Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 20, 2023


Here’s the News: America, Say Hello To Your New Landlord


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

207.08904

Word Count

6,047

Sentence Count

380

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

In this episode of Awakening Wanderers, Russell Brand explains why Google is building a new development in Mountain View, California that includes affordable housing, and what that could mean for the future of the real estate market in the Bay Area. He also explains why the mainstream media should be doing more than just reporting on current events, but instead they are amplifying establishment messages and not telling you the truth about what's going on in the world and what's happening in the real world. And he explains why you should be worried about what s going to happen to the real-estate market as a result of this development, and why we should all be worried that it could spell the beginning of the end of freedom and freedom as we know it. Stay free, and enjoy the episode! No, Here's the Fucking News! by Russell Brand. We really appreciate you, our listeners, and want to bring you more content. We will be delivering a podcast every day, 7 days a week, every single day, delivered to you by the Trusted News Initiative, a group that includes state media and big tech companies. You will notice how often they align with the establishment's interests, and how often their interests align with those of the establishment. And what an extraordinary truth it is. Once a week we bring you in depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., Sam Harris, Veena Shiva, Vandana Shiva, Gabor Maté, and many more. We bring you a podcast delivering a detailed breakdown of current topics that should be covered by the mainstream press, but are not being covered. . , and a podcast delivered by us, you will be delving into topics that will elevate your consciousness and elevate our consciousness and freedom and elevate us all together. Stay free. - Russell Brand - Stay Free, and free, stay free, together, together! - What are you waiting for it? Stay Free with Russell Brand? - Welcome to the Awakening Worshippers? , a podcast that elevates our consciousness together, we will be bringing you to a world of truth and freedom, truth and enlightenment, truth, and freedom? . . , Thank you, awakening, Wanderers. We are your host, and we want to help you become a better version of yourself, a better you, a more informed, more awake, more woke you, more aware, more informed you?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello there you Awakening Wonders on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your podcasts.
00:00:05.000 We really appreciate you, our listeners, and want to bring you more content.
00:00:08.000 We will be delivering a podcast every day, seven days a week, every single day.
00:00:13.000 You'll get a detailed breakdown of current topics that the mainstream media should be covering, but if they are covering, they're amplifying establishment messages and not telling you the truth.
00:00:23.000 Once a week, we bring you in-depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., Sam Harris, Vandana Shiva, Gabor Maté, and many more.
00:00:31.000 Now enjoy this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:34.000 Remember, there's an episode every single day to educate and elevate our consciousness together.
00:00:40.000 Stay free and enjoy the episode.
00:00:42.000 No, here's the fucking news!
00:00:51.000 Hello there you Awakening Wanderers, thanks for joining us on our voyage to truth and freedom.
00:00:55.000 And what an extraordinary truth it is.
00:00:57.000 The power of big tech is straying into territories unimaginable just a few years ago.
00:01:03.000 Physical territory.
00:01:04.000 The same way that cyberspace has been monopolised by vast big tech powers, actual space will be and is being monopolised by comparable, or in some cases literally, the same powers.
00:01:16.000 You're probably interested in why Bill Gates is buying up agricultural space across the United States. Some of you
00:01:21.000 will assume that if you can control food sources you could create scarcity, you can control whole
00:01:26.000 populations, and these are certainly theories I'm interested in even while they currently remain unproven.
00:01:30.000 Although farmers across the world seem pretty angry about something don't they? Now Google and Meta
00:01:37.000 and big tech spaces having conquered all of cyberspace like digital Alexander the Great have
00:01:43.000 turned to the real world to find new kingdoms to conquer.
00:01:47.000 Is it possible that you, unable to afford literal real estate, will have to have Mark Zuckerberg Or the Alphabet Corporation as your landlord.
00:01:56.000 Let's get into it.
00:01:57.000 Let's first of all see how the legacy media report on this and how this is being presented by the propaganda of these organizations that are acquiring vast tracts of San Francisco and stuff.
00:02:06.000 Tonight Google is revealing its plans for a big development in Mountain View that includes affordable housing.
00:02:12.000 What that should say is it's planned for world domination, isn't it?
00:02:15.000 Because that's what's happening.
00:02:16.000 Some of you will have read David Foster Wallace's book, Infinite Jest.
00:02:19.000 Not all of it, because it's too bloody big.
00:02:21.000 But in it, he posits that vast corporations will take over the world.
00:02:25.000 In a way, why have France?
00:02:26.000 Why have the United States of America, the UK, when you could have Facebook land, metacountry?
00:02:31.000 Alan Martin is here with the details, Alan.
00:02:33.000 Liz, Ken, the tech giant says its goal is to help solve the Bay Area housing crisis.
00:02:38.000 That'll be its goal.
00:02:39.000 Because one thing I've noticed about big tech giants is they care mostly about poor people and the concerns of ordinary people.
