Tech 'Elite's' Startup City vs. Democracy
Will tech workers owe their souls to the company store?
Last Saturday The New York Times revealed a “mystery” plan by Silicon Valley elite to start a new city from scratch. Seems a company called Flannery Associates, the “brainchild” of 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader (quelle suprise!) Jan Stramek has been buying up farmland about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco with plans to turn it into “a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.”
That pitch, in 2017, long before San Francisco office space began to empty from the pandemic’s new work-from-home paradigm, was from billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who “painted a kind of urban blank slate,” according to the Times, “where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought.”
First question: Would this new city consume more or less water than the agriculture it would displace? Second question: What sort of retirement complexes will it offer for white collar and tech workers who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence?
There appear to be no MAGA-right entrepreneur-authoritarians, such as GOP vice presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (who told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday he wants to make electric car titan and X-Twitter owner Elon Musk an advisor) behind the plan. It doesn’t include libertarian and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who otherwise wants his Amazon to sell everything.
Liberals indeed may be comforted by the list of the city’s investors, which include Democratic donor, venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, investors Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, and founder of the Emerson Collective (majority owner of The Atlantic magazine) Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Plans to make it a “walkable” city like Paris or the West Village might comfort those of us who see no future in personal automotive transportation in high-density cities (presumably there would be a lane on major streets for Cruise and Waymo autonomous vehicles).
Building a city from scratch also provides the opportunity to offer a range of housing, from low-income apartments to luxury lofts for Silicon Valley stars and programming wizards, but really, where will the baristas and waiters/waitresses live? Will they have the longest commutes, from minimum-income-plus-tips dormitories at the edge of town? Will they be taking commuter trains in from Oakland?
But the most troubling words in the investor deck description are these: “new forms of governance could be rethought.”
Rethought by whom? And when a DeSantis-like governor (whether from the Democratic, Republican or No Labels party) takes over California in 50 years, will he or she try to revoke Metacity’s “independent special district” status?
The idea behind Metacity might not be as old as DisneyWorld, but it should be noted that the People’s Republic of China has been building million-population-plus megacities from the ground up, with all the cool new tech infrastructure, for decades. They do not have their own “new forms of governance.”
Nearly as troubling is that the plan was so secretive it took the NYT six years to uncover, and then after two Democratic congressmen had spent years asking questions. Of course, the investors wanted to buy up the land from farmers and farm corporations as cheaply as possible. Sale prices started at less than $5,000 per acre, and now run at more than $20,000 per acre, according to the article — which is sure to upset those early sellers.
The plan is ripe for criticism from the MAGA right as another example of liberals trying to control our lives via the ‘Deep State’ and force ‘wokeism’ — which apparently means all races and ethnicities sharing those condos and apartment complexes. Dogs and cats living together. Safe spaces for LGBTQ+.
On paper at least, this shining city on farmland idea sounds much like the company towns created by rich industrialists a century-and-a-half ago, albeit in this case owned by several companies — perhaps from Apple and Microsoft to Google and Meta. What would that mean for the future of American democracy?
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