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Bill Allowing Big Tech to Form “Techno-Governments” to Be Announced Today
- sneak 6y agoIt's important to remember that almost the entirety of Nevada is uninhabited. Any jurisdictional zones so set up would be green-field projects, entirely opt-in from the start. The county mentioned in the article where this seems to most likely result in a project only has 4000 people in it. I'm excited to see what, if any, experimentation results from this. ("We already tried this, they are called company towns" is not a clever or insightful take.)
- endisneigh 6y ago> ("We already tried this, they are called company towns" is not a clever or insightful take.) Why not? That’s what it is.
- sneak 6y agoBlockchains aren't companies, scrip isn't a thing anymore, DeFi renders it interoperable even if it were, we all have smartphones and internet now, webapps and networks change the entire marketplace for information labor, no part of this suggests that the company offering the civic services would be an employer or the only employer, company towns were for in-person work, et c. Even if you just focus on the idea that a company town had a single employer for in-person work, and now we work online for anyone via the internet, this doesn't even have the basic parallels.
- drewbuschhorn 6y agoThe company owns the wires and radio bands. Maybe by a funny coincidence using alternative blockchains and working remotely for other companies creates an 'unfair to the other users' drain on bandwidth.
- sneak 6y agoNo, that would be the Nevada public utilities commission and the FCC. They aren't establishing a new country, just like everyone else in Nevada they are subject to state and US federal law.
- nibbleshift 6y agoI wonder if this is just a straight-up "bad idea" I think we've all read about ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ and how that ended. Maybe something useful will come out of it and I am definitely in support of thinking outside of the box. But there are probably some major downsides to this...
- arbitrage 6y agoThe Stanford Prison Experiment, while certainly titillating, suffered from extreme reproducibility issues. It was also wildly unethical, and any conclusions drawn from it are not scientifically sound in any meaningful sense.
- nibbleshift 6y agoI wonder if these techno-governments will have similar reproducibility issues.
- TheWellerman 6y agoRight! I get it that Nevada is struggling economically, but could they be making a rash decision? It's kind of hard to undue a town once it's been established.
- TheWellerman 6y agoI agree. At the same time I'm torn by the idea of private companies being there own sovereign entities like a city or county. But at the same time, honestly, are city councils and county commissions any more moral than private companies? I think my biggest hang up is the draft proposal that allows the formation of the defacto county commissioners to be chosen by the companies. But like the article says, the draft could change, so the final proposal might not be the same. I think if they were elected from citizens I'd be a lot more excited.
- calvinmorrison 6y agoIf my city were owned by its residents, were its shareholders, it would be an abysmal stock to hold. Philadelphia is 400+ years old. If we had just put away 1% a year of our budget into a endowment, we would be making more money on it each year than our entire yearly budget. Cities are long lived, but the financial side of it is so short lived because there's no city-state, there's no expectation that the city needs to be able to bail itself out. We're always looking for state and federal funds. It's a shame, Philadelphia could be the nicest, richest city in the world if we had something just like this.
- addicted 6y agoIt isn't about morality. It's about the fact that they have additional incentives that are directly related to what the people in a certain jurisdiction want that are missing for a company.
- sneak 6y agoCities and counties aren't sovereign entities either. They have to abide by state and federal law.
- mola 6y agoElected officials that can be fired by the company. Yeah, much freedom.
- jjoonathan 6y agoCompany towns were entirely opt-in too, at the start. The problems with concentrating power only rear their head down the road when conflict arises. Instead of worrying about getting fired, now you worry about getting simultaneously fired, evicted, jailed, and censored. Even if you are officially protected, how much can they do unofficially? > "We already tried this, they are called company towns" is not a clever or insightful take. That's not a clever or insightful dismissal.
- sneak 6y agoNothing suggests that the company operating the jurisdiction would be the sole, or even a significant, employer.
