We're not there yet. For some time we regulated things, and some of the nastier abuses of the past were attenuated a bit. The particularly bad abuses were prevented entirely, and some of the wealth was distributed in a more equitable way.
The modern version that we've seen for a while still has some of the nasty effects, such as making the town (intentionally or not) a very difficult situation to leave. Forcing decisions that are bad for and rejected by a community such "lets go fracking really close to where the drinking water comes form!" seems to be popular in modern times (and a lot of local variation).
The problem, as I mentioned towards the end of the other post, is when business and government are no longer working against each other. We extract value, as citizens from the resulting equilibrium, because the nastier tendencies of either group are restrained. I'm suggesting that the NEW change, is a dramatic and sudden shift away from that regulation. You see this in Facebook and other big players such as the banks that were labeled "Too Big To Fail". Some of the traditional power-players like the coal industry simply have a bit of historical inertia to overcome.
We've been the reducing government's ability to regulate for some time now, making the modern, milder, modern Company Town as you describe increasingly rarer as this progress.
The modern version that we've seen for a while still has some of the nasty effects, such as making the town (intentionally or not) a very difficult situation to leave. Forcing decisions that are bad for and rejected by a community such "lets go fracking really close to where the drinking water comes form!" seems to be popular in modern times (and a lot of local variation).
The problem, as I mentioned towards the end of the other post, is when business and government are no longer working against each other. We extract value, as citizens from the resulting equilibrium, because the nastier tendencies of either group are restrained. I'm suggesting that the NEW change, is a dramatic and sudden shift away from that regulation. You see this in Facebook and other big players such as the banks that were labeled "Too Big To Fail". Some of the traditional power-players like the coal industry simply have a bit of historical inertia to overcome.
We've been the reducing government's ability to regulate for some time now, making the modern, milder, modern Company Town as you describe increasingly rarer as this progress.