C4SS Feed 44 presents “What Laissez Faire?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Sheldon Richman, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. What, then, is this system called “capitalism”? It can’t be the free market because we have no free market. Today the hand of government is all over the economy — from money…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Dawie Coetzee‘s “There is More to Industrial Enclosure than Patents” read and edited by Nick Ford. I wonder about the motivation in forgoing these patents, given that many are relatively toothless. Tesla obviously wishes to play the heroic underdog, to imply solidarity with the open-source movement despite operating in an industry legally…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Avowals of Selfhood: Review of Egoism” read and edited by Nick Ford. For the egoist, individualism must precede anarchism, for the affirmation of self is the source of the denial of all authority — individualism being the more general thing, anarchism a specific implication. Any anarchism that sets itself…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Anarchism Without Hyphens” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Karl Hess, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. But anarchism is not an ideological movement. It is an ideological statement. It says that all people have the capacity for liberty. It says that all anarchists want liberty. And then it is…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nathan Goodman‘s “‘Jobs’ as a Red Herring: The Dangers of Make-Work Bias” read and edited by Nick Ford. Still, many people measure an economy’s health in terms of employment, a phenomenon economist Bryan Caplan calls “make-work bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of conserving labor.” And there are obvious economic…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Public vs Private Dualities and Contextual Analysis” read and edited by Nick Ford. It’s certainly possible for a non-government controlled space or institution to meet the criteria above. An example is a privately owned local library called Linda Hall Library that is nonetheless open to the public. This example also…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Dyer Lum‘s “Why We Do Not Vote” read and edited by Nick Ford. But, it is alleged, that as both sides resort to fraud, the chances are equal. That is, politics is a game of cards, in which only the best trumps win. Like a game also “we the people” are needed…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace ‘Anti-Capitalism’” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Defenders of freed markets have good reason to identify their position as a species of “anti-capitalism.” To explain why, I distinguish three potential meanings of “capitalism” before suggesting that…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant Mincy‘s “IP is a Hurdle to Self-Direction” read and edited by Nick Ford. This is the curse of IP – excessive restrictions upheld by laws used to protect the “economic rights” of authors. Instead of promoting scientific progress we are instead beholden to copyright. Instead of allowing human innovation to flourish, we…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Where’s Eric Garner’s Amargosa?” read and edited by Nick Ford. One might object to a comparison between these situations. The Amargosa police department has four patrolling officers, the NYPD thousands. The weaponry of the Amargosa police department is meager, that of NYPD military-grade. Surely the best way to remember Garner is…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Question is, Why Would ANYONE Trust the Government?” read and edited by Nick Ford. What was government doing, back when trust was so high? As soon as it emerged as global hegemon after WWII, the US began resorting to direct invasions, military coups and death squads when countries refused to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Apio Ludd‘s “The Anarchist As Outlaw” read and edited by Nick Ford. The original debates over illegalism were therefore not about whether anarchists should take illegal actions – it was assumed that all anarchists did – but about whether individual reappropriation was a legitimate tactic – and for an egoist this is not…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The ‘Makers’ and ‘Takers’ — Not Who You Think” read and edited by Nick Ford. But you don’t get to be super-rich — to the tune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars — by making stuff. You get that filthy rich only through crime of one sort or another…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Open the Borders Now and Forever” read and edited by Nick Ford. Free and open movement is the natural, unconditional right of every single individual, a prerogative that precedes governments and their arbitrary borders and policies. Confronted with this fact, even some self-styled libertarians will cavil and complain, puling that…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Weed Legalization as Privatization, Disempowerment” read and edited by Nick Ford. Marijuana’s legalization seems much more like neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of these first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the state’s rabid oppression…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “The Individualist and The Communist: A Dialgoue” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Voltairine de Cleyre, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. COM.: “Well, I admit that much. Certainly the employé cannot compete with his employer.” INDV.: “Then you admit that there is not free competition in the present state…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “We’re All Illegalists Now!” read and edited by Nick Ford. Being that the drug world is literally under siege by a domestic military operation, it is beyond anyone’s imagination how markets like the Silk Road could keep their doors open without a serious injection of class consciousness. All those involved in…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “The Libertarian Virtue Of Slack” read and edited by Nick Ford. The common libertarian nowadays is of the same non-interventionist temperament as the Taoists. They endorse individual preference, spontaneity and self-interest. They loathe the State and central planners of all kinds. Most libertarians identify, also, as individualists — both methodologically and…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Armies that Overlap” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Benjamin R. Tucker, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Let us narrow it a little: Socialism is the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man’s environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition…

C4SS Feed 44 republishes Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “Anarchism and American Traditions” read and edited by Rhonda Federman. 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