The Only Thing Dumber Than Libertarianism’s Critics ar...
In a recent piece that got lots of replay from the online liberal commentariat, Michael Lind (“The Question Libertarians Just Can’t Answer,” Salon, June 4) posed what he considered an unanswerable question to libertarians: “Why are there no libertarian countries?… If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it?” If anything, Lind’s…
It’s Not About Privacy
The collective responses to the dramatic revelations of NSA mass surveillance feel like the well-worn plot of a classic movie. The story reminds me of the government’s admission a few years back that Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction. By the time it was admitted, everybody had already figured out the emperor…
Move over Karl, Anarchism Is Back!
Anarchists tend to look embarrassed when the subject of economics comes up. Or we mumble something about Proudhon and then sheepishly borrow ideas from Karl Marx. It has always struck me as ironic that anarchism began largely as an economic theory, think only of Josiah Warren, Proudhon and Tucker, but then abandoned the field to…
New Tech as a Force Multiplier and Equalizer: Bootstrapping ...
The generation of energy, whether it be the gas you pump into your tank or the coal burned to produce electricity to power your computer, is estimated to contribute upwards of 82% of all greenhouse gas emission. To add insult to injury, many of these firms have long been associated with the more deleterious impacts of neoliberal development. Of course we all know about BP’s destruction of the entire Gulf region…