It is assumed in many parts of the world that democracy is a group of people facing a certain problem, who come together to solve it in a way where everyone has an equal say.

I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is already communism, so just expand it.

If you look at history, there seems to be a regular pattern: the country with the most powerful military also happens to be the one with the world trade currency. That gives them an enormous economic advantage, which causes goods to flow into their country.

There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts weren't, except on trust. So they have this free market ideology the moment they have markets operating outside the purview of the states, as prior to that markets had really mainly existed as a side effect of military operations.

Aristotle [would] probably conclude most Americans, for all intents and purposes, are slaves.

The fascinating thing about standard economic stories is exactly that: they assume that everybody wants that kind of closure. That all human relations are forms of exchange, because if everything is an exchange then it's true that we're both equals. We walk up, I give you something, you give me something, and we walk away. Or I give you something, you don't give me something right now, and you owe me. So if we have any ongoing relationships at all, it's because somebody is in debt.

What we're already doing is communism. The first step we have to make is to realize that we're already closer to it than we think.