Tag: capitalism
A recent Gallup poll found that Americans agreed by a record 52-45 margin that the government “should… redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich” (Matt Yglesias, “Americans want the government to ‘redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich,’” Vox, May 5). The nos consistently outnumbered the yeses since the question was first asked…
Anarchists usually don’t get too hot and bothered about general elections. While a change of command can no doubt mitigate some of the harms inflicted by particular governments, it makes no meaningful step towards the better world that anarchists want to see. We don’t feel any great victory if and when the lesser of two…
As an anarchist, I avoid doing anything that expresses consent to being governed, or an endorsement of any government; I am therefore a principled ballot-spoiler. However, this time around I was secretly rooting for a Labour victory (or at least a Conservative defeat). The Conservative Chancellor has been sustaining and inflating the housing bubble, particularly…
As the Reason Foundation’s Emily Ekins wrote back in February, “A recent Reason-Rupe poll asked Americans to rate their favorability towards capitalism, socialism, a free market economy, and a government managed economy.” Quite unsurprisingly, of these choices, Americans most favored free markets, with almost 7 out of 10 respondents reporting a positive opinion of a…
C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “At Alternet, Every Day is Liberal Self-Parody Day” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. “But I want to focus instead on the internal inconsistency of Eskow’s statements on the sharing economy, and his incredibly naive understanding of how regulations work. Eskow’s argument about the sharing economy is: 1)…
Once again — this time using the Baltimore uprising as a pretext — Thomas Sowell has pulled out the template for his favorite column dismissing what he calls “the ‘legacy of slavery’ argument” and blaming black poverty on the Great Society (“The Inconvenient Truth About Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown,” National Review, May 5). As is…
C4SS Feed 44 presents Erick Vasconcelos‘ “It’s Time to Destroy DRM” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. “From Apple’s cat-and-mouse race with jailbreaking phone buyers, to Amazon’s move into “exclusive” programming for its streaming service, to Netflix’s region-blocking (enthusiastically supported by the Motion Picture Association of America, a powerful US IP lobby), to rampant…
In an April 24 speech, new “Intellectual Property” Czar Danny Marti confessed that the whole point of federal IP policy is to inflate nominal GDP and corporate profits by maximizing what monopolists are able to charge for stuff. He didn’t mean to state it that baldly, of course. But that’s what it amounts to —…
With criminal justice reform front and center in today’s news, it’s as good a time as ever to revisit some of the various anarchist approaches to issues of crime and punishment. One particular analysis written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Anarchism and Crime, remains as relevant today as when it was written —…
How can you tell an American progressive from an American radical? A progressive laments the condition of working people and proposes to further empower the government. A radical laments the condition of working people and proposes to empower individuals by diminishing the power of government. Of course government power and individual power differ in kind:…
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…
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…
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”…
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…
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…
Support C4SS with Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” Audio version, read by Mike Gogulski • Introduction to the Portuguese Version of Iron Fist • • Versione in italiano • • Версия на русском • << Back to the Market Anarchism FAQ page Introduction Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by…
Il sette aprile, il New York Times (Bernice Dahn, “Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola”) ha fatto questa rivelazione: l’epidemia di Ebola in Liberia era stata adeguatamente annunciata, ma nessuno era giunto alla giusta conclusione e nessuno aveva agito di conseguenza perché le informazioni necessarie erano nascoste in un articolo a pagamento pubblicato da una…
Il dodici aprile, al Vertice delle Americhe, il presidente americano Barack Obama ha parlato in pubblico con il presidente cubano Raul Castro a proposito della fine delle tensioni tra i due paesi. Era la prima volta che Cuba partecipava al vertice, e si spera che questo segni l’inizio di una maggiore libertà di movimento di…
The Fight for $15 movement is usually identified with the fight for a $15 minimum wage. A call for government legislation is not the sort of thing you’d normally expect an anarchist to endorse. But in fact the movement to pay workers $15 or more is quite compatible with anarchist principles. Back in the late…
In a recent speech to the Mortgage Bankers Association, Sen. Ben Sasse — a freshman Republican from Nebraska — jokingly accused his colleague Elizabeth Warren of wanting to remove all risk from the economy. Presumably he means that Warren wants to insulate ordinary people from risks like mortgages with unsustainable payments relative to their unexpectedly…