Often the question is asked as to what types of acts constitute or are sufficient for homesteading (or “embordering” as Hoppe sometimes refers to it); what type of “labor” must be “mixed with” a thing; and to what property does the homesteading extend? What “counts” as “sufficient” homesteading? We can see that the answer to these questions is related to the issue of what is the thing in dispute. In other words, if B claims ownership of a thing possessed (or formerly possessed) by A, then the very framing of the dispute helps to identify what the thing is in dispute, and what counts as possession of it. If B claims ownership of a given resource, he wants the right to control it, to a certain extent, and according to its nature. Then the question becomes, did someone else previously control “it” (whatever is in dispute), according to its nature; i.e., did someone else already homestead it, so that B is only a latecomer? This ties in with de Jasay’s “let exclusion stand” principle, which rests on the idea that if someone is actually able to control a resource such that others are excluded, then this exclusion should “stand.” Of course, the physical nature of a given scarce resource and the way in which humans use such resources will determine the nature of actions needed to “control” it and exclude others.
Lecture, “Rothbard’s Revolutionary Contract Theory,” “Liberté Tribute to Rothbard on his Centenary: Rothbard 100: A Legacy for Future Generations,” Sociedad de la Libertad Latam (SdL) (a Latin American think tank based in Lima, Peru) and the 5th American Youth for Liberty Forum (Aug. 12, 2026, International Youth Day; via Youtube). Attendees included young people with a background in libertarian thought from Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico.
The speech was my English language talk interspersed with a Spanish translation by the moderator, Rosa María Apaza, Presidente SDL LATAM.
Hope you’re doing great, and I wish you a great trip to Portugal! When you have a moment, I would greatly appreciate your guidance on how to think about doxing (the public disclosure online of private or personally identifiable information about someone without their consent). I have tried finding if you have talked about it somewhere, seeing as you have pretty much mentioned everything there is to say regarding property rights and IP, but I cannot seem to find your take specifically on this. [continue reading…]
I found this unfinished draft article in a file. Not sure why I abandoned it. I would no doubt change the references now, but enclose it below in its unfinished state.
Attention Minarchists: Mind Your Manners
[incomplete draft, July 2008]
by Stephan Kinsella
For some time now, we anarcho-libertarians have put up with a great deal of abuse from some of our minarchist brethren and other fellow travelers—classical liberals, constitutionalists, paleoconservatives.
We anarchists, say some of our purported allies, oppose law and order. According to others, we are “pacifists.” They say we are not “serious,” since our ideas are too radical, too principled, too “unrealistic,” or too difficult to achieve. When we oppose increasing the power and jurisdiction of the federal government to overturn unlibertarian state laws, it must be because we are in favor of these laws. If we criticize the tyrannical, murderous and unlibertarian Abraham Lincoln and his illegal, unconstitutional Civil War, why, we must be paleoconservative, neoconfederate apologists for slavery. Some even condescendingly intone that we anarchists are not “real libertarians.” [continue reading…]
Since I got my first car with a cassette deck (a Ford Futura in 1979 or so) and bought my first two cassette albums, on the advice of my music-loving best friend, John Wax—Queen, Greatest Hits and Rush, Permanent Waves—Rush has been my favorite band (my two favorite albums being Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves). Well maybe Pink Floyd at some point edged them out for me. But I love all Rush up until about the Grace Under Pressure era (1984). I saw them a few times back in Louisiana and Texas but over time started disliking live concerts. I just prefer studio albums and don’t much like to be around pot-smoking fanboys messy stadium-style urinals.
But Rush, after disbanding after Neil Peart’s death in 2015, had reunited for a (presumably final) tour. So my hard-core Rush fan and fellow libertarian Carl Bowen, who has been to 12 Rush concerts, who lives Manhattan, got tickets and he and I and another couple of libertarians, including Rush virgin Greg Morin, are attending the concert tonight in Madison Square Garden. See:
Someone asked me if I wanted to see an essay to provide feedback on it, based on a 4-page excerpt (below). My reply below, along with a Summary of his excerpt and the excerpt.
Kinsella:
No time. Re the excerpt I saw, a few quick thoughts:
It seems like you have lots of disjointed and scattered observation and things that are just assertions, un-unnuanced, no proof, no argument, no citations or references e.g. “Negligence is a subcategory of aggression.”
Hey Stephan. Have you ever written about the legal concept of quasi-contracts? I tried searching on Google and couldn’t find anything.
