Kevin Carson

Freelance writer and anarchist
kevinacarson.org
C4SS.org
@kevincarson1.bsky.social
Patreon.com/KevinCarson

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Last Notes

2026-07-20 22:43:53 GMT

Zohran Mamdani’s City Hall Wants to Build Tenant Unions
https://jacobin.com/2026/07/mamdani-tenant-unions-rental-ripoff

2026-03-21 15:18:25 GMT

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The root of the problem lies in the ideology, and associated practice, of goldbuggery and other assorted "hard money" systems.

2026-03-20 19:03:31 GMT

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So no work is required to generate or create bitcoin? "Backing" and value referent aren't the same function. People in medieval village open-tab units used Carolingian currency as an accounting unit just for tracking the value of goods and services people advanced to one another, but nobody actually possessed any currency.

2026-03-20 18:48:59 GMT

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My problem with bitcoin in general is it's based on the myth of monetary scarcity -- that money has to be "backed" by something (i.e. mining/"proof of work").

2026-03-17 15:28:52 GMT

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FWIW, I don't think he's just someone else's product -- he's more of a loose cannon than that. Given cultural changes on the right (and especially in reaction to Obama), his preexisting celebrity status and "maverick" persona, and the new possibilities of direct marketing through the internet, he was able to appeal directly and galvanize a lot of latent reactionary white resentment. There are certainly a lot of different big interests who saw him as an opportunity and tried to latch onto him as their frontman -- the alt right/Yarvin/Vance/Miller/Thiel group, the Evangelical/New Apostolic/Christian Nationalist group, the Silicon Valley technofeudal billionaire group, etc. But it's a very unstable coalition of groups that already have their knives out for each other in anticipation when his time runs out, and I don't think anyone else could bring them all together or personally appeal to a mass base the way he has.

2026-03-16 20:42:04 GMT

I think his authoritarian desires are limitless.... But he’s in a much weaker position than... Orbán....
They’re lawless... but that doesn’t make them omnipotent. They still have to deal with the realities of a very complex modern society and a complex political system....
...What we’re seeing is escalation, and... it is causing tremendous damage...but from the perspective of [whether] this is a plausible path toward consolidating authoritarian rule: they’re not doing it right. They’re too incompetent. This is too haphazard; there’s no planning, there’s no strategy.
https://newrepublic.com/article/207714/transcript-many-trump-authoritarian-moves-failed

2026-03-16 16:23:43 GMT

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Just today I had an "ancap" who goes by the name Hogeye Bill (who, I found out when I checked his feed, also turned out to be an Epstein defender dismissing Virginia Giuffre as a gold-digger) show up in my replies at Bluesky attempting to argue against the piece. He was so immersed in Austrian "money theory of credit" and "advance theory of capital" assumptions that he didn't even realize, after supposedly reading the piece, that I *didn't* agree with him that the capitalist performs a "necessary function" of "saving and building capital," and that it naturally "compounds".

2026-03-09 23:45:46 GMT

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You can't carry on complex industrial production with in-kind calculations. There needs to be some common quantitative unit. And the whole point is that in a system that doesn't require possession of reserves, and doesn't treat credit as "lending" against such past reserves, there's nothing to accumulate. Just ongoing balances. And if you think I'm talking about a system backed up by debt collectors and soldiers, you really need to question how you managed to infer that.

