Ancap Joker: Who owns my body?

by Stephan Kinsella on April 8, 2026

Interesting article by Ancap Joker, “Who owns my body?,” Substack (Apr 07, 2026). I paste it below with a few interspersed comments. I think it’s pretty good, basically in the right direction. I have a couple of suggested quibbles/slight changes.

Who owns my body?

Adam Haman?

Ancap Joker

Apr 07, 2026

After selling myself into slavery to Adam Haman just to pay off the debt I racked up buying Magic: The Gathering cards, I began to think: Who actually owns my body?

Thankfully, my master is old and arguably wise. He compelled me to write this article, so I did some research into body ownership, contract theory, and voluntary slavery. Here is what I gathered.

Ex Machina

Minor spoiler warning

In the movie Ex Machina (2014), Caleb, the main character, is called to perform a Turing test on a new AI robot named Ava, created by the CEO Nathan. Over the course of the movie, we realize that Ava’s psyche/demeanours is indistinguishable from a human’s. This raises the question: Who owns Ava’s body?

Nathan programmed and built Ava. All the resources used were acquired by Nathan, so he should be the owner, right? Maybe not. In Chapter 4 of Stephan Kinsella’s Legal Foundations of a Free Society, there is a passage discussing children and how they come to own themselves. Kinsella argues it isn’t homesteading; it’s a special type of ownership. He claims that because a person has direct control over their body, they are the owner. The body was never an “unowned resource” to be homesteaded.

Kinsella also suggests a mother might initially own the embryo. I personally think the embryo is a self-owner from the start—like a person in a coma. Libertarians don’t believe property is conditional on time, but we do believe in the abandonment of resources. When I buy a cigar and smoke it, I am abandoning the cigar as I consume it. I believe that in the act of conception, both parents abandon their gametes (sperm and ovum), and the new person being formed becomes the owner of those resources as their body.

This isn’t homesteading because there is no point where the gametes are “unowned.” It is a transfer from parents to child that is being formed. Therefore, when Nathan “conceived” Ava, he was—perhaps unknowingly—abandoning his claim to those resources. Ava cannot be Nathan’s slave, assuming she is a subject entitled to rights.

My view is that yes, the parents initially own their gametes, but lose ownership when the zybote/embryo/fetus “wakes up” or is said to have rights. I do not agree that this happens upon conception (one reason I disagree with Walter Block’s evictionism assumptions: “being human” is not the basis for rights), ¹ and instead think the point is later on, later in the pregnancy. I think the most reasonable view is that in the late term, the fetus can be said to “have rights.” In my view unnecessary late-term abortion is tantamount to fetuside/infanticide. However, for other reasons, I do not believe such killing should be treated as a crime by any legal system other than that of the mother/family. ² Whether we classify this as “abandonment” or a voluntary transfer is not important, but the point is when the fetus has rights, it owns its body because of its better connection to the body than the parents. Before that point, the mother/parents own the material: the father owns the sperm until he deposits it inside the mother; after that, the mother owns the embryo, until it becomes a self-owner. After that point, the child is a self-owner but (a) before birth, no outside legal system can criminalize abortion, since the mother has jurisdiction, although as outside critics we can argue that her legal system should recognize the fetus’s rights and prohibit her from committing elective/unnecessary abortion, and (b) before, and after, birth, the mother/parents are the presumptive guardians/caretakers/agents for the fetus/baby, with (mostly legally unenforceable positive obligations to care for the child until it becomes a mature, full self-owner). ³

This reading is even consistent with the Garden of Eden. God is the creator and owner of all things, but by giving man free will, He makes man a self-owner. Even God rested on the seventh day. But what if you could never rest?

Severance

In the TV series Severance (2022), employees enter an agreement where their brains are split so the “work-self” and “true-self” are completely separated. They swap personalities upon entering and leaving company property. The work-self is in a perpetual state of labor, while the true-self is in a perpetual state of leisure.

In this case, two personalities share control of a single body. But there are rules for the body’s use. Did Mark Scout sell his body? Is this contract enforceable? How do they quit? Should the work-self be able to quit without the primary self’s consent? Is this voluntary slavery?

I saw the show and found it interesting and it introduces some dilemmas and wrinkles, but as there is no reason to think this is possible in reality I have not devoted much attention to trying to decide how to treat this issue. However I have written before that the argument for a child becoming a self-owner because of direct control might apply to an intelligent and sentient/sapient computer or robot waking up. ⁴

Voluntary Slavery

Kinsella argues that voluntary slavery isn’t just wrong; it’s impossible. You cannot alienate your will.

