Archive for Kevin A. Carson
Kevin Carson is the author of Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective and a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society. He blogs at Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism.
Taylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts
The Progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century—the doctrine from which the main current of modern liberalism developed—is sometimes erroneously viewed as an “anti-business” philosophy. It was anti-market to be sure, but by no means necessarily anti-business. Progressivism was, more than anything, managerialist. The American economy after the Civil War became increasingly dominated [...]
24Aug2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | ContinuedWere You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a New Life
I like to compare the rival coalitions of organized capital represented by the major parties to two farmers. One farmer thinks it’s more profitable in the long run to work his livestock in moderation and feed them well. The other figures he’ll come out ahead by just working them to death and replacing them. I [...]
25May2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 7 comments | ContinuedWhat Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out
In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]
24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies
Although critics on the left are very astute in describing the evils of present-day society, they usually fail to understand either the root of those problems (government intervention) or their solution (the operation of a freed market). In Progressive commentary on energy, pollution, and so on—otherwise often quite insightful—calls for government intervention are quite common. [...]
22Oct2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 51 comments | ContinuedCommon Versus Government Property
A central contribution of Elinor Ostrom, which earned her a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics, was to reclaim the commons as a legitimate form of property. (For more detail, see Peter Boettke’s December 2009 Freeman article.) Organization theorist Dick Langlois always makes it a practice in his European economic history class to [...]
19Apr2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 52 comments | ContinuedHealth Care and Radical Monopoly
In a recent article for Tikkun, Dr. Arnold Relman argued that the versions of health care reform currently proposed by “progressives” all primarily involve financing health care and expanding coverage to the uninsured rather than addressing the way current models of service delivery make it so expensive. Editing out all the pro forma tut-tutting of [...]
23Feb2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 23 comments | ContinuedHow “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course from the attempt to maintain occupancy of physical property that cannot be possessed [...]
23Sep2009 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | ContinuedFree Market Reforms and the Reduction of Statism
Objectivist scholar Chris Sciabarra, in his brilliant book Total Freedom, called for a “dialectical libertarianism.” By dialectical analysis, Sciabarra means to “grasp the nature of a part by viewing it systemically—that is, as an extension of the system within which it is embedded.” Individual parts receive their character from the whole of which they are [...]
1Sep2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 8 comments | ContinuedThe Subsidy of History
A considerable number of libertarian commentators have remarked on the sheer scale of subsidies and protections to big business, on their structural importance to the existing form of corporate capitalism, and on the close intermeshing of corporate and state interests in the present state capitalist economy. We pay less attention, however, to the role of [...]
1Jun2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 16 comments | ContinuedHierarchy or the Market
In an article in last June’s Freeman, I applied some ideas from the socialist-calculation debate to the private corporation and examined the extent to which it is an island of calculational chaos in the market economy. I’d like to expand that line of analysis now and apply some common free-market insights on knowledge and incentives [...]
1Apr2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 2 comments | ContinuedEconomic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth
The general lines of Ludwig von Mises’s rational-calculation argument are well known. A market in factors of production is necessary for pricing production inputs so that a planner may allocate them rationally. The problem has nothing to do either with the volume of data or with agency problems. The question, rather, as Peter Klein put [...]
1Jun2007 | Kevin A. Carson | 20 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
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The Snow Plowers’ Petition
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Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
