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.
It’s more insidious than that:
https://piped.wireway.ch/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no%3Fsi%3Dfev-OzgZmzcUfsPW&t=1
Severance / kier. 😁
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?
Last time we got full scale shooting wars between workers and companies. If I’m putting on my optimist hat then I’d say at least we’ll get to shoot some rich folk.
I doubt they’ll be on the front lines. It’ll just be the poor shooting at each other. The only real solution is Luigi, until they’re scared enough to negotiate in good faith.
Oh for sure, but if it gets to the point where I need to fire my gun at somebody it’s definitely not going to be aimed at some low level corporate thug. That is, unless they’re standing between me and their boss.
they tried it with a town before, it dint work out.
Yes, but it does follow republican naming convention. Right to work states are anything but, for example.
Just look at SpaceX‘s town. Pure dystopia.
The one where they stole the land from cards against humanity?
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.
If it’s in the name you know it’s the opposite like “Democratic People’s republic of Korea”
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 freedom when I do it and tyranny when you do it.”
It’s not the people living in the city that are the free ones. It’s the owners
“ 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!
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.
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.
God Bless Robert Evans
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 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.
We should really be doing that regardless, the corporation has outlived its utility and has become a chain on the collective neck of humanity
The billionaires get the freedom for being the best Americans
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
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?
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!
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.
Likely still a net improvement over all the fossil fuels they’re burning for that shit now.
The double-meaning of the word “startup” might throw people off, but when the other items from the list in the quote are “trials” and “construction” you can imagine they are talking about an action rather than an entity. Here a “reactor startup” would be the process of a reactor going from subcritical, extremely low power state to the point where it can heat water on its own through fission. This is a standard term in the nuclear power industry, and this confusion seems like one more reason reactors should not exist in an unregulated venture capital environment.
The “move fast and break things” mantra of silicon valley is bad enough when you aren’t talking about breaking a goddamn nuclear reactor.
Sounds too much like Vault-Tec for my tastes.
Why stop there? Can we get a nuclear and biological weapons startup in there too?!
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.
Do you want Night City? Because this is quite literally how you get Night City.
I’m starting to think that’s what they want.
Always has been. Cyberpunk (the genre) was a warning. We didn’t listen.
A genre built in the 80’s and 90’s, a commentary on the inevitable path of neoliberalism?
No way!
Time to become Johnny Silverhand then.
And isn’t Night City one of the better places to live there?
Yes, partly because there’s still competition for the territory.
Or Rapture
Tech bros love to rename terrible shit from the past and call it an invention.
That’s all fElon has ever done.
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.
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.
This reads like an email or news message you find on random computers in dystopian computer games like Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077.
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.
Libertarians do not understand how society works.
The baseline, no. The thinkers are just trying to restablish slavery.
