Elon Musk has been carving out his own “utopia” in Texas for years.
From Brownsville to Bastrop, the world’s richest and most unserious man has laid his claim on the Lone Star State—and now, he is petitioning the local government for the right to make it official.
On Dec. 12, Musk’s team sent a letter to local legislators requesting a vote to turn Starbase—a SpaceX worksite within Brownsville where the aerospace company launches rockets—into its own city.
“To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley,” Kathryn Lueders, the general manager of Starbase, wrote in a letter to the county.
But Brownsville, a town speckled with pro-Musk murals and plagued with gaping income disparity, has already been labeled by some as Musk’s first “company town,” or a city where a single company owns or controls just about everything.
About 350 miles north of Starbase lies the Musk-named Snailbrook—a township also filled with Musk’s meddling that mimics the controversial company towns littered throughout American history.
One of Musk’s Bastrop corporations is Boring Co., which is a tunneling company known for ghosting on its promises and wreaking ecological havoc.
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, relocated to Bastrop after Musk threw a fit over California’s bureaucratic red tape, joining his Starlink, Neuralink, and SpaceX facilities there.
Surrounding this collection of workers is Hyperloop Plaza, which boasts businesses exclusively for Musk’s workforce. A cafe and medical office joined the plaza earlier this month.
More recently, Musk has made headway on his long-awaited Montessori school, Ad Astra. Last month, per Bloomberg, the tech mogul received an initial permit to launch the preschool with as many as 21 pupils.
The school is a piece of Musk’s long-term plan to also incorporate a university, according to Business Insider. Musk notably conversed with hip hop artist Kanye West (whose own school drew controversy for questionable treatment of children) about his town and school plans, according to The Wall Street Journal.
When tied neatly together and observed from afar, experts have linked Musk’s many ventures in Texas to the historic—and controversial—company towns in the U.S.
Company towns were most popular in mining areas, where corporations would bring workers and their families to live in towns near the mines. To convince them to relocate, companies provided workers with housing, grocery stores, schools, and other necessities—not far off from Musk’s own modern creations.
Because of these towns, companies could keep production at a steady rate. To some, this sort of living was later called “slavery by another name.”
More recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has turned toward company towns as a solution for his company’s treatment of workers as well.
Hardy Green, author of “The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy," told Daily Kos he agrees that Musk’s actions are one and the same.
“This is definitely a company town,” Green asserted.
The author said he is skeptical that Musk can succeed in making a company town work for him in modern times.
“I think he has to come up with a reason [to get workers to relocate to his towns,” he said.
Historically, Green explained, company towns worked because they filled a need for workers that they weren’t currently getting.
But if Musk is looking to hire engineers and other highly educated people (who he has a track record of abusing and losing), he may have some trouble convincing them to move without offering major perks.
In 2023, Musk’s Bastrop community offered housing to employees for around $800 a month, a drop from the median $2,200 rent in the area, The Wall Street Journal reported.
But if employees left or got fired, they would have to leave their rented home within 30 days.
“These company towns are often sort of vanity projects,” Green told Daily Kos.
While Musk has displayed plenty of vanity, the exact motivation behind the erratic billionaire’s new utopian push remains unclear.
