Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan, by his own estimation the soul of reasonableness, has decided that now — when adjunct outrage has reached the boiling point over universities replacing 75% of their faculty with low-paid temporary workers while the numbers and salaries of administrators explode — is the perfect time to give adjuncts the Bronx cheer and say, “It’s your own damn fault.”

Aside from trolling adjunct labor activists on the Facebook page of Precaricorps, Brennan has written three articles on the subject at the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog. (Note: Much of this article is based on earlier comments under Brennan’s articles. And I’m writing it in response to the versions of the articles that were online at the time of writing. I feel it necessary to point this out because Brennan has admitted to, and feels fully justified in, making substantial alterations to the text in response to criticism without providing any notice in the text of having done so.)

The first, “This Exists” (Bleeding Heart Libertarians, April 26), summarizes Brennan’s original comments that initially sparked such outrage among the online adjunct community. Adjuncts, he says, are not victims because they’re merely suffering the results of their own “bad choices.” (Totally unrelated, but can anyone watch Dr. Phil for five minutes without wanting to slug him?)

They become long-term adjuncts because of their choices. They could quit any year and get any number of excellent jobs, such as working at GEICO.

This is not to say, he adds, that the adjuncts are wrong about the nature of the system. It really is corrupt.

I think Ginsberg’s public choice account of what happened at universities is basically right. Universities have been captured by administrators, and they tend to run things in ways that benefit themselves and those to whom they answer more than faculty or students.

But universities are notorious for this culture of corruption, and people who choose grad school and employment as adjunct faculty go into it knowingly (or at least should know), and are therefore to blame for their own misfortune.

And he finishes up with this bald assertion (which, as we will see below, is based on faulty reasoning):

Keep in mind, too, that if the Social Justice for Adjuncts movement succeeds, most current professional adjuncts will not get TT or other higher paying, more secure jobs in academy. The reason is that adjuncts are cheap and secure jobs are expensive. Instead, a small minority of them will get good jobs, and the overwhelming majority will be kicked out of academia altogether.

Like much right-libertarian commentary, Brennan frames all this as a matter of bad personal choices rather than systemic or structural issues. Like other such framing, it falls prey to the fallacy of composition.

He suggests that there’s an 80% chance of ending up as a poorly paid precarious laborer in academia because the system is corrupt, and has been captured by administrators. In so doing he neglects the fact that most other sectors of the economy are, to some extent, similarly corrupted by corporate-state collusion, managerial capture and the systematic shift of bargaining power away from labor.

Further, most adjunct faculty are in academia out of a love of scholarship and teaching, and are not only better at those things but more honorable than many presently tenured faculty who were better at playing politics and kissing ass. Why should people in a system characterized by thoroughgoing structural corruption simply accept it as “the way things are” and look for a momentarily less corrupt private garden to cultivate — especially given that, to repeat the matter of fallacy of composition, what is a viable out for adjuncts as individuals is not viable for them as a class? Some small fraction of people in a theater may be able to see better by standing up, but if all of them stand up they’re worse off than before.

It’s not like academia is uniquely corrupt. In the corporate world, managerial and supervisory pay has risen from around 25% of total compensation in the 70s to around 40% today, and senior management pay in the same interval has gone from a few dozen to several hundred times the pay of the average production worker. Corporate America is corrupt in exactly the same way, and as the result of the same kinds of forces of managerial capture and self-dealing, as academia.

And meanwhile, there’s been a glut of long-term unemployed new graduates since the 2008 crash as it is. Brennan may have been able to get a good job at Geico — a fact he’s harped on to the point of creepiness. But if the 75% of college faculty comprised of adjuncts drops out, how is the economy supposed to absorb that several hundred thousand extra people? They’ll likely just wind up competing for other precarious jobs and drive wages down even further in other industries.

And all those adjuncts will have to be replaced by somebody. So it makes a lot more sense to stay where they are, make a stand, organize, and fight the corrupt college administration to make things better for everybody, rather than trying to be one of the lucky few who manage to get out first and cut a deal with somebody else. Why not stay in their jobs instead, engage in direct action like strikes, walkouts, sick-ins, and open-mouth sabotage right where they are?

In “Is the Adjuncts’ Rights Movement Anti-Adjunct?” (Bleeding Heart Libertarians, April 27), Brennan repeats his earlier argument that collectively bargaining will lead to reduced employment. This is a common right-libertarian argument against higher wages:

Tenure-track (or other long-term, full benefits) faculty jobs are expensive, while contingent and adjunct faculty are cheap. Georgetown pays adjuncts a much better rate than most universities do, but paying an adjunct to teach 3 courses costs Georgetown about 1/10th what it costs them to hire a tenure-track assistant professor in the business school. Even if universities were to stop using adjuncts, but instead double the total amount of money they dedicate to faculty salary and benefits, they would not be able to hire all the adjunct faculty as permanent, high-pay, full-benefit faculty. Instead, a minority of professional adjuncts would get cushier jobs, and the majority would get kicked out of academia permanently.

But no matter how many times he repeats this — and he makes the same assertion at greater or lesser length in all three articles — this is nonsense. As Will Wilkinson noted in the comments:

the very big problem with your analysis, Jason, is that you’re assuming that the distributive shares are fixed. But it’s not the case that there’s a pre-determined amount of money with which to pay adjuncts, such that if adjuncts get paid more, fewer adjuncts can get paid at all. The size of the adjunct bucket is not fixed, and neither are size of the administrative or TT buckets. It’s possible to raise adjunct wages by making the administration smaller, reducing administrative wages, paying TT faculty less, closing TT lines, opening fewer new TT lines, raising tuition, etc. Who gets what is to a great extent a function of bargaining power. Adjunct bargaining power is extremely weak because supply exceeds demand and adjuncts accept low wages. It seems perverse, however, to criticize adjuncts for trying to increase their bargaining power and organizing to get a bigger piece of the pie. Insofar as that’s what “adjunct’s rights” people see themselves as doing, you’re just begging the question by asserting that the size of the slices is fixed.

Imagine adjuncts organize and manage to triple the average per-course rate. Well, you’re right, that money has to come from somewhere…. There are many margins that can adjust. If your argument is that the attempt to get a bigger piece of the pie is bound to fail, because all of the margins that could adjust, other than hiring fewer adjuncts, are too well-defended, you need to make that argument. This argument is bad and is emblematic of shitty libertarian habits of mind about collective bargaining. It’s shitty to tell people in a weak bargaining position to shut up and take what they’re getting, or else get a job at Geico. Why not help them organize, improve their bargaining position, and negotiate better terms, preferably out of the hide of administrators?

I would add that this isn’t a matter of speculation. Adjunctification was a process with a beginning. Was the actual effect of that process mainly to increase the overall size of faculties relative to enrollment, or to reduce total pay so the money previously spent on faculty could be diverted elsewhere? If the latter, then average faculty pay can be increased without reducing numbers, by taking that money back — preferably, as Wilkinson suggests, out of the administrators’ hides.

In “Either/Or (Vel aut Aut?)” (Bleeding Heart Libertarians, April 28), Brennan responds to the feathers he’s ruffled by doubling down on his rhetoric. His critics, he says, are guilty of bad faith and bad logic. He outlines two propositions:

1. The system is corrupt and should not offer adjuncts such a bad deal. More money should be dedicated to teaching and less to administrative tasks. The tenure system should be reformed.
2.  Most professional adjuncts living in poverty are victims of their own bad choices.

His critics, he continues, have tended to act as though the two were mutually exclusive. If propositions 1 if true, 2 must be false. He, however, affirms both of them.