00:02:46.000 There's never been an undercurrent of tyrannical centralisation, authoritarianism and making deals with the state that make ordinary democracy and individual freedom a near impossibility.
00:02:57.000 So hopefully we'll all be in lovely little Google homes by, I don't know, end of the month.
00:03:00.000 And tonight, we're learning more about its new plan to redevelop parts of Mountain View.
00:03:06.000 Here is the bird's eye view of North Bay Shore in Mountain View.
00:03:09.000 One of the clues is they're using Google's logo while still doing the report.
00:03:14.000 Is there going to be any discernment, analysis, scrutiny, investigation, attack from the legacy media?
00:03:19.000 Remember, we're continually telling you now about the Trusted News Initiative.
00:03:23.000 A group that includes state media organisations as well as big tech companies.
00:03:28.000 You will notice how often their interests absolutely align.
00:03:31.000 You will notice now that the legacy media is part of the establishment.
00:03:35.000 It's one of the things that Donald Trump noticed and exploited brilliantly.
00:03:39.000 Fake news.
00:03:40.000 He literally coined that and the reason it was effective is because it's true.
00:03:44.000 Now the legacy media, instead of going, is this right that you're doing I mean, how much power do you guys need?
00:03:48.000 Aren't you going to be able to massively bias and control real estate prices?
00:03:48.000 What's this going to do?
00:03:52.000 Does this mean that people are never going to own their houses?
00:03:54.000 Hang on a minute.
00:03:54.000 Aren't corporations like Google, by their nature, globalist?
00:03:57.000 And haven't we heard rhetoric from the WEF saying that you will own nothing and be happy?
00:04:01.000 Is it possible that administrative bodies like the WEF are kind of the ideological front For corporations like Google.
00:04:07.000 And what will happen is that governments will just start passing legislation that facilitates this kind of stuff and no one's asking any questions.
00:04:13.000 And when you do ask questions, for example if you're part of an independent media movement, then you will be shut down.
00:04:19.000 And you will be happy.
00:04:21.000 Just north of Highway 101, off of Shoreline Boulevard, full of office buildings.
00:04:25.000 But now Google wants to transform the space.
00:04:28.000 It plans to add shops, restaurants, offices, and housing, spanning two new neighborhoods.
00:04:34.000 Here's a look at the renderings.
00:04:36.000 Lots of open space and homes.
00:04:38.000 If you go to modern, developed places now, it's like they've fallen from the sky.
00:04:42.000 Even a city like London, which, when you walk through it, used to have layer after layer of rich, historic buildings.
00:04:49.000 A bit of an old Roman wall, and Elizabethan blocks, and Tudor housing, Georgian, Victorian, then a skyscraper, all meshed together like something that had grown, like fungus, like an architectural fungi that was an expression of a collective.
00:05:02.000 Now, what you get is things that, like, drop from above.
00:05:05.000 That's what globalism feels like.
00:05:05.000 Bam!
00:05:07.000 Anodyne.
00:05:08.000 Mundane.
00:05:08.000 Banal.
00:05:09.000 Lacking in humanity.
00:05:10.000 There'll be sort of speakers on the trees there.
00:05:12.000 Time for bed now.
00:05:13.000 There is a pandemic.
00:05:15.000 Time to return to your homes.
00:05:16.000 And then like, you know, cameras that are doing all face scans on you.
00:05:19.000 You can sort of feel it.
00:05:20.000 You've seen it in Isaac Asimov.
00:05:22.000 You've seen it in Black Mirror.
00:05:24.000 This is now the bureaucratising and delivery of those sci-fi dystopias.
00:05:29.000 Whether you approach this with centre-left narratives like climate change or centre-right narratives like the deterioration of society, this ain't helping anyone.
00:05:37.000 And look how they're repeating the word affordable, affordable.
00:05:39.000 Would you like a house that's affordable?
00:05:41.000 I would like to be able to afford a house, yeah.
00:05:44.000 Well, this is affordable.
00:05:45.000 That's the word they're pushing, not dystopic.
00:05:48.000 Google's proposal includes up to 7,000 residential units.
00:05:52.000 About 20% of them would be affordable housing.
00:05:55.000 It's cool, man.
00:05:56.000 I guess just... It's cool, man.
00:05:57.000 I've come on here to sort of make it like a piece of San Francisco news.
00:06:01.000 I could be Dave Grohl.
00:06:03.000 The legacy media just sort of casts people, trots us out to advocate for their perspective.
00:06:08.000 Just get someone, like, that you feel represents that community and get them to say something that's positive about it.
00:06:14.000 So the reality we interact with is not actual reality.
00:06:17.000 You're not interacting with whatever manoeuvres have been made with the state or with local authorities to get some special deal to build this.
00:06:25.000 All of the things that will have happened behind the scenes to make this profitable and un-ownable and to ensure that power migrates further upwards.
