It Could Happen Here - Elon Musk and the Rebirth of Company Towns feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

In Texas, the world’s richest man is bringing back to life one of the worst ideas of the Gilded Age, local Robber Baron-owned dictatorships called company towns. Elon Musk has already established two in Texas and other high-tech oligarchs like Peter Theil hope to create more. In this episode, journalist Steven Monacelli and historian Dr. Michael Phillips explore the history of company towns in the United States and their disturbing rebirth.  Sources: Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy Chad Pearson, Capitalism’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth CenturySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the People's Princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fud Around and Find Out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court.

Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports and partnership with unanimous media. on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Not today. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town.

A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe. Starring Jewel State and Ray Wye. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I work. I'm Maria Inojosa. I spent my career creating journalism that centers voices who have been historically sidelined. From the most pressing news stories to deep cultural explorations, Latino USA is journalism with heart. Listen to Latino USA, the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States.

State, hear it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Smokey the Bears. Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees you passing through. Remember, please be careful. It's the least that you can do. That's what you desire. Don't play with matches. Don't play with fire.

After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips, Smokey Bear lives within us all. Learn more at smoky bear.com. And remember, only you can prevent wildfires. Brought to you by the USDA Forest Service, your state forester, and the ad council. CallZone Media. I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co-author of a recently published book about the eugenics movement in Texas called The Purifying Knife. And I'm Stephen Monticelli. I'm an investigator of reporter in Dallas where I contribute to a variety of publications

as well as Cool Zone Media. I cover political extremism in Texas and beyond. Elon Musk has dominated the news since the 2024 presidential campaign, and for a lot of reasons. There's a billionaire's flirtation with neo-Nazi politics. There's his gutting of the social safety net through Doge. His soap opera estrangement from President Trump also grabbed much of the spotlight. In the past two years, Musk has resuscitated in two Texas communities one of the worst ideas from the robber barren age. In an effort to control his workers' lives on and off

the clock, Musk is bringing the company town back to life. On May 3rd of this year, on the South Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, people went to the voting booth on a peninsula called Boca Chica. They voted to turn their one-and-a-half square mile patch of unincorporated land into a city called Starbase. Almost all of the voters were employees of Musk, SpaceX Rocket Company. So were the candidates elected to govern Texas' newest city. But Musk is clearly the power behind the throne. Meanwhile, in Bastrop County, near Austin in central Texas,

Musk gobbled up local real estate in loosely governed unincorporated lands. That's where, in addition to Starbase, he's working to create another company town he calls Snailbrook. Many Basher presidents say Musk's businesses are poisoning the water, air, and soil in their community. On this episode of it could happen here, we'll discuss the unfortunate history of company towns in the United States, how company towns have always undermined democracy and workers' rights, and what these Elon Musk company towns may mean for the future of United States capitalism. Speaking of capitalism, we'll be back after a few words from our sponsors.

Hey guys, it's AZ Fud. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as a people's princess. But now, you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy life as I try to balance it all. from my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies

to just try to make it to my midterms on time. You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me. But this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports and partnership with unanimous media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town.

You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream. A familiar place can look completely alien. Get back, everyone who's going to next. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man,

you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe. starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Aberstown.

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner.

He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.

He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming

and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Roughly between 1880 and the mid-1930, An astounding 2,500 company towns dotted the American landscape. A product of Gilded Age greed, at best, these corporate plan communities represented paternalistic experiments and mind control.

At their worst, they became miniature police states. In Steinway Village in New York, where, not surprisingly, workers manufactured Steinway pianos, Pullman, Illinois, where employees made train cars, and Hershey's Pennsylvania, which was, of course, a chocolate manufacturing center, employers built the houses that the workers lived in, the stores where they shopped, the saloons where they drank, and the schools where their children learned. Chad Pearson is an historian of American labor at the University of North Texas, and he's the author of a noted book called Capitalism's Terrorists, Clansmen, Lawmen, and employers. in the long 19th century. We talked to him about the rise and fall of company towns from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century. Could you explain how company towns got started in the United States

and the motives of the businessmen who started them? Certainly. So really, I think we can identify three periods, three phases. So the first phase would be we might associate with the so-called Lowell Girls in Lowell, Massachusetts, which began in the 1820s and continued into the subsequent decade. These were young women, girls, and basically, you know, they lived on the campus, the town. The boss would decide when they would work and when they would eat and that sort of thing.

