There are a growing number of complex wicked problems facing natural ecosystems and human civilization. In recent years we have seen that social movements can advance and uphold public welfare, seek justice and progress society. Throughout history, people’s movements have challenged institutions and power structures. Today these movements are beginning to address our most urgent…

C4SS Senior Fellow and Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Kevin Carson interviewed on the Decline to State podcast. Kevin Carson, a well-known and well-respected mutualist talks to us about mutualism, his views on a free society, and more. We get to hear his views on economics, including his ideas on how to fuse the Labor Theory of…

Muitos economistas acham que a próxima bolha a estourar em nossa atual crise será a dos empréstimos a estudantes. A dívida de empréstimos a estudantes encontra-se em alta histórica, e as taxas de empréstimos federais estão prestes a dobrar, de 3,4% para 6,8% – a despeito de pequeno esforço para fazer com que os juros dos empréstimos a estudantes acompanhem…

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by R.A. Childs, Jr. O artigo a seguir foi originalmente publicado na edição de maio de 1971 de The Abolitionist, escrito por R.A. Childs, Jr. Uma das muitas questões que separam os “libertários de esquerda” dos “libertários de direita” diz respeito a o quanto o Governo dos Estados Unidos…

VRIJE MARKT: De inrichting van de samenleving waarin alle economische transacties voortvloeien uit vrijwillige keuze, zonder dwang. DE STAAT: De instelling die de Vrije Markt belemmerd via de directe uitoefening ban dwang of het toekennen van privileges (gesteund door dwang). BELASTING: Een vorm van dwang en belemmering van de Vrije Markt waarin de staat tribuut…

Financial commerce, the exchange of money and currency, is indistinguishable from speech. Therefore, it deserves the exact same respect and “freedom of speech” protections afforded to the utterances of the street-corner preacher, the independent journalist, the newspaper publisher, the internet blogger and so on. Financial commerce is speech, and should be free. Despite all of the “freedom…

Every once in a while I’m inspired to write a column by looking through my feeds and stumbling across two items that dovetail together so well the column almost writes itself. This is one of those times. There are several hard realities that most liberals — as opposed to those of us on the genuine…

The following article is translated into Deutsch from the English original, written by Charles Johnson and published in The Freeman, July 2008. In welchem Umfang sollten sich Libertäre mit sozialem Engagement, Praktiken, Projekten oder Bewegungen befassen, die soziale Auswirkungen jenseits, oder abgrenzbar, von gewöhnlichem libertären Einsatz zur Erweiterung des Umfanges von Freiheit von staatlichem Zwang haben? Offensichtlich kann ein konsistenter und…

Many economists think that the next bubble to burst in our current crisis will be student loans. Student loan debt is at a historic high, and federal loan rates are about to double, from 3.4% to 6.8% – despite a small effort to have student loan interest rates mimic the rates government grants big banks. This…

President Barack Obama lifted a moratorium on transfers of Guantanamo bay detainees to Yemen – a moratorium he put in place. Why Obama put this moratorium into place after vowing, on a multitude of occasions, to do whatever he could to restore justice and shut down Gitmo is neither here nor there. I don’t intend…

Memorial Day in the United States is a time for absentminded, almost spontaneous, flag-waving and military worship; a time when yellow ribbons become ubiquitous and the mantra “support the troops” enjoys renewed life. For those of us who are keenly critical of the United States, its foreign policy in particular, those accoutrements of Memorial Day…

An Evening with Karl Hess and Robert Anton Wilson The libertarian left has many luminaries, but few as quirky, thoughtful or influential as Wilson and Hess. Wilson brought us the SNAFU principle. Hess brought us our understanding of the left/right spectrum. And both brought us a shameless embrace of counter-culture and a playful interest in…

The US government has declared war on us. By “us,” I mean the many thousands of people who work as journalists in this country, myself included. This war extends a larger, more subtle war on whistleblowers that the government, and the Obama administration more specifically, has waged for several years. Last week, the first overt…

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, anarchist lawyer and activist Gerald “Jerry” Koch was taken into custody in New York City for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is the second time Koch has been subpoenaed, after the government informed his lawyers that it was…

The following section of the book, The Illuminatus! Trilogy,  is translated into Deutsch from the English original, written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. FREIER MARKT: Der Zustand der Gesellschaft in dem alle ökonomischen Handlungen (Geschäfte) auf Freiwilligkeit basieren, nicht auf Zwang. DER STAAT: Die Institution die den freien Markt behindert durch die direkte Anwendung von…

Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West and “is set to become the world’s largest apparel exporter over the next few years,”…

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson. De todos os comentários pretensamente libertários que tentam colocar a tragédia das confecções de peças de vestuário de Bangladesh em “perspectiva,” o de Benjamin Powell é provavelmente o pior (“Sweatshops Em Bangladesh Melhoram A Vida De Seus Trabalhadores, E Estimulam Crescimento,” Forbes, 2…

Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation, is at it again, this time on Twitter (@KatrinaNation). This morning she tweeted: “Ginning up IRS story to make government seem like oppressor fits into Right’s decades-long narrative. Government for common good is needed.” Pssssh. That America has ever had government for common good is one of those…

Of all the self-styled libertarian commentaries attempting to put the Bangladesh garment factory tragedy in “perspective,” Benjamin Powell’s is probably the worst (“Sweatshops In Bangladesh Improve The Lives Of Their Workers, And Boost Growth,” Forbes, May 2). In Bangladesh, Powell writes, “some 4,500 garment factories employ approximately 4 million workers. In the grand scheme of…

The American medical system is corrupt, ineffective and unnecessarily costly. These outcomes are due to state violence on behalf of the politically connected elite (namely private insurers, physicians, pharmaceutical and medical device companies). Artificial scarcity, price-gouging, misallocation of research funding and the suppression of alternative (non-patentable) therapies can be ameliorated