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 preview article at The Guardian last July for his new book Post-Capitalism (“The end of capitalism has begun,” July 17), Paul Mason — following a path previously trodden by John Holloway and by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt — argued that the emergence of a successor system to capitalism would resemble not so…

Questo articolo è stato pubblicato originariamente su The Freeman il 24 agosto 2011 con lo stesso titolo. Il movimento progressista sorto a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento, dottrina da cui nasce la moderna sinistra americana, viene talvolta visto erroneamente come una filosofia “anti-aziendale”. Certo era contro il mercato, ma questo non significa che fosse necessariamente…

Land Allocation Rules are Necessary Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to William Gillis As an alternative to what Will regards as the typical approach in advocating for a set of property rules — basically a sales pitch promoting the features of one compared to all the others — he proposes “one where we don’t exclusively compare prefigurative…

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…

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey, by Michael Huemer (Palgrave McMillan – 2012) Whether anarchy is good or not isn’t important. It’s whether it’s comparatively better than the alternatives. Or at least that’s what Michael Huemer begins arguing in chapter eight of The Problem…

How Rothbardians Occupy Part of the Occupancy-and-Use Spectrum Jason Byas’s Response to Kevin Carson Are We All Mutualists Now? Maybe: Lockeanism as Occupancy & Use The first thing to say in response to Kevin Carson’s opening essay is that he’s largely right. As this exchange’s representative Rothbardian, I agree with his suggestion that the differences…

The Spirit of Dialectical Libertarianism Rejoinder to Shawn Wilbur by Kevin Carson At the outset, before going on to dismiss the “usual” criticisms of occupancy-and-use, Shawn raises some far less common questions of his own — very much in the spirit of dialectical libertarianism — about how the character of an occupancy-and-use system would be…

C4SS’s Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory, Kevin Carson, recently appeared on Party Smasher to talk intellectual property. Some of the topics included big vs. little players in the content industry, the use of IP to enclose common culture, and copyright trolling as censorship. The interview is about 45 mins.    

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?”…

A disconcerting part of the (small g) greenish, cooperative and alternative economy movements is fond of proposals for “New Deals” of one kind or another (Green New Deal, and so forth). I say “disconcerting” because, given the broad tendency of those movements to favor decentralism, economic relocalization and horizontal governance, the New Deal is —…

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…

Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center dropped a truth bomb on the beltway in his recent piece for Fox News about the decline of Rand Paul. Taylor notes that the alleged growth of the libertarian movement in the wake of the Ron Paul campaign was largely illusory. The alienated populists and conspiracy theorists that filled…

A common negative stereotype of the conventional “pot-smoking Republican” variety of libertarian is their condescending dismissal of anyone who disagrees with them as “not understanding economics.” Such people are so fond of firing off this rhetorical weapon that they often use it in situations where it’s far more applicable to themselves. Reason‘s recent commentary on…

Somehow left-libertarianism (or at least my article “What Is Left-Libertarianism?” Center for a Stateless Society, June 15, 2014) has come to the attention of Heather Johnson, a Libertarian candidate for Senate in Minnesota. And not in a good way. “Left-libertarianism,” she says on her Facebook page, “is as much bull***t as right-libertarianism,” because it “violates……

Some anarchists and socialists argue that, even if markets can theoretically be non-capitalist, and non-capitalist market economies can exist, the dynamics of the market will eventually lead to the restoration of capitalism. The argument used by non-market anarchists and socialists is that, in a competitive market — even a competitive market of widespread distribution of…

Robert Reich contends that “Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful” (New York Times, September 20) — and so, to curb its power, big government must become way more powerful. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, like the railroad and oil trusts of the Gilded Age, are to Reich the natural result of market consolidation. Retelling the civics-textbook story of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Expropriation Continues” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. What’s variously called “cognitive,” “progressive” or “green capitalism,” celebrated in Paul Romer’s “New Growth Theory” and heavily promoted by the Gateses, Warren Buffett, and faux-left carpetbaggers like Bono, amounts to a scheme to give capitalism a new…

Cass Sunstein is such an excellent, if unintentional, parody of liberal goo-gooism that it’s hard to tell him from a creation of The Onion. As proof that “our democratic system structures” are not rigged — whatever Gloomy Guses like Elizabeth Warren and Lawrence Lessig may think — Sunstein (“The American System Isn’t Rigged,” BloombergView, August…

Benjamin Tucker notoriamente defendia que a propriedade sobre a terra dependia da ocupação pessoal contínua do dono, de forma que quando um indivíduo deseja alugar um terreno ou uma construção a um locatário, o “senhorio” efetivamente cede seu direito de propriedade ao “inquilino”. Este — a despeito de quaisquer contratos assinados — não tem qualquer…