Should Billionaires Try Constructing 'Cities of the Future' in the Desert? (theguardian.com) 269
The Guardian looks at a billionaire's plan to build a $400 billion "city of the future" in a U.S. desert.
The city — to be named Telosa — "doesn't exist yet, nor is it clear which state will house the experiment, but the architects of the proposed 150,000-acre project are scouting the American south-west." They're already predicting the first residents can move in by 2030. Telosa will eventually house 5 million people, according to its website, and benefit from a halo of utopian promises: avant-garde architecture, drought resistance, minimal environmental impact, communal resources. This hypothetical metropolis promises to take some of the most cutting-edge ideas about sustainability and urban design and make them reality. The plan combines ideas about urban farming (the "beacon" tower of the project will house aeroponic farms) and quality of life (a city where everyone can live and work and play within a 15-minute commute) alongside new green technologies and a model of land ownership proposed, but never executed, by the 19th-century economist Henry George. These are ideas that have remained in the abstract or only attempted on a small scale; now they will have a whole American metropolis to experiment with, brought to life by the creative ambitions of one very rich man.
Telosa certainly is a city of the future, but not in, like, a great way. Yes, it probably will have a very shiny public transportation system, but it seems futuristic more in the sense that, as the world deteriorates, the ultra-rich seem increasingly interested in telling the rest of us how to live. No longer content to just sneer down at us from their private jets, they take over our homes, our towns, our society... As anyone who has an adult relative who rules over their basement miniature train set with an iron fist, or who has spent any time on social media listening to 22-year-old leftists talk about what life will be like after "the revolution", knows, a lot of people have ideas about the way cities, countries and societies should work. We are usually protected from seeing those ideas realized, and dealing with the consequences of their megalomania, simply by preventing any one person from building enough wealth or power. But I have something to tell you about the tax policy of the last couple decades and the way a small number of people have benefited, and you're not going to like it...
The ideas of this fake little town are grand! Green architecture, environmental technology, "transparent governance", innovative urban planning ideas — if this works, it could advance our thinking on how humans can exist in a changing world and live harmonious lives during the coming environmental and economic calamities. But it won't work. It won't work because one guy doesn't get to decide how the world, or even a city, should work. Even if he's collaborating with the greatest "thinkers" and architects and scientists of our time, just a glance through Lore's portfolio will reveal that all of his big ideas and fancy language about the betterment and advancement of society are pretty hollow...
What would make society better? Is it skyscrapers in the desert? Or would it actually benefit the world more if billionaires had less influence over the way society operates?
The city — to be named Telosa — "doesn't exist yet, nor is it clear which state will house the experiment, but the architects of the proposed 150,000-acre project are scouting the American south-west." They're already predicting the first residents can move in by 2030. Telosa will eventually house 5 million people, according to its website, and benefit from a halo of utopian promises: avant-garde architecture, drought resistance, minimal environmental impact, communal resources. This hypothetical metropolis promises to take some of the most cutting-edge ideas about sustainability and urban design and make them reality. The plan combines ideas about urban farming (the "beacon" tower of the project will house aeroponic farms) and quality of life (a city where everyone can live and work and play within a 15-minute commute) alongside new green technologies and a model of land ownership proposed, but never executed, by the 19th-century economist Henry George. These are ideas that have remained in the abstract or only attempted on a small scale; now they will have a whole American metropolis to experiment with, brought to life by the creative ambitions of one very rich man.
Telosa certainly is a city of the future, but not in, like, a great way. Yes, it probably will have a very shiny public transportation system, but it seems futuristic more in the sense that, as the world deteriorates, the ultra-rich seem increasingly interested in telling the rest of us how to live. No longer content to just sneer down at us from their private jets, they take over our homes, our towns, our society... As anyone who has an adult relative who rules over their basement miniature train set with an iron fist, or who has spent any time on social media listening to 22-year-old leftists talk about what life will be like after "the revolution", knows, a lot of people have ideas about the way cities, countries and societies should work. We are usually protected from seeing those ideas realized, and dealing with the consequences of their megalomania, simply by preventing any one person from building enough wealth or power. But I have something to tell you about the tax policy of the last couple decades and the way a small number of people have benefited, and you're not going to like it...
