Studies in Mutualist Political Economy Quotes

“In the most capital-intensive industry, automobiles, peak economy of scale was achieved at a level of production equivalent to 3-6% of market share.84 And even this level of output is required only because annual model changes (which arguably wouldn't pay for themselves without state capitalist subsidies) require an auto plant to wear out the dies for a run of production in a single year. Otherwise, peak economy of scale would be reached in a plant with an output of only 60,000 per year.85   In any case, these figures relate only to productive economy of scale. Increased distribution costs begin to offset increased economies of production, according to Borsodi's law, long before peak productive economy of scale is reached. According to an F.M. Scherer study cited by Adams and Brock, a plant producing at one-third the maximum efficiency level of output would experience only a 5% increase in unit costs.86 This is more than offset by reduced shipping costs for a smaller market.   The point of this digression is that the size of existing firms reflects the role of the state in subsidizing increased size by underwriting the inefficiencies of corporate gigantism--as Rothbard pointed out, the ways "our corporate state uses the coercive taxing power either to accumulate corporate capital or to lower corporate costs."87 A genuine free market economy would be vastly less centralized, with production primarily for local markets.”
― Kevin Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy