Elon Musk and the Rebirth of Company Towns feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips
It Could Happen Here
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
In Texas, the world’s richest man is bringing back to life one of the worst ideas of the Gilded Age, local Robber Baron-owned dictatorships called company towns. Elon Musk has already established two in Texas and other high-tech oligarchs like Peter Theil hope to create more. In this episode, journalist Steven Monacelli and historian Dr. Michael Phillips explore the history of company towns in the United States and their disturbing rebirth.
Sources:
Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns
Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State
Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy
Chad Pearson, Capitalism’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century
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Transcript
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| 1:06.5 | CallZone Media. |
| 1:10.8 | I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, |
| 1:17.4 | and the co-author of a recently published book about the eugenics movement in Texas called The Purifying Knife. |
| 1:23.9 | And I'm Stephen Monticelli. I'm an investigator, reporter in Dallas, where I contribute to a variety |
| 1:29.6 | of publications, as well as Cool Zone Media. I cover political extremism in Texas and beyond. |
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