In the late 19th century, the decentralizing potential of the Second Industrial Revolution — the introduction of electrical power into industry — was a common theme in social analysis. The idea was that electrical power was destroying the technical rationale for large factories. The main reason for the Dark Satanic Mills of the First Industrial…

Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West and “is set to become the world’s largest apparel exporter over the next few years,”…

Of all the self-styled libertarian commentaries attempting to put the Bangladesh garment factory tragedy in “perspective,” Benjamin Powell’s is probably the worst (“Sweatshops In Bangladesh Improve The Lives Of Their Workers, And Boost Growth,” Forbes, May 2). In Bangladesh, Powell writes, “some 4,500 garment factories employ approximately 4 million workers. In the grand scheme of…

The American medical system is corrupt, ineffective and unnecessarily costly. These outcomes are due to state violence on behalf of the politically connected elite (namely private insurers, physicians, pharmaceutical and medical device companies). Artificial scarcity, price-gouging, misallocation of research funding and the suppression of alternative (non-patentable) therapies can be ameliorated

There’s nothing quite so funny as the sight of the authoritarian functionaries of a dying order trying to suppress a revolution they don’t understand — and failing miserably. The State Department’s attempt to censor 3-D printable gun files from DEFCAD is the latest — and one of the most gut-bustingly hilarious — attempts by the…

In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage “suspicion about government.” “The government’s us,” he responded. “These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.” But if government were “us,” why would we…

In every city and in most towns there still exist such bastions of communism so radical as to make even dastardly terrorist cells like the Pirate Bay pale by comparison. For in these crooked dens one might find not just the free sharing of information but non-consumable physical goods as well. Some even allow you…

Carson: Capitalism may have many varieties, types or flavors, but they all have one thing in common – they have nothing to do with a free market.

Kevin Carson: So much for the hype. What’s the reality?

Carson: Had the industrial revolution taken place in a genuine free market, our economy today would probably be far closer to the vision of Lewis Mumford than that of Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred Chandler.

D’Amato: As much as I hate to spoil the ending, neither Democrats nor Republicans are interested in anything like a real free market.

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.

M. George van der Meer: We are now approaching a breaking point, a culmination of long-unfolding trends that will witness the old forces of rigid hierarchy and centrality collide with the dynamism of the networked, freed market.

Knapp: Monopolists don’t like living in the real world, and politicians traffic in telling them they don’t have to.

Carson: Just what “liberation” meant to Rummy, Dummy and Scummy can be seen from the agenda Paul Bremer implemented as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.

Hultner: The solution to the problem of patent trolling is not to “regulate” it with faulty measures and half-steps in the “right direction.”

Kevin Carson: It’s time to pursue a vision of justice and freedom based on our own actions, on peaceful cooperation, mutual aid and solidarity with our friends and neighbors — not as a gift that depends on the temporary benevolence of a dictator.

Kevin Carson: The central identifying feature of a reformist effort is that it fails to strike at the root of oppression — power.

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Carson: Don’t fall for the line that state functionaries “work for us.” Take a look at where they worked before they entered “public service” and watch where they go back to afterward. Guess what? They’re working there right now, too.