Beware of Libertarian Red Market Agents

I'm a regular reader of Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog. I also read parts of his book "Studies in Mutualist Political Economy". On his mutualist.org website, I also like his article "The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand", which describes how government power was used to enslave everyone, converting them from farmers and small business owners to factory wage-slaves.

Overall, Kevin Carson is very difficult to read. It's worth it if you have the patience.

According to Kevin Carson, the industrial revolution was a deliberate attack on the average person. Working in a factory is horrible compared to being an independent farmer or small business owner. As a small business owner or farmer, people worked far fewer hours than they do in a factory. As a small business owner or farmer, people worked at their own pace and didn't have to take orders from others. People were unwilling to work 12-14 hours/day for 5 days/week all year long. They were only willing to work part-time, for supplemental income. Their farms or businesses provided them with enough income that they were unwilling to work in factories.

In order to make people willing work in factories "voluntarily", it was necessary to create conditions of poverty. Several boom/bust cycles forced people off their land and out of their businesses, with the Great Depression bankrupting most small farmers and small businessmen. It was necessary to create compulsory public education, so people are trained to be wage-slaves without objecting. In the present, small business owners must be workaholics, to overcome the huge handicap the government has placed on them.

In the present, people "voluntarily" work as wage-slaves because they have no practical alternative. It is theoretically possible to start your own business, but the rules of the economic and political system are stacked against you.

To my surprise, Kevin Carson even has his own Wikipedia page. Usually, Wikipedia censors articles on people who aren't recognized by mainstream media. It appears that Wikipedia mentions him primarily to denounce his work, which seems odd; censorship via omission is much more effective.

According to his own blog, Kevin Carson works in the health care industry. He is not a professional academic, which is probably the reason he can write clearly and with original content. Government sponsorship of academic research is equivalent to government censorship of research. Mainstream economics professors never mention the Compound Interest Paradox, because any professor who wrote about the Compound Interest Paradox would never receive government grants or tenure. A modern research university is an extension of the government, due to its huge dependence on government research grants.

To my surprise, on Wikipedia's article on Kevin Carson, there's a paper by Walter Block that's a sharp criticism of Kevin Carson. It's published on mises.org! The criticism completely ignores Kevin Carson's main point: Government intervention in the market causes an unequal bargaining relationship between employers and employees. The government interference in the marketplace takes three forms: the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and excessive government regulations. Kevin Carson does not explicitly call out the Federal Reserve and income tax like I do.

Walter Block is an economics professor at Loyola University. Why would a professor at Loyola University bother writing a criticism of Kevin Carson's work? After all, Kevin Carson is a health care worker, not a fellow academic. Further, the quality of his criticism is exceptionally poor. It's almost as if he didn't read the book he was criticizing, or didn't understand it. If you disagree with my analysis, you should read both Kevin Carson's book and Walter Block's article.

Even though Walter Block has "academic credentials" as an anarcho-capitalist and Libertarian, his failure to understand Kevin Carson shows that he really has no clue at all. Unfortunately, university-sponsored research is not to be trusted at all. The path to enlightenment is not to be found in a university. Universities are designed to enslave people, not free them. I'm afraid that Walter Block is a Libertarian red market agent. He's an example of The Libertarian Trap.

Why should it be surprising that mainstream economics professors denounce Kevin Carson for pointing out that the Emperor and the whole lot of them are naked!

There is another interesting point to make about writers like Kevin Carson. As far as I can tell, his articles on agorism are the most advanced and sophisticated I've seen. Surely the Supreme Leader of Humanity's agents are aware of Kevin Carson's writings. If the Supreme Leader of Humanity really wanted to suppress Kevin Carson's ideas, it would be very simple to arrange for him to meet an untimely demise. There are plenty of ways to kill someone and make it look like an accident.

When a political movement is in the beginning stages, like the agorism movement, it can be easily halted by killing off the people who are getting it started. The Supreme Leader of Humanity is aware of this tactic. For example, members of Congress who are critical of the Federal Reserve wind up mysteriously dying, have relatives mysteriously die, or they are framed for other crimes. It is only necessary to do this a few times, and eventually nobody in Congress ever speaks out against the Federal Reserve. The Supreme Leader of Humanity has not killed off the people who are trying to get an agorist revolution started. I interpret this as an endorsement of an agorist experiment.

I still consider Kevin Carson to be an order of magnitude behind where I am thinking. Kevin Carson doesn't seem to fully appreciate the role a corrupt monetary system and taxation system plays in enslaving people. As far as I can tell, Kevin Carson is merely writing and philosophizing. I am ready to start trading agorist-style, if only I could find trading partners.