The ideas of this fake little town are grand! Green architecture, environmental technology, "transparent governance", innovative urban planning ideas — if this works, it could advance our thinking on how humans can exist in a changing world and live harmonious lives during the coming environmental and economic calamities. But it won't work. It won't work because one guy doesn't get to decide how the world, or even a city, should work. Even if he's collaborating with the greatest "thinkers" and architects and scientists of our time, just a glance through Lore's portfolio will reveal that all of his big ideas and fancy language about the betterment and advancement of society are pretty hollow...
What would make society better? Is it skyscrapers in the desert? Or would it actually benefit the world more if billionaires had less influence over the way society operates?
Billionaires are going to do whatever they want. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps slightly constrained by legality issues.
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Aaah, ye olde bigwig "you got a choice" lie. One of the biggest socially conditioned distortions in the US, that frankly but no offense, everybody else finds really weird and self-harmful.
Go tell that to the kids being born into that corporate mining town. Or the ones who have the "choice" to work for them or starve and die, because the market around that town got distorted so there is no other option. What a "choice"!
Re: Billionaires are going to do whatever they wan (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't make them a slave to the government, that makes them a slave to their parents. Having a choice is not a lie. Not for children, not for adults. The entire world is full of people who have started over. The question is at what point they are conditioned to give up submissively to their fate.
The real lie is fate.
In the US southwest? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Ya, I noticed that the summary never once used the word "water". We already have a city of the future in the desert, it's called Phoenix and it's a disaster. The reason people put cities in the desert it because the cost is low - nobody wants to live there. Now you get 10,000 people living there, and things are nice. Whoops, 10,000 more people heard that the place is nice and move there, or near there in an unincorporated ring around it. And the population keeps growing. It can't sustain them all. The
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"whether or not we have to wear masks in public"
Ya, why would politicians try to prevent the American people from getting sick? What ARE they thinking?
Re: Billionaires are going to do whatever they wan (Score:2)
Given the plethora of events where their masks come off as soon as the cameras stop rolling, only for themselves of course not for their slaves... sorry... hired help, that's actually a good question. Not, perhaps, in the way you intended, but a very good question indeed.
Re:Billionaires are going to do whatever they want (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Billionaires are going to do whatever they want (Score:4, Insightful)
The big hole in your argument - if human nature is a power vacuum is filled by warlords then why wouldn't the warlord types simply gravitate to government jobs?
Hint - they do.... Ever wonder why/how so many people in government BECOME wealthy or become obscenely wealthy in government "service"?
Politicians do not give two shits about the public unless they can either increase their power or make money off doing so.
Also the "vaccine" does not STOP covid nor stop people from spreading covid. It merely reduces symptoms. Covid is now endemic - it will never go away as not only is it global but it also has numerous animal reservoirs - deer,cats,dogs etc. The above FACTS mean it is essentially irrelevant if your neighbor is vaccinated to you and your health. Why? because you WILL be exposed regardless whether it's from a vaxxed person, and unvaxxed person or an animal.
The mandatory vaccines, "passports" and other measures are merely a power grab and an attempt to exert social conditioning upon the populace.
To be clear, I am not anti vaccine, nor anti science - the shots seem to lessen symptoms/severity. That said they ARE being misrepresented by pretty much everyone.
I predict the "passports" will NEVER go away and additional requirements WILL be added to them, In essence they will become internal passports without which people will be unable to function in daily life.
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The big hole in your argument - if human nature is a power vacuum is filled by warlords then why wouldn't the warlord types simply gravitate to government jobs?
They do become the government and turn their rule into government jobs. It's just (more often than not) the type of government one expects to see in fully industrialized, 1st-world democracies.