- jjoonathan 6y agoOk, strike "fired" from the list. Maybe. It's still a concentration of power and the same rules apply. Attractive at first, but then it goes sour when the people with concentrated power start using it for their own ends.
- ryanbrunner 6y agoGiven that cities often are responsible for zoning, and the company is taking on the role of city governance, a company could do a lot to ensure its the only employer in town. Obviously this depends on the particulars of the bill, but it doesn't seem far fetched that companies could put some serious disincentives towards other companies forming.
- pjmorris 6y agoI'm kind of in the 'we already tried this' camp, because life is messy and things like fire departments and courts aren't usually felt to be 'core competencies' of corporations. The closest modern example I can think of is Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District [0][1], but lots of corporations delegate their cleaning, cafeteria, security, even their real estate out. I'm interested in why they would choose to take them back on. Do you think we'll get some theme parks out of this? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri... [1] https://www.rcid.org/ https://www.rcid.org/
- addicted 6y agoThat may not be a clever take, but is there any reason to believe it's not an accurate take?
- bubblesorting 6y agoI'm a bit scared of this. There are so many horror stories out there to the tune of, "Google banned my account, now I can't get into anything, and there's zero ways for me to get in touch with a human to talk about any avenues to fix it." and then extrapolating that to government.
- sneak 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
- bubblesorting 6y agoYeah, I don't want those either.
- ghaff 6y agoWhile it's true that most of Nevada is uninhabited, a lot of it is almost certainly uninhabitable (at scale) because of lack of water and other reasons. The example in this article in hardly an uninhabited area; it's an industrial park right off the highway on the outskirts of Reno. It's a lot different from creating even a small city in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.
- acdha 6y ago> ("We already tried this, they are called company towns" is not a clever or insightful take.) It is, however, an accurate one you can’t simply breezily dismiss because you don’t want to engage with it intellectually. This is no different in the power dynamic and will have similar failure modes in the absence of legal countermeasures: as the most obvious example, if you disagree with your boss you now have to worry about your kids being kicked out of school and losing your home at the same time. If they pay you in company block-scrip, they control the rates and where you can redeem it. You might naively think that having internet access helps but that’s assuming that the company-approved ISPs allow full unfettered access and don’t have terms of service banning unapproved usage. Again, none of this is certain but history and other parts of the world show that it’s likely to happen to some extent if companies are granted power without strict democratic oversight. Just think about how companies have asserted their right to control who you sleep with, what family planning choices you should make, which political party you support, etc. Giving them more power will not make those intrusions less likely.
- 4b11b4 6y agoThis is the naivete of a modern human. > uninhabited Yes, by humans... and. There probably were natives there. Until we killed them. AND. Otherwise... It's inhabited by billions of organisms.
- fergie 6y agoSo, basically this is allowing corporations to set up "company towns" in Nevada? Does this make sense?
- rubyfan 6y agoThe example of their Blockchain town seems either silly or over my head. I’m willing to admit it could be the latter but I don’t see it.
- 7373737373 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom%E2%84%A2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom%E2%84%A2 in action
- endisneigh 6y agoI don’t understand the point of this Bill - companies can and already do partner with the government in order to achieve democratically decided objectives (let’s ignore for a moment lobbying and other pseudo corruption). Does this achieve anything other than simply giving companies more power? Time will tell. If anything we need to go in the other direction - allow people to have the same powers as large companies, not large companies having the power of governments.
- hpoe 6y agoWhat if, and this is a crazy idea. We allowed people to form Governments instead of corporations that have a history of psychopathic behavior. I am pretty pro-business and for small government but I think this is a bad idea all around. Why do we need this in the fist place? What is wrong with the old model of people getting together and agreeing to form their own government, why do companies need to be involved in the first place?
- gjsman-1000 6y ago"We allowed people to form Governments instead of corporations that have a history of psychopathic behavior." On a flip note, are governments not known to also have a history of psychopathic behavior?
- nr2x 6y agoYou get what you give.
