“Although many [nonstate] bands have constant tension with neighbors, actual conflicts are brief, and band members clearly lack any obsession with security. According to one description, band societies do not ‘build fortifications. None have been reported to stockpile food and supplies for military purposes. None engage in special training activities for warriors. None possess a special military technology but use ordinary tools and weapons of the hunt.’ Americans with their guns, alarms, and private security services display greater fear of violence.”

- Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall, “Myths About the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies”

#PossumQuotes

“[F]irms are not units of production; they are units of power. Firms are hierarchical organizations shrouded in the cloak of corporate law. And today’s corporate rulers — like all elites before them — use their power to enrich themselves.”

- Blair Fix (@blair_fix)

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hierarchy/

#PossumQuotes

“The most important feature of private ownership is not that it enables those who own, but that it disables those who do not. Technically, anyone can get into someone else’s car and drive away, or give an order to sell all of Warren Buffet’s shares in Berkshire Hathaway. The sole purpose of private ownership is to prevent us from doing so. In this sense, private ownership is wholly and only an institution of exclusion, and institutional exclusion is a matter of organized power.

Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, Capital as Power

#PossumQuotes

“The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked…In a very real sense, the ‘middle class’ is not an economic category, it's a social one. To be middle class is to feel that the fundamental institutional structures of society are, or should be, on your side. If you see a policeman and you feel more safe, rather than less, then you can be pretty sure you're middle class. Yet for the first time since polling began, most Americans in 2012 indicated they do not, in fact, consider themselves middle class.”

David Graeber

https://www.gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-american-life-1692392051

#PossumQuotes

“This is what a collapse really looks like: The poorest and most vulnerable die first, out of sight, and everyone else just does what they can to survive. Peoples' priorities change: they concentrate on getting by from day-to-day rather than planning for the future. They stop getting married. They have less children or none at all. They live for today. They work harder for less. Taxes go up even as basic services are cut. Long term unemployment has been conclusively linked to greater mortality and susceptibility to illness, physical and mental. Would many of these people not still be alive today if were not for austerity measures and declining middle class opportunity? Isn't that a die-off?”

#PossumQuotes

http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-if-collapse-happened-and-nobody.html