According to one defense of government, citizens’ use of government services adequately explains and justifies the existence of political obligations. By attending government schools, walking on government sidewalks, and calling 911, citizens “tacitly agree” to taxation, jury duty, and military registration, or so the argument goes. One tempting rebuttal—that enforceable agreements cannot be tacit—fails pretty…

Entrepreneurs, or people who are alert to profit opportunities and act in order to obtain profits for themselves, exist in all societies. But the profit opportunities they seek will vary. Some entrepreneurs may seek to profit by providing consumers with goods they value, such as pizza or beer. Others may attempt to profit by seeking…

Recent events in Brazil have been framed as something of a morality play by both sides. For partisans of Dilma Rousseff and the Workers Party, her impeachment and the installation of Michel Temer as acting President was a neoliberal coup by corporate and landed interests in Brazil, backed by Washington. For those supporting her impeachment,…

In invoking the need for stringent economic regulations, their proponents regularly bring up the case that without these regulations the dumb consumer would fall prey to food poisoning, faulty production and all other sorts of calamities and disasters. In effect, they are saying that the consumer is far too stupid to have the capacity to…

Throughout American history centralized, federally subsidized infrastructure projects have been a recurring theme for plutocratic interests. Under the Whigs (“internal improvements”) and the Gilded Age GOP (railroad land grants) it was promoted by parties that unabashedly identified themselves as advocates for national commercial interests. But with the rise of the Progressive movement at the turn…

Advertising and big data act as two elements with the capacity to end corporate dominance if the necessary steps can be taken. They act as the quasi-independent creations of the government scourge of mass production, born of the system of the factory, emplaced in the wider social factory of commercial neoliberalism that surrounds the modern…

This month marks the 145th anniversary of the violent suppression of the Paris Commune by the French national government. The Paris Commune remains a potent symbol for many people – though what exactly it symbolizes is a matter of dispute. To conservatives, the Commune stands for a reign of terror and mob rule. For many…

The more means by which people can act the easier attack becomes and the harder defense becomes. It’s a simple matter of complexity. The attacker only needs to choose one line of attack, the defender needs to secure against all of them. This isn’t just true of small thermal exhaust ports, it’s true in our…

Jeff Jacoby, in discussing Obama’s visit to Japan (“In Hiroshima, Obama Should Celebrate the Friendship that Hiroshima Made Possible,” Boston Globe, May 14), suggests that — far from simply not revisiting Truman’s atomic bombing decision — Obama should “reaffirm that it was right and just, ultimately saving countless lives, ending a terrible war, and freeing…

Municipal governments across the country are targeting vagrants for “misusing” public property. A couple of months ago, the City of Denver, Colorado, cracked down on “Resurrection Village,” a homeless community built on public land. A month earlier, the City Council of Colorado Springs, Colorado, reduced the number of legal reasons for which people may sit and…

“Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our society economically, morally and politically,” stated the five-page letter put out by the Industrial Workers of the World’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) announcing the prison strike. “Beginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order to…

Local currencies in their praxis have many shortcomings when it comes to economic applications. Issues of supply chains and the adequacy of developed economies of scale are lacking in many local currency systems. However, such an economistic view ignores the actual political ramifications of local currencies. Certainly local currencies have issues when it comes their…

My BHL colleague Chris Freiman has three questions for left-libertarians concerning how we reconcile our “commitment to workplace democracy” with the “other commitments that libertarians are inclined to have.” Here I suggest some answers. Does workplace democracy really eliminate bosses? Most libertarians, Chris notes, “would deny that granting all citizens a vote in a political…

A new Harvard poll shows 51 percent of Millennials do not support capitalism (compared to 42 percent who do). An older Reason-Rupe poll found “socialism” beat “capitalism” in popularity 58 to 56%, but the “free market” was overwhelmingly more popular than a “government-managed economy.” The spin-meisters are quick to frame this as Millennial confusion about…

When looking at history for examples of the establishment of anarchist societies we often think of the Spanish anarchists in Catalonia or the efforts of the Zapatista army in Mexico. These are both examples of groups using tactics of revolutionary armed conflict against the state and capitalism in an attempt to establish an autonomous stateless…

People who want to live in a society organized on the basis of peaceful, voluntary cooperation don’t want to be ruled by monopolists — by states. State authority is illegitimate, unnecessary, and dangerous. But that obviously leaves open the question: what do we do now, while we’re still under the state’s rule, to make our…

To attribute to money a concept of bestowing freedom upon an individual owner may well exist as a theoretical possibility. Yet ownership is itself a contested concept. As is freedom. By bestowing freedom on the owner, it effectively prompts the dominance of certain types of power to come to the fore of monetary and economic…

Last week, I attended a local Fight for $15 rally with some fellow Wobblies and other union organizers and supporters. Echoes of rally cries demanding, “$15 and a union,” filled the streets outside of a local McDonald’s as fast food and child services workers from the Tampa and Orlando, Florida area, mostly workers of color,…

For almost five years now, Reason has been shilling for a corporate-owned charter cities project (Zones for Economic Development and Employment, or ZEDE) in Honduras. A whole body of articles by Senior Editor Brian Doherty takes a consistently boosterish approach to the project, repeatedly using such language as “a freer economy or better legal institutions,”…

The next few hours are going to define how Dilma Rousseff will leave office (the later vote in the Senate, if called upon, will be pro forma), but the rule of the Workers’ Party in Brazil undoubtedly has come to an end. The result of impeachment vote is of little importance: we already know that…