After that, we have another phase which we could identify with George Pullman and the Coleman Company just outside of Chicago in the late 19th century, really in the 1880s. Again, these were very controlling environments in which, you know, the employer had all the say workers would live in. company housing again. They go to the company church and, you know, we're really controlled both during and after the workday. And then we have a whole bunch of them, mostly in mining and textile lumber communities. By 1939, there were 70 planned industrial settlements built after 1900, so quite a few. So whatever period we're talking about, these places were infamous for management's use of surveillance and power. This is designed really to fundamentally control folks which found expression again in homes, workplaces, and churches, you would have

to sign contracts. So in a place like mining towns in West Virginia, you'd have to sign a contract that gave the boss the authority to evict labor activists or people, you know, workers who might be involved in trying to improve their conditions by fighting back, or they would be evicted for so-called undesirable behavior. Again, that generally involved things like union organizing. Pearson described these company towns as many dictatorships in which fighting for better conditions could result in harsh retaliation, and in which ministers that were hired by the company at a church built by the company bosses fed workers a steady stream of propaganda. This happened in places like New England textile mills to coal mining areas in Alabama and West Virginia. What might happen? You'll say you're active in a union or you're resisting your boss, right?

the boss or his underlings might send in mind guards and say, you and your family, get out, throw their stuff, their furniture on the street, and there would be no, no accountability, no way to, you know, address that, that problem. You'd also have company towns, you'd have a religious, you'd have preachers who would preach the company line as well, right? So that kind of pro-business, pro-capitalist indoctrination was, expressed both in the workplace and from the pulpit. A key way that company towns control workers was by not paying them in actual American dollars,

but in paper certificates called script, they can only be spent at company-owned stores. This gave the company monopoly power over what their workforce bought. A 25-pound sack of flour cost $250 at the company's store. It costs only $1.90 elsewhere, right? So this was a way for companies to sort of corner the market, if you will, right? They could jack up prices. You're basically a slave to the system. George Pullman, who established the company that made luxury railroad cars, created a company

town in Illinois in 1881. Pullman presented his experiment to the world as a utopia. The workers' houses there had natural gas and running water, which was not the norm at the time. some even had indoor plumbing. The town had retail shops and well-supplied markets, and tourists visited it as a supposed ideal community of the future. In spite of the apparent shininess of Pullman, Illinois, the relationship between Pullman and his employees turned violent in 1894, as Dr. Pearson explains.

So, Pullman, George Pullman, began creating this utopian community in 1880, okay? That's shortly after this massive, uh, native. nationwide strike in 1877 of railroad workers. So a lot of bosses in the aftermath of these massive confrontations were like, okay, we've got to do something. We've got to do something to solve what they called the labor problem, the labor question. And one way they did that was through welfare work, trying to be more benevolent, right? Carrots as opposed to only six. And so Pullman was established in 1884, just outside of Chicago, had about 12,000 residents. And it was at the time the largest, most famous company town in the nation. And he did, I mean, let's give credit

where credit is too, some things that did improve the conditions for employees. So he had a company doctor, he oversaw a good school system, funded athletic programs, a company band. And he modeled this on a company town outside of Bradford, England. So what we see is, you know, the company towns do not originate in the United States. They're sort of a phenomenon that we see across the industrialized world. But of course, there was also a darker side. He banned alcohol. He restricted tobacco use. He imposed a curfew, right? So you want to go out, you know, it's 5 o'clock somewhere. No, it's not, right? And so it's also pretty expensive to live there. Residents had to spend some like 30% of their money on rent. And when they saved enough money,

