From Twitter:
Here’s what I’ll add: you say yours is a moral argument. You say you’re a Rothbardian. I don’t think you could defend that position, especially given that Rothbard was wrong concerning all rights are property rights, and self-ownership is their source. I believe I soundly… https://t.co/dGqcgY4BPC
— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) April 25, 2025
“Here’s what I’ll add: you say yours is a moral argument. You say you’re a Rothbardian. I don’t think you could defend that position, especially given that Rothbard was wrong concerning all rights are property rights, and self-ownership is their source.”
A few things. First,…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 25, 2025
My response:
“Here’s what I’ll add: you say yours is a moral argument. You say you’re a Rothbardian. I don’t think you could defend that position, especially given that Rothbard was wrong concerning all rights are property rights, and self-ownership is their source.”
A few things. First, Rothbard was clear that his libertarian views were not about personal morals but about what the law should be–about what legal rights we should have. https://stephankinsella.com/2025/04/rothbard-on-libertarianism-personal-morality-and-political-ethics/
Second, how is Rothbard wrong that all rights are property rights? What right is NOT a property right–considering that the entire purpose of property rights is to permit conflict free use of scarce resources–things over which there be, you know, conflict? And given that all rights are legally and justifiably enforceable–get the word force there? FORCE? You know, the physical way we interact with objects to use them and with others to stop them using, you know, physical force, to use our own things without our consent? You know, physical force, the thing even Ayn Rand mentioned when she had Galt say: “So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.”
Third, this talk of self-ownership being the “source” of all rights is confusing in various ways. (a) As I patiently explain repeatedly, e.g. in my book [Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)] (eg ch. 4 et pass), “self-ownership” really just means ownership of one’s body. (b) Of course the possession and use and even owership of one’s body is prior temporally and logically to ownership of other things, namely previously-unowned resources that are acquired by original appropriation of an actor already having a body. AGain, see my book, eg. ch. 4, 9, et pass. (c) But all this talk about the “source” of rights is appeal to confusing and scientistic metaphor, one that is ultimately a form of legal positivism: it is searching for some law giver outside of oneself that decrees or “makes” something normatively/morally true–whether that be the legislature/state, God, “natural law,” etc. The better approach is to recognize that morals and norms are not descriptive facts but prescriptive norms and oughts that are not “true” in the same sense as facts and is-statements but instead are normative propositions that can either be argumentatively justified or not–and such justification, because of the is-ought gap (see ch. 6, n.12) always has to appeal to lower-level base grundnorms or values shared or accepted by other participants in discourse (see ch. 6).
Now you as a good Randian cannot deny that rights can only be violated by initiation of–what did she call it? PHYSICAL FORCE–and that therefore all property rights are rights to the types of things over which there can be physical clashing; and you cannot deny that each person owns his own body (because that is what is implied by the norm: “aggression against another’s body is impermissible”–which you Randians agree with) and this is all that “self-ownership” can coherently mean; and you hopefully do not and cannot deny that we self-owning (body-owning) acting humans who have a randian self-actualization need to act in the REAL WORLD–men are not ghosts, right? (https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mystics_of_spirit_and_muscle.html; https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/soul-body_dichotomy.html)–so of course it is right and good and justified that acting, self-owning humans have a right to use an unowned scarce resource (or to purchase it by contract from a previous owner) and to therefore come to own such things, right? Isn’t this covered by Rand’s prohibition on aggression? that is, doesn’t one’s ownership of one’s body imply ownership of scarce resources in the world to things one has acquired by original appropriation, or by contract–i.e., you know, property rights?
So do please tell us how it is wrong to say that (a) all (human) rights just are property rights; (b) how “self-ownership” can coherently mean anything other than ownership of one’s own body; (c) how owning one’s body is not logically and temporally prior to any claims to external scarce (conflictable) resources; and (d) how any (property) right to anything—to one’s own body or to previously-unowned external things one has appropriated—can have any “source” other than a reasons grounded in the nature of things and relying on either common, agreed-do and shared norms and/or norms necessarily presupposed by all participants in peaceful, civilized discourse?
And while you are at it, why don’t you explain how these justified property rights are compatible with IP rights! https://c4sif.org/2011/06/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/
