As originally posted: Center for a Stateless Society on October 6, 2010. Kevin Carson: “Hierarchies are systematically stupid and inefficient, for the following reasons. 1. Hayekian information problems: The people in authority who make the rules interfere with the people who know how to do the job and are in direct contact with the situation…. Continue reading
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Kevin Carson responds to Greer’s “End of the Internet” prediction
(republished from July 2010) Digital technology and the network revolution are at the heart of what’s creating the potential for a low-impact, less resource-intensive economy. Green and high-tech are allies against mass production and the mountains of deliberately obsolete goods piling up in our landfills, and against the globalist economic model of truck/containership warehouses linking… Continue reading
Kevin Carson responds to Greer’s “End of the Internet” prediction
Digital technology and the network revolution are at the heart of what’s creating the potential for a low-impact, less resource-intensive economy. Green and high-tech are allies against mass production and the mountains of deliberately obsolete goods piling up in our landfills, and against the globalist economic model of truck/containership warehouses linking points of production and… Continue reading
Kevin Carson calls for an Open Kindle
Via the C4SS blog. Kevin Carson: “When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.” –Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, 2002. “You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights… Continue reading
Kevin Carson reciprocity in an (un)free market (2): the problem of artificial scarcity
We continue the publication of Kevin Carson’s critique of capitalism from a ‘free market’ perspective. Here, in the last of the two-parter, he outlines what reciprocity can mean under unfree conditions. Kevin Carson: “Privilege–coercion–creates a zero-sum situation in which one party benefits at the expense of the other. There is a symmetrical relationship between one… Continue reading
Kevin Carson on reciprocity in an (un)free market (1)
I asked Kevin Carson, a mutualist who values “free markets” for his vision on Reciprocity. See also here for an extensive discussion of reciprocity in the context of peer to peer dynamics. This is the first of two parts, with part one focusing more on ‘free markets’ and part two on ‘unfree markets’. This is… Continue reading
Kevin Carson on peer production as a crisis of capitalism
Kevin Carson is continuing his work on Organization theory , and has published added drafts and excerpts for chapter 13 and 15. I have always liked Kevin’s work because, though it is libertarian and in his own words, ‘free market fundamentalist’, his brand of mutualism is not based on a justification of the exploitation of… Continue reading
Kevin Carson on decentralized and re-localized production
Kevin Carson is continuing to publish interesting items. He’s been writing new chapters of his book on decentralized production, see here. Chapter 3 and 4 argue that state policies foster excessive scale and centralization. A discussion on the prospects of relocalized production. Here is a must-read critique of the very (legal) form of the corporation… Continue reading
Kevin Carson reacts to our entry on Peer Property
We recently augmented our P2P Foundation Encyclopedia entry on
Book of the Week: Kevin Carson on the Mutualist Political Economy, excerpts
We continue our publication of excerpts from Kevin Carson‘s significant book, which we have read, and strongly recommend. SELECTION THREE, From Chapter Three, “Time Preference and the Labor Theory of Value” …Böhm-Bawerk for the most part stuck to an ahistorical treatment of the actual origins of the distribution of wealth, taking as a given that… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Kevin Carson on the Mutualist Economy
Kevin Carson, the author of one of my favourite blogs has also written a book, which is available online . Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, a book I recently read in full and can strongly recommend, represents a small, I think we can say ‘specifically American’, tradition, which calls itself libertarian or ‘individualist anarchism’, which… Continue reading
Kevin Carson on building the new within the shell of the old
How to make sense of the emerging strands of the P2P movement? In my presentations and lectures, I use a threefold typology to explain the major choices. 1) transgressive: this is what the young filesharers are doing. Based on the most obvious natural use of the technology and the naturalness of sharing, they simply ignore… Continue reading
Kevin Carson defends the LETS menace
In a recent vigorous debate with a corporate libertarian, Kevin Carson has some eloquent paragraphs defending the importance of local exchange trading systems: “LETS systems and other alternative currencies are an instrument of individual freedom, a tool for economic independence from the unholy alliance of the centralized state and the centralized corporate economy. Things like… Continue reading
The Ethical Economy debate (1): Kevin Carson on Tom Peters
Kevin Carson has written a most remarkable essay, about the double nature of the new, ‘peer to peer’ inspired management practices, which can be read as a companion to Adam Arvidsson’s book-in-progress on the Ethical Economy. See also my own comment to the fourth installment of the Ethical Economy book. Kevin’s comments are of particular… Continue reading
Kevin Carson on markets without capitalism
To put the following into context: P2P Theory envisages a new political economy that evolves around a core centered on non-reciprocal peer production (Commons-oriented), surrounded by other modes of production which are re-formed and in-formed by the peer to peer mode. The core would be surrounded by: – a re-invigorated field of reciprocity-based gift economies,… Continue reading
Kevin Carson and Matthew Claxton on Desktop Manufacturing and P2P economies
This is such an interesting explanation from the Mutualist Blog, at that I’m quoting it in full-length. Kevin Carson: In the comments on “The Two Economies,” Matthew Claxton of Little Iguanodon referred me in the comment thread to material on desktop manufacturing. As he says, Manufacturing is already, in small ways, breaking out into an… Continue reading