All’American Enterprise Institute, Mark Perry (“Yes, America’s middle class has been disappearing… into higher income groups,” 17 dicembre) spiega la contrazione della classe media e la crescita della disuguaglianza economica citando un recente studio del Pew Institute, dal quale risulta che, dell’11% per cento di americani che non fanno più parte del ceto medio, il…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Will Free Markets Recreate Corporate Capitalism?” read and edited by Tony Dreher. And when I say “free markets,” I am not referring to a society in which the majority of economic functions are organized through money exchange (the “cash nexus”) or business firms. By “free market” I mean only…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “At Reason War is Peace … and TPP is “Free Trade” read and edited by Tony Dreher. Did you know President Obama’s “core legacy” is free trade — and the centerpiece of this alleged “free trade” policy is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Neither did I. But that’s what Shikha…

At the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Perry (“Yes, America’s middle class has been disappearing… into higher income groups,” Dec. 17) justifies the shrinking middle class and growing economic inequality by citing the finding of a recent Pew Institute study that of the 11% shrinkage in the American middle class, 7% have gone to the top…

In a preview article at The Guardian last July for his new book Post-Capitalism (“The end of capitalism has begun,” July 17), Paul Mason — following a path previously trodden by John Holloway and by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt — argued that the emergence of a successor system to capitalism would resemble not so…

Questo articolo è stato pubblicato originariamente su The Freeman il 24 agosto 2011 con lo stesso titolo. Il movimento progressista sorto a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento, dottrina da cui nasce la moderna sinistra americana, viene talvolta visto erroneamente come una filosofia “anti-aziendale”. Certo era contro il mercato, ma questo non significa che fosse necessariamente…

Land Allocation Rules are Necessary Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to William Gillis As an alternative to what Will regards as the typical approach in advocating for a set of property rules — basically a sales pitch promoting the features of one compared to all the others — he proposes “one where we don’t exclusively compare prefigurative…

In a video produced by the Future of Freedom Foundation (“The Libertarian Angle: Do Libertarians Really Hate the Poor?“), Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling obviously intend a smashing, unanswerable rejoinder to the left-wing stereotype of right-libertarians as “pot-smoking Republicans” who hate the poor. Sadly, it only reaffirms that stereotype. It’s exactly what left-wing critics of libertarianism…

Introduction The capitalist economy has gone through another shock, and the potential for another, larger one is on the horizon. While it’s seemingly in its death throes, capitalism continues to fuel growth. Under such a system we have seen a vast improvement in general living standards across the globe, despite rigged markets and the omnipresent…

It has been a century since “the man who never died” was put to death. Joe Hill, whose songs inspired labor organizing and introduced the phrase “pie in the sky,” went before a firing squad on November 19, 1915. The case putting him at the scene of a grocery store shootout was tenuous at best. But as Franklin Rosemont observes,…

Property and the family are two ideas, for the attack and defense of which legions of writers have taken up arms during the last half century. Recent systems, founded upon old errors, but revived by the popular emotions which they aroused, have in vain disturbed, misrepresented, sometimes even denied, them. These ideas express necessary facts,…

Geo-Mutualist Depictions of Occupancy-and-Use Fall Flat Carson Adresses Schnack’s Criticisms Will begins by questioning the extent to which non-Proviso Lockeanism and occupancy-and-use really do occupy a single “stickiness” spectrum: …[H]e acknowledges … that mutualism and neo-Lockeanism may exist on a spectrum in regards to conventions relating to abandonment and community reclamation. It is implied that capitalists…

So, going through the final rounds of work on Markets Not Capitalism with Gary Chartier and the rest of the Collective has really been reminding me that I’ve accumulated a lot of occasional and fragmentary writing — papers, paragraphs, notes, etc. — that I really ought to have been collecting for this blog and sharing more…

Did you know President Obama’s “core legacy” is free trade — and the centerpiece of this alleged “free trade” policy is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Neither did I. But that’s what Shikha Dalmia says, writing at the leading right-wing libertarian periodical Reason (“Why Is Hillary Throwing Obama’s Core Legacy on Free Trade Under the Bus?”…

Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to Steven Horwitz. As with Derek Wall, I’m gratified by the thoughtful tone of Steven Horwitz’s response to my lead essay. Where he agrees with me, he makes some good points of his own that add to what I was trying to say — particularly in regard to “free markets” not meaning the…

Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to Derek Wall. I appreciate the thoughtful tone of Derek’s response, and I’m certainly gratified by whatever role I may have played in inspiring him to take up brewing beer. And having been strongly influenced by the work of Elinor Ostrom myself, I was pleased to learn that an Ostrom scholar was…

Some anarchists and socialists argue that, even if markets can theoretically be non-capitalist, and non-capitalist market economies can exist, the dynamics of the market will eventually lead to the restoration of capitalism. The argument used by non-market anarchists and socialists is that, in a competitive market — even a competitive market of widespread distribution of…

Imagine the following person. He believes all individuals should be free to do anything that’s peaceful and therefore favors private property, free global markets, freedom of contract, civil liberties, and all the related ideas that come under the label libertarianism (or liberalism). Obviously he is not a statist. But is he an individualist and a…

A common liberal or “progressive” criticism of so-called “sharing economy” entities like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb (usually appearing in venues like Salon or Alternet) is that they’re “unregulated.”   This implicitly assumes, of course, that regulations like the taxi medallion system exist for some idealistic purpose of serving the “public welfare” and not simply guaranteeing…

C4SS Feed 44 presents T.J. Scholl‘s “Border Authoritarianism is Not Only an Institution of the Outwardly Racist” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. Anti-immigrant sentiment has found a home in political platforms across the nation and on both sides of the aisle. One such politician is Wisconsin Governor and 2016 Republican…