Originally Posted by
jar
Look closely at the coins.
They are Company Money, good only at the company store and not transferable into cash.
The Mill and Company town period of Capitalism lasted well into the WWII era. People lived in company houses bought from company stores and since they were paid in company money could not set anything aside for reserve, retirement or emergency.
You were of course free to NOT work at the Mill or Mine or Shirt Factory or ...
BUT ...
you then left your house with only the clothes you could take with you and zero savings or cash.
It was True Capitalism and freedom from restrictions or Over-regulation.
I'd obviously never seen "company store" money, through I'd heard of company stores.
I grew up in a city that was a one company town, but of a very different sort - Butte Montana, the Gibraltar of unionism. At least it was till 1979, when the mines closed down completely. Right now, to work in the newly opened mines, you can't be in a union.
Still, I return to my nostalgia for the way things worked when I grew up. We had a good public utility system, which was better than the market system which replaced it in the 90's. The promises of lower cost never panned out, and I watched what a market based gas and electric system turned out to be. We got to learn about rolling blackouts, as we were gamed to take our money. I yearn for the strong and effective PUC which was lost. It will take work to get it back, and we're not close.
I liked the old telephone system, again a regulated utility. What the market has given us is a substandard system compared to Europe, at least as far as I can see. We have a poor infrastructure which will hamper our competitiveness as we go forward.
So, I guess I still long for the system I saw in the 60's, with respect to the markets. There was a lot of lessons built into it that the Voodoo economic years destroyed.
Side note: I'm not going to be able to keep up with a rapid back and forth, but I will do my best. I'm enjoying this immensely.
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