Scrip Nation

In the 1800s, back in the days when mining and logging were becoming major industries, companies were located in remote areas where there weren't established towns or cities, so the bare necessities -- housing, dry goods stores, maybe a post office, a saloon, probably stables -- sprung up to serve the workers, some of whom were immigrants, all of whom had moved to these places solely for the work.

And then this happened: Companies began to pay its workers in scrips, company currency, rather than U.S. currency. The local businesses, which were the only place for the workers to purchase goods and services, were often owned by the companies, and those businesses would only take scrips. So workers were paid in scrips and had to purchase everything with scrips and then of course, the goods and services were grossly overpriced, so very quickly these workers became indebted to their employers. This was an awesomely anti-worker, anti-human business plan. 

It should be no surprise that it is the business model most preferred by anti-worker corporations; now it's called privatization. 

Privatization is the business practice of taking over portions of government for profit. Prisons are sometimes privatized, public transportation, some utilities, bridges, tolls -- things like that are privatized. Corporations break off a discreet portion of a government service and purchase it outright, or pay fees until some point in time or in perpetuity, or a combination of both. Government gets the ready cash it so desperately needs and businesses get a guaranteed revenue stream.

But if there is profit to be made, why doesn't government just make the profit and plow it back into government, maybe fund some other underfunded service? Because business convinces politicians that business can run it better, more efficiently, and more profitably and is willing to pay a premium for it. And for various reasons, some thoughtless, some corrupt and some honest, they buy it.

But all things being equal, how can business make so much more profit from a government service than government does to make it a worthwhile purchase? Efficiency isn't something that is a magical attribute to business. It's doing things faster with less waste, and in order to obtain efficiency some variable has to change.

You can offer less service.

You can employ fewer people and require those left to do more work in the same amount of time.

You can charge more for the same service.

Offering less service means that we, the people, are actually effectively getting a tax hike. So we just gave money to some company for nothing. We didn't get better service, we got less service and we pay the same damn fees for it.

Firing people is not a good thing. Even if they are government employees. I have no idea why people think that firing people saves money. It doesn't. We are a community, tied together at the ankles. If this newly unemployed person isn't someone in your family you have to directly lend money to, s/he is someone who will drag you down if you don't pull him up. I know that some of you think that you can just reach down and cut the rope and go on about your merry way and I have to say, you can't. You just can't. That doesn't work. It never works. The reason why we have social safety nets is because we need them, and we when we don't have them, we make them. It's part of who we are, and it's a sign of a mature, stable society.

Charging more for the same service is not supposed to be part of the deal, but it does happen. Business agrees to keep the sames fees, but then at some later date says that it must raise fees for some unforeseen reason, which, is of course, a tax hike to us.

There is another insidious, slightly evil, way that business can make a profit from a service previously provided by government: It can only take over a fraction of the service and leave some of it to be run by government. Like administration of civil servants (testing, vetting, bonding, etc.), or not be required to pay a single cent for the initial capital investment of building, equipment,  This has to be done with the tacit approval of politicians, which is the evil part, this collusion between business and government to defraud the people. It's also effectively a tax hike, because once again, we are paying the same amount for less, less service and/or less investment. 

So privatization is only profitable to business if it is more costly for us.

The connection between privatization and company scrips is this: We are being forced to purchase goods and services from companies who are grossly-overcharging us for things we already own. Our taxes, the money we earned through our hard labor, is being used to in-debt us to corporations and to take profits from the mouths of our children and their children.

Privatization takes our assets, gives it to corporations, and then over-charges us for their use.