In defending number 2, he keeps asserting how “easy” exit is. “Most professional adjuncts have high opportunity for exit, and most either did or should have known what the risks were.” And he repeats several variations on the theme that “the opportunity for exit is very high” and they could “easily quit” and go to Geico. But he never directly addresses the fallacy of composition thing — what works for a few people won’t work if everybody does it. Given the fact that many laid off people have taken much worse jobs, retired early on inadequate income, or dropped out of the job market altogether and moved in with relatives — and given that people in their original jobs face the same problems of precaritization, downsizing and management featherbedding that characterize academia — how will the economy absorb those hundreds of thousands of adjuncts? And what will they do to the bargaining power of those already on the outside.

In my opinion Brennan himself is guilty of bad faith in his insistence on the full agency and freedom of exit of adjuncts who are currently getting a bad deal within academia.

…[T]heir situation is quite literally chosen–in the most rigorous and agentful sense of “voluntarily”, they voluntarily chose to stay what they are calling an unfair and bad job rather than take what by their lights should be a better and more fair job.

But if this is not a free market — and it is not — and if structural bargaining power is shifted across the board from workers to employers, then we all have a significantly diminished range of alternatives. If we make a Venn diagram of the set of productive activities that people would find satisfying and fulfilling, and the set of available jobs, the area of intersection between them is much smaller than it would otherwise be because of collusion between the state and employers. As a commenter argues,

…Brennan acts as if “you have the ability to leave” just obviously entails “you are in no way a victim.”

This… [is] transparently false. If I get an apartment in Town A, knowing that I could afford one in Town B, I am not thereby unable to be a victim of my landlord’s bizarre demands or failures to follow through with his end of the agreement. Especially if there is realistically no other option in Town A specifically because he’s been given an effective monopoly on apartments in Town A. I know what I’m getting into by moving to Town A, and I could easily move to Town B, but I am still a victim of my landlord.

Indeed. When someone is forced to accept a lower utility, because the range of alternatives is artificially constrained by force, they are a victim of the situation. To argue otherwise is, to borrow a phrase, bad faith.

In a comment elsewhere, Brennan quipped that he’s a better Leftist than I am, because he’s “reasonable” and I just take “knee-jerk” positions. But if his tone in these three articles is any indication, far from being “reasonable” he takes a deliberately provocative and contrarian position, coupled with inflammatory rhetoric, for the sake of generating more web traffic. Or maybe just for the fun of trolling people he’s beaten out in the competition for tenure.

Of course there’s nothing with being provocative and inflammatory for the sake of attracting more traffic — I do it myself. For example, I’ve recently provoked some squeals of outrage by suggesting — mostly in jest — that telecom executives be dragged out of their C-suites and marched to the guillotine. But in using such rhetoric, I always try to be sure — as in the example I just gave — to punch up. But there are a lot of fit descriptions for someone who, having made it, has the ill grace to turn around and make smug “contrarian” arguments from a position of privilege against those who have not — and “reasonable” is not one of them. The term “ass” would be more appropriate.

Brennan stipulates, in his first installment, that the winners of the tenure track lottery might have done so purely through luck. Even so, he says, the losers are not victims because they knew the house odds going in. Perhaps Brennan believes that had he lost instead of winning — purely by luck, either way — he’d have simply gone to Geico and looked on the sunny side of life. Perhaps he even would have. But I have my doubts. And regardless, it takes a special kind of person to win such a lottery and then rub the losers’ noses in the fact of their loss — and not only that, but to go out of their way to troll them for it.

I don’t use the term “troll” lightly. His tone throughout is Limbaughesque taunting, including feigned surprise that adjuncts don’t agree with him. If you think this is an exaggeration, bear in mind that Brennan gloats in the comments over the prospect of spending his soon-to-be tenure track raise on a BMW: “…[I]t looks like I’ll be tenured at the end of this academic year. That comes with a salary bump, and I don’t want your movement to prevent me from buying myself a BMW 335 M Sport for my birthday.” Class act, dude.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has devastated Nepal. Buildings, old and new, have crumbled. Older brick and wood homes are almost exclusively reduced to rubble.

In an interview with The Guardian, Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist, describes the situation: “Outside Kathmandu it’s the rural poor. But in the city it’s the people in the older precarious housing. It’s obvious: the wealthier you are, the stronger the house you have.” For years the Nepali people have tried to improve disaster preparedness and resilience, but too many are resource strapped.

Kshitiz Nyaupane, a Kathmandu local in his mid-20’s, is quoted in Time: “Our government is not strong enough to handle this. We must take care of it ourselves.” Nyaupane echoes the beliefs of many in the region. The Nepali political system has a decades long history of indecision, conflict and instability. To maintain the political class important issues, such as basic infrastructure needs, have been ignored.

Once again, disparity and asymmetrical power relations add to the severity of disaster.

Frustratingly, the very institutions that cause such disparity are who the populace must depend on for relief. As aid floods Nepal, victims continue to struggle to regain control over their lives. Meanwhile, decisions over the distribution of resources are made for them. The influx of aid pouring into the region will no doubt save lives, but many ravaged by the quake are having to wait days for food and shelter as government officials take pictures, avoid the public and leave.

The situation is so bad that Nepalese villagers are blocking trucks carrying supplies for earthquake victims. Protests are on the rise outside of Nepal’s Parliament. Locals are demanding more to help the tens of thousands now homeless and short of food and water.

So, what can be done? What can be done to close the wealth gap? What steps can be taken to ensure that the impoverished do not continue to be the hardest hit by disaster?

The answer may lie behind altruistic social forces in the region. In an interview with the Associated Press, a local talks of his frustration with the government, stating: “Only the other villagers who have also lost their homes are helping me. But we get nothing from the government.” In the wake of calamity there is no mass violence, no survival of the fittest mentality, but instead a beautiful mutualism. Altruism is alive and well, a part of human nature.

The Nepalese are huddling together at night to keep warm, sharing blankets, food, water and more. Scholarly research shows such selfless behavior is common after disaster. Often, it is the political authorities who are selfish. Fearing anarchy, power structures often work against altruistic behavior.

Never the less, the human condition prevails. In the wake of disaster there is always hope, generosity and solidarity. The basic libertarian principle of mutual aid shines through.

This of course fuels the fire against the ruling class. Even in calamity we build rich, cooperative networks. This serves as a reminder that vibrant social cooperation is intrinsic to the human condition. If we grasp it, if we confront disparity, if we strive for the permissive society, we will revel in the altruistic markets that emerge. We can alleviate human suffering, simply by advancing human liberty.

C4SS Feed 44 presents “The American Land Question” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Joseph R. Stromberg, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford.

One key (but not the only one) to this much-sought-after independence was access to land, a theme taken up by Catholic writers Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton in early twentieth-century England. Sociologist Robert Nisbet commented that never, after reading Belloc, did he “imagine that there could be genuine individual liberty apart from individual ownership of property.” In any case, as historian Christopher Lasch put it, “Americans took it as axiomatic that freedom had to rest on the broad distribution of property ownership.” Perhaps Americans were wrong to believe such a thing. But let us examine the matter a bit more.

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If you’ve been paying attention to the trends of copyright law in the last ten years or so you may have noticed something: Corporations are gaining more and more power over what they claim is rightfully “theirs”.

One of the largest company in making agricultural machinery, John Deere, is the latest in this destructive trend that continues to dispossess those who are less economically advantaged. In this case the farmers are getting hit hardest.

