KOL449 | Trademarking the Infinite Banking Concept?

hey everyone Logan Herz here with hazle teen LLC I’m super excited we got a really special guest today uh who’s

going to talk to us about patent law uh his name is Stefan canella uh Stefan is

a patent attorney and libertarian writer he wrote uh an essay book entitled

against intellectual property which I linked to in a couple of my past episodes and we’re going to talk today

about patent law about trademarks about IP law in general and I’ll give the

context for in a second but stepan great to have you on the show how you doing I’m good glad to be here thanks for

being with us stepan we really appreciate it so in a couple of previous episodes which I’ll link to we talked about the Nelson Nash Institute which

promot promotes the infinite banking concept I also promote the inv concept I

have a lot of positive things to say about the Nels Nash Institute but I disagree with them a little bit on the

strategy for how best to promote the infinite banking concept and what they have done recently is they have actually

trademarked the phrase the infinite banking concept and they’ve started

taking legal action against people who use that phrase and by the way that phrase was in use for decades in the

general public before the Nelson Nations to even existed so it’s interesting the

approach that they have taken and uh Stefan has a lot of interesting experience and uh intellectual insights

on this topic so I wanted to hand it over to Stefan to talk to us about trademark marks and maybe Stefan if you

can start with introducing yourself a little bit your thought and give give

our viewers an overview of kind of intellectual property what is it why does it exist sure so I am a basically

retired now at this point but I was a a long time practicing intellectual property attorney I was an electrical

engineer by by background in undergrad and so after I started practicing law initially I

practiced Orland gas law here in Houston Texas but uh then I switched pretty soon after to intellectual property law

because because I had an engineering degree and and doing patents uh was a good career move for me so I’ve been

practicing intellectual property law for almost 30 years and in also property is

a field of law that Inc that covers several types of legal rights patents

which cover inventions which is my main specialty and copyrights which covers published books and movies and things

like that original works with authorship or art basically and then trademark and there’s others too Trade Secrets and

trademarks but trademarks or intellectual property right that governs the exclusive right to the use of a Mark

or a slogan something like that to identify your company’s name or the name of your product something like that so

they all have different sort of bases and arguments I’m a Libertarian writer as well I’m been a practicing attorney

with law firms and with companies for all this time and and but and I’ve helped dozens of companies acquire

hundreds of patents so I’m a patent attorney so I understand the system that help people acquire it but right around

the time I passed the patent bar in 1994 maybe a little bit before even when

I started moving into that field as a Libertarian interested in libertarian Theory which means understanding which

laws are good laws which laws are bad laws which laws are should be abolished which laws are are Justified basically

the libertarian idea of strong property rights capitalism free markets living that live there should be no victim of

crime laws you know there should be no drug laws U there should be no taxes or very low taxes you know the standard

free market libertarian perspective um I kept wondering about intellectual

property because the arguments for the gates that were all over the map you had people that said in electric property

was important because it helped stimulate innovation and is necessary for sorry let me make an important

distinction sure in you say intellectual property but I think really you’re talking about intellectual property law

and even that would where we’d have to describe like intellectual property obviously exists ideas exist they’re

here right you’re talking about intellectual property law apparatus govering right corre that’s correct and

in my writing I try to distinguish because it because people use the term in different ways and it leads to

confusion um for example yeah if I was would to be precise I would say intellectual property rights or IPR or

intellectual property laws and um yeah most people they identify Innovation and

things that they call your secret sauce which is technical knowhow or knowledge they call that IP and the

reason they call it IP which is actually slightly uh erroneous as you as you picked up on is because they’re so used

to identifying the legal regime of protecting IP rights with the underlying

knowledge and that this is part of the problem is if I say we should abolish the patent system people think that

you’re that you have a problem with Innovation or technology because they identify the technology and the

knowledge that’s protected by ITP milal property rights with the underlying knowledge and they don’t understand that

you can separate those things and you could be in favor of free enterprise and competition and technology and progress

without favoring a legal system that uh protects that attempts to protect this in any

case I started investigating the issue as a Libertarian because I was a budding libertarian theorist in addition to

being a budding lawyer and I just thought I’m going to become an expert

like a legal expert in IP law so I might as well be the one guy who can actually

sort out the the confusion and figure it out like I originally thought I would be the one who would come up with a better

argument for patent rights and copyright and trademark but I kept running into problems which

was that every argument I came across was flawed and that was for IP and I

finally realized why I kept failing to come up with a better argument and just because IP rights are unjustified and

they’re violations of private property rights and they should all be abolished for different reasons so I start I wrote

my my my monograph in around 2000 one or something like that on abolishing intellectual property and I’ve been

writing on it ever since um and I built on that insight to develop other

libertarian um I mean I write on things other than intellectual property but my

my latest book which was from last year has a lot of my libertarian Theory

contract law rights Theory punishment Theory legislation versus the common law

but a lot on intellectual property so all that’s in here they all integrate with each other and I came to an

understanding that um that everything about all forms of intellectual property

law all of them um are are terrible for the economy and for individual rights and for in for for Innovation for