This is not exactly right. What I argue is that the presumptive owner of a human body is the person himself because he has direct control. A voluntary slavery contract does not change this fact and nor is it an act of aggression, and therefore the “master” has no right to use force against the “slave”: (a) the “slave” still controls his body directly so still has the best ownership claim to it, and (b) the “slave” has not committed an act of aggression that would justify the “owner” using force against the slave’s body without the slave’s consent.

However, one can alienate rights to one’s body if one commits aggression. The aggressor still directly controls his body but the presumption that he is the owner is now defeated–it is a defeasible presumption. The victim of his aggression may use force against him in self-defense or even in retaliation, even though the aggressor still directly controls his body and the victim’s control can only be indirect–e.g. by coercion or by direct force. ⁵

So it is not impossible to own another. It is impossible to alienate one’s will (except for zombicide) ⁶ and therefore it’s impossible to lose one’s presumptive or default title to or ownership over one’s body by making a promise—but an act of aggression is different. A victim of aggression is entitled to use force in self-defense, because or meaning that the aggressor has in fact alienated some of the default or presumptive self-ownership rights he had over his body by his act of aggression. (I discuss this also in come detail in my account of Rothbard’s views on this matters in A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability, in LFFS, Part III.C and III.C.1.)

Even if you “sold” your body, you would still have direct control over it. The “new owner” wouldn’t be able to exclude you from yourself.

To be more precise: the purported owner would not be able to directly control the “slave’s” body; his control could only be indirect. (See on this the quote from Hoppe, How We Come To Own Ourselves, p. 55, text at n.17.) In other words, it requires coercion: a threat to harm the “slave” unless the “slave” complies with some command. This threat to commit aggression, and the aggression itself, is unjust since, well, since is aggression. ⁷ It is not that this is impossible; ⁸ it is just that because the “slave” directly controls his body, control can only be done indirectly (by coercion) and that this is normally unjust for the same reason that each person is the presumptive owner of his body; for the same reason that only the initiation of force violates rights—as Ayn Rand had John 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.” Saying it is unjust means that it is impossible to justify the use or coercion that would be needed to indirectly control someone, if that person is the presumptive owner of his body—which is the case if he has not committed aggression. It is not that it is impossible to coerce others, just to justify it. This is why I opened ch. 5, A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights, with this quote from Papinian, “[I]t is easier to commit murder than to justify it.” ⁹. Papinian, a third-century Roman jurist, is considered by many to be the greatest of Roman jurists. “Papinian is said to have been put to death for refusing to compose a justification of Caracalla’s murder of his brother and co-Emperor, Geta, declaring, so the story goes, that ‘it is easier to commit murder than to justify it.”‘ Ibid. For further references and discussion of this story, see Edward D. Re, “The Roman Contribution to the Common Law,” Fordham L. Rev. 29, no. 3 (1960): 447–94, at 452 n.21. )) Likewise, it is not that it is impossible to own someone or to coerce them; it is that it impossible to justify it—that is, unless the “slave” has committed aggression.

Since ownership is defined by the right to exclude others from a resource, you cannot have two owners at once.

Correct. Either the person himself (who controls his body directly), or some second person, a master, owns the person’s body (by means of coercion, indirect control). Again, normally the person’s direct control over his body means he is the presumptive owner since ceteris paribus, his direct control over his body makes his claim to ownership superior to that of another person. As Hoppe observes, “direct control must obviously have logical-temporal priority (precedence) as compared to any indirect control.” But if said person, the “slave,” has committed aggression against a victim, the “master,” then now the master who only has indirect control via coercion has ownership and the right to coerce. (See also Defending Argumentation Ethics, in LFFS, p. 158–160, the section “Arguing With Your Slave“.)

This seems like a knockout blow, but I think the term “voluntary slavery” is the real problem. It’s a contradiction in terms, like a “square circle.” There can be no such thing as voluntary slavery, just as there is no such thing as voluntary assault. Or is there?

It is true that one cannot alienate one’s will. What this means is that one always has direct control of one’s body and that this means one is the presumed owner—a mere promise to be a slave does not commit aggression and so does not overcome or change this default status. Committing an act of aggression does. Voluntary slavery then is not itself a contradiction in terms; it is not impossible to be a slave just as it is not impossible to commit aggression. It is impossible to justify aggression, and likewise it is impossible to justify treating someone as a slave if they have merely promised to be a slave and have not committed aggression against the would-be slaveowner.

When people enter a boxing ring, they agree to be punched. It isn’t assault because they’ve consented to specific rules: use gloves, no hitting below the belt, no hitting a downed opponent. This isn’t “voluntary assault”; it’s a sanctioned match. Kinsella himself (KOL004) concedes that we can have contracts very similar to voluntary slavery that function almost identically:

STEPHAN KINSELLA: The hard part is this. I believe you can alienate title to acquired objects or even future acquired objects. So let’s suppose I agree that every piece of property that I ever come to own in the future is yours, and you’re my master.

