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Government The Almighty Buck

Cryptocurrency Magnate's Plan to Turn 67,000 Acres into Blockchain-Based 'Smart City' (lasvegassun.com) 81

Posted by EditorDavid from the ledger-domains dept.
"A cryptocurrency company that owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada wants state government to grant technology companies power to form local governments on land they own," reports the Associated Press.

Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, ultimately envisions "a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint — financial statements, medical records and personal data — on blockchain."

The Associated Press calls him "a cryptocurrency magnate" who "hopes to turn dreams of a futuristic "smart city" into reality." To do that, he's asking the state to let companies like his form local governments on land they own, which would grant them power over everything from schools to law enforcement...

The company wants to break ground by 2022 in rural Storey County, 12 miles east of Reno. It's proposing to build 15,000 homes and 33 million square feet of commercial and industrial space within 75 years. Berns, whose idea is the basis for draft legislation that some lawmakers saw behind closed doors last week, said traditional government doesn't offer enough flexibility to create a community where people can invent new uses for his technology.

"There's got to be a place somewhere on this planet where people are willing to just start from scratch and say, 'We're not going to do things this way just because it's the way we've done it,'" Berns said. He wants Nevada to change its laws to allow "innovation zones," where companies would have powers like those of a county government, including creating court systems, imposing taxes and building infrastructure while making land and water management decisions...

If lawmakers back the proposal, technology companies with 50,000 acres of land that promise a $1 billion investment could create zones governed by three people like county commissioners. The draft legislation says two of them initially would be from the company itself... The former consumer protection attorney said the idea was born from how he sees government as an unnecessary middleman between people and ideas.

"For us to be able to take risks and be limber, nimble and figure things out like you do when you're designing new products, that's not how government works. So why not let us just create a government that lets us do those things?" Berns said.
The article notes that "innovation zones" and Blockchains LLC were both a key part of the governor's annual "State of the State" address last month. And that both the governor's campaign and an affiliated political action committee "received a combined $60,000 from the company."
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Cryptocurrency Magnate's Plan to Turn 67,000 Acres into Blockchain-Based 'Smart City' More

Cryptocurrency Magnate's Plan to Turn 67,000 Acres into Blockchain-Based 'Smart City'

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  • How high will the walls be? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lije Baley ( 88936 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @04:59PM (#61063734)

    I'm not usually one to oppose the freedom to "innovate", but what will keep their unbridled creations from spilling out into other areas? And how will this help at all with the FAA, FCC, EPA, etc.?

    • Re:How high will the walls be? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:17PM (#61063780) Homepage

      I'm more wondering where they expect their water to come from. Reno NV already has to focus on water conservation for existing residents, and future warming is only going to increase the pressure.

    • The highest point will be the tip of their pyramid.

      Sounds like an attempt to go back to company towns at worst, and an attempt to be their own county/state/country at best.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      I hope this doesn't go through because it's just a thinly veiled libertarian scenario (see Bioshock) which doesn't end well.

      There is a reason why stories about big corporations getting bigger than state governments never end well. How the hell this person managed to amass that much land in the first place is questionable, as that's likely land designated as park or farm land, and most of Nevada had been irradiated with nuclear tests, this sounds like trying to be "Las Vegas II". Most of the east part of Nev

      • it's just a thinly veiled libertarian scenario

        There's nothing libertarian about private companies attempting to wield government powers; the correct word is fascism.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Yeah, but it still seems to be one of the stock libertarian dreams. Libertarianism tends to have the facade of 'freedom', but pivots to authoritarianism real fast as proponents mostly seem to picture themselves as the new rulers once 'government' is out of the way and stopping them from using their power over others.

          Over the years there have been a bunch of libertarian projects that pretty much come down to 'hey, if you give our company all the money and power, WE will protect you from the government and

  • Excuse (Score:3)

    by enriquevagu ( 1026480 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:07PM (#61063754)

    So now Blockchain is now the excuse for companies to replace governments?

    Wow

    • Just another version of the old fashioned company town monopoly. Given the area, I would not be surprised if the water from the retaining reservoirs that catch the snow in the winter will soon be selling for .5 bitcoin/gallon

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjevsnCRQ_A [youtube.com]

    • The fact you need the latest in computational hardware and your own personal power plant to mine a few coins goes hand in hand with the insurmountable rats nest of bureaucracy that is government. The finest match since peanut butter and jelly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Pseudonym ( 62607 )

      Cryptocurrency is the new scrip.

      Mind you, the fact that a "cryptocurrency company [...] owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada" just goes to show how good a long-term investment they think crypto is.

    • Re:Excuse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @06:52PM (#61063982) Homepage Journal

      It's a Frankenstein's monster combining gerrymandering with time share resorts: slap some buzzwords on your development and when the gullible flock to it turn the equity in their homes into a millstone that anchors them to your products and services.

  • the bitcoin economy (Score:3)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:08PM (#61063760)
    They should have brisk sales of liquor, guns and hookers.

