[p2p-research] The Production Bubble: Why Capitalism Withholds Solutions and Gets Away with It

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/25/10, Alex Rollin <alex.rollin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some people do want to be rich.  I like the idea of everyone having a chance
> to taste metaphorical blood, and I see no reason for any real blood to be
> spilt, yet any position that defends unregulated markets defends the
> position that blood should be allowed to be split, in real red.
>
> Luckily markets still function under state rules, except where corporations,
> their leaders, and employees abuse their privilege.  It is always possible
> to cut back on the freedoms that the poorer examples (ie the market leaders)
> are allowed to enjoy.  The often idolized and particularly American phantasm
> of the free market often beguiles those who would be rich; they are often
> then one who believe (metaphysically or otherwise)  that the market was ever
> or could ever be free.  It is not, and it will be reigned in before we are
> all ruined.

I think your implicit assumptions here get it almost directly
backward.  Getting rich would be a lot harder, and I would say getting
super-rich would be virtually impossible, in a genuinely free market.

The main function of state interventions in the market, and state
limitations on the operation of the free market, has not been to
reduce the amount of blood or economic exploitation.  It has been to
rig the market in favor of big business and the rich.  State subsidies
to operating expenses and accumulation, and state protections from
competition (like regulatory cartels and "intellectual property"), are
the main structural supports that make corporate capitalism possible.

The state rules aren't there to protect us from the corporations, but
to protect the corporations from us.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html