Paying employees in company scrip was a horrifyingly exploitative practice during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where corporations paid their workers in private, fake…

A closer look

Paying employees in company scrip was a horrifyingly exploitative practice during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where corporations paid their workers in private, fake currency that could only be spent at company-owned stores. Mining and logging towns essentially trapped their workers in a dystopian loop of debt, as the company store would charge heavily inflated prices for basic survival necessities like food, clothing, and tools. Because the workers never received actual United States dollars, they could not save up to move away or find better jobs, effectively turning them into indentured servants bound to their corporate overlords. While we look back at this as a brutal relic of the unregulated past, modern gig economy platforms forcing you to accept payments in proprietary digital tokens or offering restricted employee perks instead of actual living wages brings a chilling, high-tech flavor back to pure feudalism