Protected firms can get away with abusing workers. By way of Roderick Long I’ve learned that Amazon.com has some pretty rough rules for its employees. (Long draws on the Huffington Post and the Times Online.) According to the Times, employees at the Bedfordshire (UK) warehouse were: Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Steve Horwitz‘s “Will Truly Free Markets be Truly Different?” read and edited by Tony Dreher. As I have argued before, I find it a very convenient coincidence that the left-libertarian picture of a free market society just happens to line up almost exactly with the world that many on the traditional…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Will Free Markets Recreate Corporate Capitalism?” read and edited by Tony Dreher. And when I say “free markets,” I am not referring to a society in which the majority of economic functions are organized through money exchange (the “cash nexus”) or business firms. By “free market” I mean only…

Recensione di: David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Per gran parte del diciannovesimo e ventesimo secolo milioni di americani furono membri di organizzazioni di mutuo soccorso note come società benefiche, o di solidarietà. Queste società, organizzate democraticamente, fornivano ai loro…

Recensione di: Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, 2003. È arrivato il momento di eliminare il sistema carcerario in America e nel resto del mondo? L’attivista, studiosa, icona dei diritti civili Angela Davis nel suo libro del 2003 risponde chiaramente Sì. La Davis è meglio conosciuta per il suo impegno a favore dei…

Seemingly John Stossel never sits down to write without the goal of further lowering the bar for qualifying as a libertarian. This time (“My Trump Problem,” Reason, Nov. 11), he’s managed to push the criterion to the all-time low of being somewhat less statist than Donald Trump. Stossel’s first problem with Trump allegedly centers on…

In a preview article at The Guardian last July for his new book Post-Capitalism (“The end of capitalism has begun,” July 17), Paul Mason — following a path previously trodden by John Holloway and by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt — argued that the emergence of a successor system to capitalism would resemble not so…

A Review of David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, (University of North Carolina Press-2000) Through much of the 19th and 20th centuries millions of Americans were members of mutual aid organizations known as fraternal societies. These democratically organized groups provided their members with an assortment of…

Questo articolo è stato pubblicato originariamente su The Freeman il 24 agosto 2011 con lo stesso titolo. Il movimento progressista sorto a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento, dottrina da cui nasce la moderna sinistra americana, viene talvolta visto erroneamente come una filosofia “anti-aziendale”. Certo era contro il mercato, ma questo non significa che fosse necessariamente…

Someone shared this on my FB. My desultory comment: I first heard the argument for wholesale abolition of zoning from my first-year design lecturer. Two observations, though. Firstly, the term “zoning” may be used in wider and narrower senses. In some contexts it refers only to what land is used for; in others, like Cape…

In a video produced by the Future of Freedom Foundation (“The Libertarian Angle: Do Libertarians Really Hate the Poor?“), Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling obviously intend a smashing, unanswerable rejoinder to the left-wing stereotype of right-libertarians as “pot-smoking Republicans” who hate the poor. Sadly, it only reaffirms that stereotype. It’s exactly what left-wing critics of libertarianism…

Introduction The capitalist economy has gone through another shock, and the potential for another, larger one is on the horizon. While it’s seemingly in its death throes, capitalism continues to fuel growth. Under such a system we have seen a vast improvement in general living standards across the globe, despite rigged markets and the omnipresent…

Geo-mutualism Represents a Middle Ground William Schnack’s Reply to Jason Byas on Economic Rent Jason Byas asks Fred Foldvary which territory is due the rent. “Do I owe rent to the territory roughly corresponding with Decatur, Georgia? Or is it something more like the size of DeKalb County? Or is it to something the size…

The Moral Irrelevance of Rent Jason Byas’s Response to Folvardy, Schnack and Kirchner In my initial response to Kevin Carson, I briefly asserted that rent from land is morally irrelevant in determining property norms. Three of the respondents in particular — Fred Foldvary, Robert Kirchner, and Will Schnack — clearly think differently. Thanks to their…

The Intercept is a website dedicated to investigative journalism. It is best known for having Glenn Greenwald as one of its editors. Its long term goal is to provide “fearless journalism” that sheds much-needed light on privacy invasions. But even knowing all of that, some of its headlines still manage to take you by surprise: Massive…

Geo-Mutualism Offers Inter-Community Dispute-Resolution Carson’s Occupancy-and-Use Regime Has No Such Mechanism I’d like to thank Kevin Carson for taking the time to reply to my critique of his original statement. Before I continue to respond, I’d like to also take a quick moment to do something which I should have done in my first response,…

Panarchy Flourishes Under Geo-Mutualism William Schnack’s Response to Carson’s Arbitrary Occupancy-and-Use Doctrine My position on occupancy and use is a little different than Kevin’s, and I dare suggest that it is the position nearest Proudhon’s original intentions. Though I do believe it is a component of the original mutualism, I have branded my stance “geo-mutualism,”…

We could use a radical in the presidential race — someone who really challenges the status quo — but Bernie Sanders isn’t it. Sanders of course calls himself a democratic socialist, but that tells us almost nothing. One gets the impression the socialist label was pinned on him and after resisting it, Sanders decided “socialist”…

So, going through the final rounds of work on Markets Not Capitalism with Gary Chartier and the rest of the Collective has really been reminding me that I’ve accumulated a lot of occasional and fragmentary writing — papers, paragraphs, notes, etc. — that I really ought to have been collecting for this blog and sharing more…

Ρу́сский: Рынки, не капитализм — Введение Türkçe: Kapitalizm Değil, Piyasalar – Bir Giriş Indonesia: Pasar Bukan Kapitalisme Español: Mercado, no capitalismo – Introducción Italiano: Mercato, non Capitalismo Português: Mercados não capitalismo — Introdução The individualist anarchist tendency is alive and well. Markets Not Capitalism offers a window onto this tendency’s history and highlights its potential…