an impossible thing to do often, when they did save that money, they would get out. Pullman's experiment in welfare capitalism came crashing down when the United States sank into an economic depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897. At one point, three million people, or about 20 percent of the country's workforce, could not find jobs. Hunger and suicide became rampant as hard times dragged on, and Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages by 33 percent during this time. Residents of the company town in Illinois struggled to pay rent at the Pullman-owned housing, where management refused to lower prices. Eugene Debs, who would soon emerge as the leader of the Socialist Party of America, and would serve five times as that party's presidential nominee,

led the 150,000-member American Railway Union. The ARU staged a strike calling for a rollback and pay cuts and a reduction in rents at the company housing. The strike spread nationwide with railroad workers refusing to handle trains carrying Pullman cars. President Grover Cleveland dispatched 12,000 troops to crush the uprising and reopen the rail lines. Federal Marshals shot two strikers to death in Kensington, Illinois, not far from Chicago, while authorities arrested Debs and put him in prison for defying the court order by continuing the strike. In a sop to workers, the House and Senate unanimously passed a bill. creating what we now know today as Labor Day.

Later on, in jail, Eugene Debs becomes radicalized, reading Marx, runs for president a few times after that. Bottom line, workers lost a strike. But Pullman's experiment soon ended. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that George Pullman's ownership of the community was in violation of its charter and dismantled the town in 1898. So a dramatic period in U.S. history, one of the most important struggles in U.S. labor history and really showed the way in which bosses, the state came together to really fight labor. By around the end of the 1800s, about three percent of the American population lived under the almost complete control of their corporate masters. Meanwhile, an extensive network of spies filled company towns. These corporate agents

posed as fellow workers, bartenders, mailmen, or just another customer at the store. They reported to management and email content who complained about working hours or wages. Fired workers were often placed on a blacklist that was widely distributed among corporations and made landing a new job even more difficult. Some mining towns resemble prison camps. Armed guards surrounded the towns to keep out union organizers. And the corporate overlords in company towns use violent means to maintain tyrannical control. We asked Dr. Pearson to explain this. Now, Dr. Pearson, you titled one of your books, Capitalism's Terrorist, and you were

referring basically to the fact that corporations, including the ones that own company towns, often use private armies, armed militias, or they basically hired outside violent groups to control labor. Could you go into that a little bit more? Let me read you an anecdote from Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. Vandergrift, Pennsylvania is a company pound, not far from Pittsburgh. It's a steel town. And in July of 1909, during a strike against the American sheet and tin plate company, the company's

superintendent was a guy named Oscar Lindquist. He led a mob of hundreds to a hotel in the nearby town of Apollo where the union organizers were staying. So there's an effort to build a union membership in this company town. And Lindquist was so pissed about their presence. So he informed the organizers that they had an hour to leave town and that he would be burn the building down if they refused to comply. When they protested, insisting that they had free speech and assembly rights, Lindquist claimed that, quote, his word was the law. A local town

official reinforcing Lindquist's demand gave the men until the next morning to leave. So we have threats of like burning places down, killing people, right, and ultimately no accountability. I think it's fair to call these people terrorists. The harshness of company town's inspired worker resistance, including what came to be known as the Colorado Coalfield War. We'll hear more about that and a tragedy that came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre after this break, sponsored by some companies. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as a people's princess,

but now you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy light as I try to balance it all, from my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time. You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV,

you may think you know me. But this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports and partnership with Unanimous Media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There's a vile sickness in episode. town? You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look

completely alien? Get back everyone! He's going to next! And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Mankey this is Havoc Town a new fiction podcast sets in the bridgewater audio universe starring jule state and ray wise listen to Havoc Town on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the devil walks in aberstown welcome to pretty private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new

insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network.

Tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps,

are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming,

and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the bloodiest confrontations between a company militia and striking workers in American history took place in Ludlow, Colorado in the early 20th century. The Colorado fuel and iron company controlled several coal mines, and it was owned by the world's richest man, John D. Rockefeller, who also owned the Standard Oil Company. The coal workers were unhappy with several things. They were working 12-hour days, six days a week, sometimes seven.

