of the Sower
Can't wait to pick out which burbclave to join..
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
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.
God Bless Robert Evans
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.
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.
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.
Did these guys play cyberpunk? Like that game pretty much embodies what these guys are asking for.
I think Musk has talked about the game, and obviously every message was completely lost on him and his main takeaway was that "Arasaka is cool. I want to be that."
That is exactly what they want.
“Blade Runner would drive a cybertruck!”
They would love that. That game is all about execs essentially being royalty. That's like their wet dream.
Hey everyone, Chaz from Cool Sci-Fi Productions Brought to Life LLC here with an exciting announcement! Our team of dedicated overpaid engineers has finally finished our first working prototype of the famous Planetary Destruction Cannon from the cult-classic 1982 film “Do Not Build Planetary Destruction Cannons!”
I thought the same thing. Scary AF
According to interviews and presentations viewed by WIRED, the goal of these cities would be to have places where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups, and building construction can proceed without having to get prior approval from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Yes because the first thing I think needs regulations is fucking nuclear power!
Can we just build an artificial island in the middle of the ocean for these losers? Just drop them there and let them try to figure it out. See how long before they come begging for help.
Sounds too much like Vault-Tec for my tastes.
If anyone reads that and goes “hell yea”…
Also what the fuck is a “nuclear reactor startup”?!? God, tech bros really take a whole bunch of privilege and advantage and just throw it all away to be dumber than anyone could have thought possible.
It's like a regular nuclear reactor, except it's run by people who don't know anything about nuclear reactors, the waste is dumped wherever without consequence, and the power output is only used to run an AI and mine cryptos.
The "move fast and break things" mantra of silicon valley is bad enough when you aren't talking about breaking a goddamn nuclear reactor.
Why stop there? Can we get a nuclear and biological weapons startup in there too?!
Those already have a name - company town.
They failed the last time they were tried and will fail again.
It’s more insidious than that:
https://piped.wireway.ch/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no%3Fsi%3Dfev-OzgZmzcUfsPW&t=1
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
But before they failed, they stole a ton of labor/profit from the residents.
Right. They worked very well for the companies!
I mean, they can only steal so much / so quickly WITHOUT building them...
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
Ask Appalachia about company towns. Folks here at least ought to know better.
And what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt...
I'm always torn between this version and the Johnny Cash one.
A city run by a corporation is the opposite of a "freedom city"
It's freedom from government regulations, many of which stem from the last time we let companies set up their own towns. What could possibly go wrong?
"It's freedom when I do it and tyranny when you do it."
Yes, but it does follow republican naming convention. Right to work states are anything but, for example.
If it's in the name you know it's the opposite like "Democratic People's republic of Korea"
Cyberpunk IRL
Honestly, the beauty of the game is the sheer irony of it all.
And I kinda wish those neo-kitsch high fashion Kevlar-lined clothing was real, because some of the Corpo drip in Cyberpunk looks cool as fuck.
Just look at SpaceX‘s town. Pure dystopia.
The one where they stole the land from cards against humanity?
It makes much more sense when you understand the differences between the Northern version of freedom vs. the Southern version of freedom. These asshats think of freedom as the freedom to rule over others.
It's not the people living in the city that are the free ones. It's the owners
Do you want Night City? Because this is quite literally how you get Night City.
“ 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!
There we go. Now we're looking at the Star Trek dystopia that we expected last year.
Just a bit delayed
This "plan" is literally the setting of Snow Crash
I actually like this idea. So long as the CEOs are required to live in the town as well a minimum of 300 days out of the year.
Because working in an office is worth the collaboration.
And I like knowing where the CEOs are so that checks instance name I can play Minecraft with them in person. I get so much more enjoyment playing Minecraft in person and would like to make sure the latency is really low.
It would never happen that way.
By the way, we used to do this. You can read all about it. It's very very bad.
Well yeah. They've clearly wanted to bring company towns back for a while. Everyone from Disney to Amazon does their best to recreate them already and there's been no change in the profit incentive since the last time they were fully legal.
I do feel like the tech guys have forgotten why we agreed to give workers rights though...
Oh well.
This is the dumbest branding exercise ever. There are no additional "freedoms" that you can get in a corporate-run city versus a regular city; except that perhaps the corporation has more freedom to trounce upon the rights of the citizenry.
If the future that Curtis Yarvin and his type envision starts to shape up, we're gonna need to go full, 100% anti-corporation to push back.
except that perhaps the corporation has more freedom to trounce upon the rights of the citizenry.
That is exactly the kind of freedom they are looking for, and don't underestimate the psychology there - it feels like freedom to them, the kind of freedom that allows for injustices to prevail. I'm reminded of an anecdote of Ẑiẑek, talking to a bunch of fascists in former Yugoslavia, where they in no uncertain terms revealed, that it had been tyranny to them to not be able to be violent, rape, plunder, etc. and that the chaos of the breakup had been a liberatory event for them, psychologically.
Never assume "freedom" is something, that opposing classes and groups in general agree upon when it comes to its definition.
The billionaires get the freedom for being the best Americans
We should really be doing that regardless, the corporation has outlived its utility and has become a chain on the collective neck of humanity
Yeah, this would be bad for everyone. Even the corps. I don't think any CEO actually wants to become an actual real life general.
Because there would be wars from these 'independent' corps.
Tech bros love to rename terrible shit from the past and call it an invention.
That's all fElon has ever done.
Freedom Cities is a branding exercise in the same tradition as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The more you have to advertise how free a society is, the less free it tends to be in practice.
I didn't think I would live to see Cyberpunk become a reality. Or the return of Company Towns. Either one sounds preposterous.
We’re not even getting the cool parts of cyberpunk like cybernetic limbs.