freedom of expression um as you have seen with the examples of what I would

call uh extortion or bullying by the Nelson Nash Nelson Nash Institute

because they have trademarks the way of would rank intellectual property law in terms of how damaging and destructive

they are to Human life into the economy the patent system is the worst because

it impedes and distorts Innovation it slows slows down Innovation and makes the human race poorer because the the

way the human race becomes richer over time is is not because we’re smarter

than the Romans it’s because we have accumulated more technological knowledge which makes us more efficient and how we

use resources and that’s why every new innovation and breakthrough scientific breakthrough technological break through

keeps making the world richer which is one reason we’re not poor right now despite Government taxes and regulations

we keep outstripping the Damage Done To Us by the government by increasing productivity because of technological

insights and those insights come despite the drag and the and the obstruction of the patent system if we did not have a

patent system my firm view is that we would have even more Innovation and more human wealth and prosperity we might

have flying cars by now and all that kind of stuff so it’s a drag but at least but that’s the that’s the source

of human Prosperity is the accumulation of knowledge so that’s why the patent system does the most damage to the human

race and should be abolished first and foremost the next most damaging is the copyright system because it lasts the

longest patent protection lasts for about 17 years So eventually patented ideas become public domain knowledge

which could be used I mean it’s an unfortunate 17-year delay before people could start using it but at least

eventually can start using using it the copyright system originally was around the same thing the founding of the

country it was a term of around 14 years extendable once so 28 years and you had

to register for it uh but ever since the in the 20th century with the burn convention and other modern treaties and

and legal systems um the copyright system has just gone out of control um number one it’s now automatic you don’t

have to apply or register or even put a copyright notice you just get it automatically by writing something or by

making something that’s original work of authorship and the term is now the life

of the author plus 70 years it used to be 14 or 28 years now it’s well over a

century so copyright so it lasts forever basically but in copyright threatens

internet Freedom by shutting down websites with piracy links it restricts freedom of speech freedom of the press

because literally prevents you from publishing a book if you wanted to if I wanted to write a sequel to Star Wars or

to Harry Potter I I couldn’t do it I would be literally there would be an

injunction from a court telling me I I couldn’t do it on penalty of going to prison and that is a restriction of

first amendment’s Free Speech guarantees so copyright is the second worst trademark is the third worst in my

opinion now trademark unlike patented copyright patented copyright laws were

artificial intrusions on the free market they did not arise on the common law there was no such thing as a copyright

in our sense or a patent that devel that was developed by Common Law Courts or the Roman Law Courts in just in in

developing the private law which we all like the private law which intended to

protect your body from from torts and and crimes and your property from theft and and and and things like that um

copyright and patent had to be invented by legislatures artificially coming up with these rights um the patent system

came about uh as a reaction into the practice of of of of monarchs granting Monopoly

privileges to their their Court cronies and and that resulted in the statute of monopolies in England in 1623 which is

where the modern patent system paint Dr and the um and the copyright system we have now came from the statute of an in

1710 uh which was response to a a Government monopoly on printing press

all these things have nothing to do with freedom or the free market so you could see that that patent Cy system or

intrusions onto private property rights freedom and free markets and competition and Innovation and learning now the

trademark system emerged on the common law and it emerged with somewhat decent

Roots rooted in the idea that it’s wrong to commit fraud or to be dishonest or to

cheat your customers okay so the original idea of trademark which I still think is unjustified by the way I think

the trademark law was not necessary you could have simply dealt with the problem of consumer confusion or Consumer Fraud

with contract law and with fraud law we already had contract law and fraud law so that means for example if I sell a uh

a hamburger from a fake McDonald’s restaurant to a customer I’m pretending to be McDonald’s

authorized McDonald’s chain and I’m not or if I’m selling a Louis Von a fake Lou Chanel Pur a fake Chanel purse right or

if I’m selling a Nelson MCH I’m sorry an infinite banking concept service or product I’m communicating information to

my customers about what I’m selling them now if I’m selling you a fake hamburger

not a fake hamburger but I’m selling a hamburger that pretends to be authorized by McDonald’s but it’s not then in

principle I’m defrauding or I’m breaching a contract with my customer because the deal is I’m going to give

you an authorized hamburger and you’re going to give me $5 okay in principle the customer could

sue me for breach of contract or for fraud that’s fine I don’t I think so

over time so obviously what would happen is if there’s a b there’s a McDonald’s hamburger chain and I want to start a

competing hamburger chain in reality this not a problem what do most people do I start the Wendy’s chain or I start

the Burger King chain people want to put their own name on things but okay let’s say I’m some Russian knockoff and I I

have a fake McDonald Restaurant in St Petersburg okay do the customers really

care it’s it’s not authorized or they just want to hamburger I don’t know but that’s up to the cour to decide whether

or not there was fraud committed on that customer and if there’s a lawsuit and

the hamburger chain has a lot of liability to its customers guess what that means then that means that they’re

not going to do it in the first place because when they try to get investors to build this fake McDonald’s chain no

one’s going to invest in something that’s going to go out of business pretty soon so the point is the common law the frond law the contract law is

sufficient to handle cases of what we call Consumer Fraud or consumer

confusion and you will notice that in this case the

plti this is important plaintiff or the person with the complaint is the

customer so he has a cause of action say you ripped me off

so the there there are there are several problems with the way trademark law evolve to give this right a trademark