According to Wired’s Kyle Weins, John Deere wrote to the Copyright Office that, “…farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”’

You read that right: John Deere owns your local farmer’s tractor because of the zeroes and ones that make up how it functions.

Deere is not alone in this process; other companies have recently tried to make similar claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA was a law signed into effect in 1999 which helps decide the interrelation of software and hardware. Weins reports that after a hearing in July we can expect the Copyright Office to make a decision on which things we can hack and modify.

All of this may sound bizarre, but it’s nothing new.

Karl Hess, a now sadly lesser known libertarian, wrote the IRS in 1969 saying that he refused to pay his taxes. The IRS proceeded to then place a 100% lien on his property. Hess would no longer be able to deal in money to the extent that the IRS could discern he was using or making it. This forced Hess to start relying on bartering  and his wife to support himself.

John Deere follows the same logic the IRS response to Hess used: You don’t really own what you receive.

In general, Weins is spot-on with his diagnosis of a lot of the problems but his ideas on a solution remains disappointing, “Tell the Copyright Office to side with consumers when it decides which gadgets are legal to modify and repair. Urge lawmakers to support legislation like the Unlocking Technology Act and the Your Own Devices Act, because we deserve the keys to our own products. And support Fair Repair legislation.”

Apparently Weins will go as far to say that “…taking back the stuff that we own won’t be easy. Corporations have better lobbyists than the rest of us.” But none of that translates into copyright itself being the problem, much less the state.

For Weins, if we can manage to tweak the existing framework then we might just have a chance of owning our stuff.

But the dispossessed are a real and growing trend within history and that is no accident. Government does not exist to be reformed. Instead, it exists to become a thing apart from the people it supposedly represents. It, like any other big institution, will try to make itself seem sacred and untouchable.

And so if Weins and others are going to take reform seriously, then let us abolish copyright and all other forms of intellectual property. And with apologies to Noam Chomsky, let’s do the only strategy worth doing in the long-run: smashing the state.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant A. Mincy‘s “The Politics of Wilderness” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford.

“Regarding the ANWR proposal, sit back and watch the depraved political theater unravel before your eyes. This move for conservation depends on congressional Republicans. There is no chance the GOP will approve the wilderness title. Bloomberg notes Alaska Republicans are going ballistic and oil industry officials are up in arms because the move would keep billions of barrels of their black gold buried. Always the political chess player, Obama knows he can pander to his base and simultaneously boast his support of U.S. natural gas production which is curbing the nation’s demand for oil. At the very least he can prevent drilling for two years. Depending on his successor, the measure can either be swept aside or carried forward — we shall see what 2016 holds.”

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We speak of the blowback that results from American foreign policy, the senseless, heinous acts of terror that represent an unfocused and irrational rebellion against American imperialism. We understand that calling it what it is, blowback — pointing out the causal relationship between American foreign policy and terrorism — is not an attempt to exculpate the people who commit these crimes. Looking for a motive that may aid in explaining these horrors is not looking for an excuse.

Similarly, the Baltimore rioters have found themselves on the losing end of a set of government policies that have consolidated wealth and foreclosed economic opportunities for independence and self-sufficiency. While so many Americans have been railing against welfare recipients, worried about the effects of food stamps on the federal budget, top American companies have worked closely with government for generations, guaranteeing the corporate welfare and special privileges that define the U.S. economic system.

The truth is that corporate capitalism has hung these rioting Baltimoreans out to dry, the American Dream being to them no more than a cruelly sarcastic joke, forever out of reach, mocking them. The prevailing story depicts the urban poor largely as the victims of “the free market,” dependent on a helping hand from government, be it education, job training, or just the bare necessities. In this story, government intervenes to file the sharp edges off of unbridled free market competition.

The problem with this story is that is recasts government in a role it has never actually played for poor and working class people — least of all black Americans. In real life, the state has intervened not to protect the economically powerless and penniless, but to serve to the needs of capital, to fence off resources and restrict opportunities in order to subject people to the control of a few giant employers. This coercive, state-driven process has nothing to do with a principled, libertarian free market today, and it never has in the past.

The result has been a permanent underclass, condemned to live in ghettos under quasi-military occupation, surrounded by violent crime that is the direct product of a failed war on drugs. And while the people who live in these communities are demonstrably no more likely to possess contraband than anyone else, they are far more likely to be stopped and frisked, arrested, and even murdered by increasingly militarized police officers.

The problems in Baltimore are historical and systemic. Everyone agrees that rioting, looting, and the wanton destruction of private property are senseless acts that ultimately can’t help anyone or create positive social change. We must nevertheless ask why these people in Baltimore feel so helpless, so abandoned and frustrated by the “proper channels,” that they find it is necessary to lash out and express themselves in this way.

Systematic state violence has left Baltimore communities barren, crying out for justice and opportunity. Anarchists believe that the dormant power of self-organization, cooperation and trade, once truly freed from aggression and meddling, is all the poor need to thrive. Through the anger and sadness coming out of Baltimore, it’s important not to lose sight of the larger, underlying issues.

Translations of this article:

• Spanish, Baltimore al límite.

Depois de o periódico Providence Journal reproduzir o artigo do nosso colega de C4SS Chad Nelson sobre as violações da quarta emenda da constituição dos Estados Unidos, que garantem aos cidadãos proteções legais a mandados arbitrários de busca e apreensão (“Marathon Security Violates Constitution“, 20 de abril), o leitor Rick Hawksley respondeu em uma carta ao editor que Nelson “parecia mais preocupado com traficantes de drogas do que com a saúde e o bem-estar de seus vizinhos”.

O acirramento da guerra às drogas, da guerra ao terrorismo e de outras guerras ao povo americano estão ligados a um crescimento igualmente agudo do autoritarismo em nossa cultura. Para a mídia popular, por exemplo, como afirma Richard Moore (“Escaping the Matrix“, Whole Earth, verão de 2000), “direitos são uma piada, os acusados são sociopatas desprezíveis e nenhum criminoso jamais é condenado com justiça a não ser que algum nobre policial ou promotor dobre um pouco as regras”.

A mim sempre era impressionante ouvir a sequência de entrada da série Lei & Ordem, em que o narrador nos ensinava que “na justiça criminal, há dois grupos separados embora igualmente importantes: a polícia, que investiga os crimes, e os promotores, que processam os criminosos”. Em primeiro lugar, eu sempre afirmei que deveriam dizer “os acusados” e não “os criminosos” — embora alguns aparentemente não entendam a diferença. Em segundo lugar, onde estão os advogados e júris, que — mesmo nos livros infantis sobre cidadania — devem representar a sociedade ao evitar que policiais e promotores corruptos prendam pessoas quaisquer com base em falsas acusações, depoimentos mentirosos e evidências plantadas ou fabricadas?

A carta do Sr. Hawksley é um exemplo gritante dessa tendência cultural abjeta.

É comum entre direitistas que pretensamente favorecem a “ordem pública” igualar as proteções procedimentais contra policiais com a proteção dos criminosos que eles querem condenar, ou igualar os direitos de devido processo legal a “direitos dos criminosos”. Não, Sr. Hawklsey. Esses direitos protegem todos nós. Nelson claramente deseja que seus vizinhos estejam protegidos de invasões sem mandado de suas casas por policiais que estão com os dedos coçando para apertar os gatilhos, sob a desculpa de que estão lutando contra o “terrorismo” ou contra as “drogas”.

Muito mais americanos — desarmados — foram baleados ou tiveram suas cabeças arremessadas contra o chão por policiais (“Não resista! Não resista!”) depois de serem neutralizados do que foram mortos por terroristas. Histórias assim parecem surgir diariamente hoje em dia: uma pessoa negra desarmada leva um tiro da polícia — às vezes tentando se render, às vezes fugindo, às vezes com o policial plantando uma evidência no cadáver após o assassinato.