Through their union, the United Mine Workers, they asked for a raise and for their workday to be no more than eight hours. They also demanded the right to live in housing that wasn't part of the company town controlled by Rockefeller and to spend their hard-earned money in stores that he didn't control. The relationship between the United Mine Workers and Rockefeller broke down when he refused to negotiate with them. Between September 1913 and December 1914, the coal miners in Ludlow staged strikes against the richest man on the planet at the time. Instead of negotiating, Rockefeller assembled a private army of local sheriff's deputies and private detectives. The militia armed itself with a motorized gatling gun that Rockefeller's goons named,

the death special. The nation recoiled in horror when on April 20th, 1914, militia troops attacked a company miner's tent colony. They were living in the tent colony because they had been kicked out of company housing. During the armed assault, Rockefeller's troops killed 66 men, women, and children. They doused the tents with kerosene, incinerating 11 hiding in a pit, including a pregnant woman. The folk singer Woody Guthrie immortalized the hurricane. scene at Ludlow in his ballad, the Ludlow Massacre. You struck a match in the blaze it started.

You pulled the triggers of your gaddling guns. I made a run for the children, but the firewall stopped me. 13 children died from your guns. About 200 people in all died in what came to be called the Colorado Coalfield War. So we asked Dr. Pearson about the long-term impact of the Ludlow Massacre and what happened to company towns in the subsequent years. So basically on the morning of April 20th, 1914, National Guardsmen who were aligned with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which is owned by John D. Rockefeller, attacked this camp of strikers, you know, mine workers, strikers, ultimately killing 21 people, including 11 children. This brutality, this brutality lasted for 14 hours. The guards torched the colony.

And this came in the midst of a strike that had been going on for months, which started in September 1913. And so this was a real struggle. It was a terrible public relations disaster from the vantage point of Rockefeller and the company. The pressure to do something was great. And so what we see is we see government officials. meeting and discussing this event. There are these various gatherings of business people and labor unions

trying to resolve it. And in the aftermath of this, Rockefeller worked closely with what we might call industrial relations specialists. And he became a champion of welfare capitalism. Welfare capitalism like company unions, these sort of hop-down initiatives designed to win, as I pointed out, factory solidarity instead of class solidarity. And so how successful that was, probably not. These bosses continued to exploit, but they did so with smiley faces. As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Company Towns never completely died, and they're making a bit of a disturbing comeback via Rockefeller successor as the world's richest man, South African native and Texas transplant Elon Musk. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been a big

ally of Musk, at least until his nasty split with Trump over the president's tax and spending policies. But nonetheless, Musk is still popular in Texas, and the state and local governments, for instance, have given Musk $64 million worth of tax breaks to establish his Tesla factory called Gigatexas in Travis County, not far from the state capital. COVID-19 restrictions in California during the pandemic enraged Musk, who for a time defied state law. He derided California as defined by, quote, over-regulation, over-litigation, and over-taxation, poop on the sidewalk, and scorn. In contrast, Texas stood out for its lax environmental and labor standards, as Abbott bragged to the Fox Business Channel. A need that Elon had was speed. He

does everything fast, and this would have taken five, maybe ten years to accomplish in California. I told him that Texas moves at the speed of business. He was able to complete a mile-long gigafactory in a year and a half. That is unheard of, probably not replicable in any other state. Whether Bastrop residents liked Musk or not, it soon became clear that he was making a very large local footprint. Bastrop County has always been famous for its beauty. This is how Bastrop sold itself to tourists, businesses, and potential residents in the early 2000s.

Next time you're on the way between, Houston and Austin or points in between you want to stop here in Bastrop we've got a pretty little place here along the Colorado River place with charm and great natural beauty we're the home of the lost pines so cross the bridge into the old town and have a look we've been growing here since 1832 and growing in a good way a way that looks to the future and that preserves the landmarks of the past Bastrop has more than 120 homes and other commercial and public buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Some people come here just to drive around town and see the pretty houses.

