On February 16, 1967, NBC aired the twenty-second episode in Season 1 of “Star Trek“; it was called “Space Seed,” known to Trekkies as the episode that introduced the world to the character Khan Noonien Singh, he who would come back with fury in the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” For those who aren’t familiar with…

Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato il 5 novembre 2020 con il titolo Why Big-Small and Vertical-Horizontal Trumps “Public-Private”. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Il mito del settore privato, parte I: Perché Grande-Piccolo e Verticale-Orizzontale Batte “Pubblico-Privato” Oggi (28 ottobre) Rachel McKinney, un’amica che insegna filosofia, si lamentava su Twitter dicendo che doveva preparare una tesina e…

Kevin Carson. Título original: The Myth of the Private Sector, Part I: Why Big-Small and Vertical-Horizontal Trumps “Public-Private”, 5 novembro 2020. Traduzido por Gabriel Serpa. O Mito do Setor Privado, Parte I: Por Que as Abordagens “Pequeno-Grande” e “Horizontal-Vertical” Importam Mais que “Público-Privado” Hoje, 28 de outubro, Rachel McKinney, uma amiga e professora de Filosofia,…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] Today (Oct. 28) Rachel McKinney, a friend who works as professor of philosophy, complained on Twitter that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into…

When it comes to economics, market anarchism has done a pretty good job at punching above its weight. While Austrians and Marxists tend to ignore us, when they do respond it’s with strawmen or lazy assertions of dogma that are easily dispatched. In serious debates in these realms, we hold our own, only falling short…

Reaffirming Occupancy-and-Use Further Clarification in Response to Robert Kirchner Robert Kirchner is in the unusual position, in a symposium on occupancy-and-use land tenure, of defending it more uncompromisingly than my kick-off essay in favor of it. He emphasizes that he is “somewhat more doctrinaire” than me, and contrasts his position to my own of taking…

Many thanks to the more than helpful edits of Kyler Dineen and Mike Moceri The “Left” in Left-Libertarian The goal of this paper isn’t to convince anyone of the benefits of anarchism or to convince anyone that they should be a left-libertarian. Instead, I’d like to help deepen our understanding of what the position entails and…

According to Damon Linker, spontaneous order “might be the silliest and most harmful of all” libertarian ideas (“Libertarianism’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea,” The Week, Sept. 26). He summarizes spontaneous order, popularized by Hayek in the 20th century, as the belief that “when groups of individuals are left alone, without government oversight or…

È opinione comune che, secondo come vengono formulate le domande, i sondaggi possono produrre praticamente qualunque risposta desiderata. Emily Ekins, parlando dell’atteggiamento della generazione Y su questioni economiche e politiche (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, 18 agosto), dimostra un’incoerenza concettuale quasi totale nell’inquadrare i risultati di un sondaggio Reason-Rupe sulla generazione Y…

Over at Reason, Nick Gillespie defends the Hayekian “spontaneous order” idea from Damon Linker thusly: An obvious example of spontaneous order from the contemporary moment isn’t Iraq or Libya but something like the way Uber operates vis a vis traditional taxi cartels. I happen to be with Gillespie versus Linker, but I think the idea…

It’s a common observation that polls can produce virtually any response desired, depending on how the questions are worded. Emily Ekins, ostensibly reporting on the political and economic attitudes of millennials (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, August 18), displays almost total conceptual incoherence in framing the results of a Reason-Rupe poll of “millennials” (young Americans age…

You hear a knock at your door. It’s your friend Steve. While it’s physically impossible, Steve seems to bound through the door before you even open it. “Excited” is an understatement: he’s psyched, and you couldn’t reach his level even if you tried. Around two, you and Steve made plans to go out tonight. You…

C4SS Media presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Hayek vs Rothbard On Coercion,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. “An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the…

Initial thoughts on “Informing the News” I recently picked up a copy of Harvard journalism professor Thomas E. Patterson’s latest book, “Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism.” One of the things that immediately interested me about the work was its thesis, that the cure for journalism’s current “crisis of confidence,” as Patterson refers…

James Tuttle alerted me to an appendix discussing Hayek’s conception of coercion in Murray Rothbard’s, The Ethics of Liberty. It serves as the jumping off point for a broader discussion of what constitutes coercion. Let us begin by contrasting the definitions of coercion employed by Hayek and Rothbard. Rothbard defines coercion thus: the invasive use…

Ross Kenyon comments on the “shakedown” of BP and the American government’s inability to be trusted to handle this situation in an ethical or productive manner.