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@alessandro @xale @HeavenlyPossum @squeakypancakes

As David Graeber observes, "Despite the persistent liberal assumption—rooted in Adam Smith's legacy—that states and markets are somehow opposed, historical evidence reveals the opposite: stateless societies typically lack markets." Consequently, it is state-imposed taxation, artificial scarcities in land, housing, and technology, and regulatory monopolies over sectors like banking and healthcare that compel us into exploitative relationships. We are forced to pay rents to landlords, interest to bankers, profits to bosses, and royalties to pharmaceutical companies, or become dependent on a capitalist or political class for essential services like healthcare. Without the state's intervention, these markets—and the corporations they sustain—against which we must constantly defend, would cease to exist.