I’ve always been against defamation law (libel, slander, etc.). I assumed it was the plumbline libertarian position, even though many libertarians and most Objectivists seem to favor reputation rights. As I wrote in “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”: 1 [continue reading…]
Schiff’s Future Bitcoin Tweets (courtesy Grok):
Bitcoin Hits $150,000 – December 15, 2026“@PeterSchiff: Bitcoin at $150k? Just another speculative spike. This Ponzi is running on fumes—treasury companies and speculators are the only buyers. Gold’s still the real store of value,…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) July 14, 2025
(I like Peter; this is just in fun! See our podcast episode, where he’s wrong on IP and Bitcoin. KOL316 | Discussion with Peter Schiff about Patent, Copyright, and Bitcoin.)
My Grok prompt: [continue reading…]
Hoppe’s Social Theory: An Executive Summary (Grok and ChatGPT):
I asked Grok4 (SuperGrok) and ChatGPT to provide executive summaries of Hoppe’s thought. Results below; I have not reviewed these.
My prompt:
Take these documents by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and provide an organized executive summary of Hoppe’s social thought: his economics and economic theory, his views on rights and libertarianism, democracy, immigration, and other issues. Organize it systematically, and include detailed links, references, footnotes/endnotes, and so on. Entitle this Hoppe’s Social Theory: An Executive Summary. Make this as detailed and comprehensive as possible and as long as necessary.
I spent about 30 years writing the material that became Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023). I had plans to write this book for over 15 years but kept dithering, stopping and starting, and also waiting to write a few key chapters. Even so, I could have finished it at least 7 years ago. [continue reading…]
As noted in Libertarianism: A Treatise: AI Assisted Draft:
I spent about 30 years writing the material that became Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023). I had plans to write this book for over 15 years but kept dithering, stopping and starting, and also waiting to write a few key chapters. Even so, I could have finished it at least 7 years ago. [continue reading…]
[From my Webnote series]
From a tweet:
Not really. First, in practice most don’t. Even honest Randians eventually admit this — e.g. David Kelley, annoying pest Jan “Helfeld,” Rand’s attorney Murray Franck, Marsha Enright (I think), and many others. https://t.co/wKbx8ijabC
Second, to have a criminal state you don’t…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) July 12, 2025
Another reason why “voluntary” and tax-free minarchism is a chimera.
In this podcast episode with Richard Epstein and John Yoo, Insurrections, The Militia Cause, and Getting Dunked on By Charles Barkley, they discuss, inter alia, the recent case Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. 1
See discussion at 38:40, in particular this comment by Epstein:
[44:20] … and it’s 9-0 in both cases, and I have yet to find anybody who thinks that these are sort of imprudent decisions, no matter what they think about guns.
Well, I, for one, disagree with the ruling and the law, as the Federal Government has no authority to regulate state tort law. But then I seem to be the only non-centralist libertarian who opposes such unconstitutional laws. [continue reading…]
The essence of the libertarian notion of aggression and self-ownership — see On the Core Principles of Libertarian Property Rights. See, on this, the Roman law doctrine of “Corpore Corpori,” or “To the body”. AI summary:
In the context of Roman law, “corpore corpore” is a Latin phrase meaning “by the body to the body.” It refers to the requirement in the first chapter of the Lex Aquilia, a law dealing with damage to property, that the damage had to be inflicted by direct physical force. Specifically, the damage had to be caused by the wrongdoer’s body acting directly on the body of the injured thing.
Related:
I always saw the promise in BTC, from the beginning. Even spoke at one of the first conference, in 2013. 1 But I wrongly assumed that the state would realize this and if when it became a threat, it would ban it. 2 So I didn’t buy because I was too confident in the state’s competence. As I tweeted here, “A friend: “It seems counterintuitive to me that the fed and other regulators seem mostly indifferent to the existential threat that bitcoin represents to the world reserve currency status of USD.” Me: for one, they are stupid, for another, they don’t care about the future–short term thinking. It’s why I was wrong in 2013 or so and wrongly assumed the FedGov was smart and evil and competent and would ban BTC as soon as it became a threat (stephankinsella.com/2025/07/austri). They are just evil and stupid. They have short time preference because they dont “own” the state so they don’t care that BTC is a threat in 10 years. (See Hoppe’s Democracy.)” But I never bought into the flawed “it’s impossible because regression theorem” argument.
Most austro-libertarians are for sound money and for this reason are also pro-bitcoin (BTC), or at least are ambivalent and admit they do not fully understand it—such as Hoppe, who has features pro-bitcoin speakers at the PFS several times:
Some others, especially initially, argued that it was “impossible” because bitcoin “violates the regression theorem” or something. Work in progress—
For arguments that Bitcoin can be money and does not violate the regression theorem:
I’ve lost track of all those who made the argument that it is impossible for various reasons, but here are a few who have expressed skepticism:
My prompt, to Grok and ChatCPT. Answers below.
Provide a summary (up to 2 pages) of Epstein’s argument for the state provided in his book, namely, his argument that state takings of property–in eminent domain and also in the form of taxes–is justified because of the existence of public good and market failure caused by the phenomenon of holdouts and freeriders, and thus certain takings such as eminent domain and taxes, are justified because they address these market failures and thus “grow the size of the pie” thus leading to a surplus from which particular victims of eminent domain can be compensated, and other takings victims such as taxpayers are compensated by in-kind restitution since the regulations or taxes address market failures and thus make society better off in general, in other words taxpayers and those burdened by regulation are compensated by the in-kind restitution of more overall wealth that results from the “taking.” And thus, that only state laws — mostly those of the minimal state or night-watchman state–are justified and most laws and regulations and taxes engaged in by the US federal government are illegitimate, because they do not actually fix a real market failure and grow the pie so that the takings can be compensated, at least by in-kind compensation, but instead destroy wealth and make us all worse off, and at the same time redistributes wealth from the shrinking economy from A to B.
Also consider Richard Epstein’s Takings Political Theory versus Epstein’s Intellectual Property Views and explain Kinsella’s critique of Epstein’s argument from an anarchist libertarian point of view and also Kinsella’s critique of Epstein’s pro-IP views and arguments which do not even pass the test of his own takings-based theory of the minimal state.
Related:
Interesting discussion from Isaac Arthur. To his credit, he doesn’t totally mangle the issues he has only a bit of familiarity with, namely money and property rights. [continue reading…]
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), and International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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