[rc-research]

> Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction.

Company towns are well-recorded history, not science fiction. Lost Hills California (home of Wonderful Pistachios) exists in the real, present, non-fictional world.

[roxolotl]

That does not make it not frightening nor not the stuff of science fiction. We know how awful corporate towns are that’s partly why cyberpunk is what it is.

[ranger_danger]

Not always... Bentonville is actually pretty great: https://youtu.be/sIwslwoQUKY

[xerox13ster]

Bentonville is not "pretty great". Take it from someone who lived there for decades before the current marketing push.

The only things that make Bentonville "pretty great" are available in all of the surrounding cities.

Rogers, Lowell, Springdale, Fayetteville, Bella Vista. ALL OF THEM are better than Bentonville in spades. Bentonville is riding on their coattails.

Bentonville DOES NOT have a single national retailer other than Walmart in its city limits. Walmart makes sure of it by owning over half the land in town. The only competing grocer is an employee owned co-op that Walmart could not succeed in starving out like they did all the IGAs and local markets.

It is car centric as hell, despite the meager efforts they've been making with the NWA Regional Greenway (which was started by Rogers and Fayetteville and Bentonville initially resisted). They destroyed a long standing low income community so they could widen 8th for Walmart. You might think, well they're courting mountain bikers with the greenway and the mountain biking trails, but actually try to get anywhere and live on a bike. I did. The greenway gets you around completely separated from anywhere you might want to go. You WILL have to get on city streets or ride in the grass, hoping that it's not hiding a 2ft deep ditch. If you get on city streets, you WILL be used for target practice. They might have built infrastructure, but the people haven't changed, and for 25 years I heard people joking about running down cyclists for shits and giggles. People in huge lifted trucks will turn right on red over you while you have a walk sign to cross.

It has gradually developed downtown to be a little more urban, but not without major consequences. They have in the past decade destroyed innumberable small apartment complexes, triplexes and duplexes in downtown so that out of town executives and magnates can come buy megamansions on Central Ave, the literal main street through town. There can be no thriving downtown, no business to support the square and its tax base, when these mansions are eating the density that was supporting the tax base.

But they added few bike paths and MTB trails, a building you can ride a bike up, and a bunch of Private Equity owned restaurants, so I guess that's worth the systemic displacement of longtime residents and the short sale of the city's future for some biking tourism dollars. OH, and that gaudy display of wealth Alice Walton built, Crystal Bridges. It's nice that they put an installation in specifically to remind the locals just how far above them they are. Crystal Bridges is the Walton's "Bezos Balls". I would have preferred that the woman spend that money at the time paving the ditches in town so people can walk around without stepping in the street. OR JUST PAY LOCAL TAXES!!!!

You want retail? Dick's Sporting Goods, Target, Best Buy, Whole Foods, Marshalls, B&N, Pier 1, Staple, Lowes, Kohls, Office Depot, Petco, Ross, Northwest Arkansas Mall and The Pinnacle Hills Promenade are all in Rogers.

You want a night out? Good fucking luck in Bentonville, it's a company town, people are gone in the evenings and your options for dinner suck. There are basically no entertainment options in town. There's the movie theater that serves drinks, and I think Great Day Skate Place might count if you don't mind being sober and surrounded by families with kids. Fuck you if you want a club or lounge though. Double fuck you if you can't afford to pay rent in Bentonville (don't forget Walmart has spent half a century depressing real wages in Northwest Arkansas) and have to live in Centerton, Gravette, or Highfill. All the bars and night life are in Springdale and Fayetteville.

Want a fancy night out? Ruth's Chris, Theo's, Oak, Bordinos, and Atlas are all in either Rogers or Fayetteville. River Grille technically counts for you, but you have to drive like you're leaving Bentonville for Pea Ridge to get there.

Wanna go hiking? Fayetteville. Wanna go golfing? Bella Vista and Rogers. Wanna see a movie that isn't the top 4 newest releases? Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville. Wanna buy health food? Whole Foods or Cook's in Rogers.

You want local history? Go to Pea Ridge National Military Park. Go to the Daisy BB gun museum in Rogers, go to the Shiloh Museum for Ozark History in Springdale. Go to the Siloam Springs museum. Go to the Clinton House in Fayetteville. The Museum of Native American History has only been there for a few years. All these other museums have been entrenched. I guess the Amazeum is cool for kids but you probably look weird if you try to go in yourself.

Rogers has the water park, the aquarium, the AMP (major concert venue). Fayetteville hosts the performing arts at Walton Arts Center and the UofA Theater. Fayetteville has all the live music at small bar venues like George's Majestic Lounge. All the karaoke is on Dickson St.

There is not even a bowling alley in Bentonville.

Bentonville is not great. Bentonville is a shitville void smack dab in a region it refuses to participate in. Bentonville is a puppet of the Waltons and they make it no secret in the Walmart Home Office orientation, that Sam Walton wanted the city to remain small and the lack of any resources to actually live life has been by design. Only in the last 10 years have they even sort of kind of started to renege on that and start to actually build it up some, and that was only because there was major brain drain because no one wanted to live there.

Whatever caused you to think Bentonville is great has been the result of a relentless marketing push.

[kulahan]

There’s really nothing inherently profane about the concept, it’s just often abused. I’d love to see a few working examples out in the real world, personally.

[xboxnolifes]

> There’s really nothing inherently profane about the concept, it’s just often abused.

The same thing can be said about any autocratic government, but the practical and documented historical issues are why they are not liked. Just as dictatorship works well when you have a good ruler who cares about the people, the issue isn't if you get a bad ruler, but when.

[kulahan]

The same can be said about literally anything in existence, from this incredibly inane point of view. Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it.

Most things suck when someone shitty is running it. This is the worst argument of all time. There's really no reason, based on the very bad argument you've presented here, to assume a local, state, or federal government would be any better than any corporation. Please, I beg of you, come up with some argument that takes more than two seconds to disregard.

[watwut]

> Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it.

Authoritarian dictatorships always have people who sux on top. They are created by people who sux in the forst place and there is only a little to make them accountable.

And incentives placed on rules and their underlings ensure they will sux even when they did not originally.

[kulahan]

Cool, we’re not discussing authoritarian dictatorships - we’re discussing company towns.

[croon]

> Most things suck when someone shitty is running it. This is the worst argument of all time.

I actually think it is the only argument.

As Churchill mused:

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

Company towns, communism, etc are bad specifically because of their ease of abuse, which is why our best (least worst) systems of governing are focused on transparency, accountability and minimizing abuse. It sucks that all that friction makes it less efficient, but alas we need to plan for the/humanities worst, because it continually crops up.

[duped]

Pullman, IL was the model of a company town and started off as a reasonable (if paternalistic) approach to providing good housing and services to your employees.

Unsurprisingly, it did not last.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

I mean... Larry Ellison bought an entire Hawaiian island... from the Dole family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%81na%CA%BBi

[MrDrMcCoy]

His owning of a volcanic island is what solidifies him as a Bond villain for me.

[staplers]

Dupont, WA is another

[opengrass]

Water main upgrade canceled because Sandeep from Nepal voted against it.