The short answer is no. Western intervention cannot work, as the fundamental knowledge of the geopolitical situation is completely lacking among the military and political elites of America, Britain, France and other countries. And these talks of a grand, international coalition are a fantasy. Russia don’t really want ground troops there, as they’ve got Assad’s and Iran’s troops. India and China have no real interest. And the Middle Eastern countries outside of Iran are too scared to become involved. Continue reading →

The continuing destruction of the steel industry in the UK has been a major news topic. And as usual we see the typical narrative of either statist leftists who parrot nationalisation and subsidisation as a solution, or the supposed market supporters, who take Ricardian economic arguments of specialisation and butcher them. What neither of these arguments understand is that the modern economy is constrained via government monopoly and artificial economies of scale which favour large scale international trade in heavy industry markets. Continue reading →

This was written back in 2012 during the Tuareg rebellion. I believe some of the predictions have been vindicated. The French intervention hasn’t quelled Islamist sentiments but simply radicalised them further and allowed them to move into other areas of North Africa. The MNLA’s and Tuareg peoples have also been repressed, with their wishes of autonomy being outright ignored. This is the effect of Western imperialism, allowing tensions to fester until violence is seen as the only path: Continue reading →

An institutional approach in monetary political economy means understanding that money and its antecedents are shaped by institutional arrangements. Looking back, we see the Fei of Yapp and Sumerian credit systems, where money was not known, and instead claims were made via credit. Social relations were a significant element of these monetary systems, making institutional characteristics the lynchpin of credit and money. Continue reading →

Rockwell’s recent piece Open Borders: A Libertarian Reappraisal provoked an angry response by Carson in How Low Can Lew Rockwell Go?. However they both go wrong. The former assumes a nonsense, fascistic idea that all American and European whites despise immigration and would prefer communities governed by restrictions on movement that have never been seen and takes a simplistic view of immigration and its forms and effects. However the latter also takes a simplistic view, asserting implicitly that because America was founded on robbery and imperialism, the people who live here now have no right to protect their culture and ideas in the way they would like. Continue reading →

Many may see anarchism and the general idea of statelessness as a pipe dream of abstract intellectualism and childish radicalism. Anyone who says this must have a stunted imagination and they simply serve as the useful idiots of the state and it’s plutocratic class. The Westphalian experiment is very young and in many respects ahistorical. The concept of governance in historical tribal or feudal structures was seen as much more decentralised and even voluntary. There were many different forms of governance, both economic and political. There was decentralised planning and economic control, as seen with kin groups in some tribes in Oceania and the Americas. There were also community credit-clearing systems, as well as local markets with forms of monetary exchange. Continue reading →

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 power of the state. However, who is this growth for? While absolute poverty has been rolled back, and in many Western nations completely eliminated, we still see a large, indebted underclass, a Global South regularly sold out to the interests of capital and a system of vast wealth that only seems accessible to a privileged few. Continue reading →

In this paper I look at the effects of the UK’s national minimum wage on non-university educated 18-21 year olds. I find that the effects are generally negative, with a significant disemployment effect amongst the young and unskilled, whereby general levels of youth unemployment have consistently increased since the minimum wage has been increased above particular productivity levels. There are also major underemployment and training-deficit effects, where hours are usually cut irrelevant of the wider economic picture and there are forms of labour-labour substitution which favour trained, older workers over those entering the labour market. Fundamentally, the minimum wage does not help non-university educated 18-21 year olds in gaining skills, entering the labour market or finding long-term employment. Further, it entangles labour markets, negating their functioning as mechanisms that create employment dynamics. In this respect, I recommend reforms which decentralise the minimum wage toward smaller politico-economic units, allowing for disaggregated knowledge to inform decisions on the minimum wage’s effects. Continue reading →