I grew up in that kind of shit. I wasn't fun. At all.
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I appreciate your argument but I would say the warlord types typically gravitate to gangs and militias, Lawyers are typically the ones that gravitate to govt jobs.
unfortunately your argument about vaccines is on the premise that all vaccines are absolute but that is not how science works. Some are such as polio, measles etc, some are not. The evidence we have of the current crop of vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus specifically dramatically reduces ones chances of dying or clogging up the hospital syste
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You can certainly try and minimize vaccinated people spreading covid by calling them "breakthrough" infections. Note I said the shots appear to minimize symptoms.
Question for you - do people who take flu shots still get the flu at some point? Have flu shots ever had ANY hope of eradicating the flu?
The answer to both is no.
Covid and covid shots we be essentially the same - they will help mitigate symptoms but pretty much EVERYONE vaxxed or not will get covid (probably repeatedly.) Most people simply cannot
Re:Billionaires are going to do whatever they want (Score:4, Informative)
Covid and covid shots we be essentially the same - they will help mitigate symptoms but pretty much EVERYONE vaxxed or not will get covid (probably repeatedly.) Most people simply cannot wrap their head around that idea.
In Denmark COVID now has an R value somewhat below 1, despite the country being fully open. That is what getting 3/4ths of the population fully vaccinated does. Eradication was unnecessary, the vaccine passports went away, the emergency laws were repealed. Exactly as promised.
There are no signs that a significant fraction of Danes will get COVID from now on, and certainly not repeatedly.
Meanwhile, the UK with around 2/3rd of the population fully vaccinated is stuck with a high transmission rate almost exclusively among under-20's. At least numbers are mostly steady and it seems unlikely that a significant fraction of the population will get COVID in the future. Once children under 12 are allowed to be vaccinated, the UK should hit 75% vaccination and numbers should go down.
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Unfortunately due to the nature of humanity if you don't have government then that space will be filled with warlords
I wouldn't call them warlords. More like lords or people that aren't bound to pursue the common interest.
Not that our current "democracy" is producing politicians that pursue our common interests, but that's a failure from our part, as a society.
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In America, it is politicians who seem intent on telling us when we can leave our homes, if, how, or when and to what capacity we can operate a business, whether or not we have to wear masks in public (or in the privacy of each other's establishments
In America the freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose regardless of whether or not we are on private property. Same goes for spreading infectious diseases.
and rather mocks billionaires as people who "No longer content to just sneer down at us from their pri
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Freedom for most, has been around you can do what ever you want just as long as you don't hurt others by doing it, and that you don't hinder someones else non-harmful freedom just because you disagree with it.
Cases of emergency, Like a pandemic of an easily spread virus, being that your presence itself is considered a risk, because you could spread the virus without knowing you have it yet. You actions which under normal condition that would be considered acceptable risks, are now considered risky and da
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There are plenty of issues, though most of them tend to be social-environmental.
Here's my proposal billionaires. Go straight to "arcology" , do not build cookie-cutter cul-de-sac subdivisions for profit, because that has failed, every, single, time.
Heck, buy up an existing ghost town, like Texola, Oklahoma; Ruby, Arizona; or Kennecott, Alaska.
Tianducheng, China was a failure
Burj Al Babas, in Turkey was a failure
The Satoshi, seasteading venture was a failure
There are several more cities in China as well that
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While I agree it has been going on a long time, never before has gov tried to do the following -
1. Mandate that you take a vaccine which is STILL under emergency use authorization (go read the actual FDA letter - the pfizer vax is still under EUA and says so as it does not meet the data requirements normally needed for a vaccine approval)
Hmm, going to the FDA site, under approved vaccines I found this, https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-b... [fda.gov]
Considering emergency use is basically cutting a bunch of red tape, something that should be praised, and at this point there's been millions of doses given out with very few problems, I'd say it is pretty well tested now and shows the emergency authorization was a good idea, lots of lives saved.
