I read Goliath two or three years ago. At the time, with Substack being new, I was an avid reader of Matt Stoller’s newsletter Big. The development of the Google antitrust case leads me to another reading, and this one I will document. Goliath, I should think, will fit in interestingly with a few other books in my Papertrail library, like A Pattern Language and the lean books.

”Undesirable citizen” apparently became an appellation that was self-adopted by the groups to which the term was originally, and disparagingly, applied. Modern politics offer no few examples of this same phenomenon.

https://debsproject.org/2019/04/28/undesirable-citizens-19-12/comment-page-1/

It is difficult to imagine a world where communism was a political concept, but only in theory, before the Russian revolution embodied its philosophies in the form of a state. It is interesting to see how averse American institutions were to the possibility of its influence in America when it had yet to be applied in practice. The agitation and violence of Europe’s radical political movements in the late 19th century, as well as the contemporary violence in Russia, likely informed this aversion.

Or, that aversion was informed right here at home.

I think of myself more as a Jeffersonian. More explicitly, my instincts tell me that consolidation leads to exhausting institutions that exist for their own sake, and that it is confusing to be a participant in or subject of. I am in favor of aerobic undertakings in both economics and politics that are charged by groups effective in their size, organization, and purpose. I almost believe that aristocracies made sense, or i am almost sympathetic to certain aspects of it, when their purview was largely constrained to a country’s agrarian production. Once industry is introduced, I do think that consolidated control becomes untenable, or anaerobic.

I did not realize that Wilson instituted the Federal Reserve. The context as to why is especially interesting. I would be interested to know if its purpose has remained consistent, or if the institution has been handed back and forth between differing philosophies, as administered by differing appointees.

A high school history teacher once made the case the Wilson's wife operated as president while her husband was inarticulate.

The actual mechanism of liquidating any type of security or instrument in order to meet government needs, like in times of war, fascinates me. I suppose the need is simply because suppliers to the government need cash, as it is entirely fungible. Why governments cannot simply procure their needs directly is logical, as nothing is free, even for an entity that controls the money supply, but the idea that they operate like individuals in some respects is lost in the details to me. - Blowing up a merchant ship is one way of asymmetrically subverting economic advantage.

A world order was a new invention. The explicit statement here that wealth and power had to be invested to bring it about invites many angles of interpretation as to its motivations, its good, and its innate dynamics.

❡1 How does inflation protect central bank profits?

❡2 Gary was established as a company town for steel manufacturing, I believe. I imagine the government was not wholly consistent with expectations for other small cities in America, but that it rather operated as an extension of the steel concerns.

Mellon weaponizing Bureau of Internal Revenue against political opponents 👀

The Mellon case, amongst others, demonstrates how markets tend to become less free as the actual power law, and the institutionalization of that abstract dynamic, takes effect over the course of time. All societies exist at the intersection of ideals and practical stakes, and the question of what a free market is is evergreen, going back to Smith’s invisible hand.