El Puño de Hierro Tras la Mano Invisible El Capitalismo Corporativo como Sistema de Privilegio Garantizado por el Estado por Kevin Carson Introducción Comúnmente, se reconoce que el feudalismo se fundó sobre la base del robo y la usurpación; una clase dominante se estableció por la fuerza, y luego obligó a los campesinos a trabajar…

Lucy Steigerwald chats with Cory Massimino, econ student and writer, about his journey to left-libertarianism, what the heck that is, and why he doesn’t want to kick anyone out of the big liberty tent.

Over the past few weeks, the American business lobby and in particular the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in force to support the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. These groups and their puppets in Washington insist that the Ex-Im Bank is good for American small businesses and supports job…

In “Invitation to a Dialogue: Alternative Therapies” (New York Times, May 14), Dr. James S. Gordon writes: “Many economists believe that health care costs will continue to rise. Even more distressing, the Affordable Care Act will likely reinforce current practice, which dictates surgical and pharmacological interventions that can be expensive, inappropriate, burdened by side effects and, often,…

When a descriptive term carries a negative connotation, there is a widespread tendency to associate the term with its worst referents. When critics of Obamacare call it “fascist,” for example, they are regularly accused of absurdly likening Obamacare to the Nazis’ campaigns of mass slaughter. Yet “fascism” is a word with a meaning, and the…

It’s been a pretty bad couple of weeks on the climate front. Two separate teams of climate scientists warn that the collapse of the western Antarctic ice sheet has already begun and is now too late to stop. The six glaciers already in retreat are enough, by themselves to add four feet to global sea…

[Note: This piece was originally written as a letter to the editor of the New York Times in reply to its “Invitation to a Dialogue” on alternative therapies.] As Dr. Gordon notes, legislation ostensibly aimed at increasing the affordability of health care has had the effects of locking in a status quo of needlessly high levels of costly treatment required…

In Seattle, St. Louis and elsewhere, “ridesharing” services such as Uber and Lyft are causing a kerfuffle. These services, which allow users to submit orders via a smartphone app that are then filled by individuals driving their own cars, run afoul of long-standing regulations requiring the special licensing of taxis by municipal authorities. These licenses,…

A lot of recent libertarian commentary has treated Uber and Lyft as the greatest thing since Bitcoin and 3D-printed guns. On the other hand, a lot of critics — including not only liberals but anarchists who should know better — have demonized it as a corporate gentrification tool straight out of the fever dreams of…

Da decenni i regolamenti sui taxi sono un esempio da manuale di come le norme governative creino artificialmente barriere, rendite e lavoro salariato. Oltre ad una serie di normative di stampo proibitivo che arrivano a definire anche il colore dei calzini di un tassista, il sistema dei “medaglioni” (come sono chiamate le licenze dei taxi…

Two researchers at Utah State University have discovered a factor which may be silently impacting the much-discussed, but poorly understood, gender wage gap. Lindsey McBride and Grant Patty examined the gender bias of occupational licensing requirements. What they found is that —  at least at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder — women are…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Gnosticism of Power” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this: Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material…

For decades taxi regulations have served as the textbook example of government regulations creating artificial enclosures, rents, and wage labor. In addition to a host of prohibitous regulations that even extend to the color of a driver’s socks, the “medallion” system dramatically limits the number of taxi in major cities while at the same time…

My name is Nick Ford and I would like to welcome you to this blog of mine, Hardly Working. The goal of this blog is to promote a future where none of us will have to work. And by “work” I don’t mean just giving effort, but labor that we give to others under systematic…

It’s common for Democrats to depict themselves as the “party of compassion,” as opposed to the Wall Street stooges in the GOP,  resorting to soccer mom rhetoric about “American working families” and “sitting around the kitchen table.” Republicans, on the other side, frame themselves as the “free enterprise” party — unlike those anti-business socialists on…

Around the country, consumers are greeting newly arrived rideshare and taxi alternative companies like Lyft and Uber with fanfare. Some people, though, aren’t so happy. Taxi companies, for example, are lobbying city and local governments to heavily regulate and outright ban these services from the streets — ostensibly for “safety” reasons. One group in Seattle…

Kyle Platt chats with Sheldon Richman about the recent standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy. Who has a claim to the land? Can a government own land?

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Working Three Jobs to Make Ends Meet? This Might be Why” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The state, the giant corporation, and large institutions of all other kinds are part of an interlocking culture designed to extract as much money from us as possible while delivering as little as…

The Bundy ranch saga has been the subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good guys in this. The respective echo chambers for the two sides differ on…

Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this: Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material world, and from direct experience of the constraints offered by material reality. For example, earlier…