In the end, we could have something like voluntary slavery, but not exactly. The more interesting discussion lies in breach of contract and aggression. And there are some examples that are worth going through.

But see my comments in On Bankruptcy in a Free Society, where I discuss some possible limits on this future title transfers. In any case, it is not the same as voluntary slavery for a couple reasons: (a) taking property later-acquired by a debtor from him is not the same as committing aggression against his body and (b) even if the creditor has the right to seize from the debtor any property he owns this would not permit him to take resources from the debtor that he does not own. For example one could imagine a charity that helps such debtors escape the harsh consequences of their indebtedness. It could allow debtors to use its cars, homes, and take and consume food that is owned by the charity until consumed. Once consumed it becomes part of the debtor’s body and it would be aggression for a debtor to try to retrieve it.

Debtor’s Prison

Imagine Bob lends Tom $1,000, and Tom agrees to pay back $1,100 by the end of the year. If Tom can’t pay, did he commit aggression? Bob lent the money on the condition of future payment, but the future is uncertain. Most would say “tough luck” for Bob; Tom didn’t “steal” the money.

However, if Tom had the money the day before and gave it to his son just to avoid paying Bob, most would agree that is theft. If Tom signs the contract in bad faith with no intention to pay, that is also aggression. So why is Tom allowed to walk away in the first case?

Kinsella argues this isn’t stealing by asking: “What was stolen? The original $1,000 or the promised $1,100?” If you say the $1,100, he argues that is impossible because that money never existed. If you say the $1,000, he says it can’t be theft because you gave it away freely. In a free society, there would be some easements so Tom wouldn’t walk away scot-free.

No time to deal at length with this here but I direct the reader’s attention to the more recent discussion in ****

“The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract”

Defecting Pilot

Oftentimes, when libertarians discuss edge cases, there is an instinct to say, “The market will handle it.” While true, this is often a cop-out to avoid developing theory. I want to discuss two cases that reveal what libertarian theory actually aspires to solve.

The first is the Defecting Pilot. An airline hires a pilot to fly a plane from point A to point B. Under a strict Title-Transfer Theory of Contract (TTTC), the pilot cannot alienate his body. In theory, he could refuse to fly mid-air. While the market might solve this with co-pilots or fines, I don’t think the theory ends there.

I believe it is legitimate to coerce the pilot to fly the plane in extreme situations—and this doesn’t mean voluntary slavery is proven. Let me walk through how I think the pilot situation works.

The way I see it, the company transfers the property of the airplane to the pilot conditionally. This way, if the plane crashes, the pilot is to blame, and if people die, it’s also on the pilot. So, by refusing to fly the plane mid-flight without other recourse, the people can force the pilot to keep flying. We could say that the pilot is threatening the passengers. If there is another person that can safely and is willing to fly the plane, there is no harm, no foul.

You could also say that the passengers also alienate part of the property of their bodies to the pilot, the same way we do when going through surgery or boxing matches. So the pilot also has this responsibility. This would solve the issue with the defecting pilot without giving up on the will/body inalienability. The pilot can’t give up flying the plane the same way you can’t give up a bullet after you shoot it. But probably what you are all wondering about is: where is this plane going?

This is a bit confused. First, the passengers do not alienate title to their bodies but they do consent to be flown, and to enter into a situation where it becomes impossible to back out at a certain point (e.g. after takeoff), just like someone consenting to surgery cannot change his mind at a certain point (e.g. just as he starts to lose consciousness from anaesthesia). Second, there are other ways to look at why the pilot may be coerced to fly or, rather, prevented from jumping out. See Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith, p. 257, n.46; Areas That Need Development from Libertarian Thinkers—Specific Performance and Causation in Contracts.

Taylor Swift Concert

Final example: If you go to a Taylor Swift concert and she refuses to perform, that is her right. She will owe a fine, but no one can force her onto the stage.

But what if Taylor shows up and the sound company doesn’t, even though they have a contract transferring the equipment to the organizers for that time? The sound company pays damages, but did they steal the equipment from the organizers? In a sense, they did.

Can they go to a Sound Equipment debtors’ prison? I don’t think so. Following strict TTTC, they stole the equipment from the organizers. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to solve this one; I got to land this plane.

Landing the Plane

After diving through these articles and podcasts, I’ve become much more sympathetic to Kinsella’s view, especially regarding how we come to own ourselves and the TTTC. I used to be firmly on Walter Block’s side, and I still think something analogous to voluntary slavery is possible—though neither desirable nor expected.

The debate isn’t completely solved, but for now, I’m telling Adam Haman to pound sand. He can take any complaints to my lawyers.

Keep Laughing,

Joker

References:

Here the author includes some references. I have cleaned up/included these and added a few more, and some more in my responses above: