> a centralized industrial one. This was the true benefit of the war: taking the nation into the modern age This is another can of worms. Once the federal gove

> a centralized industrial one. This was the true benefit of the war: taking the nation into the modern age This is another can of worms. Once the federal government concentrated its power and became more centralized, one of its first acts was subsidizing the railroads, passing the high distribution costs of large, centralized industrial firms on to taxpayers. This effectively crowded out more decentralized methods of production that could have been more effective, using networks of small rails or canals to more cheaply distribute local goods, for example. The concentration of capital of centralized industries continued to increase under this regime, with the state being used as a blunt force instrument to distribute external costs of large industrial firms to the public. This relationship between the state and industry continued to mutate into the corporatism we have today, with the corporate form now being massively privileged and protected by the state through subsidizing infrastructure (transportation, communications, etc.), limiting legal liability, tariffs, patents, copyrights, etc. The state acts as a blunt force instrument for concentrating capital in the hands of a few, on behalf of legal fictions called corporations. This is the modern age, and in many ways it seems like there are more slaves today than there were before, despite the so-called efficiencies of centralized industry. If you're interested, Kevin Carson puts forth a critical survey of orthodox views on economies of scale in Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective, refuting proponents of centralized industry such as Joseph Schumpeter, JK Galbraith, and Alfred Chandler. He provides a strong argument for decentralizing industry as a way to truly lower real distribution costs, by stripping away the many privileges afforded to corporate forms by the state, in preference of freed markets and bringing more wealth into local economies.