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1. Captive Markets State Capitalism and Legal mandates and government monopolies the Many Monopolies often serve to produce captive markets, in which businesses sell goods or services to customers whose demand is locked in, or artificially bolstered, by Charles W. Johnson political requirements to buy services – or to buy [September 2011, Freeman; revised March 2013] services from particular, regulated sellers – that they wouldn’t otherwise pay for. (Consider, for example, Libertarians defend economic freedom, not big how the market for corporate car insurance is shaped business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate by state laws requiring its purchase, and regulating the economy. And what would freed markets look like? minimum levels of service that must be purchased.) Nothing like the controlled and distorted markets we Captive markets create a select class of incumbent have today. Yet there’s nothing more common than to companies with legally guaranteed access to a steady hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, and stream of customers, many of whom might not pay ecological catastrophe blamed on libertarian politics, for their services but for the threat of fines and and to hear the economic status quo attributed to the arrest. voraciousness of “unfettered free markets.” As if they were all around us! Really, the crises laid at the 2. Ratchet Effects feet of laissez faire are crises that have arisen in Legal burdens, price distortions and captive markets that are nothing if not fettered. When critics markets combine to ratchet up fixed costs of living, confront us with corporate malfeasance, structural far higher than would prevail in freed markets. To get poverty or socioeconomic marginalization, we need to by, people are constrained by the necessity of be clear that market principles are not about covering these persistent, inflexible costs – by selling defending the practices or profits of big business; and labor, buying insurance, taking on debt – under to point out how much of what our critics condemn artificially rigid circumstances. Ratchets keep everyone really traces back to government regulation and legal chasing the next paycheck, and create permanent privileges. For a model of how libertarians might states of financial crisis for the poor. analyze the political edge of corporate power, and defend markets from the bottom up, 21st century 3. Concentration libertarians would do well to look back to our 19th Confiscation, regressive redistribution and legal century roots. Our economic discussions would monopolies deprive workers of resources while benefit greatly from the insights and understanding concentrating wealth and economic control within a offered by the American individualist anarchists, politically-favored business class. Struggling to cover especially their most talented exponent, Benjamin ratcheted fixed costs, workers are dispossessed of the Ricketson Tucker (1854-1939), the editor of the means to make an independent living, and enter Anarchist journal Liberty (1881-1902). markets where legal privilege keeps ownership of land, capital and key resources concentrated in the Markets Deformed by State Capitalism hands of employers, landlords, and big corporations. Conventional textbook treatments portray the So workers must depend on relationships with bosses American Gilded Age as an age of relentless and corporations far more than in freed markets, economic exploitation, and also an age of economic deforming economic activity into hierarchical rela- laissez faire. But Tucker argued, against the conven- tionships and confining rental economies. tional narrative, that the stereotypical features of cap- italism in his day were products not of the market form, 4. Insulation but of markets deformed by political privileges. Tucker Captive markets and bailouts protect big players, did not use this terminology, but for the sake of while legal monopolies, regulatory barriers, and analysis we might delineate four patterns of anticompetitive subsidies inhibit competition from deformation that especially concerned him: (1) captive below and self-help, non-commercial or informal- markets, (2) ratchet effects, (3) concentration of economic sector substitutes. Government support props up big ownership, and (4) insulation of incumbents. businesses, stifling the market and social pressures Industrial Radical 2.1 Autumn 2016 43 that might otherwise be brought to bear on with vacant land more readily open to homesteading businesses, landlords and employers. Insulated and titles based as easily on sweat equity as on businesses can treat employees and consumers with leveraged cash exchanges. Many people now forced to far less consideration or restraint; meanwhile, rent by economic circumstances would no longer intervention shuts workers out of alternative need to; those who chose to rent would find that solutions by blocking entry from smaller, grassroots competition had dramatically improved the prices and or informal competitors. conditions available on the market.