right to a competitor or to a person using a Mark um one problem is so let’s

take this Nelson Nash example and I don’t know the details of it U I’m sure it’s the same old story I’ve heard many times before yeah one important

distinction is that the infinite banking concept was a phrase that was in use before The Nelson Ash Institute right

it’s like they’re they’re taking Gravity the word gravity oh we’re going to tradem mark it right you know so I think

that’s important something the Nelson Ash Institute did not come up with the infinite banking so so let’s so let’s so

like I said earlier there are say the three main types there’s also trade secret the three main types of

intellectual property are patent copyright and trademark now for a patent means you apply to the government to get

a um a monopoly right to practice a given invention which is like a machine

or a process you have to apply for it and there are certain requirements you have to fulfill you have to have a

useful invention it had to be novel which means new and it has to be non-obvious in in view of the priority

this is why um you can’t get a patent on something even if you thought of it

yourself your basement if it turns out someone else was was selling this five years ago even if he didn’t learn it

from them it’s too late it’s in the it’s in the public domain so you can’t get a patent of something that’s been known to

be public for for more than a year before you filed for it okay copyright

is obtained by simply producing an original work of authorship and writing it down fixing it a tangible meaning of

expression so that so patents require you could call it originality or or inventorship you have to have a novel

idea copyrights require originality that is some creative expression and that’s

usually easy Because unless you’re copying from someone else which would be plagiarism um it’s it’s look for Paton

it’s very common for um it’s very common for multiple people to come up with a similar invention at the same time and

the reason is because an invention usually comes about when the background technology has reached the point where

it’s possible to do that you know the Romans couldn’t have they couldn’t have invented incandescent light Bol back

then not because they’re stupid but because they didn’t have all the technology need to get to that phase

andison and his contemporaries in the late 1800s they had electricity they had

vacuum sealing tubes they had GL making Pro a fibit idea they had knowledge about

electricity that it’s obvious that at a certain point in time there was going to be a light bulb inent it’s obvious that

at a certain point in time someone would have come up with an airplane there was the things almost always come up about

at the same time because which is another reason you shouldn’t have a patent system because no one is

really a true inventor they always are incremental and they’re always doing things that are basically obvious at a

certain point in time the transistors is the same way uh lots of inventions are the same way the guy that happens to get

the patent OB tur gets the only the Monopoly like andison or the R Brothers for their airplane it’s just ridiculous

right now for for copyright it is usually extremely unlikely that someone

would write the same novel as the first guy you’re never going to have someone independently write Atlas Shrugged or

Moby Dick and so that originality requirement for copyright is almost

always present doesn’t mean it’s system Justified I’m just saying that’s part of the way it works now for trademark there’s no

requirement for you to have come up with the phrase or expression you just have to under the

current the way the system in in the way the system worked under the common law if you just started using a name a brand

name a product name a company name in the market you develop what’s called common law rights in that geographic

region now with the internet and with International Commerce we have a federal and an International System of

registration you file for it you don’t have to come up with it you just have to be the first one who applies for that

and gets a registration in the trademark office just the way it works you don’t

have to if no one had filed a trademark for infinite banking concept or even the initials then it’s

up for grabs anyone can get a trademark on it now there are some limitations in the trademark wall which is that the

Mark needs to be uh it cannot be inherently generic or or

descriptive so like you couldn’t get a trademark own pencil because even if

you’re the first one to apply for it because it’s just a description and if you give someone a trademark on the word

pencil you would inhibit competition because other people would have to bend over backwards to find it an awkward way

to describe the the thing that they’re selling which is another pencil which is why most people this is

counterintuitive to most people but the strongest trademarks are those that are what we call Whimsical or fanciful for

example if I came up with the name for my S well let’s say I was selling infinite banking if I came up with

Pegasus Journeys down the road to profit something Whimsical and crazy that’s

actually misdescriptive or not descriped that’s a stronger mark But then of course you wouldn’t care because you could still say hey I’m teaching a

course on infinite banking I would imagine that getting a trademark on infinite

making concept is on the edge of being a little bit too generic or descriptive to

survive if there’s a lawsuit but but who knows this this part

of the problem with IP law patent law copyright and trademark law is that the people that hold these rights that once

you once you have a certificate from the government like a copyright registration a patent certificate a trade Parks CIP

once you have that there’s this this presumption of validity and the burden of proof now shifts and usually the

company that Holy thingss have Deep Pockets and lawyers and they can just they can bully people so people just

give up or give in which is why these laws have a chilling effect on Commerce Innovation and free speech um even

trademarks um so I personally my good feeling is that

calling this infinite making concept is so descriptive of what

this concept is that you can call the Nelson Nash method or something so you add something to it that makes it a

narrower claim right uh anyway but the point is they have this right and they can use it to bully people this is a

perfect example of why trademark law is unjust now you can

criticize the companies that have you say they abuse these rights you’re not really abusing it this is the system the

whole purpose of the system is to enable and to allow legal bullying right if I

have a patent I can send you a cease and assist letter and you know it’s going to cost literally $2 million

