Libertarians make a self-defeating mistake in assuming that their fundamental principles differ radically from most other people’s principles. Think how much easier it would be to bring others to the libertarian position if we realized that they already agree with us in substantial ways. What am I talking about? It’s quite simple. Libertarians believe that…

When I was a young, I remember reading about the difference between cooperative and coercive exchanges. It was a mind-blowing thought, that all interactions could be lumped into one of two categories. And that the implications of the nature of those interactions could be so incredibly powerful and meaningful. While libertarianism certainly encompasses many thoughts…

Naomi Klein, to a casual reader, might seem to hate the free market. Or at least she hates what most people think of as the free market, based on the conventional use of that term by mainstream politicians and journalists. And the usual vulgar libertarian suspects (see here and here and here) have reacted with exactly the kind of by-the-numbers polemics you’d…

The most controversial and celebrated artist this year is, without a doubt, Miley Cyrus. Miley has quickly and flawlessly altered her image from 2000’s bubblegum sensation to corporate-sponsored rebel. Miley has captivated audiences with what many consider to be shocking performances that embrace hedonism and the mocking of puritan values. While many might consider her…

Recentemente assisti a uma apresentação por Mark Hendrickson da Faculdade da Cidade do Pomar acerca do livre mercado e da Walmart. Na apresentação Hendrickson cobre em sucinto, mas informativo detalhe, como funcionam os mecanismos do livre mercado. Firmas que oferecem melhores preços no mercado subtraem clientes de outras firmas, e o resultado final é que novas empresas…

Today we can celebrate the recent relaunch of the Silk Road drug market, named for a predecessor taken down over a month ago by federal agents for its connection with an alleged assassination conspiracy involving alleged founder Ross Ulbricht. The FBI is attempting to tie Ulbricht to the online identity of the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), an entrepreneur…

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Commonwealth (Belknap, 2009). This third installment in Hardt and Negri’s trilogy, which began with Empire and continued with Multitude, is concerned mainly with the forms taken by the successor society emerging from the decaying corpse of corporate capitalism. This quote is as good a statement of the general theme as…

I recently watched a short presentation by Mark Hendrickson from Grove City College about the free market and Walmart. In the presentation Hendrickson covers in short, but informative detail, how free market mechanisms work. Firms that offer better prices in the market draw away customers from other firms, and the end result is that new…

After watching a couple of people I know argue about whether “economic freedom” or “social freedom” was more important, I had the typical libertarian reaction: That’s a meaningless question, they’re the same thing. All transactions are “economic” in an important sense, and all relationships between people are “social.” To violently repress any non-invasive action is…

In Washington, D.C., Fully Informed Jury Association activist James Babb has placed informative billboards at Metro stations near the courts. These billboards tell passersby about jury nullification, the ancient right of jurors to judge both the facts and the law. The doctrine has a long and venerable history; the right of juries to ignore the law…

This article won the 2011 Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing. Although critics on the left are very astute in describing the evils of present-day society, they usually fail to understand either the root of those problems (government intervention) or their solution (the operation of a freed market). In Progressive commentary on energy,…

It’s impossible to make this stuff up, folks. Salon.com columnist Tom Watson, in an article on the upcoming “Stop Watching Us” rally in Washington, D.C., has excoriated all of his progressive friends for supporting something that libertarians — surprise! — also support. He writes, “Some of the biggest names in civil liberties and digital freedom…

The tenets of the Tao Te Ching express the first anarchist or at least proto-anarchist political philosophy, to my knowledge. The Taoist opposition to government springs from a radical non-interventionist philosophy on all three major branches of philosophy. While Taoism rejects the normative, they recognize a sort of logic about the state of the universe,…

How many times have you heard a politician, addressing some issue of regulatory policy, speak of “all the stakeholders” being at “the table?” That phrase has become popular recently, in particular among sponsors of maximalist copyright law proposals like SOPA and ACTA. “All the stakeholders had seats at the table — the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft…

The Argument for Market Failure A public good, as economists define the concept, is any good from whose enjoyment non-contributors cannot be excluded. The theory of public goods is of interest to libertarians for two reasons: first, because a great many things we care about – highways, education, law enforcement, fire protection, national defense, etc. – are widely thought…

In his classic essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” F.A. Hayek explains the concept of distributed knowledge. Every individual has unique knowledge shaped by their experiences and preferences, knowledge that may not be accessible to others, no matter how well educated they may be. Hayek writes: “Today it is almost heresy to suggest that…

I recently watched Elysium. And in it, like a lot of Hollywood movies, a strong, heroic man saved a helpless woman and child. And as a feminist I felt irritated. But as a woman I felt something else. I realized I saw the appeal in being saved by a strong, heroic man. Those same cultural…

I am told that today is New Zealand’s Father’s Day. I offer this painting by Goya as my opinion of this sort of celebration. To begin with, we should never reverence anything merely for the accident of sheer proximate existence or genetic relation. We should never revere anything on the basis of sex or age….

C4SS Fellow, Nathan Goodman, discusses left libertarianism, prison abolition and the prospects of life in a stateless society with The Annoying Peasant Radio Show. Popular Politics Internet Radio with The Annoying Peasants on BlogTalkRadio

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Kevin Carson‘s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson‘s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy“. $15.00…