Como o Sr. Hawksley, eu quero me sentir seguro. Eu imagino que minhas chances de ser morto em um ataque terrorista sejam quase nulas. E mesmo se o perigo fosse significativo, as medidas de “segurança” que Hawksley celebra são, em geral, apenas teatro — são inúteis porque geram milhares de falsos positivos para cada ameaça genuína que é identificada. Eu não tenho medo do terrorismo. Mas, mesmo sendo branco, toda vez que eu vejo uma viatura da polícia no meu espelho retrovisor, eu tenho medo. Você realmente diria que não tem?

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

C4SS Feed 44 presents “How “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford.

Since intellectual property is not necessary to encourage innovation, this means that its main practical effect is to cause economic inefficiency by levying a monopoly charge on the use of existing technology.

In any case, for those whose libertarianism follows from the principles of self-ownership and nonaggression, whether or not intellectual property is necessary to profit from certain forms of economic activity is beside the point. That’s the same argument used by protectionists: Certain businesses would be unprofitable if they weren’t protected by tariffs. But no one has a right to profit at someone else’s expense, through the use of force. In particular, no one has the right to make a profit by using the State to prevent others from doing as they please with their own pens and paper, hard drives, or CDs. A business model that isn’t profitable without government intervention should fail.

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After the Providence Journal printed Chad Nelson’s commentary on Boston’s violations of Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure protections (“Marathon Security Violates Constitution” April 20), reader Rick Hawksley responded in a letter to the editor that Nelson “seemed to be more concerned about drug dealers than with the health and welfare of his neighbors.”

The sharp escalation of the Drug War, the War on Terrorism and other wars on the American domestic population has been associated with an equally sharp growth in general cultural authoritarianism. This includes popular media in which, in Richard Moore’s words (“Escaping the Matrix,” Whole Earth, Summer 2000), “‘rights’ are a joke, the accused are despicable sociopaths, and no criminal is ever brought to justice until some noble cop or prosecutor bends the rules a bit.”

It always galled me to hear the opening sequence of Law and Order, in which the narrator sanctimoniously intoned that “in the criminal justice system, there are two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders.” First, I always protested that that should be “the accused,” not “the offenders” — even if some self-styled “tough on crime” types don’t seem to understand the difference. And second, what about the defense attorneys and juries, who — even in the naive civics book understanding of the “criminal justice” system — are supposed to represent society by preventing crooked cops and prosecutors from railroading people into prison based on false accusations, perjured testimony from jailhouse snitches, and fabricated or planted evidence?

Mr. Hawksley’s letter is as glaring an example of this loathsome cultural trend as any I’ve seen.

It’s a standard trope among right-wing “law and order” types to equate procedural protections against cops with protection of the alleged criminals they’re in pursuit of, or to equate due process rights to “criminal rights” (see also “Grace, Nancy”). No, Mr. Hawksley. They protect the rest of us. Nelson clearly desires that his neighbors be safe from warrantless invasion of their homes by trigger-happy cops, under the ostensible guise of fighting “terrorism” or “drugs.”

A lot more Americans — unarmed Americans — have been shot by trigger-happy cops in the past year, or had their faces repeatedly slammed into the concrete (“Stop resisting! Stop resisting”) after they were incapacitated, than were killed by terrorists. The stories seem to be appearing almost daily now about an unarmed person of color being shot by the police — sometimes while trying to surrender, sometimes in the back while fleeing, and sometimes with the cop planting evidence on their dead body after murdering them.

Like Mr. Hawksley, I want to feel safe. I figure my chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are nearly zilch. And even if the danger were significant, the kinds of “security” measures Hawksley celebrates are mostly Security Theater — useless because they generate a thousand false positives for every genuine threat that’s identified. I’m not afraid of terrorism. But even though I’m white, every time I see a police car in my rear-view mirror I’m afraid. Can you honestly say you’re not?

David Sirota discusses the parade of phony GOP “libertarians”.

Charles Burris on why Ayn Rand got Robin Hood wrong.

Eric Margolis discusses a WW1 Churchill crime.

Steven Horowitz discusses how capitalism contributed to feminism and gay marriage.

Justin Raimondo discusses the Saudi state as our enemy.

Doug Bandow discusses why America should say no to war against Iran.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses the extrajudicial killing that didn’t happen.

Jon Schwarz discusses how the U.S. media can’t get the Iraqi WMD story right.

Dan Sanchez discusses plunder and the state.

Laurence M. Vance discusses assisted suicide and libertarianism.

Charles Davis and Medea Benjmain discusses Hilary the hawk.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the omnipotent power to assassinate claimed by the U.S. government.

Ramzy Baroud discusses how we were duped into disowning the Palestinians.

Sheldon Richman discusses why Obama helps the Saudi state murder Yemenis.

Richard M. Ebeling discusses defending the ethical enterpriser in an anti-business climate.

David Cole discusses new questions about targeted killing.

Radley Balko discusses the drug war marching on.

Marjorie Cohn discusses seeking justice for human rights crimes in Egypt.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the tyranny of drug laws.

Doug Bandow discusses the rental of the U.S. military to the Saudi state.

Ron Jacobs discusses a new Noam Chomsky book on Palestine.

Glenn Greenwald discusses how only Western victims in the War on Terror are mentioned.

Justin Raimondo discusses crony capitalism, the Clintons, and American foreign policy.

Terrell Jermaine Starr discusses 5 ways the poor are criminalized in America.

Eric Margolis discusses mass murder committed by human beings.

W. James Antle the Third discusses whether Rand Paul is a hawk or a dove.

Trevor Timm discusses the hostages killed by U.S. drones as casualties of an inhumane policy.

Stephen Zunes discusses how the U.S. government contributed to Yemen’s crisis.

Christian Appy discusses from the fall of Saigon to our present day fallen empire.

Peter Lee discusses the difference between an “unabashed nationalist” and a “fascist”.

In 1970 country singer Lynn Anderson had a hit recording of a Joe South song that opened with the line:

I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden.

I often think of that song in connection with the libertarian philosophy. You may be asking: for heaven’s sake, why?

Because it’s what I want to say to people who seem annoyed that freedom would neither cure all existing social ills immediately nor prevent new ones from arising. It’s a strange demand to make on a political philosophy — that it instantly fix everything that the opposing philosophy has broken. Moreover, I’m concerned that some libertarians, in their justifiable enthusiasm for “the market,” inadvertently lead nonlibertarians to think that this unrealistic expectation is part of their philosophy. Of course, that is not good because nonlibertarians won’t believe that the market would make all things right overnight, and so they’ll write off all libertarians as dogmatists.

Libertarians of all people should understand that decades — indeed, centuries — of government intervention have distorted society and the economy considerably. It’s safe to say that both would look different had that intervention not occurred. To pick one American example, the creation of an integrated continent-wide national market in the United States was in large part consciously planned by government officials (most prominently Abraham Lincoln, who embraced Henry Clay’s corporatist American System) and their corporate cronies, especially but hardly exclusively through transportation subsidies. (This is not to say they were able to dictate developments in detail; moreover, zones of entrepreneurial freedom existed, constrained though they were.) This system is American capitalism, which is to be distinguished from the spontaneous, decentralized free market.