to defend yourself even if you win and which small inventor in his garage can afford to do

that which is why what happens is you have for example if you remember

about 10 years ago there was something called the smartphone Wars and you had Apple came up with the

first I guess the first they claimed to be the first smartphone with a

touchcreen and a you know kind of an adaptable interface and o with rounded Corners that was one of their patents

that was a design patent not a Utility Patent still it was a patent on the way the phone looked with rounded corners

and Motorola and Samsung and even Google later and and am Apple they were suing

each other left and right now these are both these are all very large companies with billions of dollars and multiple

hundred million dollars of patent War chess and lawyers and legal staff so they just Sue each other they keep the

lawyers employed for for seven years lots of legal and Technical experts are used and finally at the end

of this what happens they come to a settlement and they my stack of patents

is three times as big as your stack of patents so I’m going to pay you royalties half a trillion and you’re

going to pay me royalties of 1.5 trillion we’ll we’ll offs set the difference and we’ll come up with a cross licensing deal where we can all go

in peace and compete with each other like we were doing before after all the lawyers have gotten fat and Rich and now

we just have to raise our prices a little bit to pass it on to the customers so now you have three two or

three Monopoly or or or olops cartelized basically manufacturers of the only few

smartphones out there and they all they can all compete with impunity because they hav’t deal with each other they

pass the increased costs on to their customers The Innovation is slowed down in the meantime because they don’t have as much competition and they don’t have

as much competition because all the little guys who would have competed with them they can’t do this they can’t if

they enter The Fray they will be killed by a massive patent law suit from one of the big three guys so you can see why

the patent system leads to olop and the same thing is true with in different ways with the other types of Ip like

copyright and trademark here you have so my point is you could criticize

Apple or Samsung but you know they’re just following the rules of the legal

system probably in many cases especially for a publicly traded company it would be um a

violation of your fiduciary duties if you’re on the on the board or if you’re on the management of apple and you have

a patent trough that you can use to extort your competitors or slow down competition if you don’t do that you

probably would get fired or maybe even liable so the system almost forces

people to to to to use the patent system and the copyright system

and the trademark system in unethical in aggressive ways now there are some

exceptions for example Tesla under Elon M’s sort of iconic

leadership I don’t know 10 years ago and Twitter by the way before even they both

announced a policy we’re going for for Tesla I believe they announced a policy we’ve got a lot of patents but we’re not

going to sue our competitors because they wanted the electric vehicle Market to grow they understood that

they have these patents that could give them a tiny slice a Big Slice of a small

pie they would rather have a bigger slice of a huge P so they implicitly they intuitively understood that patents

are useless stop competition so now you’re wondering then why do they have to spend millions of dollars on patent

attorneys like me to acquire these patents that they’re not even going to use like the whole thing is such a a disaster and Twitter had a policy where

they and they did this to attract employees they said if one of our employees comes up with a new patentable

method we’ll file a patent on it but we they made a contract with their employees where they said but we will

not assert these patents offensively against our competitors without the

permission of the inventor so they were trying to Shackle their hands and they’re trying to say listen we’re just acquiring patents for defensive purposes

but we won’t be a bully if you do it that way and the shareholders no then I don’t think that the directors or the or

the management be accused of to F fulfill your their fici your duty but it’s very rare that company will even

try this they don’t understand all they know is Wall Street and the shareholders all they think is we’re a company our

our goal is to make profit we have an asset we have prar assets we have patent

assets and we have um copyright assets and we should use them to our advantage and so that’s what’s going to happen and

if you criticize companies for taking advantage of and responding to the incentives set up by an interal property

system it’s like criticizing I don’t know immigrants or

poor people from taking welfare I mean if you set out a a fig a pig TRW full of

free stuff and the purpose is to is to get free free stuff away people will

line up for it and they will take it if they didn’t take it we wouldn’t even worry about it but they will they

will take it but the problem is not the people that respond to Natural incentives the problem is the legal system itself um so

in the case of the Nelson nashing I will say that in in some cases I have people approach me from time to so they like

Ping copyright are different so let’s talk about trademark like I said given the system

you can file a trademark on a common expression like infinite banking concept

um and because of that reality if you were doing this as a business you would be stupid not to try

to grab it if that’s part of your main business because if you don’t do it then one of your competitors could get it

first so the legal system creates this war of all against all where everyone’s

trying to grab these rights so that they’re not shut down from their business even if I was a totally

innocent nice guy and I don’t mind competition I don’t want to use my trademark to bully you I better grab

them first to keep you from grabbing them to stop me now in the case of copyright you don’t

have to enforce your copyright in the case of patents you don’t have to enforce your patent as the cases of say

Tesla and Twitter show the problem with trademark is as I understand if you get

a trademark and then you don’t enforce it then you’re in danger of losing it so let let’s say that the Nelson Nation

