"Capitalism developed in a symbiotic relationship with the apparatus of the state. In feudal times, most people had obtained much of what they needed outside the exchange economy . But as the state consolidated power, the fields and pastures that had been held in common were privatized and local minorities and overseas continents were ruthlessly plundered. As resources began to flow more dynamically, merchants and bankers gained increasing power and influence."

"Self-employment is associated with personal freedom; but managing your own business generally makes more demands on your time than working for a corporation, and not necessarily at comparable rates."

"Self-employment gives you more agency without offering any more liberty: you get to manage you own affairs, but only on the market's terms. Being self-employed simply means organizing the sale of your labor yourself and personally taking on all the risks of competing."

"It takes a lot to beat this natural curiousity out of children. You have to take them away from their families, isolate them in sterile environments with only a few overworked adults, and teach them that learning is a discipline. You had to send them to school."

"What is the function of prisons? Above all, to keep people docile in other prisons, Prisons are necessary not to pres eve order so much as to protect and enforce the inequalities produced by the market. The coercion and control they represent isn't an aberration in an otherwise free society, but the essential precondition for capitalism. Prisons are simply a more extreme manifestation of the same logic inherent in property rights and national borders."