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…

C4SS Media presents Sheldon Richman‘s “Libertarian Class Analysis” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Say the words “class analysis” or “class conflict” and most people will think of Karl Marx. The idea that there are irreconcilable classes, their conflict inherent in the nature of things, is one of the signatures of Marxism. That being the…

C4SS Media presents Jason Lee Byas‘ “Abolishing Capital Punishment is Not Enough” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford. When we are disgusted by the unnecessary pain inflicted even on those who’ve inflicted unnecessary pain, we are disgusted with retribution. When we are outraged by the horror of a botched execution, we are outraged by the use…

In 1982 Murray Rothbard published his magnum opus in political philosophy, The Ethics of Liberty. It is a tour de force, a remarkable presentation of the moral case for political freedom. What a complement to Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market, Rothbard’s towering contributions to our understanding of free markets! The first striking feature of Ethics is that the…

C4SS Media presents Jonathan Carp‘s “How to Kill a Man” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford. But if we can’t face the man on his knees, and if we don’t want to see ourselves as the man holding the pistol, should we be killing at all? Clayton Lockett was tortured to death last night so we…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Education and Equity” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Any genuine proposal for educational reform will have to start with the distribution of power and privilege in society at large. And the idea that the state — whose main function is to serve, maintain and reproduce this distribution of power…

Senior Fellow and Trustee at the Center for a Stateless Society David D’Amato joins Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus for a conversation about the idea of voluntary socialism through the lens of the individualist anarchists of the 19th century. They discuss the life and philosophy of Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, and others, and explain how…

C4SS Media presents Jonathan Carp‘s “Fernando Teson Doesn’t Learn” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Of course, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine do not have the option of staying uninvolved. The wolf is at their door, it seems. While we of course wish them well, a sober analysis of the military situation does…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “With ‘Socialists’ Like Lawrence and Wishart, Who Needs Capitalists?” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. For the forces of information freedom, and other movements associated with the successor economy, to attempt to fight the established interests of the existing system for control of the state, is like an army…