View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s C4SS Study: Capitalist Nursery Fables: The Tragedy of Private Property, and the Farce of Its Defense Traduzione italiana, I Miti del Capitalismo: La tragedia della proprietà privata e la farsa della sua difesa Introduction Since the beginning of class society, every ruling class has required a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cory Massimino‘s “Private Property, A Pretty Good Option” read by Stephen Leger and edited by Nick Ford. It’s vital not to forget Joseph’s wonderfully put and absolutely correct argument that private property is the only method by which people can peacefully interact and allocate scarce resources. It would be odd indeed if we ignored…

Jiminykrix recently commented on my last post about how we left-libertarian market anarchists aren’t socially liberal capitalists. He had a point to make about private property that’s worth mentioning. The inspiration for his commentary on it was my defining capitalism as the separation of labor from ownership rather than markets or private property per se….

Mutual Exchange is the Center’s goal in two senses — we favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to the Center’s audience. A lead essay, deliberately provocative, will be followed by responses from inside and…

Mutual Exchange is the Center’s goal in two senses — we favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to the Center’s audience. A lead essay, deliberately provocative, will be followed by responses from inside…

Libertarians tend to see two worlds: one with private property that works reasonably well, and one without that farcically implodes. What they often miss, however, is that this dichotomy is conditional. Private property isn’t morally meritorious or great in itself, but only insofar as it is the best and only way to avoid conflict given…

David S. D’Amato: As an individualist anarchist, however, I define it as something rather different, as nothing more than one of the ways we ensure the law of equal liberty in practice.

David D’Amato finds a recent court decision makes an excellent opportunity to examine the concept of property.

Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato il 13 febbraio 2024 con il titolo “Tragedy of the Commons” Part I. Traduzione italiana di Enrico Sanna. Tutti i Padroni di Casa sono Terribili Padroni A riprova della sua teoria per cui “lo stato è un terribile padrone di casa”, Steven Greenhut (su Reason, il primo dicembre) racconta di…

  The Rentier Economy, Vulture Capital, and Enshittification   There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of…

The Poverty of Right-Libertarian Cliches Right-libertarians, it seems, have a love affair with Garrett Hardin and his so-called “tragedy of the commons.” It’s a principle to which they return, time and again. But as a foundation, it is historically illiterate; and the structure which they erect upon it is conceptually incoherent. Take, for example, Saul…

    Karl Hess: A Life on the (Right) Left (and Right) Introduction. Focus of This Paper Over the past decade or more, I’ve done a considerable number of C4SS studies on particular anarchist thinkers. Since my formal titles at Center for a Stateless Society include Karl Hess Chair of Social Theory, it’s probably well…

All Landlords Are Terrible Landlords As an object lesson in support of his thesis that “government is a terrible landlord,” Steven Greenhut (Reason, Dec. 1) recounts his experience trying to get action from his county government over complaints of a poorly maintained, overgrown vacant lot owned by the fire department.  I started making calls to…

    The Undeclared Condominium The USSR As Partner in a Conservative World Order   Introduction Although the Right has typically framed the Soviet Union and “International Communism” as an aggressive and subversive revolutionary force, the reality is — at the very least — considerably more nuanced. In fact, it would be more accurate to…

I recently stumbled across a screenshot of this classic old tweet from Arthur Chu: Whenever such an observation appears on social media, it inevitably provokes a storm of responses along the lines of “workers wouldn’t be able to make anything if they had to make their own parts and tools.” For example, as part of…

“Moral Equivalency” is the Only Alternative to Nihilism. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, in the aftermath of the October 7 terror attack, that  as far as the military is concerned, there is little difference between Gaza’s civilian population and Hamas, which has governed the besieged territory since 2007. “It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians…

At Reason (“Did NYC Just Kneecap Airbnb?”), Liz Wolfe seems to be diversifying beyond her normal focus on tech platform apologetics and crowding onto the turf of resident landlord whisperer Christian Britschgi. I confess my first reading of the title brought a smile to my face — probably not the effect Wolfe intended — as…

  Introduction There is probably no libertarian polemic more widely distributed and more familiar, or held in higher esteem, than “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read.” It originally appeared in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. It has since been circulated as a pamphlet by the Foundation for Economic…

At Pluralistic, Cory Doctorow comments on libertarian elitists like Bryan Caplan and Jason Brennan, who argue for restricting the franchise because most people “Just Don’t Understand Economics”:  When you compare the views of the average person to the views of the average PhD economist, you find that the public sharply disagrees with such obvious truths…

Recently on Facebook, left-libertarian activist Brianna Coyle posted: Radical idea: The amount of freedom someone has in their life shouldn’t be dependent on how much money they have, or whether or not they own property. “Freedom of association” in the context of property rights is a privilege afforded only to those who own property. Freedom…