Tucker’s Big Four 2. The Money Monopoly With these four categories in mind, we can turn to For Tucker, the most damaging of the Big Four Tucker’s central idea – the Four Monopolies that shaped was the Money Monopoly, “the privilege given by the the Gilded Age economy. In his classic essay “State government to certain individuals ... holding certain Socialism and Anarchism” (1888),1 Tucker argued that kinds of property, of issuing the circulating medium,” captive markets, ratchet effects, concentration, and politically manipulating the money supply, prohibiting insulation came together most powerfully in four alternative currencies, and cartelizing banking, money central areas of economic activity where government and credit. Tucker saw that monetary control not only deformed markets into “class monopolies,” secured monopoly profits for insulated banks, but regressively reshaping all markets as the effects also concentrated economic ownership throughout rippled outward from these four cen- the economy, favoring the large, ters. These were: established businesses that large, established banks preferred to deal with. 1. The Land Monopoly Tucker identified the Money Mono- Land titles in 19th century America poly as an economic force in 1888 – had nothing to do with free markets. before the Fed and fiat currency, the All unoccupied land was held to be the FDIC, Fannie, Freddie, the IMF, or property of government, and the mili- trillion-dollar bailouts to banks judged tary seized land out from under Indi- “Too Big to Fail.” Today, alongside the ans, Mexicans, and independent “squat- longstanding monopolization of financial ters.” Government ownership and services such as credit, savings, and preferential grants monopolized access, investment, regulatory cartels and political excluding free homesteading.2 Tucker mandates have also captured insurance as a identified this concentration of land Money Monopoly stronghold, forcing titles in a few elite hands as a “land Benjamin Tucker workers into rigged markets for corporate monopoly,” creating a class of privy- insurance, while shutting out non-cor- leged landlords by depriving workers of market porate, grassroots forms of mutual aid.3 opportunities to gain freeholds and escape rent. Since 1888, the land monopoly has dramatically 3. The Patent Monopoly expanded. Governments worldwide have nationalized Tucker condemned monopolies protected by oil, natural gas, and water resources; in the U.S., patents and copyrights, “protecting inventors and mining rights and fossil fuel exploration are largely authors against competition for a period long enough managed and accessed through government licenses, to enable them to extort ... a reward enormously in due to government’s ownership of 50% of the land in excess of ... their services.” Since copying an idea does the American West, their monopolistic control over not deprive the inventor of the idea, or of any territorial waters, etc. The cost of land has been tangible property she had before, “intellectual ratcheted and ownership has been concentrated property” really had nothing to do with defending the through zoning codes, decades of “Urban Renewal,” property of inventors; it meant securing a legal for-profit eminent domain, municipal “development” monopoly against competitors who could imitate or rackets, and a host of local policies to keep real estate duplicate the monopolists’ products at lower cost.4 prices permanently rising. Freed land markets would IP has grown vigorously since 1888, as corporate see ownership widely dispersed, less expensive, more media, technology and scientific innovation made often by individuals and more often free and clear, control over the information economy a linchpin of 44 Autumn 2016 Industrial Radical 2.1 corporate power. Monopoly profits on IP are the measures ratcheting up prices, distorting effective business model of Fortune 500 companies production towards subsidized crops, and con- like GE, Monsanto, Microsoft and Disney, who centrating agricultural activity in large-scale, demand virtually unlimited legal power to insulate capital-intensive cash-crop monoculture. These their privileged assets from market competition. government programs – inevitably enacted in the Copyright terms have quadrupled in length; while name of “small farmers” – invariably benefit large massive, synchronized expansions of Intellectual factory farms and industrial agribusiness con- Protectionism became standard features of neoliberal glomerates like ADM, Cargill and Tyson, as well “free trade agreements” like NAFTA and KORUS as controlling corporate suppliers like Monsanto. FTA.5 In a freed market these monopolists’ business models would fall – and with them, the ratcheted 2. The Infrastructure Monopoly includes both costs consumers must pay to access culture, medicine, physical and communications infrastructure. and technology. Governments build roads, rails and airports through eminent domain and tax subsidies, and 4. The Protectionist Monopoly impose cartelizing regulations on most forms of Tucker identified the protectionist tariff as a mass transit. Where government restricts entry, it monopoly in the sense that it insulated politically- secures monopoly profits for insulated carriers; favored domestic producers from foreign com- where it confiscates money and property to petition, and thus ratcheted up daily costs for subsidize long-distance transportation and consumers. shipping, it creates tax-supported business With the rise of multinational corporations and opportunities for high mileage agribusiness, big neoliberal trade agreements, tariffs have declined in box chain retailers, and other businesses recent decades. But the specific legal mechanism was dependent on complex logistics and long-haul less important to Tucker than the purpose of trucking. Incumbent telecommunications and controlling trade to insulate domestic incumbents. In 1888, media companies like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon that meant the tariff. In 2013, it means