Commentary
Authority: If It’s Good, Why Does It Make Us Feel So Bad?
Carson: Dealing with other human beings — all other human beings — as equals, confident and unafraid, is the right way to live. It’s the only right way to live.
From Coffin Ships to Coyotes: A Saint Patrick’s Day Reflection
Hummels: Open borders for people, not just product.
Patent “Trolls” are Bad. Patents are Worse.
Hultner: The solution to the problem of patent trolling is not to “regulate” it with faulty measures and half-steps in the “right direction.”
Fifteen Benefits of the War on Drugs
Carson: The Drug War is a failure only if the state exists to serve you.
The Will Of The People Doesn’t Mean Jack To Drug Warriors
Hummels: Today’s political class views federalism as archaic.
Health Care: When Krugman is Right …
Knapp: “Privatization” is one of those Humpty Dumpty words that means just what the political class chooses it to mean, neither more nor less.
The Strategic Defeat of Labor: Your Government at Work
Kevin Carson: If labor stopped playing by the bosses’ rules and adopted a strategy of full-blown guerrilla warfare, the bosses would be begging us to sign a contract.
“The Government is US?” Not Unless We’re Citigroup
Carson: Don’t fall for the line that state functionaries “work for us.” Take a look at where they worked before they entered “public service” and watch where they go back to afterward. Guess what? They’re working there right now, too.
Would Conscription Curb US Militarism? Thom Hartmann Thinks So
Hummels: Progressives try to put a populist shine on conscription.
Bailout Capitalism, Episode 34721: Cyprus
D’Amato: [W]hen crisis and disaster inevitably befall [the] doctored, corporatist economy, it is the whole populace which is expected to bail out the policymakers and their corporate masters.
One Reason Not to Build the Keystone XL Pipeline: Justice
Byas: The Keystone XL pipeline has inspired a lot of controversy. For defenders of freed markets, however, it shouldn’t. Libertarians should emphatically and unequivocally oppose the pipeline.
“Intellectual Property”: This Land was Made for You an … er, for Monsanto
Knapp: By its very nature, “intellectual property” always represents an assertion on the part of one person of ownership title to the minds, bodies and property of others.
Et Tu, Iceland?
Knapp: Regime uncertainty is the state’s version of herpes: Its eruptions are unpredictable, it makes people think twice about intimate contact with the carrier, and yes, it sometimes literally kills babies.
Deadly Contradictions: Patent Privilege vs. “Saving Lives”
Nathan Goodman: While politicians repeatedly promise to protect public health, they have long used coercive power to raise medical costs, sacrificing public health for private profits.
Airlines Merger: Competition vs. the Great Trusts
D’Amato: Government doesn’t protect us from monopolists; it empowers them to eat us alive.
Why Import Evgeny Morozov When Tom Franks and Andy Keens are Out of Work??
Carson: Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. … We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers.
Christopher Dorner and the Chaos Inherent to Government
Jason Lee Byas: These tragedies were not random flukes. They were a direct result of political government, its monopoly on “legitimate” violence, and the psychology of entitlement bred by its authority.
I Should Know — I’m the Sheriff
Carson: As anarchist Rudolf Rocker pointed out, civil liberties aren’t granted by governments; where governments recognize them, they do so because the people forced them to.
Coloring “Competition”
D’Amato: [The state] intercedes in economic affairs not to aid ordinary, working people … but to restrict their opportunities and options so that dominant corporate actors (today’s feudal lords) may prey upon them.
The New Political Asymmetry: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide
Knapp: The global political class, like it or not (and they don’t, not one bit), is faced with the inverse transparency David Brin predicted in 1998’s The Transparent Society.
Anarchy and Democracy
Fighting Fascism
Markets Not Capitalism
The Anatomy of Escape
Organization Theory