The so-called “sharing economy” is sometimes also called the “gig economy” — arguably a more accurate term, because “sharing economy” carries overtones of cooperation and mutuality that are (to say the least) grossly misleading. In the case of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft it’s misleading because it suggests the direct sharing of rides between…

Networked and Distributed Communities Kevin Carson’s Final Rejoinders This final set of rejoinders to the other participants’ second replies to me, where they made them, is not meant in any way to be comprehensive. It touches only on a few points I especially wanted to address. And anyone who responds to me after this will…

Radicalism or Rules of Thumb? William Gillis’s Response to Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder With such a nice response from Kevin it’s probably incumbent upon me to emphasize some disagreements — or perhaps just nuances — I was hoping to draw out. Along the way there are a few quibbles I’d make in response to Kevin’s commentary,…

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…

The Moral Irrelevance of Rent Jason Byas’s Response to Folvardy, Schnack and Kirchner In my initial response to Kevin Carson, I briefly asserted that rent from land is morally irrelevant in determining property norms. Three of the respondents in particular — Fred Foldvary, Robert Kirchner, and Will Schnack — clearly think differently. Thanks to their…

Use-and-Occupancy: Practical Issues Robert Kirchner’s Response to Kevin Carson I have no desire to exchange ‘salvos’ with anybody, least of all Kevin Carson, whose work I greatly admire, who has greatly helped me to clarify my own thought on a range of economic and political issues, and who has strengthened my hope in anarchist strategies…

Geo-Mutualism Offers Inter-Community Dispute-Resolution Carson’s Occupancy-and-Use Regime Has No Such Mechanism I’d like to thank Kevin Carson for taking the time to reply to my critique of his original statement. Before I continue to respond, I’d like to also take a quick moment to do something which I should have done in my first response,…

Introducing the November 2015 Mutual Exchange Symposium Discourse on Occupancy and Use: Potential Applications and Possible Shortcomings “It’s a shame there’s even a need to say this, but ‘property’ is a word that’s used by different people to mean different things,” reckons Kevin Carson in his opening salvo. Carson’s statement neatly summarizes C4SS’s November 2015…

Robert Reich contends that “Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful” (New York Times, September 20) — and so, to curb its power, big government must become way more powerful. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, like the railroad and oil trusts of the Gilded Age, are to Reich the natural result of market consolidation. Retelling the civics-textbook story of…

I’m happy to announce the official launch of the Center for a Stateless Society’s (C4SS) Monthly Mutual Exchange Symposium. C4SS’s effort to achieve mutual understanding through exchange is now a monthly project. Mutual Exchange will explore many issues from a variety of different perspectives. Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted…

…Mutualism is a social system based on reciprocal and non-invasive relations among free individuals. The Mutualist standards are: Individual: Equal freedom for each — without invasion of others. Economic: Untrammeled reciprocity, implying freedom of exchange and contract — without monopoly or privilege. Social: Complete freedom of voluntary association — without coercive organization… The libertarian ideal…

Wolfi Landstreicher. “Anarchy on the Market? A critical look at Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy” Modern Slavery 2 (Fall-Winter 2012/2013). Landstreicher begins with a critique of my approach in defending the labor theory of value in terms of Ludwig von Mises’s a priorism: But what if someone doesn’t accept the a priori assumption that there…

Uber: To Socialize or Not to Socialize? I’d describe myself, at best, as an occasional reader of the quarterly leftist publication, Jacobin. I’m by no means a long-time, consistent or even an enthusiastic reader. Sometimes I find things on their site that I think are interesting, such as their recent take on Thomas Paine from…

Another year is over. The New Year holiday is a natural time of reflection. When the ball drops and fireworks pop in the early January sky 2014 will be gone. A whole new year of human history will begin. A whole new year to continue our beautiful struggle. If there is one fact our collective history…

It’s no secret that economists and libertarians have developed a bad habit of assuming things about history and other societies on first principle without actually checking archaeological or anthropological findings. On occasion the divide can be quite stark. David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years gets a lot of momentum by attacking a widely circulated…

The environmental movement may be larger than ever. On Sunday, September 21, the “People’s Climate March” flooded the streets of New York City. Estimates project an upwards of 400,000 people participated in the climate rally, with ten’s of thousands more showing solidarity in smaller demonstrations (significant in their own right – London was host to 40,000 people) across…

Right after the economic crisis the country went through over ten years ago, which reached its climax in 2001, Argentina bounced back and entered a period of relative prosperity due to favorable foreign trade conditions. Nevertheless, the situation of the average Argentine worker remains the same as it has been for hundreds of years: their…

Rudolph Rocker once said that there is a definite trend in the historical development of human civilization which strives for the “free, unhindered unfolding of the individual and social forces of life.” This is indeed an accurate account of human history — we strive for the beautiful ethic of liberty. Liberty can be described, rather simply,…

Carlton Hobbs recentemente desafiou a tendência da corrente principal dos libertários, defensores do livre-mercado e anarco-capitalistas a favorecer a corporação capitalista como modelo primário de propriedade e atividade econômica e a assumir que qualquer sociedade de livre-mercado futura será organizada no padrão do capitalismo corporativista. Como alternativa a essa forma de organização, Hobbs propôs a…

Carlton Hobbs recently challenged the tendency of mainstream libertarians, free marketers and anarcho-capitalists to favor the capitalist corporation as the primary model of ownership and economic activity, and to assume that any future free market society will be organized on the pattern of corporate capitalism. As one alternative to such forms of organization, Hobbs proposed…