My recent appearance on The Rational Egoist. (Spotify; Youtube)
Shownotes:
Michael engages in a lively debate with Stephan Kinsella, a libertarian theorist and anarcho-capitalist, as they explore key issues that divide Objectivists and libertarians. They discuss topics such as intellectual property, the role of the state, and foundational philosophical differences between the two schools of thought.
There is apparently yet another new libertarianism-related book in the works: The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right, by one Christopher Cook, whom I have never heard of before (h/t Adam Haman). See:
But in the case of an attempted voluntary slavery contract, the promisor, by saying, “I promise to be your slave,” or “I give my body to you” does not commit an act of aggression. It does not create any victim who has a right to retaliate against him. So if the would-be slave decides to renege on his promise and run off, the would-be master has no right to use force to stop him. It is always current consent that matters. If a girl promises a kiss at the end of the date and the boyfriend an hour later kisses her, she cannot claim it was nonconsensual. In effect, she communicated her consent, she set up a standing presumption that is reasonable to rely on—until and unless she changes her mind. If at the end of the date she announces she no longer wants a kiss, it is that consent that matters. It is always the most recent consent that matters since this is the best evidence for what was consented to. There is nothing in libertarianism that says people cannot change their minds. To simply state that you can make an irrevocable, binding promise is just question-begging since it is just another way of sneaking in the assumption that our bodies are alienable, even though our rights to our body do not stem from homesteading or acquisition but rather from our direct control of them.
I was approached recently by my old friend, legal scholar and philosopher David Koepsell (a fellow opponent of IP who appeared on the John Stossel show with me a few years back), 1 as one of his students at Texas A&M, Eliot Kalinov, was interested in my and Hoppe’s work on argumentation ethics and related issues. I offered to have a discussion with Eliot about these issues for his research and publication plans, which we did yesterday (Feb. 18, 2025). We recorded it for his own purposes, and I post it here, with his permission, for those who might find the topics discussed of interest. He is very bright and asked very intelligent questions. We discuss mainly the topics noted in the title of this episode.
In discussing an article by Ron Johnson, The Government Says Money Isn’t Property—So It Can Take Yours, I mentioned that in previous writing 1 I had argued that just as bitcoin is not ownable, in today’s world of fiat money even dollars are not exactly ownable—but that I would not want to get the state to accept this argument at present time. A friend asked me: “what would follow if the courts accepted your premise? How could that affect intellectual property law?” [continue reading…]
I have been interested in Libertarianism for some time now and Hoppes AE has especially fascinated me.However,I have some questions which were left open.Hoppes central claim seems to be,that you cannot argue without accepting NAP and self -ownership .
Not exactly. It is that all truth claims must be established in argumentation, including claims about what norms or conduct is justifiable. Also, that the activity argumentative justification necessarily presupposes certain norms or values, such as peace, universalizability, non-contradiction, truth, the ability to homestead unowned resources, the ability to control one’s own body, the value of avoiding conflict, and so on; and that these norms–which we may think of as “grundnorms”–cannot be denied without contradiction since they are inevitably presupposed by every participant in argumentative justification; and finally, that any political norm other than libertarianism (that is, all forms of socialism) are incompatible with these grundnorms and thus cannot be argumentatively justified. It is essentially a proof by contradiction: that any non-libertarian political norm contradicts more basic norms that are necessarily presupposed by all participants in argumentation. Socialism is aggression and violence and contradicts the norms presupposed by the participants by virtue of participating in the peaceful activity of argumentation. [continue reading…]
In my book Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 5, p. 73, n.23, I provide a quote, “What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” which I took from an article by Clarence Carson. Carson calls it an “old saw” but provides no attribution.
I have realized this is a version of a quote widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According many sources on the Internet, the original quote is “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Emmet Fox, in The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life (HarperOne, Reissue ed., 2009), provides a subtly different version, also attributed to Emerson: “What you areshoutsso loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
I found it curious that none of the sources attributing this to Emerson provide a citation. I was unable to find this exact quote anywhere in Emerson’s work. With the help of people on Twitter, I finally came across this: “What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary,” from this paragraph:
Let nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let our eyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, “I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.
The paper deals with the view of contemporary world politics presented by American libertarians. Specifically, it examines the claims of Murray N. Rothbard and his successors with regard to the role of the United States of America in the international arena. The article argues that since the Cold War, the libertarian account of international relations has been staunchly critical of the US, while exhibiting a soft spot for competing powers, particularly the USSR and the Russian Federation. As the article submits, this asymmetry is supported by two flawed theoretical contentions: the liberal imperialism thesis (LIT) and the American hegemony thesis (AHT). Moreover, the article shows how anti-Americanism impinges on libertarian analyses of contemporary Central- Eastern European politics, in particular the war in Ukraine.
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