| > What's lacking is schooling, housing and entertainment, and much of this could likely be developed. Also missing: friends, family, and diversity. As a non-white person in the US, most small towns are a non-starter for me because it's uncomfortable being the only non-white person in every room. I don't ascribe that to any malice on their part -- it's just an unfortunate reality. I think most people feel this way, regardless of their race. > And, again, leaving the politics aside, this seems like a win-win That's like saying "leaving safety aside" or "leaving authoritarianism aside"... you just can't. It might be the determining factor about whether a place is appealing. We now have to contend with the fact that most of the inexpensive states will criminalize many aspects of family planning, the way they are criminalizing abortion. When my girlfriend gets pregnant, we will spend the pregnancy in a blue state for that reason (despite living in a red one now). > small towns don’t want to be left behind Why do you think this? It sounds like your definition of "left behind" is that they're not going to grow or be filled with young creatives. By that definition, a lot of small towns absolutely do want to be left behind. Most of them seem to be filled with people who want their children to have more or less the same childhood that they had: similar vibe, quality of life, etc. I can't speak for all small towns, but most small towns would probably not appreciate the developments you're describing. They might as well be started on a relatively uninhabited piece of land, like Serenbe and similar places were[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenbe |
I definitely think local political pushback is one of the potential challenges. But I will also admit that part of the plan would be to move in enough people to gain political control.
It's a very viable, legal political strategy to ship 60k families into a new urban enclave in Wyoming or Montana and thereby turn it blue. 120k blue votes would do it.
I honestly thought that was Amazon's plan with HQ2, which is what made me think of it. A company the size of Amazon could create that many great jobs in one of these states in a single election year. If they paired it with tasteful property development, I would be shocked if a good chunk of their Seattle employees didn't swarm the new town.
But let's assume that:
1 - no existing large company will do this. Patagonia or similar could, but most don't wade this deeply into politics.
2 - locals would dislike it but would also get rich selling their land. So this is not hostile to them, and we don't need to obsess over their feelings too much. It's just capitalism.
Seems to me a better mechanism would be to assemble the interest, then collect the money, and then buy the plot of land. You wouldn't want to project too much ahead of time for fear of scaring or intimidating. But once you secured the land, assuming you could still subdivide it and develop it (ie, assuming local politicians didn't stop you first), you could sell it off, get the new residents registered and you're done. You just took over.
This could sound too premeditated, but developers wielding local laws in unexpected ways to their economic advantage is nothing new. See Robert Moses.
I think a DAO should be the next Robert Moses, only not racist and focused on making all of the gorgeous land in this country habitable for young people. This is a massive country. The only reason we all huddle in cities is because the rest of it is so left behind that we don't want to help it anymore.
BTW, I don't think there's much difference between taking over a town and starting a new one. You start a new one and the neighboring towns plus the county will still freak out. It's in your best interest to control local politics, ideally all the way to the governor, either way.