C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “How Not to Respond to Charges of Hypocrisy” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. “Idealistic” Kennedy liberalism, like the process for making sausage, doesn’t bear much looking into. In reality, behind all the talk of promoting the “ideals of the Enlightenment” and “global community” and “human rights,” the state does…

The entrepreneur is given considerable accolades in today’s political discourse. Republicans laud them as role models, paragons of the protestant work ethic. Democrats celebrate the jobs they add to the economy. Libertarians of all stripes love them for their independence and key role in markets. It seems that only advocates of the various forms of…

As the radical, insurrectionary affirmation of self, egoism is a direct and hostile challenge to politics, society, civilization, and economics. Unlike the various philosophical identifications and ideologies that it challenges, it is no pretender to the thrones of any mode of thought based upon duty or obligation, no attempt to place itself above or outside…

Nel 2010 Newt Gingrich spiegò che il presidente americano Barack Obama “non si capisce” se non si tiene conto del suo orientamento “anticoloniale keniano” come punto di riferimento interpretativo del suo comportamento bizzarro. Certo che Obama è riuscito a nascondere benissimo il suo odio profondo verso il colonialismo; tanto che ha elogiato l’Europa, in un…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Magical Thinking and Authority” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Anyone who works within a corporate or government hierarchy, and has to do their job despite constant interference and irrationality from higher-ups, will recognize the truth of this phrase from Dilbert: “Bossworld, where the laws of time, space and mathematics…

Here we go again: The US Supreme Court has relaxed some political contribution limits. Cue the hype. Last year, 2013, was the first year of the 2014 campaign cycle. Question #1: How much did federal elected officials spend on their 2014 campaigns last year? Answer:  At least $3.45 trillion — a little over $6.4 billion…

C4SS Media presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The New Economy and the Cost Principle” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. “As free marketers, decentralists and individualists, we occupy a corner of the libertarian movement. At the same time, as critics of wealth inequality and champions of the poor and working classes, we find ourselves within today’s…

Charles Koch of Koch Industries, wounded to the core of his being by allegations from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others that his championing of the “free market” conceals lobbying efforts to rig the system in his favor, sufficiently recovered his composure to respond in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (“I”m Fighting to Restore…

Più di un decennio fa, i blogger neoconservatori coniarono il termine “Fisking” per indicare uno strumento polemico (usato per la prima volta contro il giornalista di sinistra Robert Fisk) che consiste nel fare a pezzi un commento, frase per frase, tagliuzzandone analiticamente ogni parte fino a ridurla a coriandoli. Anche se la posizione dei neoconservatori…

I continue to have trouble believing that the libertarian philosophy is concerned only with the proper and improper uses of force. According to this view, the philosophy sets out a prohibition on the initiation of force and otherwise has nothing to say about anything else. (Fraud is conceived as an indirect form of force because, say, a deceptive seller…

Back in 2010 Newt Gingrich explained that US president Barack Obama lies “outside our comprehension” unless we use his “Kenyan, anti-colonial” ideological orientation as a reference point for understanding his bizarre actions. Obama has been amazingly successful at concealing his deep-seated hatred of colonialism — to the point of praising Europe, in a speech last…

More than a decade ago, neoconservative bloggers coined the term “Fisking” for the polemical device (originally demonstrated against left-leaning journalist Robert Fisk) of taking apart a commentary, sentence by sentence,  analytically ripping each part to shreds. Although the neocon positions in this debate range from misguided to repugnant, the technique itself is a good one….

A forthcoming “NASA study” that predicts medium-term collapse has gone viral on the Internet, based entirely on Nafeez Ahmed’s advance writeup for The Guardian (“NASA-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?,” March 14). To start with we should note, just in passing, that it turns out not to be quite a “NASA study” after…

Joel Schlosberg discusses how privacy and sausages are unlike laws. Patrick Cockburn discusses the road from hell in Syria. JP Sottile discusses drones. Ryan McMaken discusses crony capitalism and the transcontinental railroads. Justin Raimondo discusses Israel and the conservative movement. Stephen Kinzer discusses the end of American hubris. Ted Snider discusses 21st century coups. Kenan…

Recently US Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) attracted attention by calling for an all-out ban on Bitcoin, which he claims is not only “unstable and disruptive to our economy” but encourages “illicit activity.” If Manchin thinks any such law can actually be enforced, he’s delusional. His delusion illustrates a much broader phenomenon: The tendency of those…

Robert Campbell invites us to consider feminists as falling into two groups. (It’s not clear whether the division is meant to be exhaustive.) One group, the “individualist feminists” or “libertarian feminists,” hold that “equality of rights is getting close to being consistently recognized in countries like the United States,” and that “further feminist efforts, in this part…

On both sides of the argument over the efficacy of the Universal Basic Income (UBI), there is the claim that the UBI might encourage unemployment. The critics of UBI claim this is a defect, but the Left often argues that employment is not the only value we should have, and that a universal net will…

This is the final part of a trinity of posts on Lynn Stuart Parramore’s recent Atlernet article called “3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode“. The first two posts in the series dealt with selective contentions about her thoughts regarding the libertarian attitude towards inequality and public goods. This one is about her thoughts on…

Historien håller på att upprepa sig på ett fasansfullt sätt. Europas romska befolkning står inför ökad fientlighet, diskriminering, marginalisering och fattigdom. Jag har förut skrivit om den etniska registreringen av romer i Sverige, utförd av den svenska polisen. Vi som bor i Sverige har under de senaste månaderna också märkt en tillströmning av utfattiga romer…

Liberals are prone to conflate all forms of decentralism and self-organization with the right wing, framing the range of possibilities as a stark contrast between their own managerial-centrist approach on the one hand and Paul Ryan, Marvin Olasky and Newt “Culture of Dependency” Gingrich on the other. A good example is Mike Konczal’s recent column…