Bitcoin Pizza Day passed again recently and with it came the expected wave of posts reminiscing about how far the world of cryptocurrency has come since that fateful day when Florida Man sent 10,000 of his magical internet money overseas all for a couple of pizzas. Of course, cryptocurrency has always been touted as a…

Benjamin Netanyahu has been perhaps the most anti-Palestinian Israeli prime minister of a large rogue’s gallery dedicated to driving the aggrieved Palestinians out of the land they and their ancestors have lived in and worked for millennia. This oppression — which has included ethnic cleansing, savage war on the people of the Gaza Strip, routine brutality and humiliation,…

It’s common among centrists to describe themselves — in contrast to the “far Left” and “far Right” — as the “rational adults” who can compromise and get things done. The “rational adult” trope usually appears in conjunction with “Horseshoe Theory,” according to which wisdom and reasonableness inhere in the political center and deviation from the…

Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman. Pirate Editions/Grove Press. 1971 If you are looking for an in-depth collection of arguments about the evils of the current system, this is not the book you are looking for. In fact it assumes in the intro that readers have already reached their ideological conclusions and are prepared to…

Every Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, Americans are subjected to endless reruns of an “inspirational” (cringingly stupid) poem by Charles Province, written in 1970: “The Soldier.” “It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.” The poem restates the same basic principle in regard to a series of other freedoms: …

Bernie Sanders wants to stay on message. So his presidential campaign has focused on economic issues. The American economy is rigged, Sanders says, in the interests of the wealthy and well connected. Banks and Wall Street brokerage houses get what they want at the expense of everyone else. The government should step in on the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “‘Peace Through Strength’ and Other Lies” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford.   Maybe we should ask ourselves, though, whether America really is the good guy — or whether it’s the power that needs to be deterred. And if you look at its record of invasions,…

This column was inspired by one of Rupert Murdoch’s tweets on September 6: “Big military brings peace through strength.” A cliched tweet by Murdoch isn’t what most people would consider a news hook. But it’s just the latest expression — caveman syntax perhaps included — of an insidious idea that anyone born in the United…

Harvard law professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig is mounting an intriguing run for President. Lessig’s symbolic campaign will be entirely funded by crowdsourced donations since he has a one-issue platform: campaign finance reform. If elected president, Lessig would attempt to pass a single law through Congress which would scrap existing private campaign financing in…

July 15 was the final day for FAO Schwarz’s iconic flagship retail store, a New York City fixture since 1870. What, exactly, closed the toy box? The immediate cause, increasing rent, was merely the last straw. The store’s approach was more and more out of step in an economy in which personalized service from Amazon.com-style warehouses is replacing brick-and-mortar retail…

Om de zoveel maanden nadert de Amerikaanse overheid haar zelfopgelegde “schuldenplafond.” Om de zoveel maanden wordt het Amerikaanse publiek getrakteerd op een theaterstuk over de vraag of het plafond wel of niet moet worden “verhoogd,” inclusief hysterische doemscenario’s over wat er gebeurt als politici niet zoveel geld als ze willen mogen uitgeven aan wat ze…

Every few months, the US government closes in on its self-imposed “debt ceiling.” Every few months the American public gets treated to theatrics on whether or not that ceiling should be “raised,” complete with hysterical projections of doom if the politicians aren’t allowed to spend as much money as they want, on anything they might…

C4SS Trustee and Senior Fellow, Gary Chartier, discusses war, peace and the permanent danger of a standing state on C4SS Media’s youtube channel.