a vast network accumulate empires by cartelizing bandwidth; of political controls that governments use used to control of broadcast frequencies is concentrated manage the “balance of trade,” including not only through the FCC’s political allocation and import tariffs, but also export subsidies, manipulation oversight requirements; ownership of telephone, of exchange rates, and the programs of multi- cable, and fiber-optic bandwidth is concentrated government agencies like the World Bank and IMF. through local monopoly concessions for each medium. And government directly monopolizes The Big Ten and Metastatic Monopolization physical infrastructure from roads to rails to Tucker’s Big Four have only grown more interstate highways and airports, subsidized by tax pervasive and controlling since the 1880s. But the past money and often built through the threat or the century has also seen the metastatic proliferation of direct exercise of eminent domain. government regulatory bodies, intended to restructure new transactions and to capture new markets, 3. The Utility Monopoly concentrates control alongside the original four monopolies identified by over electricity, water, and natural gas in the hands Tucker. An exhaustive list of every ratcheting, of massive, centralized producers through concentrating and insulating intervention would run comprehensive planning, subsidies, and regional far beyond the scope of this article, but the special monopolies. Household energy generation, poly- pervasiveness, centrality, and far-reaching ripple centric neighborhood systems or off-the-grid effects of some of today’s Many Monopolies call out alternatives are crowded out or regulated to death for special attention at least these six major both through the insulating subsidies to the interventions: competitors, and also to the locking-in of existing grid technologies through government building 1. The Agribusiness Monopoly encompasses codes. the New Deal system of USDA cartels, regulatory burdens, surplus buy-ups, subsidized irrigation, 4. The Security Monopoly sustains highly con- price supports, export subsidies, and similar centrated, captive markets through a sprawling, Industrial Radical 2.1 Autumn 2016 45 and growing, ecosystem of government suppliers ratchet effect. Patent Monopolies ratchet up and contractors. With the massive expansion of drug costs, and insulate profits for Pfizer and standing military forces and paramilitary police GlaxoSmithKline. The FDA and medical licensing forces since the late 19th century, government’s laws provide a form of Regulatory Protec- core monopoly on the use of force has rippled tionism, constraining the supply of doctors, out to sustain multibillion dollar rigged markets in hospitals, and pharmaceuticals, concentrating which nominally “private” security firms and profits, and further ratcheting costs. Every medi- industrial manufacturers feed on tax-funded, cal need becomes a catastrophic cost, effectively politically-directed government contracts. The requiring comprehensive insurance. Working-class prominent and powerful beneficiaries of the patients, who once got insurance through security monopoly include Fortune 500 military- fraternal or mutual aid societies, now face a rigged industrial complex engineering and manufacturing corporate insurance marketplace thoroughly cor- corporations, such as Lockheed-Martin, General poratized by the effects of Money Monopoly Dynamics, Halliburton and Raytheon; high-tech subsidies, mandates, and regulatory control. In- weapons manufacturers such as Dow and General surance giants use their entrenched position to Electric; mercenary “security” and military- restructure entire markets to the demands of their support firms like Academi (formerly Blackwater) “managed care.” Meanwhile workers are tethered and DynCorp; private-prison contractors like to their bosses (since leaving jobs means sacri- GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut); and the ficing health coverage) and face the persistent growing number of companies like Taser danger of lost coverage, denied claims and International or Ameri-can Science and crippling debt.7 Engineering, who cater primarily to government police forces and to domestic “Homeland * * * Security” agencies. But what about progressive legislation? 5. Regulatory Protectionism may be the most Left-wing market anarchists – supplementing widely dispersed of the Many Monopolies. Like Tucker’s analysis of the Four Monopolies controlling Tucker’s Protectionist Monopoly, it concentrates the Gilded Age economy, with the new Big Six that and insulates incumbent providers by creating the past century has introduced – argue that these economic hurdles for would-be competitors. Many Monopolies reveal not only a limited or isolated Established businesses stifle competition from set of government interventions, but a pervasive, below by lobbying for regulatory red tape, interlocking system of interventions, with both extortionist fees, and complex licensing for profound direct consequences, and far-reaching ripple everything from taxi-driving to hairdressing. effects, for the structure of everyday economic Industry standards, which would otherwise be set activity. When we consider how access to land, by social convention and market experimentation, money, ideas, food, security, healthcare, utilities, are removed from the competitive realm and infrastructure, industry and basic livelihoods are determined by political pull. High compliance redirected by political intervention, and (therefore) costs insulate incumbents who