The dystopian "freedom cities" dream fueling Elon Musk's destruction

[marmar]

The dystopian "freedom cities" dream fueling Elon Musk's destruction
Tech's plans for billionaire-rule expose why Musk wants to end government by the people

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published March 17, 2025 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In our cynical times, most people are familiar enough with doublespeak to understand that anything called a "freedom city" is likely to be the opposite. It's a sign of the delusional self-confidence in their own mendacious powers that the tech oligarchs who are financing this idiotic idea insist on going with that branding anyway. Investigative reporters Vittoria Elliott and Caroline Haskins published an in-depth report on this scheme for Wired earlier this month. What immediately becomes clear is that what the Silicon Valley billionaire class considers "freedom cities" is simply neo-feudalism, a plan to end the concept of citizenship and make every working person a serf whose entire life is controlled by the whims of their boss.

By design, the details of how "freedom cities" would be established are laden with legalese like "federal enclaves with special economic and jurisdictional zones" or "interstate compacts." In practice, the plan is straightforward. Advocates want the federal government to set aside land to build cities exempt from federal and state laws. Instead, the cities would function as mini-dictatorships, where the CEO of each town runs everything, and the people who live and work there are subject to the boss's whims. It would be like being an employee of a controlling company, except you don't clock out at the end of the day or have a life — or rights — outside of what the boss allows you.

"These are going to be cities without democracy," journalist Gil Duran told Wired. He's spent years documenting how the Silicon Valley elite — along with politicians like Vice President JD Vance — have pushed the idea that democracy should be ended and replaced with governments run by all-powerful businessmen. "These are going to be cities where the owners of the city, the corporations, the billionaires have all the power and everyone else has no power." In the tech bro world Elon Musk comes from, the definition of "freedom" is that rich people get to treat everyone else however they like, without that pesky government coming in to protect people's safety, autonomy or civil rights. As Duran explained in his newsletter, "These cities will be controlled entirely by tech billionaires and corporations, operating outside of U.S. laws."

....(snip)....

All of this helps illuminate the ideology fueling Musk's war on the federal government, and propping up his faith that he, an unelected billionaire, should have the right to nullify any federal agency or policy created through the democratic process. It also helps explain why he is happy to go along with Trump's tariffs and other assaults on the economy, even though the chaos is causing the stock market to crash and executives at his own company, Tesla, to panic about the future of the business. The possibility that his reckless actions cause social, economic and governmental collapse doesn't bother Musk, because in the ideological waters he swims in, destroying it all so it can be rebuilt as a tech-dystopian dictatorship is very much the point. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/17/the-dystopian-freedom-cities-dream-fueling-elon-musks-destruction/

[FalloutShelter]

1. Feudal Lords loyal to and answerable to the King.

Medieval shit right there.