2026-03-07 22:46:31 GMT

The argument that capitalists are needed to provide workers with means of production, and profit is their reward for doing so, is nonsense.
All capitalists have are paper or digital claims on the right to allocate means of production or material resources. All of the actual material resources -- means of production and raw materials -- are entirely the product of labor acting on free gifts of nature.
The entire point at issue is the legitimacy of the process by which capitalists happen to be in possession of those paper or digital claims, and how workers come to be dependent on those claims. Why, instead of groups of workers simply acting on the free gifts of nature, advancing streams of material resources to one another, and using a simple unit of account to track the balance of these advances of material resources and who owes what to whom, do they have to go to someone who is in possession of stockpiles of these imaginary paper claims?
Why are capitalists able to interpose themselves between groups of workers, and create the illusion that they are "providing" something when they are in fact simply controlling a toll gate?
The problem is the myth that money is a "thing," some sort of commodity with an independent existence and value of its own, when in fact it is simply a unit of measurement like an inch or a pound. We have a money and credit system based on the myth that a certain class of people must accumulate a pile of paper claims and then "lend" credit "against" them -- a "service" for which they are entitled to payment.
It's as nonsensical as the idea that, in order to cut lumber and build something, a carpenter must first find someone in possession of a pile of inches who can provide them. Imagine all the wasted resources, all the impeded production, if such a bizarre state of affairs actually existed. Imagine how much housing would go unbuilt, how much food would go uneaten, if before the carpenter could saw lumber or the butcher could weigh a cut of meat they had to go to the owner of a supply of inches or pounds and pay tribute for using them. There would be an entire class of people whose incomes came from such tribute for not impeding production. Great amounts of use-value would go unproduced despite the producers having the labor and materials required for production, for want of enough money to pay for the inches and pounds. The owners of inches and pounds would use their revenue to pay for still more inches and pounds, continuing to concentrate the ownership of them, so that they could charge higher and higher prices. There would be great accumulations of inches and pounds, far more than could be used, and equally great amounts of labor and material resources going idle, because producers could not afford the inches and pounds needed to put their labor and materials to use.
This is the world we live in.

2026-02-27 21:57:48 GMT

"There are a lot of people who came into Trumpworld just because Trump seemed to be the winner and the kingmaker. As soon as he weakens, I believe people are going to peel off—and he has been weaker and weaker and weaker.... I do believe the only tool he really has left is violence and threats. But that is a brittle form of authority."
https://newrepublic.com/article/207130/transcript-trump-epstein-scandal-takes-brutal-turn-maga-tailspins

2026-02-15 16:55:44 GMT

With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet
https://www.404media.co/with-ring-american-consumers-built-a-surveillance-dragnet/

2026-01-17 00:44:33 GMT

Interactive map of every ICE contractor working with the Trump administration.
https://readsludge.com/2026/01/16/the-companies-behind-ice/

2025-12-30 21:40:52 GMT

No, the money does not exist for you or me or a person. Money is for entities that could potentially funnel more money into the economy, even if the ways that these entities use the money are reckless and foolhardy, because the system’s intent on keeping entities alive incentivizes it.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittifinancial-crisis/?ref=ed-zitrons-wheres-your-ed-at-newsletter

2025-12-02 17:28:28 GMT

"the issue isn’t that we need more 'boy-friendly' reforms. It’s that boys are socialized to compete only with boys and to read girls’ success as illegitimate or emasculating. The result is dissonance, resentment, and disengagement for boys—and hostile climates for girls."
https://time.com/7335723/auto-draft-25-2/

2025-11-12 18:22:09 GMT

ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed over 700 videos posted on social media.
The network used five-year-old footage, mislabeled other dates and implied footage from elsewhere was in Portland.
https://www.propublica.org/article/portland-protests-national-guard-fox-news-coverage

2025-11-12 18:07:21 GMT

ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-supremacist-x-account/

2025-11-12 17:43:30 GMT

Since the Civil Rights era, right-wing politics has been fueled entirely by a series of backlashes when any group with less power than them made a successful attempt to be treated like human beings.
Meanwhile they're the world's biggest crybullies, thinking they're Anne Frank because they had to hear someone speaking Spanish or see two men holding hands in public without killing them on the spot, or the school library has books that weren't vetted by Jim Bob Duggar.

2025-11-12 01:13:30 GMT

Here’s the Name of Every Senate Democrat Who Caved to GOP on Shutdown | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/post/202930/name-senate-democrats-caved-government-shutdown

2025-10-26 23:50:21 GMT

You Don’t Argue With Extremists. You Organize Against Them
https://zeteo.com/p/research-debate-extremists-organizing

2025-10-08 16:34:00 GMT

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back - The Onion
https://theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leaving-o-1819577456/

2025-10-06 22:23:47 GMT

The World’s Most Annoying Man
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man

2025-10-05 17:00:50 GMT

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/indigenous-nations-plan-tariff-free-trade-corridor-across-us-canada-border/

2025-09-30 22:37:56 GMT

From Capital to Commons: A Review | Grassroots Economic Organizing
https://geo.coop/articles/capital-commons-review

2025-09-24 21:33:45 GMT

Pluralistic: The billionaires aren’t OK (24 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/24/robo-lickspittle/

