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There is no evidence to support your belief that company towns were an exploitive institution. It's just another popular myth that persists because it resonates

There is no evidence to support your belief that company towns were an exploitive institution. It's just another popular myth that persists because it resonates with inherent biases against the rich, and serves certain parties' interests in delegitimizing private property rights.

AstralStorm 6y ago
Sure, because Pullman strike, Pinkerton's and strike busting were never a thing. Corporate owned stores with gouged prices, and so on. Oh, and whole towns being sold out in bankruptcies, people forced to move. (Latest example being slow dismantling of Scotia.) All sorts of paternalistic policies. Nowadays the corporations do not have this kind of control because they don't want real estate on this level. The towns were extremely vulnerable to downturn in business, and still are. (Even whole industry sector cities have problems, such as Detroit.) Capitalism itself is based on profit, which is not shared to workers. By definition exploitative, unlike taxes, which are supposed to be redistributed back to populace as services almost in whole, if the government works correctly. (Excluding public sector salaries. Monarchies and dictatorships excluded to a point.)
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  The Pullman Strike started with violence from the strikers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike >>On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive.[8] Elsewhere in the western states, sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks, or threatening and attacking strikebreakers. This increased national attention and the demand for federal action. This was destruction of the private company's property and trespassing to violate the shareholders' right to freedom of movement across the US. This is only justifiable if you accept the victimhood ideology, which sanctifies any worker, and grants them an unlimited right to commit any action in support of their demands. It completely rejects the principle of free association, and the free market, in favor of assigning moral superiority to individuals based on their level of wealth. And what's wrong with strike busting? Strike busting means hiring replacement workers to cross the picket line. They hired the Pinkertons to PROTECT the workers from the violent picketers, who would regularly assault, and sometimes murder, strikebreakers. >>Capitalism itself is based on profit, which is not shared to workers. By definition exploitative Profit is the investor's compensation for their investment. The investors owes the worker what they commit to paying them in their employment contract - nothing more. It's not exploitation when a worker freely agrees to work for a person, and that person profits from the enterprise that they hired them to work in. You're claiming that you can take a job based on employment terms that were disclosed to you, and then because the employer didn't share any profit that they never promised to share in the employment agreement, cry victim, and demand their private property. This is just a narrative used by cheats to rob people of property that they are in no way entitled to. The workers get paid wages, as promised. A worker is able to save their wages after expenses, and then start their own company, and earn profit on their capital. The incentive to invest capital, into new machinery, leads to productivity growth, which leads to wage growth. That is the process that made the US the most productive country in the world by 1890, with people from Europe migrating en masse to try to enjoy the much higher hourly wages it offers.

AstralStorm 6y ago

Sure, because Pullman strike, Pinkerton's and strike busting were never a thing. Corporate owned stores with gouged prices, and so on. Oh, and whole towns being sold out in bankruptcies, people forced to move. (Latest example being slow dismantling of Scotia.) All sorts of paternalistic policies. Nowadays the corporations do not have this kind of control because they don't want real estate on this level. The towns were extremely vulnerable to downturn in business, and still are. (Even whole industry sector cities have problems, such as Detroit.) Capitalism itself is based on profit, which is not shared to workers. By definition exploitative, unlike taxes, which are supposed to be redistributed back to populace as services almost in whole, if the government works correctly. (Excluding public sector salaries. Monarchies and dictatorships excluded to a point.)

CryptoPunk 6y ago
The Pullman Strike started with violence from the strikers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike >>On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive.[8] Elsewhere in the western states, sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks, or threatening and attacking strikebreakers. This increased national attention and the demand for federal action. This was destruction of the private company's property and trespassing to violate the shareholders' right to freedom of movement across the US. This is only justifiable if you accept the victimhood ideology, which sanctifies any worker, and grants them an unlimited right to commit any action in support of their demands. It completely rejects the principle of free association, and the free market, in favor of assigning moral superiority to individuals based on their level of wealth. And what's wrong with strike busting? Strike busting means hiring replacement workers to cross the picket line. They hired the Pinkertons to PROTECT the workers from the violent picketers, who would regularly assault, and sometimes murder, strikebreakers. >>Capitalism itself is based on profit, which is not shared to workers. By definition exploitative Profit is the investor's compensation for their investment. The investors owes the worker what they commit to paying them in their employment contract - nothing more. It's not exploitation when a worker freely agrees to work for a person, and that person profits from the enterprise that they hired them to work in. You're claiming that you can take a job based on employment terms that were disclosed to you, and then because the employer didn't share any profit that they never promised to share in the employment agreement, cry victim, and demand their private property. This is just a narrative used by cheats to rob people of property that they are in no way entitled to. The workers get paid wages, as promised. A worker is able to save their wages after expenses, and then start their own company, and earn profit on their capital. The incentive to invest capital, into new machinery, leads to productivity growth, which leads to wage growth. That is the process that made the US the most productive country in the world by 1890, with people from Europe migrating en masse to try to enjoy the much higher hourly wages it offers.