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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 171.
I was a guest yesterday (Feb. 6, 2015) on Albert Lu‘s “The Economy” podcast, discussing my recent appearance on Stossel [Stossel Show on Intellectual Property (Fox Business Channel, Jan. 30, 2015)]. The full episode is here; the portion including only our interview is included in this podcast feed.
Transcript and grok shownotes below.
GROK SHOWNOTES
Show Notes: KOL171 | The Albert Lu Podcast: Discussing Stossel and Intellectual Property with Stephan Kinsella
Introduction to Intellectual Property Debate [0:00–1:00]
Albert Lu introduces the topic of intellectual property (IP) by referencing a recent episode of The John Stossel Show that explored the concept. He highlights how America grants creators exclusive rights to their works—such as songs, books, and movies—to encourage innovation, but notes the controversial nature of IP, as illustrated by Stossel’s comment about YouTube viewership being akin to “stealing.” Lu introduces his guest, Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney and libertarian writer who appeared on Stossel’s show to discuss IP from a libertarian perspective. Kinsella expresses his enthusiasm for the mainstream platform addressing this issue, noting Stossel’s open-minded approach despite his leanings toward supporting some form of IP.
Overview of Stossel’s Show and IP Arguments [1:00–4:13]
Lu and Kinsella discuss the structure of the Stossel episode, which included a debate between a pro-IP attorney and an anti-IP advocate, David Koepsell, recommended by Kinsella himself. The show examined six industries—magic tricks, music, fashion, TV, literature, and comedy—highlighting that three are protected by IP laws while three are not, yet all exhibit significant innovation. Kinsella praises the show for its balanced approach and libertarian perspective, a rarity in mainstream media. He notes that different producers handled various segments, and the inclusion of guests like Chris Brigman (discussing fashion) and Doug Stanhope (a libertarian comedian) supported the anti-IP stance by showing how industries thrive without IP protection, such as fashion benefiting from copying and magic tricks relying on community self-enforcement.
Examples of Innovation Without IP Protection [4:13–8:25]
Kinsella elaborates on specific examples from the show that challenge the necessity of IP. He points out that fashion designers benefit from copying, which helps establish their trendsetting status, contrary to the belief that IP is essential for innovation. The discussion also covers literature, where the absence of copyright for foreign authors in the 19th-century U.S. allowed widespread access to works like those of Charles Dickens, boosting literacy and making him famous enough to profit from speaking tours. Kinsella critiques the pro-IP attorney’s shift to moral arguments when utilitarian claims faltered, particularly citing the example of a George Harrison song, “My Sweet Lord,” which faced copyright issues for resembling an older tune. He argues that strict IP enforcement could have prevented such cultural contributions, citing cases like the banned Catcher in the Rye sequel and the destruction of Nosferatu copies as instances of IP-driven censorship.
Impact of IP on Innovation and Lives [8:25–12:31]
The conversation shifts to the broader implications of IP, particularly its detrimental effects on innovation and human lives. Kinsella highlights how patents can stifle life-saving technologies, such as seatbelt mechanisms or drugs like Fabrazyme, which treats Fabry disease. He recounts how patent restrictions and FDA regulations led to drug shortages, causing harm to patients. Kinsella criticizes the pro-IP attorney’s justification of courtroom enforcement as a legitimate means of coercion, comparing it to a sanitized form of thuggery. He references a Spooner quote to argue that state-backed IP enforcement is more insidious than overt theft, as it institutionalizes coercion. Additionally, Kinsella discusses the economic toll of patent trolls, estimating they extract billions annually through legal threats, further hampering innovation and competition.
Corporate Interests and Copyright Extensions [12:31–16:06]
Lu raises the issue of corporate interests, exemplified by Disney’s copyright on Snow White, a public domain story, and its extensions to protect characters like Mickey Mouse. Kinsella explains how Disney’s lobbying led to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, prolonging copyrights to life plus 70 years in the U.S., and how the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has pushed other countries to match this term. He critiques the retroactive extension of copyrights, which pulls works back from the public domain, calling it “crazy” and a distortion of property rights. Kinsella notes the confusion between trademark and copyright in public discourse, even among experts, and highlights the hypocrisy of Disney using public domain works while aggressively protecting its own IP.
