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.
This is my talk “Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape,” delivered at “100 Years with Rothbard,” Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026 (iPhone audio).
This was a simply wonderful event. As noted here, 100 Years with Rothbard was held yesterday in beautiful Porto, Portugal (June 27, 2026), sponsored by several Portuguese libertarian groups: Mises Portugal, Catalaxia, Don’t Trust Verify (bitcoin podcast), ZugaTV (libertarian podcast), and Golpe de Estado Podcast (ancap podcasters). It featured and was attended by a number of Property and Freedom Society (PFS) members, including myself, Hans Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, Saifedean Ammous, Thomas Jacob, Gregory and Joy Morin, and Alessandro and Domitia Fusillo. Hoppe, and Ammous and I spoke at the conference along with others. It was a wonderful event, attended by hundreds from Portugal and many other countries.
Recorded live at the Rothbard at 100 conference
Porto, Portugal • June 27, 2026
Presented by Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org
In this entertaining and insightful talk, Stephan Kinsella delivers his personal “greatest hits” selection from Murray Rothbard’s enormous body of work — the ideas, arguments, and even the funniest moments that have influenced him most over the decades.
Show Notes & Key Points
Libertarianism and Rothbard
Kinsella has been a libertarian since high school (age ~15) — about 45 years.
He became a Rothbard fan just a couple of years later, as soon as he started reading him.
He has been an intellectual property attorney for ~33 years (since 1993) and has been opposed to IP for the same length of time.
Rothbard’s Greatest Hits – A Personal Mix Tape
In his chapter in the new book Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (edited by Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe), Kinsella highlights Rothbard’s most important and interesting insights.
He compares the talk to making a “Rothbard greatest hits” mix tape — the kind he used to make for girlfriends — or even a mix containing only the guitar solos from his favorite band, Rush (another passion he’s had since age 15).
Others’ Favorite Rothbard Works
Rothbard was incredibly prolific. Here are some of his most popular and influential works mentioned:
Man, Economy, and State
Power and Market
For a New Liberty
The Ethics of Liberty
Conceived in Liberty (multi-volume)
America’s Great Depression
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
The Betrayal of the American Right
Anatomy of the State
The Progressive Era
“War Guilt in the Middle East”
Highly recommended collections:
The Free Market Reader
The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000)
Making Economic Sense (1996)
Economic Controversies (2011)
One of the best pieces ever written about Rothbard is Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty.
Kinsella’s Personal Favorites
These are the ideas and writings Kinsella has found most useful, interesting, or clever:
The Dog That Did Not Bark (Rothbard on IP)
At a 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and others, someone asked Hoppe whether personal sovereignty extends to knowledge and ideas.
Hoppe’s answer: “In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.”
Rothbard remained silent. Hoppe later said he believes Rothbard was “almost there” and would have adopted the full anti-IP position had he lived longer.
Contract Theory – Title-Transfer Theory
One of Rothbard’s most important contributions (developed with Williamson Evers) is the title-transfer theory of contract. Rothbard suggested the idea, Evers wrote it up, and Rothbard later used it in The Ethics of Liberty.
This theory finally makes coherent sense of contract law as an extension of property rights rather than a separate mystical category.
Utility and Welfare Economics
In “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics” (in Economic Controversies), Rothbard emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared — a point also stressed by Mises.
Taxonomy of State Intervention
In Power and Market, Rothbard systematically classifies state interventions as:
Autistic
Binary (e.g., taxation)
Triangular (e.g., antitrust, licensing, and intellectual property)
Kinsella notes that IP is a classic triangular intervention — a nonconsensual negative servitude that lets the IP holder control other people’s property.
The Funny Rothbard
Rothbard had a sharp wit. Some highlights Kinsella loves:
“Mozart Was a Red” — a hilarious play mocking “dimwit and serioso” Randians.
“Hoppephobia” (Liberty magazine, March 1990) — Rothbard’s response to a critical review of Hoppe’s book. Classic line: Hoppe’s work has the “remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
The Galambos story: A Galambosian author who believed in perpetual IP sent Rothbard a $100 check for using his ideas. Rothbard returned it, saying that if the author really believed in owning ideas, he owed all his royalties, not just $100.
