In one of my blog posts; I discussed property rights and the Civil Rights era sit-ins. This post is a further exploration of the subject. I said the following in the previous post: These bills make an Orwellian use of terms like freedom. The ability to exclude people for irrational and arbitrary reasons is not…

Libertarians tend to see two worlds: one with private property that works reasonably well, and one without that farcically implodes. What they often miss, however, is that this dichotomy is conditional. Private property isn’t morally meritorious or great in itself, but only insofar as it is the best and only way to avoid conflict given…

If you thought the standards of the Famous Artists’ School (“Can You Draw the Pirate?”) on old matchbook covers were lax, wait till you see Reason magazine’s criteria for recognition as a “free market think-tank.” The American Federation of Teachers blacklists asset managers who manage public sector employees’ defined benefit pension funds, but have contributed…

Ivan Eland discusses U.S. security agencies. Uri Avnery discusses changing the Israeli flag. Eric Sommer discusses why journalists have blood on their hands. Patrick Cockburn discusses Saudi Arabia’s regret over supporting terrorism. Robin Philpot discusses Rwanda. Matt Peppe discusses terrorism directed against Cuba. Jacob G. Hornberger discusses treating people like garbage. Sheldon Richman discusses the…

C4SS Media presents Joel Schlosberg‘s “The Forever of Anti-Capitalism” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Some radicals not usually thought of as economists foresaw the essential principle. Howard Zinn envisaged a time when “[c]ertain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available — free — to everyone.” Even…

C4SS Media presents Jason Lee Byas‘ “A Thick and Thin PSA” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. So, the right question to discuss is not “thin libertarianism vs. thick libertarianism” (especially since the two depend on each other), but 1. “is it possible to have libertarianism without thickness, and if so, does this mean thickness…

What do you call a “withdrawal” that doesn’t end drone strikes? A faux one. The term withdrawal implies an exit from the area. If U.S. drones will continue to kill people in Afghanistan, the military presence is not truly over. We should be worried about the continued and apparently indefinite use of imperial violence by…

Alternet just can’t stop publishing attacks on libertarianism. The article is titled “10 Reasons Americans Should be Wary of Rand Paul’s Libertarianism, Especially Young People“. It mistakenly labels Rand Paul a libertarian. He has stated he isn’t one: They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my…

Non-libertarians often find libertarianism baffling. Notice the fundamentally puzzled tone of so many critiques of libertarianism – like, for example, this one by Don Herzog (I choose it more or less at random): There’s something endearingly toughminded, if that’s not an oxymoron, about libertarianism. At the same time, for the same reason, there’s something unbelievably…

Justin Raimondo discusses the pattern of disaster in U.S. foreign policy. Charles R. Pierce discusses the torture scandal and the Obama admin. Brian Cloughley discusses the warmongering of NATO. Alexander Reid Ross discusses Hollande’s trip to Nigeria. Brian Doherty discusses five gun rights cases to watch. Raphael Cohen and Gabriel Scheinmann discuss the Libyan war….

I continue to be confused by “libertarian” support for the Keystone XL pipeline. As I noted last month, my objection to Keystone is simple: It can’t be built without having the government steal land to build it on, from people who don’t care to sell. For anyone operating under the label “libertarian,” that should be…

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…

Consumerism is often derided by leftists. It’s viewed as an outgrowth of capitalism and markets more generally. There is truth in the notion that commercialism is a product of markets, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. As Ellen Willis stated: First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable…

Within the libertarian blogosphere, there has been a huge debate between libertarians who believe we should join the fight against privilege and those who think we shouldn’t. This debate is crucial to the libertarian movement, for it calls into question the scope of coercion (i.e. – is privilege a form of non-aggressive coercion?) and our…

Sheldon Richman discusses how Americans can help Ukrainians. David Gordon discusses Gary Chartier’s new book on John Rawls. Norman Solomon discusses the hypocrisy of senator Feinstein. Christopher Brauchl discusses the hypocrisy of senator Feinstein. Patrick Cockburn discusses the conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Cesar Chelala discusses the Syrian civil war’s impact on children. Jacob…

From a free market anti-capitalist perspective, Jeremy Rifkin’s account of “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism” [New York Times, March 15] gets it almost right. Rifkin’s thesis that “The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant,” in a process which “is about to…

If you use “thick libertarian” and “thin libertarian” to refer to individuals, you’re misunderstanding the terms. All libertarians are thin libertarians, and all libertarians are thick libertarians. Thin libertarianism is just the thin core that all libertarians agree on in so far as they’re libertarians, thick libertarianism is the additional beliefs that we add onto…

In 1975, two leftists, one of whom had been a top GOP insider and a founder of the American libertarian movement, collaborated on a book published by a leading Washington, D.C. left-wing think tank and the Unitarian Universalist Association advocating devolution of political power from the federal, state and city levels to self-sufficient local neighborhoods,…

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…