Elon Musk Follows in George Pullman's Steps

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The town was developed by George Mortimer Pullman, an American engineer and industrialist who designed and manufactured the Pullman sleeper and luxury rail cars.

After the United States experienced the Great Railroad Strike in 1877, its legacy included more powerful unions and a tendency for employers to consider the broader well-being of their employees. Pullman’s objective in building a company town was to attract a superior type of employee and further elevate these individuals by excluding adverse influences.

The company also provided the residents with a physician and medicines, and fire protection.

Not all workers at the Pullman factories lived in Pullman. Some could not afford the rents; others disliked the posted demeaning rules, disagreed with the lack of a town government, and said the Pullman’s spies invaded employees’ privacy.

Elon Musk has reportedly bought thousands of acres of land about 35 miles outside of Austin and plans to build his own town there for employees to live and work

The Wall Street Journal reports Musk has described the city as a “sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River.” By creating the town, Musk would be able to set some of the city’s regulations. Last year, at an all-hands meeting of Boring employees, president Steve Davis reportedly talked about holding an election for mayor of the city.

The proposed municipality is said to be adjacent to the Boring and SpaceX facilities that are currently under construction, and to already include some modular homes and signs hang from poles reading “welcome, snailbrook, tx, est. 2021”

Snailbrook is the name of Boring’s mascot.

Musk reportedly wants to offer rental houses to workers that are well below the local market value. One ad allegedly put the price of a two- or three-bedroom home at $800, compared to $2,200 a month in nearby Bastrop, Texas. There are also plans for a Montessori school in the municipality

Social engineering & control?

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Yes, but this is the goooood kind of social engineering and control because it’s being done as part of a business and is intended to protect a rich guys private property and his first dibs on other people’s productivity. This is why it’s only bad when the government does it.

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Factory towns have been around for quite a while. Especially when located in a rural area like near mine. There is one in Illinois built with Sear house kits. Hercules had one in World War II at their explosives plant in Louisiana, MO.

Living in a company town with your co-workers has always been controversial. You give up some privacy. But it is convenient to work and if quality is good and price is low it might be worth it.

You are not required to live there, but having the opportunity can be a plus. Day care might be easy too. And convenient. Close to work and home.

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Yes, I’ve known about them since i read about them 55 years ago. Big in the 19th/early 20th century especially in extraction industries like timber. Some were slave camps. Think Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “St Peter don’t ya call me 'cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.” And some were true model communities that were quite beloved by the workers. My well-being and quality of life and very future depends on the kindness of employers…? Why not a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and cut out the middle-mishisgahss?

It sort of reminds me of being in the military. Barracks and family housing areas, and when I was doing those remote gigs in Alaska at Cold War radar shacks. But they paid me up front in US dollars not company scrip and they weren’t doing it for their bottom line and political clout. It’s sort of in the nature of the business (military). It sounds good when a privateer does this and I hate to be too suspicious and cynical but we all know what motivates a businessman.

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:rofl:
I don’t know you, but I sure hope that’s tongue in cheek!

When Pullman was buried, they buried him twice as deep and covered the cemetary plot with a couple truckloads of concrete because his family feared his workers would dig up the body, parade it around Chicago and burn it in effigy. (More or less.)

Milton Hershey found having town of his workers quite difficult, too. And, he really was trying to help them.

  • Telling people how to live is unpopular, when you’re rich as as a god.
  • Even more difficult, telling people they must leave their homes if they take another job, because you want to provide for your workers, first makes them feel like they are trapped.
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Yes, I was being funny. :grin:

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So did Henry Ford. His thugs patrolled his company town outside Detroit looking for infractions, and it went so far that his giant venture in Brazil (Fordlandia) was a disaster, and was abandoned within a few years of being set up. It seems the peop[le there didn’t like working in a hot sweatshop in the middle of the day, but were perfectly willing to work a split shift in the morning and late in the afternoon. Ford thought that was wrong, and rather than do what the workers wanted, he insisted, whereupon they left and he lost his entire investment.

Speaking of, how ironic is it that the Disney “company town” of DisneyWorld is being dismantled just as Musk tries to set up his own corporate utopia?

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The Japanese and S Koreans do this.

Japanese auto manufacturing workers in effect have always had a better life style than their American counter parts.

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Dismantled?

I thought that a corporate ‘company town’ was being replaced by a governmental ‘company town’.

I think that’s often referred to as a slow motion train wreck.

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Your choice. I’ll take ZZ Top and Jeff Beck LIVE over Tennessee Earnie Ford’s version.

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I’ll take baritone over guitar!

The Captain

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It’s not a “government” in the way we tend to think of those things in the US. It’s entirely unelected, it’s just a bunch of political cronies of the governor instead of a bunch of economic cronies of the corporation.

When they have “an election” I’ll be interested to see how it turns out, Of course there aren’t that many residents of the property, so the small division of “Golden Oaks” would have massively outsized voting power. As does the group of cronies recently installed.

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The idea behind rock is to swing…make it cool. Totally agree Captain.

ZZ Top in concert was one of the very best bands. That though fell flat. Beck does not know what to do with those guys.

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???
That’s the Austin branch of the Colorado River?

DB2

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The Colorado river in Texas is not a branch of the Colorado that runs through the Grand Canyon.
Two separate watersheds, on opposite sides of the continental divide.

:sunrise:
ralph

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Today is a great day, I learned something new! Thanks!

https://coloradoriver.org/about-the-river/

The Captain

‘colorado’ means colored implying a reddish color

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Good to know. It also seems that the river valley is one of the rice growing regions of Texas. Who knew?

DB2

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