David Cameron, the UK prime minister, has been caught pants down. His tie is not on straight and he begins his speech grasping for straws. “We do live in a dangerous world. We live in a world of terror and terrorism”, he says playing on people’s fear. He references a recent attack on a British…
The collective responses to the dramatic revelations of NSA mass surveillance feel like the well-worn plot of a classic movie. The story reminds me of the government’s admission a few years back that Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction. By the time it was admitted, everybody had already figured out the emperor…
In the late 19th century, the decentralizing potential of the Second Industrial Revolution — the introduction of electrical power into industry — was a common theme in social analysis. The idea was that electrical power was destroying the technical rationale for large factories. The main reason for the Dark Satanic Mills of the First Industrial…
There are a growing number of complex wicked problems facing natural ecosystems and human civilization. In recent years we have seen that social movements can advance and uphold public welfare, seek justice and progress society. Throughout history, people’s movements have challenged institutions and power structures. Today these movements are beginning to address our most urgent…
President Barack Obama lifted a moratorium on transfers of Guantanamo bay detainees to Yemen – a moratorium he put in place. Why Obama put this moratorium into place after vowing, on a multitude of occasions, to do whatever he could to restore justice and shut down Gitmo is neither here nor there. I don’t intend…
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
Obama says some Americans are paranoid, fretting about an imagined tyranny lurking behind the corner. Progressives cheer as he mocks his lowly subjects. Yet some among them embrace one of the most despotic state powers imaginable: the draft. The draft is military slavery. It cannot be justified on any basis. Ever. It is wrong in…
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,”…
Under the cooperative model, workers own the business, reducing injustice because they have a stake in the community and because an individual will find it hard to exploit oneself. Workers often buy into their jobs (upfront or amortized), vote on major decisions in general assemblies or committees, and even voluntarily donate to the co-op for re-investment.
Matonis: Bitcoin is not a governmental instrument of legal tender that requires regulatory legitimacy and coercion by law in order to gain acceptance.
Gregory: Twenty years ago, Waco showed Americans the truth about law enforcement, the U.S. government, and the state itself.
The question of whether advertising is the root of the American desire to always have more is one that is asked frequently, but I often wonder if we are simply asking the wrong question.
Tuttle: An introduction to a left libertarian conception of political economy that has emerged from many collaborative and challenging conversations within the market anarchist milieu, known as Freed Market Anti-Capitalism.
Kevin Carson: So much for the hype. What’s the reality?
At his blog Pro Libertate, William Norman Grigg recently weighed the pros and cons of resisting arrest. His somber conclusion: “Resistance may be dangerous, but submission is frequently fatal.” The topic of resisting arrest is familiar territory for Grigg. He regularly explores the legal evolution of resisting, as well as the reasons people may feel…
Sebastian A.B.: The amateur, tinkering genius in her garage now finds a home with communities of researchers engaged in playful cleverness. Biology, formerly prohibitively expensive, is now fertile ground for the hacking of positive Black Swans.
M. George van der Meer: We are now approaching a breaking point, a culmination of long-unfolding trends that will witness the old forces of rigid hierarchy and centrality collide with the dynamism of the networked, freed market.
Kevin Carson: The current educational system is essentially a Taylorist-Fordist mass production system.
Carson: Intersectionality undermines the ruling class’s “divide and conquer” strategies of labor market segmentation as a strategy for weakening the bargaining power of labor.
Sebastion A.B.: Psychopaths are drawn to and uniquely capable within politics. They are charismatic, show no remorse, crave power and rise to the top. Leading psychologists have built the literature on the corporate form, but statist psychopathy bears investigation
