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Comment by code4tee | Hacker News Reader

Things will simply evolve. People said the same thing about industrial buildings in cities which are now thriving residential complexes. Lord and Taylor’s flagship store in Manhattan went bust and was going to become a WeWork, then when WeWork imploded the building was bought by Amazon and will become their offices. There won’t be a “property apocalypse” but there will be a “property evolution.”

In cities with diverse economies and a strong talent base this evolution happens quite quickly. Elsewhere it happens more slowly, and thus it’s more painful, but it will eventually happen there too.

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That evolution is coming strangely close to us becoming company towns owned by billionaires. Little Vendorvilles everywhere. I wonder how much property Amazon will accumulate in the next few years.

edit: Oh, yeah, I pay rent and insurance to Berkshire today, guess I'm there.

Life could be better in company towns. They can create ecosystems of jobs that could better support the company's goals, and as the company reinvests funds to improve the quality of life and attract talent and labor, you could see improvements in things such as mass transit or perhaps a privatized police force with better accountability.

That's an optimistic take (are you being sarcastic?). We've seen something similar with company stores in mining towns during the 19th and 20th centuries. They weren't exactly known for treating their residents (employees) fairly.

I'd expect a much more sophisticated 21st century take on company stores before some libertarian utopia.

This is satire right?

The history of the company town is not all negative. Many company model towns were truly built to provide a better quality of life for workers, albeit with some very paternalistic overtones and often a desire to make them better workers as well.

Interestingly, the modern US military base still often resembles a company town. While not perfect, my impression is that life isn't worse then off base.

You're a lower enlisted. You live in an apartment complex, sharing a stairwell with 5 other lower enlisted families. One of you is tagged as stairwell coordinator. It's now your job to get everyone in that stairwell to clean the area regularly. If you fail, your boss hears about it.

You get promoted, you're now given duplex housing in the NCO housing area. You now have a yard. Your grass grows too long. The military police ticket you, and notify your supervisor.

You goto the store on post. A coworker is there. He's with some girl who isn't his wife.

You goto the dining facility. You have to go to the dining facility because your paycheck is automatically deducted $300+ a month because you are forced to have a meal card, regardless of how often you eat there.

Just a few examples from people I know. Everyone tries to get statement of non-availability so they can live off base.

A company town has no inherent need to police such vanities or moral character. It would be no worse than living somewhere with an HOA.

Fair. This makes sense. I didn't think of militaries as companies.

I guess the ideal situation is when your goals align with what the company wants out of you.

The opportunity of company towns is the opportunity of dictatorships: with fewer decision makers, longer-sighted decision can be rammed through.

For example, California could presumably make better housing decisions if existing property owners didn't get a say.

That said, the weaknesses of dictatorships obviously apply equally. A benevolent dictator leads to great happiness; a terrible one leads to hell that can only be overthrown by revolution.

I wouldn’t assume it’s going to happen - ever seen eastern Connecticut or Maryland, upstate NY, etc.? There are plenty of places which have been waiting for that eventually since the 1800s, with nice downtowns and plenty of industrial space but simply an insufficient number of ways people can make a living.

There’s a wicked critical mass factor where you need enough now to be able to get people to start businesses there rather than moving, and there’s a nasty feedback cycle with shrinking tax bases cutting into city services which is hard to break out of.

SF and NYC probably haven’t priced out enough diversity to get through this but there are a lot of cities which only need a couple of employers to fold or relocate to start having big challenges. Attracting teleworkers quickly enough could help but a lot of old industrial and even office space will require a lot of work to convert into residences.

There aren't quite as many thriving former industrial buildings as there are rusted hulks strewn about.

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