is preparing to ship out the belated copies of the January 2012 Market Anarchy Zine Series and Anarchist Classics Series booklets. Coming soon to subscribers: a slightly revised edition of “State Capitalism & The Many Monopolies,” and a previously promised new booklet edition of de Cleyre’s “Anarchism & American Traditions.”

is back in Alabama. But my car won’t move anymore. Not for love or money.

is in Austin, Tex.

Every time I go back to the books to refresh my memory on Detroit & the demolition of Black Bottom, it makes me really sad all over again. What the hell, 20th century?

“Fighting Capitalism through the state is akin to treating a migraine with a hammer.” – @shacharh86 / Shachar Heller

is off to read True Civilization, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

Anyone here have contacts with radical or independent community bookstores in Texas — especially in San Antonio, Houston, or the D/FW metroplex — which might be interested in hosting a book event for Markets Not Capitalism during the first couple weeks of February? Anyone interested in helping us get the book event set up?

If so, let me know! I am going to be driving out that way with a trunk full of anarchist agitprop and would be happy to stop off at as many places as possible along the way . . . .

is enjoying the Christmas gift of new solar charger for cell phones / Kindles / MP3 players / etc. Currently trying to figure out a good place to actually charge it during the day.

is back in Alabama

dsatyglesias writes: “If you oppose universal health care, you by definition support letting people who can’t afford health care die.”

Maybe so. (Certainly, there are plenty of conservatives who are all too comfortable with — or even enthusiastic about — a lot of needless suffering in the world.)

But I hope that you realize that not everyone who supports universal healthcare supports government healthcare, and not everyone who opposes government healthcare opposes universal healthcare. The one might follow from the other if the only way to get universal coverage were by means of a political guarantee of coverage. But that’s not so: there are folks who oppose government healthcare because they think corporate healthcare is awesome and they don’t mind if people die; but there are also folks who oppose government healthcare because they support non-governmental, non-corporate universal coverage through grassroots social organization and community mutual aid. (See for example http://radgeek.com/gt/2007/10/25/radical_healthcare/ or the closing sections of http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/health-care-debate-meaningful/ .)

Of course, that leaves open the question of whether they (we — I’m one of ’em) are right about the best means for getting universal coverage. Maybe social means are inadequate; or maybe there is some reason, which has yet to be mentioned, why governmental control is preferable, as a means for getting it, to voluntary associations for mutual aid. But whether the position is right or wrong, it’s certainly not one that can be answered simply by defining it out of existence, as you do when you pretend that the only alternatives available are (1) corporate coverage of only those who can afford it; or else (2) universal coverage by means of government mandates; as if there were no (3) universal coverage by non-governmental means.