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from the company-towns-and-company-scrip dept.
Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments:
Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.
Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state's economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.
The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.
The measure to further economic development with the "alternative form of local government" has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.
[...] The governor's economic development office did not respond to questions about the zones Wednesday.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 06 2021, @01:24PM (10 children)
Or we have "done it right" numerous times, and you just don't like the yardstick used. For example, most of those company towns do alright for the people depending on their products - it might suck relatively being a coal miner in a company town, but not so much if you were keeping the lights on or the furnace going with the cheap coal from that company town.
Keep in mind that if your interests don't sufficiently align with that of the corporation, then you don't have to live or work there.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday February 06 2021, @02:37PM (5 children)
So what you're saying is that putting people in awful situations is totally fine so long as it's not you that's in that awful situation.
If you know the history of the West Virginia coal wars, you know that the people who lived there did not in any significant way approve of how the system worked. They went into coal mining because their only alternative, after the coal companies poisoned what had been their farmland, was to starve to death. Company thugs murdered a mayor and a local police chief that tried to resist them among others. There was even a pitched battle between company forces and the miners, who apparently thought that attacking an entrenched enemy uphill armed with nothing but handguns and clubs was preferable to enduring their current situation.
But hey, there's money to be made here, so that makes it OK! /sarcasm
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 06 2021, @04:08PM (4 children)
So what you're saying is that you're an idiot who doesn't have a thing to contribute to this thread? Don't put words in my mouth.
Awful is relative. You already acknowledge later that coal mining in a company town was better in your view than other things those people could be doing (such as allegedly "starve to death"). I imagine that if those coal miners had been transported a century into the future, even into a hypothetical company town in Nevada, it'd still be vastly than where they were. But the only way to get from there to here is one back-breaking day at a time.
Similarly, a century or so down the road, we may have all the big ticket troubles that humanity faces solved. In such a case, today would probably look pretty awful to those future people. But we can't just choose to transport ourselves to that future. There's no royal road to good situations. One has to work to get there.
That's why I support this idea. It's an experiment that has considerable potential to make a better future. And as I noted with my Disney World example, sometimes it works pretty damn well.
Cool story, bro. Note first that you acknowledge that coal mining in a company town was a relatively good choice. Second, you fail to acknowledge that the alternative to all that is move somewhere else (which wouldn't have been that far away) where farmland isn't poisoned and such and you don't need jobs in company towns to keep from starving. People mined coal by choice.
And given that they knuckled under after the defeat at the Battle of Blair Mountain, there apparently were things worse than the current situation.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:24PM (1 child)
And, you look like a fine guinea pig to me!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @08:09PM
khallow is now too fluffy and round to run on the wheel. It's more of a tumble cycle. So he can no longer be a guinea pig. Sorry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @06:28PM (1 child)
Your outrage short circuits your reading skills. Not surprising, one can not bury their emotions for long without causing serious mental disorders.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 07 2021, @01:12PM
In other words, a "heads I win, tails you lose" position. If I show emotion, it's an outrage short circuit. If I don't, then it's "burying" emotion. There is no right approach to your criticism which let us note is irrelevant to the discussion.
But most significantly, there's no word at all on the bogus "So what you're saying is" straw man that sparked this alleged outrage short circuit. Some alleged minor outburst on my part is worth mentioning. A blatant fake characterization of my words is not.
Can't you see the dishonesty of these posts, both Thexalon's and yours?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2021, @06:00AM (3 children)
Except that's not true, in a bunch of those coal mining towns you had to buy from the company store in order to get the gear you needed to do your job and the money you paid to the store was enough to ensure that you were always in debt to the company. It was effectively slave labor as you couldn't leave if you hadn't paid your debts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 07 2021, @02:10PM
Except, of course, by leaving without telling said company where you were going, you didn't have to stay or pay off those alleged debts. Seriously what could the company do to you? Send the Pinkertons? Waste a bunch of money in a court to get blood from a stone? Unless the target had that money somewhere, it would be a losing and very unprofitable proposition for them even for the purpose of scaring the rest of the miners.
The US was notoriously fluid when it came to such things back then. I find it remarkable how poorly founded some of these myths are.
Strikes and other protests that were put down with military force are well documented. People who chose to stay under abusive circumstances because that was better than the alternatives are pretty well documented.
But so are miners moving from one mine to another and few examples of large debts to the company store. In the references to this paywalled article [cambridge.org], we have the following:
Doesn't sound to me like a number of the problems alleged in this thread such as being forced to stay and work, company store debt, company scrip, etc were widespread practices.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 07 2021, @03:51PM (1 child)
Do these company towns have names? How much is a bunch? How does the company collect on that debt once you move out and start working for a competitor?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 08 2021, @06:27PM
Historical not current. Look up debtor's prison for why everything he said is completely accurate.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.