00:06:33.000 As happened in the pandemic period, as has been happening in the last 20, 50 years, you tell me in the chat, the legacy media presents this story as entirely positive, doesn't offer any questions, any interrogation, any doubt, any discernment.
00:06:46.000 It's possible that you would have a legacy media that would go, listen, we're very concerned about this.
00:06:49.000 This Google housing project looks a bit worrying.
00:06:52.000 Does this seem right to you?
00:06:53.000 Haven't they got a bunch of deals with the government, like around surveillance and data capture?
00:06:56.000 Do you want them to have More power.
00:06:58.000 How much money do they spend on lobbying?
00:06:59.000 How many donations do they give to the Democrat Party and the Republican Party?
00:07:02.000 Actually, this isn't right.
00:07:03.000 If we're ever going to have the America proposed in the Constitution, these are the very kind of projects that we're going to have to oppose.
00:07:09.000 Put aside your cultural war values for a second and see that you are facing a titan.
00:07:14.000 And if you don't bind together and face that titan, you will be, some might argue quite rightly, crushed by it because we weren't able to awaken.
00:07:20.000 Quick!
00:07:21.000 Wake up!
00:07:21.000 Giving more housing opportunities to people, that's important.
00:07:24.000 There's no doubt that the need is immediate for affordable housing.
00:07:29.000 The city says it's working with Google on the new plan.
00:07:31.000 Better believe the local authorities are working with Google.
00:07:34.000 They're not going to oppose them, are they?
00:07:36.000 How that is implemented is really going to be something that we as a council are going to be discussing next month in March and really digging into what those details are.
00:07:45.000 Really just finding ways to present this so there can be no opposition.
00:07:48.000 Back in 2019, Google announced a $1 billion investment in housing across the Bay Area by repurposing its own land.
00:07:57.000 That's not investing in housing, is it?
00:07:59.000 Repurposing your own land?
00:08:00.000 That's an investment in your own portfolio, in your own projects of profiteering, isn't it?
00:08:04.000 That's not like, how the hell can we help the people of the world?
00:08:07.000 Think how far away we've moved from what indigenous cultures might have once existed there.
00:08:12.000 And one day, perhaps Google will repurpose this land.
00:08:17.000 It already has other development projects in the works, including 80 acres west of downtown San Jose.
00:08:23.000 Do you know the way to San Jose?
00:08:25.000 Google map it, then Google live in it, then Google fuck off to your Google grave.
00:08:30.000 In a statement, Google's development director says in part, we're committed to helping our hometown communities recover from the pandemic.
00:08:38.000 Oh yeah, no, that is, you are so committed to that pandemic that you exploited, profited from, censored true information about, thanks for all of your help.
00:08:47.000 We're looking forward to continuing to work with the city and community on the next steps.
00:08:52.000 I live in an illusion.
00:08:53.000 That piece of language is deceptive.
00:08:56.000 The way that it's reported is deceptive.
00:08:58.000 The entire claim being made about the project is deceptive.
00:09:01.000 The economic system that undergirds it is deceptive, telling you things like it'll all trickle down, it'll all be distributed.
00:09:06.000 The rhetoric exchanged about it in news media and in Congress, Senate or whatever political spheres you hear it discussed in.
00:09:12.000 We've got to move to the left.
00:09:13.000 We'd better move to the right.
00:09:15.000 All of it is a total and absolute illusion.
00:09:17.000 It's almost impossible to remember.
00:09:19.000 You are in infinite space right now.
00:09:20.000 You have an aspect of consciousness within you that's sort of still some sort of weird miracle or mystery and it's possible to imagine new realities if you're willing to overcome your own obstacles to progress.
00:09:31.000 It's extraordinary that we're willing and satisfied to live in some pixelated version of reality that doesn't allow us to be free.
00:09:37.000 That was all very complicated and existential.
00:09:39.000 Why don't we trust Google to give us a version of reality that's got a lot less questions in it?
00:09:48.000 Music, optimism, hopeful, right?
00:09:50.000 Silicon Valley has been the cradle of this sort of series of innovations that over the last decades have propelled technology and world economy.
00:09:59.000 I've already got some questions.
00:10:01.000 Sometimes I do marvel at the miracle of tech.
00:10:04.000 Of course I do.
00:10:04.000 There are sort of meditations and connections and sort of miracles of culture all over your phone.
00:10:10.000 But those things are inadvertent.
00:10:12.000 Side effects of its actual function, which is to control you, sell you stuff, prevent you gaining access to information that might activate you, further centralise already centralised authority structures, advance globalist projects, create dissent, disruption and opposition amongst ordinary populations.
00:10:29.000 Big tech is not working towards solutions at all.
00:10:32.000 It's working towards power You know when they say, we decided to repurpose this land to help poor people.
00:10:37.000 If you want to help poor people, society wouldn't look like this.