2. Tie your ability to work for essentially the entire US population to said mandate.
To this Canadian that does sound somewhat far reaching and perhaps should be done on a State by State basis. OTOH, t
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Perhaps slightly constrained by legality issues.
But that's not the question. The question is not whether billionaires can get away with doing X, but whether they should.
At the risk of running into Humme's Is/Ought problem, I will use the word "should" carefully in the context of what is better for a nation (or at the very least, not detrimental to the nation, a local economy or humanity.) There's no way to axiomatically define such a requirement, and thus this is a matter of personal choice to believe this definition or not. And that's a decision we al
... Why? (Score:3)
People ranting about private spaceship rides forget this shite is the alternative. At least rockets are cool.
Re:... Why? (Score:5, Informative)
What is it about being a billionaire that makes middle aged dudes go "You know what, society is what's wrong with the world. And I bet I could build a better one. Somewhere the land is cheap so I don't have to sink too much money into the perfect society."
Just that, when they have such an idea (as lots of people do), they also have the money to actually go do it.
Hubris and ego (Score:3)
Because they did really well in one sphere of life they seem to lose touch with reality somewhat and start to believe that they possess some kind of insight and vision which other don't. This probably isn't helped by being surrounded by advisors who are Yes men and will say whatever it takes to remain in their jobs.
Otherwise otherwise smart people such as Musk wouldn't come up with BS nonsense such as his car tunnel in las vegas which is a teenage boy racers reinterpetation of a metro and Bezos wouldn't be
This. (Score:2)
Also, capitalism is a system of reality management built on the idea that one's brain is simply better and more valuable the more money said brain sits on.
Like, mathematically.
The number the money the more the brain brains.
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Because even a billionaire doesn't have enough money to solve the world's problems. But they have pet projects. I mean, they've got a ton of money and don't have to do the 7 to 7 grind anymore, so they need a hobby to keep themselves occupied. In the past this meant creating a museum, creating a university, etc. Sometimes they were misguided (I can fix the tenement problem by tearing down the tenements). Sometimes they do well (creating a self sustaining charity lasting a century or more after they're
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And so, billionaires would never exist in the first place!
If they don't exist in this country under this country's laws and customs they will exist in China, EU, Singapore, Turkey, and other places. Then what? So lets say we made laws that makes it impossible for them to exist in this country how do you stop them from existing in other countries and dominating us? They will have the means to. You'd rather billionares from other countries and customs having all the cards?
Re: ... Why? (Score:2)
Dominating? I guess you answered the question right there. Rich guys shouldnâ(TM)t dominate anybody. Politics shouldnâ(TM)t be handled by whoever has the most money, but by those elected by the people.
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Namely to criminalize all forms of harmful coercion. Not just robbery, theft, usury, racketeering, monopolism, etc... but profit, lock-in, imaginary property, interest, etc too!
This has been tried, in two major countries. The results were horrible. Both experiments collapsed in a soggy heap of empty shelves and prison camps. The only place where your ideal survives is certain American university campuses. Go enroll in one, if they still accept men at all.
Investing (Score:2)
Then all payments are actually earned with work.
That's great but where is the money going to come from to buy the equipment and property most of us need to do our work? Either that money comes from the government in which case you have the state controlling the economy and we all know how well that works or else you have to persuade people to invest some of the money they made from their work.
The only way to do offer them some sort of financial reward if the new company does well and now all you need is someone to make a series of lucky bets and you
Re: ... Why? (Score:3)
Anyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Who sneers at "leftists" as though they were a collective, or the young for their dreams, has no business telling anyone how to live. Especially as they're likely the ones responsible for the excesses of billionaires those opposed to the left created.
Re: Anyone (Score:3)
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Rightism is broadly stupid, if not evil, class of ideology. At best it is childish and unworkable, at worst it is brutal dictatorship.
