Recently, a rebuttal of my previous article “Anarcho-Capitalism is Impossible” was brought to my attention. The author, Christopher Cantwell, made some points that are worth addressing and my own thoughts on the matter have shifted somewhat over time. Therefore, I think it would be worth revisiting the topic with fresh eyes. In his introductory paragraphs,…

Amanda Marcotte discusses the tribalism of the religious right. William Norman Grigg discusses police brutality. David R. Hoffman discusses the NSA and CIA as criminal enterprises. Arthur Silber discusses psychological manipulation and lying. Arthur Silber discusses atrocity in the context of war. Arthur Silber discusses neurosis and terror as national policy. Arthur Silber discusses a…

Download: MOLOCH: Mass-Production Industry as a Statist Construct. I. The Origins of Sloanist Mass Production A Fork in the Road A Wrong Turn The Role of the State in Tipping the Balance II. The Institutional Imperatives of Sloanism Economies of Scale, Economies of Speed, and Push Distribution Microeconomic Institutional Forms for Providing Stability Mass Consumption to Absorb…

Remember when “Honest Bob” Murray of Murray Industries whined about a “War on Coal”? Most people in “Honest Bob’s” situation would’ve had the sense to keep their pie holes shut, considering he was responsible for the negligent homicide of the coal miners who died in one of his death traps just a few years earlier…

If I understand Princeton historian Sean Wilentz correctly, progressives ought not to be grateful to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald for exposing government spying because they are not card-carrying progressives. (“Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?”) Apparently they have either hung out with…

In his 1815 Principles of Politics, French liberal author Benjamin Constant defended the monarch’s “right to dissolve representative assemblies.” Constant’s position might seem surprising. Wasn’t securing the independence of parliaments from the royal will one of liberalism’s hard-won victories? His reasoning ran as follows. The “tendency of assemblies to multiply indefinitely the number of laws” is the inevitable…

Say the words “class analysis” or “class conflict” and most people will think of Karl Marx. The idea that there are irreconcilable classes, their conflict inherent in the nature of things, is one of the signatures of Marxism. That being the case, people who want nothing to do with Marxism quite naturally want nothing to…

I – What Is Anarchy. The statesman, intent on schemes to compromise principles and tide over clamorous demands for justice, says it is disorder and spoliation. New taxes are then levied to defend the state, to repress incendiary talk, and protect privileged prerogatives. Or false and surface issues are prepared to distract attention, to embroil citizens in partisan quarrels,…

O editor do The Freeman, Sheldon Richman, discursando na George Mason University, levantou a questão sobre o que os libertários convencionais querem dizer quando chamam um país de “capitalista”. O que qualifica um país como “capitalista”? Muitos países com índices relativamente baixos de liberdade econômica (incluindo aqueles classificados como “majoritariamente não-livre”) são normalmente considerados “capitalistas”, e referenciados…

Download [PDF]: Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles I. The Unsustainability of the Existing System II. The Seeds of the New System III. What Stands in the Way The problem is, the low-overhead business model I described above for the informal economy is, in almost countless ways, illegal. Take the restaurant/brew pub example. You have to buy an extremely expensive…

Download [PDF]: Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles I. The Unsustainability of the Existing System II. The Seeds of the New System III. What Stands in the Way Sloanism, not to mince words, is as dead as Elvis; the corpse just hasn’t started to stink yet. The kind of industry that emerges on the other side of the Time…

In the latest news story about collusive government-industry pipeline deals, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell announced a “partnership” between the Alaskan government, TransCanada, Exxon Mobil, BP and ConocoPhillips to build a pipeline “attractive to North Slope oil and gas companies.” Such pipeline projects, all involving massive government subsidies including the use of eminent domain to condemn…

Download [PDF]: Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles I. The Unsustainability of the Existing System II. The Seeds of the New System III. What Stands in the Way Einstein reputedly said that you can’t solve problems with the same level of thinking that caused them in the first place. The political and economic establishments tasked to deal with problems, unfortunately,…

The modern libertarian case against so-called intellectual property (IP) has been building steadily since the late 1980s, when I first encountered it. Since then, an impressive volume of work has been produced from many perspectives: economics, political economy, sociology, moral and political philosophy, history, and no doubt more. It is indeed a case to be…

Foundation The Industrial Revolution is typically regarded as a story of capitalism, free enterprise, and progress in technology and living standards. This paper attempts to disentangle the threads of capitalism, free enterprise, and progress, in the context of the Industrial Revolution, with a focus on Britain and the United States. It aims to bring some historical perspectives into…

Scrivo spesso della scarsità artificiale come sorgente di rendita per le classi possidenti, e sul ruolo che ha lo stato nell’imporla. Ma l’altra faccia della moneta è il ruolo che ha lo stato nel rendere artificialmente abbondante, per le classi privilegiate, ciò che è scarso in natura. Un esempio lo vediamo dalle notizie che parlano…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Libertarian Road to Egalitarianism” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. But we needn’t regard inequality as a weak point in our arguments for economic freedom, or as an issue on which we simply cannot win. Existing economic relations are not the product of freedom of exchange or…

C4SS Senior Fellow Gary Chartier talks to right libertarian John Stossel about Markets Not Capitalism and why advocates of freed markets should oppose capitalism. http://youtu.be/INfSOUgLHG8

Recently Mike Konczal (“‘Corporatism’ is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation,” The New Republic, December 15) attacked “corporatism” as a pernicious right-wing meme, ostensibly aimed at exposing Obama’s policies for “enriching the well-off” but in reality a “reactionary” agenda freeing big business from accountability. I think he underestimates the extent to which the “corporatism” and “crony…

AUTHOR’S NOTE: TechCrunch has reported that the Iron Maiden story that this article was centered around was misreported, if not an outright fabrication. We have corrected the factual inaccuracies and regret the error. For years, advocates of strict enforcement of intellectual property law on the Internet and elsewhere have said that the single largest detriment…