Kevin Carson

https://kolektiva.social/@KevinCarson1

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

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npub1glrzagrn0f5fgjqcy6us96dvh8ah6pce6r3yk29hr6d4pgjtt0zswu8qmc

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsy033w5peh56y5fqvzdwgzaxktn7maquvapcjt9zm3ax6s5f94h3gprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyqq2xyydc

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relay.momostr.pink

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npub1glrzagrn0f5fgjqcy6us96dvh8ah6pce6r3yk29hr6d4pgjtt0zswu8qmc

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Last Notes

2026-03-24 19:36:01 CET

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Yeah, the whole idea I'm attacking is that "currency" -- a circulating medium that serves as an independent store of value -- is necessary for exchange.

2026-03-23 17:50:43 CET

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The very language you use -- "fiat money," the obsession with inflationary "printing," etc. -- is essentially the same language used by right-wing Austrians, ancaps, goldbugs, and hard money people. You're just using it leftishly. There may not be a lot of overlap between Bitcoin adherents and goldbugs in terms of personnel, but their basic understanding of money is directly analogous.

2026-03-23 17:46:25 CET

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"if you dont have bitcoin you should start out by earning some first" This is what I mean by scarcity of money. It's an idea of money as something with an independent existence of its own that has to be acquired before it can be spent, rather than something that's *created* by the act of exchange.

2026-03-23 17:42:30 CET

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No. You're confusing hoarding the thing that's measured with the unit of measure. Lumber or heat may be scarce, but inches and degrees are not. If you've got the lumber or heat, the very act of measure creates all the units you need -- someone who has the lumber doesn't have to buy the inches from someone who's stockpiled them.

2026-03-22 15:41:17 CET

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OK. Say there are two people networked to each other, and neither has any Bitcoin at all. Can one of them purchase 10 Bitcoin worth of services or merchandise from the other, be debited 10 Bitcoin, and run a negative balance of Bitcoin, without having to start with a positive Bitcoin balance? And then bring the balance up to zero by selling 10 BTC to the other person later? If so, it's a non-scarce system. If not, and they had to have a positive balance to start with in order to make a purchase, then it's scarce in exactly the same way as a gold-based system.

2026-03-22 15:36:19 CET

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There should be nothing TO hoard -- it should be as logically impossible as "hoarding" any unit of measurement, like degrees Fahrenheit.

2026-03-21 16:18:25 CET

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

2026-03-21 16:16:25 CET

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The paradigm by which there is a "supply" in "circulation," that can be "hoarded," is the problem.

2026-03-20 20:04:54 CET

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The problem is the idea of money in "circulation," that has an independent value of its own. It's like saying there are feet and inches in circulation, independent of the boards being measured.

2026-03-20 20:03:31 CET

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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 19:48:59 CET

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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 16:43:07 CET

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As I understand it money has always been created out of thin air, but the myth of "backing" by gold reserves or whatever has served to limit the creation to those who possess gold.

2026-03-16 21:43:41 CET

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Shit, I read a college textbook on banking and finance that said banks "aggregated savings" to provide investment capital, and this was a fucking ECONOMIST pretending they don't just create money and credit.

2026-03-16 21:42:04 CET

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 17:23:43 CET

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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".

2026-03-10 17:38:46 CET

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In one of your posts, you call for universal basic income. Just what do you think UBI would be issued in, if not quantitative units?

2026-03-10 17:33:31 CET

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Seriously? My whole long post was a critique of the logic behind "the mafia's blood money," which treats money and credit as things with independent value as commodities, and restricts their issue to those in possession of wealth. The idea of a common unit of account that workers could use to track the flow of advances of goods between themselves, without having to ask someone with wealth to "lend" or "advance" it to them, is a remedy to capitalist money.
The very fact that today money is "the factory owner's" and workers depend on capitalist investors is owing to the idea of money as something that's stockpiled, and not a system for measuring flows like inches and pounds.
And for century medieval villages that possessed no specie currency in circulation maintained a system of running open tabs for tracking their balances with each other, using a unit of account based on the denominations of Charlemagne's currency centuries earlier -- despite that fact that none of them had seen a pound or shilling coin in their lives. And they did it with no soldiers at their backs -- if anything, it was the rise of modern capitalist banking that suppressed these self-organized systems. But Charlemagne's denominations were just seized on as something handy -- the particular unit was beside the point. They could have simply chosen the word "unit" or anything else, in order to have a ready quantitative unit by which makers of shoes, barrels, or whatever, could set the value of their goods in terms of other goods.
Do you think people are unable to weigh meat, or measure lumber in feet, without a soldier at their backs forcing them to agree on a standard unit?

2026-03-10 00:45:46 CET

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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 23:46:31 CET

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.

2025-12-02 18:28:28 CET

"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 19:22:09 CET

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 02:13:30 CET

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

2025-10-27 00:50:21 CET

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

2025-10-08 18:34:00 CEST

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/

2025-10-07 00:23:47 CEST

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

2025-10-01 00:37:56 CEST

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

2025-09-24 23:33:45 CEST

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 19:47:13 CEST

"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 17:38:56 CEST

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 21:34:02 CEST

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 22:53:21 CEST

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 16:37:46 CEST

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 20:01:19 CEST

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 20:30:00 CEST

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 04:19:58 CEST

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

2025-09-10 01:07:29 CEST

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/

2025-09-10 00:20:16 CEST

‘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 22:00:12 CEST

"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 20:35:12 CEST

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

2025-09-07 00:06:59 CEST

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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.”

2025-09-07 00:01:44 CEST

"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 23:12:56 CEST

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

2025-06-08 14:03:46 CEST

"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

2025-02-28 19:26:02 CET

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 19:05:42 CET

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Thank you!

2024-11-06 19:02:42 CET

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 03:43:56 CEST

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 23:47:09 CEST

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 20:31:35 CEST

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

2024-09-25 21:13:34 CEST

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

2024-09-25 21:13:19 CEST

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

2024-09-20 01:37:59 CEST

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

2024-08-30 01:02:40 CEST

@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 22:09:24 CEST

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

2024-08-10 19:12:15 CEST

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 03:30:17 CEST

[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/

2024-08-03 01:07:39 CEST

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

2024-05-03 04:05:55 CEST

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