Institute has a trademark on IBC and then little competitors spring

up and then they don’t what’s called police it they don’t police it then they

can lose it for for um the suude or for or for just it it could become generic

again or something like that or maybe someone else could grab it so unfortunately the law gives you an

incentive not only to acquire trademarks but then to police them by sending out cease and desist letters and all that

now that said there is an ethical way to do this and that ethical way is this let’s say

that you’re a competitor of the you’re one of the people selling the

service of um Bas all the Nelson the infnet banking concept and um the main

say the big guy I don’t know is it true that the Nelson Ash would be like the the big guys on the Block like the main

ones that people know of the Nelson Ash Institute doesn’t actually do infinite banking um they

have like they they have a program where they certify what they call their IBC

practitioners right okay fine and there are lots of people who do the infinite banking concept some of them are

officially authorized with the Nelson n Institute some of them are not I’m not sure in terms of how the numbers break

out but so what they could do they wanted to be ethical and not be bullies

which again they have no incentive not to be but they were just decent people you can’t really criticize them

for obtaining the trademark you can’t even criticize them for for policing it but policing it doesn’t mean you have to

be ex extortion and Bully what you could simply do is you could say listen like you could send a letter and

to someone you can say listen we have a trade BK on this on this term you’re

using it in your service to avoid confusing our consumers because we

license this Mark to all of our licensed or authorized sellers or service providers

we would simply we will hereby we will be willing to negotiate with you and Grant you a license to use the term for

a dollar a year if you simply put a disclaimer on your site saying not

authorized by the Nelson ntion Institute now that would be a very ethical and polite way to then they

could keep their trademark alive because they’re getting you to admit that they have a trademark you’re doing it under

their permission and the permission is like a dollar a year it’s nothing so you’re not really harming them and you’re willing to compete with them you

just want to say look here’s our authorized dealers your Fe are not authorized fine you could do that

no one does this no one does this because they don’t understand IP law and they don’t care about being unethical

apparently yeah there’s a lot to talk about there so that thank you for providing that alternative that was that

was interesting first of all it’s one of the things that I always find interesting is that within the Nelson

Nation Institute among the leadership and the membership there is a very strong libertarian impulse whether

people whether you like it or not and obviously there are plenty of people who do infinite banking who are not Libertarians but within the Nelson

Institute there’s no question that the leadership and the membership are very strongly libertarian in fact one of them

officially authorized he has a mug that says taxation is theft and he displays it prominently on his podcast things

like that right at the very least there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on there if you’re gonna loudly announce

how libertarian and even Anarchist you are in some cases and then you’re going to use the apparatus of the government

to go and Bully your competitors that’s pretty hypocritical right also it’s because there’s widespread confusion

about in property most even anarchists I mean there’s a a large number of the the

more sophisticated or principled or intelligent anarchists mostly the Austrian the Austrian Anarchist the Roth

Guardians who partly from my work and others they understand that intellectual property law is totally incompatible

with the free market system but you’re run-of-the-mill Libertarians they think property rights

good and therefore for intellectual property rights good because they’re so stupid that they they if they hear and

they hear a slow or you know they hear a propaganda slogan they they they think it’s true

right it’s really intellectual property Monopoly it’s really what’s going on right of course that’s really what’s

going on because it’s not saying I have the right to own an I own an idea you can hold an idea in your head you have

the right to that they’re saying and therefore I have the right to exclusively profit from this idea right

yes that’s the the example I always think of is it’s a good thing the early Christians had no concept of

intellectual property right otherwise the Bible would not have been copied so freely the Bible was copied all over the

place freely Everywhere by the way don’t hear about the descendants of St Paul going after

those evil who copi the Bible trying to get cut this was back when books were

like way more expensive and way more valuable than they are today right no before the printing press the scribes

were the engines of keeping these words Lie by copying them if there had been copyright law we might have lost lots of

things we probably have lost lots of things because of copyright in fact you remember I was talking about the origin of copyright the first thing they did

was they monopolized for about a hundred years with this thing called the stationers company printing gild for

1500 something like that it lasted about a 100 years because you had to fear an

author you have to go through you don’t have a a zero fure at your house you still got to go to this building with

people that can have a printing press cranking out things and so for about 100 years that lasted and that sort of put a

stopper in the GD coming out of the model but of course that was doomed to failure and in the modern internet age

we’ve seen with self printing the web and all this it’s gone now they can’t control anything it’s glorious but at

the end of that 100-year period or so the 100y year Charter for the sters company was about to expire so then the

question is what do we do now and under Queen an or her successor I can’t remember 1709 1710 the statute of am was

passed and what he did was he said instead of renewing the charter of the stationers company he created the modern

copyright system where it said authors are the owners of copyright not the Publishers so it looked like it was Pro

author but it really wasn’t because still the authors had to go to the printing companies to print their

books and that that Legacy model has lasted until about 20 years ago which is

why artist like Prince had slave on his cheek all these musical artists all

these movie stars authors they’re all walked into these horrible contracts because the

publishing industry had the bargaining power because they were the only ones who could print or distribute movies or

or music in the old days under the physical medium system they could

extort contracts from the artist where they’re locked in and they don’t even have a right to their stuff yeah so the

the modern attempt to control thought under the printing press which you’re right was a way to like let the Bible

spread that it led to the modern system which lasted I don’t know from 1700 to let’s say the

year 2000 basically now everyone can do whatever they want we have podcasts we have the internet although that’s even

that’s severely restricted by copyright anyway I’m on a tangent now but the point is all this is of a piece

