Ocasio-Cortez Compares Facebook's Libra to Company-Issued Scrip

(Bloomberg) -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is asking Facebook Inc.’ David Marcus about the Libra Association: how it was compiled, how it will manage the reserve, etc. It’s a tough issue because the association is really just an idea at this point. There are members, but no charter, no one has paid membership dues.

Ocasio-Cortez references previous instances of people being paid in corporate-controlled currency, known as "scrip" -- a very dark history there.

Company scrip is a company-controlled currency. Back in the day, if you worked for Acme Co., you lived in Acme housing and shopped at the Acme store with Acme-issued “dollars.” In “company towns” where one firm employed most of the working population, there would be only company stores.

Often, workers had to buy work tools, groceries and everything else with scrip at the company store, and often at higher prices than they could afford, leading to a cycle of debt.

It’s now illegal to pay workers this way.

In 1955, Tennessee Ernie Ford had a hit with the song “Sixteen Tons,” whose coal-mining narrator lamented:
“Saint Peter don’t call me ‘cause I can’t go/I owe my soul to the company store.”

For more on Facebook’s Marcus Testifies on Libra Before House Panel, click here for our TOPLive blog.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net;Austin Weinstein in New York at aweinstein18@bloomberg.net;Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tal Barak Harif at tbarak@bloomberg.net

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