Critiques of Nozick and Georgism
Rothbard’s devastating critique of Robert Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in “Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.”
Complete demolition of Georgism in “The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications” and the reply to Georgist criticisms. (Kinsella adds: “Egads, I hate Georgism.”)
Method
Next to The Ethics of Liberty, Kinsella finds Rothbard’s essays in Economic Controversies (especially Part One: Method) among the most useful. He compares them to the first 100 pages of Mises’ Human Action on methodology.
Property and Freedom Society: PropertyAndFreedom.org
Kinsella Slide Shownotes
From powerpoint:
Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org
100 Years with Rothbard
June 27, 2026
Porto, Portugal
Libertarianism and Rothbard
► Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15. So 45 years.
§ I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.
► Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.
Rothbard’s Greatest Hits
► Rothbard Chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought
§ There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.
§ Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.
► Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends
§ Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos
§ Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.
Others’ Favorites
► With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.
§ If one was try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation
§ I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute
► Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28-Aug. 2, 2002)
► He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians
Others’ Favorites
§ There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?; An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought; The Betrayal of the American Right; Anatomy of the State; The Progressive Era; “War Guilt in the Middle East”; etc.
§ He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason magazine, Liberty magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard …
§ Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997)
§ And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard in 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift
Others’ Favorites
§ And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty
► Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life
Kinsella’s Favorites
► Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here:
► These are basically some of my personal favorites.
§ The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.
§ Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies
► Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did NOT say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “the dog that did not bark”
§ Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused
§ 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others
Kinsella’s Favorites
► Owning Thoughts and Labor [Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006)
► Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? … Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
§ Rothbard did not say anything
§ Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there”
§ “I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.”
§ Cite my recent article w/ hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, “Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,” StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract,” n. 52
The Funny Rothbard
► Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians
§ This was a term he used in a 1993 article:
► “When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit andseriosolibertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”
► See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressable Rothbard (Feb. 1993)
► Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech
► Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017)
► I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets”
§ Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”; Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets
The Funny Rothbard
§ Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:
► “The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
§ Muttering and chewing the carpet!
► “[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.”
§ Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line
The Funny Rothbard
§ Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his the ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.
► One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.
► The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check
► Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?
Nozick, Georgism
► But on to more serious topics:
► Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State
§ He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky”.
► Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms.
§ Egads, I hate Georgism
Method
► As I noted, next to TheEthics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method
§ Just as the first 100 pages or so of Human Action, on methodology, is my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book
§ Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History
Contract Theory
► To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers
§ Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty
§ Neither was a lawyer
§ It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law
► The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract
Utility and Welfare Economics
► “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.
§ As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value
§ See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” StephanKinsella.com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).
Taxonomy of State Intervention
► Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.
► Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention
§ taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market
§ antitrust law licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects
► This also applies to intellectual property
► IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources
► This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:
§ it is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner
► Monopoly Theory/antitrust law: “Monopoly and Competition,” ch. 10 of Man, Economy and State (1962). In this chapter, Rothbard adopted a more radical and sound view of monopoly and antitrust law, from both an Austrian economic and libertarian perspective, than the more conventional view of Mises.
§ See also Hoppe’s complementary views in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 10, “Capitalist Production and the Problem of Monopoly.”
► Defamation: Rothard was only one of the few libertarians to see this issue clearly
§ you can’t own your reputation since it is just what others think of you
► This plus his comment about Galambos that you can’t own ideas, is another reason I think he would have rejected IP completely
► “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”
Shooting the Hostage
► some have argued that if a bad guy has a hostage and he is shooting a you, you have the right to shoot the hostage in self defense. Rothbard argued that this would be murder:
§ “There is an important philosophical error that [Eric] Mack makes about free-market defense agencies that is quite relevant to our concerns. He maintains that if A uses B as an innocent shield to aggress against C, it is perfectly legitimate for C to shoot B. The problem here is that Mack forgets about the rights of B. Suppose, after all, that B has hired his own defense agency sworn to defend his life and property, and that, for some empirical reason, the agency can’t get to A; would it not then be perfectly legitimate for B or his agent to shoot C in self-defense? The answer, of course, is yes.”
