While The New Yorker was out earning a much-deserved thrashing for its poor choice of cover art, I was enjoying a nice, long weekend of running mouths, playing frisbee golf, drinking beer, acquiring sunburn, and generally soaking in some rural/small town goodness. I left at sunset, returned at sunset, and found out something highly interesting.
As it turns out, Oxford, Mississippi doesn't allow chain stores to conduct business in some close proximity to their town square. This makes the town square at least somewhat free from capital poisoning, a feature that has in turn, allowed economic activity and development to flourish. The fact such a rule has been allowed to exist in the United States, in this era of capital poisoning, in a Red State no less, is simply astounding. |
