C4SS Feed 44 presents Erick Vasconcelos‘ “Elections and the Technocratic Ideology” read by Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. It’s not about being governed or not, it’s about who is going to do the governing. Who would we want to sit on the Iron Throne if not a “specialist?” Someone who wouldn’t be driven by politico-ideological…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “ISIS and Ukraine: They’ll Say Anything” read by Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. We all remember how Vietnam ended. After two lost ground wars in Asia in the last 12 years, after recourse to the history book accounts of the post-WWII era, you might expect Obama to have…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant Mincy‘s “Political Governance and Natural Boundaries” read by Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. What is imperiling the desert is human domination of the landscape. Planning, zoning and development ultimately seek economic growth. There are of course guidelines and restrictions, town hall meetings and financial statements, but at the end of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Socialist Ends, Market Means” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Left libertarianism represents a particularly radical development of generally acknowledged libertarian moral judgments and an elaboration of the implications of moral principles that can be seen to provide plausible grounds for rejecting…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Joel Schlosberg‘s “Our Bodies, Their Subsidies” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Moreover, the Affordable Care Act is merely the latest in a century-long line of legislation ostensibly aimed at increasing the affordability of health care, but which by subsidy have locked in a status quo of needlessly high levels…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nathan Goodman‘s “Don’t Reform the Surveillance State, Route Around It” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Moreover, the state tends to secure its own interests and those of concentrated special interest groups first and foremost. Bills that pose a substantial threat to the NSA, their telecom company collaborators or profiteers…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Daniel Pryor‘s “Threat Level: Pointless” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. The only likely change in behaviour amongst the British public is a greater feeling of dread when they see someone who looks “a bit foreign.” This fearmongering serves the state’s agenda of control and power by applying the timeless…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant Mincy‘s “Another Top-Down Disaster” read and edited by Nick Ford. In the short term, our current institutions will work with residents to try to ameliorate the crisis, but what about the long term? How can we work to ensure these 400,000 are not left without potable water again? There will be a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Socialism: What It Is” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Benjamin R. Tucker, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Now, Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism says that what’s one man’s meat must no longer be another’s poison; that no man shall be able to add to his riches…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “On Big Box Stores and the Abuse of Hayek” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Borders at least tips his hat to the possibility that there is some local government aid to Big Boxes. But he does so in the manner of Lincoln’s anecdotal Jesuit who, accused of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David Grobgeld‘s “The Cynicism and Futility of Imprisonment” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. The prison system is built on a fundamental paradox of principles. On the one hand, its defenders make pragmatic, consequentialist arguments like “we need to send a clear message to criminals.” But all evidence points to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “Ferguson: Nixon Would Make a Solitude and Call it Peace” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. I lived near Ferguson for 12 years. I drove an ice cream truck up and down its streets for two summers. I seriously considered renting an apartment in Canfield Green, the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Trevor Hultner‘s “No, a Soldier Cop on Every Corner Does Not Sound Great” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. The most obvious statement to make at the outset is that neither jaywalking nor suspicion of petty theft nor running away from cops are crimes punishable by death anywhere in the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The United Police States of America” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Historian and political scientist Mark Neocleous explains that the “term Polizeistaat, usually translated as ‘police state,’ came into general English usage in the 1930s,” increasingly used at that time to describe totalitarian governments such as…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Sheldon Richman, read by Charles Johnson and edited by Nick Ford. Abstracting from the numerous, often mutually exclusive details of specific cultural projects that have been recommended or condemned in the name of libertarianism, the question of general principle has to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Left-Libertarianism: Its Past, Its Present, Its Prospects” read and edited by Nick Ford. This form of left-libertarianism should not be confused with the position of the same name associated with Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka, combining self-ownership (the libertarian part) with some sort of common ownership of natural…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Thinking Our Anger” read and edited by Nick Ford. “This disagreement between Lawrence and Seneca conceals an underlying agreement: both writers are assuming an opposition between reason and emotion. The idea of such a bifurcation is challenged by Aristotle. For Aristotle, emotions are part of reason; the rational part of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Poison as Food, Poison as Antidote” read and edited by Nick Ford. But it is an all-too-common mistake – and this tendency to underestimate the chasm between free markets and corporatism is enormously beneficial to the state, enabling a slick bait-and-switch. When free markets and government grants of privilege to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Egoism And Anarchy” read and edited by Nick Ford. I’ve long held that Greek philosophy and modern libertarianism are natural allies, tailor-made for each other ‘ not because they are similar but because through their very differences each can supply the deficiencies of the other. This debate in Liberty is…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Proletarian Blues” read and edited by Nick Ford. Of course the book has its flaws. One is the author’s attitude toward her “real” working-class colleagues, which sometimes struck me as rather patronising. The other – and this is what invokes the libertarians’ sneers – is her economically clueless, hopelessly statist…