Elon Musk Planning a ‘Utopian’ Firm City Referred to as Snailbrook
Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, and Boring Firm CEO Elon Musk is including yet another title to his resume: city proprietor. The multi-billionaire is reportedly engaged on constructing his personal “utopia” in Texas and plans to call it Snailbrook.
The Wall Avenue Journal experiences that Musk plans to construct the city exterior of Austin close to his Boring and SpaceX amenities that are presently below development, in accordance with the outlet. Fb pictures revealed the world already has a group of modular houses, a pool, an out of doors sports activities space, and a fitness center, and already has indicators posted that learn: “Welcome, snailbrook, tx, est. 2021.”
In response to the Journal, Musk’s plans embody constructing a spot for his staff to reside and charging them roughly $800 per 30 days for one and two-bedroom houses, with the caveat that they might have 30 days to vacate the premises in the event that they have been laid off or give up. Though the plans are nonetheless within the works, it looks as if an excellent time to ask: Is this even a good suggestion?
Corporations have been lapping up cities for many years, creating a spot the place they may set up a monopoly of energy in an space for his or her wide-ranging corporations and make a revenue from their staff. The concept, in essence, sounds good—work for an employer and also you get to reside within the city with entry to all of the facilities for a reduced value. However what occurs when issues go south?
Firm cities have a lengthy historical past of making so-called utopias for his or her staff but additionally created cities that have been akin to a jail camps the place employers are the owner and the shopkeep and the whole lot else one may need. Many cities have been constructed by coal corporations and the employees usually lived in poverty and abuse.
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Nearly all of the corporate cities have been constructed on the labor and talent set of the employees with out adequately paying them or offering regular residing requirements. In response to The Smithsonian, when the coal, metal, and textile industries have been booming within the early nineteenth Century, corporations constructed the cities to require their staff to reside in primary housing and despatched the youngsters to company-owned colleges the place the scholars have been solely taught data from the boss’s perspective.
The employees additionally didn’t obtain satisfactory compensation and have been paid in scrip somewhat than common cash. Scrip was a forex that staff may solely use on the firm retailer which frequently drastically elevated its costs by about 20% greater than different institutions exterior the compound.
Whereas these city fashions are thought to exist previously, they’re nonetheless round in the present day. With Elon Musk exhibiting himself to be a right-wing activity grasp who reportedly fires staff on a whim, loathes security laws, fosters discriminatory workplaces, and customarily appears to imagine legal guidelines don’t apply to him, do we actually need him working his personal city? He already began his personal college for his children, do you assume he’s above attempting to pay staff with a ScripCoin token?
