Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Thompson will not speak to you tonight. His time is up. I have taken it over. You were to hear a report on the world crisis. That is what you are going to hear.
For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is Kevin Carson? This is Kevin Carson speaking.
I’ve been too busy Misesing to have a chance to listen to it yet. But here it is.
Okay, this is now my favourite Coke ad ever:
The good news: C4SS is on the list of top 50 libertarian websites.
The bad news: we seem to have fallen from #30 to #43.
(But you can always help get us back up by contributing to our fundraiser. Even a $5 or $10 monthly pledge would be terrific!)
My favourite part of Franz Kafka’s Amerika is the (dare I say Kafkaesque?) sequence in which the protagonist is fired from his job as an elevator boy; it’s a classic illustration of the impossibility of upward communication in authoritarian hierachies. (I recently reread it for a paper I’m writing on Othello, William Godwin, and the problem of other minds. Long story.) The 1984 movie version, titled Class Relations, is online in twelve parts; the relevant sequence (condensed, alas) is in sections eight and nine. (Couldn’t embed these, sorry.)
I got back from my voyages on Monday (I announce belatedly).
PorcFest was anarchy in miniature: people were smoking weed, packing heat, selling unlicensed food and alcohol, and generally behaving in a peacefully unauthorised fashion. There were pistol safety classes, gay dance parties, and sessions on everything from polyamory, transhumanism, and cop avoidance to alternative currency, alternative medicine, and planning the revolution. C4SS, S4SS, ALL, AltExpo, Fr33 Agents, and SFL were all represented. In addition to my previously mentioned talks I was on a panel on agorism with Brad Spangler, Dan D’Amico, and Bob Murphy. If I go again next year I’ll bring some copies of Kevin’s Homebrew Industrial Revolution; PorcFest seems like the ideal crowd for it.
After that came the IHS seminar at Towson. The students were great, and I spent a lot of time talking with them about philosophy, libertarianism, and science fiction – which (as will come as no surprise to my readers) are three of my favourite subjects. One of the students was wearing a t-shirt with my picture on it! The topics of my lectures were approximately the same as last year. The other faculty were Dan D’Amico, Brian Doherty, John Hasnas, George Selgin, and Amy Sturgis, so it was an even more radical lineup than last year. We found a good Cuban restaurant; I also got a chance to see Jesse Walker, who lives nearby.
My next gig will be Mises University here in Auburn, July 24-30. And then of course there’s always the APS in September and Libertopia in October.
Kevin Carson in CounterPunch again.