You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the new Google modular home
Every now and then a story appears in the national media that causes a lightbulb to start flashing incessantly in my head. For me, such a story came to my attention today and relates to how Google is manufacturing housing for some of its employees due to the ridiculous cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here’s a summary from The Verge:
Google’s employees can’t find affordable housing in Silicon Valley, so the company is investing in modular homes that’ll serve as short-term housing for them. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has ordered 300 units from a startup called Factory OS, which specializes in modular homes. The deal reportedly costs between $25 and $30 million.
Modular homes are completely built in a factory and assembled like puzzle pieces onsite. This method of construction can reduce the cost of construction by 20 to 50 percent, the Journal reports. These apartments can also be put up more quickly to address dire housing needs. In one case the Journal cites, tenants saved $700 a month because of reduced construction costs.
Earlier this year, CNBC published a piece that detailed the difficulty tech companies have in trying to convince possible employees to move to San Francisco, especially when they live abroad. In response, some startups are establishing offices in other cities, like Chicago and Seattle. The other option is to out-tech the housing crisis, as Google appears to be doing with its modular home investment.
First, let’s get a couple of things out of the way. Yes, I understand that San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, and yes, I get that nobody is forcing anyone to work for Google or live there. Yes, I understand that this is probably intended for entry level employees. Yes, I understand that revolutionary new ways of building homes using technology is the future, and the ability for such techniques to reduce costs is a positive thing. Yes, I understand all of that, yet I still think this development is a sign we are getting closer to some sort of breaking point.
The middle class in America has been getting squeezed for a long time, and the societal, political and ethical ramifications of this development cannot be overstated. In fact, I’ve been so concerned about the U.S. transformation into a neo-feualism serf economy, I’ve dedicated much of the last decade to writing and warning about it. What’s going on with Google employees unable to afford housing is a sign that this corrupt, fraud economy is now starting to affect even the fortunate amongst us.
Google is one of the most successful companies the world has ever seen, and if its employees are struggling to find a place to live (I don’t care what city it is), something’s really not working. To me, this is a clear glitch in the matrix. A sign that some sort of reckoning is near. How that reckoning manifests I have no idea, but most companies don’t have the luxury of just buying homes to put their employees in. If this is happening to Google, consider it some sort of canary in the coal-mine.
The entire economic system is a rent-seeking, corrupt scam in which financial oligarchs and assorted other parasites suck more and more life out of the economy until it breaks completely. The fact that Google employees are now feeling the repercussions of this, tells you all you need to know. Even a terribly corrupt system can continue until it consumes itself. It is now consuming itself.
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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The city planners in the Bay Area are complete idiots! What did they expect?! How many fairway can dance on the head of a pin? How many tech companies can operate within Silicon Valley without generating apocalyptic real estate bubbles?!
Ye Shall Know The Truth, And The Truth Shall Make You Free!!
Note to the Federal Reserve on the Federal Reserve note:
Let’s get this revolution started! America and Americans are held hostage by a predatory and gangrenous banking cartel that capitalizes off of the surplus of labor by lending fiat currency to our government and citizens!
Our congress has failed with a capital FFF—!
It is the responsibility of congress to regulate money and debt!
Article 1 section 8 of the constitution specifically grants that right to congress listed as their responsibility:
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
I would argue that central bankers should be jailed for counterfeiting and that the entire congress be removed for treason!
The Federal Reserve is incapable of dictating fiscal and monetary policy which benefits America and Americans due to their inherent conflict of interest since it is owned 100% by member banks of which 37% of banks in this country are listed!
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to end the debt enslavement of America and Americans! It’s a revolutionary concept!
At some point in my career I worked in a cubicle environment. As the agency expanded, more space was needed in the same building. Some wag in the office suggested that we use the Pueblo system in which a second level of cubicles was set upon the first, with ladders allowing access to the top level. It will be interesting to see just how Google’s modular residences are configured.
Sounds like the basis for a Dilbert cartoon. Maybe a series.
Very intuitive….we’re all owe our debt ridden souls to the company store, being the one bank and its monolithic corportocracy. Does it really matter if the flat screen you purchase is a Panasonic or a LG as both entities are financed by the one bank. If one goes down the other just picks up the sales and the one bank never even blinks.
This is reinforcement of your argument:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-16/beware-collapsing-social-contract
The author needs to read the history of the Pullman company or the early years of the Ford Motor company. What he describes in this article is a repeat of the ills of a ‘Company Town’.
This is a cool site. My only issue is w the push to decentralize and deregulate everything is that in a multi sovereign/national/ other countries this won’t work.
I think there ought to be agreements between nations to limit the power of banks and big business.
I have to admit the media criticism is annoying even if it’s accurate. Obviously you think for yourself, but can’t Americans just do that too? Yes it’s all corporate owned, but still we can use our brains.
>I think there ought to be agreements between nations to limit the power of banks and big business
Then banks offer unlimited credit to governments, who reduce or remove those limits and help them attack and destroy governments that stubbornly kept having them, economically or militarily.
Libya, for example.
Time for Google to reinvent the wheel.
In 19th century companies built barracks to their workers, set shops there too, and paid workers with cheques they could pay in those shops with.
That would be a recipe for 21st century America, won’t it.
Alternatively it can be CWA/PWA slavery again.