StephanKinsella.com

[From my Webnote series]

Quite often you hear people muse about a post-scarcity society, one of near superabundance, where money will no longer be useful since there will be no need to economize or calculate. This is reminiscent of the Star Trek universe which sometimes implies there is no longer any need for money. Of course this is preposterous. There is a reason Rothbard mocked what he called the “Space Cadets.” ¹ I mean hey, I like sci-fi too, but know the difference between fiction and reality, unlike too many libertarian activists, trekkers, and D&D fans.

True post-scarcity or superabundance is impossible, just as the economic concept of scarcity (conflictable resources) ² is not really the same as the more colloquial concept of “scarcity” (lack of abundance). ³ [continue reading…]

1. See Kinsella, Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”. [↩]
2. On Conflictability and Conflictable Resources; Voluntaryism and Voluntarism. [↩]
3. On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession; Nobody Owns Bitcoin; KOL272-2 | Q&A with Hülsmann, Dürr, Kinsella, Hoppe (PFS 2019). [↩]

As noted in KOL480 | The Liberland Constitution and Libertarian Principles (Liberland Prague, 2025), I recently visited Prague for the Liberland Constitution Christmas Party Prague 2025, which also featured my friends Alessandro Fusillo and Hans Hoppe, who also spoke. My friend Greg Morin joined me, and we met up there with friends such as Hans’s wife Gulçin Imre Hoppe and Domitia Fusiillo, Jozeph and Helena Martiniak, and others. I also met up with Paula Hessenberger, a longtime friend of my brother Michael, who  passed away last year but lived for years in Prague and helped to start an annual charity ball in Prague which benefits a local children’s hospital, which now features a plaque in his honor. We had a marvelous time. Pictures of the event may be be found at Hoppe, Fusillo, Kinsella Speak at Liberland Constitution Celebration, Vit’s post at Facebook, my facebook post, and online at google drive (full set) and here (Kinsella set); a selection below. [continue reading…]

Related:

• Examples of Libertarian Law vs. Louisiana vs. French vs. Common Law: Consideration and Formalities
• Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases
• The Superiority of the Roman Law: Scarcity, Property, Locke and Libertarianism
• The Universal Principles of Liberty, §11

Not a normal answer man segment since this was not an unsolicited query, but rather from a private discussion with some libertarian friends.

We were discussing Hedge fund ordered to pay bonus to trader who made 97% of its revenues. In this case a London trading firm indicated the trader would likely get a discretionary bonus if he hit a $10M target; he ended up far exceeding this and making 97% of its revenues that year.

Still, the boss told him he would not give him a bonus because they were not happy with negative publicity from a dispute with the SEC from previous employment activities. He sued and one. I said ULTIAAO, “unlibertarian things I almost approve of.” One friend disagreed, saying the contract said the bonus was discretionary so that settles it. [continue reading…]

[From my Webnote series]

Related:

• Libertarian Answer Man: Self-ownership for slaves and Crusoe; and Yiannopoulos on Accurate Analysis and the term “Property”; Mises distinguishing between juristic and economic categories of “ownership”
• Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes

From Stephan Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023):

Property as a Right between People

Moreover, as noted in “A Libertarian Theory of Contract” (ch. 9), n.1, property rights can be conceived of not as a right between a human actor and an owned object, but rather as a right as between human actors, but with respect to particular (owned) resources.

As Judge Alex Kozinski writes:

But what is property? That is not an easy question to answer. I remember sitting in my first-year property course on the first day of class when the professor … asked the fundamental question: What are property rights? … I threw up my hand and without even waiting to be called on I shouted out, “Property rights define the relationship between people and their property.”

Professor Krier stopped dead in his tracks, spun around, and gave me a long look. Finally he said: “That’s very peculiar, Mr. Kozinski. Have you always had relations with inanimate objects? Most people I know have relations with other people.”

That was certainly not the last time I said something really dumb in class, but the lesson was not lost on me. Property rights are, of course, a species of relationships between people. At the minimum, they define the degree to which individuals may exclude other individuals from the use and enjoyment of their goods and services….^[53]

^[53] Alex Kozinski, “Of Profligacy, Piracy, and Private Property,” Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y. 13, no. 1 (Winter 1990; https://perma.cc/Z8AD-634V): 17–21, p. 19. See further references in “A Libertarian Theory of Contract” (ch. 9), n.1.

***

Errata:

• Re ch. 2, Appendix I, “Property as a Right between People,” and ch. 9, n.1, see Gerard Casey, “Can You Own Yourself?“, Research Depository UCD Dublin (Dec. 2011): “legal (or jural) relations obtain between people in relation to things (in the limiting case, themselves) and not directly between people and things”. See also Eric R. Claeys, Natural Property Rights (Cambridge U. Press, 2025), §4.2, p. 77, “property is a law of things inasmuch as it consists of social relations between people regarding separable resources.” Citing Henry E. Smith, “Property as the Law of Things,” Harvard Law Review 125 (7) (2012): 1691–1726. Also Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford 1988), pp. 26–27 (“Consider the relation between a person (call her Susan) and an object (say, a motor car) generally taken to be her private property. The layman thinks of this as a two-place relation of ownership between a person and a thing: Susan owns that Porsche. But the lawyer tells us that legal relations cannot exist between people and Porsches, because Porsches cannot have rights or duties or be bound by or recognize rules. The legal relation involved must be a relation between persons—between Susan and her neighbours, say, or Susan and the police, or Susan and everyone else.“).
  • See also Sprankling, op cit., §1.01: “In general, the law defines property as rights⁴ among people5 that concern things. [^4. While property is commonly discussed in terms of “rights,” perhaps “relationships” would be a better term. See §1.03[C], infra.]”