Wouldn’t the market have tended toward greater integration if left free? I believe so, but the differences would have been substantial. In a freed market, costs are internalized. Expanding trade across a continent would require private risky investment in the means of transportation — canals, roads, railroads, etc. No government land grants or other subsidies would be available. If a firm wanted to ship its products cross-country, it initially would have to bear the shipping costs, which would be reflected in consumer prices. Consumers, choosing in a competitive marketplace, would then be free to decide if the products were worth the price asked compared to those of more-locally produced products, whose manufacturers did not have high transportation costs to recoup. (They may have disadvantages due to their small size, but diseconomies of scale, as well as economies of scale, exist.) Consumers might be happy to pay the higher prices, but it’s up to them. “National” firms would not have the advantage that government intervention has afforded them historically. (Today, repairs to the taxpayer-financed interstate highways is disproportionately paid for by private automobile operators. Owners of big rigs don’t pay their share of the upkeep.)

The whole point of a government-led effort to create a national market was to impose costs on taxpayers, who had no choice in the matter, rather than have businesses charge consumers, who would have had a choice, at the checkout counter. Since national firms’ retail prices don’t have to reflect the full cost of production, consumption is distorted and smaller firms are harmed. We cannot say exactly how things would look had the government not instituted this corporatist policy, but we can say that things would be different. To claim otherwise is to suggest that government interference with economic activity is inert. Libertarians should know better.

Em discurso recente à Mortgage Bankers Association, o senador americano Ben Sasse — um calouro republicano do estado do Nebraska — jocosamente acusou sua colega Elizabeth Warren de pretender remover todo o risco da economia. Presumivelmente, ele pretende dizer que Warren quer proteger as pessoas comuns de riscos como financiamentos habitacionais com pagamentos insustentáveis graças à redução inesperada de seus rendimentos, ou de pagamentos maiores do que o valor das casas financiadas, graças à quebra do mercado imobiliário.

Porém, ele deveria ganhar um Nobel pela audácia de acusar Warren de pretender eliminar os riscos, uma vez que ele estava falando para representantes de um setor que deu origem à expressão “grande demais para quebrar”. O governo federal gastou centenas de bilhões no resgate da indústria bancária simplesmente para salvá-los das consequências dos próprios riscos que tomavam. O programa TARP do governo dos EUA, sob a tutela tanto de Henry Paulson quanto de Timothy Geithner, pretendia evitar a deflação dos ativos das classes rentistas através da compra de títulos de financiamentos ao valor nominal. Isso era basicamente idêntico ao que Alexander Hamilton fez no primeiro governo de George Washington, quando pagou os empréstimos para a guerra revolucionária pelo valor de face, apesar do fato de que seu valor de mercado havia diminuído a uma pequena fração daquilo e de que os investidores que os possuíam naquele momento os haviam adquirido a um preço muito baixo dos compradores originais. Claro, embora fosse perfeitamente aceitável que o governo resgatasse os bancos às custas dos pagadores de impostos, era absurdo que ele colocasse condições ao resgate, como fixar os valores aos preços correntes no mercado ou limitar os bônus pagos a CEOs. Veja bem, essa seria uma intervenção ao livre mercado.

É realmente esquisito que Sasse fale como se a eliminação dos riscos fosse tão ruim, dado que a socialização dos riscos e dos custos operacionais das corporações, junto com a privatização dos lucros, é a principal atividade do estado capitalista. O historiador da New Left Gabriel Kolko cunhou o termo “capitalismo político” para descrever o estado regulatório assistencial do século 20. O capiatlismo político, para ele, é “a utilização de canais políticos para atingir condições de estabilidade, previsibilidade e segurança — isto é, a racionalização — na economia”. Isso implica na ação política para restringir a competição de preços a níveis gerenciáveis, permitindo que as grandes empresas façam planos com base em expectativas de longo prazo e criando um ambiente político-econômico racional em que as empresas possam auferir “lucros razoáveis” no longo prazo.

Toda a nossa indústria tem os contornos atuais porque o estado — tanto sob égide de uma economia de guerra permanente quanto por conta de programas “progressistas” como a criação dos sistemas de aviação civil e de rodovias interestaduais — assumiu grande parte dos custos e riscos dos investimentos nas novas indústrias, além de ter formado cartéis regulatórios para domar a competição, restringir as variações de preço e facilitar a troca de patentes.

O estado, em suma é — como Marx o descreveu mais de um século atrás — o comitê executivo da classe dominante capitalista. A socialização dos riscos e custos, para que os interesses corporativos privilegiados possam coletar seus lucros monopolísticos, é a principal atividade do estado. Ninguém deve saber disso com maior clareza do que Sasse e os banqueiros que pagaram 100 dólares por um lugar para ouvi-lo. Mas imagino que a “remoção do risco”, para Sasse, só conte quando ela é feita em prol dos mais pobres.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

Kevin Carson recently wrote in support of the Fight for $15 movement. While usually associated with the modern fight for a state mandated minimum wage, Carson rejects that argument and instead turns to other methods by which the labor movement fought for better conditions and wages in the 19th century, such as “information and pressure campaigns against employers” and “direct action on the job.” While I’m glad to see Carson reject the state coercion in a government enforced minimum wage and the emphasize worker empowerment, I’m not in agreement when it comes to aligning with a concerted effort for a national wage floor.

Carson writes that the standard “right-libertarian” critique of raising workers’ wages, that forcing employers to pay above a worker’s marginal productivity will merely result in unemployment of laborers whose marginal productivity is below the minimum wage, rests upon three unwarranted assumptions. But I think Carson’s arguments rely on even more unwarranted assumptions. He writes,

First, it assumes that this is, in fact, a free market. But it is not. We have an economy in which the state has intervened in the market on behalf of capitalists and landlords to make capital and land artificially scarce and expensive, and acted in other ways to raise entry barriers against self-employment, so that wage employers are protected against the need to compete for workers against the possibility of self-employment or employment in worker-owned enterprise. As a result, employers are able to hire workers for a wage less than the full product of their labor; the difference between the free market wage of labor and what is actually paid under capitalism amounts to a substantial economic rent. Hence, an increase in wages resulting from increased bargaining power of labor can come out of this rent.

I believe Carson is generally on point in his analysis, but horribly wrong in his conclusion. Carson is right that state intervention creates barriers to entry into markets that give a privileged class artificial control over capital, which allows oligopolists to extract economic rents from labor. Carson is wrong in thinking that higher wages brought about by increased bargaining power can come out of this rent ceteris paribus. In some cases, increased worker bargaining power might result in higher wages at the expense of rent, but often this isn’t the case because employers usually have the ability to simply fund higher wages through reductions in expenses other than rents like hiring, production, advertising, foregone expansion, etc (this is a reason to let individual exchanges on the freed market determine the price of labor, not a national movement that supports a specific, uniform wage). Given that employers are so institutionally advantaged, why would they pay for these increased wages by reducing rents and not something else?

Carson addresses the second unwarranted assumption, “…that employers have some idea of what the marginal productivity of their workers is.” I agree this is an unwarranted assumption given the massive amount of state intervention that distorts markets and causes calculational chaos even within firms. And Carson rightly deduces, “This leaves bargaining by workers as an important part of the discovery mechanism by which the marginal productivity of labor is determined.” The negotiation and haggling involved in exchange does indeed help discover a worker’s marginal productivity. But how does a concerted effort for a national wage floor, even if brought about through nominally voluntary interactions like union membership and negotiation, help firms discover the marginal productivity of a given worker? That needs to be determined on an individual level between two or more free parties.