Property Rights vs. IP Rights [16:06–19:51]
Kinsella addresses the core libertarian critique of IP by contrasting it with true property rights. He argues that unlike physical property rights, which are perpetual, IP rights expire, indicating they are not genuine property rights but state-granted monopolies. Drawing from his work in Legal Foundations of a Free Society and Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property, Kinsella explains that the founders, like Thomas Jefferson, viewed patents and copyrights as temporary privileges, not natural rights. He criticizes the propaganda that rebranded these as “intellectual property” in the 19th century to counter free-market economists’ opposition, as detailed in The Problem with Intellectual Property. Kinsella notes that even libertarian IP supporters like Ayn Rand offered convoluted justifications for limited IP terms, reinforcing his view that IP lacks a coherent moral or logical basis.
Final Thoughts and Stossel’s Position [19:51–23:41]
In the closing segment, Kinsella reflects on Stossel’s ambivalence, noting his acknowledgment of IP’s problems but reliance on a utilitarian defense, fearing his show’s viability without copyright. Kinsella argues that businesses must adapt to a free market without IP, as discussed in The Problem with Intellectual Property, rather than expecting property systems to conform to their models. He suggests Stossel’s conflict of interest, tied to Fox’s media empire, may influence his stance, though he personally supports piracy of his show on YouTube. Lu encourages Kinsella to return to Stossel’s show to further advocate for IP abolition, emphasizing the need to address issues like the TPP. The episode concludes with Lu thanking Kinsella and directing listeners to his website, c4sif.org, for more resources on anti-IP arguments.
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to the Show
Timestamp: 0:00
Albert Lu: Like they don’t even exist, okay? Coming up next, I’ve got a clip from the John Stossel show, and Stephan Kinsella is going to join me to talk about intellectual property. America grants certain rights to creators of songs, books, movies, paintings. The idea is to encourage the creation and proliferation of new ideas by providing a brief and limited period of exclusivity. “I’m an intellectual property attorney, and you have stolen my client’s melody. You can be sued and found liable for monetary damages.” And yet, some of you watch my show on YouTube. That’s stealing. And that’s our show tonight.
That was the voice of John Stossel last week as he discussed intellectual property. And one of the guests on the show was patent attorney and libertarian writer Stephan Kinsella, who joins me now.
Timestamp: 1:00
Albert Lu: Stephan, thanks for joining me today. How are you?
Timestamp: 1:02
Stephan Kinsella: I’m very well, glad to be here.
Timestamp: 1:04
Albert Lu: Yeah, I thought it was very encouraging actually that the John Stossel show decided to take on this issue. Of course, he leans libertarian, but he is pretty much a mainstream audience, I think. And so, you were part of that segment, but I want to talk about the segments that preceded you. They had a pro-IP advocate and an anti-IP advocate, and I thought it was very interesting because they started with a utilitarian argument. John Stossel framed it this way, and they brought up, I would say, over the course of the show, five different examples—perhaps there were some that I missed, but five or six. And the ones that I remember are magic tricks, music, fashion, TV, literature, and comedy. And the interesting thing about those were, three of them are protected by IP, three are not. And if you don’t really think about these things, you wouldn’t really know which ones were and which ones weren’t because there’s so much innovation in all six areas, correct?
Timestamp: 2:06
Stephan Kinsella: Yeah, the show was a very good show, I think. I was very heartened that they had it. I’m to have a mainstream show deal with IP policy from a libertarian perspective. I think it’s probably the first time it’s ever been done, and I give Stossel credit for being open-minded. And I think he’s leaning in our direction. He did say he wasn’t sure where the line should be. He wants there to be some IP, but he recognized it’s not always necessary, and he recognized lots of problems with it.
The interesting thing about the show, I found out after I was there, is that each of the segments had different producers. So, there’s just a big operation, and I was actually contacted twice by two producers independently. So, I was contacted for my segment, and then a few days later, I was contacted by the other producer for that first segment, which was a debate. But I said, “I’m already gonna be on the show,” and he said, “Well, who else can we get?” And I said, “Well, here’s three or four really good free-market, anti-IP people, including David Koepsell,” who was the guy that appeared on the first segment. And so, they took him because he’s very similar to me. In fact, he and I are co-editing a book later this year on sort of a collection of anti-IP but free-market writings over the centuries and decades. So, we’re working on that together right now.