nb @NSKinsella pic.twitter.com/BTFXhpnUFm

— Kadaververwertungsanstalt (@witheredsummer) December 10, 2025

Sheldon Richman opened my naive eyes to many ugly truths about the US Constitution. ¹ His great book, America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited (Griffin & Lash: Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2016; pdf) was published a few years ago. It was actually published under a CC-SA license but still unavailable online. As all books should be free and online, ² I nudged Sheldon to send me the file, and tidied it up a bit, so here you have it.

Jeffrey Tucker’s Foreword and Sheldon’s Introduction are below. Enjoy! [continue reading…]

1.  KOL457 | Sheldon Richman & IP; Andre from Brazil re Contract Theory, Student Loan Interest Payments, Bankruptcy, Vagueness, Usury;  On Constitutional Sentimentalism; Napolitano on Health-Care Reform and the Constitution: Is the Commerce Clause Really Limited? [↩]
2. The Academic Publishing Paywall Copyright Subsidized Racket; On Leading by Example and the Power of Attraction (Open Source Publishing, Creative Commons, Public Domain Publishing); Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing; Academic publishers have become the enemies of science: yet more real piracy;  Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing; Tucker, “Authors: Beware of Copyright,” in Bourbon for Breakfast (Mises Institute, 2010); Authors: Don’t Make the Buddy Holly Mistake. [↩]

Mr. Kinsella,

I have a question after reviewing your chapter “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023).

If a debtor, pursuant to a secured loan agreement (mortgage), decides not to continue making payments on the loan despite their ability to do so, is this theft? The lender has the ability to foreclose on the property in the event of default. [continue reading…]

Related:

• KOL293 | Faith and Free Will, with Steve Mendelsohn
  • Shallow Draughts: Faith in the Absence of Free Will (2017; pdf) and Sequitur (2020; pdf)
• Steve Mendelsohn: The God of Death and the Death of God
• Steve Mendelsohn, Law School Asshole
• Patent Lawyer Mostly Agrees With Me
• KOL471 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 1,” Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver)

Steve Mendelsohn, a patent attorney friend from my days in Philadelphia, sent me the essay below about his kosher eating habits (posted with permission). As I may have recounted somewhere before, ¹ when I moved to Philly in 1994 Steve, as a slightly more experienced patent attorney at my firm, befriended and mentored me. I remember when he took me to get my first Philly cheesesteak at Charlie’s Waterwheel below ground on Sansom. But they were just called “steak” sandwiches; I asked where’s the cheese, and Steve said, oh, it’s kosher. [continue reading…]

1. See Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (Papinian Press, 2025), KOL455 | Haman Nature Hn 109: Philosophy, Rights, Libertarian and Legal Careers (March 24, 2025), KOL139 | Power and Market Report with Albert Lu: Law, Careers, Scholarship, and other biographical pieces. [↩]

Update: Bryan Mercadente, “Natural Rights: Kinsella v Mercadente,” Libertarian Alliance (UK) (5 Dec 2025).

***

Bryan Mercadente, “Free Trade and the Foundations of Liberty: Another Response to Duncan Whitmore,” Libertarian Alliance (UK) (3 Dec. 2025), writes:

Duncan Whitmore has replied to me again, so here is my response. Our exchange began with trade but has become a dispute about foundations. The surface topic is free trade versus a limited, strategic use of protection. Underneath that is a fight over what makes a liberal order possible, and what keeps it alive once the slogans have faded. Mr Whitmore argues as a principled libertarian. He takes property rights as natural rights, from which politics should withdraw save to avert plain evils. I argue as a contingent libertarian. I take rights as a settlement adopted by a community for chosen ends: prosperity, peace, continuity, and the minimal unhappiness compatible with survival. That difference explains why he treats tariffs as an outrage in themselves, while I treat them as tools that may sometimes be justified to repair the conditions that let liberty breathe. [continue reading…]

Fascinating recent lecture by Santiago Villalpando, Legal Advisor and Director of UNESCO. This is the Eli Lauterpacht Lecture 2025 for the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University (where my former teacher Rosalyn Higgins is Honorary Fellow): ¹ “Hard Law in Times of Liquid Modernity: Treaty Law and Practice in the 21st Century.” (apple podcasts)

The lecture is inspired, in part, by Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polity 2000): [continue reading…]

1. See Preface and Acknowledgments to Legal Foundations of a Free Society; The Louisiana Civil Code of 1825: Content, Influences and Languages; Past and Future: Returning to my Louisiana Roots, n.5; Epstein on Roman Law, n.13; Review of Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (1995); On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing; Rosalyn Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (Clarendon, 1994); KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018). [↩]

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: Addendum: EP34 Atomic Accountability.

Dan visits with Professor Alex Wellerstein, whose new book about Truman and the dropping of the atomic bombs will challenge everything you think you know about the subject.

Re Alex Wellerstein, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age (2025).

[continue reading…]