They just need to realize that a token system isn't even needed, especially at this is level. It's the token system that the government is objecting to, not the actual credit for which it goes proxy.
I recall moving to a small town in Iowa and going to the hardware store to buy some stuff. When the charges were rung up, I presented cash. The owner was taken aback. You said that I lived in the town and had an account with 30 days to pay and they would send out a bill. I realized that this is just the way business is traditionally conducted and said OK. I didn't even have to sign to take the stuff and I had the receipt that I could compare with the tally when it arrived in the mail, even though store was only a block away.
I also recall a conversation with a neighbor some time later, when I was "accepted." He told me that he had moved there forty years ago from a neighboring town and still not considered as being "from here." He said that as far as the locals that are "from there" are concerned, you aren't from there if there's no one in your family in the cemetary. Most of the families go back many generations.
During the Great Depression, there was not much cash in farm country and business and daily affairs were conducted using credit. Apparently it worked for them, and they still like it that way.
Tom, I'm moving to Iowa.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that was before the family farm was wiped out. Iowa is all agribusiness now. That hardware store closed not long after Walmart opened in the neighboring larger town. The store owner told me with chagrin that he was shocked that all the townspeople with whom he had grown up abandoned him.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I saw grown men cry as the family farms went under. It wasn't just the farmers but the many small businesses that served them.
IN the small town I was living in in the early 80's I was told that in the fifties there were three car dealerships, a John Deere dealership, several banks and restaurants, a movie theater, several banks, two lumber years, a hardware store, etc.
When I moved there it was all gone or closing. Now there is one bank left and a small PO. The rest of the square is empty or just gone.
Sad, but "progress," you know.
You're either an owner or an itinerant navvy.
ReplyDeleteFreedom of movement and contract you know. Nothing at all to do with unequal power relations and excessive centralisation.