can afford them mediated by captive, concentrated, ratcheted, and from competitors who cannot, shutting the poor insulated commercial formations, market anarchists out of entrepreneurial opportunities and see a distinctive structure of protected state capitalism independent, informal-sector livelihoods.6 controlling the most fundamental, far-reaching, and urgently necessary aspects of daily economic life. And 6. The Healthcare Monopoly is largely a ripple the structural effects of state capitalism go – we argue effect of several other monopolies; but it's worth – a long way towards showing why existing markets special notice because of the all-consuming work the way they work, and why the fail for many of growth of the medical sector, and because the people that they fail for. These observations have concerns about healthcare and health insurance occasioned a great deal of energetic discussion of costs so profoundly shape so many decisions corporate privilege within recent libertarian writing;8 about jobs, money and financial planning. The they also, often, inspire objections from more central economic fact of healthcare is a crippling conventionally pro-capitalist libertarians. 46 Autumn 2016 Industrial Radical 2.1 It is often objected, for example, that the Many that would persist in markets free of structural Monopolies certainly deform markets toward privilege, or because of predicaments that would stereotypically capitalistic business; but then, govern- dissipate when competitors are free to offer ment intervenes in more than one direction. What about alternatives with less centralization, less management, the myriad regulations or welfare programs intended and more trade and entrepreneurial independence for to benefit poor people or small players; or intended to ordinary workers. 9 constrain the business practices of large, consolidated If Tucker’s analysis proves anything, it proves firms? Sure, these exist; but, first, let’s not put too there are many places in economic life where ordinary much faith in government policies’ efficacy in people are given a hard shove towards spending achieving their supposed political aims. As shown in money they’d rather not spend, with trading partners scholarship like Gabriel Kolko’s Triumph of Con- they wouldn’t keep, if not for the shove. The most servatism and Butler Shaffer’s In Restraint of Trade, pervasive, far-reaching government interventions fos- “progressive” regulatory structure and antitrust law, ter economic concentration, commercialization, hy- far from curbing big business, really formed the perthyroidal scale and the consolidated hierarchy historical core of Regulatory Protectionism, cartelizing needed to manage it – not because they grow natural- and insulating big business. Moreover, even where ly in market economies, but because they grow out of these programs do tend to produce their stated goals, control in the hothouse of socialized costs and there are issues of priority and scale to keep in mind. inhibited competition. I object to SBA loans, OSHA, or TANF as much as any free marketeer; but in this age of billion-dollar The Belt and the Bones war contracts and trillion-dollar bank bailouts, it For most of the 20th century, American libertari- ought to be obvious that even when government puts ans were seen as defenders of “capitalism.” Some – a finger on both sides of the scale, one finger is Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand – embraced the term. pushing a lot harder than the other. Others – Hayek, Roy Childs, Karl Hess – were uncomfortable with the identification. They thought But what about economies of scale? it made defenders of free markets look like uncritical What about the explanations that conventional apologists for the interests and practices of real-life economists have offered to explain capitalistic firms’ capitalists – financiers, big corporations, and the mili- greater efficiency, and greater success in unregulated tary-industrial complex. But despite occasional markets, based on the division of labor, on econo- dissent, most 20th century libertarians, cheerfully or mies of scale, or on gains from trade? Even if some grudgingly, took up the “capitalist” banner. Most specific firms would decline or fall without the cor- libertarians, and nearly all of their opponents, seemed porate safety-net of the Many Monopolies, wouldn’t to agree that libertarianism meant defending business large firms, industrial agribusiness, and corporate against the attacks of “big government,” and that the business models, still outcompete smaller rivals, even purpose of laissez-faire was to unleash existing forms without some of the subsidies and monopolies they of commerce from political restraints. currently enjoy? This was almost a complete reversal from the But Tucker, and modern-day market anarchists, attitude of traditional libertarians like Tucker, which don’t reject the division of labor, or gains from trade, or we might call a sort of “free market anti-capitalism.” large-scale production; only capitalistic organization. Tucker was one of the best-known defenders of free We suggest that labor, trade and scale could be markets in 19th century America, and he happily sum- organized along different lines, and might well, if present marized his economic principles as “Absolute Free forms of organization weren’t locked in by political Trade ... laissez-faire the universal rule.” 10 Yet at the monopolies. Independent contracting, co-ops, and same time he – like most of the other individualist worker-managed shops are forms of