The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) has named Grant A. Mincy its first Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance. Mincy holds a chair on the Energy & Environment Advisory Council for the Our America Initiative and an Associate editor of the Molinari Review. He earned his Masters degree in Earth and…

Economist, political scientist, game theorist, professor, co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, detailed researcher, scholar of polycentric institutional systems, and Nobel Prize winner: Elinor Ostrom. The Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance is the fourth academic position created by the Trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society. Each…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The State as Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Sometimes the capitalist state’s internal rules and procedures, created to serve an economic ruling class, in specific cases wind up sabotaging the very interests they were created to serve. Much like the Catholic doctrine of concupiscence…

On January 14 the US Department of Justice announced that the Joint Terrorism Task Force had disrupted the latest “domestic terrorism plot” — this time by “a Cincinnati-area man … to attack the U.S. Capital and kill government officials.” House Speaker  John Boehner immediately cited the disrupted plot as evidence that Congress should think carefully before refusing…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Wish You’d Stop Bein’ So Good To Me, Cap’n” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. Some people might see an internal contradiction between Hoppe’s repeated use of the term “dominated” to describe the role of certain privileged segments of society, and the idea that “libertarian” ideas were formulated by…

The history of the University of Bologna offers an example of how the spontaneous-order mechanisms underlying market anarchism — mechanisms like mutual-aid surety associations and competing legal jurisdictions — can operate in a university setting. Many mediæval universities were run from the top down. The University of Paris, for example, was founded, organized, and funded…

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity — literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some…

The US Supreme Court’s announcement on January 16 that it will decide the constitutionality of state-level bans on same-sex marriage has elicited the predictable whining about judicial activism. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins pleads “there is nothing in the Constitution that empowers the courts to silence the people and impose a nationwide redefinition of…

Come definire una persona che vuole rubare la tua terra e causare terremoti sotto i tuoi piedi? David Koch, uno che approva entrambe le cose, si definisce libertario. Il mese scorso, in un’intervista rilasciata a Barbara Walters per la trasmissione “This Week” trasmessa da Abc, si è autodefinito “essenzialmente libertario”. A parere di Koch, l’etichetta…

The critically acclaimed film Selma‘s conspicuous absence from Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for David Oyelowo’s portrayal of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. follows its concerted targeting by flunkies of Lyndon B. Johnson outraged by its portrayal of friction between King and the arch-war criminal president. One leading critic,…

A persistent theme in popular culture, when it comes to issues of technological progress and the future, is that the super-rich will be the main beneficiaries of new technology. Billionaires with artificially augmented lifespans will retreat into their gated communities and anarcho-capitalist enclaves; the rest of us will live lives nasty, brutish and short, subject…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Wage Slavery and Sweatshops as Free Enterprise?” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The phrase “wage slavery” tends to really pique most free marketeers, who often object that the employer-employee relationship is one of simple voluntary agreement and contract. A legitimate contract, however, assumes that relations, up until…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Labor Struggle in a Free Market” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The problem is that, to date, bosses have fully capitalized on the potential of the incomplete contract, whereas workers have not. And the only thing preventing workers from doing so…

What do you call someone who wants to steal your land and subject you to earthquakes? David Koch, who favors these things, calls himself a libertarian. In an interview with Barbara Walters last month on ABC’s “This Week,” he described himself as “basically a libertarian.” That label, as Koch sees it, means “a conservative on…

One of the most common questions raised about a hypothetical free market society concerns worker protection laws of various kinds. As Roderick Long puts it, In a free nation, will employees be at the mercy of employers?… Under current law, employers are often forbidden to pay wages lower than a certain amount; to demand that…

Speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 9 US president Barack Obama unveiled an initiative to provide two years of community college tuition-free, nationwide, to anyone meeting attendance and grade requirements. The idea, inspired by a similar program in Tennessee, aims to make two years of college as universal as high school is now. Obama’s proposal is in…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. But treating either the payment of taxes or receipt of government money as a proxy for where one stands on the Producer-Parasite spectrum is ridiculous. Commenter Kirsten Tynan points out the sheer absurdity of asserting that the bottom…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “State Justice Failed Michael Brown. People’s Justice is Just Getting Started.” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The consequences for cops who draw public attention due to their extreme levels of brutality, in this new age of citizen journalism, is instructive. The people are more than happy to administer…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “The Inherent Flaw of the Criminal Justice System” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. The protesters who utter such concerns about the validity of a state prosecution of a police officer have their finger on an issue that market anarchists have long recognized. Government checks and balances are a…

Last November, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) launched a ten-year drive to end “the scourge of statelessness.” In December,  UNHCR Senior Regional Protection Officer on Statelessness Emmanuelle Mitte appealed to journalists (in west Africa and worldwide) to promote the effort, citing the press’s “responsibility to carry out advocacy, and sensitisation on the issue.” But the campaign, starting…