2025-09-24 20:39:25 GMT

Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Program Spent Twice as Much on Administrative Costs as on Health Care, GAO Says — ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-pathways-medicaid-work-requirement-gao-report

2025-09-24 20:14:30 GMT

ICE Agents Held 5-Year-Old Autistic Girl as Bait to Arrest Her Dad | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/post/200827/ice-5-year-old-autistic-girl-arrest-dad

2025-09-24 17:47:13 GMT

"More than a million people had canceled Disney streaming subscriptions as of Monday, the Disney source told me, and the company likely knew that trend would only continue the longer they kept Kimmel silenced."
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/kimmel-reinstatement-disney-price-increase-scoop

2025-09-24 15:38:56 GMT

RFK Jr. Promotes Natural Immunity With Invitation To Touch His Festering Sore - The Onion
https://theonion.com/rfk-jr-promotes-natural-immunity-with-invitation-to-touch-his-festering-sore/

2025-09-23 19:34:02 GMT

AI Workslop Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable
https://www.404media.co/ai-workslop-is-killing-productivity-and-making-workers-miserable/

2025-09-18 20:53:21 GMT

JD Vance admits administration has no idea whether the people it's murdering are "drug traffickers" or random fishermen
https://truthout.org/articles/jd-vance-jokes-about-us-vessel-strikes-i-wouldnt-go-fishing-right-now/

2025-09-18 14:37:46 GMT

Between the Texas A&M student complaining that a professor was disobeying "President Trump's laws," and the woman complaining that businesses in NY hadn't lowered flags despite Trump "ordering" them to do so, it's safe to say the right-wing public has an increasingly Schmittian view of the Constitution.
https://theonion.com/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-consti-1819571149/

2025-09-16 18:01:19 GMT

DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing
https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/

2025-09-15 18:30:00 GMT

The Data Center Building Boom Is Running Into Local Resistance – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/data-center-construction-ai-water-local-resistance/

2025-09-12 02:19:58 GMT

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro convicted of plotting coup, sentenced to over 27 years in prison | CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/11/americas/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-coup-trial-verdict-latam-intl

2025-09-09 23:14:09 GMT

Georgia judge to toss landmark racketeering charges against 'Cop City' protesters - ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/georgia-judge-toss-landmark-racketeering-charges-cop-city-125404264

2025-09-09 23:07:29 GMT

What the Polls Are Screaming to ‘Mainstream’ Democrats - The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-09-09-what-polls-are-screaming-mainstream-democrats/

2025-09-09 22:20:16 GMT

‘It's Just a Mess:' 23 People Explain How Tariffs Have Suddenly Ruined Their Hobby
https://www.404media.co/its-just-a-mess-23-people-explain-how-tariffs-have-suddenly-ruined-their-hobby/

2025-09-09 20:00:12 GMT

"AGAINST OUR PRESIDENT'S LAWS"??? She should never have been allowed to graduate middle school, let alone high school.
https://www.kbtx.com/2025/09/09/am-dean-professor-removed-following-student-complaints-over-curriculum/

2025-09-09 18:35:12 GMT

Hero
https://abc7.com/post/dhs-agent-assaulted-skateboard-downtown-los-angeles-during-immigration-arrest/17773031/

2025-09-06 22:06:59 GMT

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“It appears that ICE ultimately paid $90,000 for each Chevrolet Tahoe, which has a starting price of approximately $63,000, calling into question whether the government received the best value.”

2025-09-06 22:01:44 GMT

"the $2.25 million contract for 25 SUVs was awarded without competition to Hendrick Motorsports LLC, a company owned by prolific Republican donor Joseph Riddick Hendrick III."
https://zeteo.com/p/exclusive-zeteo-story-on-dubious

2025-09-04 21:12:56 GMT

Transcript: Epstein Survivor Nukes Trump in Moving Speech as WH Panics | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/199979/transcript-epstein-survivor-nukes-trump-moving-speech-wh-panics

2025-08-29 15:22:30 GMT

Katrina Set the Stage for New Orleans’s Capture by Investors
https://jacobin.com/2025/08/katrina-new-orleans-investors-neoliberalism-housing/

