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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 448.

I was interviewed by Logan Hertz, of Hazeltine LLC, about attempts by the Nelson Nash Institute, they of the poorly-named “Infinite Banking” concept, to use trademark to bully competitors. I discuss the general problem with IP and then apply it to trademark, and provide suggestions as to more “ethical” ways of using trademark and IP in an IP-world. See also Logan’s LinkedIn post.

For more, see: Do Business Without Intellectual Property.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 448.

This is my discussion with European patent attorney David Pearce, of the Tufty the Cat European IP blog (twitter). He and I were co-founders and members of the Advisory Council for the Open Crypto Alliance (2020–22). We discuss Craig Wright, nChain and bitcoin related patents, and so on (see video below).

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 447.

This is from the show “Axioms of Liberty,” which has another episode about my IP writing. This time, it’s a reading of “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society.”

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 446.

This is from the show “Axioms of Liberty,” which has another episode about my IP writing. This time, it’s a reading of “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism.”

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 445.

The show “Axioms of Liberty” has an episode about my IP writing, including readings of three early pieces: First, one of my earliest writings, Stephan Kinsella, “Letter on Intellectual Property Rights,” IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 12-13, and followed by David Kelley’s response. Next, “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?”, first published in the Pennsylvania Bar Association Intellectual Property Newsletter 1 (Winter 1998): 3 and republished in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter, vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000). And finally, “In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 4, 2000). I am not sure who this podcaster is, but he has my gratitude.

My friend Ryan McMaken has an interesting article up today, “Tax Cuts Without Spending Cuts Won’t Reduce the Taxpayers’ Burden,” LewRockwell.com (Nov. 8, 2024).

I am not sure I agree, though.

In my view, it is always better to cut FedGov spending, even if taxes are not lowered. It is also always better to cut taxes, even if spending is not lowered. It is of course best to do both, and the more cuts the better, but they are independent goals.

Cutting deficits is only a side effect, an ancillary goal, of cutting spending and of cutting taxes. Cutting deficits or balancing the budget is not the main goal or even a real, independent goal; it is just the consequence of lowering gov spending and gov taxation.

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I was alerted to a course by LiquidZulu, “The Fundamentals of Libertarian Ethics,” touted as “The single fastest route from novice to expert in Austrian legal theory.” Somewhat amusingly, his site states:

Theres a problem…

Philosophy is big. Learning even a very small part of one specific philosophy could take years, if you even know where to look in the first place.

Theres a solution!

I have spent those years autistically studying philosophy, so I can deliver to you only the parts you need to know to understand what is true, rather than having to slog through thousand-page tomes of utter nonsensical jibberish. (And believe me, a lot of it is jibberish).

Great care has been taken to craft the courses on this website and I refuse to release a course unless it is better than any alternative that I am aware of.

The course is presented in seven modules in written form, free online, and also in video form which can be purchased at whatever price you like. I have only skimmed through some of the modules so far but from what I can tell it looks like a very good introduction to this topic, well organized, written and researched. The site claims the text version takes about 3 hours and the youtube videos (I paid for it) appear to be about 2 and a half hours.

I did a longer course on a similar topic for Mises Academy back in 2011, “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society,” which was well received, so such a course is definitely needed. I may in fact do an updated version of this course later, based on my book, Legal Foundations of a Free Society. Stay tuned. In the meantime, check out LiquidZulu’s course.