trademark patent copyright they’re all completely unethical they’re intrusions

into the free market and freedom which I know that sounds radical to people that are used to because you’re going toar

hear the standard thing well if I don’t have a right to my name what’s to stop me what’s to stop Burger King from like

well there’s fraud law and there’s contract law right right and why would they but also yeah you’re right it’s

called contract law it’s very simple and I not only that is I was hinting at earlier as I mentioned earlier you could

see a justification for a cause of action by a group of customers or a customer for contract breach or for

fraud if they are deceived by um uh by a

knockof restaurant or or seller of goods or something like that but the cause of

action would be with them but the trademark right law gives the right gives the cause of action to the

trademark holder so for example Chanel has a trademark on the Chanel name and

there’s some company selling knockoff Chanel purses then it’s not the customers who

are deceived that have a lawsuit it’s Chanel is not

harmed said VI and not only that the other I didn’t get to this point here’s the other problem if you had a an actual

lawsuit by a customer it would be because of fraud or a contract breach

contract breach is clearly understood is the terms of the contract fraud is understood as you have to deceive

someone into basically handing handing over payment under false pretens so

those are fairly clearly courts or legal claims under the trademark law there is

no requirement first of all the problem is again it gives the right to the competitor not to the Agri the the the

customer the customer the one that is supposedly protecting who would be agreed doesn’t even get protect it and

moreover they don’t the so it’s called now it’s called not fraud but it’s called infringement so you committed

trademark infringement which means you’re you’re infringing the rights of Chanel the corporation or you’re

infringing the rights of Nelson Nash Institute even though you didn’t commit fraud against them and even though you

didn’t commit fraud against anyone because the the trademark law does not require you to show

fraud what it requires you to show is the likelihood of consumer confusion so

number one it doesn’t require to show consumer confusion which is not fraud by the way if I confuse someone it’s not

clear that I violated the right I guess we’ll have to shut down the entire mainstream media they’re causing consumer confusion exactly that’s my

point hey maybe I like trademark law now all of a sudden that’s another that’s a whole another topic but the point is you

don’t have to show like you don’t have to show consumer confusion you only have to show I’m sorry you don’t have to show Consumer Fraud you only have to show

consumer confusion and you don’t even have to show consumer confusion you have to show the likelihood of it so that is

why you can have a court order from the IC or from a court that that has these

Steamrollers go and they take fake Chanel purses from some Mark some black

market in New York or somewhere and they just they taken they steamroll they burn they destroy these purses even though

the the people buying these purses are not confused or defrauded at all if you

buy a $10 Chanel purse no one in the world thinks that’s

the real Chanel purse they know that it’s a f and they’re happy with that they want the cheap purse so they’re

they’re not being cons defrauded at all so you can see how Mark law has lost any possible connection it could have to

protecting consumer rights under a fraud or consumer even a consumer confusion stand so that’s the background that’s

how I would encourage your your listeners to think about this is to see how Insidious and how harmful and how

dangerous how damaging it is to have these IP laws all based upon the confusion that you can have a pro the

ultimate mistake people make they believe you could have a property right

in the value of something this is the fundamental mistake property rights the entire

purpose of property rights is to recognize that we live in a world of scarce resources where there could be

conflict among people and there’s only so much of these scarce things to go around that’s not true of ideas by the

way this is why we’re richer which I mentioned earlier a million people can use a new recipe for baking of salmon at

the same time uh a million people can use a new transistor idea or a new

Manufacturing idea at the same time this is why we get richers because idea spread we use them to enhance the

efficiency and the richness of our right to say that a little better I think in a colloquial way if I steal your bike you

no longer have the bike you can’t use it you’re deprived of the use of that bike it’s a scar if I steal your idea you

still have your idea and the only way to enforce the intellectual property is to monop is to create a monopoly where now

I’m the only one who’s allowed to profit from that new salmon rest I came up with this new recipe and now no one’s allowed to use it even despite the fact that if

I use that new salmon recipe myself you haven’t lost anything I’ve taken nothing from now this gets it so this is a

little bit technical this is the way I look I’ve been trying to find ways to explain this to people for 30 years and

I I keep coming across coming up with different ways of look these these things are these are Arcane law which

only Specialists like me usually understand even the economists and these free market so-called free market

liberals who support them they don’t even understand what they’re talking about you’ll hear people all the time

conflate patent copyright trademark plagiarism piracy fraud knocking off

these are all completely different and distinct Concepts and they just throw them all together in this mishmash and

if you support piracy then like by the way the word piracy is also another propaganda term piracy means taking

people stuff and killing them from their ship or something you know right which

which is taking their tangible material property that they can’t use anymore like the biking example but now we use

it to refer to using other information you’ve heard on the market and making a

profit off of it oh now making a profit is such a horrible thing the or in many cases in many cases not even making a

profit off of it just making it freely available but as a I used to work as a strategy consultant and I used we used

to deal with this stuff all the time this stuff is so easily addressed and we would just do non-disclosure agreements

right so we’re meeting with Fortune 500 companies Executives so on and they’re giving us very sensitive financial

information that obviously they don’t want their competitors get so we’re dealing with intellectual property all

