The following article was written by Sheldon Richman and published at The Future of Freedom Foundation, May 22, 2013. Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson. De todos os comentários pretensamente libertários que tentam colocar a tragédia das confecções de peças de vestuário de Bangladesh em “perspectiva,” o de Benjamin Powell é provavelmente o pior (“Sweatshops Em Bangladesh Melhoram A Vida De Seus Trabalhadores, E Estimulam Crescimento,” Forbes, 2

Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation, is at it again, this time on Twitter (@KatrinaNation). This morning she tweeted: “Ginning up IRS story to make government seem like oppressor fits into Right’s decades-long narrative. Government for common good is needed.” Pssssh. That America has ever had government for common good is one of those

Of all the self-styled libertarian commentaries attempting to put the Bangladesh garment factory tragedy in “perspective,” Benjamin Powell’s is probably the worst (“Sweatshops In Bangladesh Improve The Lives Of Their Workers, And Boost Growth,” Forbes, May 2). In Bangladesh, Powell writes, “some 4,500 garment factories employ approximately 4 million workers. In the grand scheme of

The American medical system is corrupt, ineffective and unnecessarily costly. These outcomes are due to state violence on behalf of the politically connected elite (namely private insurers, physicians, pharmaceutical and medical device companies). Artificial scarcity, price-gouging, misallocation of research funding and the suppression of alternative (non-patentable) therapies can be ameliorated by revoking state-conferred elite privilege

For all the discussion in the United States today about the proper function and role of our federal government, there are a few arguments that seem to always surface when discussing state power. These arguments are not exclusive to our mainstream political parties either. Our politicians always boast what is best for the “national interest,”

In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage “suspicion about government.” “The government’s us,” he responded. “These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.” But if government were “us,” why would we

I recently translated a chronicle of the recent violent crackdown on the Alberdi Hall artists collective in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s a perfect case study of statist attack on public property, on an autonomous initiative that produced a highly valued cultural offering for the community with a clear potential of standing on its own financial

The following article was written by Roderick T. Long and published on Austro-Athenian Empire, May 15th, 2010. “I don’t try to make you believe something you don’t believe, but to make you do something you won’t do.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein “Over and over, you’re falling, and then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.” — Laurie

Carson: Capitalism may have many varieties, types or flavors, but they all have one thing in common – they have nothing to do with a free market.

Carson: O que exatamente “libertação” significa para Rumsfeld – Rummy, Bush – Dummy e Cheney – Scummy pode ser visto a partir do programa que Paul Bremer implementou como chefe da Autoridade Provisória da Coalizção (CPA) no Iraque.

Tuccille: I may need five minutes alone with the American public, however, since many of my countrymen apparently think it’s “unfair” that other people have more money than them — and they want the government to give them some of what the other guy has.

Carson: “Bueno, hasta aquí la publicidad. ¿Cuál es la realidad?”

Carson: The state, by its very nature, is the executive committee of a ruling class. It’s the mechanism by which landlords, usurers, bureaucrats and rentiers extract wealth from the majority of the population.

Kevin Carson: So much for the hype. What’s the reality?

Goodman: Human rights organizations shouldn’t be in the business of handing out awards, accolades and executive positions to human rights abusers.

Thomas L. Knapp: O problema da “propriedade intelectual” é que, em nossos dias — graças ao progresso tecnológico — quase toda escassez de produtos de informação TEM de ser artificial, isto é, criada pelo governo.

Carson: The corporate Pharisees of our day strain at a gnat using “free market” rhetoric to attack welfare for the poor, but swallow a camel when it comes to welfare for corporations.

Kevin Carson: Em suma, você fica reduzido a sentir-se como uma criança “malcomportada” diante de uma figura de autoridade adulta.

Kevin Carson: The large firm and the factory system did not become the dominant economic institutions because of some objective technological imperative, or their superior efficiency in a free market. They became the dominant economic institutions because of their superior effectiveness at controlling labor; and then the state intervened in the market to make them efficient enough to survive.