Truth is the first victim of the Company Store's dominance.
My view of the Status Quo as a neocolonial, neofeudal arrangement is succinctly captured by correspondent D.C.'s description of state-corporate capitalism: the Company Store. In the plantation model (i.e. any economic setting dominated by a primary corporate employer and/or the state), almost everyone works for the company, and is beholden to the company for their livelihood and security.
In exchange for this neofeudal (often described as paternal) security, employees must shop at the company store, which maintains a near-monopoly (i.e. competition is limited because the company owns the land and/or colludes with local government) as a means of extracting monopoly prices.
The company store extends credit to employees (in the modern version, student loans take the place of employee credit), and since prices are kept artificially high and wages are kept stagnant, the employees never manage to pay off their debts at the company store.
This describes the core dynamic in our state-corporate system. The state-corporate Status Quo suppresses competition (few other stores are allowed in town), usually by indirect means: high land leases, high fees for doing business in town, mountains of absurd regulations no small businesses can afford to meet, etc.
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
2 comments:
Everyone needs to read The Meat Racket. It explain how the meat companies have created blight and poverty in the areas they grace. How they've commandeered the industry from start to finish completely wiping out small business like hatcheries, feed mills, trucking companies, processing facilities.
How they haven't raised wages in years, decades even and how the industry now employee mostly foreigner like Hispanics, latinos and Asians who have a low standard of living so aren't inclined to improve their properties causing other properties to suffer financial loss.
Look at every industry and you will see the government allowing monopolies everywhere only to the largest political donors.Cable,pharmaceuticals,consumer goods,food and the list goes on.Banks wont lend to small business.Small business has to buy from the same people trying to put them out.
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