Word: "Modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural."

Relating Atkins' eloquently simple reminder to the local scene, it's an election year.

Among the likely candidates for mayor, both hopefuls running as Democrats -- Jeff "Corporate Welfare" Gahan and David "My Career in Big Biz" White -- adhere to the "natural economy" myth punctured here.

The eventual chosen Republican, whether Dale Bagshaw or Steve Burks or Mark Seabrook (maybe he's calculating odds again, maybe not) will accept the inevitability of "natural market forces" as holy writ; in Burks' case, it'll be so tightly wrapped with scripture that Jesus will be swaddled in Armani.

In short: They're all conservatives, differing only by tiny incremental degrees.

Then there's me. I've never been much for "if you can't beat them, join them." Insofar as possible, I'd rather shift toward playing by different, localized rules. If we accept New Albany as a construct personifying "wonderfully and delightfully us," then I favor keeping our resources here as often as possible, and seeing just how wonderful and delightful we can be.

Corporations are Artificial, Too, by David Atkins ("Political Animal" blog at Washington Monthly)

... But there’s another key lie in the conservative “natural economy” story, which is that modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural. It’s an artificial system encoded arbitrarily into law and interpreted in a specific way that tends to give maximum advantage to executive and shareholders at the expense of society.