Yeah, this would be bad for everyone. Even the corps. I don’t think any CEO actually wants to become an actual real life general.
Because there would be wars from these ‘independent’ corps.
I’d buy that for a dollar.
You want Night City? This is how you get Night City…
Every day I watch the news or look at Lemmy or talk to a friend and I hear some horrible new way of creating a distopia I had never considered. It’s depressing.
Cyberpunk 2025
Can’t wait to pick out which burbclave to join…
Isn’t this how RoboCop starts.
It’s also like Chapter 4 in Parable of the Sower
Big part of robo cop 3 I think.
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
It’s funny how Americans here are so against the idea, yet there are plenty of private towns and villages here in the UK and it’s just normal.
Incorporating an HOA or a company making a retirement village is not really the same as Amazon or Monsanto funding some sort of handshake with the state government to make some sort of lawless zone for them to take advantage of.
You should learn a thing or two about the City Of London.
Something tells me these freedom cities would be a different beast entirely. Somehow I doubt the UK private towns don’t follow the national or local laws of the country.
The City of London (which is not London) is probably the most relevant example here, it’s enjoying its own representation in the government, its own laws, its own police force, and functions almost as a separate state in the Kingdom.
Until not too long ago, here in the West Country, there were also partially self-governing collections of tin-mining towns. The tin trade was subject to stannary law, made at stannary parliaments, enforced at stannary towns in Devon and Cornwall. Tin, when refined, could only be sold in the first instance in stannary towns, where it would be made into standardized coinage. Tax on tin was also collected in the stannary towns and sent to the Monarch (or in Cornwall, the Duke of Cornwall).
The City of London is a more extreme example, since its government had representatives from each of the guilds operating in the city (and now has representatives of the large corporations, as well as a much smaller number of representatives of the people who live in the City). While it’s not London, it is about one square mile within central London. It’s a remnant of the way that many English cities were run from late Saxon times until the 19th century, and is the only “city” that has been exempted from democratic reforms.
It doesn’t really function as its own state since it has no separate courts (it owns and partially runs the Old Bailey, but that’s for all of England, not just the City), no defense or foreign-policy capacity, and none of the other functions of a state. It’s a Liberty (an area with enhanced or different rights) rather than a state. These, particularly parts of cities owned and run by the church, used to be common throughout England.
It doesn’t really function as its own state since it has no separate courts (it owns and partially runs the Old Bailey, but that’s for all of England, not just the City), no defense or foreign-policy capacity, and none of the other functions of a state. It’s a Liberty (an area with enhanced or different rights) rather than a state.
It’s the same for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Or for 50 states inside the US.
USA states have their own: police force, congress, judiciary, laws, taxes, constitutions, and so on. So I’m not sure what you mean by comparing the City of London to USA states - it isn’t really meeting your criteria aside from not having a standing military which is also true for some countries/states outside of the USA.
Wut?
Right, but they probably understand civics and aren’t dumbass libertarians who think taxes are theft, and that they shouldn’t be providing anything for the people that live and work there.
Also, the US has a storied history with company towns. I can promise you that this is not what you are thinking it is. This will be towns owned by massive corporations that will pay people in scrip that they can only use at “the company store.”
So imagine Walmart coming in and buying an entire town, and instead of paying the people a living wage, they give them credits that they can only use at Walmart.
What is an example of a private town in the UK?
The City of London (which is not London) is probably the most relevant example here, it’s enjoying its own representation in the government, its own laws, its own police force, and functions almost as a separate state in the Kingdom. Only corporations registered in the city can vote for its government, private residents cannot.
Then there are loads of towns and villages owned by the aristocracy, places like Clovelly, Heydon, Aldbury, etc. Or Poundbury, which was built by King Charles III (the work started while he was still a prince in 1999) because he just wanted to experiment with architecture.
Libertarians do not understand how society works.
The baseline, no. The thinkers are just trying to restablish slavery.
These tech libertarians never stop trying to make their own company towns.
Here was a recent failed attempt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Toronto
Also this piece never gets old. https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
This is one of my favorites:
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear
It would be funny if a billionaire shit ass wasn’t doing this exact thing on a national level.
Yay! Corporate towns! I look forward to be paid in company script!
Scrip, no t, but there are positive pro community versions of this where cities use their own as a way of circulating money within the local economy.
I agree, it’s a novel approach for small towns that are trying to rebuild or boost their local economy.
We can all agree that the Corporate scrip is just a fancy of screwing workers.
This is the dumbest branding exercise ever. There are no additional “freedoms” that you can get in a corporate-run city versus a regular city; except that perhaps the corporation has more freedom to trounce upon the rights of the citizenry.
If the future that Curtis Yarvin and his type envision starts to shape up, we’re gonna need to go full, 100% anti-corporation to push back.
The billionaires get the freedom for being the best Americans
except that perhaps the corporation has more freedom to trounce upon the rights of the citizenry.
That is exactly the kind of freedom they are looking for, and don’t underestimate the psychology there - it feels like freedom to them, the kind of freedom that allows for injustices to prevail. I’m reminded of an anecdote of Ẑiẑek, talking to a bunch of fascists in former Yugoslavia, where they in no uncertain terms revealed, that it had been tyranny to them to not be able to be violent, rape, plunder, etc. and that the chaos of the breakup had been a liberatory event for them, psychologically.
Never assume “freedom” is something, that opposing classes and groups in general agree upon when it comes to its definition.
We should really be doing that regardless, the corporation has outlived its utility and has become a chain on the collective neck of humanity