But yes, Stossel’s show, what the first segment was, was a debate between an IP attorney from California and Koepsell. And then there was, yeah, the other guests, other than me and Koepsell, were not really anti-IP, but the points that they were brought out to make, I think, ended up supporting my side. Because you had Chris Brigman, who was talking about how the fashion industry thrives in the lack of copyright protection and in the face of piracy and copying, if you want to call it piracy. And then there was a comedian who showed that you really can’t get protection for magic tricks with standard copyright and patent, but the community has a way to self-enforce. People who sort of take credit for others’ tricks, and the same in the comedian industry. There was that comedian, Doug Stanhope, who’s a libertarian comedian, who was the last guest. So, I thought it was a really balanced and good show overall and pretty much predominantly anti-IP.
Examples of Innovation Without IP
Timestamp: 4:13
Stephan Kinsella: And a couple of the points that were raised, I thought they were excellent points. The fashion expert, he basically said that, you know, these high-profile, leading-edge fashion designers, they actually benefit from copying. And you wonder if those leading fashion designers could even exist or enjoy the trendsetting position that they do without copying. It seems like their position is almost reliant on copying.
And then the example of the literature, basically talking about the anti-copyright, I guess, or the lack of IP in the U.S. resulted in so many people gaining access to literature and becoming literate because of it.
Albert Lu: Well, not only that, they gave a great example of Dickens, who, if I remember the story correctly, was upset at first that his work was being pirated widely in the U.S. because the copyright protection at the time did not apply to work with foreign authors. And he was dismayed by it, but it made him so popular over here that he was able to come over here and go on this big speaking circuit because he was famous and revered. And he made so much money on that trip from speaking that it constituted a large share of his estate when he died, actually.
Stephan Kinsella: Right, and so that was the discussion. And then the pro-IP person in the debate, he almost immediately conceded the utilitarian argument by just shifting focus almost immediately to the morality aspect. And I think the problem here—you might disagree—but sometimes I’ve seen it before where you can win an argument, and I think we did so convincingly here, even just by letting this person talk, I think was enough. Because he switched to the morality play, but then he talks about the different aspects of how you would have to enforce IP, even in the absence of actual legislation. He talks about Shakespeare helping to close down theaters violently. Stossel says, “What, do you just go down there with a gang and go ahead?” Right? It kind of exposed the thuggery behind it, really, and that it’s really censorship.
And of course, this guy, it’s a case of special pleading. He’s a patent—or he’s an IP attorney, so of course he has an interest in the system. So, he really didn’t have the most credibility on the show, you know. The other guests didn’t really get to talk about the morality on the other side, so we didn’t have time. It was more utilitarian-focused, but I thought one of the most damning things that the guy said, which we could have explored, was they were talking about, I think it was a George Harrison song, “My Sweet Lord” or something like that.
Albert Lu: Yes, that has, like, a very small clip in it that it resembles some older song, and I think there was a settlement or something like that. But basically, they got the IP lawyer to say, “Yeah, he was infringing other people’s copyright when he did that.”
Stephan Kinsella: And if you take that logic to the extreme, yeah, what that means is, if copyright had been enforced properly, we would never have had that song. In other words, the original person whose tune was sort of being borrowed as part of the background in that song could have vetoed that song, and we wouldn’t have one of the most beautiful pop songs, you know, in history to grace humanity with. It would have ended—it could have ended up stopping it, you know.
At least the copyright lawyer could argue for some kind of non-injunction regime where you can always do what you want; you might have to pay a little bit of a tax later, you know, some kind of damages. But they don’t argue for that. They want the copyright holder to be able to stop people from doing things. In fact, this has been done before. People don’t realize that in the U.S., there was a judge that literally banned the publication of a book, which is a sequel to Catcher in the Rye, because it was a derivative work and not authorized by the estate. He just said, “No, you just can’t publish this book.” It wasn’t even like, “You can publish it, and then you might have to pay damages.” You just can’t publish it. That’s outright book banning by the state.
Copies of this German film Nosferatu, a vampire film, were ordered destroyed and seized and destroyed and just erased from the face of the earth because it was supposedly a knockoff of Dracula or something like that. So, this kind of book banning and censorship of ideas is literally the result of these systems.
Impact of IP on Innovation and Lives
Timestamp: 8:25
Stephan Kinsella: And in my view, this is just the tip of the iceberg because, as important as music and culture and art are to society, I mean, there are other things, too—scientific discovery, health breakthroughs, things like that, things that could actually literally save lives that could be banned because of IP. Oh, and that actually is happening and does happen. There are literally people that have died because of patents. I mean, to take a simple example, there are, you know, various patents on seatbelt mechanisms and safety mechanisms in cars. And if one manufacturer gets a patent on it, they can prevent others from using a similar life-saving mechanism, and so others have to design around.