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Already live in that world, drug tests for example can take away your ability to work based on compliance. There's thousands of laws on the books that you can be arrested for and especially if you can't afford a good lawyer, your ability to work can be much diminished. Whether actually guilty or not barely comes into it.
People are entitled to create model towns (Score:5, Interesting)
Most, such as those by Robert Owen, Titus Salt and Joseph Rowntree, are infinitely superior to the Libertarian alternatives. Take your sneers and shove them.
Re:People are entitled to create model towns (Score:4, Informative)
Most, such as those by Robert Owen, Titus Salt and Joseph Rowntree, are infinitely superior to the Libertarian alternatives. Take your sneers and shove them.
And this is how you will probably end up with Fordlandia...
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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In the UK the main difference is that commercial house builders are only interested in profit. They don't use proper architects, they use architectural engineers whose job is to design a house that costs as little as possible while still meeting legal standards, and tart it up a bit so that people who don't know better are wowed by a few nice fixtures.
They tend to be extremely narrow so that they can minimize the amount of road they have to build, and usually semi-detached to terrace to save on materials an
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Would you want to live in a Levittown these days?
Bias-free links (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, where I am from the most desirable neighbourhoods, both wealthy and low-income ones, are the ones that grew organically or were planned largely by private enterprise (usually with input from city planners though). In contrast, most failed neighbourhoods were planned by city councils. Cities work well when they are designed for the needs of the occupants, rather than high falutin’ ideals from the planners.
Henry George (Score:2)
Care to expand? I mean EVERYONE from Marx to Rothbard has had critiques of George (with varying degrees of success).
Rather interested in how the idea of single tax and billionaire company town fit together.
Or is this just hating on the premise because a billionaire parroted it?
Re: Henry George (Score:2)
Single taxes tend to be very inefficient and push the money upward. Libertarian ideals benefit wannabe kings rather than societies.
That's not yo say model villages are bad, or that I'm opposed to the experiment. All voluntary experiments are good.
What I'm opposed to is the idea that there is one true way. I've my own ideas and they'd probably fare better than theirs, but still none of them are the one true way and would fail if treated as such.
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Ok, sure. I'd start with Prince Charles' idea that towns should have a well-defined centre and that houses should be enjoyable to live in, not merely be functional. These seem to be admirable places to start, although Prince Charles' vision failed to meet the standards of the model villages of the past by providing inadequate open spaces and too high a density.
So, we look to the previous iteration of the concept. Joseph Rowntree, et al, had their model villages consist of high-quality, medium density, housi
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it seems that what you are advocating for is a highly managed, and top-down designed commune rather than organic sprawl. Who designs and manages that? Who pays for those high quality homes? Who sustains those high quality homes?
Learning and development at the city center? i like that be where do govt complexes go?
How do you manage workers that do not want to travel to the outskirts of town to work even though it would be the best thing for their healh? How do you deal with t
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I never heard of Henry George's ideas until today, but they seem quite outdated when looked at with a modern lens. Land doesn't have the same value it once did. Knowledge and knowledge-based assets are much more valuable than land. Land today is more or less a commodity asset now.
Re: Henry George (Score:2)
Knowledge dies with its owner, land ownership accumulates.
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Cities work well when they are designed for the needs of the occupants, rather than high falutin’ ideals from the planners.
If those ideals from the planners are not inline with the needs of the occupants then they are objectively shit planners and shouldn't be involved in designing cities.
Re:Bias-free links (Score:5, Insightful)
It tends to be the opposite in the UK. While there are some council built estates that are disasters, on the whole they tend to be a lot better than privately build ones. Bigger, better quality houses, better amenities and access.
It's got to the point now where privately built estates are barely fit for human habitation. The latest trick is to not bother with any pavement (sidewalk) or front garden, just tarmac the lot right up to the front door. Because the housing market has gone insane it's all about maximum profit for minimum effort, and most are built on the assumption that everyone living there will drive to remote shops so nothing is within walking distance.