specialization anarchists – repeatedly described his views as a theory and trade no less than centralized firms. Scale can be of “Anarchistic Socialism.”11 The combination could internalized through central management, or it can be hardly be more jarring to the modern eye. But what externalized through polycentric trade. A corporate could “socialism” mean for an uncompromising free- economy is only one among many possibilities for market individualist like Tucker? Certainly not govern- dividing labor and exchanging values; the question is ment control of industry. Rather, what he meant was whether it predominates because of market forces workers’ control over the conditions of their own labor – con- Industrial Radical 2.1 Autumn 2016 47 trol which, Tucker argued, was effectively denied by markets, inventing the class structures of ownership, the legal privileges granted to big business, and by the ratcheted costs, and inhibited competition that pro- artificial inequalities of wealth and bargaining power duce wage-labor, rent, and the corporate economy we those privileges fostered. For Tucker, then, libertari- face. These primary interventions are no belt for capi- anism meant opposition to the predominant business talism to wear or take off; they are its very bones. With- structure, and an attack on economic privilege – not out them, what’s left is not a different look for the by empowering the state to seize the for-tunes of same body – but a totally different organism. capitalists, but by knocking out the political privileges Because you wear a belt on the surface, it’s easy to that propped them up, and dismantling their mono- see, and easy to imagine how you might look without polies by exposing them to freed-market competition it. Because the belt is hitched by government co- from below. ercion, 20th century libertarians rightly condemned it The Many Monopolies are, above all, pervasive – but rarely noticed that however much the anti- interventions, and fundamentally business belt constrains the capitalist shape the everyday reality of the economy’s natural shape, capitalism corporate economy. So why then without the belt is still a political have not only the opponents, but also creature, shaped by intervention the supposed advocates of free markets down to its pro-business bones. The so often missed Tucker’s point about Monopolies that create capitalists, the role of political regulation in landlords and financiers, and uphold institutionalizing capitalist economic corporate power, are so deeply em- models? Why do Progressives so bedded in the existing economy, so easily lay the blame for inequality, entrenched in consensus politics, it is exploitation, and corporate power easy to mistake them for an eco- on “unregulated markets,” and why nomic given, business as usual in a do so many libertarians respond by market society. trying to make excuses for the corporate capitalist statist We might say – with apologies to Shulamith Fire- quo? Paradoxically, the answer may be that Tucker’s stone – that the political economy of state capitalism approach is forgotten partly because of the very depth is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear to be a and pervasiveness of the problems it identifies. superficial set of interventions, a problem that can be The interventions that 20th century market liber- solved by a few legal reforms, perhaps the elimination tarians were most likely to identify and oppose – pro- of the occasional bail-out or export subsidy, while gressive taxes, welfare programs, environmental regu- preserving intact the basic recognizable patterns of lations – are more politically controversial, but (really, the corporate economy. But there is something deep- because) they are surface interventions, economically er, and more pervasive, at stake. A fully freed market speaking. While aiming to reform or restrain the corp- means liberating essential command posts in the orate capitalist economy, each of these political inter- economy from state control, to be reclaimed for ventions took the basic structural features of that market and social entrepreneurship. The market that economy – concentration, insulation, ratcheted costs would emerge that would look profoundly different and corporate power – bosses, banks, landlords and from anything we have now. That so profound a massive, entrenched firms – for granted, attempting change cannot easily fit into traditional categories of only to contain their most unsightly downstream ef- thought, e.g. “libertarian” or “left-wing,” “laissez- fects. Countervailing “progressive” regulations are like faire” or “socialist,” “entrepreneurial” or “anti-cap- a belt put on capitalism. A man may need a belt or he italist,” is not because these categories do not apply may look better without, but he has the same body, but because they are not big enough: radically free for good or for ill, without the restraint. markets burst through them. If there were another But political means that consolidate the Many word more all-embracing than revolutionary, we would Monopolies do something more than just interfering use it. ∆ further in the outcomes of preexisting market struc- tures. State capitalist privileges shape basic patterns of Notes: ownership, access, and cost for essential goods and factors of production. They fundamentally restructure [1] “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and 48 Autumn 2016 Industrial Radical 2.1