the time and so we just have standing non-disclosure agreements with all of our with all of our clients and again

the way of enforcing it is not through the government not through the courts which is a very inefficient way of

addressing it what happens is we had a a case with a a guy who he actually um took a slide

from one of the presentations that had gone to a client and there was no client specific information on it that’s the other thing too is that they want us to

reuse our insights right they want that so we’re they don’t want to restrict that because then we as consultant would

lose all of our value if we can’t draw from the experiences we’ve had the best practices we’ve learned from other

companies what we can’t give them is oh you’re competitor that this is his sensitive financial information right

and so this particular guy who worked for a consulting firm he was he didn’t even do anything wrong wrong just an

oversight he was creating some public a thought leadership kind of piece and he put a slide in there that had 100%

public information there was nothing in it that was proprietary nothing in it that was sensitive but he that

same company saw it called him out for and the consequences

were he company and that and then that consulting firm was locked out of that

company for two years it was massive negative Financial impact to them and no courts were involved there was no

trademark no copyright no nothing right yeah because because of course reputation matters more than anything

number one but but even there you you there could have been a there could have been a there could have been a lawsuit about

reach of contract there are implicit and explicit agreements people make with each other if I’m your attorney there’s

attorney client privilege but there’s also an understanding whether explicit or implicit that I’m not going to reveal

your secrets and if I do I’m basically reaching the contract and I owe you some kind of Damages although the damages

from reputation loss are the really the main thing that that you worry about anyway but the problem is people because

of this mistake I said earlier I mentioned earlier where people equate knowledge and secrets and

information they equate that with the IP laws so

they they just can’t conceive of the fact that they’re separate things and you can there are ways to protect one

without the other there’s reputational effects and if you approach a company if

you’re representing someone as a counselor or as a trusted advisor an accountant or a priest even a husband

and wife depends on the situation there’s an understanding that you are not free to reveal confidential

information but that and people think that means that you they think that means that there’s some justification

for for conceiving of information an ownable property right object and that’s

simply just wrong um information cannot be owned only scarce resources can be

owned and so what I was going to say earlier the sort of the actually correct way to

understand intellectual property this applies more to patented copyright it’s a little bit um it’s a little bit um

like I said every every IP right is different in its justifications and its nature um trademark is more the system

of of giving someone a legal right to control the free speech of other people it’s something like that which is a

violation of property rights had and copyright were a little bit more clear about what their nature is I I think

they’re what what’s called in the law a negative easement or in the in this in the civil law a negative servitude and

this sounds like a legal complication but your your listeners can to understand this everyone’s familiar with

the concept of a homeowners association homeowners is where you have a group of people who live in proximity

with each other usually and there is a master agreement among all the people

usually done by a developer when they buy the thing but it could be done it could just be two you could just have

two neighbors who have an their neighbors and they both have an agreement with each other to restrict how they can use their property they

both say listen let live at peace I can use my property you can use your property but let’s both agree we’re not

going to build a pig farm here or let’s agree we’re not going to build our building more than three stories and

that’s what homeowners associations usually do so what you have is you have a contractual or a voluntary agreement

among neighbors and they agree to to transfer to each other some limited

control rights and they’re usually always negative so my neighbor can’t come into my house and use it just by

the way if you own if you own Google stock stock you can’t go into the Google headquarters and have your have your

birthday party there there are certain limitations on rights you can give up a limitation you can give up some rights

of your property you can say okay I give up the right to have a p form on my

property in exchange for you giving up a similar R that’s perfectly legitimate

that’s called a negative easement or or a negative or a negative uh servitude it

it’s also called a restri restrictive covered and this is the basis of Home Association now you’ll see what’s key

about this is It’s voluntary which we dis agreed to so there’s nothing wrong with me dividing up my property giving

for example if my neighbor if I have a driveway that could that’s next to my

neighbor’s property and he doesn’t want to he would rather use my driveway to get to his garage instead of building a

separate driveway right next to mine which the weight of space he might just pay me an annual fee for the right to

use my driveway that’s that’s another type of easement or a right abuse all this is perfectly fine you can divide up

rights as long as it’s done voluntarily by contract now so for example if I have

a printing press I have a building I own the building I own the land I own the

printing press I own the ink I own the paper and I print books in my building

okay got a little Gutenberg printing press or a little Factory on Amazon whatever

I’m not violating anyone’s rights if I print a book is a copy of another book

because I’m not trespassing against their property rights if I print 100 copies of the Bible I print 100 copies

of muy dick if I print 100 copies of Romeo Juliet or if I print 100 copies of

Harry Potter I’m not trespassing anyone’s property right I I’m not violating a contract because I don’t

have a contract however if I make a contract with someone and let’s say I’m

going to make it a deal with the other Publishing House down the street that I won’t I will not publish copies of your

infer books and you won’t publish copies of mine that’s a game perfectly legitimate that would not be copyright

wouldn’t be intellectual property but it would be a private contract which could be enforced the problem is when the

government grants Paton rights and copyrights and even trademark rights to

it great it’s and I just have to point out we’re we’re totally abusing the word rights when we’re talking about these

that’s the other thing it misuses what is a good word that has

positive ethical connotations a right protecting human rights and they’re taking that word and abusing it and