And there’s a drug called—and I have it on my website, c4sif.org. If you look up, just go to my site and look up Fabrazyme. It’s a drug that treats, I think it’s called Fabry disease. It’s one of these weird, debilitating diseases, and people can die from it. There’s only one type of drug that apparently works, and there’s one manufacturer in the U.S. that has a patent on it, and they can’t make enough. Now, this is a few years ago; I don’t know where it’s resulted, but there were—there’s two drugs in Europe that work, but they can’t be imported here because of FDA regulations. So, there’s only one here, and we were shipping this one to the Europeans because the market was better for some reason. So, there was a shortage, and no one else could make it here because of the patent, and we couldn’t import the alternative drug because of the FDA regulations. So, you have all these patients in America suffering from Fabry disease, unable to buy legally the drug from the manufacturer, and no one else could make it. So, it’s really killing people.
So, you know, it seems like the moral argument is also a slam dunk. And when the pro-IP attorney was confronted with, basically, the coercion that takes place to, you know, to implement and enforce these laws, he says, “Well, I don’t shut anyone down in their workshop. I do it in a courtroom,” as if that legitimized the whole process.
Albert Lu: Yeah, it’s like they think hiding the fangs makes them, you know, makes it like they’re not—they’re just hiding the wolf’s fangs. But I had almost rather—it’s like the Spooner quote about the highwayman versus the state. You’d almost prefer the highwayman who robs you once and leaves you alone, and he doesn’t have the gall to pretend he’s doing you a favor. He doesn’t follow you around your whole life to pretend he’s doing something good for you, and, you know, it’s a one-time deal. But the state always pretends like they’re doing you a favor, and they never let you go. Doing it through the courts almost makes it worse and institutionalizes it.
Stephan Kinsella: And it’s so expensive to defend from these suits that bullying is a big part of it. There are copyright trolls and patent trolls, and they go around extorting money from people, even when they arguably have a good defense against the patent infringement or the copyright infringement. But they know that they don’t want to go through a two- or three- or four-million-dollar legal fees just to defend themselves and to win. So, they cough up half a million dollars or something like that, or a hundred thousand dollars, to make them go away.
And there are estimates that, in—I think it’s around 1992, about five years ago when this study was done—over about a 25-year period, estimates that patent trolls alone had extracted half a trillion dollars. And I think the latest trend I’d seen was about eighty billion dollars a year in recent years. So, patent trolls are taking about eighty to a hundred billion dollars a year in royalties from companies all across the U.S., probably often based upon just a threat of an expensive lawsuit that they might not even be able to win. Now, that’s just patent trolls. There’s also real patent lawsuits from non-trolls, which are probably ten times bigger than that. So, we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars a year are just taken from companies or that impose that much cost in terms of lost innovation or lost competition or increased prices because there’s less competition and more oligopolies and cartels. So, the cost of the patent system in terms of dollar costs and innovation costs is gargantuan.
Corporate Interests and Copyright Extensions
Timestamp: 12:31
Albert Lu: I like that they brought in the issue of, basically, corporate interests. And one of the—one of the gentlemen brought up—it could have been Stossel, actually—brought up the case of, I think it was Snow White, that Disney or someone had received a copyright on that story or something like that. And so, you can’t tell the story anymore. And this is something that they actually had extended as well. Can you explain that?
Timestamp: 12:57
Stephan Kinsella: Yeah, it’s—in, and it gets a little complicated because of the way copyright law works and because most people that aren’t really deep experts in this field get confused by it, which is understandable. Even Stossel on his show, even with all the—I mean, everyone in the show, I believe, except for the comedian, was a lawyer. They didn’t say that, but everyone was a lawyer. David Koepsell has a law degree; he’s a philosopher, a law professor, of course. And also, the magician, apparently, has a law degree.
Albert Lu: I was wondering about that. He seemed very knowledgeable.
Stephan Kinsella: He did. I was surprised. And then later on, I looked at his bio, and he’s like, oh, he’s like a polymath kind of guy. And he—but in any case, but even Stossel kind of mixed up trademark and copyright and patent at one point in one of his little monologues in the—in the term. In copyright, the way it works, and the copyright lawyer in the beginning sort of alluded to this, but basically, Disney took a story that’s in the public domain, which was the German folk tale of Snow White or whatever, and they made their own version of it. And that’s basically a derivative work of a public domain work. So, the copyright is held by Disney, and it’s in the new derivative work. But it really wouldn’t prevent someone from making their own Snow White. However, Disney might sue them for trademark infringement if they used the word Snow White because they probably also claim trademark in that term.
