| Serenbe is a very cool example, thank you. Do you know of any others? 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. |
Not off the top of my head, but there were a lot of attempts at something like that in the 20th century. Most of them were associated with escaping social norms (e.g. communes, cults, etc.) and ultimately failed.
> 120k blue votes would do it
You're missing a few factors:
1. Land votes, not people. One of the reasons Republicans are a minority party and control the country, even at most state levels, is because of gerrymandering. You need far more than 50% of the state to take it back over, especially if the Supreme Court is tolerant of extreme gerrymandering (as it has been for years now).
2. A large percentage of people don't vote. If you want 120k votes, you need probably 200k+ potential voters.
3. There is an explicit strategy by the GOP to make purple states (like Texas) scary or unpleasant to live in for Democrats.
> 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.
I'm not sure this is true. I think the #1 reason for living in a city has been the job opportunities, and the #2 reason was the social connections. Maybe it's close to friends, family, or a like-minded community.
You don't have those things in a random spit of land in the middle of nowhere. You won't have an airport, convenient highways, easy weekend getaways, nearby beaches, etc.
Serenbe is cool, but it took decades to develop it into a real competitor to a city, and it was also consciously built close to the busiest airport in the world. You can't replicate those conditions quickly or easily.
I think if you had $30B to spend, you could either build a town or boost the endowment for youth voter turnout, and I think the latter would give you better social returns on your investment.