The night of November 4th in Belem, capital of Brazil’s Para state, was terrorizing. After the death of Corporal Figueiredo, from the Tactical Ops (Rotam) of the Military Police of the State of Para, at 7:30 PM, there was a violent retaliation, killing nine people, according to the official numbers, six of whom were undoubtedly executed….

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Fairness and Possession” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. C4SS trustee and senior fellow Gary Chartier is a Professor of Law and Business Ethics, and Associate Dean of the School of Business, at La Sierra University. He is the author of Economic Justice…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “How Libertarians Should — And Should Not — Approach Millennials” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Millennials are used to networked collaboration. In the workplace they view such collaboration with their peers as the way to get things done, and see traditional corporate managerial hierarchies as a form of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “From Whence do Property Titles Arise?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by William Gillis, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Forgive the digression to my 90s Nickelodeon childhood, but in illustration I am reminded of an episode of Angry Beavers in which the brothers suddenly discover that they each have…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Black Hole of the American Injustice System” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. And while consumers pay top dollar for the prisoners’ expensive wares — and companies like Colorado Corrections Industries rake in millions — the prisoners themselves often make as little as 60 cents per…

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman finds that “the top 0.1% of [American] families now own roughly the same share of wealth as the bottom 90%.” Furthermore, the study shows that the “recovery” we keep hearing about hasn’t reached the middle class, with only those atop the economic pyramid seeing its benefits. With a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Jeff Madrick’s Misplaced Criticism of Free Trade” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. The centerpiece of the neoliberal agenda is not “free trade” — that is, voluntary exchange of goods and services in which all parties operate on their own nickel and nobody has access to coercive power…

Remember that stupid “We Are the 53%” campaign? Were you hoping you’d seen the last of it? Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s back. This time it’s being resurrected in an even more monstrous form by Stephan Kinsella — a libertarian attorney who, when not writing stuff like this, is actually one of the most…

I’m usually pretty optimistic about the day after tomorrow — I’ve been dismissed more than once as a techno-utopian — but sometimes when I get depressed by NSA surveillance, drones, and the corporate state’s manufactured aura of inevitability, I need a story to cheer me up. Here it is: A Canadian artist copyrighted his land…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cory Massimino‘s “No Justice from the Prison State” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. As prison system inspectors visited Franklin Correctional Institution they discovered an incident from three years prior in which an inmate, 27-year-old Randall Jordan-Aparo, begged officer Rollin Suttle Austin, to take him to the hospital because of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “There is No Hope/The Anarchist as Lover” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford. Music: Despair and Triumph, Danse Morialta, and Reawakening, by Kevin MacLeod. incompetech.com “The war culture is all-enveloping and there is no end. The American resolve against war does not exist beyond an Internet fad, entirely obliterated…

I don’t know when this column will see print, but as I write it people all over the world are celebrating — with rightful enthusiasm — the fall of the Iron Curtain 25 years ago. During the Spanish-American War, William Graham Sumner gave a speech on “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” in…

David Graeber. Debt: The First 5000 Years (Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011). David Graeber, as we already saw to be the case with Elinor Ostrom, is characterized above all by a faith in human creativity and agency, and an unwillingness to let a priori theoretical formulations either preempt his perceptions of the particularity and…

Professional fools are an ingrained aspect of our image of the medieval royal court system. Fools, more commonly known as jesters, were permitted to be asses for the amusement of heads of governments. While professional and respectful conduct was expected of most members of the court, the Fool existed to give an image of laxness….

Political satire has a long and honorable history: Aristophanes, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift; W.S. Gilbert; George Orwell; Tom Lehrer, David Frost, and That Was the Week That Was; George Carlin; Spitting Image, Yes, Minister; the Smothers Brothers; the early Saturday Night Live, Dave Barry, The Onion, South Park, Family Guy, and so many more. Unfortunately,…

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Dominant Idea” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Dominant Idea“. $1.50 for the…

The 2014 midterm election delivered both good news and bad. The good news is that the losers lost. The bad news is that the winners won. Journalist Mike Barnicle says he’s never seen an election in which the people feel so distant from the government. I wish his diagnosis were right, but I suspect it…

On the morning of November 6 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation trumpeted its takedown of the Silk Road 2.0 website and the arrest of  alleged operator Blake Benthall. In so doing the FBI demonstrated, once again, that the War on Drugs has nothing to do with anything its propagandists claim it’s about. If drug criminalization is a…

Science and innovation are chaotic, stochastic processes that cannot be governed and controlled by desk-bound planners and politicians, whatever their intentions.  Good scientists are by definition anarchists. –Theo Wallimann, ETH Zurich Abstract Although profitable, cancer therapy has failed to live up to the promises of the War on Cancer waged since 1971. Modern chemotherapy can…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Joel Schlosberg‘s “The Conquest of the United Kingdom by Scotland” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. “Yes” netting 44.7% of the tally undermines a 300-year consensus and the devolution of substantial political power to Scotland is already conceded. Such a near-tie is far more problematic for an existing political system…