That won't fly because tech's innovativeness is already declining.
And it'll get worse as the skilled workers flee the US.
This is exactly what Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want, to own city states as kings using neo-feudalism.
See:
I'm glad to see this already here. Scary stuff.
SpaceX is trying to buy a town as we speak. Maybe not "buy" in the traditional sense but I'm sure money, or promises of money, will tilt this in their favor.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/starbase-texas-election-spacex
So like a town, owned by a company, like some sort of company town, but now with freedom! The freedom to live in a house owned by your employer, shop at a store owned by your employer, and you have to use special money that your employer pays you in. Yup, nothing says freedom more the having incredibly limited choices.
I can't wait to live in DowIndustrialRunoffVille, 3Mcancertowne, and Exxondumpsiteburgh.... Oh wait we already do. Can you imagine how bad it would be if they had pure control and zero oversight or restrictions? The US is really sprinting headlong into the worst kind of dystopic hellscape.
Don't worry, surely any of those negative repercussions will be neatly contained within their city limits.
Then it will just be the problem of Merck county, P&G township, or the state of Pepsi to worry about.
Welcome to Freedom City #35, Brought to you by Apple. We have a number of accommodations for our community. A gym where cyclists generate the power for their own homes while they also assemble iPhone 23s, Wage Slavery park where children can play in the "sand" boxes sorting out circuit board capacitors, and a wide variety of restaurants that serve delicious meals for as little as two whole day's wages in Apple Bucks. (Note: all wages paid in Apple Bucks, which are invalid as currency outside of Freedom City #35). Work is from 6AM to 8PM, curfew at 10PM, strictly enforced by the Freedom Troops conveniently located on every block.
🎵Freedom cities! Where nothing is free but the irony!🎵
Is Elon so mad that he wasn't in the game Cyberpunk 2077 but Grimes was, and wants to spitefully create his own Night City and Arasaka tower in real life to have his little fantasy?
Good morning! Today is brought to you by our friends at ocular implant world. With their help you can see everyday through rose tinted digital filters! Just a reminder, you are now in debt to the corporation for $42,547,880.46. Would you like to listen to another targeted advertisement for $0.35?
Now I'm sad
You just need ocular implants!
The French had an answer to "Let them eat cake."
Me thinks the tech-bros won't like that answer very much.
The French wouldn't have let things get nearly this bad in the first place.
It's weird how the hardcore wingnuts were constantly jabbering about "Big Tech" and making noises about "Hunter's
hard-drivelaptop" just a few short years ago. They could never define this "Big Tech" other than to make hooting noises about how they were "censoring" the crazy right wing. They didn't really know what they were going on about, but boy, they were mad about it. Because laptop.Now they seem to be all-in with whatever the fuck "Big Tech" wants for them, because, what? They think it will own the libs? Just what the fuck do they think billionaires are going to do for the average redcap but put them out of work and yank any and all government services that will help them or their families?
Dystopian AF.
One of these ghouls that I rarely hear brought up in these discussions is Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. I believe that she is involved in the effort to build something like this in Solano County, California. She’s supposed to be a big Democratic Party supporter, so I suspect that the effort to create corporate cities is not an exclusively Republican project. I wish there was more reporting on her.
The US Democratic party is also a neoliberal right-wing party, just a bit more moderate.
Snow Crash anyone?
It's funny how Americans here are so against the idea, yet there are plenty of private towns and villages here in the UK and it's just normal.
Something tells me these freedom cities would be a different beast entirely. Somehow I doubt the UK private towns don't follow the national or local laws of the country.
Incorporating an HOA or a company making a retirement village is not really the same as Amazon or Monsanto funding some sort of handshake with the state government to make some sort of lawless zone for them to take advantage of.
You should learn a thing or two about the City Of London.
What is an example of a private town in the UK?
The City of London (which is not London) is probably the most relevant example here, it's enjoying its own representation in the government, its own laws, its own police force, and functions almost as a separate state in the Kingdom. Only corporations registered in the city can vote for its government, private residents cannot.
Then there are loads of towns and villages owned by the aristocracy, places like Clovelly, Heydon, Aldbury, etc. Or Poundbury, which was built by King Charles III (the work started while he was still a prince in 1999) because he just wanted to experiment with architecture.
People unfamiliar with this: See the previous thread about this from a few days ago as well: https://lemmy.world/comment/15538652
Is anybody actually watching Severance? An underlying theme of the last episode was that this kind of crap specifically is a bad idea.
Frickin’ wild that Apple TV+ puts it out at all, honestly…
anyone ever played shadowrun, because that is the way we're heading...
Without all the nice tech and the magic
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
(Workin' in a coal mine)
(Goin' down down down)
(Workin' in a coal mine)
(Whoops! About to slip down)
(Workin' in a coal mine)
(Goin' down down down)
(Workin' in a coal mine)
(Whoops! About to slip down)
Now a Burbclave, that's the place to live. A city-state with its own constitution, a border, laws, cops, everything.
https://chnm.gmu.edu/exploring/20thcentury/consumerism/pop_stephenson1.html
So what, Irvine?
Ooh, they can even have their own currency! But what to call it... something brief and punchy, to underscore all the efficiency... I know, we can call it "scrip!"
Sounds like how the CCP develops and employees its citizens. You live where you work and you can’t escape your bubble. “Hey honey, going to go shop at google to pick up milk and then go to google to get that bookshelf you wanted. I’ll be next to google if you need anything for your new garden.”
Did any other Bioshock fans out there just get a bit weirded out by this. Not the live action we hoped for....
Cool. Let them.
Honestly some people like sucking corporate dick, I say let them. If they're small cities it's fine, more housing is what's needed. That just relieves tension on housing and lowers the price for everyone.