Ⓐmerican Cynic

A look at the interest rates charged by Kiva's microfinance field partners.

This is my attempt at an introduction to Marxian economics and materialist feminism. Most of the billions of people in the world today already do too much work, particularly women, especially in the so-called third-world or developing countries, and any scheme which promises to improve life by giving poor women _more_ work to do ought to be met and examined with the utmost suspicion.

An anecdotal introduction to the continuum-forming typology of begging as a dialectical model for understanding the structure of late capitalist economy.

I wasted an entire month reading about and writing down some thoughts on the first forty days of President Trump's reign. "The king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion."

A hyperlinked transcription of James Huneker's "Ideas of Max Stirner" as it was published in the New York Times on April 20, 1907. Includes some introductory notes and my thoughts on Huneker's use of the term "Socialism".

An incomplete review of a recent documentary about nonviolent vs American Christianity. It is confusing in the opening, good in the middle, and disappointing at the end.

On the double-lie of democracy and the criminalization of homelessness

Trying to answer the question 'Is rioting justified?' and the follow-up 'Is it okay if I disagree with the looting?'

Navigating American political discourse toward anarchism. "Whereas a 'small-government' conservative will insist that in the name of liberty, peace, and prosperity we need to submit to authority, live under constant threat of violence, and resign ourselves to owning nothing, a 'progressive' liberal will accept those conditions at face-value as the axioms of their dreamed-of society."

The official American Cynic voting guide to the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates