TIL many US companies in the late 1800s-1938 would pay their employees in company scrip, a currency issued by the employer and can only be used in company owned stores where they upcharged exorbita...

that's why that abomination of a "community" being built by musk is a dystopian nightmare

Oh it's even better. Look up the battle of Blair Mountain. Where the US government dropped bombs on protesting coal miners, whose only crime was wanting to be paid in real currency.

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said, "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store.

15 years and what do you get?

29 USC § 203 (m)(1) authorizes 29 CFR § 531.34. The current rule making from the Secretary of Labor (q) is as:

Scrip, tokens, credit cards, “dope checks,” coupons, and similar devices are not proper mediums of payment under the Act.

This all is found in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, public law Pub. L. 75-718

Dugaloos

If you learned that today, you must have been living under a very cosy rock of blissful ignorance. This scheme is still in use even now in a wide array of poorer countries.

Did you just watch the Peter Santenello video?