C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “I Don’t See Class” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. “See, welfare — like racism and sexism — is welfare, regardless of who receives it. Welfare for giant corporations is morally equivalent to welfare for poor people. Structural issues of class and economic privilege have absolutely nothing to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “A Riot Broke Out and No One was Surprised” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. “Many liberal reformists object to rioting as a legitimate tactic of effecting positive change. They cite, as all anti-revolutionaries do, crackdowns on prison life and the possible negative response of outsiders. However,…

If you have even a shred of humanity, the answer is yes. Prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat have dominated headlines for nearly two weeks after escaping from Dannemora, a maximum security prison in Upstate, New York. One prison employee, Joyce Mitchell, has been accused of providing them assistance in their escape. She too now,…

King John of England, who 800 years ago this week was forced at Runnymede to affix his Great Seal to Magna Carta — which at least in theory subordinated his power to law — might have envied President Obama. Sure, Obama also pays lip service to idea that the executive is subject to law. But…

There is no doubt that the last twelve months have been a watershed period concerning the greater visibility of transgender, genderqueer, and other gender‑diverse people in both mainstream and social media. Two examples from recent times most readily spring ready to the mind. The actress Laverne Cox graced the front cover of the iconic Time…

Download a PDF copy of Mikayla Novak’s full C4SS Study: Gender Identity and Libertarianism Abstract People who do not identify with a gender status consistent with conventional fixed, binary gender stereotypes remain the target of a complex array of typically intertwining state policies and civil societal norms which greatly inhibit their liberties. Transgender and other gender-diverse…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kelly Vee‘s “Sex Slavery Revisited” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. “When de Cleyre used the phrase ‘sex slavery,’ she was referring to laws that existed at the time permitting men to rape their wives as well as cultural expectations regarding the way women should dress, behave, and generally carry…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “Dissolving Borders” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. “When feuding parties are unnaturally forced apart by walls, be they real or metaphorical, you can count on their disputes escalating into outright aggression against one another. And the states who govern such borders would have it no other way….

In Free Market Fairness [1] John Tomasi lays out a way in which the gap between broadly libertarian (or classical liberal) and high liberal (or liberal egalitarian) political philosophies can be bridged. Since F. A. Hayek’s methodologically individualist rejection of the concept of social justice, and Robert Nozick’s liberty-based rejection of egalitarian distributive justice, there…

One of the best things about The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is that David Graeber finally tackles issues directly relevant to anarchists. While his prior work has had value, it’s also largely been about rather obvious topics and punctuated with a need to apologize for or defend…

Back on May 19th, 2015, the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution that would increase the minimum wage to $15 by the year 2020. Fast forward to May 27th, and we see labor “leaders” who intensely supported the increase pushing a last minute amendment to exempt companies from it if they let the unions…

“Behind every great fortune,” Balzac wrote, “there is a crime.” That’s certainly true of the largest concentrations of wealth in the world today. The fortune of every billionaire, it’s safe to say, was amassed through some sort of crime. You don’t make that kind of money on the free market. And the holdings of every…

It’s sad evidence of collective latent racism that no one cares about prison until a conventionally attractive, intelligent, well-educated, middle-class, urban white woman goes there. Hence, Orange is the New Black, a funny and moving hit original series based on a bestselling memoir. How is it that black and Latina women are relegated to supporting…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Secret Service Incident Highlights Double Standard” read by Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. “Implicit in the idea of a governmental police force, from the Secret Service down to your local beat cop, is inequality of rights. Police by definition are supposed to have rights that other people don’t have:…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Charles Johnson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The daily experience of the urban poor is shaped by geographical concentration in socially and culturally isolated ghetto neighborhoods within the larger city, which have their…

Judge Katherine Forrest’s decision to lock up Ross Ulbricht for the rest of his life is a momentous tragedy. There were other tragic circumstances on display during Ulbricht’s trial, however. Submitted as evidence against the integrity of the Silk Road were stories of drug overdoses that were allegedly tied to products bought on the darknet…

Involuntary commitment is the ability of the State to institutionalize mentally ill people against their will. Perhaps the most well-known law providing for involuntary commitment is Florida’s “Baker Act” of 1971, which allows for the involuntary commitment of a person who (a) may possibly have a mental illness, and (b) may be harm to themselves,…

Ross Ulbricht has been sentenced to die inside a cage. We call this a “life sentence”, but it is a death sentence. His fate is quite literally to die in a cage in order to punish him for operating the online drug market known as the Silk Road. But truly, that is not his crime….

An article by George H. Smith from a few years ago makes a distinction about freedom that seems worth pursuing. In “Jack and Jill and Two Kinds of Freedom” (also a podcast), Smith distinguishes between (as the title indicates) two kinds of freedom, or between freedom and liberty. He tells the story of Jack, who…

The impending expiration of the USA Patriot Act is a matter of intense focus among civil libertarians; Rand Paul’s filibuster has been in the news, along with petition drives pressuring Congress not to vote for renewal. But it doesn’t really matter: Even if the legislation expires, the NSA will carry right on with domestic surveillance…