Amoral Jerks (Score:4, Interesting)
It is amoral - that is without morals - to build a city for people in a geographic area which cannot provide water. This is no different from the Mars colony where the wealthy control/restrict the oxygen that poor people are allowed to breathe.
Re:Amoral Jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
You know in 700BC we did this thing called "infrastructure" which decoupled the location of a natural resource from the location of those people consuming it. I think the romans called it an aqueduct. And we've gotten a bit better and moving resources around since then.
Saying it's amoral to build a city where there's no water is no different than saying it's amoral to be further than walking distance from a local farm providing fresh produce. No city in the world is currently able to provide for its population without infrastructure and logistics. There's nothing magically amoral about not being co-located with water.
Re:Amoral Jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
What you say is technically true. However, the water problems in the Southwest are a bit bigger than "build an aquaduct". An aquaduct from where, exactly? The water resources in an area of hundreds of thousands of square miles have been overcommitted. On top of that, historical water rights are a mess. And on top of *that* the actual water commitments are greater than the supply - water tables in the whole region (where they exist) are dropping rapidly.
So what are you going to do, pump water uphill from the Mississippi? Build massive desalination plants, and pump it uphill from the sea? Do you have any idea how much water a city of 5 million people requires? This isn't something you can just handwave away...
This. Mod up (Score:2)
This is on point, mod up please
The entirety of the Southwest is water starved and there's no reasonable place to move water over from that I know of.
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Some suggested the Great Lakes, but the SC has already ruled you'd need permission from both Canada and the states on the lakes.
Good luck with that.
We're happy you wanna use up all your water farming for us though. Home use is just a sliver, but that's where the politicians focus your attentions to get you on board as a diversion.
Without your sacrifice of water, the rest of the world wouldn't have the cuisine known as "California style", i.e. with avocado!
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Some suggested the Great Lakes, but the SC has already ruled you'd need permission from both Canada and the states on the lakes.
Ha, yeah and good luck building across half the country to build the canal needed to move that water.
We're happy you wanna use up all your water farming for us though. Home use is just a sliver, but that's where the politicians focus your attentions to get you on board as a diversion.
Well aware of the situation, thank you. It's not as if there's another large region of the US with amazing weather to grow produce in that exists that farming can just transfer over to though.
Limited Supply (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Amoral Jerks - dum bass! (Score:2)
Re:Amoral Jerks - dum bass! (Score:4, Insightful)
71% of Abu Dhabi's water comes from groundwater. [wikipedia.org]
Desalinated water constitutes only 24% of water used. All of it is produced by burning fossil fuels.
I.e. Building a city like Abu Dhabi in the desert is not just immoral - it is suicidal locally [thenationalnews.com] and genocidal globally.
Meanwhile, to further illustrate the innate wastefulness of resources in the face of literal thirst for said resources - half of the reclaimed waste water (remaining 5% of Abu Dhabi's supply) is simply dumped in the desert.
Resulting in a freshwater lake. [cnn.com]
Not a reservoir. Not a way to recharge aquifers. It's a dumping ground for treated waste water.
While they burn oil to produce it.
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Could you explain your thought process? As long as the price of utilities is roughly known in advance, isn't this a point that can be overcome?
Lore is a huckster (Score:5, Interesting)
He's made a career out of serially building businesses that appeared interesting on paper, puffing them up into operating businesses with no hope of earning a profit, and then flipping them to other hucksters who thought they were smarter than he is. And it's made him a very wealthy man. If you look back at those ventures, they have faded into the landscape as his business partners folded in those gaffes into their operations and pretended the transactions didn't happen.
This will be no different. He'll find a way to profit and the whole thing will turn out to be a mirage.
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I believe that all the desert in the US with ocean front views has been spoken for. Unless you think those Californian NIMBY types are going to agree to pipe all that seawater inland.
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You would never suspect what the largest issue will be... people don't like the landscape of deserts. You basically want all indoor gardens to give people the greenery they want and I am fair with that but you will still have too many fuckers wanting green grass and the biggest issue with that is it's a waste of energy which leads to a related cost.
