The resurgence of the company town?

Observation Deck
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Residents of Boco Chica, who are mostly SpaceX employees working at the company launch facilities, recently voted to incorporate their community into the city of ‘Starbase’

This has parallels with the 1981 novel ‘Oath of Fealty’ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This describes the near future relationship between the city of Los Angeles and the privately developed arcology/residence of Todos Santos. The proposition is that a more feudal form of governance (brokered by ‘Millie’: a ‘neutral’ form of AI) provides a superior, safer, living standard than a ‘free’ city.
Bear in mind this was written before we saw what the current fad for AI was like, and before unleaded petrol had cleansed the brain damage causing the spiralling levels of urban violence in the late seventies

A more recent example of this arrangement might be seen in the Netflix series ‘Arcane’ which is set in Piltover: the heavily governed ‘City of Progress’, and Zaun: it’s undercity on the opposite side of a river. (the former has cleaner streets, sunshine, and teleporting airships! The latter has better street food and beer)

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Ah, I read Oath of Fealty as a teen and think of it occassionally, but I always forget the title and have to look up “Todos Santos” to find it.

I recall being troubled by the plot—which, similarly to my first read of Dune, had me unsure who I was rooting for—and fascinated by that improbably huge self-contained cube city. It comes to mind whenever I read about some dubious new megaproject by the Saudis, or another attempt at a libertarian utopia.[1]

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And Arcane is great stuff – highly recommend!

  1. Grafton NH, Colorado Springs, Prospera (Honduras), MS Satoshi, Telosa… ↩︎