00:10:40.000 If you wanted fairness and equality and freedom of expression, society wouldn't look like this.
00:10:44.000 Look, my first suspicions in the pandemic period were not based on data.
00:10:47.000 They were based on intuition.
00:10:48.000 They were based on, hold on a minute, do we care about the sanctity of human life though?
00:10:51.000 Do we always put the most vulnerable people to the forefront of our minds?
00:10:54.000 That doesn't seem like the world that we've been living in.
00:10:56.000 That was just a quiet question.
00:10:57.000 But all of the resources, all of the intelligence has been invested into the immaterial.
00:11:00.000 and in the end became just a statement of fact as things progressed.
00:11:02.000 And using that attitude, that perspective, you can sort of analyse all news.
00:11:07.000 In fact, that is what we do on this channel.
00:11:09.000 But all of the resources, all of the intelligence has been invested into the immaterial,
00:11:15.000 the digital realm, the internet.
00:11:17.000 We can't continue to make this glorious content without your support and the support of our sponsors.
00:11:21.000 You will be aware that there are clusters of respiratory illness in Northern China and what has been referred to as White Lung Syndrome in the United States.
00:11:30.000 Drawing attention, I would say, to the importance of being prepared for a medical emergency at any time.
00:11:36.000 Do you know that 90% of pharmaceuticals in the US are produced outside of your country?
00:11:40.000 What happens when the next global crisis strikes?
00:11:44.000 Well, I'll tell you, I'm an expert on international trade.
00:11:47.000 Countries will clamp down on exports like that, Sonny Jim.
00:11:50.000 They will stockpile like it's 1999.
00:11:52.000 The price of drugs will shoot through the bloody ceiling and the American shelves will be empty.
00:11:58.000 As empty as Joe Biden's mind at that moment when someone goes, action, deliver a speech.
00:12:03.000 That's happening already.
00:12:04.000 The wellness company's medical emergency kit does have you covered for times like this.
00:12:08.000 The wellness company, which you may not have heard of, is home To Dr. Peter McCulloch.
00:12:12.000 He's been on the show.
00:12:13.000 He's one of the great voices of the pandemic.
00:12:15.000 He was one of the people that was ahead of the curve.
00:12:17.000 Also, Dr. Drew Pinsky, some have called him America's family doctor.
00:12:21.000 He's coming on soon.
00:12:21.000 And other truth-telling doctors will empower you to take control of your own health.
00:12:26.000 40% of Americans say they would avoid a doctor or hospital unless it was a catastrophic situation.
00:12:31.000 The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit provides a solution.
00:12:34.000 This kit includes eight potentially life-saving medications, along with, of course, a guidebook for safe use.
00:12:39.000 You don't want to be guessing, do you?
00:12:40.000 You get emergency antibiotics, antivirals and antiparasitics to keep you and your loved ones safe in the face of natural disasters, supply chain shortages, medical emergencies like white lung or Covid.
00:12:54.000 Go to twc.health forward slash brand and get your own medical emergency kit right now.
00:12:59.000 That's right it's twc.health forward slash brand and if you use the code brand it will save you 10% right at the checkout.
00:13:07.000 Isn't that amazing?
00:13:08.000 Don't wait till it's too late.
00:13:09.000 Take control of your health right now with The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit.
00:13:13.000 Now let's get back into this, shall we?
00:13:15.000 We have an opportunity to build new buildings, which is nothing unique, which people do every day all over the world.
00:13:21.000 But what we've tried to do is take a step back and say, how do buildings work with nature?
00:13:27.000 Come on, how are we going to get it to work with nature?
00:13:30.000 I don't know.
00:13:31.000 Don't build it.
00:13:32.000 Don't use materials that are exploitive.
00:13:34.000 Don't have a profit motive.
00:13:36.000 I mean, the whole thing actually just becomes unfeasible and implausible within this system.
00:13:40.000 I find even the questions I'm proposing, that's just not how things work.
00:13:44.000 Yeah, that's not how things work.
00:13:45.000 So why are we pretending that the goal at the end of this is like sort of a happy, diverse family, abundant and robust oak tree?
00:13:52.000 We're really making sure that we MakeSpace is very open and accessible, so it's just not for Googlers, but it's for anyone who lives in the area to come by.
00:14:00.000 Googlers now.
00:14:01.000 That's the type of a person is a Googler.
00:14:03.000 How could that become your identity?
00:14:04.000 I'm offended when on the news they go, Consumers are getting a great deal!
00:14:07.000 Now it's Googlers.
00:14:08.000 You're a Googler.
00:14:09.000 Like you're not American, you're not French, you're not English, you're not South African, you're not Belgian.
00:14:13.000 What you are is a Googler. You're a person who uses and is utilized by Google.
00:14:18.000 You were just sort of a blob at the end of tendrils that lead back to Google.
00:14:22.000 And when there's a time where Google don't need you, Google will let you know about that.
