Robert Johannes, a 73 year old man, is currently incarcerated in Michigan. His attorney, Daniel E. Manville, contends that inadequate access to dental care has left Johannes missing teeth for extended periods of time and unable to eat. As Michigan Live reported, “The lawsuit claims that Johannes has had several teeth removed, including three bicuspids and…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Education and Equity” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Any genuine proposal for educational reform will have to start with the distribution of power and privilege in society at large. And the idea that the state — whose main function is to serve, maintain and reproduce this distribution of power…

C4SS Media presents Gary Chartier‘s “We Should Abandon The Term ‘Capitalism‘” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Advocating liberty means opposing the use of force to restrain peaceful, voluntary exchange. But it doesn’t have to mean calling a system of peaceful, voluntary exchange “capitalism.”

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Gnosticism of Power” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this: Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material…

About 2,748,978 Americans are employees of the federal government. The population of the US is somewhere around 317,940,000. The federal government takes 17.3% of Gross Domestic Product in taxes. So the average federal employee controls a little more than 20 times as much of each year’s produced wealth as the average American. And it’s not…

For decades taxi regulations have served as the textbook example of government regulations creating artificial enclosures, rents, and wage labor. In addition to a host of prohibitous regulations that even extend to the color of a driver’s socks, the “medallion” system dramatically limits the number of taxi in major cities while at the same time…

My name is Nick Ford and I would like to welcome you to this blog of mine, Hardly Working. The goal of this blog is to promote a future where none of us will have to work. And by “work” I don’t mean just giving effort, but labor that we give to others under systematic…

It’s common for Democrats to depict themselves as the “party of compassion,” as opposed to the Wall Street stooges in the GOP,  resorting to soccer mom rhetoric about “American working families” and “sitting around the kitchen table.” Republicans, on the other side, frame themselves as the “free enterprise” party — unlike those anti-business socialists on…

Around the country, consumers are greeting newly arrived rideshare and taxi alternative companies like Lyft and Uber with fanfare. Some people, though, aren’t so happy. Taxi companies, for example, are lobbying city and local governments to heavily regulate and outright ban these services from the streets — ostensibly for “safety” reasons. One group in Seattle…

Kyle Platt chats with Sheldon Richman about the recent standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy. Who has a claim to the land? Can a government own land?

Venerdì scorso (undici aprile), un terreno nei sobborghi di Rio de Janeiro è stato reso al gigante della telefonia fissa Oi. L’area, conosciuta come “favela da Jelerj” era stata occupata da 5.000 persone, provenienti soprattutto dalle favelas di Mandela, Manguinhos e Jacarezinho, che lì avevano costruito le loro case improvvisate. Ci sono stati scontri con…

In a New York Times letter to the editor (“Invitation to a Dialogue: Unequal Schooling,” April 22), Heather Gautney – a professor of sociology at Fordham University – expresses understandable dismay at the inequitable distribution of resources in the public school system. After citing the common American belief that “education is the great opportunity equalizer –…

The second part of Richard Ebeling’s discussion of individual self-determination vs Russian or Ukrainian or Russian nationalism. Andrew J. Bacevich reviews The Education of an Anti-Imperialist: Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansionism. Justin Raimondo compares the American invasion of Afghanistan with the Russian invasion of Crimea. Philip Giraldi discusses Gareth Porter’s new book titled Manufactured…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Charles Koch Clutches Pearls, Dies of Moral Rectitude” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Over two hundred years ago free market economist Adam Smith pointed out that, when businesspeople get involved in government, it’s to protect themselves against competition and rob the public. That’s just as true of the Kochs…

The Bundy ranch saga has been the subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good guys in this. The respective echo chambers for the two sides differ on…

Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this: Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material world, and from direct experience of the constraints offered by material reality. For example, earlier…

Ahmad Barqawi discusses why the Arab League should be dissolved. Binoy Kampmark discusses the military dictatorship in Egypt. Roberta A. Modugno discusses the Levellers. Lucy Steigerwald discusses how the War on Drugs is literal. James Bovard discusses USDA’s regulation of raisin production and distribution. Ryan McMaken discusses Ron Paul, Richard Cobden, and the risky nature…

Part 1: Kolko at Home An earlier generation of libertarians was interested in Gabriel Kolko, a historian of the Left. Who was he? Born in 1932 in Paterson, NJ, historian Gabriel Kolko studied at Kent State, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University (PhD: 1962). From 1970 until his retirement he taught history at York…

Last Friday (04/11), a piece of land property in Rio’s suburbia was reinstated to telecom giant Oi. The area was known as “favela da Telerj” and had been occupied by 5,000 people, mostly from Mandela, Manguinhos, and Jacarezinho favelas, who built improvised homes there. There were serious confrontations with the Military Police in the enforcement…

If you thought the standards of the Famous Artists’ School (“Can You Draw the Pirate?”) on old matchbook covers were lax, wait till you see Reason magazine’s criteria for recognition as a “free market think-tank.” The American Federation of Teachers blacklists asset managers who manage public sector employees’ defined benefit pension funds, but have contributed…