Wherein They Differ” (1888). Reprinted in Instead of a Book, By a Research Paper No. 11, c4ss.org/content/5580 Man Too Busy to Write One (1893/1897), more recently in Markets [10] “State Socialism and Anarchism,” ¶ 22. Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, [11] Throughout “State Socialism and Anarchism,” he classifies Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty (2011), 21-36. Anarchism as one of the two competing schools of Socialism; [2] The “Homestead Act,” supposed to open Western lands to see also, for example, in “Socialism: What It Is” (1884) or homesteading, really imposed rigid legal limits on homesteaders, “Should Labor be Paid or Not?” (1888), both reprinted in Instead which only certain medium-sized commercial farmers could of a Book (Part IV, essay 1, and Part V, essay 5, respectively), and effectively meet. Smaller farms, and non-farmers, were excluded. in Markets Not Capitalism (145-148 and 269-270, respectively). Meanwhile, lands actually available to homesteading were ringed around by government giveaways of much of the most valuable land to railroad companies. [3] On mutual-aid, worker-owned alternatives to corporate insurance, see Roderick Long, “How Government Solved the The Road Builders Healthcare Crisis,” in Markets Not Capitalism, 315-318. [4] On the false analogy between individual ownership of tangible property, and the monopolistic control of copyrights Voltairine de Cleyre and patents, see “The Libertarian Case against Intellectual Property Rights,” by Roderick Long (1995), reprinted in Markets [Philadelphia, 24 July 1900] Not Capitalism, 187-197, or the selections from Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty collected in The Question of Copyright (republished (“Who built the beautiful roads?” queried a friend of the 2013, by the Alliance of the Libertarian Left Distro, present order, as we walked one day along the macadamized distro.libertarianleft.org/for/anarchist-classics-series/ driveway of Fairmount Park.) liberty-the-question-of-copyright). On the anti-competitive effects of patent and copyright restrictions, see “How ‘Intellectual Property’ Impedes Competition,” by Kevin Carson I saw them toiling in the blistering sun, (2009), reprinted in Markets Not Capitalism, 325-334. Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone, [5] See for example the discussion of international trade Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools, treaties in “I’m Against Free Trade Agreements Because I’m For Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest, Free Trade,” by Charles Johnson (2011), at the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog (bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/08/im The sweat drops dripping in great painful beads. -against-free-trade-agreements-because-im-for-free-trade) I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock, or in “Patents Kill” (radgeek.com/gt/2005/04/26/patents_ The helpless hand still clutching at the spade, kill) and “Patents Kill, Part III” (radgeek.com/gt/2013/02/ The slack mouth full of earth. 13/patents-kill-part-iii) by Charles Johnson, at the Rad Geek People’s Daily blog. [6] For a fuller discussion of some of the mechanisms, and the And he was dead. pervasive ripple-effects, of Regulatory Protectionism, and the His comrades gently turned his face, until explosive possibilities of informal-sector alternatives that The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes, government licenses and prohibitions are intended to contain, Wide open, staring at the cruel sky. see for example “Scratching By: How Government Creates The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone; Poverty As We Know It,” by Charles Johnson, in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty 57.10 (December 2007), or Stealth of Nations: the But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead: Global Rise of the Informal Economy, by Robert Neuwirth (New Driven to death beneath the burning sun, York: Pantheon, 2011). Driven to death upon the road he built. [7] See for example Kevin Carson’s “Health Care and Radical Monopoly,” in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty 60.2 (March 2010), He was no “hero,” he; a poor, black man, and “The Healthcare Crisis: A Crisis of Artificial Scarcity,” Center for a Stateless Society Research Papers (May 2010), Taking “the will of God” and asking naught; c4ss.org/content/2088 Think of him thus, when next your horse’s feet [8] See for example the articles collected in Markets Not Capital- Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road; ism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, Think that for this, this common thing, The Road, and Structural Poverty (Autonomedia/Minor Compositions, 2011). A human creature died; ’tis a blood gift, [9] It is, also, worth considering not only different ways in which scale might be organized, but also the extent to which To an o’erreaching world that does not thank. internalized scale carries diseconomies that are obscured by Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well, – insulating and concentrating deformations of market com- Still human; and you drive upon his corpse. ∆ petition. For a more thorough discussion, see for example “Eco- nomic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth,” by Kevin Carson (2007), reprinted in Markets Not Capitalism, 213-221, and Michigan native Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) – “The Great Domain of Cost-Plus: The Waste Production Eco- essayist, poet, and activist – was one of the leading writers of the nomy,” by Kevin Carson (2010), Center for a Stateless Society American individualist anarchist movement.