Voters Head to the Polls to Decide If Elon Musk Should Get a Company Town in Texas

The “company town” is largely an artifact of a bygone era—a vestige of an unhappy time in American history when wealthy land barons controlled society, and labor rights, at least as we know them today, did not yet exist. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find many of these corporate slums active in the U.S., but that hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from trying to bring them back in style. The Wall Street Journal has a new story out on SpaceX’s ongoing attempt to incorporate its own town in a region of the Texas Gulf Coast, where the company’s Starbase, which it uses to test and launch rockets, is located. Currently, over 3,400 SpaceX employees and contractors are active around the base, and the company has increasingly sought to build up infrastructure and amenities to provide for that growing workforce. Musk’s company filed paperwork to turn Starbase into a company town in December. In February, the Texas county where Starbase is located approved a local election to let its residents decide ... Read full article.