Company Towns and the Free Market

[tnu]

My friend who is a staunch anarcho-syndicalist brought this up and I thoguht it was rasonably interesting. I kind of want to delve in to the nature of company towns, company stores, and trucking systems in the free market. my main points of skepticism are viabili ty and cost. for company towns it becomes an issue fo rme of "how are you going to pay for it?" and for trucking systems it becoems an issue of "how are you going to do that without a monopoly on currency?" But I really don't know enoug h about it to really discuss it so I figured I'd post here and get everybody's opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Hatfield


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matewan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War

[MrBogosity]

Company towns were generally unincorporated protectorates of the state they inhabited. They got to use their own currency (scrip) and pay their workers solely in that. Whenever entrepreneurs other than the company set up exchanges for the dollar and company scrip, or set up stores just outside the town limits that competed with the company store, they got the state forces to shut them down.