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!"
This reads like an email or news message you find on random computers in dystopian computer games like Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
Severance / kier. 😁
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
These people idolize Henry Ford, so they should double check the history on how he tried and failed spectacularly at the same thing: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/19/lost-cities-10-fordlandia-failure-henry-ford-amazon
And you’ll be paid in such lovely scrip, too. Just don’t try using it somewhere else.
Hence, crypto.
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’m leaning more towards Halcyon and less like Night City
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.
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?
government officials ending every phrase with, “brought to you by carls jr” is getting more real of a likelihood all the time.
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
He really is going to kill us all. His plan is to eventually kill social security or something that will piss off his opposition.
His opposition will take to the streets and cops will be there. Anyone who kills a cop gets put to death. Martial law declared.
Then he’ll take true power.
And religious people will eat it up as destiny because their books speak of an end similar to this. It almost seems too perfectly planned.
We’re so fucked.
if i were trying to stop that scenario, i’d probably form/join a guerilla resistance, neutralize the cops, dethrone him and musk, then round up all the christians for reeducation camps and help ensure a ‘never again’ attitude for the surviving population.
yeah, but no ones fucking organizing anything right now.
Thats not entirely true.
We have this but it needs to quicken with sign ups.
