A White House study in 2021 found that 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2 percent of their income in taxes, while the average American paid 13 percent of their wages in taxes. Keep that in mind as you read the following.
Dryden Brown, a man of twenty-nine, has a new plan that will “save Western civilization” as we know it. He is on a mission to create a “network state” called Praxis, a city that “has yet to exist.” Praxis will be a “special economic zone” that will “accelerate technological progress” in the areas such AI (Artificial Intelligence for those unfamiliar with it) biotech and energy. Praxis has raised about half a billion dollars from the likes of Sam Altman, Shervin Pishevar, as well as (those notorious billionaire brothers) Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The city already has an online community of 89,000 prospective citizens. You didn’t get invited? Well, you’re not cerebral enough, and don’t have the social connections necessary in this “neo-Gilded Age.”
But Praxis is not the only high-tech city planned by Silicon Valley billionaires. From The San Francisco Standard of August 26, 2023: “Several high-profile Bay Area tech billionaires were identified Friday as the investors behind a company that has spent $800 million in recent years to acquire a wide swath of land in Solano County with the hopes of transforming it into a modern metropolis.
The group, which has been operating under the company name Flannery Associates, has been purchasing rural land around Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills in Solano County, about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco.” Not that you would know the names of these billionaires, but the likes of Jan Sramek (former investment banker) Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz, among others who are not likely your neighbors, or people who send you holiday cards, or is that texts or emails now?
Flannery Associates has been buying out thousands of acres of farmland, and paying far more than their market price. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk has formed his own city in south Texas called Starbase. All of the aforementioned are looking to assemble their own high-tech cities, designed from the ground up, filled with high-tech geniuses, without ghettos or any other problems of the modern metropolis. Secluded mansions and gated communities aren’t enough for the billionaires; they need their own personal cities, surrounded by tax-evading geniuses such as themselves.
I fail to see how the billionaires have given thought to the environmental impact of bulldozing farmland to build cities, when existing cities rot in ruin, with empty houses, pothole-filled streets, empty rusting factories along with unemployed populations and homeless citizens. I won’t mention the names of cities in many states that are virtually begging for people to move there because of declining populations, and yet, that’s not good enough for the billionaires; they want to start from scratch.
Through loopholes, expert tax accountants and tax lawyers, most of these immensely wealthy people have avoided paying taxes; and their “charitable foundations” while putting on an admirable face, are simply institutions for escaping taxes. Yes, it is all legal, and they have millions devoted to lawyers and accountants intend to keep it that way. For example, your software company just went public. Being one of the founders, you are awarded thousands, if not millions of shares. You immediately put all of the shares in a non-taxable 401k. The stock soars, but all of your shares, now worth hundreds of millions, are in a non-taxable account. Or, you start a charity foundation, pouring millions into a tax-free account, while your legal obligations to actually perform a charitable act are only in the hundreds of thousands. You declare yourself (or a close relative) the chairman of the charity with a salary in the millions.
Exiting roads, sewers, electrical grids, water supplies, and waste disposal systems that already exist in cities that shall here remain nameless and would have a much smaller environmental impact, but then, they have too many messy problems, those problems being citizens, of course. I have no doubt that all of the governmental taxes and just general expenses for these planned metropolises will be paid by the citizens, if the billionaires continue with their abilities to avoid taxes and pass the expenses of their dreams upon the public.
Not that this hasn’t been tried before. I seem to recall other countries concentrating the intellectuals in one city, and having the intellectuals determining the fate of their nation’s citizens, because, well, they are the smart ones, now aren’t they? Wait a second, I recall now, those cities were Moscow, Beijing and Tehran; look at the impact of the geniuses of those countries. The instant communication technology has given us, in emails and texts just aren’t enough. The high-intellect citizens need a city of their own, if for no other reason that they won’t have to associate with all of the losers and morons that populate our formerly great nation. If they want to pay for it, all of it, on non-arable land, I’m all in. As for having the rest of the nation, especially the working class, pay for some dream of the tech geniuses, so they don’t have to deal with the working stiffs, (who pay most of the taxes) I’m one-hundred percent opposed.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/praxis-dryden-brown
https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/25/bay-area-tech-billionaires-behind-mystery-land-grab-revealed
