Every time I write a commentary on one of John Stossel’s godawful columns, I tell myself I’ll lay off him for a while. But good lord, this latest wretched little piece of pro-corporate apologetics (“Corporations Have Become Hollywood’s Go-To Villains,” Reason, July 1) is about the worst thing he’s ever done. The biggest challenge any…

Usually when right-libertarians defend gentrification, they do so by framing it as an entirely spontaneous free market phenomenon, and minimizing or ignoring the state’s role in promoting it. That’s bad enough. But we don’t usually expect them to come out explicitly in favor of direct state intervention to evict poor people for the sake of…

Cathy Reisenwitz announced last week that she was quitting full-time libertarian commentary to pursue a career in sales. She wrote in her blog post announcing this move that, “I want to learn to connect better. And getting successful at sales will require humility and constant feedback, and self-improvement is so incredibly important to building a…

Pope Francis’s remarks on poverty, inequality and capitalism — most recently at his open air mass in Seoul — don’t sit well with many conservatives and right-leaning libertarians. The Pope’s remarks include criticism of growing economic inequality and a call to “hear the voice of the poor.” Among those who take issue with the Pope’s statement is…

Just about every week another story comes to my attention confirming the complete and total government-dependency of fracking — beloved of so many self-proclaimed “free market” advocates on the libertarian right. Something about eminent domain to build the pipelines, or liability caps for spills, or regulatory approval of unsafe pipelines superseding tort liability for negligence, and…

Gehen Sie zu einer durchschnittlichen libertären Veranstaltung an einem beliebigen Tag, und es ist wahrscheinlich, dass Sie ausführliche Verteidigungen für unternehmerische Globalisierung, Wal-Mart, Offshoring, Nike’s Sweatshops, steigende CO2-Pegel, Einkommensunterschiede und Wohlstandskonzentration, Managergehälter, Pharmaprofite und Microsofts Marktanteil sehen werden, alle basierend auf Prinzipien des „freien Marktes“ – verbunden mit energischem Bestreiten aller wahrgenommenen Übel korporatistischer Macht,…

Carson: The corporate Pharisees of our day strain at a gnat using “free market” rhetoric to attack welfare for the poor, but swallow a camel when it comes to welfare for corporations.

Mercatus: The rights of marginalized individuals are trivial and “them pore ol’ bosses need all the help they can get.”

Thomas L. Knapp: Bourgeois libertarianism is a failure not of theory or of ideology, but of imagination.

A libertarian movement that dismisses the public’s concerns about very real problems, apparent to anyone with eyes in their head, with doctrinaire denials that they exist or can exist, is a libertarian movement doomed to irrelevance.

Kevin Carson: This makes the unwarranted assumption that working for someone else is the only way of reducing risk, as opposed to cooperative ownership, federation, etc..

Kevin Carson: This school of libertarianism has inscribed on its banner the reactionary watchword: “Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get.”

Kevin Carson: You’d almost think there was a hidden agenda here.

Jason Byas: Wayne Allyn Root is a capitalist evangelist, at least he got one thing right.

Vulgar libertarian watch…

Carson: If I thought “free markets” and “free trade” really meant what neoliberal talking heads mean by them, I’d hate them too.

Carson: Exatamente aquilo contra o que lutamos.

Carson: Exactamente contra lo que nosotros peleamos.

Carson: Exactly what we’re fighting against.

Kevin Carson: Words mean things.