    • and forget the liquor and guns.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjevsnCRQ_A [youtube.com]

    • Nevada runs on liquor, guns, prostitution, and gambling already. That's what you just said, since crypto speculation is a synonym for gambling.

  • This cannot be allowed to happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:08PM (#61063762)
    Land ownership does not and should not allow anyone, less a non-person like a corporation, change the laws or form their own government. The bloody history of corporate towns should serve a reminder of what not.

    • You're correct, but Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, et al. have found it more effective to simply buy the existing one.

      Every single time these fuckers appear before Congress, there's a published list of who they bribed and how much--and yet, nothing happens. This is infuriating.

      Our government sold itself to a new set of owners than the People. You should be afraid, and VERY mad.

      • Every single time these fuckers appear before Congress, there's a published list of who they bribed and how much--and yet, nothing happens. This is infuriating.

        Our government sold itself to a new set of owners than the People. You should be afraid, and VERY mad.

        What pissed me off even more is learning how much these asshats sell out for. It’s often 30k, 15k, hell even 2-3k sometimes for an entire industry. What we need is crowd funded bribery such that we pay more and buy our democracy back. Noting would make nearly every last politician shart their pants harder than voters also being the primary lobby. They don’t wanna play ball? Crowd fund an opponent who will.

        • We already do have crowd funded payoffs to government officials. It's called "taxation".

          • The worst part is how those taxes are given to these companies and increased to cover subsidies to the very companies that don't want to pay taxes and are purchasing our government.

            They're literally just milking the people for their tax money, while paying the government thugs to do it for them at gunpoint. After all, that's what taxes on proles are backed by.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by metadojo2 ( 7455524 )
        you dont have to have a facebook account you know. i havent had a phone in 10 years. i still made 200k as a w2 employee ( a consultant even ) if you want freedom the jailer is in the mirror

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by randjh ( 7163909 )

          If you want to reveal just how to do this, I'll purchase a copy of your pamphlet. In 20th century Western civilization without a telephone, without a credit card, you'll be living in a homeless shelter. Economically, you don't exist. (One of the national food delivery services has started to require that you give them 2 credit card accounts.) That's why even the 3rd world has rural mobile phone service.

          Sure, you can get along fine without social media. You won't locate me on Facebook or Twitter or the like.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 )

      > The bloody history of corporate towns should serve a reminder of what not.

      The last 5 years or so I've seen a lot of that, people wanting to try out "a new idea" that's been done plenty of times before, with horrible results every time. Was history removed from the curriculum a few years ago and now we're seeing the effects, people who don't know history?

      I did notice about 15 years ago my step-daughters spent a lot of time on *-history. Maybe history was replaced with Mexican history, black history, a

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by istartedi ( 132515 )

      The bloody history of corporate towns should serve a reminder of what not.

      Don't worry. Communism solves that problem. /sarcasm.

      And the sarcasm tag is needed because... you actually find unironic communists, not only on reddit but in real-life settings like universities which is damned scary. Either people don't learn from history, or they're mentally defective in the same way that Trumptards are, thinking that they can work within the framework of a revolution (be it fascist or communist) and achieve a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        you actually find unironic communists, not only on reddit but in real-life settings like universities which is damned scary.

        Don't be so shocked, I've met Stalinists who didn't believe in the gulags, a Flat-Earther, and no shortage of young Earth creationists. I knew a guy whose grandmother left him a Manchurian coal mine in her will because Chiang had gifted it to her husband and she was sure the day Mao died the people would rise up and restore the warlords and foreign owners. People believe all sorts of weird shit, even ones who should know better.

    • Because... what could possibly go wrong. Dictatorships are bad, no matter who the dictator is. And corporations, which by their nature turn into humanless sociopathic entities, would be the worst of all.

  • When blockchain isn't stupid enough (Score:3)

    by An Ominous Coward ( 13324 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:35PM (#61063824)

    So one corporate entity will be the authority over all services and transactions in its domain. Certainly a use case for the overhead of distributed trust if I've ever heard one!

    But I guess when regular blockchain fever dreams aren't retarded enough, why not up the ante with Randian nightmare dystopia?

  • Fortunately in America being in debt to someone doesn't let them tell you where to live. And "this note is legal tender", so corporate script cannot be demanded instead of bitcoin. So the worst case for residents is they have to leave their homes and jobs behind and look for work elsewhere. That's not easy, but it's a significant limit on the power of the corporate town.

    No, the dangerous part is what happens if these get popular and start to regulatorily capture US laws. Make no mistake, our overlords woul

    • And "this note is legal tender", so corporate script cannot be demanded instead of bitcoin.

      Sweetie, that just means exactly that: the note is legal tender. It doesn't make the note mandatory tender. If the seller demands payment in quatloos, and you agreed to that, you'd better have quatloos on hand.

      • Nope, policy can't trump law.

        This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.

        Once a debt is established, they are forced to accept payment in said legal tender.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      being in debt to someone doesn't let them tell you where to live

      Why do you think they want to form their own government? So they can play with local laws enough to get around that and other regulations. If all transportation belongs to the company then you're walking through the desert trying to leave. Thousands of illegals have died trying that not far from where they want to build their Utopia.

