Great reference with Fordlandia.
Here’s the obligatory link to a 99 Percent Invisible episode that covers it really well, as I hadn’t heard of it before:
18 Likes
Futility Closet also did a great episode on Fordlandia.
15 Likes
Same guy that wanted everyone to live at Twitter HQ then stopped paying the cleaners a few days later?
21 Likes
I miss the Futility Closet podcast a great deal. I hope they’re doing well.
11 Likes
14 Likes
11 Likes
There’s a difference? Oh wait, yes, of course there is. The company towns technically pay the inmates. I wonder how this budding Coalwood will get around the Fair Labor Standards act?
7 Likes
I would argue that there is. As exploitative as company towns were, it still wasn’t slavery.
But no, company towns likely went away in part thanks to New Deal legislation like the FLS Act…
7 Likes
I agree, but the lines start to get really blurry at some point. Sure, you can leave, but if everything in sight is owned by the local feudal lord, it may as well be “can’t.” Slavery absolutely is worse, but so much of company towns can so easily slide from one into the other that the longer it goes on, the more of a technicality it becomes.
(Ok, I see I’m a little maudlin and down today, don’t mind me …)
11 Likes
Where the line is, is an important question!
Oh no!
16 Likes
The historic company towns that I have read about were generally designed to hold you captive with debt.
17 Likes
They were also usually paired with a dose of christian nonsense to brainwash its employees into submitting behaving.
11 Likes
True, it was more akin to sharecropping than to enslavement… which was popular in the agricultural sector at the time.
7 Likes
I remember reading a bunch of UK parliamentary documents in a former life about stamping out this scourge. Monopolies need to be destroyed. Oligarchs need to be stripped of their assets, companies, their power. Else we are mere providers of fodder: our children.
For our children’s sake we must be radical.
11 Likes
Here’s hoping the full on tech bro utopian libertarian vision includes no street lights or street signs for the whole thing, because freedumbs. Then the whole population sorta takes care of itself, Darwin-wise.
5 Likes
Shoot i thought he was trying to entice Fred and Carrie to get the band together and try it in Florida.
1 Like
For a lot more details on what Musk is building in Texas listen to this guys videos. He lives next to spaceX and Boring company in Texas. He talked about musks permit to build residential homes and some of the code and regulation violations he’s found along the way. You can watch episode 2 without seeing episode 1 https://www.keepbastropboring.com/
He is also active on /r/boringcompany and regularly posts photos and videos from his drone.
His name is Chap and we worked together for a few years and are still good friends. He’s a really chill dude and I wish he had better “neighbors”. Even if we weren’t friends I would still recommend giving his videos a watch.
12 Likes
So Bioshock? Because this man already gives me Bioshock vibes.
13 Likes
Sandkings.
6 Likes
Serfdom!
2 Likes
