Billionaire backers of new California city seek voter approval after stealthily snapping up farmland

The article mentions there are laws in place on those lots that restrict redeveloping agricultural land for urban use. That's my main objection to this whole project.

The billionaires didn't want to buy out an actual town. Or undeveloped land near an interstate or existing town, something like that. Presumably those lots would be more valuable, more costly. They wanted to scoop up farmland, and turn it away from its current purpose. Farmland that was priced based on its agricultural value, rather than "what if you owned all of it, and put a city down" value.

Further, they want the laws changed (or for a variance/exemption to be issued) just because. Basically, just because. You can say it's "just because we have money" but that's really the same as "just because."

If the local farmers, all got together and got on the same page, and wanted to pool their property and start a city, they'd have no chance. Why not? No money. Lawyers are expensive. Court time is expensive. Lobbying politicians, from the local to state level, is expensive. Those farmers would be "stuck" with their farmland, and prohibited from scaling it up to urban levels. Because the laws were put in place to prevent that sort of conversion, to safeguard the farmland and its agricultural purpose.

But these guys have money, and that lets them decide they want something and then go after it. I'm all in favor of "it's your money, do what you want" but then you run into something like this. Where they're abusing their money to impose their own will widely.

It's not like they bought property and put up a mansion, a private lake the size of a county, built their own mountain for skiing, installed a private airport, or something like that. A basically private purpose, where they have their own little piece of the world but that's it.

No, they want laws changed to accommodate their whim on a broad scale. To affect thousands, tens of thousands, of other people.

There's got to be a lot of places in California they could go to start a city. That's how cities basically start; people (often one or a small group of them) settle in an area for a reason. Company towns continue to be a thing, they're not a historical relic.

We like to think of cities as this organic thing, and maybe in Europe, where many (most?) cities today are literally a millennia or more from their origins, they kind of are at this point. But in America, not so much. We pretty much know the exact origins, growth pattern, history, and reasons for any city of note in America. Not legends and myths of their origin, basically the exact reasons and purposes the cities were founded. Why they grew.

There was often an economic reason. Either a company started it, or there was an existing economic concern that encouraged people to live near it, and so on. Some of the oldest American cities were places where people founded it as a colony, and then flourished due to economic concerns. Often a harbor or river, which enabled easier trade since boats are easier (cheaper) than horses and wagons.

These guys want to build a city. They're not building it for altruistic reasons. Somehow, they want money. The easiest assumption is, since they own all the land, anyone who moves in will buy (more probably rent) from them. If they're allowed to incorporate as a city, presumably they can collect taxes. Direct payments just for people residing and shopping there.

It occurs to me it might be easy to see what their actual intentions are if they were offered a deal that divorced them from the ownership of the city. "You want to build a city here? Cool. But you don't get to be the government. You can't collect the taxes, and after your ownership and construction investments are paid off the city and buildings don't belong to you anymore."

I'd expect they suddenly don't give a fuck about "building a sustainable urban community" at that point. Their goal is to create a big revenue stream. The next step of corporate control is life control, the iron clad ability to literally turn employees into citizens. Corporate cops, corporate bureaucrats (not a city council; a board of directors appointed by the billionaires), and so on.

The step after that would be to do it on a county scale. And then, at this rate probably by the late 21st, maybe early 22nd, someone with Google or Apple or Microsoft money will start looking at the Midwest and thinking "you know, we do have the money to just buy a state out."

I'm always reminded of The Matrix sequels. The highway scene. They looked high and low, all over North America (and at least a little beyond I think) for a section of highway they could use for filming. No one wanted to let them take over a stretch of interstate or anything similar to film a movie on.

Then someone on the production joked about they might have to build their own interstate. Then they stopped laughing and looked at their budget, and then how much it costs to build a mile of interstate. For less than three million dollars they got 1.25 miles of six lane interstate highway with exits and overpasses. They spent more than that on CGI, probably more than that on costuming. What seemed "impossible" or even "ridiculous" was actually quite feasible, as soon as they looked at it realistically instead of assuming it was out of the question.

Cyberpunk postulates a world where corporations have so much power (resources) they just literally own the world. This California project is a step along that path, and it very directly leads straight to a scenario where they look at Iowa or Kansas or New Mexico and say "sold." Just because, when they are the government, they can do what they want.

With enough money, they'll just do what they want because it'll be cheaper than continuing to bribe and corrupt the existing government. Here state senators, county commissioners, city council, take the cash, don't oppose our buyout, and now we own New Mexico.

Right now they're trying it on a city level in California. They might have enough money (if they're willing to tuck sufficient amounts into the pockets of the politicians and key community leaders involved) to push it through. If they get it, and other corporations and billionaires see "holy fuck, those guys own the town and are raking in cash without having to market or sell anything" ... that's going to encourage more of the same.

How long before one of those tech nationstate companies moves out of Mountain View, Redmond, Cupertino and into their own municipality? It's actually surprising they haven't done it before now. They get a real-world modern example of someone who has, who controls their own city with all the benefits of governmental control it entails, and it'll happen.

I read cyberpunk. It'd be nice if it didn't become reality until at least after I die. Hopefully never, but it's inevitable at this point. Too much money, and too many politicians eager to be on the take.

Wake up choom. Time to make the doughnuts.

I find myself conflicted about this. On one hand, a capitalist-owned city has a lot of potential to be trouble, but on the other hand many of the woes of cities in the US boil down to insufficient infrastructure at time of founding and paralyzation from all the bureaucracy and NIMBYism that’s been allowed to accumulate. In the modern era in the US it seems that what doesn’t get designed into a city from the start will never be there, meaning that projects like this might be the only realistic shot we have at building people-centric urban environments with walkability and good public transit and the like.

Isn’t this the plot of Chinatown, True Detective, and probably other movies?