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A Cryptocurrency Millionaire Wants to Build a Utopia in Nevada (nytimes.com)
chiefcrash shares a report from The New York Times about a man who wants to build a community based on the blockchain technology introduced by Bitcoin: An enormous plot of land in the Nevada desert -- bigger than nearby Reno -- has been the subject of local intrigue since a company with no history, Blockchains L.L.C., bought it for $170 million in cash this year. The man who owns the company, a lawyer and cryptocurrency millionaire named Jeffrey Berns, put on a helmet and climbed into a Polaris off-road vehicle last week to give a tour of the sprawling property and dispel a bit of the mystery. He imagines a sort of experimental community spread over about a hundred square miles, where houses, schools, commercial districts and production studios will be built. The centerpiece of this giant project will be the blockchain, a new kind of database that was introduced by Bitcoin.
So far, he said, he has spent $300 million on the land, offices, planning and a staff of 70 people. And buying 67,000 largely undeveloped acres is a bit of old-fashioned, real estate risk-taking. Still, Mr. Berns said his ambition was not to be a real estate magnate or even to get rich -- or richer. He is promising to give away all decision-making power for the project and 90 percent of any dividends it generates to a corporate structure that will be held by residents, employees and future investors. That structure, which he calls a "distributed collaborative entity," is supposed to operate on a blockchain where everyone's ownership rights and voting powers will be recorded in a digital wallet. "In a keynote spectacle at Devcon4 in Prague, Berns announced some of their plans for the future, as well as some of their recent activities, such as buying two nuclear bomb shelters, a mountain fortress in Switzerland, and a bank," adds Slashdot reader chiefcrash.
So far, he said, he has spent $300 million on the land, offices, planning and a staff of 70 people. And buying 67,000 largely undeveloped acres is a bit of old-fashioned, real estate risk-taking. Still, Mr. Berns said his ambition was not to be a real estate magnate or even to get rich -- or richer. He is promising to give away all decision-making power for the project and 90 percent of any dividends it generates to a corporate structure that will be held by residents, employees and future investors. That structure, which he calls a "distributed collaborative entity," is supposed to operate on a blockchain where everyone's ownership rights and voting powers will be recorded in a digital wallet. "In a keynote spectacle at Devcon4 in Prague, Berns announced some of their plans for the future, as well as some of their recent activities, such as buying two nuclear bomb shelters, a mountain fortress in Switzerland, and a bank," adds Slashdot reader chiefcrash.
He allows himself a lot of freedom of thinking.
where he is going to get the water from. With 67,000 acres of desert seems l;ike there is plenty of room. But with out water in large volumes I am not sure how this gets done.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Jonestown in Nevada? The setting is different but the Kool-Aid is the same.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Nevada would be a great candidate for a solar updraft tower.
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Ever heard of California City, California? That's the same idea, but in California. Lots are quite affordable, and also entirely plentiful. And you don't even have to live in Nevada. Guess what? Nobody wants to live in the desert unless there's some kind of natural feature there which makes it make sense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...even if you disagree with him. He is putting his money where his mouth is and trying something new.
Yes he is a very wealthy man who can afford to squander a big chunk of his resources. There are very many people who could well afford to expend a small portion of their resources and try nothing.
There are easily ten of thousands of "serious" socialists who spin yarns about their beautiful ideas, ideas that a couple hundred of them could try to put into practice by pooling their resources and building a new kind of community on the embers of some rural town whose heyday is long past. But they do not try.
This man is trying.
Well, You know the rest.....
Caution: Contents under pressure
This comic is a dispatch from the future of this city.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
gee, what could possibly go wrong?
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Every attempt to built a Utopia turns out to be a Hell.
These for example :-
https://listverse.com/2016/05/...
In Atlas Shrugged (which I presume is the inspiration for this exercise), Midas Mulligan's valley (later known as Galt's Gulch) was located near Oured, Colorado. It had local hot springs for water, wheat farms and fruit tree orchards, and also a perpetual motion machine to make electricity and a hologram projector to keep it hidden from outsiders. I suppose solar power is available in the desert, but man cannot live by blockchain alone.
if it was based on cash - well you can't eat cash,
but it's based on blockchain - virtual cash - well you can't eat virtual cash either
fecking air heads - go out in the desert and fecking die.
(hmmm - sorry - that's not very nice)
Go well
I can see a WACO style ending to this.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
https://twitter.com/dril/statu...
"me and a bunch of stupid assholes are going to start a community in the middle of the desert to either die or prove a very important point"
and also a perpetual motion machine to make electricity and a hologram projector to keep it hidden from outsiders.
Sounds a bit like Wakanda.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
Yeah, sure, whatever. And what is going to produce the energy in that tower? The freakin' sun is going to do it for free, I suppose? Why not just ask the wind to work for free too, while he's at it.
#DeleteFacebook
And how is this different from regular society? Paying cash is starting to disappear, people are paying with debit or credit cards. You can bet that the banks and the credit card companies are keeping all transactions and building a profile on everyone.
#DeleteFacebook
I just remembered I saw that awful movie because of your comment.
Fuck you.
#DeleteFacebook
Not this shit again...a super-rich dude envisions his idea of Utopia and everything goes great...that is, until the humans show up.
And then it starts....petty greed, disputes, minor conflicts breeding simmering revenge, jealousy, vying for power, undue influence, bribery, power plays, pervy sexual urges, and a host of other human traits come into play, and before you know it someone's handing you a cup of Kool-Aid.
Yeah, this whole "come live in my Utopia compound" thing never seems to end well. For example: Jim Jones, the Branch Davidians, The Hale-Bopp nutters (Heaven's Gate), David Berg and the Children of God, Aum Shinrikyo, Scientology, etc etc.
(I know, it was actually "Flavor Aid" but you get my point.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Blockchain more likely laundering.drug.money.chain
Cost of land per acre in Nevada, at the link you gave: $1,000.
If this is some sort of scam, or if he is an overly idealistic true believer.
Is Mr. Berns going to start a Nuclear Power plant too?
"Wants to Build a Utopia " = " wants to build a community based on the blockchain technology"
????
Step 4: Profit!
Also:
Mr. Berns said his ambition was not ...... to get rich
Sure thing.... Mr. Burns.
I didn't care one way or the other that most actors were black, that was a given because the story was about Black Panther.
What pissed me off was the "magic tech sand" bullshit, which is similar to the last few versions of Iron Man's suit and the last Transformer movies.
#DeleteFacebook
This sounds like a neat idea in theory but in practice it's unlikely to work.
I can applaud the idea of a utopian society, except it's a thousand times easier to try and create one within our own society, well-integrated into the systems that are needed, than it is to completely DIY it from the ground up. The area in Nevada he's purchased is pretty miserable in any season. Hot and dry, very cold at night. The only advantage to living there is you don't need much deodorant because the environment is so hostile, not even bacteria do well.
What bothers me about this is the general mentality of wanting to separate oneself from society.. as if once you're away from all the influences you disagree with, you think you can create something better? In theory that sounds great, but in reality, you quickly find there's a very good reason society is the way it is, and one reason is because people don't work hard enough to make it better and instead would rather take their ball and go someplace else.
I think you have to pick one.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Yes. The grocery stores sell the purchase records to insurance companies, so you premiums are correlated with bacon consumption.
RTFA: "Blockchains has already received preliminary county support for a new town along the Truckee River"
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...