But the hypocrisy, if you want to call it, of Disney was using things that are in the public domain to make a new work that they got a copyright on. And the work was in the public domain only because copyright doesn’t last forever, or because those works were created so long ago before—before copyright had expired or before copyright existed. But Disney keeps lobbying Congress to extend the term of copyright every time one of their major characters, like Mickey Mouse, is about to go into the public domain. They did this in the ‘90s with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension and gave Mickey Mouse yet another life.
The U.S. is now at life of the author plus 70 years, or it’s a different term for corporate works, but that’s roughly the term. Most—a lot of the other parts of the world only had life of the author plus 50 years. So, the U.S. is now using this TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is allegedly a trade agreement, right, meant to lower barriers to trade. And the countries that it’s negotiating with, we already have pretty much low barriers to trade. So, really, this is meant to extend U.S.-style IP protection. And I believe, just in the last couple of days, I think Canada has agreed, finally, and probably some of the other countries too that are part of this TPP negotiation, to go ahead and add 20 more years to the term of their copyright, from 50 to 70 after the life of the author, to match the U.S. term.
And I guarantee you that in a few years, when some of the other characters start expiring or entering the public domain, you’re gonna have strong pressure on Congress to make it life of the author plus 90 years. So, they basically make it in perpetuity. They’ve even done this before for works that have entered the public domain, and then they get Congress to change the law and make it retroactive. So, you’ve had works and characters that have entered the public domain because the copyright term finally expired. Then Congress passes an extension of the copyright term, and it snatches something that was already public domain and puts it back into the copyright coverage. It’s crazy.
Property Rights vs. IP Rights
Timestamp: 16:06
Albert Lu: Okay, and now we get to your segment, basically, because now we’re talking about what this is really about. And you made a great point that I wish you guys had time to elaborate on because Stossel or someone brings up the issue of property rights, and he says, as you know, libertarians, this is something that we feel very strongly about—property rights. You made an interesting point. You said, “Look, I’m libertarian. I value property rights probably more than anyone else, definitely more than conservatives, and property rights never expire, yet patents and copyrights in these things do expire. So, that should be a hint as to what’s really going on here.” So, Stephan, what’s really going on here?
Timestamp: 16:48
Stephan Kinsella: Right, I do think it was a good point to make because I could make it very shortly, and it gave people time to think. But I didn’t have time to elaborate as much. Actually, I did talk more about that, but they cut some of that out for time reasons. But, and Tom Bell makes this point, by the way, in his book on intellectual privilege. The—in most supporters of IP don’t want it to last forever. So, even they—or, I mean, you can overcome this contradiction or this inconsistency by saying, “Well, then property rights should last forever, just like regular property rights do.” And a few people do advocate that, like Lysander Spooner actually believed did, and Galambos did—Andrew Galambos, sorry, two libertarians who supported IP.
Most libertarians who support IP, even the non-utilitarian ones, like Ayn Rand, even she thought that they should only last for a certain amount of time. And her argument as to why they should last seventeen years or seventy years or whatever is so contorted and so sort of reverse-engineered, you know, to justify this arbitrary rule that Congress passed. That’s actually what made me a skeptic in the first place, reading Ayn Rand’s contorted, convoluted attempts to justify this arbitrary copyright and patent term.
Tom Bell points out the founders who were in favor of copyright and patent—that’s why they put this clause in the Constitution—they never did treat them as property rights. They never thought they were property rights. And that’s exactly why the Constitution says Congress can enact these rights for limited times. It was just supposed to be like a temporary infringement into the market to induce more innovation than otherwise would have happened, etc. So, there’s a utilitarian basis. They weren’t considered to be property rights by the founders. They were never considered to be property rights. They were called monopoly rights, or they were called privileges.
In fact, Thomas Jefferson proposed an amendment that was going to be included in the Bill of Rights, which he tried to limit how long these terms could be. And he had a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which would have been in the Bill of Rights, which was rejected, but it would have said something like, “Congress shall have the power to grant monopolies to inventors and artists, but only for X years.” So, he wanted them to put a term in there, like 15 years or 40 years or something. He wanted a maximum cap in there, but he called them monopolies because that’s what they are.