- gjsman-1000 6y agoAnd on that note, is there any entity that has power that does not have a history of psychopathic behavior? Psychopathic behavior just comes with power, it seems.
- nr2x 6y agoYes, but complaining about “the government” in a functioning democracy* is just complaining about fellow citizens. Making “the government” into some exogenous monolith makes no sense. * Local conditions may vary, contact your local election official for details on gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression. Offer may not be available in all areas.
- nix23 6y ago>Psychopathic behavior just comes with power, it seems. It's the opposite, psychopath are attracted by power.
- giantg2 6y agoWhat's next, bringing back company stores and paying people in company dollars?
- randmeerkat 6y agoI suspect that’s what will happen, but this time instead of company dollars it’ll be cryptocurrency.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoThe hell? We are basically reinventing company towns and robber barons? Why does history have to rhyme? I mean even assuming good intentions ( and I do not ), the road to hell is often paved with them. I just do not know how that would end well.
- marcus_holmes 6y agoA 10-minute review of the history of company towns will demonstrate to anyone why this is such an awful idea. It's literally been done, didn't work, and we moved on. Let's try a new idea instead?
- SamBorick 6y agoAh yes. Innovation Zones. Innovate local government by removing *checks notes* democracy.
- swader999 6y agoIf you examine the destruction related to the BLM protests. The vast majority of it occurred directly in the opportunity zones in these cities. These are areas zoned for capital investment tax free. You can sell your Facebook shares and your Amazon ones too and invest your profits into these zones without any capital gains due.
- michaelbrave 6y agoThere is an entire genre of fiction called cyberpunk which is mostly about why this is a bad idea. It's like if they announced that they managed to clone a dinosaur all of us would be like "did you watch movie"
- Covzire 6y agoFoolish. Very foolish. Allowing tech companies with no regard for public trust or public institutions set up their own "justice courts" on sovereign soil is about as crazy of a thing as I can imagine.
- dmkaner 6y agoLook up Pullman Car Company Town, tried it before, didn't work too well haha
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tjs8rj 6y agoMaybe this isn’t an insightful or clever take either, but this article reads like the first chapter origin story in a book about corporations become de facto government like WALL-E or Bladerunner. On one hand, will be interesting to see if private entities can run government better than public ones, and if so then the road to there may just be a matter of time as lobbying, voters voting with their feet and money, and public messaging takes hold.
- christiansakai 6y agoWelcome to Cyberpunk: Nevada.
- cblackthornekc 6y agoAnd it looks like the company lobbying for this got this bill wrote up fairly cheap too. > Las Vegas Review-Journal reports Blockchains, LLC gave $50,000 to a political action committee, Home Means Nevada, which managed Sisolak’s transition into office in January 2019. Campaign finance records also show the company donated $10,000 to Sisolak and his Republican opponent Adam Laxalt’s campaign in 2018. > Records also show the company’s owner, Jeffrey Berns, personally gave $50,000 to the Nevada Democratic Party in 2019 and various donations ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 to various state lawmakers from both parties.
- TheWellerman 6y agoYeah... they definitely got a steal
- ASalazarMX 6y agoThere must be other perks, those amounts are peanuts for a 2 year period, unless your crooked politicians live more modestly than usual.
- cblackthornekc 6y agoYou'd be surprised how little it would take. I know in Kansas that if a rep worked 365 days a year at $88/day they would take home $31,562/yr. So $50k would be almost double their salary. Looks like Nevada is $150.71/day or about $55k/year. We really need to pay these people more so they don't need to supplement their pay through lobbying.
