Elon Musk is planning a “utopian” corporate town called Snailbrook

Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, and boring company Director Elon Musk is add another title to his resume: city ​​owner. The multi-billionaire is reportedly busy building his own “utopia” in Texas and plans to name it Snailbrook.

THe Wall Street Journal reports that Musk plans to build the city outside of Austin near his Boring and SpaceX facilities that are currently under construction, the outlet said. Facebook photos revealed that the area already has a collection of modular homes, a swimming pool, an outdoor sports area and a gym, and that it has already signs posted that read: “Welcome, snailbrook, tx, estimated 2021.”

According to the JournalMusk’s plans include building a place for its employees to live and charging them about $800 a month for one- and two-bedroom homes, with the caveat that they would have 30 days to vacate the property if they were laid off or quit. While the plans are still in the works, it seems like a good time to ask: iIs this a good idea?

Corporations have swallowed up cities for decades, creating a place where they could establish a monopoly of power in an area for their broad businesses and make a profit from their employees. The idea basically sounds good –work for an employer and you get to live in the city with access to all amenities for a reduced price. But what happens when it goes south?

Company towns have one Long history of creating so-called utopias for their workers, but also created cities akin to prison camps where employers are the landlord and the shopkeeper and everything else one might need. A lot of cities were built by coal companies and the workers often lived in poverty and abuse.

The majority of company towns were built on the labor and skills of the workers without paying them enough or providing them with a normal standard of living. According to The SmithsonianAs the coal, steel, and textile industries boomed in the early 1800s, companies built the cities to require their workers to live in simple housing and sent the children to company-owned schools, where the students only received information from the boss. perspective.

The workers got nothing either appropriate compensation and were paid script instead of just money. Scrip was a currency that employees could only use in the company store, which happened often drastically increased its prices by about 20% more than other establishments outside the compound.

While thinking about these city models to exist in the past they are still around today. With Elon Musk showing he’s right-wing task master allegedly fires employees on a whim, dislikes safety regulations, promotes discriminatory workplacesand generally seems to believe that laws do not apply to him, do we really want him to run his own city? He already started his own school for his kids, do you think he is above paying employees with a ScripCoin token?