There's a heavy price for moving at Greg Abbott's speed of business, however. Chap Ambrose, a landowner in Bastrop County, 33 miles southeast of Austin, said that he had admired Musk for being a high-tech titan. He was excited when the billionaire announced he was going to move part of his business empire to the small, mostly agricultural county. Ambrose describes his feelings about Musk arrival in his YouTube series, Keep Bash Drop Boring. The weird part here is I'm actually an Elon Musk fan. I have my Tesla cyber truck.

reservation here from November of 2019, and SpaceX's Starlink, their satellite service, I've also signed up for last year. All of Bash Stop's natural and architectural splendor, however, is in danger since Musk came to town. In Texas, counties have even less ability to protect the environment than do cities. And Musk has strategically placed his operation on land where he'll face lax local oversight. He used his fortune to buy about 35,000 acres of what was once farmland in Bastrop County, which is now headquarters for the Boring Company. The Boring Company plans to build tunnels. Musk hopes one day will provide high-speed underground alternatives to our current web of interstates. Musk has secured permits to dig six test tunnels in Bashrop County, which is now also officially

the headquarters of his social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter. the musk industrial complex also includes a 500,000 square foot warehouse where the space exploration technologies corporation more commonly known as SpaceX builds terminals for another musk business venture the satellite company starlink neuralink which manufactures computer chips that have been experimentally implanted in test subjects brains and resulted in the deaths of many chimpanzees is also nearby. The Tesla Gigafactory, which produces electronic cars, is just 13 miles west on an unincorporated land, neighboring Travis County. I've seen it driving down the highway. It's an abomination.

Construction has also begun on a company town Musk has named Snailbrook. Plans for Snailbrook eventually include 110 single-family rental homes actually owned by Musk. So far, fewer than 20 modular homes have been taken. completed. According to Teen Vogue, plans are that rent for these houses will start at about 800 a month for a two or three bedroom dwelling, which is well below the $1925 median rent in Bastrop County. A Montessori school called Ad Astra, which is from the Latin, which means who the stars, is open, along with the boring bodega, which the Austin American statesman notes, offer snacks, soda, coffee, beer, wine, a children's playground, lounge space,

complete with video games and beanbag toss, a pickleball court that can be rented for a dollar an hour, and, of course, a variety of boring company merchandise, such as a t-shirt that says Tunnel Mars. This purported Worker Utopia already has a Gilded Age-style catch. If workers get fired by Musk, long famous for his volatility and mass layoffs at his companies, they will only have a month to vacate their homes. And as with the Gilden Age, much under the Snailbrook glitter is not gold. The town's playground, for instance, lacks shade from the broiling summertime central Texas heat, and much of the equipment is broken and made of inferior materials. The monastery school initially admitted 50 students, but the campus

wasn't big enough. Only 16 actually attended when classes first opened because the facilities were too small. Musk once marketed himself as an environmental savior. His electric cars would supposedly save the planet from climate change. However, in Bastrop County, he's a major polluter. The Boring Company petitioned Texas for the right to pour 143,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the Colorado River every single day. Meanwhile, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to date has cited SpaceX and the boring company 13 times because of the unauthorized discharge of water used to clean concrete trucks. The company also failed to meet state standards regarding erosion control and the release of toxic chemicals in the soil. As Teen Vogue reported, however, the resulting fines represent

mere pocket change for a man who earns an estimated $1,000 a second. The self-professed Musk fan, chap Ambrose, who he heard from earlier, said, he's disappointed about all this. There's a culture of secrecy, and it seems they're actively trying to obscure the truth, not just from neighbors, but also our county officials. If you're going to prototype the world's fastest tunneling machine in my neighborhood, then I expect the most innovative and transparent safety systems to go alongside it. Why do they refuse to give direct answers, and why won't they put their promises in writing?

Why do they refuse to follow the very minimal restrictions we have in Texas for development. And why do I have to go to commissioner court so that they put in a legal septic system? It seems to me that they only follow the rules and behave when they're being watched. Transparency may have disappeared forever for residents of Musk's other company town. One of Musk's most lucrative company, SpaceX, launches its rockets about 20 miles outside of Brownsville on the Texas Gulf Coast near the Mexican border. Most of the residents near the launch site, known as Boca Chica Village or Tejano's, and many struggle economically. The wetlands and beaches are considered sacred by members of the Carozzo Comacruido tribe of Texas.

