Not sure if this is a joke, but this is already planned.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/03/09/tech/elon-musk-texas-town...

It's not a company town unless the company owns all the businesses and houses and pays you in company scrip. If you are going to call company planned residential projects for employee housing "company towns", then there are already company towns in Silicon Valley, but you'll have to excuse me for not feeling sorry for the workers.

Do you really think Elon Musk would be able to prevent himself from putting his face on the town currency? He may or may not care to name the store Elonmart.

I think I will judge him on what he actually does and not on nonsensical hypotheticals

Like spending $44 billion on a marginally profitable social media network, seemingly in a fit of pique at the SEC, and inserting a VIP modifier of 1000X into the algorithm so that his posts always pop to the top of everyone's feed because he was mad that the US President's tweet got more attention? Does that sound like the actions of a person with zero interest in wielding power over the residents of his new domain?

I thought that AMP was finally a thing of the past...

That story was fake news

I already saw some documentary about gentrification. And how the restaurateur were building houses to house her workers. Charging pretty obscene rent and somehow telling nothing was wrong there... That isn't too far away from true exploitation.

Heck, there's this case where the workers aren't even citizens. Just cheap labor imported en mass to work in the service/hospitality industry:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-sour...

In summer tourist areas, it's pretty common to bring in students from e.g. eastern Europe and (I think) often provide housing. But doesn't seem like a terrible deal for everyone involved. A lot of ski areas have dorms as well for seasonal workers.

Those are short term with a well defined end date and with clear upfront costs. Company towns were anything but, with workers frequently surprised with random charges at the end of the month just to make sure they don't accidentally make any money and pay off their debt to the company l.

They weren't all strictly the same though, there's some variations on the theme. One company in the past was in the business of buying fish from fishermen in small remote towns, transporting and selling it wholesale. They were also in the business of financing the boats for the fishermen. The terms of the loans were predatory and the company was a monopoly in the area, whatever money the fishermen made just went back to the company.

4 years ago, Google had proposed a massive housing development of their own, which some then compared to bringing back "company towns". My reaction was, we must be in a pretty crappy state where company towns are an improvement (over the current housing situation).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20215407

Not quite 5 years: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/elon-musk-plans-to...