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| Not sure who made this, but it's spot on. |
I used to think Elon Musk was interesting and goofy. That was about ten years ago, back when people could still think of him as Tony Stark. But he's definitely Lex Luthor. And he's bringing his evil schemes to Texas in a new way but with an old flavor.
This GF is to be read to this tune.
I will never understand why Americans who make very little money worship this fuckin' guy. John Steinbeck once said that Americans think of themselves as "temporarily inconvenienced millionaires," and that goes a long way toward explaining this baffling thing. Americans will constantly vote against their best interests because they believe, deep down in their hearts, that they will one day be rich.
The majority of those people are wrong. By majority, I don't think I'm being extreme when I say 99% of them. It's a great fantasy. Sometimes I think about what I'd do with a lot of money. I don't have extravagant tastes. I joke about buying a castle to have it sent to Elmhurst, or to have a pirate ship I could sail in Lake Michigan, but in reality I would spend it all on things I literally need to survive. And books. I would probably back a shit-ton of Kickstarters. And I would try to make the world a better place.
But some motherfuckers just want fast cars, a bunch of mansions and lots of sex they wouldn't be able to have if they didn't have money.
Elon Musk has more money than almost anyone else on the planet, and from what I can tell, the only thing he wants is more of it. And now he's building a town in Texas to help pave the way to even more riches.
He's already bought the land, and he intends to build affordable housing for all the employees he's going to have working for Boring, Tesla and SpaceX. On the surface that sounds noble, especially in this age of outlandish costs of living. But there's a darker side that the WSJ and Forbes and Fortune and other publications that cater to the super rich aren't willing to explore.
It sounds to me like a company town. A company town is a town where one company owns everything. Houses, schools, churches, stores, everything. People who live there all work for the company, so what happens is, they get paid by their employers, and then they spend that money paying rent and buying goods and services, which essentially cycles that money right back to their employers. In fact, some company towns don't pay in actual money. They pay in credits that can be exchanged for goods and services at the company store. It's a great scam, especially if you're in charge of everything.
That includes laws and regulations. What Musk is doing is setting himself up as the king of his little Texas fiefdom.
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| It's good to be the king. |
Musk freely admits that he's fleeing California because it's the land of "overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation." Taxes are one thing that a fucking trillionaire shouldn't have to be concerned with, but I'll let that go. And there are maybe too many lawsuits in the world, and I'll bet a lot of them against trillionaires are legit. But I'll let that go, too. Overregulation, on the other hand, is an oxymoron. There's no such thing when it comes to shit like this.
Regulation of corporations is very, very important because it's been proven, time and time again, that if we leave them to regulate themselves, they make the world an even worse place than it already is. There is already a lot of concern about this from people who already live in the area Musk wants to build his company town.
Boring could have a lot of negative environmental impact on the area, in particular when it comes to ground water. This is especially horrifying now, considering the UN's recent announcement that if we don't fix our water problem fast, our world is going to be fucked beyond all hope.
But Texas politicians don't care about that kind of thing. They caught a whiff of Musk's musk, and now they're all horny for a huge payday. Overregulation? Pfft. Let's fast track this shit so we can earn a shit-ton of money while our constituents pay a higher price out of their own skins.
There are a lot of landowners down there who DON'T want Musk's company town. People who swear they're never going to sell to him. I admire their tenacity, but they don't stand a chance. How much you wanna bet that eminent domain gets used to take that land from them?
And then there are the poor bastards who are going to live in that town and get fleeced by this fuckin' prick. It sounds like a good deal until you realize that maybe you don't want to work for these companies. Or even worse, you get fired. What happens then? In regular America you get drunk for a week and feel sorry for yourself, and then you start looking for a new job. In Musk's company town you have 30 days to get out. Not only do you lose your job, but you also lose your home, your kids' schooling, your church (if you're the praying sort), YOUR WAY OF LIFE. Not such a good deal, after all, is it? Unless, of course, you're a sycophant. Sycophants would probably thrive here. They don't know what it's like to live without their lips stitched to their boss's ass, so they'll be OK as long as they toe the line.
If you're tired of hearing me talk about this, perhaps give this a read. I promise, it's super long and incredibly boring (heh), but it's worth reading. When you're done, I have a question for you.
Done? OK, here's my question. Did you notice something odd about that article? There's a phrase that reoccurs throughout the piece. Anytime the journalist reached out to someone on Musk's side, what happened?
They "didn't respond to requests for a comment." There's also mention of signing NDAs in there. This is not the behavior of people who have nothing to hide.
A lot of people are going to want to move to Musk's town, and I feel bad for them. They have no idea that they're really making a deal with the devil.
PS: Yes, I worked on this over the course of my day after getting out of work. I felt this was important to write about, and I planned on getting high. Too high to write this kind of thing. So once again I cheated on a GF, but I think it was worth it.
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