Firms with established market positions wanted to reduce the impact of such competition and employed voluntary methods (such as mergers, pooling, tra… - Butler D. Shaffer

Western Civilization is in the crisis it is because we have sacrificed more profound values than the immediate and quantifiable consequences we tend to associate with the pursuit of our material interests. Among these are peace; liberty; respect for property, contracts, and the inviolability of the individual; truthfulness and the development of the mind; integrity; distrust of power; a sense of spirituality; and philosophically-principled behavior. But when our culture becomes driven by material concerns, these less tangible values recede in importance, and our thinking becomes dominated by the need to preserve the organizational forms that we see as having served our interests.

One cannot be devoutly religious, or patriotic, or moral, without differentiating oneself from the ungodly, the disloyal, or the immoral. To be for one’s own group, or nation, or race requires that one be against strangers.

The history of institutionalized society has been principally one of the organization and management of conflict. Do institutions not encourage the duality in our thinking that promotes the practices of projecting good and bad characteristics onto others? Do they not encourage and exploit both scapegoating and authority worship, continually reminding us of the presence of some object of fear or hared, or some other source of conflict, and consoling us that they, alone, can make our lives secure?