► Rothbard, “Reason Watch,” Libertarian Review 6, no. 4 (August 1977): 10–13; published as “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at LewRockwell.com and “Libertarians Must Never Warm to the Warfare State” at Mises.org; also Rothbard, Murray N. 1984. “Eric Mack and the Anarchist Case for War.” The Libertarian Forum. Vol. 18, No. 5-6, pp. 3-7; http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1984/1984_05-06.pdf
Pollution and Hermeneutics
► “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” in Economic Controversies (originally published 1982). This piece advanced the concept of the “relevant technological unit,” which I have drawn on in my own writing about property rights.
§ This is relevant to how much of a resource is homesteaded by use or occupation, and why stepping foot on a continent does not mean you own the whole thing
§ Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” pp. 24–25, n. 34; and idem, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” n. 42 and “On Libertarian Legal Theory, Self-Ownership, and Drug Laws,” n. 39, both in LFFS.
► Criticism of Hermeneutics: The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics
§ This pairs well with the Economic Controversies, Section One: Method (The Mantle of Science, In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”, and others)
Universal Communism
► Universal communism: his argument for self-ownership:
§ only two alternatives to self-ownership:
§ One class owns another (slavery)
§ Universal communism: everyone owns a share of everyone else
► “a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.”
§ pp. 353–354; bold emphasis added
§ See also similar arguments and comments in Rothbard, “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” in The Ethics of Liberty
Hayek’s Knowledge Problem
► “the entire Hayekian emphasis on ‘knowledge’ is misplaced and misconceived”
► Murray N. Rothbard, “The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited,” Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala: Mises Institute, 2011), p. 846
► Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Knowledge, Judgment, and the Use of Property.” Rev. Austrian Econ. 10, no. 1 (1997): 23–48, p. 39 (discussing “the irrelevance of knowledge problems”)
► Joseph T. Salerno, “Ludwig von Mises as a Social Rationalist,” Rev. Austrian Econ. 4 (1990): 26–54, p. 44 (“[t]he price system is not–and praxeologically cannot be–a mechanism for economizing and communicating the knowledge relevant to production plans. The realized prices of history are an accessory of appraisement”)
► Hoppe, “Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?”, in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 146 (“Hayek’s contribution to the socialism debate must be thrown out as false, confusing, and irrelevant.”)
Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15.
I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.
Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.
Rothbard’s Greatest Hits
Rothbard Chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought
There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.
Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.
Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends
Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos
Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.
Others’ Favorites
With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.
If one was try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation
I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute
Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28-Aug. 2, 2002)
He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians
He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason magazine, Liberty magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard …
And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard in 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift
And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty
Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life
Kinsella’s Favorites
Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here:
These are basically some of my personal favorites.
The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.
Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies
Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did NOT say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “the dog that did not bark”
Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused
1988 panel discussionon ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others
Question:I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? … Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
Rothbard did not say anything
Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there”
Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians
This was a term he used in a 1993 article:
“When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit and seriosolibertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”
Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech
Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:
“The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
Muttering and chewing the carpet!
“[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Libertywell know.”
Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line
Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his the ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.
One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.
The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check
Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?
As I noted, next to TheEthics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method
Just as the first part of Human Action, on methodology, is the my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book
Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History
To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers
Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty
Neither was a lawyer
It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law
As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value
See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).
Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.
taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market
antitrust law licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects
This also applies to intellectual property
IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources
This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:
it is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner
Monopoly Theory/antitrust law: “Monopoly and Competition,” ch. 10 of Man, Economy and State (1962). In this chapter, Rothbard adopted a more radical and sound view of monopoly and antitrust law, from both an Austrian economic and libertarian perspective, than the more conventional view of Mises.
See also Hoppe’s complementary views in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 10, “Capitalist Production and the Problem of Monopoly.”
