One of the most common questions raised about a hypothetical free market society concerns worker protection laws of various kinds. As Roderick Long puts it, In a free nation, will employees be at the mercy of employers?… Under current law, employers are often forbidden to pay wages lower than a certain amount; to demand that…
The measure of statism inheres in the functioning of the overall system, not in the formal statism of its separate parts.
The reality is considerably more complicated, with all sorts of permutations and combinations of public and private.
Kevin Carson: with Rothbard’s disillusion with (and abandonment of) his New Left alliance. Now I want to look at some of the people who continued the left-Rothbardian tradition.
Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point.
There’s a popular historical legend that goes like this: Once upon a time, back in the 19th century, the United States economy was almost completely unregulated and laissez-faire.
Inequality is a scourge that is not going to go away.
Building a road is a manifestation of power, particularly state power.
Carson: The human infrastructure of traditional reporting is a magnificent army. But as Lincoln said to McClellan, “if you’re not planning to do anything with that army, may I borrow it?”
Kevin Carson: By any reasonable standard of justice, the plantations should have been broken up after the Civil War and the land given to the freed slaves.
The issues that I care about require a long-term battle and they’re ones I’m very devoted to pursuing.
Carson: The average member of the producing classes should rest secure in the knowledge that he would be able to support himself in the future, without depending on the whims of an employer.
Rothbard didn’t exactly fit the “pot-smoking Republican” stereotype.
In the case of the corporate economy, it’s almost meaningless.
Each of these movements, in its own way, offers some potential as a basis for common action with the left against the increasing authoritarianism police state, and against the corporate-state nexus that dominates the economy.
On this latest anniversary I want to talk about how the state breeds war – both in the sense of provoking attacks like 9/11, and in the sense of generating its own misguided responses, like the Iraq war.
“Corporate capitalists don’t want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush the competition by controlling the government.” – RFK, Jr.
Carson: Licensing regimes, stand in the way of transforming one’s skill into a source of income, and raise the cost of doing so.
I say this injustice cannot stand. The Man will have to pry that crispy treat from my cold, greasy fingers.
The problem with mainstream libertarianism is its almost total departure from its radical roots.
