Hostility to unions, lax environmental regulations, and –- perhaps less obviously –- far flung rural communities: all of these helped give birth to our express-delivery, buy-on-credit economy. Environmental historian Bart Elmore considers the importance of the American South to the genesis, reach, and ecological damage of five outsized corporations: Walmart, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Bank of America, and Delta Airlines.
Resources:
Bart Elmore, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet University of North Carolina Press, 2023