2025-08-29 15:20:40 GMT

Trump Was ‘Disappointed’ By the Army Parade On His Bday and Wants to Try Again - TPM – Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/trump-was-disappointed-by-the-army-parade-on-his-bday-and-wants-to-try-again

2025-08-29 14:56:52 GMT

Transcript: Trump Press Sec’s Dumb Spin Implodes as RFK Fiasco Worsens | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/199832/transcript-trump-press-sec-dumb-spin-implodes-rfk-fiasco-worsens

2025-08-26 20:12:08 GMT

Which Costs Washington More: Wage Theft or Shoplifting? Economic Opportunity Institute
https://www.opportunityinstitute.org/blog/post/organized-retail-theft-wage-theft/

2025-06-08 12:03:46 GMT

"It's really hard to fathom that the guy making my pizza for 25 years is a gangster and a terrorist, and the person who shows up in an unmarked car wearing a mask and body armor comes to take him away is somehow the good guy”
https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/wayne-county/its-just-made-to-instill-fear-ice-detains-3-restaurant-employees-in-wayne-county-honesdale/523-e463cdf3-4464-44f3-89ae-08a499f77768

2025-03-15 19:04:20 GMT

Why are working-class people conditioned to feel ashamed about owing unjust debt? Why are we constantly told to embrace personal responsibility and “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps”? Because the ruling class spends billions shaping these narratives—encouraging us to police ourselves and each other instead of building solidarity.
Debtor solidarity is powerful. And we can fight back.
https://debtcollective.org/event/100-days-from-shame-to-solidarity-politicizing-sharing-your-story/

2025-02-28 18:26:02 GMT

The U.S. government has put up a submission form for reporting schools who teach kids about “DEI.” It accepts file uploads. Internet, you know what to do: https://enddei.ed.gov/

2024-11-06 18:05:42 GMT

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Thank you!

2024-11-06 18:02:42 GMT

Because of last night's events in the US, many of us are fearful for our own futures, of those we love, and of vulnerable populations. So I know my concerns aren't -- and shouldn't be -- of much importance in the light of your own.
But if any of you know of any paid writing opportunities from organizations interested in my line of subject matter (primarily postcapitalist transition, and the technological and institutional building blocks of a future postcapitalist society), I'd appreciate your passing them on to me.
My writing income is entirely donor-dependent, either through Patreon or indirectly through C4SS (which is donor-funded). Since people's willingness to support writing is heavily influenced by economic conditions, the potential for near-term economic disruption leaves me extremely concerned about my level of exposure, given... recent events.
I hope all of you are doing well, and continue doing so in these uncertain times.
www.patreon.com/kevincarson

2024-10-21 01:43:56 GMT

Elon Musk’s “petition” site is a data mining operation. You can just put anything in the fields, there is no check.
We can poison the entire data set SUPER EASILY. Just pick a zip code in the suburb of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh and fill in the rest of your ID with anything you like.
https://petition.theamericapac.org/

2024-10-18 21:47:09 GMT

Elon Musk is paying registered voters in swing states to sign this petition. Please do NOT flood it with fake signatures like "Jack Meoff" and "Hugh G. Rection."
https://petition.theamericapac.org/

2024-09-30 18:31:35 GMT

My latest at C4SS
https://c4ss.org/content/59895

2024-09-25 19:13:34 GMT

Center for a Stateless Society » Meritocracy is Bullshit
https://c4ss.org/content/59889

2024-09-25 19:13:19 GMT

Center for a Stateless Society » Book Review: Assets in Common
https://c4ss.org/content/59886

2024-09-19 23:37:59 GMT

Specifically mentions housing co-ops, community land trusts, and ending the status of land as a commodity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/opinion/aoc-tina-smith-housing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.L04.KMDZ.4IMxmclCUx1S&smid=url-share

2024-08-29 23:02:40 GMT

@npub1fdr…lvhs One for your reverse centaur file:
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/047/801/423/452/694/original/dd304c8b3c209582.jpg

2024-08-29 20:09:24 GMT

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Elisha wasn't an angel, but the story of him and the widow had the same moral.

