the anarchist/communist who claims that property is theft is not wrong in principle. To take any piece of land on this planet and trace its ownership history, you will have to come to some point in history when it was forcibly taken or plundered from someone. And before that, the previous owner did it to the one before him.
Do you maybe know why did Mises—who otherwise had healthy views – have this particular view? Why did he not recognize homesteading? Thank you.
A: All this means is there is some taint in ownership chains but this does not invalidate property rights at all. [continue reading…]
I consider the homesteading principle to be one of the most consistent and justified foundations for property rights. However, I have recently encountered a concern that I am struggling to resolve. [continue reading…]
“The Problem with Intellectual Property,” audio. Thanks to Jorge Besada, using AI. I think this is my best comprehensive, recent, yet concise take on IP.
From Stephan Kinsella, “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” Papinian Press Working Paper #2 (May 15, 2025), forthcoming in Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics, 2nd ed., Christoph Lütge & Marianne Thejls Ziegler, eds. (Springer, forthcoming 2026; Robert McGee, section ed.).
Hans Hoppe recently published “Mises Institute: Quo Vadis?”, which contains various criticisms of the Mises Institute (MI) as it is currently organized.1 He has since been removed as Distinguished Senior Fellow by MI.2 I fully support Hans and do not disagree with anything he wrote.3
Here I would like to mention my own experience with MI, with which I have been associated, on and off, for over thirty years, since 1994. I have discussed some of this history previously,4 but as my experience has certain parallels to that of Hans I will go into more detail here than I have in the past.
Despite my critical remarks here I, too, share Hans’s admiration for Lew Rockwell (discussed below) and what he achieved with the Mises Institute. I love the mission of the MI and the role it has played for the last 44 years. It is due to my concern over the decline of MI, and its treatment of Hans, that I publish these remarks. Pursuit of liberty is always a quest for truth. But truth is fragile and seems easily cast aside by those with more base motives. With that in mind, I offer some of my own thoughts on these matters—entreating the reader to judge the reasonableness of my position (and that of Hoppe).
The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue:
This is my appearance on the Mark Edge show. Shownotes:
Mark Edge invites libertarian legal theorist and retired patent attorney Stephan Kinsella to unpack the stunning April 1st memo from the Mises Institute announcing that Hans-Hermann Hoppe — their longtime Distinguished Senior Fellow and arguably the most important living Rothbardian — is no longer affiliated with the Institute.
Kinsella walks through the backstory: his own 2013 resignation, the recent departures of three Mises presidents, a private memo Hoppe and Guido Hülsmann sent the board over governance issues, tensions surrounding Javier Milei, and the “Quo Vadis” essay that preceded Hoppe’s termination.
Kinsella also previews the new book he and Hoppe co-edited celebrating Murray Rothbard’s 100th birthday, the upcoming Rothbard celebration in Porto, Portugal (June 27), and the Property and Freedom Society meeting in September.
Jan. 8 1996. We moved to Philly in 1994 from Houston and lived in an apartment in beautiful Chester County, until wife insisted we buy a house. So in 1995 we bought our first house in Newtown Square, Delaware county.
We were snowed in for a few days because of this crazy blizzard. I got bored after being shut in for a couple days. Our back yard sloped down fairly steeply to this wooded creek area, so on Monday, as we were working from home, I dug some trenches and rigged a makeshift sled out of cardboard and got my wife and her low-IQ cocker spaniel, Muffy, to sled down it. I dressed Cindy in my snow skiing pants and jacket. I later MacGuyvered a white trash sled out of thick plastic and a trash can lid. I remember we saw our neighbors a couple days later when we emerged and they had assumed we were gone because we stayed home for 3-4 days and waited for the roads to be cleared. You can take the boy out of Praireville, but you can’t take the coonass out of the boy. I think Big Daddy’s accent was thicker back then.
Wife was bitching that I paid someone $90 to blow our driveway, but it was very long. I remember another time, after the driveway was covered in snow, well the builder had for some reason put both hot and cold taps in our garage, so I got the bright idea to run a hose to the drive way and turn on the hot water, thinking that would melt all the snow. It made a 2 inch hole and did nothing. Oh well. Yet another lesson learned in Yankeeland. Another time I threw a cup of hot water on car’s driver side window to clear off the ice and snow but of course it immediately froze. Good thing I moved back to God’s country (Texas) a year later.
Jeffrey Tucker sits down with Stephan Kinsella…libertarian attorney, author of the seminal 2001 essay “Against Intellectual Property“, and the massive treatise “Legal Foundations of a Free Society“…for a provocative discussion on why defamation (libel and slander) law should be rejected as just another form of intellectual property right.
Kinsella argues that reputation is not ownable property. What others think of you cannot be controlled or turned into a legal entitlement. Defamation law, like patents, copyrights, and trademarks, rests on the flawed idea that the state should protect intangible “rights” through force. He explains how these laws create chilling effects, perverse incentives, and actually amplify the harm of false speech rather than reduce it. [continue reading…]
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