this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Tech Billionaires' Quest to Build a New City in California Is Already Mired in Trouble::A legal battle is already brewing over a quixotic attempt to build a new city on Bay Area farmland.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I say let them do it. But only them, nobody that isn't a tech billionaire is allowed in at any time for any reason.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That would be so interesting. They'd have to automate almost everything.

Can they not be allowed to leave as well? I'd enjoy watching that petri dish. A billion dollars doesn't mean much without disparity.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, make them stay forever in there.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They'd be screwed the first time they needed a sink unclogged or a tire changed. Assuming they even got as far as building structures that didn't collapse immediately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It would go bad way before that. These people wouldn't clean up after themselves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They'd certainly think it's possible. Like a game of Factorio. But what they wouldn't consider is that the protagonist in that game is fully capable of doing all the work by hand.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I recall county officials raised concerns as to whether they had the ability to support a new city's needs for water, electricity, and sewage.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

They don’t.

Already a high-population water stressed state with rolling brownouts. Don’t need some high-tech pseudo paradise with huge homes needing extra energy and water.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The cohort of Silicon Valley tech titans who have been hoovering up Bay Area farmland in the hopes of converting it into a new city have been accused of deploying “strong-arm tactics” and a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to gobble up as much acreage as possible.

A number of local farmers say Flannery Associates, the parent company behind the quixotic California Forever project, has used underhanded tactics in its pursuit of a regional real estate hegemony.

In August, the New York Times reported that Flannery, which was then a totally mysterious company, had managed to buy up $800 million of farmland in the Solano County region.

The Times also revealed that Flannery was backed by a coterie of influential Silicon Valley billionaires, including folks like Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and a variety of other big names in the tech industry.

In the recent court filing, the farmers dismissed the lawsuit’s claims, alleging that Flannery had repeatedly engaged in “strong-arm tactics” in an effort to pry loose the land.

The whole thing seems like a giant expensive mess that is doomed to fail but I guess you should never count out the disruptive potential of a tech mogul’s unquenchable hubris.


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