I believe Kevin Carson identifies as mutualist, or something of a left-libertarian anarchist. Anyway, I think he makes great points here about insiders and outsiders. The challenge is for outsiders to set up rules and systems which are as difficult as possible for insiders to later manipulate to their own advantage.
The quote below, and more interesting commentary, can be found at
http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/03/03/the-rats-of-el-toro/#comment-130Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
“'Working to make sure' that government is not abused by the powerful is an effort comparable to what the salmon undertake in swimming upstream, without anywhere near the reward for doing so.
"The natural tendency of any large, hierarchical organization is to give the insiders running the machinery of the organization an advantage over the outsiders they’re theoretically responsible to, in setting the policies of the organization. Those on the inside will always have an advantage in time, energy, information, attention span, and agenda control over those on the outside.
"The average person on the outside, of necessity, has a limited amount of attention or energy left over for monitoring the policies the organization makes, after he has attended to the primary concerns of dealing with his family, job, friends and neighbors. For those running the organization, on the other hand, the internal affairs of the organization ARE their career, the source of their bread and butter, and probably constitute a large part of their social network as well.
"What’s more, those on the outside who do try to pay attention and exercise some control are likely to be sidetracked by a false image of reality which the large, centralized organizations themselves have played the dominant role in shaping.
"Since the turn of the twentieth century, our perception of both the problems and the range of possible solutions has been shaped by the professional and managerial New Middle Class that runs the large organizations. The modern sciences of propaganda, mass advertising and public relations were invented by this New Middle Class as a way of “engineering consent”–securing public acceptance to the dominance of the managers running the large, centralized organizations, and to buy the stuff produced by those organizations. The average person’s view of what is both normal and possible is almost entirely shaped by this 'matrix reality' created by the large organizations and their managers."