Jacob Huebert, “Walter Block, Fearless Inspiration”

The recent book Walter Block – Anarcho-Capitalist Austro-Libertarian, Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds. (Addleton Academic Publishers, 2025) contained my essay “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre.” My friends Doug French and Jacob Huebert told me they had been asked to contribute but for some reason their essay was not included. I asked Walter about this; he said maybe they could be in … volume 2. In any cases, I believe Doug’s piece was eventually published as “Entrepreneurship Can’t Be Taught in a College Classroom,” Mises Wire (June 21, 2025), and then included in Doug’s book When Movements Become Rackets and Other Swindles: The PFS Trilogy.

Huebert’s was the piece below, which he gave me permission to post.

Walter Block, Fearless Inspiration

By Jacob Huebert ¹

As a scholar, teacher, writer, and speaker, Walter Block is fearless. And I’m grateful to him for helping me to become more fearless, as well.

In 2006, Walter and I were invited to present a paper we’d written, “In Defense of Advertising in Space,” ² at the annual Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space, which would be held in Valencia, Spain. Walter understandably declined, given his schedule, the lack of any honorarium or travel reimbursement, and the many speaking opportunities open to him elsewhere. But he encouraged me to go. I’d never presented a paper anywhere and embraced any excuse to travel internationally, so I went.

The Colloquium was attended by scholars from around the world who focus on laws regulating space exploration–even though, I noticed, many of them came from countries with no hope of ever having a space program.

When it was my turn, I got up before this group in a darkened room and presented our paper’s thesis: that there should be no restrictions on advertising in outer space at all, as long as the advertisements comported with private property rights. So if someone wanted to put giant billboards in orbit, visible from the ground, that would be fine. And if advertisers could project an image–say, the Pizza Hut logo–onto the face of the moon, that, too, would be fine. “After all,” Walter and I wrote in the paper, “it is merely an accident that the Moon’s face has been scarred in the way that it has been over the eons. What if, instead of looking somewhat like a ‘man in the Moon,’ the Moon’s face coincidentally looked like the Pizza Hut logo? In that case, presumably the anti-advertising advocates would have no problem with the logo’s presence and would insist that no one tamper with it.”

Wouldn’t space advertisements interfere with astronomers’ ability to observe the cosmos from the ground? Maybe. But as Walter had repeatedly argued in his work, a person has no right to preserve a particular view from his property at the expense of others’ property rights. So even if the so-called light pollution of space advertising would reduce the amount of astronomical observation that occurs, “astronomers have not made the case that an astronomy that tramples on the rights of others results in the economically optimal amount of astronomical research.” Therefore, we argued, astronomers’ efforts to prohibit space advertising “appear to be little more than theft-seeking: that is, seeking government privilege to ensure their continued employment, or, at least, advancement of their own special interests.”

How did the world’s gathered space law scholars receive these ideas?

They hissed. Literally, as I was speaking. It was not only the first time I’d been hissed; it was the first time I’d seen any speaker hissed. But I carried on through the end, doing my best to emulate the cheerful spirit in which I’d seen Walter present provocative ideas many times.

Then came the Q&A. An elderly gentleman, apparently known and respected by many of the others, brought himself to his feet with the help of a cane and spoke slowly in heavily accented English. Like many who get up at Q&A time, he offered not a question, but a comment: “I would like to propose an award,” he said, “for the Worst Paper Ever Presented at this Colloquium.” The audience endorsed his suggestion with applause.

Was I embarrassed, dejected, discouraged? Not at all. It was fun. I got to go to Spain to present a paper I’d written with Walter Block! And–although I like the night sky and the moon the way they are–I believed our ideas were right. And if this crowd of space socialists was so hostile to property rights that they could only respond with ridicule, rather than reasoned argument, why would I care about their approval or disapproval?

I’d never had a great fear of public speaking, but this experience eliminated any trace of it. My talk had received about the worst reception possible, short of a riot–and I was fine. If I could get through that worst-case scenario and be no worse off, I could speak anywhere about anything and know I’d be okay.

Walter, of course, was and is my inspiration. From the beginning, he has followed his principles wherever they lead and joyously presented the truth as he sees it, with no topic off-limits and no conclusion too controversial to express. He doesn’t hold back regardless of how a particular audience might respond, and even regardless of whether he might suffer more serious personal consequences.

And he has suffered personal consequences. In recent years, administrators at his university have persistently persecuted him based on a few leftist students’ frivolous complaints about viewpoints he’s expressed and supposedly offensive words he’s used in the classroom. The university has repeatedly investigated him, forced him to endure DEI trainings, and threatened to fire him. But he’s gone right on speaking the truth in his own enthusiastic way, in his classes and everywhere else, neither pulling his punches nor revealing any bitterness over his mistreatment.

He’s also persevered even as some fellow libertarians have harshly criticized his approach, from day one. Defending the Undefendable received praise from no less than Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek (among others), but also received harsh criticism from other libertarians. A Reason magazine review, for example, called its provocative approach “callous,” “offensive,” and “a positive menace to the libertarian movement.” ³ And so it has gone throughout his long career.

In these critics’ views, libertarians should try to “meet people where they are,” present our ideas selectively, and choose our words cautiously to avoid offending contemporary sensibilities. They fear that Walter’s different approach might scare people away.

And it’s true that Walter’s approach is not for everyone. Maybe it’s not for the fearful–for the milquetoast, the seeker of social approval, the person who values comfort over confrontation. Maybe sometimes it does scare the scareable.

But in the right person Walter Block’s bold approach can awaken a passion and the confidence to pursue and speak the unvarnished truth in the face of a hostile world. The world needs more such people, and Walter has produced, and continues to produce, many of them. ⁴ I’m proud to count myself among those who have benefitted greatly from Walter’s example and encouragement.

1. President, Liberty Justice Center. The views expressed here are those of the author, not any organization. [↩]
2. J.H. Huebert & Walter Block, In Defense of Advertising in Space, Proceedings of the 49th Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space 479-489 (2007). [↩]
3. Sharon Presley, Defending the Undefendable, Reason, Feb. 1977. [↩]
4. I notice, for example, that Javier Milei—the anarcho-capitalist Argentine presidential candidate who presents his ideas in a most uncompromising and unreserved manner—cites Walter as an inspiration. See, e.g., An Interview with Javier Milei, The Economist, Sept. 7, 2023; Javier Milei, Twitter, Aug. 20, 2017 (one tweet among many directing readers to Walter Block’s work). [↩]