We delude ourselves with the beliefs that the establish order suffers from only from policy or style defects, and that the new leadership or legislat… - Butler D. Shaffer

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?

There prevails a highly romanticized view of the small, independent retailer as the paladin for a system of free and open competition. An examination of the evidence, however, reveals few trades with a better track record than independent retailers at getting to the political arena with programs for depriving somebody of a competitive advantage. Virtually every innovation in retailing has met with the organized and vocal opposition of retailers who were unwilling to adjust their own selling methods to meet the competition, and who responded with legislative proposals to preserve the status quo.

The efforts of one organism to live at the expense of another is, when confined to members of the same species, a form of cannibalism.