Defamation: Rothard was only one of the few libertarians to see this issue clearly
you can’t own your reputation since it is just what others think of you
This plus his comment about Galambos that you can’t own ideas, is another reason I think he would have rejected IP completely
Shooting the Hostage: some have argued that if a bad guy has a hostage and he is shooting a you, you have the right to shoot the hostage in self defense. Rothbard argued that this would be murder:
“There is an important philosophical error that [Eric] Mack makes about free-market defense agencies that is quite relevant to our concerns. He maintains that if A uses B as an innocent shield to aggress against C, it is perfectly legitimate for C to shoot B. The problem here is that Mack forgets about the rights of B. Suppose, after all, that B has hired his own defense agency sworn to defend his life and property, and that, for some empirical reason, the agency can’t get to A; would it not then be perfectly legitimate for B or his agent to shoot C in self-defense? The answer, of course, is yes.”
“Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” in Economic Controversies (originally published 1982). This piece advanced the concept of the “relevant technological unit,” which I have drawn on in my own writing about property rights.
This is relevant to how much of a resource is homesteaded by use or occupation, and why stepping foot on a continent does not mean you own the whole thing
Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is,” pp. 24–25, n. 34; and idem, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” n. 42 and “On Libertarian Legal Theory, Self-Ownership, and Drug Laws,” n. 39, both in
This pairs well with the Economic Controversies, Section One: Method (The Mantle of Science, In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”, and others)
Universal communism: his argument for self-ownership:
only two alternatives to self-ownership:
One class owns another (slavery)
Universal communism: everyone owns a share of everyone else
“a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.”
Criticism of Hayek: “the entire Hayekian emphasis on ‘knowledge’ is misplaced and misconceived”
Murray N. Rothbard, “The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited,” Economic Controversies(Auburn, Ala: Mises Institute, 2011), p. 846
Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Knowledge, Judgment, and the Use of Property.” Austrian Econ. 10, no. 1 (1997): 23–48, p. 39 (discussing “the irrelevance of knowledge problems”)
Joseph T. Salerno, “Ludwig von Mises as a Social Rationalist,” Austrian Econ. 4 (1990): 26–54, p. 44 (“[t]he price system is not–and praxeologically cannot be–a mechanism for economizing and communicating the knowledge relevant to production plans. The realized prices of history are an accessory of appraisement”)
Hoppe, “Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?”, in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 146 (“Hayek’s contribution to the socialism debate must be thrown out as false, confusing, and irrelevant.”)
Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org
100 Years with Rothbard
June 27, 2026
Porto, Portugal
Libertarianism and Rothbard
Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15. So 45 years.
I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.
Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.
Rothbard’s Greatest Hits
Rothbard chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought.
There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.
Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.
Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends.
Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos.
Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.
Others’ Favorites
With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.
If one was to try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation.
I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute.
Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28–Aug. 2, 2002).
He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians.
There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, The Betrayal of the American Right, Anatomy of the State, The Progressive Era, “War Guilt in the Middle East”, etc.
He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason Magazine, Liberty Magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard…
Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997).
And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard at 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift.
And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty.
Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life.
Kinsella’s Favorites
Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here.
These are basically some of my personal favorites.
The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.
Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies.
Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did not say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “The Dog That Did Not Bark.”
Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused.
1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others.
Owning Thoughts and Labor [Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006).
Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …
Hoppe: … In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
Rothbard did not say anything.
Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there.”
“I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.”
Cite my recent article w/ Hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, ‘Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,’ StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, ‘A Libertarian Theory of Contract,’ n. 52.”
The Funny Rothbard
Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians.
This was a term he used in a 1993 article:
“When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit and serioso libertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”
See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressible Rothbard (Feb. 1993).
Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for Liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech.
Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017).
I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets.”
Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”; Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets.
Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:
“The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
Muttering and chewing the carpet!
“[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is ‘no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.’ Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.”
Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line.
Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.
One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.
The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check.
Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?
Nozick, Georgism
But on to more serious topics:
Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.
He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban on competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky.”
Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms.
Egads, I hate Georgism.
Method
As I noted, next to The Ethics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method.
Just as the first 100 pages or so of Human Action, on methodology, is my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book.
Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History.
