In the fours years since the Federal Government and Federal Reserve began dumping obscenely large piles of public money into the corporate banking system, little has been changed for the better. The revolving door between that industry and its "regulators" is the same as it ever was, and there is every reason to believe that, in the next crisis, the "Too Big to Fail Banks" will once again be able to extract a bailout from our government over the protestations of the American people. Given this reality, it has become clear that trying to reform the financial system through purely political action in the current environment is a fool's errand. The banking industry is so deeply embedded in the power structure that it gets what it wants from...

In the more than two centuries since the beginning of radical transformation of economic life that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, one of the most interesting trends has been the changing nature of the forms through which people have engaged in economic activities. Before the industrial revolution, an artisanal mode of production predominated, with many small work-shops producing the goods required by the largely agrarian economy. At first glance, such the existence of many small firms would suggest a highly competitive economy; however this was not the case. Rather, the high cost of transporting goods created by primitive transportation networks, the risk of brigands, etc., meant that, rather than a single integrated...