Now, he was in favor of them with hesitation, you know, with misgivings, but he didn’t think that they were property rights. None of the founders did. It wasn’t until the free-market economists in the mid-1800s started really opposing the growing threat of patents and copyrights and calling them monopolies and privileges and protectionism and censorship that the defenders of IP—who, it wasn’t called IP at the time, it was just called patent and copyright or monopolies—they started referring to them as property rights as a propaganda campaign to defend these rights. So, they just made this term up to appeal to people’s natural sympathy towards property rights. But they’re not property rights, of course. Property rights don’t expire.
Final Thoughts on the Stossel Show
Timestamp: 19:51
Stephan Kinsella: They’ve done an excellent job at that propaganda. Now, overall, I would say this was a great episode, and I’m glad they did it. But in the end, there was a little bit of disappointment at the end where Stossel basically says, “Look, it takes money.” He used his own show as an example. “It takes money to put on a show like this. I employ many people. It’s a lot of capital involved. I don’t know if we’d do it if we didn’t have copyright.” And so, in the end, he falls back on this, basically, this tired defense of IP, which is basically utilitarian, but it’s personal utility. “IP works for me, and therefore I support it.”
Although, to be honest, I think—well, I think he moved in our direction. He seemed to nod at some of my points. I think, actually, he may be more on our side than he let on. I think he feels compelled to take his employer’s side, which is Fox, which is, you know, a big media empire, which thinks that it relies upon copyright. I actually think they’re probably wrong about that, but they think that they need copyright. So, he even said he likes when people pirate his show on YouTube. He personally likes it, but he’s worried about whether his employer likes it. So, you can see he’s got this sort of conflict of interest almost.
If I had had time, I would have pointed out two things to him. Number one, I would have said, as a really principled libertarian, you know, with a principled view towards property rights, I would have said, “Look, if there’s a certain business model that cannot make sense absent copyright law, then unfortunately that business model has to go.” That’s the bottom line. It’s just like antitrust law or taxes, you know. If people want to collude and set prices on the free market, they have the right to, even if—even if they could. I don’t think they could in most cases because there’s too much competition to permit that. But bottom line is, people have the right to do what they want with their own property rights. The same thing here.
But I would also argue that I don’t think they really need copyright to make a profit. He can still have a show. He could have advertisers. Maybe he wouldn’t make quite as much money on the secondary and tertiary streams of income because there would be more and more competition for that. But they would have a reputation, they’d have a channel, they’d have good quality content, they’d be reliable. People—people would still sell ads. People make ads now on the internet with popular websites, even though piracy and copying of their content is possible. Why is that possible?
So, just because someone hasn’t yet figured out a business model that would work in a copyright-free world doesn’t mean we need to have copyright. People need to adapt to adjust to a property order rather than a property order adapting to the business models people are used to.
Albert Lu: Yeah, these are all great points, and it’s basically the basics of a free market in a just society, right? The producers and the businesses adapt to the markets, not the other way around. And in business, think about technology and other things. We solve so many more difficult problems than how to have a product without someone copying it. I mean, the problems that we solve are so much more difficult than that. If we just put a little bit more of our resources into figuring out how to secure the profit, I don’t think we would have to rely on these laws. And not to mention all the money that’s wasted, as it stands, on internal legal teams and whatnot.
I just think it’s a—it’s a slam dunk, but the work is not done, Stephan. So, I think you’re gonna have to go back on that Stossel show and just work on John a little bit more. He’s—he is doing a great job, I think you’re right, and he’s got an obligation to his employer, so that was a good point too. But it wouldn’t hurt if you could get on there again and make, you know, sway things a little bit more in our direction.
Timestamp: 23:21
Stephan Kinsella: Well, I would never turn down the trip to New York, to tell you. That’s a lot of fun.
Timestamp: 23:23
Albert Lu: So, alright, thanks for joining me, Stephan, and I hope you’ll come back again. I really want to get into that TPP issue because that is a very important issue, and I think not a lot of people know about that. So, please, thanks for joining me, and I hope you’ll come back again.
Timestamp: 23:36
Stephan Kinsella: Happy to do it. Thanks a lot.
Closing Remarks
Timestamp: 23:41
Albert Lu: And that is The Economy for Friday, February 6th. My thanks to Stephan Kinsella for joining me today. Please visit his website at c4sif.org. That’s C, the letter, 4 S-I-F dot O-R-G. If you have a question or comment, please send it along to question@powerandmarket.com, or you can tweet at Albert K. Lu. Thanks for joining me today. I’m Albert Lu. Until next time, take care.
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