2024-08-10 17:12:15 GMT

The official new name for Hillbilly Elegy is "Stolen Squalor"
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/jd-vance-never-was-and-never-will-be-the-voice-of-appalachia

2024-08-07 01:30:17 GMT

[This is what Buckminster Fuller called ephemeralization]
Take the material bill itself: the assumption that a transition will require a linearly scaled quantity of materials includes the assumption that cleantech won't find substantial efficiencies in its material usage. Thankfully, that's a very bad assumption!...
Take copper: electrification requires a lot of copper. But the amount of copper needed for each part of the cleantech revolution is declining faster than the demand for cleantech is rising. Just one example: between the first and second iteration of the Rivian electric vehicle, designers figured out how to remove 1.6 miles of copper wire from each vehicle.
That's just one iteration and one technology! And yeah, EVs are only peripheral to a cleantech transition; for one thing, geometry hates cars. We're going to have to build a lot of mass transit, and we're going to be realizing these efficiencies with every generation of train, bus, and tram.
We have just lived through a massive surge in electrification, with unimaginable quantities of new renewables coming online and a stunning replacement of conventional vehicles with EVs, and throughout that surge, demand for copper remained flat. @npub1fdr…lvhs https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/

2024-08-02 23:07:39 GMT

In March of 1945, the US Army issued this "fact sheet" to guide conversations with soldiers on the topic of fascism, paying particular attention to the ongoing threat that domestic fascist movements posed to the US. Their analysis of what a homegrown US fascism would look like is interesting.
The central point is that when fascism came to America it wouldn't call itself that, nor would it be wearing a swastika. It would call itself "patriotic" and "100% American."
The first fascistic tactic to look out for is a hate campaign against a particular religious, racial, or ethnic group. Like, for example, let's say a candidate emerges who calls all people of one nationality "rapists" and "criminals," while promising to ban immigrants from only one religious group.
The second fascistic tactic to look out for is anyone who tries to amp up nationalistic animosities toward other nations or peoples, framing attempts to foster international cooperation as forms of weakness. The idea that all humans share the earth as equals is anathema to fascists.
The third fascistic tactic to watch out for is their tendency to label anyone they disagree with who is to their left "a Communist." Fascists claim that they alone can save their nations from "the communist menace." Anyway, the 2024 GOP platform contains the phrase "Christ-hating communists."
https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up?view=theater

2024-06-18 18:46:26 GMT

On this day, 16 June 1531, English king Henry VIII modified the vagrancy laws he brought in the previous year, which were key in creating the working class. People kicked off communal land who were not in wage labour were designated as vagabonds, and on their first offence were to be whipped, then on the second whipped with half an ear sliced off and upon a third offence they were to be executed. This and similar laws enacted across Europe, backed up by intense state violence, created a class of people forced to sell their labour to survive: the working class.
Karl Marx described these legal mechanisms in volume 1 of his work, Capital: "Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system." This expropriation was extended across the globe by violent colonialism.
Rather than being a natural state of affairs as it is often portrayed, the creation of the working class was fiercely resisted for hundreds of years, and indeed still is to this day in some areas.
https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/stop-thief-the-commons-enclosures-and-resistance

2024-06-13 14:28:30 GMT

The University of Minnesota has paused the hiring of Israeli scholar Raz Segal to head the institution’s Holocaust and Genocide school over his principled position that Israel is perpetrating a genocide.
Truly reprehensible.
https://jewishinsider.com/2024/06/university-of-minnesota-pauses-hiring-of-professor-who-justified-hamas-atrocities/

2024-06-09 21:14:56 GMT

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I installed ublock origin for Chrome and now everything's fine.

2024-06-09 20:40:15 GMT

Anybody else's Adblock Plus stop working on YouTube?

2024-05-20 15:25:39 GMT

People who were repeatedly vaccinated for COVID-19 — initially receiving shots aimed at the original variant, followed by boosters and updated vaccines targeting variants — generated antibodies capable of neutralizing a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants and even some distantly related coronaviruses.
https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-covid-19-vaccinations-elicit-antibodies-that-neutralize-variants-other-viruses/

2024-05-03 02:05:55 GMT

So Utah, having passed a transphobic bathroom bill, has launched an online form for people to snitch on folks they think are in the "wrong" bathroom or locker room. Be a real shame if people on the Internet flooded it with fake reports.
It also allows file uploads, which I'm just mentioning for no particular reason.
https://ut-sao-special-prod.web.app/sex_basis_complaint.html