Kinsella:
Not explicitly, except maybe on incidentally on occasion, see e.g. note 12 to The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract: “Alessandro Fusillo observed to me that Rothbard might not have been aware of the fact that his notion of “implicit theft” echoes the concept of quasi delicts. See La. Civ. Code, arts. 2315 and 2316; Levasseur (2009, §1.1.1.D).”
I tend to focus for now on fundamentals for a few reasons.
First, modern statist law is hopelessly distorted and cannot be fixed; it can only criticized in view of more abstract natural justice principles (libertarianism). Second, it is premature and probably impossible to work out the details of a functioning libertarian law code without it working in practice. That said, in addition to codifying the abstract and fundamental principles as The Universal Principles of Liberty I am also working on further refinements in my Supplemental Principles as well as in my Kinsella’s Annotations and Commentary (both TBD). But I suspect that once this is done, aside from commentary and criticism and contributions by other libertarian scholars, not much more can be done. On all this see:
As I note in some recent posts, I think we have to rethink many existing divisions and classifications which are part of positive law, but this may have to wait until libertarian principles and law are further developed . But this might include: merging criminal and tort and property law together, but not from criminal to property/tort/restitution, but the other way around (though in practice it would be a restitution system)—as well as other existing distinctions mainstream thinkers take for granted. See:
Principled libertarians are anti-state because they favor property rights and oppose aggression. 1 This does not mean respect for rights, or the non-aggression principled is our “only,” or even the “highest,” “value”; 2nor that we believe in “absolute” property rights, whatever that means. 3 It only means that we have a principled case for property rights and we oppose aggression; we recognize that it is impossible to justify aggression. 4
And for these reasons we oppose both private crime or aggression, and institutionalized aggression by the state, including taxation and other forms of institutionalized theft by the state—such as eminent domain, conscription, intellectual property law, 5 and so on (as well as many other types of aggression). 6[continue reading…]
Listening the other day to one of my favorite rock bands from the 80s, Judas Priest, I was struck by the prescience of the lyrics to their great song Electric Eye, from their 1982 Album Screaming for Vengeance. Released almost 30 years ago, it eerily describes the Bush-Obama PATRIOT-act surveillance state: [continue reading…]
100 Years with Rothbard was held two weekends ago in beautiful Porto, Portugal, on Saturday, June 27, 2026, featuring and attended by a number of PFS members, including Professor Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, Stephan Kinsella, Saifedean Ammous, Thomas Jacob, Greg and Joy Morin, and Alessandro and Domitia Fusillo. From the PFS side, Hoppe, Kinsella, and Ammous spoke at the conference, along with many other wonderful speakers (program). It was a wonderful event, attended by hundreds from Portugal and many other countries. Below is my report of the event, along with some photos of the event. [continue reading…]
At dinner one night, I noticed his scapular so asked him about his Catholicism. We ended up talking atheism, sedevacantism, and whether Mises’s praxeology is compatible with God. I think this came up when he mentioned something about how Praxeology is compatible with man’s natural ends or something like that and I ended up responding that to the contrary one reason the very idea of God is nonsensical is because he cannot act because that would imply uneasiness, dissatisfaction, imperfection.
I have discussed such issues many times before, e.g. Mises on God and others collected there (see below), and I was not attempting to really press the case for atheism but just to observe that the notion of God does seem to be incompatible with praxeology and its assumptions. [continue reading…]
This is my interview by Alex Buxeda of at Schweizer Monat [Swiss Monthly; linktree]; recorded June 22, 2026. Youtube shownotes:
Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney, legal theorist, and one of the leading critics of intellectual property sits with Alex Buxeda to explore whether ideas can be owned. Starting from first principles, they discuss why Kinsella argues that patents and copyrights are incompatible with property rights, the role of scarcity in economics, innovation without intellectual property, pharmaceutical patents, entrepreneurship, pricing, and the philosophical foundations of ownership.
Grok summary: We discussed why intellectual property is fundamentally incompatible with genuine property rights. Stephan Kinsella argued that patents and copyrights are not legitimate property but state-granted monopolies that violate real ownership of scarce, physical resources. He explained that ideas and knowledge are non-scarce and non-rivalrous — one person’s use does not prevent another’s — so enforcing IP requires aggression against others’ tangible property. We explored the flaws in common justifications for patents (especially in pharmaceuticals), the arbitrary nature of IP law, the myth that “creation” grants ownership, and how free competition and open knowledge flows drive far more innovation than government-protected monopolies. Kinsella also addressed the ethics of piracy, the distorting effects of the FDA and tariffs, and why emerging technologies like 3D printing and AI will increasingly undermine IP systems.
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