WI Time Stores come to dominate Cincinnati?

In 1827, years before Proudhon had started thinking up Mutualism, Josiah Warren was running capitalists out of business in Cincinnati, Ohio by running a profitless retail store.

It was so successful that another retail store nearby adopted the methods.



What if it hadn't stopped at two? What if Time Stores had proliferated and come to utterly dominate Cincinnati's business sector?
 
The Labor theory of value ?! I've been wondering what this is since it keeps coming up in Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Wikipedia said:
The items in the store were initially marked up 7% to account for the labor required to bring them to market with the price increasing the longer the time that a customer spent with the shopkeeper, as measured by a timer dial.
...Which means that if these stores catch on, they will be even more ruthless than OTL businesses at spending capital on labor-saving devices.
 
Well, IOTL Warren closed up his shop and left town to establish 'colony' stores that would use his same mutualist economics. A simple POD would be for him to keep the store open, and have trusted friends and relatives that also followed his economics to spread the word.
 
Could you explain the results/impact this would have a little to people who have little understanding of this area but are interested?

Is this suggesting that a strong nonprofit business could take hold and influence the American economy at large to follow suite?
 
Is anarchism that uninteresting?

I'm not understanding this - how did he stay in business?

If he was relying on essentially making his living expenses through charity, then this is Haight-Ashbury 140 years early, and without the modern pharaceutical component.

I can't see it spreading, if this is the case.

Mike Turoctte.
 
I'm not understanding this - how did he stay in business?

His wares were much, much cheaper than the other retail stores. He got enough business that the markup for the costs of running the store let him stay in business. Such is the power of market competition.


Eventually the Time Store turned into an early time bank similar to the LETS system and the Ithaca Hours thing in NY State is based, ultimately, on the Cincinnati Time Store. Ithaca has been doing it fore close on to twenty years now.
 
Could you explain the results/impact this would have a little to people who have little understanding of this area but are interested?

Is this suggesting that a strong nonprofit business could take hold and influence the American economy at large to follow suite?

Well, I'm not particularly well read on the topic, but the economy of Ithaca, New York is based on a Time-Dollar system derived from Warren's experiments.
 
Top