C4SS Feed 44 presents Jason Lee Byas‘s “For a New Levelling” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 1 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford. The Levellers didn’t like the term “Levellers,” though, preferring “Agitators.” This was because they felt that “Leveller” misleadingly implied they wanted to reduce everyone…

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…

Two years ago my wife and I lost a baby. We went to the 20 week ultrasound, expecting to hear if we were having a boy or a girl. Instead, we did not hear a heartbeat. The pain was sharp and immediate, though it has dulled with time. In our grief we sought comfort in…

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…

In one of comedian Louis CK’s standup routines, he talks about the vile things that come out of his mouth directed at other drivers when he gets behind the wheel. “In what other scenario,” he asks, “would a person feel comfortable saying such foul things to others?” Put a little distance and a scrap of…

I saw my first “homemade gun” when I was a kid. Older kids — teenagers — would save up the 4th of July fireworks known (for obvious reasons) as “bottle rockets” and play “war” with them: Stick the firework in a glass soda bottle (this was back when soda came in glass bottles that one…

According to Leonardo Dupin on journalist Juca Kfouri’s blog, Minas Arena consortium will have the right to operate the Minerao soccer stadium in Belo horizonte for 25 years, after their investment of about $300 million, $180 million of which was kindly lent by Brazil’s state development bank, BNDES. The agreement guarantees that the government of the…

“The biggest challenge to getting functioning space hotels and moon colonies might not even be, you know, building them and subsisting in space,” writes Jason Koebler (“The First Space Colonies Might Be Illegal,” Vice, May 15). “Instead, it might be navigating the tricky international legal framework governing off-world ownership.” Koebler’s concerns, which he hangs on…

In the military, we learn to leave no one behind. Whatever the cost, whatever the situation, everyone comes home: unharmed, wounded, or dead. The importance of this principle is drilled into us from the very beginning of basic training, when our PT formations loop around to pick up those who fall out and the entire…

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…

It’s over. As the evening started on Thursday (May 15), the Military Police of the State of Pernambuco, in Brazil decided to finish a strike that had lasted the whole day. Looting, depredations, disorder and murder all happened during the strike. Stores closed, people went home. “Arrastoes” (“draggings,” where large groups of people set off…

“Are you interested in individualist anarchism, or at least so frightened by it that you want to keep an eye on its progress? Are you frustrated by capitalism’s love for central planning and communism’s conservative view of human potential? Do you suspect that abolishing the institution responsible for war, police brutality, and mass incarceration might…

In 1973, nine years before he published his magnum opus in political philosophy, The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard issued a comprehensive popular presentation of the libertarian philosophy in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, first published by the mainstream publisher Macmillan. The book is an excellent discussion of libertarian principles and applications, and it is…

Gabe Newell — Valve‘s CEO, a company that develops games such as Half-Life and Portal, and also manages the virtual video game store Steam — famously noted, a while ago, that piracy is a service problem, rather than a pricing one: We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and…

Jeffrey Tucker of Liberty.me takes on the tricky topic of prisons and the market solution with Cory Massimino.

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…