Prima parte Di Kevin Carson. Articolo pubblicato originariamente su Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism, 11 gennaio 2005. Pubblicato su C4SS il 17 dicembre 2012 con il titolo Vulgar Libertarianism Watch. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Non appena ho pensato di aprire un blog, mi è venuta l’idea di scrivere una rubrica chiamata “Osservatorio del Libertarismo Volgare”,…

On the libertarian Right — including Reason, the magazine for “free minds and free markets” — you hear a lot of lip service to opposing something called “crony capitalism.” And they periodically trot out the Ex-Im Bank or federal insurance for beach homes as their standard throwaway examples. But for the most part they love…

At Reason, Nick Gillespie (“How to Build a Better Epi-Pen — or Something Totally Different That’s Much Better,” Sept. 4) argues — correctly — that Mylan’s EpiPen price-gouging is enabled by government regulations. He cites fellow Reason writer Scott Shackelford’s earlier article (“Want to Reduce the Price of Epipens? Approve Some Competition!” Aug. 25) showing…

During one of the many civil wars between patricians and plebians that racked the early Roman Republic in Livy’s account, Menenius Agrippa — a spokesman for the oligarchy that had enclosed the common lands and reduced the Latin peasantry to tenant status and debt peonage — defended the privileges of the landed aristocracy with a…

If right-libertarians have a “comparative advantage,” it’s in writing by-the-numbers puff pieces on “free trade” that borrow the language of Ricardo and Cobden to defend what amounts to a totalitarian corporate lockdown on the world economy. This time it’s Richard Ebeling of the Future of Freedom Foundation (“Free Trade Versus Political Fallacies,” June 15) doing…

Michael Gibson tries to demonstrate the infeasibility of a universal basic income by showing that people actually like to work, as evidenced by the increase of hours relative to increased prosperity witnessed during the 20th and 21st centuries. According to him, a UBI would not work as major disincentives are created, which Gibson shows by…

Right-libertarians are routinely awful on economic issues, acting as though big business were — in Ayn Rand’s famous phrase — “a persecuted minority.” But leave it to someone at the Cato Institute to write a column attacking corporate welfare on the grounds that it victimizes the recipients! That’s literally the title: “Corporate Welfare Harms Corporations”…

Recent events in Brazil have been framed as something of a morality play by both sides. For partisans of Dilma Rousseff and the Workers Party, her impeachment and the installation of Michel Temer as acting President was a neoliberal coup by corporate and landed interests in Brazil, backed by Washington. For those supporting her impeachment,…

For almost five years now, Reason has been shilling for a corporate-owned charter cities project (Zones for Economic Development and Employment, or ZEDE) in Honduras. A whole body of articles by Senior Editor Brian Doherty takes a consistently boosterish approach to the project, repeatedly using such language as “a freer economy or better legal institutions,”…

In a recent article at FEE, “Walmart, Pepsi Rescue Flint from Government Failure,” Jeffrey Tucker celebrates the generous donation of 6.5 million bottles of water Walmart, Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle have made to the schoolchildren of Flint, Michigan to ameliorate their ongoing water crisis. Tucker takes this contribution as evidence of a general trend: “In…

Naomi Klein coined the term “disaster capitalism” to describe what is virtually the only kind of “market reform” that ever takes place in the real world. In the event of collapse or emergency, capitalist elites seize uncontested control of a state and — in collusion with global corporations — force their agenda through without opposition….

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Libertarian Self-Marginalization” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Go to the average mainstream libertarian venue on any given day, and you’re likely to see elaborate apologetics for corporate globalization, Wal-Mart, offshoring, Nike’s sweatshops, rising CO2 levels, income inequality and wealth concentration, CEO salaries, Big Pharma’s profits, and Microsoft’s…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “At Reason War is Peace … and TPP is “Free Trade” read and edited by Tony Dreher. Did you know President Obama’s “core legacy” is free trade — and the centerpiece of this alleged “free trade” policy is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Neither did I. But that’s what Shikha…

Seemingly John Stossel never sits down to write without the goal of further lowering the bar for qualifying as a libertarian. This time (“My Trump Problem,” Reason, Nov. 11), he’s managed to push the criterion to the all-time low of being somewhat less statist than Donald Trump. Stossel’s first problem with Trump allegedly centers on…

In a video produced by the Future of Freedom Foundation (“The Libertarian Angle: Do Libertarians Really Hate the Poor?“), Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling obviously intend a smashing, unanswerable rejoinder to the left-wing stereotype of right-libertarians as “pot-smoking Republicans” who hate the poor. Sadly, it only reaffirms that stereotype. It’s exactly what left-wing critics of libertarianism…

Introduction The capitalist economy has gone through another shock, and the potential for another, larger one is on the horizon. While it’s seemingly in its death throes, capitalism continues to fuel growth. Under such a system we have seen a vast improvement in general living standards across the globe, despite rigged markets and the omnipresent…

È da tanto che anarchici e libertari prendono in giro, riducendola a stereotipo, la classica risposta dell’infantilismo di sinistra di fronte alla prospettiva di una società senza stato: “Come la mettiamo con le strade?” Ma ora due libertari (autodefinitisi tali) hanno fatta loro questa espressione. Rispondendo all’asserzione chiaramente autoevidente secondo cui, da un punto di…

For a long time, anarchists and libertarians have mockingly characterized the stereotypical liberal goo-goo response to any vision of a stateless society as “But what about the rooaaads?” But now a couple of libertarians — at least that’s what they call themselves — have made that phrase their own. In response to the seemingly self-evident…

Did you know President Obama’s “core legacy” is free trade — and the centerpiece of this alleged “free trade” policy is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Neither did I. But that’s what Shikha Dalmia says, writing at the leading right-wing libertarian periodical Reason (“Why Is Hillary Throwing Obama’s Core Legacy on Free Trade Under the Bus?”…

Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to Steven Horwitz. As with Derek Wall, I’m gratified by the thoughtful tone of Steven Horwitz’s response to my lead essay. Where he agrees with me, he makes some good points of his own that add to what I was trying to say — particularly in regard to “free markets” not meaning the…