The milieu of middle-class remain voters are bemoaning something that in their mind is akin to the Norman invasion or World War II or some other equally destructive event. Of course it isn’t, and these people really need to grow up and stop whining like 5 year olds. It is simply a large faction of working class and lower middle class people registering their dissatisfaction with fear mongering campaigns and the stupidity of our political classes. And in the end, it fundamentally changes nothing. Continue reading →

Agorism is the philosophy of counter-economic activity eventually overcoming the statist economic consensus. It’s not simply black market activity, but rather a whole alternative economy that operates just below the surface of state capitalism. While seen by some (including Rothbard) as a niche element to the state’s leviathan, Konkin himself noted that the counter economy encompasses a huge range of activity, from black market heavy industry in Burma to the cottage industry of medical marijuana in the United States. In the modern world, where regulation is more pernicious than ever before, and is enforced through a huge range of trade agreements, product directives and intellectual property law, agorism is more important than ever. New developments in technology and software are increasingly enclosed by corporate vested interests through the mechanisms of intellectual property and complex trade law.

Its the day of voting, and of course everyone is keen to make their views known and push forward their ideology and opinions. In that respect, I may as well say I’ll vote to leave, simply because potentially seceding from one unaccountable bloc of power may potentially lead to other such secession-based movements and ideas. That’s it. That’s the only reason I can possibly think to bother voting at all. Leaving one centralised power hopefully causes a whole raft of decentralisation. Continue reading →

Those of the Vote Leave side in the referendum regularly tout the importance of British democracy relative to the supposed unaccountability of the EU elites. They say that you can fire a government here, unlike in Brussels. However, this kind of rubbish is patently false when looking at the actual structures present in British government. The most important and powerful structures are the civil service and the range of quangos which decide on the regulatory mechanisms that are applied in the EU. Those effected by such mechanisms have no real say, as members of these committees and groups are appointed by governments. Continue reading →

I’ve made it clear that I don’t see the EU referendum as particularly important. The major economic questions surrounding the modern world, from banking fragility and capital creation, to huge levels of private and sovereign debt and politico-economic centralisation are not remotely addressed within this debate, except maybe on the peripheries. If we leave, economic and political power will simply be moved from unaccountable elites in Brussels to those in Westminster and its parasitical institutions. Democracy is not important in this debate as some have emphasised, as realistically the kind of representative democracy we have has led to many of the ridiculous problems the UK faces today, from failing social systems to a debt-led economy. Representative democracy relies on mass ignorance and the ability to debate non-issues among non-representative parties. Continue reading →

Michael Gibson tries to demonstrate the infeasibility of a universal basic income by showing that people actually like to work, as evidenced by the increase of hours relative to increased prosperity witnessed during the 20th and 21st centuries. According to him, a UBI would not work as major disincentives are created, which Gibson shows by looking at parallel examples from lottery winners who have not achieved the Marxian dream of free producers but have instead gone down a path of destructiveness and despair. Thus are the effects of “money for nothing”.

The young of today find themselves in the artificial globalism of the modern world. Traditional identities no longer matter if one has the ability to travel and get cheap rates on their mobile phone. Laughably, despite this, the young are still seen as politically and socially radical in some way. This supposed radicalism of the young has given place to a pathetic acceptance of neoliberal globalisation. At university today, we hear the modern left support staying in the EU (an institution founded on the principles of neoliberalism) and accepting this moronic idea of a “globalised world”, which we must be citizens of. National identity or ethnic tribalism, well these are racist. How about localism and economic independence, well these are isolationist and probably proto-fascistic. Such are the responses of today’s radical youth. Continue reading →

Its the last day for people to register to vote in the upcoming EU referendum. Everyone, from laypeople to experts to politicians, are telling you that this is the vote of a generation. That the outcome will radically change the UK one way or another. I’m not convinced. If we look at where the power lies on both sides of this referendum, we see extremely similar proposals and campaigns. It’s not to say that there aren’t radical ideas being developed. On the Leave side, there is David Davis, Steve Baker, Douglas Carswell, the Traditional Britain Group, the TUSC party and the Flexcit campaign, an assortment of radically libertarian and decentralist ideologies and campaigners. But they’re not going to be in power after June 23rd. Continue reading →

This article examines markets as structures independent of capitalist socio-economic organisation. It rethinks markets as economic tools that can be placed in radically different economic systems far removed from the normalities of capitalism. By examining how markets are shaped by five monopolies created by state intervention and artificial economies of scale that rely on massive subsidisation, I see how some of the fundamentals of capitalism, the factor markets and capital-labour relations, are reshaped in a conception of free markets that are not influenced by capitalist agency. I go on to see how the Austrian School’s subject of the individual as an agent of subjective economic desires is changed when placed within structures of free, or freed, markets. The institutions of markets, the surplus value distribution and the multiple social relations that present themselves as possible under a regime of rethought markets shows this subject as instituted in a diverse economy of possibilities and existences. I then examine how, even under capitalism, such a diverse economy already exists on the peripheries and in the interstices of the modern economy. Continue reading →

In invoking the need for stringent economic regulations, their proponents regularly bring up the case that without these regulations the dumb consumer would fall prey to food poisoning, faulty production and all other sorts of calamities and disasters. In effect, they are saying that the consumer is far too stupid to have the capacity to actually choose, and instead needs the guiding hand of the coercive state to do it for him. I call this the dumb consumer fallacy. Continue reading →