C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Elizabeth Warren’s War on Students” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. It’s absurd to suggest that the solution to overpriced government student loans is to eliminate profit from the program. Loans are supposed to be the current use of one’s future capital. Interest rates signal how efficient this advance…

As a libertarian masochist who keeps up with the regular by-the-numbers attacks on libertarianism at Alternet and Salon, I almost dared to hope for something at least marginally better from Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect (“The Libertarian Delusion,” Winter 2015). I was disappointed. “The stubborn appeal of the libertarian idea persists,” Kuttner writes, “despite…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Education and the “Progressive” Corporate State” read by Ian Anderson and edited by Nick Ford. The official White House happy talk, predictably, takes the corporate state’s assumptions for granted: “In our growing global economy, Americans need to have more knowledge and more skills to compete — by 2020, an estimated 35 percent…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Let The Free Market Eat the Rich!” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Jeremy Weiland, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. At the root of all these competing theories, the key question for anarchists remains: what does a stateless society look like? What exactly are we working towards? It is…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Radicalism as Revolution: A Call for a Fractal Libertarianism” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. Ruper, in all fairness, does say he appreciates libertarians’ intense self-analysis. He seems to just want libertarians to redirect their energies toward spreading broadly libertarian ideas, rather than converting members of the libertarian movement…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “NYPD Strike Exposes Empty Narrative” read by Thomas J Webb and edited by Nick Ford. Ismaaiyl Brinsley was by all accounts a loose cannon, armed not to preserve justice but to hurt the most opportune targets. However, that will not be his legacy. The consequence of his actions that day may have…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Murray Rothbard, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The homesteading principle means that the way that unowned property gets into private ownership is by the principle that this property justly belongs to the person who finds, occupies, and transforms…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Direct Action as Entrepreneurship” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. A less well-received idea in popular discourse is that of direct action, and rightly so. Direct action intentionally sidesteps popular discourse. By simply ignoring popular opinion and working to achieve their ends outside of entrenched systems, activists can bring…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Biggest Baddest Gang in Town” read by Ryan Calhoun and edited by Nick Ford. Police departments do exactly what monopolies always do — abuse and cheat consumers and, in the words of Benjamin Tucker, “furnish poison instead of nutriment.” As monopolies, police departments are exempt by law from any competitive…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Where are the Specifics?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Karl Hess, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Libertarianism is a people’s movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Charles Johnson‘s “Against All Nations and Borders” read by Ryan Calhoun and edited by Nick Ford. A recent post at the “Libertarian Realist” blog (actually, they are neither) claims to take issue with Sheldon Richman’s defense of free immigration. The post is an example of astonishing sophistry, beginning with a long attack on Sheldon’s…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant A. Mincy‘s “Anarchy and the Wrench” read by Ryan Calhoun and edited by Nick Ford. Enclosure movements devastate communities. Who we are, whether we realize it or not, is greatly influenced by our ties to the surrounding ecology. Land is emotion — a product of deep and lasting roots. But, this is of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Two Words on Privatization” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Charles Johnson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. There is something called privatization which has been a hot topic in Leftist circles for the past 15-20 years. It has been a big deal in Eastern Europe, in third world countries…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Free Trade is Fair Trade” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Joe Peacott, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. “Free” trade agreements and organizations like NAFTA and WTO may alter some of the details of this intervention, but do not challenge the principle that governments are entitled to tell their…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “History of an Idea” read by Jeff Riggenbach and edited by Nick Ford. So long as the confusion between free markets and plutocracy persists – so long as libertarians allow their laudable attraction to free markets to fool them into defending plutocracy, and so long as those on the left allow their…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford‘s “The State Can’t Sink Our Battleship” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. For every site the government tries to take down, another five spring up. And no one in government is going to admit that what they’re doing is futile. They simply don’t have incentives to act rationally. They’re…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Free Market Reforms and the Reduction of Statism” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The default tendency in mainstream libertarianism is a high degree of statocracy, to the point not only of (quite properly) emphasizing the necessary role of state coercion in…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Warning of Animal Farm: Inequality Matters” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Like Hodgskin, today’s market anarchists do not object to the mere fact that capital is compensated for its part in the process of production. The worry — which can only finally be allayed by observing…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The State Needs Crime” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Police provocateurs as instigators of crime is an old narrative. As Earth First! organizer Judi Bari famously said, “the person that offers to get the dynamite is always the FBI agent.” From the December 1999 Seattle protests on, the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “Shutdown Theater (Off-Off Broadway Follies)” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. When even “progressive” Democrats like Elizabeth Warren threaten “shutdown” to get their way, it’s just too obvious that there’s no real shutdown in play. Per Chekhov, “[i]f you say in the first chapter that there is a…