Discovering marginal productivity requires information specific to each context. All the details and information involved in a worker and their marginal productivity are special to that case and that exchange. A large-scale, uniform wage floor achieves the exact opposite of the natural entrepreneurial tendency of the market to allow individuals to discover and utilize knowledge available to them. Unless Carson has the knowledge relevant to every single instance of employment in the country to discover everyone’s marginal productivity, there is no reason to think the marginal productivity of every worker is at least $15 and no reason to support an effort for essentially a “voluntary wage floor”. Even if voluntary, the proposals suffer from the same knowledge problems that calls for state mandated minimum wages do. Discovering marginal productivity requires local knowledge available only to the people involved in the exchange, not just any advocate of labor.

Carson’s last “right-libertarian” unwarranted assumption is that, “the demand for labor is highly elastic.” But I’m not sure why this is accused of being unwarranted. The data is in: “”Evidence to date does not support the view that raising the minimum wage will lead to positive employment effects.” Minimum wages do cause unemployment. The demand for labor must be at least elastic enough so that employers can resort to hiring fewer employees because, according to the evidence, that is what they do.  Why should we think “voluntary wage floors” would accomplish anything else? The demand for labor is clearly elastic enough so that employers can, at least on net, simply cease hiring to pay for wage increases, whether those wage increases are a result of bargaining or government coercion.

The reason that it’s unlikely for wage increases brought about through increased bargaining power to ever come out of artificial rents is because those rents are the result of institutional favoritism, not individual cases of sub-par bargaining. Even though the problem of artificially low wages is at first glance the result of a bunch of sub-par agreements due to worse bargaining, the root cause of this problem is institutional. There is no way to address the problem without addressing the institutions, which suffer from a lack of competition. Barriers to entry create oligopolistic capital markets without competition and so labor is at an artificial disadvantage in terms of bargaining power and can be subject to artificial rents. But increased bargaining power can’t lower artificial rents ceteris paribus because lack of competition allows employers to reduce other expenses to fund increased wages.

What’s needed is more competition. This is why I do like Kevin’s final suggestion of, “the formation of worker-owned and -managed enterprises by workers on strike.” This is the only solution that affects not the actual bargaining agreement between employee and employer, but the competition to the employer. Competition is what destroys artificial rents. And that’s exactly what a new, worker-owned and -managed firm would introduce. Of course it can be very difficult to do this, which is what makes the lack of competition so devastating.

An across the board, one-size-fits-all, imposed wage floor is not “compatible with anarchist principles” like Carson argues. I believe Carson is guilty of an unwarranted assumption of his own: that advocates of labor are not prone to the knowledge problem as much as government regulators are. This is not only unwarranted but absurd. The spontaneous and unpredictable workings of the market need to be left free to discover opportunities and information, not straddled by misguided economic doctrines. While increased labor bargaining power might seem like enough to aid the laboring class, it won’t accomplish much of anything if not accompanied by a swift destruction of the many oligopolies and introduction of competition and liberty.

Just when I’d managed to get control of my laughter over the “Obama is a Marxist” trope —  he held Red Study Circles where he read Quotations From Chairman Mao with Geithner, Rubin and Summers, presumably — David Harsanyi accuses Hillary Clinton of “class warfare” (“For Hillary Clinton, No War But the Class War,” Reason, April 24). I may have to buy a truss. Apparently in a meeting with economists she “intensely studied” a chart of the plutocracy’s exploding income, and commented that it was necessary to “topple” the top 1% for the good of the economy.

To his credit, Harsanyi doesn’t actually believe Clinton is a class warrior. He suggests she doesn’t mean a word of it — a reasonable inference, considering that one or two of her speaking fees would put someone in the top 1% she talks about toppling. On the downside though, in denouncing her rhetoric he regurgitates all the standard right-wing talking points about “class warfare.”

So really we have two utterly inane sides to root against here. First Clinton. As Harsanyi points out, she’s well into the top 1%. In fact she’s typical of the managerial-professional types that have come to dominate the 1%, and kicked the traditional rentier classes who derive their income from concentrated wealth up into the top 0.1%. Most of the top 1% today are senior corporate management, high-paid attorneys and other professionals, reflecting the growing managerialization of American society and the incorporation of a white collar New Class into the old plutocratic elite. And the effect of this class on the society it oversees is almost uniformly pernicious — as evidenced by the career of Clinton herself, whether as a tool of Walmart and Monsanto in her Rose Law Firm days or as an advocate for police state surveillance and drone killings in the State Department.

And to accept as a “class warrior” someone who pals around with a Morgan Stanley Vice President and assures Wall Street bankers in private speeches that they’re just misunderstood, is a bit beyond anyone’s capacity for suspension of disbelief outside the #UniteBlue Kool-Aid cult. Like a lot of Democrats, Clinton is great at churning out soccer mom rhetoric about “working families around the kitchen table” on demand. But the best way of judging what she’d actually do as President is not by what she says with her mouth, but what she’s doing with her hands meanwhile.

For example, although she’s carefully avoided making any definite statements about her position on the issue, close Clinton associates in the economic policy world express confidence that she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And that’s another thing — she’s pretty good at avoiding straight answers to tough questions on most anything. Witness the way she puts on her best “I’m glad you asked me that question” smile whenever she’s asked about her emails or Clinton Foundation donations, or her latest story on those issues or the “landing under fire in Bosnia” thing is revealed to be a, um, prevarication within days.

But if anyone can manage to come across as even more disingenuous than Clinton, it’s Harsanyi. First of all, it takes a lot of gall to whine about “class warfare” when we’re in one — and it’s the top 1% waging it against us.

And to dismiss negative comments about the top 1% as “zero sum” is begging the question. It assumes that people in the top 1% didn’t get rich at our expense — something Harsanyi asserts without backing up. But the top tenth of a percent make their money almost entirely off rents on assorted state-enforced monopolies or direct subsidies, and the managers and professionals down in the rest of the 1% are mostly either members of professional licensing cartels or hired overseers for the rentier classes.

So take your pick: The next President will be either a Democrat who talks populist talk about the 1%, or a Republican who uses all kinds of fake “free market” rhetoric — and either one will become the newest presiding officer over the executive committee of the corporate ruling class. Politicians are all class warriors — for the other side.

Lottare per la libertà significa opporsi all’uso della forza per frenare lo scambio pacifico e volontario. Questo però non significa che dobbiamo chiamare “capitalismo” un sistema basato sullo scambio pacifico e volontario.

Certo ci sono persone che pensano che “capitalismo” significhi proprio questo. E io non sono in grado di dimostrare che si sbagliano, perché la stessa parola significa cose diverse per persone diverse. Io credo, però, che anche i sostenitori della libertà che dicono di supportare il libero scambio abbracciando il “capitalismo” farebbero bene a scegliere un termine diverso.

Perché il termine “capitalismo” si porta appresso un fardello pesante… e per lo più negativo. Non è chiaro quando sia comparsa per la prima volta la parola “capitalismo” in inglese. Secondo l’Oxford English Dictionary, fu William Makepeace Thackeray ad usarla, in senso neutro, già nel 1854-55 nel suo romanzo The Newcomes. Molto prima di allora, però, veniva usata in senso critico. Thomas Hodgskin, già nel 1825, la usava spesso con una connotazione negativa. Nel suo libro Popular Political Economy del 1827, parlava, con tono sorprendentemente moderno, di “avidi capitalisti”!

Certo, il fatto che un sostenitore del libero mercato usi le parole “capitalista” o “capitalisti” in senso negativo non significa che la parola è irrimediabilmente corrotta. Ma ho citato Hodgskin per far capire che queste parole sono usate in senso peggiorativo da lungo tempo, e non solo dai nemici del libero mercato. Credo che oggi sia evidentissimo che gran parte di quelli che dicono “capitalismo” o “capitalisti” non abbiano affatto in mente la libertà.

