Two folks have already suggested “People’s Republic of Wal-Mart”, which is defintiely what was on my mind when I wrote this post and is a much more fulsome analysis of this specific subject, but if this is interesting to you as an angle for viewing the world, I highly recommend the book “Thinking in Systems: A Primer” by Donella Meadows. It’s not an explicitly socialist text, but it’s a concise and very accessible introductory work on systems thinking, and it puts a lot of the key concepts in place to think about the world in these terms.
Two folks have already suggested “People’s Republic of Wal-Mart”, which is defintiely what was on my mind when I wrote this post and is a much more fulsome analysis of this specific subject, but if this is interesting to you as an angle for viewing the world, I highly recommend the book “Thinking in Systems: A Primer” by Donella Meadows. It’s not an explicitly socialist text, but it’s a concise and very accessible introductory work on systems thinking, and it puts a lot of the key concepts in place to think about the world in these terms.