![]() Sen is known for his ruling-class-friendly takes, which recently included a call for Americans to embrace the idea of “build-to-rent” communities rather than strive to attain the once-commonplace ideal of homeownership. However, many on social media couldn’t help but notice that it took a financier writing for a news outlet belonging to a fellow billionaire to say anything nice at all about Amazon’s silent conquest of the sprawling spaces between American cities – and the populations that call those spaces home. The writer waits until the conclusion to acknowledge the “new issues” that will “need addressing,” little details like “adequate amounts of housing, schools and healthcare facilities.” The Amazon ploy is to build a large warehouse facility in various suburban areas where housing is inexpensive. ![]() Anand Giridharadas The.Ink September 17, 2021Īmazon’s “factory towns,” however – Sen writes – are supposedly marked by rising wages, massive job creation and the potential for a “higher likelihood of success” in “solving inequality” than “high-cost metropolitan areas.” He believes that those should be encouraged, at one point even calling these ‘Bezosvilles’ the "future of a large segment of the working class.” “Let’s call them ‘factory towns,’” Sen suggests, apparently in an effort to avoid the baggage that accompanies the concept of “company towns.” Popular in the late 19th century among the new breed of mega-corporations – railroads, steel mills, and the like – many of these dormitory communities held workers as veritable prisoners, paying them in scrip that was only redeemable at the company-run store and retaining groups of thuggish Pinkerton “detectives” to stamp out any attempts to unionize.īillionaire’s union-busting company good for working people, says media outlet owned by another billionaire. Erika Hayasaki wrote a recent article for The New York Times Magazine about Amazon’s influence on the Inland Empire, a region east of Los Angeles where the company is the largest private. The e-commerce empire founded by Jeff Bezos will offer the American working class a better option than scraping to get by in increasingly expensive cities, investment adviser Conor Sen wrote in a Friday oped for Bloomberg, the financial news outlet whose namesake is billionaire former New York mayor and failed presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg. ![]() While many are aghast at the idea, fellow billionaires are praising it. Amazon’s massive new distribution centers, soon to be surrounded by infrastructure built to serve workers, are being compared to Gilded Age company towns. ![]()
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