Thanks for writing this, Ray. I encourage anyone else to jump into this topic, as well. Your version is more elegant than mine , I think. :)

The more people talk about it, the more we can get to think about the evil that is Blind Fanatical Competition over competing fanaticisms.

I just read an article in AcresUSA about how the McCarthyism of the '50s was the pretty much the end of the local Co-op movements. The witch-hunt (even though McCarthy was actually right: there were commies in the government, just not as many as he thought, and not the ones he was worried about.) put the stink of 'comm'nism' on all cooperatives, and the world is a lot worse off for it.