Kevin A. Carson

capitalism ever-growing state intervention economy piranha

“In short, capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of state intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the point where the teat runs dry.

The result is a system in which governments and corporations are increasingly hollowed out. And meanwhile, growing up within this corporate capitalist “integument,” things like open source software and culture, open-source industrial design, permaculture and low-overhead garage micromanufacturing eat the corporate-state economy alive. An ever-growing share of labor and production are disappearing into relocalized resilient economies, self-employment, worker cooperatives and the informal and household economy. In the end, they will skeletonize the corporate dinosaurs like a swarm of piranha.”

― Kevin A. Carson

externalize authority privilege power benefit

“by externalizing effort and reward on different actors, authority creates fundamental incentive problems. The primary function of authority is to create privilege: the wielder of power is able to externalize the costs of his decisions on others, while appropriating the benefits for himself.”

― Kevin A. Carson

leadership institutions irrelevant state politics corporations

"Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. We don't want to take over the state or change its policies. We want to render its laws unenforceable. We don't want to take over corporations and make them more 'socially responsible.' We want to build a counter-economy of open-source information, neighborhood garage manufacturing, permaculture, encrypted currency and mutual banks, leaving the corporations to die on the vine along with the state. We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers."

― Kevin A. Carson

chattel slavery feudalism slavery concrete slave master worker

"Under chattel slavery and feudalism, exploitation was concrete and personalized in the producer's relationship with his master. The slave and peasant knew exactly who was screwing them. The modern worker, on the other hand, feels a pounding sensation, but has only a vague idea where it is coming from."

― Kevin A. Carson

free enterprise state-enforced scarcity subsidy corporate power

"A genuine free enterprise system, without state-enforced artificial scarcities, artificial property rights or subsidies, would be like dynamite at the foundations of corporate power."

― Kevin A. Carson

capitalist system coordination lump corporate socialism

"The capitalist system of coordination by trade seems to be largely populated by indigestible lumps of socialism called corporations."

― Kevin A. Carson

singularity point of no return information warfare

"We have probably already passed a “singularity,” a point of no return, in the use of networked information warfare. It took some time for employers to reach a consensus that the old corporate liberal labor regime no longer served their interests, and to take note of and fully exploit the union-busting potential of Taft-Hartley. But once they began to do so, the implosion of Wagner-style unionism was preordained. Likewise, it will take time for the realization to dawn on workers that things are only getting worse, that there’s no hope in traditional unionism, and that in a networked world they have the power to bring the employer to his knees by their own direct action. But when they do, the outcome is also probably preordained. The twentieth century was the era of the giant organization. By the end of the twenty-first, there probably won’t be enough of them left to bury."

― Kevin A. Carson

productivity work home Microsoft

"…people are more productive away from work than they are at work. And management wonders why people would rather work at home using their own software tools than go through Checkpoint Charlie to use a bunch of klunky proprietary “productivity software” from the Whore of Redmond."

― Kevin A. Carson