At C4SS: Have You Got a Form 27B/6?

First Quarter 2010 C4SS Fundraiser

Brad Spangler's got the First Quarter fundraiser up and running. If you've enjoyed my commentary and research papers there and have the money to spare, you might want to chip in. For that matter even if you think my stuff's a bunch of crap, you can chip in to keep Tom Knapp's and Alex Knight's commentary coming.

At C4SS: Way to Miss the Point

At C4SS: Libertarians for Junk Science

At C4SS: The Troops Protect Our Freedom, and Other Lies I Learned in School

Movie on South Central Farmers

If you followed the South Central Farm controversy in 2006, and my posts on it here and here, you may be interested to know there's a documentary out on it. Veronica Renov just The Garden Movie to my attention.

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:

Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public?

And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”

If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?

Readers interested in buying the movie can get a 20% discount on the DVD by entering the code "HolidayD3" at checkout. The offer is good for one month. Order here.

At C4SS: We're Watching Big Brother

At C4SS--Honest Statism Beats a Fake "Free Market" Every Time

New Research Paper at C4SS: The Alternative Economy as a Singularity

"The Alternative Economy as a Singularity"

Localized, small-scale economies are the rats in the dinosaurs' nests. The informal and household economy operates more efficiently than the capitalist economy, and can function on the waste byproducts of capitalism. It is resilient and replicates virally. In an environment in which resources for technological development have been almost entirely diverted toward corporate capitalism, it takes technologies that were developed to serve corporate capitalism, adapts them to small-scale production, and uses them to destroy corporate capitalism. In fact, it's almost as though the dinosaurs themselves had funded a genetic research lab to breed mammals: “Let's reconfigure the teeth so they're better for sucking eggs, and ramp up the metabolism to survive a major catastrophe—like, say, an asteroid collision. Nah, I don't really know what it would be good for—but what the fuck, the Pangean Ministry of Defense is paying for it!”

To repeat, there are two economies competing: their old economy of bureaucracy, high overhead, enormous capital outlays, and cost-plus markup, and our new economy of agility and low overhead. And in the end... we will bury them.

At C4SS--Making the State Irrelevant, Part Three: Undermining its Legitimacy

At C4SS--Making the State Irrelevant, Part