  • Simply a horrible idea in utero. Bringing back company towns and stores would be a giant number of steps backwards.

  • And you can pay your rent to the Company, and shop at the Company store.... And the Company pays the police. What could possibly go wrong?

  • Already been done (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clovis ( 4684 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @06:25PM (#61063936)

    "There's got to be a place somewhere on this planet where people are willing to just start from scratch and say, 'We're not going to do things this way just because it's the way we've done it,'" Berns said. He wants Nevada to change its laws to allow "innovation zones," where companies would have powers like those of a county government, including creating court systems, imposing taxes and building infrastructure while making land and water management decisions...

    We know how it ends.
    These "starting over" with a new and better way to make a society always winds up with all the 12 year old girls being "married" to the village leaders.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by randjh ( 7163909 )
      Sure has. Remember Sealand not too long ago? Does this joker expect protection from any govt when the Nevada Mob decides to take over? Or does he expect to raise a mercenary army that accepts payment in his local currrency? Good luck with that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by clovis ( 4684 )

        Sure has. Remember Sealand not too long ago? Does this joker expect protection from any govt when the Nevada Mob decides to take over? Or does he expect to raise a mercenary army that accepts payment in his local currrency? Good luck with that.

        lol. I had forgotten about Sealand and the attack by mercenaries. That was a wtf moment. Or lol, depending on your general outlook on life.
        Thanks for the memory.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Yeah, the west is already littered with these overdeveloped 'built it and they will come' communities. People keep thinking that everything will be fine if THEY are in charge and they can choose who is in their community and who is not.. but when you just swap out the people without changing the underlying pressures, all you end up with is the same pattern but with amatures running things.

  • Starting over, again (Score:5, Informative)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:10PM (#61064018)

    ... an unnecessary middleman between people and ideas.

    Government isn't there to protect ideas. It's there to protect people's rights, what few haven't been legislated away, and common assets like land, waterways and air, and of course exclusivity/ownership of other assets. By that metric, a lot of governments around the world are incompetent.

    ... including creating court systems ...

    What can a corporation do that the existing courts can't, except create a debtors' prison. I notice that Berns didn't include prisons in that demand for responsibility, implying the state will pay to punish the people Berns dislikes.

    In the USA, corporations already have a court system, it's called arbitration.

    ... take risks and be limber, nimble ...

    If you're the government, who's going to give you a bail-out? Also, when you're the government, the people with pitchforks stand outside your door. Good-luck with that.

  • His friends can call him Jeffrey, but to you, it's Mr. Berns!

  • Sounds like a pure corpocracy to me, anybody read "Cloud Atlas"?

  • So they are not people, but appear to have people traits? Are we talking AI government leaders now? Or perhaps total blockchain democracy, everyone votes (on the blockchain record) and >50% wins every decision per commissioner? Who is in which commissioner's voting district is decided by the company who owns the town of course.

  • The original "company towns" in the US were towns where a company owned everything, including the stores, medical facilities, and homes. People worked, but the wages were set by the company, as were the rents and the prices for utilities and food and healthcare so that a worker would expend all his money staying alive and providing for his family and have nothing left to either get ahead or escape. Tennessee Ernie Ford had a famous song [www.youtube.comwatch] on this theme. Back then, these towns tended to be very corrupt, but th

    • Well, many people are just unbelievably stupid.

      Like not having looked at a product a single time, from the time they take it out of the shelf at the store, until they bring it home. To a point where all they were going on to decide if that was what they wanted, was the color of the lid. So they bought washing powder instead of cornflakes "because the box was red". I've literally seen that.

  • Colorado allows locals to form tiny taxing enclaves. Here's what happens now:
    1) A developer wants to build homes. He won't be able to sell them at a competitive price unless he hides the cost in a special tax structure like all his competitors are doing.
    2) He buys undeveloped land. Him and his wife and business partner register as the only 3 residents in their new special taxing district.
    3) They sell a bond for tens of millions, with balloon payments starting a few years out.
    4) He builds the homes, and sell

  • âoesmart cityâ is an oxymoron

  • this is how it ends?

  • Something something something EPCOT. Something something something complete waste of time and money

  • Company Town (Score:3)

    by StonyCreekBare ( 540804 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @09:38AM (#61065474) Homepage

    Hmm... An entire town, and everyone's financial life controlled by a corporation, and where the public officials are employees of the corporation. What a novel idea, no one has done anything like this before, What could possibly go wrong? Wait... Coal Towns, you say? NAH, those were EVIL polluting corporations, not environment-friendly high-tech ones like we have today.

    Count me in...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Sadly, a lot of people look back fondly on the idea of the company town.. though they picture themselves as the new rich rather than the poor miner. They tend to see the government (and all those brown people) as holding them back and how much stronger they would have been back then.. and fail to realize that if they are not successful now, they probably would have done even worse in such a historically cutthroat environment.

  • Because the concept worked so well in the past...

    "St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to the company store"
    (from the song 16 tons.)

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