Several big Silicon Valley names are teaming up on a massive project to build a city in California according to their left-wing utopian vision.
The effort is spearheaded by the venture-capital firm Flannery Associates, The Guardian reports. Leading the charge is Jan Sramek, a Goldman Sachs trader, along with Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Steve Jobs), LinkedIn co-founder Reif Hoffman, and Patrick and John Collison — sibling co-founders of the popular payment processing platform Stripe.
These and other Big Tech elites have reportedly already spent $800 million on purchases of 55,000 acres’ worth of agricultural and vacant land in northern California. Flannery Associates says its planned community will offer residents clean energy, public transportation, and numerous amenities.
Flannery has achieved its massive acquisition by offering farmers and landowners several times the market value for their property. These purchases have made Flannery the largest landowner in Solano County, which lies about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The land bought by Flannery surrounds Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, a city with a population of 120,000.
As The New York Times reports, landowners did not know to what purpose Flannery intended to put the land until residents in the area last week started receiving texts and emails with a poll to determine their opinions on a broad range of questions.
The Times noted:
One asked them to rate the favorability of several names including “Joe Biden,” “Donald Trump” and “Flannery Associates.” Another question began with a description of a possible ballot initiative for a project that “would include a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space.”
Brian Brokaw, a representative for Flannery, told the Times that the group is composed of “Californians who believe that Solano County’s and California’s best days are ahead.”
Silicon Valley elites have long been frustrated with the real estate shortage in the Bay Area and with the barriers to building in California, often clashing with the municipalities, such as Palo Alto and Mountain View, in efforts to expand their headquarters.
This desire for more space has led to an interest among Big Tech power players in the idea of building entire cities from the ground up.
Flannery gained public attention in the spring when it filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against landowners in the area, accusing them of colluding to inflate the prices of their land.
According to The Times:
In November 2018, the company sent offers to “most landowners in this area,” the lawsuit said, and included incentives such as allowing sellers to retain income from wind turbines, as well as stay on the properties rent-free under long-term lease-back agreements. Over the five years, the company purchased some 140 properties from 400 owners, the lawsuit said.
This month, a lawyer representing landowners jointly filed a motion to dismiss the case. In July, three landowners said they had reached a potential settlement with Flannery.
The titans of Silicon Valley have made the ownership of land a priority. Bill Gates is now the largest private owner of farmland in the country, with 269,000 acres across dozens of states. He owns more than 69,000 acres in Louisiana, almost 48,000 acres in Arkansas, and nearly 26,000 acres in Arizona, among other large holdings.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has also made major land purchases.
Fittingly, even while buying up real land, Silicon Valley bigwigs have been promoting “digital real estate” in the metaverse, where people can buy virtual plots of land that exist only on the internet.
As The New American reported, Texas entrepreneur Adam Hollander last year invested $1.2 million to create an island in the metaverse called White Sands, a tropical getaway.
Ultimately, this is about power. There is great power to be had in owning land, resources, housing, food production — and the elites of Silicon Valley know it. They are far from content with the vast power they wield over the digital and information spheres. They want to extend that power to every aspect of our physical day-to-day life.
They have already inserted themselves heavily into the political sphere. Why not raise their influence even further by owning the very cities in which people live, work, and raise their families?
What would life be like for those living in a Silicon Valley “utopian” city? Would the individuals who are quick to deplatform and ban users for posting “right-wing disinformation” hesitate to cut the power and water and food to those they deem guilty of wrongthink?
While their northern California city is far from being a reality — there are many political and regulatory hoops through which Flannery must jump before it can start building anything — these questions raise crucial considerations for California residents who may be tempted to be involved with the project.
