6 - Capitalism: southern style

Summary

Ideas are like roses. They grow and bloom in the mind. There is a time when they peak. They must be plucked then and put in the vase of some publication. If left on the stem, they get blown about and close up tight again and finally lose all their petals. Of course, in the vase they also wither and droop and lose their petals. To write them down is to take a picture of them at full bloom. But pictures, too, crack and fade. So ideas are better compared to young people – there is no way to keep them beautiful and young. But what I present here is really but the germ of an idea rather than a fully spelt-out explanation with a well-researched substantiation. That is another thing about ideas: One can communicate the germ of one in a few seconds; sometimes it takes an individual a lifetime, or a society a century, to recover from the disease or the dream that they encapsulate.

A hundred or even fifty years ago, American capitalists did exhibit, my idea tells me, somewhat different styles of behavior in the three historic regions east of the Great Plains, Northeast, Midwest, and South. I mean specifically the style of business behavior, the behavior having to do with buying and selling, hiring and firing, handling money in the scramble to earn a living or to make a profit – or at least to avoid bankruptcy.