- NoOneNew 6y agoUhh... am I in bizarro world? The general public and gov consensus has finally wised up that tech companies with free reign have been pretty dangerous. While I get a majority of NV is a wasteland (driven through a good part of it when I was a truck driver for a little while), this is just stupid for their own state gov. No matter where this tech dystopia happens, the water infrastructure required will be a testament to anti-environmentalism and unsustainability. Vegas already is unsustainable. Another city, profit centric needing vast amounts of water? This doesn't get into the new veil of secrecy tech giants will be given. That's going to create an even bigger hurdle for whistle blowers and investigators to stop tech giants from hijacking both the economy and public discourse. What's that I smell from clear across the country? Smells like large stacks of undeclared cash in envelopes traded hands. I wonder where that smell is coming from? We all know the history of Vegas and the state of Nevada is the epitome of law, honor and corruption busting practices. Company towns have never worked! This is bullshit! Am I the only one that reads history books or am I taking crazy pills!?!?
- erhk 6y agoNo tax exemptions so this means nothing
- TheWellerman 6y agoYeah... but oddly they could still impose their own taxes.
- NoOneNew 6y agoBecause the tech oligarchs have been so good with paying their taxes under current tax codes when governed by an outside body. They'll do even better in a tech governed county. I forsee Dystopia County's tax collection office will be led by Santa since he's so good at maintaining lists.
- jdxcode 6y agoDespite the title, this appears to currently only involve a company called "Blockchains, LLC". I can't see anything involving actual "big tech" companies.
- WaitWaitWha 6y agoHow is this going to be different than the coal mining companies in Appalachia?
- gdsdfe 6y agohmm crazy but interesting ... if you wanna build a 'smart' city, now you can do so with little to no oversight. I can see Google or Amazon jumping on this.
- king_magic 6y agoHoooly shit, this is a terrifying and awful idea.
- Communitivity 6y agoI've been following this for a while (~months), unless this a new bill. If it's the same bill, then I see it possibly propelling us down the road to Shadowrun style corporations with extra-territoriality. What I'd like to see implemented is a city government formed as a Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) into which city taxes went, and for which the owners are the inhabitants of the city. The security would need to be set up much better than the DAO corporation was for this to work though. There are a lot of thorny issues to be resolved beside security too. For example, if you make owners be the taxpayers, you excluding population segments (many students, those earning less than the poverty line, etc.). If instead you have ownership be based on mandatory buy in when people move to the city, that creates other problems, including two classes of citizenship within the city (owners and not-owners). I still think a DAC (Distributed Autonomous Community) is viable and possibly a good idea though. I just don't want to see it under a Board of Directors control, or individual control. Because.. "You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be."
- 4b11b4 6y agoHave you come across any DACs or close?
- Communitivity 6y agoNot yet, it would be a new thing. The DAC name itself is something I made up.
- throwaway287391 6y agoCouldn't a tech company that is sufficiently determined and large enough to fulfill the requirements already try to incorporate a new city/county through whatever the standard method is to do that in Nevada? Does this "just" signal the state's support for companies doing so, or make that process easier / more likely to be approved? Or is it something qualitatively different? Like, would these city/county governments be able to do things that a normal city/county government couldn't?
- jp57 6y agoRegardless what this bill says, any local government would still be bound by the US Constitution as required by the 14th amendment. It's not at all clear to me that an unelected local government would survive an equal protection challenge from the citizens of one of these innovation zones.
- randmeerkat 6y agoCould TikTok buy a corporate city if the city is successful successful? Could TikTok make its own corporate city?
- LatteLazy 6y agoIsn't this the exact thing Disney do for Disneyland? And Las Vegas? And Google, Apple etc for their HQs? And even large shopping malls and holiday resorts? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri...
- mxm0118 6y ago"Major technology firms would be granted authority to form their independent techno-governments within Nevada." WTF—Sounds like the beginning of a techno civil war to me! Pretty amazing though to see the evolution of the future of technology and municipalities. I don't think I could have dreamed a cooler story.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- grnfsh 6y agoWhat happens to the town or whatever when and if the company goes out of business?
- donclark 6y agoSeems like this is an open invitation for Mark Z and/or Facebook. Could a "techno-government" go to war with another? And if so, what would that look like?
- keith_erskine 6y ago"Oath of Fealty" was a science fiction novel, not a how-to guide