Ad esempio, i media tradizionali, cartacei o elettronici che siano, dicono solitamente “capitalismo” per intendere “il sistema economico attuale”. E capita spesso di sentire il termine “capitalismo” impiegato come sinonimo di dominio nel posto di lavoro e nella società da parte di chi davvero possiede i capitali. Non necessariamente chi sostiene la libertà deve sostenere anche il capitalismo, in una accezione o nell’altra.

Come fa notare il filosofo libertario Roderick Long, il termine “capitalismo” acquisisce una sfumatura malvagia quando la gente lo usa per intendere sia “libero scambio” che “status quo” o “dominio da parte dei capitalisti”, o entrambe le cose. In questo senso, “capitalismo” è un concetto “onnicomprensivo”, che prende due idee indipendenti e le tratta come se fossero connesse tra loro. Chi vuole la libertà ha ogni ragione per evitare la parola “capitalismo” in questo senso, a meno che non voglia avallare l’ipotesi dubbia che il libero mercato comporta il privilegio e porta ad un potere gerarchico, all’abuso e alla povertà.

Nel sistema economico attuale la possibilità di scambio pacifico e volontario è limitatissima. C’è una rete fitta di privilegi normativi e legali che va a beneficio di chi è ricco e gode di appoggi, a spese di tutti gli altri. Basta pensare ai brevetti, ai copyright, i dazi, le restrizioni alle operazioni bancarie, il sistema di licenze che regola certe occupazioni, le restrizioni all’uso della terra, e così via. Il complesso industrial militare canalizza ricchezze incredibili, letteralmente in punta di cannone, dalle tasche della gente ai conti in banca delle ditte d’appalto e dei loro amici. Incentivi di ogni genere alimentano una rete di attività privilegiate e no-profit. Lo stato poi protegge la proprietà terriera ottenuta con la violenza o acquisita con leggi arbitrarie per poi cederla a individui e gruppi di sua scelta.

No, l’economia di Stati Uniti, Canada, Europa occidentale, Giappone, Australia e altri paesi non è frutto della pianificazione centrale. Lo stato non rivendica la proprietà formale di tutti (o di gran parte parte de) i mezzi di produzione. Ma quando lo stato garantisce e sostiene i privilegi economici è difficile affermare che il sistema economico che abbiamo oggi è “libero”. E se la parola “capitalismo” si riferisce al sistema attuale, allora chiunque sia a favore della libertà ha buone ragioni per essere scettico del capitalismo.

I privilegi che contraddistinguono l’attuale ordine economico, comunque lo si voglia chiamare, beneficiano di gran lunga i più ricchi e chi ha più potere d’influenza sulla politica. E la rete di privilegi salvaguardati dallo stato tende, in un modo o nell’altro, ad avvantaggiare i capitalisti sul luogo di lavoro. È qui che i privilegi garantiti dallo stato riducono le chance del lavoro autonomo, incrementando i requisiti di capitale minimo e i costi d’ingresso e allo stesso tempo riducendo le risorse disponibili per chi vuole iniziare e mantenere un’attività economica. Lo stato poi impone restrizioni legali all’attività sindacale, riducendo così la capacità del dipendente di contrattare efficacemente con il datore di lavoro. Rientrano in questo caso leggi come la Wagner Act, tesa ad addomesticare i sindacati e ridurne il potere contrattuale non violento. Riducendo le alternative al lavoro dipendente e il potere contrattuale collettivo dei lavoratori, lo stato incrementa il potere di leva del datore di lavoro. In sostanza, il dominio sul luogo di lavoro e sulla società da parte dei “capitalisti”, così come avviene oggi, deve molto alle intrusioni dello stato. Ancora una volta, se questo è “capitalismo” i sostenitori della libertà non hanno ragioni per accettarlo.

Certo, qualcuno potrebbe ribattere che, se “capitalismo” si riferisce spesso a fenomeni sociali discutibili, è anche vero che altrettanto spesso si riferisce ad un sistema economico che davvero mette la libertà al centro. Ci sono persone che usano il termine in questo senso. Ma l’accezione negativa circola da tanto tempo e oggi è molto diffusa. La parola è corrotta. E quando la gente, nelle strade di tutto il mondo sviluppato, urla la propria opposizione al “capitalismo” (intendendo con questo non una vera libertà ma il dominio delle potenze occidentali e dei loro alleati corporativi privilegiati), credo che sia di vitale importanza per noi sostenitori della libertà precisare che questo sistema di oppressione statalista a cui si riferisce chi protesta non è il sistema che noi vogliamo.

Lasciate pure che chi scrive editoriali sul Wall Street Journal o su Faux News, così come i portavoce delle élite economiche e politiche, continuino ad usare l’espressione “capitalismo” per indicare qualunque cosa che sia di loro gradimento. Non sono questi gli alleati naturali del libertarismo. Un libertario non ha alcuna ragione di emularli. Non è segno d’incoerenza sostenere la libertà dei mercati e dire addio al “capitalismo”.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Anarchism Without Adjectives” read by Ian Anderson and edited by Nick Ford.

“So what can we say about the general outlines of a stateless society? First, it will emerge as a result of the ongoing exhaustion, hollowing out and retreat of large hierarchical institutions like state, corporation, large bureaucratic university, etc. It will generally be based on some kind of horizontalism (prefigured by movements like the Arab Spring, M15 and Occupy) combined with self-managed local institutions.

Second, its building blocks will be the counter-institutions cropping up everywhere even now to fill the void left as state and corporation erode: Community gardens, permaculture, squats, hackerspaces, alternative currency systems, commons-based peer production, the sharing economy, and in general all forms of social organization based on voluntary cooperation and new ultra-efficient technologies of small-scale production.

And third, to the extent that it reflects any common ideology at all, it will be an attachment to values like personal autonomy, freedom, cooperation and social solidarity. But the specifics will be worked out in a thousand particular ways, far too diverse to be encompassed by any verbal model like “communism” or “markets” (in the sense of the cash nexus).”

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “The Two Simplest Arguments for Open Borders” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford.

“If someone in Spain and someone in Saudi Arabia want to meet in Bangladesh, preventing them by force from doing so simply because of their starting locations cannot be justified. The same two people, if living across the street from one another and meeting in a local restaurant, would do no harm and face no border controls. The inconsistency is morally intolerable.

…

It doesn’t particularly matter what the enforcement rules are, so long as they make movement harder. It could be that it costs a few widgets to cross one, that it takes a long waiting time, that they are completely impassible, or some combination thereof. What matters is that there is a cost, insurmountable or not, to crossing a border. This does not bring prosperity to those in regions with more land than labor to work it, as they cannot easily get laborers to work that and increase its productivity. Nor does it help labor-rich regions, as laborers there have nothing on which to work.”

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

Bitcoin tips welcome:

• 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

In un recente discorso davanti alla Mortgage Bankers Association, il senatore Ben Sasse, repubblicano del Nebraska di prima nomina, scherzando ha accusato la sua collega Elizabeth Warren di voler eliminare completamente il rischio dall’economia. Forse voleva dire che Warren vorrebbe mettere la gente comune al riparo da certi rischi, come il pagamento di un’ipoteca reso insostenibile da un’inattesa riduzione del reddito, o come la riduzione di valore di un’abitazione, mentre il pagamento è ancora in corso, a causa della crisi immobiliare.