So new harmony Indiana (Score:2)
Probably end the same too
They aren't experts at city planning. (Score:2)
They are experts at stealing people's money.
So ... take a wild guess!
Usually cities in the desert (Score:2)
are built by regimes from the ancient past.
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Oh boy, a company town! (Score:3, Insightful)
Complete with company housing and company store, I bet?
Oh! Oh! I got an idea! They could even issue their own currency and pay their workers in it!
Wrong name (Score:3)
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That is the free market fallacy as applied to town planning. The reality is the best cities are definitely not the ones left to the development ideas of their own self interested individuals. Heck doing that is how you very quickly create hellholes as everyone climbs over each other to support the latest goldrush.
If the economic benefits of such a city are external (local mine, tourism, or exploitation of some other common resource) the free market will destroy the city as the self interested attempt to max
Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Like the Arab billionaires are already doing it in the middle-east since a few decades?
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Probably. Some more ruins to marvel at the stupidity behind them in a few decades.
America (Score:2)
Where utopians and snake oil salesmen all are present, sometimes in the same people.
So....what's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like a pretty naive take on what appears to be a glorified planned community, which have been around for a very long time. Most that I've heard of recently are more focused on suburban communities but a quick google search will point you to dozens of urban planned communities created over the past several centuries.
There are two ways a city evolves: spontaneously (typically due to the presence of some natural resource) or by planning, or somewhere in between. It's hard to see a scenario where more planning is a bad idea, since you can optimize the city along a variety of factors (low pollution, efficient commute, access to green spaces, use of local resources, etc) before anything is even built. I'm sure there are many Paris or New York subway engineers who wish the subway was designed before the buildings were built.
So what's the problem? That a billionaire is involved? That's insufficient data for me to declare something a bad idea. The author provides no actual reason why it's a bad idea and instead just sneers back at billionaires. What's the mechanism by which Lore will tell residents "how to live"? Is the issue with governance? The city will be governed by an elected city council. Laws will be established and changed, and eventually the city will evolve past Lore's vision. So is the issue with the initial city design? I'm not sure what the evil is in having green technology, fast commutes, efficient public transport, and sustainable local agriculture, but I'm open to hearing concerns about how these sorts of things (or other design aspects) are a bad idea. The author doesn't provide any foundation for his concerns other than declaring rich people evil.
To be clear, I'm not saying all planned cities are successes, or that rich people great. There are many now-abandoned Soviet-era planned cities. In this case maybe people don't want to live in a desert. Maybe there won't be enough business draw to sustain employment. Maybe the surrounding state and national economies will collapse and cause the city to be abandoned. But in my opinion having a rich person involved doesn't automatically make it a bad idea.
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Modern U.S. cities take planning to an extreme, and now our neighborhoods are nothing but tract housing, little ticky-tacky boxes all the same, as far as the eye can see. Since the end of WWII, it has become illegal to build corner stores that you can walk to from home and pick up things like milk and eggs and popsicles [boingboing.net]. Central planning sucks all the charm out of cities.
Worse, planning also segregates people economically, with the poor living in
H2O limiting factor not $ (Score:3)
Water: without it nothing gets built, nothing grows and no one thrives
Temecula CA was the last CA city to leapfrog over statutory, regulatory and ordinance restrictions on growth to build a city from scratch. California put law in place to keep this sort of unlimited growth from occurring again. Other states would be wise to put similar laws in-place to hold development accountable for its growth impacts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There is no shortage of water. Only a shortage of energy.
For variable values of "only".
Re: (Score:3)
The relationship between money and water supply is dynamic. A lack of water is a barrier to development, but development also justifies water megaprojects.
Look at New York City: if sufficient local water were necessary to maintain a city, New York City would be limited to the population of maybe 200,000, like back in the day when it got its water supply from wells and ponds on Manhattan. NYC's first water megaproject was in the 1840s, a 41 mile aqueduct from Westchester County. It's latest is a 60 mile tu
Yes (Score:2)
Every Billionaire is a policy failure (Score:2)
If you want to take away their outsized and self serving influence on society, take away their wealth.