00:14:26.000 In order to assist nature, we're gonna use you as fertilizer.
00:14:30.000 And then the last piece, which is really Google at its heart.
00:14:34.000 In anything we do, trying to lead the project, giving something back to the world.
00:14:39.000 We've invented this thing, this bit of paper thing.
00:14:42.000 Oh, thanks.
00:14:43.000 Oh, the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.
00:14:45.000 Pay your taxes!
00:14:47.000 That they didn't have before we started.
00:14:50.000 I'm familiar with Buckminster Fuller.
00:14:52.000 I know that there are no right angles in nature.
00:14:55.000 I'm aware of intuitive, natural, biological design.
00:14:58.000 I'm aware that we could be living in a different world.
00:15:00.000 In fact, as with politics, what's most offensive is that there is so much that's spoken that's actually true.
00:15:05.000 It's not that we need new ideas, it's just that we need to use the ones we already have.
00:15:09.000 The Magna Carta in this country enshrining the rights of the individual.
00:15:11.000 Constitution in your country full of amazing ideas like Can we get round that in some way?
00:15:16.000 Yeah, you could get round it this way.
00:15:18.000 And what they're doing now is like, can we use the kind of general aesthetic of, let's call it wokeness for want of a better term, to present Google moving into the acquisition of land and the development of real estate and make it look like we're doing everyone a massive favour.
00:15:32.000 Yeah, we could, just like, you know, look, I got this thing.
00:15:34.000 I know, I have things at school.
00:15:36.000 Who will marry a sippy?
00:15:39.000 Google owns your house now.
00:15:41.000 Can I try a different one?
00:15:41.000 Oh, shit.
00:15:42.000 But all of these have got Google owns your house now under it.
00:15:45.000 No, no, that one's Mark Zuckerberg.
00:15:47.000 That one's even worse.
00:15:48.000 Yeah, stick with the Google one.
00:15:49.000 Let's check this rather more discerning piece of journalism.
00:15:52.000 The typical US home value at the beginning of 2020 was about $230,000 according to Zillow data.
00:15:58.000 Today, it's shot up to more than $330,000.
00:16:01.000 All told, as of 2022, median home prices and rents in America hit all-time highs.
00:16:06.000 This is great for those who already own as their property values continue to soar.
00:16:10.000 But for many Americans, little is left over for the rising cost of everything else like food and health care.
00:16:15.000 Let alone to save for a house.
00:16:17.000 Who's to say you even need food or healthcare?
00:16:20.000 Ultimately, the dream of home ownership or an affordable rental is becoming unreachable for more and more Americans.
00:16:25.000 The digital renderings of North Bay Shore, a massive proposed development in Mountain View, California, are crowded with glistening buildings and cheerful animated pedestrians.
00:16:34.000 There's a lot to show off, including 7,000 new homes, three distinct neighborhoods, and nearly 300,000 square feet of retail and community space.
00:16:41.000 Notably though, the gleaming images don't bear any hints of the company behind the whole endeavour.
00:16:46.000 Google.
00:16:47.000 Wow, it's like, at this point they've realised, yeah, just cut back on the Google branding.
00:16:51.000 Some people have got questions.
00:16:53.000 Companies like Google and Facebook's parent, Meta, conquered the digital realm a long time ago, setting the ground rules for how we search, interact and shop online.
00:17:01.000 Not content to stop there, however, these firms are now making huge bids to expand their reach.
00:17:05.000 They want to be landlords too.
00:17:07.000 Now we own the online world, what about the offline world?
00:17:10.000 And what about space?
00:17:11.000 And what about your children's dreams?
00:17:13.000 And what about your pets' frustrations?
00:17:15.000 I don't think we can monetize that.
00:17:16.000 Oh well, don't do the last one then.
00:17:17.000 Across the country, corporations are using their considerable sway and resources to build modern company towns, mini-cities that will feature all the trappings of traditional civic life, including housing, shops and public spaces.
00:17:28.000 These new projects won't have corporate logos on every building, and many of the units will be available for the general public Not just employees.
00:17:35.000 But in the grand scheme of real estate, they're distinct.
00:17:37.000 After years of running up against housing shortages in their backyards, companies like Google, Meta and Disney, not exactly known for building new homes, are taking matters into their own hands.
00:17:47.000 Their creations have boring names like Middlefield Park and Willow Village, but they might as well be called Zooktown or Google City USA.
00:17:54.000 And while the developments promise thousands of new homes, the plans are also a tacit acknowledgement of the bleak I like the way it's masked in banality, words that don't cause you to stop and ponder, man in view, willow this.
00:18:14.000 Everything now is meant to pass by your eyes unquestioned, that you're only disrupted when the media disrupts you.
00:18:20.000 Are you afraid?
00:18:21.000 This new thing's happening we want you to care about.
00:18:23.000 Meanwhile, it's just been sort of sucked into a banalising, centralised life where you have increasingly less power.