The area residents were clearly invisible to Musk during a 2018 press conference when he spoke of how test flights such as those as he planned at the Boca Chica site were a necessary first step for exploration of the moon and Mars. The subsequent controversy was reported by a local TV station. K-R-G-V. When asked how soon flights would be going to the moon or Mars, must talk about the necessary test flights that would need to take place first. Most likely it's going to go to have an out of Brownsville location because we've got a lot of land with nobody around. And so if it wasn't up, it's cool.

The people at Brownsville didn't agree that if a rocket ship blew up in their neighborhood, it would be, quote, cool. His comment is not sitting well with Gail McConaughey. He's been out here before. He's damn sure I'd have to know. that he's seen the village, you got to know that it's not a ghost town. McConaughey and his wife have been living at Boca Chica Village every winter for the past 11 years. He says he's offended that he and the other residents are considered nobody. It also raises questions, he adds, about how safe the launches will be. In a rocket that size or any size that would go up and who knows

what might happen, it might start tipping the wrong direction. Who knows if something happens to the engines and it explodes, that's cool. When you're talking about there's lives here that's a mile and a half away. O'Connay's words were prophetic. In subsequent years, Musk's rockets did blow up, such as in April 2023 when a SpaceX special obliterated the concrete launch pad leaving behind a massive crater. As Scientific American reported, quote, particulate debris as well as concrete and steel shrapnel from the Bosch launch, scattered far and wide across the surrounding landscape, igniting fires,

and slamming into protected habitats and public beaches. Ash, dust, and sandgrains hurled aloft by this first starship test rained down as far as Port Isabel, about five miles from the launch site, end quote. Another Musk rocket launch, this time from Bocahika, exploded again this past June 19th, as reported by WTHR. Whoa! In the skies over South Texas overnight, a massive fireball. After a SpaceX rocket exploded during a six,

static rocket test, a ground test for an upcoming launch. Ship 36 just blew up. Ship 36 just blew up. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, said the Starship rocket experienced a major anomaly while preparing for its 10th flight test, adding that all personnel are safe and there are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities. The explosion rattled nearby residents who posted videos on social media, one telling my San Antonio news, quote, our whole neighborhood felt it. It shook all of our houses. In spite of this record of Mayhem, on Saturday, May 3rd, Bocahika Village held an election on whether to incorporate

as a city of Starbase. The proposal to create the state's newest city carried by a vote of 212 to 6. Nearly two-thirds of the electorate live near SpaceX's launch site. Overwhelmingly, the voters were Musk employees. All three candidates elected to Starbase's City Commission ran unopposed and one without putting up a single campaign sign or hosting a single candidate forum. All three were employees of Musk and SpaceX. As the Texas Tribune has reported, the new city government increased control over the nearby public beach revered by local indigenous people. Some local residents feel the creation of the company town gives them even less power to protect what's seen as a local treasure. Starbase is only about one and a half

square miles. It's, of course, the home of space X, and the main goal is sending humans to Mars. According to the FAA, Starbase is aiming for 25 rocket launches a year, but this is all coming with a bit of controversy, especially over access to the popular Boka Chica Beach. Any SpaceX rocket launch or engine test requires closing a local highway to the beach, and some say Starbase is giving Musk too much control. People gathered at the beach Saturday night to protest. They're just tearing it up and doing whatever they want because they want to gentrify. They want to be a city by themselves. When you gentify the land, you're gentrifying the soul of the people.