Ma Sasse merita il nobel per la faccia tosta per aver accusato la Warren di voler eliminare il rischio proprio davanti ai rappresentanti dell’industria da cui ha avuto origine l’espressione “troppo grande per fallire”. Il governo federale ha speso centinaia di miliardi, con il programma chiamato Tarp (salvataggio delle banche con soldi pubblici, es), così da salvare le banche dalle loro stupidate in fatto di attività a rischio. Il programma Tarp, sotto la guida di Paulson e Geithner, mirava, con l’acquisto di titoli tossici, a prevenire la deflazione dei beni delle classi che vivono di rendita. Questa è praticamente la stessa cosa che fece Alexander Hamilton durante la prima amministrazione Washington, quando pagò i bond di guerra, i Continental, al valore di facciata nonostante il loro valore di mercato fosse una piccola frazione, e nonostante il fatto che gran parte di queste obbligazioni fossero nelle mani di investitori che li avevano acquistati a prezzo bassissimo dai loro possessori originali. Ma se è perfettamente lecito che lo stato salvi le banche con i soldi dei contribuenti, a quanto pare non è affatto lecito imporre condizioni, come la svalutazione del capitale dell’ipoteca al valore presente di mercato, o la limitazione dei bonus degli amministratori delegati. Oh no. Sarebbe stata un’interferenza con il libero mercato.

Sarebbe molto strano se Sasse dicesse che eliminare il rischio è un male, quando la socializzazione dei rischi e dei costi aziendali e la conseguente privatizzazione dei profitti è l’attività principale di uno stato capitalista. Lo storico della nuova sinistra Gabriel Kolko ha coniato il termine “capitalismo politico” per indicare lo stato assistenziale-normativo del ventesimo secolo. Il capitalismo politico è “l’utilizzo del sistema politico per raggiungere condizioni di stabilità, prevedibilità e sicurezza nell’economia (ovvero, la sua razionalizzazione).” Questo significa usare l’azione politica per ridurre la concorrenza sul prezzo a livelli maneggiabili, dare la possibilità alle grosse aziende di pianificare sulla base di aspettative prevedibili di lungo termine, e creare un ambiente economico politico razionale in cui le aziende possano ottenere un “ragionevole profitto” nel lungo termine.

Tutto il panorama industriale prende questa forma perché lo stato (vuoi sotto l’egida dell’economia di guerra permanente, vuoi tramite programmi “progressisti” come la creazione dell’aviazione civile e il sistema autostradale interstatale) ha assunto su di sé una grossa fetta dei costi e dei rischi delle nuove industrie. Questo ha portato all’imposizione di cartelli normativi anti-concorrenza tramite, ad esempio, le restrizioni alla concorrenza sui prezzi e lo scambio e la condivisione dei brevetti con l’aiuto dello stato.

In breve lo stato, come disse Marx oltre un secolo fa, è il comitato esecutivo della classe capitalista di governo. Compito del governo è la socializzazione dei costi e dei rischi, così che gli interessi corporativi possano raccogliere profitti in un monopolio garantito. Nessuno lo sa meglio di Sasse e dei porci capibanda bancari che pagano cento dollari a portata per fare la fila alla mangiatoia e ascoltare quelli come lui. Ma io credo che sia “rimozione del rischio”, secondo Sasse, solo quando è fatto nell’interesse del popolino.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

“The U.S. Navy … has dispatched the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt toward the waters off Yemen to join other American ships prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the rebels, U.S. officials said,” the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday.

Thus does the Obama administration risk war with Iran while embracing the mischievous agendas of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Iran has not been found shipping arms, but you won’t learn that from mainstream news accounts. Nor do the media ask why the United States and its allies — but not Iran — may intervene in Yemen.

The Tribune, like all mainstream news outlets, refers to “Iran-backed Shiite rebels,” that is, the autonomy-minded and long-burdened Houthis, who are portrayed without evidence as agents of the Islamic Republic. The media are mere conduits for Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab Gulf states, which have an interest in falsely portraying the turmoil in Yemen, long racked by civil war, as an instance of Iranian expansion. The Sunni Arab states don’t want Shiite Persians playing a prominent role in the region and becoming friendlier with the United States, while Israel uses Iran to take the world’s mind off the Jewish State’s brutality against the Palestinians. All this goes on while the United States negotiates curbs on a nonexistent Iranian nuclear-weapons program — to Saudi and Israeli consternation.

While the media fill American minds with almost nonstop propaganda about Iran’s ambitions, the U.S. intelligence agencies have their doubts. Why don’t the media report this, considering that Obama has facilitated the Saudis’ naval blockade against Yemen and its off-again/on-again bombing campaign? As a result of this war, Yemen suffers a humanitarian catastrophe, complete with refugees, food shortages, and the slaughter of civilians.

The Everglades are among the last sub-tropical wilderness areas in the United States. Their Floridian air is thick with humidity, but a cool breeze is commonly felt from both the fresh and saltwater systems that spread throughout the landscape. Open prairies provide relief from the dangers of the swamp. A mosaic of forest, from pinelands nourished by ancient limestone, to tropical hardwoods, coral reef communities and mangroves, supports an incredible array of wildlife. These unique systems are habitat for numerous endemics including aquatic birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians — of which many are endangered or threatened.

Hard to think of a landscape quite like the fragile Everglades, but it is politics that brought U.S. President Barack Obama to such splendor on Earth Day. In the backyard of  Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, both GOP presidential contenders (with checkered environmental legacies), Obama talked of climate change impacts on the imperiled wetland community. He went on to highlight the 100 year anniversary of the Park Service, coming up in 2016, and a new report that notes National Parks store 14 million tons of carbon each year. Point after point was made for conservation.

Hard for me to argue with his rhetoric. Easy for me to recognize his insincerity.

Obama did not mention his administration’s new push for offshore drilling, limited funding for national parks, the leasing of natural lands to oil and gas companies, or the permitting of mountaintop removal coal mines. No commander-in-chief will ever mention their extensive, carbon burning, wars.  No executive will talk poorly of the state economic system, nor their policies that encourage the growth machine. National monuments are good, I have a fond place in my heart for the national parks, but state archism trends towards violence and the mass consumption of resources. This will not change.

We see the failures of state decisions everywhere. From sprawl and drought in the Southwest, industrial disasters in the Midwest, Cancer Alley along our coasts, the destruction of Appalachian mountain ecosystems and so much more. Natural resources are terribly mismanaged. As a result of state decree, and the rise of hegemonic corporations, we are in the midst of a 6th great extinction. The age of the Anthropocene is upon us.

If we are to be serious about climate, conservation and environmental health, perhaps we should investigate best management practices. Perhaps we should explore our individualist spirit. A radically different social order is necessary if we are to permit a life worth living to our posterity. Imagine a world without archism, a place where every human being is free to bring their inclined labor to one another in mutual account. Imagine such liberty.

Decisions regarding climate, thus how to allocate resources across social/economic systems, should not belong to a few decision makers. Furthermore, the populace should not be held hostage by internal political bickering among Republicans and Democrats in the halls of power. These decisions should be made democratically, in common, where power is equally distributed among all stakeholders. Thanks to the work of famed economist Elinor Ostrom, we know that governance of this type is not only possible, but incredibly successful.

With such polycentric decision-making, human beings are not subject to the wishes of the state, but instead to community needs. Here, resources are distributed by need as opposed for the sake of growth. Let’s reclaim the power that is rightly ours and build a society worthy of our future generations.

Without collective action, we remain at the mercy of systems of power and domination — wild places, like the River of Grass, are doomed. Without wild lands, we are doomed as well.