I like finding contrasting stories on a similar theme. It's informative to see how similar contexts, approached differently, result in divergent narratives. These twin-bill stories tell us a bit about a writer's biases and they show us ours.
Here are two about company towns. Your reactions to Brownsville and to Monson may illuminate an assumption or two.
Brownsville, TX, is the ailing small city, without its old industrial base (energy and mineral), that became the company town of Elon Musk's SpaceX. In a city of 200,000, only a few thousand work directly for SpaceX. But like any primary employer, though, those jobs and their spillover effects dominate the city. If you look at "coal country" or "Boeing country" or any other one-show city, you'll see a similar trend: far more people are employed by the local service sector and by local government, education, and healthcare, but it's the primary industry that matters more: the rest come from it. In this way, SpaceX has saved Brownsville.
Our man for the Times, Austin-based writer Christopher Hooks, approaches Brownsville as a case-in-point for a society too dominated by billionaires such as Musk. It's hard not to agree with that bias: any sampling of unhinged Tweets makes you shudder that these people have any power. Yet, when Hooks or the activists/organizers he features in the essay talk to Brownsville residents, the latter range from subtly to openly defensive of SpaceX and antagonistic towards its critics: SpaceX their economic engine, Musk is their billionaire, and they don't want to naysay his million-dollar gifts or billion-dollar investments. Perhaps the only thing worse than having a billionaire dominating your town is to lose him.
Hooks's piece presses on, finding some people frustrated with the politics of their billionaire; others annoyed at the noise from the rockets; and more than a few who've found environmental damage and species endangered by the rockets. These are exactly who you'd expect: sad folks, concerned about what the progress may have already cost, wringing their hands at its inevitability. You can picture them mailing checks to the Sierra Foundation and Audubon Society. Having found some allies, Hooks returns to the theme of surprise about the city's leadership not being more antagonistic towards Musk; he seizes on some $30 million Musk gave to the school district, as if it's blood money for the endangered jaguarundi. As the piece comes to its conclusion, Hooks posits that Musk's belief in the future is as mind-clouding as religion. It's an interesting twin-bill of an assumption: religion clouds the mind; material progress isn't worth it.
I mentioned at the top that this a double-feature. The second essay takes us to Maine, where we find a glowing portrait of another kind of progress via corporate town-takeover. But in this case, we have a far more acceptable billionaire: the Libra Foundation is an heir to a large fraction of the Intel/Fairchild semiconductor fortunes and its board directs the most anodyne, some might say progressive, gifts you can imagine. Downeast, Maine's premier magazine, sent writer Amy Sutherland to Monson. It's a town of maybe 700 people not far from Moosehead Lake. She tells an interesting story about whether something like $10 million in real estate rehabilitation, submarket rents for artists, and other small time grants can rehabilitate the region.
It's a remarkable story from more than a few angles: why would anyone spend that kind of money in such a small town? On the other hand, is that all it takes to take over a town? When the foundation wraps up its active investment, what will be left? Is this model sustainable? In reading the essay and thinking about it, I came to the paper mill towns we drive through near that section of Maine. Where the handful of mill town mills still run, the towns are hanging on. You can tell the vibrancy of a place with an economic engine, even if it's "only" a few hundred people working a two-shift wood products mill. But where the mills have closed, and most are closed, the towns are about dead. In Monson, this foundation is creating a contemporary company town. It's the kind of place where antiques, arts, and expensive food cater to a certain flavor of upper-income Maine Instagrammers. Some combination of the Hamptons and cottage core—not coincidentally, the types who read Downeast love this.
Sutherland has a little hand-wringing along the lines of a shaky future. The foundation is just about done spending new money, but their ownership of much of the town won't be changing any time soon (according to them). So while there is a risk of the rich white person "mill" closing, it's probably a low-probability risk. There's not much else to naysay in this story. That is, if you're already on the side of these billionaires and their attempt to "save" one small town in Maine. But is the "non-profit" motive de facto purer than the profit motive? Is rural gentrification an unqualified good? Is a company town that doesn't meaningfully employ anyone doing the people of the town any good?
I don't think there should be two sets of rules. If it's going to be a company town, then you need to accept the tradeoffs. The Portland crowd coming to Monson; the noise of desert rocket launches. You might prefer Libra to Musk, but they're doing a similar thing. If it's longterm sustainability you want, then you have to consider that a real, profitable, local company is a better bet.
Reading
Try Living in Elon Musk's Company Town
Brownsville has become something of a company town for SpaceX, its largest private employer, and the most high-profile firm in the commercial space industry right now. Murals glorifying the company dot Brownsville's downtown, which has been spruced up with donations from Mr. Musk.
The Monson Experiment
Over the past three years, the Libra Foundation has poured more than $10 million into rescuing a dying town. Will it be the spark that ignites a region-wide revival?