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from the first-home-is-reserved-for-Winston-Smith dept.
Bill Gates is Buying Land in Arizona to Build a "Smart City"
An investment firm run by Bill Gates has put down $80 million to develop a planned community in Arizona. The 25,000 acres of land is about 45 minutes west of Phoenix, in an area called the West Valley. The community, which Gates wants to turn into a "smart city," will be named Belmont.
"Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners, the Arizona real state investment company involved in the deal, said in a news release.
The proposed freeway I-11, which would connect the Belmont area to Las Vegas, makes the land an ideal spot for a new community, according to Ronald Schott, the executive emeritus at the Arizona Technology Council. Of the 25,000 acres, 3,800 will be used for office, retail, and commercial space. Another 470 acres will be used for public schools. That leaves enough space for 80,000 residential units.
Also at TheUSBPort, Fossbytes, CNET, and Real Estate Daily News.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @02:55PM (2 children)
Unless you're Donald J. Trump, Jr. Or you amassed so much power that you can force society to give you more.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @03:11PM (1 child)
Inheritance is making a bet.
Guess what? Donald didn't lose the loan he received from his father; he multiplied it into billions.
Guess what? Choosing to make a loan to your son, or choosing to bequeath your wealth to your son, is a valid, voluntary choice; it's the choice to transfer control of your decision-making power to someone else. It's a bet like any other; had Donald Trump squandered that decision-making power, then he'd have lost that decision-making power. Instead, he proved that he was capable of making some decent decision, as evidenced by the growth of his capital.
That being said, much of Donald Trump's wealth comes from collusion with... wait for it... government; as always, the problem is governmental coercion, not individual liberty.
Of course a very wealthy individual has the power to coerce people by allocating resources to said coercion. That may be a very bad thing, but that's not an example of Capitalism, because Capitalism philosophically forbids coercion; all interaction must be voluntary (otherwise property rights would be meaningless).
This is not a "No True Scotsman" fallacy; this is a recognition of an objective, hard-nosed philosophical boundary.
A monopoly that grows solely from voluntary interaction (e.g., a business) is going to be a much more benign shape than a monopoly that grows even slightly from involuntary interaction (e.g., a government). We all know that a monopoly is probably a bad idea, so why in the world would anyone want to place society's checks and balances in the form of a centralized State, especially one that is founded on the philosophy of "do-as-I-say" coercion? It makes no sense!
It would be a far better idea to achieve a separation of powers through competition within a market founded on the culturally internalized principle of voluntary interaction. Long live Capitalism; it is and will always be our savior—it is what has made mankind so mindbogglingly productive, despite that ancient parasite that one calls "government".
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @08:24PM
Yeah, but multiplying a loan into billions of debt is not all that hard. What is difficult is hiding it from your creditors. And from the American people. In fact, some say that The Donald only ran for POTUS in order to avoid being jailed or snuffed for his massive racket.