AtDTDA 34: Fish Market Anarchy

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

 "If such a system is ever produced," Scarsdale Vibe 
was saying, "it will mean the end of the world not just 
'as we know it' but as anyone knows it. It is a weapon 
Professor, surely you see that---the most terrible 
weapon the world has seen, designed to destroy not 
armies or matériel, but the very nature of exchange, 
out Economy’s long struggle to evolve up out of the 
fish-market anarchy of all battling all to the rational 
systems of control we enjoy at present."

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, p. 33/34

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy 
for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people 
begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between 
two villages is impassable, the peasant says, "There 
should be a law about parish roads." If a park-keeper 
takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow 
him with servile obedience and insults one of them, the 
insulted man says, "There should be a law to enjoin more 
politeness upon the park-keepers." If there is stagnation in 
agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle-breeder, 
or corn- speculator argues, "It is protective legislation which 
we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one 
who does not demand a law to protect his own little trade. 
If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labor, 
the politician in embryo explains, "We must have a law to put 
all that to rights." In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue,
a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result
from human indolence and cowardice.
             --Peter Kropotkin,
               "Law and Authority"

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm

It would be a return to an older model. The British East India 
Company had an army and a navy. This made sense at the 
time. Government power followed in behind it. In Africa, 
private ventures were followed by colonial power. The 
colonial powers withdrew, and the governments they left 
behind were never viable in most places. It makes sense t
hat anyone wanting to do resource extraction in these 
places would have to use force to get in, and then provide 
basic security for the business to carry on, and incidentally 
provide the public good of a safe haven that they patrolled 
and policed. In other words, for certain parts of the world, 
i.e. sub-Saharan Africa, this is an idea whose time is long overdue.

http://www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2006/12/04/corporate-armies/



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukiji_fish_market