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THE TEXAS ADVANTAGE By Berit Anderson Why Read: The Wild West is back. Only this time around, Texas is the gold rush siren offering pioneers cheap land, easy capital, and a lack of scrutiny. Why its popularity as a US economic center is likely to balloon in the coming years. ______ It was early Thursday morning, and, in the tech world, all eyes were on Tesla shareholders as they drew close to the deadline on a historic vote. Most media were homing in on Elon's record $44.9 billion pay package, but I was equally interested in its companion - a vote to move Tesla's registered HQ from Delaware - the state whose legal system had challenged said pay package - to Texas. "If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible," Musk posted on X back in February, announcing SpaceX's move to the Lone Star State. After Thursday's vote, Musk is likely to be the most highly compensated executive of a publicly traded company - a likelihood he encouraged on Wednesday by posting early returns of the vote showing both initiatives with a wide margin. He is also among the most vocal backers of Texas's new gold rush - a flight of money, talent, and manufacturing from Silicon Valley. By comparison, the wealthiest person in California during the early years of the 1800s gold rush was Samuel Brannan, a merchant, newspaper publisher, and adroit self-promoter who opened supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other goldfields, selling mining supplies, food, and clothing. Brannan's approach was to corner the market - buying up, for example, every carpet tack in California so that he could increase prices - not that dissimilar to supplying the new world of tech employees with high-priced cars, internet, and rockets, then using X to gas up the public to secure your wealth. |
