In the mainstream libertarian movement, accusations of “statism” typically focus on a fairly predictable set of targets. Anyone who complains of racism, sexism or other social justice issues, the economic exploitation of workers or degradation of the environment is reflexively accused of statism on the assumption that exploitation, injustice and pollution could only be problems…

La maggiore organizzazione del Tea Party in America, Tea Party Patriots, ha recentemente celebrato il suo quinto anno di attività promettendo di raddoppiare gli sforzi per ottenere il pareggio del bilancio federale e il ripagamento del debito pubblico. L’effetto, immagino non intenzionale, sarebbe la distruzione del capitalismo come lo conosciamo oggi. Il capitalismo corporativo, fin…

Perfect freedom is often dismissed as a fantasy. This post is aimed at refuting that notion. A good starting point is the late Ellen Willis’s distinction between personal and sovereign freedom. The former pertains to the ability to do whatever you want as long as you obey the law of equal freedom. This law stipulates…

A Tacoma, nello stato di Washington, gli immigrati detenuti nel Northwest Detention Center fanno lo sciopero della fame. Gli agenti dell’Immigration and Customs Enforcement stanno cercando di intimidirli, minacciando di alimentarli a forza. Parlando con americani, ho notato che molti di loro non hanno simpatia per i detenuti. Appongono agli immigrati il marchio di “illegali”…

This piece by Lorenzo Morales at La Silla Vacía shows, with concise and beautiful prose, the process through which the FARC impose themselves on local peoples in Colombia, becoming the de facto rulers of an incipient state. Morales tells us about life in Araracuara, a small, isolated town within the Caquetá Department, deep within the…

A forthcoming “NASA study” that predicts medium-term collapse has gone viral on the Internet, based entirely on Nafeez Ahmed’s advance writeup for The Guardian (“NASA-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?,” March 14). To start with we should note, just in passing, that it turns out not to be quite a “NASA study” after…

Il sedici marzo scorso, Claudia Silva Ferreira ha commesso questo crimine: viveva nel posto sbagliato con il colore della pelle sbagliato. È uscita a comprare pane e prosciutto con una tazza di caffè in una mano. Non sai mai quanto può essere letale una tazza di caffè se tenuta da una donna nera e povera,…

Since reading 1984 as an adolescent, I’ve remained perpetually amazed at George Orwell’s prescience. The Edward Snowden/Glenn Greenwald surveillance state strip-tease has recently focused attention on one aspect of that predictive acumen, but “we have always been at war with Eastasia” is returning to the fore due to the … “situation” … with Ukraine, Crimea and…

Claudia Silva Ferreira’s crime, last March 16, was living in the wrong place and having the wrong skin color. She went out to buy bread and ham, a cup of coffee in hand. We can never know how lethal a cup of coffee might be if held by a black, poor woman living on the…

Joel Schlosberg discusses how privacy and sausages are unlike laws. Patrick Cockburn discusses the road from hell in Syria. JP Sottile discusses drones. Ryan McMaken discusses crony capitalism and the transcontinental railroads. Justin Raimondo discusses Israel and the conservative movement. Stephen Kinzer discusses the end of American hubris. Ted Snider discusses 21st century coups. Kenan…

C4SS Media presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “The Problem Isn’t ‘Patent Trolls.’ The Problem Is Patents.,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. “Apple’s complaint, in its essentials, is that patent “trolls” just buy up patent “rights,” then search for infringement to cash in on, rather than going to the trouble of making real products. But why…

Recently US Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) attracted attention by calling for an all-out ban on Bitcoin, which he claims is not only “unstable and disruptive to our economy” but encourages “illicit activity.” If Manchin thinks any such law can actually be enforced, he’s delusional. His delusion illustrates a much broader phenomenon: The tendency of those…

On both sides of the argument over the efficacy of the Universal Basic Income (UBI), there is the claim that the UBI might encourage unemployment. The critics of UBI claim this is a defect, but the Left often argues that employment is not the only value we should have, and that a universal net will…

Joe Nocera devoted a recent column (“Will Digital Networks Ruin Us?” New York Times, January 6) to Jaron Lanier‘s “universal theory” that the tendency of “network efficiencies” to benefit but also destabilize large organizations are the root cause of a host of problems in domains with nothing else apparently in common. Such brittleness and dysfunction is everywhere,…

This is the final part of a trinity of posts on Lynn Stuart Parramore’s recent Atlernet article called “3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode“. The first two posts in the series dealt with selective contentions about her thoughts regarding the libertarian attitude towards inequality and public goods. This one is about her thoughts on…

The largest Tea Party organization in the U.S., Tea Party Patriots, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary with promises of redoubled efforts to balance the federal budget and pay down the national debt. Of course this would have the — presumably unintentional — effect of destroying capitalism as we know it. Corporate capitalism, since it coalesced…

Historien håller på att upprepa sig på ett fasansfullt sätt. Europas romska befolkning står inför ökad fientlighet, diskriminering, marginalisering och fattigdom. Jag har förut skrivit om den etniska registreringen av romer i Sverige, utförd av den svenska polisen. Vi som bor i Sverige har under de senaste månaderna också märkt en tillströmning av utfattiga romer…

This is part two of a three part series on an article by Lynn Stuart Parramore of Alternet. The first part focused on a contention she made about libertarians and inequality. This post discusses her take on libertarians and public goods. Our focus is on her thoughts about national defense. As she puts it: Another…

Matthew Yglesias may be the most left-libertarian friendly liberal commentator out there. Not only is he unusually open to free market ideas, but he’s also repeatedly shown strong sympathies for open-source and post-scarcity approaches to economic organization. In fact, he’s practically built his brand around setting himself against the two defining features of American liberalism…

Today, the Iraq War turns eleven. If you’re an American, you’d be forgiven for thinking the war in Iraq was over. After all, Barack Obama, after being thwarted in his desperate attempts to extend the American military presence there, has been crowing about how he “ended” the war in Iraq. But the war never ended….