00:18:31.000 It seems to me the more that power aggregates and accumulates in these establishment sets of authoritarian systems, increasingly unlikely it becomes that we will ever be able to oppose them.
00:18:39.000 If you have an alliance between the media, the state and vast corporations such as Google, great example Google, The companies behind these projects argue that they can help solve the country's lack of affordable housing that they caused.
00:18:48.000 Can we have a different vision of America?
00:18:50.000 Can we have a different vision of a community?
00:18:51.000 I maybe don't want to work 12 hours a day or 10 hours a day.
00:18:54.000 You should have as much freedom as possible.
00:18:56.000 This will not result in more freedom.
00:18:58.000 This will result in less freedom.
00:18:59.000 And it's been sold to you as if it's like some sort of ecological wonderland.
00:19:03.000 The companies behind these projects argue that they can help solve
00:19:05.000 the country's lack of affordable housing that they caused.
00:19:08.000 But it's fair to approach the plans with a healthy degree of scepticism.
00:19:11.000 America's single employer company towns have a long, bloody history
00:19:15.000 of exploitation and labour strife.
00:19:17.000 While the current plans hardly represent a return to those dark days of the 19th and early 20th centuries, they probably won't usher in a new era of futuristic techno-utopias either.
00:19:26.000 Judging by the plans that have been publicly unveiled so far, The Googles and Metas of the world aren't aiming nearly that high.
00:19:32.000 Instead, their visions of city living spaces look a lot like what we're already used to seeing from the modern real estate developers.
00:19:38.000 Glassy office buildings, verdant parks and walkable main streets with coffee shops, salad bars and alluring apartment buildings.
00:19:45.000 It's nice, but not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
00:19:48.000 In a sense, the new conservatism now is this kind of neoliberalist corporatism.
00:19:53.000 Let's just maintain that.
00:19:54.000 But less and less people can afford all these little treats, nice little salads, nice expensive coffees.
00:19:58.000 Doesn't matter.
00:19:59.000 Soon we will have automated labour instead of them.
00:20:02.000 Keep your mind on the big vision.
00:20:03.000 Rather than from the floating cities or domed villages once dreamed up by science fiction writers, these watered-down plans show that what these companies have been after all along is a way to one-up their competitors.
00:20:14.000 They want to attract and retain top employees.
00:20:16.000 And ideally get them back into the office too.
00:20:18.000 It doesn't hurt that right now residential real estate looks like a pretty good bet.
00:20:22.000 It's interesting that a couple of years ago it was considered ingenious that Facebook and these kind of companies would have nice bars where you could get breakfast and stuff, and little pods to sleep in.
00:20:31.000 When I used to visit them when I was working more in legacy media, I'd think, God, this is so ingenious.
00:20:35.000 Look, there's a bowl of Skittles.
00:20:36.000 They're free!
00:20:37.000 The idea behind them is, you never leave here, you eat those Skittles and then you sleep in that pod.
00:20:41.000 Then you can play foosball for a couple of hours and it's back to coding!
00:20:44.000 Now what they're doing is, they just want to own all of reality.
00:20:47.000 And in a sense, they kind of already do.
00:20:49.000 It's just, we're just waiting for the timeline to edge along with us to the point where they own your mind, they own your attention, they own your screen, they own your opinions, they own your office space, they own your home.
00:20:59.000 No one is going to prevent this happening, except for you.
00:21:01.000 It's literally only you that can do it.
00:21:03.000 The noble aim of building more housing, including affordably priced units, is the cherry on top.
00:21:07.000 But make no mistake, these companies will only pursue these plans as long as they fit their business goals.
00:21:11.000 In June, Mountain View City Council approved the master plan for Google's North Bayshore project,
00:21:16.000 a partnership between the tech giant and the Australian real estate firm Lendlease.
00:21:20.000 The new community will replace a suburban office park with a sprawling new neighbourhood in the heart of Silicon
00:21:25.000 The plans call for as many as 7,000 new homes across a mix of income levels.
00:21:25.000 Valley.
00:21:30.000 Mix.
00:21:31.000 As well as parks, restaurants, shops and more than 3 million square feet of office space on 153 acres.
00:21:36.000 Roughly 15% of those units will be priced below market rate, although the city hasn't settled upon the exact income thresholds that will determine who can apply for the units.
00:21:45.000 So, 15% of these properties will be below market rate.
00:21:48.000 This is the fact of the matter.
00:21:49.000 That's not very many, is it?
00:21:51.000 And look, they've not established any income threshold that will determine who can apply for the units.
00:21:51.000 15%.
00:21:55.000 That means that, essentially, they could sell below-market-rate properties to people that it's expedient to sell those properties to, perhaps because they work at Google or whatever.
00:22:04.000 So, while it's using the kind of face of, we're helping people, in reality, it's not making any commitment.