Cities of the future: Affordable slums/shanties (Score:2)
Blockchains (Score:2)
NIMBY (Score:2)
Yeah, um, no. Not in my backyard. We already have severe water shortages because of the last time some bozo decided building a megalopolis in the southwest was a good idea (see L.A. and Cadillac Desert). You want plenty of land? Try North Dakota.
'No', they should be solving EXISTING PROBLEMS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey rich jackasses, how about you invest your billions into existing problems, like homelessness, food deserts/food insecurity, affordable housing, and other looming issues that face society, instead of foisting those problems off on the Middle Class like you've always done!?
Yes, that would be a good idea. But given that rich jackasses are the primary reason we are in the mess (see the Oil Industry that _knowingly_ delayed climate-change response by some absolutely critical decades), the hope that rich jackasses will do anything to meaningfully offset all the damage they did to get rich in the first place is futile.
Re: 'No', they should be solving EXISTING PROBLEMS (Score:2)
Re: 'No', they should be solving EXISTING PROBLEMS (Score:3)
And are you not really just asking rich people to solve your problems for you? Oh how dare someone with vision try to create something new instead of making sure you donâ(TM)t have to feed yourself!
renters of the future (Score:2)
Sure, head for the 'city of the future' that is owned by some billionaire that you admire. Be ready to be a perpetual renter, because the only financial winner in Billionaireville is the Billionaire that owns it all.
Re: renters of the future (Score:2)
Another pie in the sky is idea (Score:2)
Only thing missing is a monorail.
High Modernism fails everywhere its tried (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Expensive ruins are the last thing we need now. Anything only sustainable with high effort is doomed to fail eventually and unless it creates oodles of money (Las Vegas) that failure will come fast.
Let them! (Score:2)
I don't understand all of these freaking nay-sayers on here...
Just let them do it. They'll be paying for workers, paying for materials, paying for equipment, paying for manufactured goods... The outlay of money will be tremendous, so just let them do it!
Nobody will be forced to live there, there would (just like in any other city) probably be normal-ish suburbs that spring up around the place if it takes off so you'd have other options, ...
The billionaire is not just going to say "well okay, I can't have my
There are good questions, author did not ask them. (Score:2)
How about a meaningful question like, is it a good idea to build a city in a desert? Where there is no water, no food, and no infrastructure for producing it or getting it to the city.
How about asking if the guy behind the project ever read Oath of Fealty? An excellent point was made about why an arcology (which is basically the idea here) in the desert would be a bad idea, while one near an existi
It's the intent, not the building that matters (Score:3)
If the billionaire is motivated by (mostly) ego, then its a dumb, self-aggrandizing idea that will probably fail and also likely is some kind of scam, too.
But if some billionaire said: "I want to build a city of the future in the desert because deserts represent hard to inhabit environments. And the future of mankind will likely require us to figure out how to live in a desert, sustainably, and possibly even in a desert not on this planet."
I think that's more valuable. The point isn't to create Elon City because Musk deserves the name recognition, but to figure out how to run a city in a hostile environment for the benefit of its occupants. Lessons useful both here on Earth and perhaps elsewhere, especially if the project involves new technologies for water reclamation, waste treatment, energy consumption as well as the more human-factor elements of layout, etc.
Re: Communism (Score:2)
"except controlled by single dictator instead of a government."
Where do you see that it'll be controlled by a single dictator? I believe the plan is for it to be run by an elected city council.
Re: Maybe you own it? (Score:2)
Oh another fool who thinks rich people care about politicians they dont own. Every politician is owned by the rich and since there exists leftist politicians you can bet that they are financed by people on the left. I love your parroting of propaganda about how the left is for the poor, but don't worry, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
The right is too, but at least you recognize them for what they are.