Endless pages could be written criticising Bernie Sanders’ platform and voting record, but despite his affinity for trying to pass off milquetoast social democracy as democratic socialism he has suggested some useful solutions on occasion. One such occasion was when he introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act or the Stop BEZOS…

[Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 14 maggio 2017 con il titolo Flint: Enclosure of the Water Commons. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] La crisi idrica della città di Flint è nuovamente sulle cronache nazionali. Dopo il diciannove maggio, oltre ottomila residenti potranno vedersi ipotecata la casa per bollette non…

The Flint water crisis is back in the national news. Over 8,000 Flint residents now face tax liens on their homes for unpaid water bills after May 19th, and are faced with the possibility of losing their homes if they don’t pay the total amount in arrears. This follows last month’s mass water cutoffs for residences with unpaid bills.

Right-libertarians are routinely awful on economic issues, acting as though big business were — in Ayn Rand’s famous phrase — “a persecuted minority.” But leave it to someone at the Cato Institute to write a column attacking corporate welfare on the grounds that it victimizes the recipients! That’s literally the title: “Corporate Welfare Harms Corporations”…

Reason‘s science editor Ron Bailey (“Pope Francis and Naomi Klein Both Hate Free Markets, Technological Progress, and Economic Growth,” Reason, June 29) refers to Naomi Klein as a “prominent hater of free markets,” adding that she also hates “technological progress and economic growth.” But based on my readings of both Klein and Bailey, I think…

It is difficult to take a political work seriously with the word “nanny” in the title, but Dean Baker’s 2006 book the “Conservative Nanny State” is a serious book and a decent introduction to some often overlooked market distortions that benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else. It also has the advantage of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. But treating either the payment of taxes or receipt of government money as a proxy for where one stands on the Producer-Parasite spectrum is ridiculous. Commenter Kirsten Tynan points out the sheer absurdity of asserting that the bottom…

Remember that stupid “We Are the 53%” campaign? Were you hoping you’d seen the last of it? Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s back. This time it’s being resurrected in an even more monstrous form by Stephan Kinsella — a libertarian attorney who, when not writing stuff like this, is actually one of the most…

In this post, I continue my brief introduction to left-wing laissez faire economic theory. Let’s get started. After discussing Benjamin Tucker’s four big monopolies, the next big thing to discuss is that of contemporary mutualist/individualist anarchist – Kevin Carson. I already made use of some of his stuff, but I want to highlight the innovations…

Carson: The state, by its very nature, is the executive committee of a ruling class. It’s the mechanism by which landlords, usurers, bureaucrats and rentiers extract wealth from the majority of the population.

Carson: The corporate Pharisees of our day strain at a gnat using “free market” rhetoric to attack welfare for the poor, but swallow a camel when it comes to welfare for corporations.

But it’s a messed-up libertarianism that looks at that situation and says, “Man, first thing we gotta do is get rid of that welfare!”

Alan Furth: Regrettably this is typical

El estado trabaja para los capitalistas. No trabaja para usted.

Kevin Carson: The state works for the capitalists, not for you.

Thomas L. Knapp on political favoritism in business.

The Senate Republicans have made it clear they have no principled objection to bailouts.  As The Freeman editor Sheldon Richman pointed out, if they’d been motivated by free market principle, they would have just refused a bailout–period.  But instead, they demanded a rewrite of the House version because it wasn’t tough enough on auto workers….