Contract Theory
To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers.
Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty.
Neither was a lawyer.
It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law.
The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract.
Utility and Welfare Economics
“Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.
As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value.
See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” StephanKinsella.com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).
Taxonomy of State Intervention
Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.
Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention.”
Taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market.
Antitrust law, licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects.
This also applies to intellectual property.
IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources.
This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:
It is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner.
In the most recent episode of the excellent podcast Divided Argument, “Watch Snobs” (June 14, 2026), at about 55 minutes, the hosts talk about an anomaly in the law where it is possible to commit murder and get away with it because of some quirks in our federal constitutional scheme. They refer to a 2005 law review article and a novel based on this issue:
Brian C. Kalt, “The Perfect Crime,” Georgetown L. J. 93, no. 2 (2005):
This article argues that there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one might be able to commit felonies with impunity. This is because of the intersection of a poorly drafted statute with a clear but neglected constitutional provision: the Sixth Amendment’s Vicinage Clause. Although lesser criminal charges and civil liability still loom, the remaining possibility of criminals going free over a needless technical failure by Congress is difficult to stomach. No criminal defendant has ever broached the subject, let alone faced the numerous (though unconvincing) counterarguments. This shows that vicinage is not taken seriously by lawyers or judges. Still, Congress should close the Idaho loophole, not pretend it does not exist.
This video, based on Christopher Ingraham, “Victory! Illinois Village Agrees to Let Laura’s Garden Grow After IJ Letter,” Institute for Justice Press Release (, covers a recent “right to garden” case in Illinois involving a homeowner, Laura Schaefer, and the Village of Millstadt, Illinois (apparently a local government, as it has a mayor).
Schaefer, a gardener and botany instructor with decades of experience, and her husband bought a village block that included a house and several vacant lots. Over five years, she transformed the half-acre property into a well-maintained oasis of native plants, pollinator plants, heirloom vegetables, and edible plants, with mowed paths and detailed documentation. In May, the village issued her a citation for violating a local ordinance against “high grass and weeds” (specifically prohibiting vegetation over one foot tall). A village official threatened that if she didn’t tear out the garden within 7 days, village workers would destroy it and bill her $40 per hour. [continue reading…]
This is my interview by Matthew Geiger of the Carl Menger Institute for Menger Institute Podcast #6 (recorded June 11, 2026). Shownotes and transcript below. [continue reading…]
I’ve known PaulCwik, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Mount Olive and fellow of the Mises Institute since I started attending the Austrian Scholars Conference in 1995. He is an Austrian and libertarian of sorts but had some qualms with my anti-IP writing so presented a paper “Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics?” at the Austrian Scholars Conference in 2008, which I attended and commented on. After 18 years we finally decided to get around to talking about this. I had planned on an hour but we ended up talking for 3. It turns out we were old friends but not that close; we didn’t know much about each other. So the first 30-50 minutes or so is more preliminary discussion. [continue reading…]
I attended LNC2026 a couple weeks ago; what a sh*tshow. I ran for re-election for the Judicial Committee, on which I served the last 4 years; I was not re-elected. Good riddance. I’ll write up my experience with the LP over the last 4 years presently, but for now, a couple of commentaries, by PFS member Adam Haman, with Bob Murphy, and on the Tom Woods show.
Interesting commentary by Tank. I have not yet heard the whole thing but wanted to chime in a few things Tank mentioned. I append the transcript below. So for now, a few initial and quick comments: [continue reading…]
I’m never quite sure how to describe what it is that I do (my avocation, not my (former) vocation(s)). 1
Is it political theory? Political philosophy? Libertarian theory? Libertarian legal theory? Legal theory/jurisprudence? Moral theory? Ethics? Metaethics? 2 Philosophy? Isn’t all libertarian theory really libertarian legal theory, in the end, since our focus is on what institutional uses of force are just, that is, what laws are just? What property rights there are?
Am I an intellectual? A scholar? An academic?
A few Grok searches helped sort some of this out. Bottom line: [continue reading…]
In the most recent episode of the excellent podcast Divided Argument, “
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