00:22:09.000 Do you notice how, in our techno-dictatorship, how common the lack of definition around language crops up?
00:22:16.000 What is hate?
00:22:16.000 Hate.
00:22:17.000 Whatever we say it is.
00:22:18.000 15%?
00:22:18.000 What is 15%?
00:22:20.000 Whatever we say it is.
00:22:21.000 What is affordable?
00:22:22.000 Whatever we say it is.
00:22:23.000 Do you see?
00:22:24.000 That's how tyranny works now.
00:22:25.000 They're not going to come with like a gun and a bayonet and force you.
00:22:28.000 This is your new lovely apartment.
00:22:30.000 There's a salad bar over there.
00:22:31.000 You don't even know you're not free anymore.
00:22:34.000 That's what's terrifying about it.
00:22:36.000 Mountain View also greenlighted the master plan for Middlefield Park, another Google development that proposes to tear down existing office and industrial buildings and construct nearly 2,000 new housing units as well as more office and retail spaces.
00:22:47.000 How can any local authority body oppose a Goliath, a gargantuan company of this nature?
00:22:52.000 Think of the type of relationships that exist.
00:22:54.000 Remember that content we did where Fauci did an interview with the BBC?
00:22:58.000 Bouncy, how are you?
00:23:00.000 Look at how entrenched and interwoven these interests are.
00:23:03.000 They're just there to facilitate now.
00:23:04.000 That's what the state at the level of a whole nation or a local authority does.
00:23:08.000 It facilitates the interests of the powerful.
00:23:10.000 Then the legacy media tells you that that's not what they're doing.
00:23:13.000 They're helping you.
00:23:13.000 You're going to get an affordable house.
00:23:15.000 15% of you.
00:23:15.000 What do you mean affordable?
00:23:16.000 I'll tell you later.
00:23:17.000 Is that a real commitment?
00:23:19.000 What do you mean?
00:23:20.000 That's not even a word.
00:23:21.000 It is if we say it is.
00:23:22.000 Google wasn't a word, but you better believe it is now.
00:23:24.000 You little Googler you.
00:23:26.000 Other household names are getting in on the action.
00:23:28.000 Last year, Menlo Park City Council voted unanimously in favour of the plans for Willow Village, Facebook's 59-acre project that's affectionately, or cynically, referred to as Zooktown.
00:23:37.000 It promises more than 1,700 homes, as well as office, hotel and retail, right next to Meta's headquarters at one hack away.
00:23:45.000 Walt Disney World also plans to break ground next year on 1,400 affordable housing units across 80 acres, a few miles from its flagship theme park in Florida, the company said in the spring.
00:23:56.000 Remember once more that philosophical point that we make sometimes?
00:23:58.000 I think it was Baudrillard that said the fact that Disneyland is in America distracts you from the fact that America is Disneyland, that the whole thing is in fact a corporate project, that it's not visible.
00:24:07.000 Remember how in the pandemic things became visible to you, or us I suppose, that we hadn't seen before?
00:24:12.000 Hang on a minute, the media is just supporting this ban.
00:24:14.000 Wait, Wait a minute, they're censoring true information.
00:24:16.000 Hey, the deep state are involved in this.
00:24:17.000 Whoa, the media.
00:24:18.000 Hey, this is happening everywhere.
00:24:20.000 It just becomes more pronounced when you look at it in microcosm.
00:24:23.000 This can't be Disneyland.
00:24:24.000 That's Disneyland.
00:24:25.000 The whole world can't belong to Google.
00:24:27.000 That bit belongs to Google.
00:24:28.000 The whole thing belongs to Google.
00:24:29.000 This just provides you with some context.
00:24:32.000 Nearby, the competing resort company Universal is also building a thousand affordable apartments.
00:24:36.000 It's interesting actually because what we're seeing is a type of decentralisation like Universal Land, Disney Land, Google World and Metapark or whatever.
00:24:45.000 And I sort of think this is the corporatised version of what might work nicely actually.
00:24:49.000 Imagine if it wasn't sort of owned by oligarchs, but your community was owned by you and you democratically vote like
00:24:55.000 on "Oh, we want migrants or we don't want migrants. We want
00:24:58.000 our schools to teach this or we don't want our schools to teach this.
00:25:01.000 We want to send this much money to the Pentagon or we don't want to send this money to the Pentagon."
00:25:04.000 Democracy, democracy, democracy. You determine what happens with your resources.
00:25:07.000 Where do your taxes go? All of this is possible now.
00:25:09.000 Do you want to participate?
00:25:10.000 No, I'm going to nominate someone to participate at a local level.
00:25:13.000 You could have democracy as close to you as possible.
00:25:15.000 These kind of things show you that when facilitating corporatism, they're able to create little local citadels, aren't they?
00:25:21.000 It's not too complicated then, is it?
00:25:22.000 It's not too difficult then?