Juan Macias, the protester you just heard, is the chair of the Carrizo-comacrudeau tribe of Texas. He told the Texas Tribune, quote, These hills are sacred to us. They don't know the history of the land, and they're trying to erase that. Of course, Musk has a history as well, and it is one characterized by labor abuse. abuses. Like the robber barons who ruled as emperors over their gilded age company towns, Musk has been accused of firing union organizers. At his Austin Gigafactory, workers claim Musk either didn't pay them for overtime or shortchanged them. Those same workers charged that records were

faked to document their safety training. And according to the Texas Observer, a publication I'm glad to contribute to, one worker said he was forced to work in a flooded part of the factory, and and had to work on a metal roof at night without lights. These are clear OSHA violations. It is highly unlikely the state of Texas will require Musk to provide any transparency about his business practices. Governor Abbott recently refused the request of a media outlet, the Texas newsroom, to release emails between him and Musk, claiming the extensive communication between the pair was, quote, intimate and potentially, quote, embarrassing, and therefore not a public interest. With so much a Musk enterprises in the state operating in company towns he politically controls or on county land with little oversight, Musk has become the Lone Star State's modern, unchecked, Robert Barron, extraordinaire.

And with the aid of his on-again, off-again, allied Donald Trump, he has blazed the trail for other tech billionaires. When Trump ran for president last year, he floated a proposal to build what he called, quote, freedom cities across the country. pushed by oligarchs like Peter Thiel, Mark Andresen, and Sam Altman, who ironically now has a bit of a fit and a fight with Elon Musk. They hate each other, and it's really funny. These proposed fiefdoms would function as libertarian oases. Coal miners were once paid in script, and the federal government banned script in 1938. But nevertheless, Jeff Bezos already uses something he calls, quote, swag bucks that are redeemable at Amazon to reward those. in the company he deems his most productive workers. Workers in the freedom cities under discussion

would not earn U.S. legal tender, but would get cryptocurrency instead, the historically stable store of value that has never ripped off thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. In the municipal monstrosities imagined in this scheme, workers would be paid not in U.S. currency, but as I just said, this insane, highly volatile cryptocurrency, these corporate havens would operate with the barest nods to workplace safety, environmental protections, and job security, and, God forbid, might even scam their workers by trading in that same highly volatile cryptocurrency that they're paying them in. Back in Bastrop, Chap Ambrose thinks we can still embrace the future without surrendering

a more old-fashioned concept of community. He hopes that Musk one day sees the light. I truly hope the borrowing company succeeds in its efforts. I think tunneling makes sense, and if they can improve traffic into Austin and around it, that'd be great. But you have to be better neighbors. Texas has strong landowner rights, and you can do pretty much what you want on your land. However, Texas law also says that we share the air, and you share the groundwater with me and my one-year-old son. So if you're going to come to my neighborhood and build the fastest and most efficient tunneling operation,

then I expect the most innovative and transparent safety systems to go alongside it. The struggle against the absolute power wielded by the rulers of the Gilded Ages company towns led to actual battles with literal casualties on American soil. Dr. Pearson reminded us that the hard life in the Gilded era, the era of company towns, represented an American norm rather than an exception. And because of Musk, Teal, and other modern robber barons, the battles fought in Pullman, Illinois, and Ludlow, Colorado might have to be fought once again. Some of you folks may be aware of Jefferson Cowley and Nick Salvatore's book, which he calls the Great Exception. and they argued that, you know, most of American histories like the Gilded Age. Yeah, we had a 40, 50-year period from, I know, the 30s, the 70s, when things were kind of better, right?

You know, what blue magas and red magas alike like to celebrate. But the fact is, you know, things were pretty exploited then as well. And so what kind of lessons can we learn from resistance to capitalism in its various forms? And I think the key one is to trust one another. There's no substitute for working class solidarity. Stop having illusions in the Democratic Party. They're not going to save you. And so to see, you know, where there are victories when workers are united.

And we see a little bit of that, you know, kicking ice agents out of towns, right? I mean, that's politicians aren't helping us there. That's, you know, collective action of working class people. It's not formal unions, but it's something, you know, I see hope. I see hope in the mass mobilization of working class people, irrespective of race, gender class and any other identity. I'm Michael Phillips. You can find me on Substack

at Dr. M. Phillips, 2001, on Blue Sky and Facebook. Google my name and quote, White Metropolis. And I'm Stephen Monticelli. You can find me on Blue Sky, and I've got a Patreon and all those other things.

Thank you for listening, and we hope that you found this delightful topic about Elon Musk's desire to bring back Company Towns Informative. Thanks for listening. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website,

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