00:25:23.000 Oh, suddenly we can do that.
00:25:24.000 That's interesting, you lucky little Googler.
00:25:27.000 It's no surprise that the largest of the new developments are the brainchildren of Silicon Valley giants.
00:25:32.000 The modern tech industry was built on a California-tinted brand of utopianism and the belief that connecting people is the answer to many of the world's problems.
00:25:40.000 After all the digital ad dollars have been hoovered up and all the attention squeezed out of our screen-addled eyeballs, the next logical step is building a new city where the founding principles of the tech world can be put into practice.
00:25:52.000 But companies are also ruthlessly pragmatic profit-making machines beholden to shareholders who closely watch their every move.
00:25:58.000 High-minded ideals aside, the modern company towns also make for sound business propositions.
00:26:02.000 I think that's how you end up with that peculiar mix of idealistic language and visionary rhetoric about actually just sort of traditional hardline profiteering.
00:26:10.000 Because underneath it and behind it, they are all owned in quite a conventional way where you can't go, we're just going to build a bunch of affordable housing.
00:26:16.000 Well, that doesn't sound very profitable.
00:26:18.000 OK, what if we just say we're going to do that?
00:26:19.000 Yeah, that could be profitable.
00:26:21.000 These firms are interested in two things, retaining skilled labour and drumming up positive publicity that makes them look civic-minded.
00:26:27.000 Yeah.
00:26:28.000 Building houses near their HQs checks off both those boxes.
00:26:31.000 Commuting is the top reason employees don't want to go back to the office full-time, according to Gallup.
00:26:36.000 In a recent piece for Harvard Business Review, the economist Edward Glazer and the consultant Atataki argued that companies should think of housing assistance as just one part of a broader benefits package next to on-site chefs or an office gym that encourages employees to stick around and be more productive.
00:26:51.000 People always talk about cults as if cults are a terrifying and bad thing, but this is a type of cult.
00:26:57.000 It's just a cult that's so mundane and banal and called such boring things and is Based on materialism and rationalism, so you don't notice that you're in a cult already.
00:27:06.000 If a cult goes, hey, why don't we detach from all this?
00:27:07.000 Because we're going to die anyway and love's the most important thing in all our lives.
00:27:10.000 You maniacs!
00:27:11.000 We got you a chef!
00:27:12.000 You can stay at work all day!
00:27:14.000 Okay, but what about love?
00:27:16.000 What about love, you crazy little Googler?
00:27:18.000 The company towns of the 19th and 20th centuries also bore some of that utopian flavour, at least in theory.
00:27:23.000 In many cases, company towns were a practical response to the need for housing near factories or lumber mills, which were typically located in barren locations without the kind of amenities that would keep workers happy, like churches or libraries.
00:27:35.000 But the idea of a place dominated by a single corporation where your boss not only owns your home but also runs your church and your kids' schools and sells you everything you need at the company's store was always a fraught proposition.
00:27:44.000 In many company towns, the corporations used the setup to maintain their social control, threatening disgruntled workers with eviction from company housing if they went on strike.
00:27:52.000 When your company is your entire world, the stakes are infinitely higher.
00:27:56.000 That's why globalism is a bad thing.
00:27:58.000 That's why social credit scores are a bad thing.
00:28:00.000 That's why digital ID is a bad thing.
00:28:02.000 That's why being able to debank people is a bad thing.
00:28:05.000 learning how on a global scale to do something that's been proven to be bad at a local feudal level.
00:28:10.000 Given the history of company built housing, it's fair to wonder which way the new iterations will lean.
00:28:15.000 Towards the idealized version of cheaper housing and prized amenities,
00:28:18.000 or a more dystopian outcome in which we will become more reliant on companies that have already infiltrated every
00:28:24.000 aspect of our lives.
00:28:24.000 Let me see which way the wind's blowing.
00:28:27.000 Yeah, it's globalism, isn't it?
00:28:30.000 It's evil tyranny, isn't it?
00:28:31.000 That's the way the wind's blowing.
00:28:32.000 If Hitler had gone, I'm gonna do Hitler housing, he would have gone, well, hopefully this time he's learned his lesson.
00:28:37.000 You know, you'd know what the move was gonna be.
00:28:39.000 Well, can we just see what they've done in cyberspace?
00:28:40.000 Well, they've monopolized it, they've done deals with the state, They're controlling people, they're censoring true information, they're stockpiling our data, their business model isn't even what they tell us it is, they tell us what they're doing is like, say, in the case of Google, providing searches, but what they're actually doing is capturing all of our data and selling it to advertisers.
00:28:55.000 So if we start letting them control reality, and I'm not saying that reality is more important than the cyber world, and certainly not any metaphysical prima materia of consciousness itself, which, by the way, they're probably trying to own right now, I would say is a fair bet that the dystopian trajectory is the one that they will be pursuing.
00:29:11.000 Well, that's just what I think.