basically now what they’re calling a right is a monopoly privilege tot the legal it’s the right of the tyrants to

tyrannize his people it’s a leg it’s a legally granted Monopoly privilege and but it’s classified as a right because

under the law you can enforce it so here you have the B here you have the bifurcation or the distinction between

what call natural rights or moral rights and and positive rights which the

government just grants and they there’s no reason for them to expect them to be consistent with Justice or property or

natural property but the way to consider this is when the government grants me a

copyright let’s say when they Grant uh JK rolling copyright in and Harry Potter

she can go to a court and she can use that right to stop me in my private

printing press from printing certain patterns of information on these paper now as I said earlier

that would be legitimate if I agreed to it but I didn’t agree to it it’s the government taking part of my property

right and giving it to to to JK rolling that’s a transfer of property rights

it’s a stealing it’s a taking of property rights it’s what I would call a non-consensual negative servitude no

there’s nothing wrong with or negative eastmen to use the common law language there’s nothing wrong with negative e if

you agree to it so the whole point is whether you

consent or you don’t consent in the case of an agreement in a homeowner association or a negative normative

normal negative easement you have consented to this restriction on your property rat or more properly to give

part of it to someone else is totally legitimate but the government simply takes it from you in the form of so this

is ultimately the problem with patent copyright and even trademark is that it’s the government grant hting a

negative Ser EAS to someone that they didn’t bargain for they didn’t get by

permission of the owner of what we call the burdened estate so now you have a burdened estate the burdened estate

means there’s a piece of property that I own and before this happened I had the right to do whatever I wanted with it

but now there’s a limitation there’s a negative restriction on what I can do I’ve got to get the permission of the other guy so if you want to sell uh this

infinite banking concept Force now you had previously you had the

before IP law you had the per perfect right to do it because you’re not def frauding anyone you’re just selling a

service you’re competing with some other people with the trademark system you give your

competitor you give the owner of the the so-called IP right the right to use

physical Force to prevent you from using your property as you see fit even though you never agreed to this negative East

that’s ultimately the problem IP law so what you’re pointing out in Layman ter terms is the only way to enforce

intellectual property so-called rights is to destroy real property rights

because I can’t control the ideas that you have in your head I can only control what you do with the actual property

that you own right yes so this this is this is a really subtle Point that’s hard for once you understand that it’s

easy to see but it’s hard for people to grasp um because the concept of property rights has been so muddied over the over

the years because we again we with property wrting value instead of the

physical Integrity of of the thing but the thing is once you understand that

there are two components of successful Human Action this gets back to off train economics and mises it’s just a very

simple this is praxiology but you don’t have to really understand all of this but point is it’s common sense to

understand that every human action has two essential components that then is to

achieve what you want to achieve in life to do something successful to have a profit as we call it a a psychic profit

or a monetary profit to go from here to achieve what you want to achieve you need two things you need availability of

scarce resources you have to have things to work with and you need knowledge in your head that guides what you do these

two things are both essential to successful but only one of them is the

subject of conflict is the clashing over these resources like you said earlier

everyone can use idea at the same time so the liity rights necessarily are

control rights to scarce resources that’s what they are because every law

is always the use of force against someone who’s misusing someone else’s

resource when there’s a possibility of conflict or CL I would say that’s civil law because because law yeah that’s a

whole another I I I subscribe to more theistic definition of law so I would reject your definition of law there but

I think I know what you’re saying is a in a practical sense right and that’s well that’s a whole another conversation um I I there there’s in in in legal

Theory and in moral theory there is a distinction between to mytic natural law

which I’m sometimes calling here um moral law or libertarian law which

really just means Justified law I know that there’s the natural law thinkers well also like the law of gravity that’s

a law yeah I’m going to f on like different types of of law so there’s the laws of cause and effect causal laws

there’s also laws of Economics there’s logical laws but and these are all about regularities that we can notice in life

and then there’s also moral laws and and there’s what you can call Legal laws and

then the legal laws have two types one is Justified law or moral law which is a normative component and then you have

positive law which is the law that actually exists that The Sovereign or the legal system is actually literally

enforcing but because we come to an age dominated by legal positivism in a

sense ushered in primarily by the rise of the bureaucratic State the

administrative state in the 20th century which coincided with the with

the with World War I and and the collapse of monarchies and the old regime and the rise of democracy which

is what Papa calls legislative I’m sorry Democratic lawmaking we’ve replaced the

old concept of law as a fixed thing that has to be rooted in morals and norms and

natural law to some degree which is the distinction we make between what we call malam and say and malam prohibitum laws

malam say is laws written on your Eng graped on your heart because of God or moral law or or common sense or

tradition and Mal prohibitum are things that are just illegal because the government says so and the common law

and the Roman law were more natural law reasoning systems based upon practicalities and we discovered what

the law was whereas now with the rise of the administrative State and

democracy for about a 100 plus years now everyone thinks of law is you hear these

even Libertarians they’ll say oh the income tax isn’t legal isn’t it’s not illegal to to evade income tax because

show me the law when they say show me the law they’re thinking like the legal positives because they want you to show

you a book written by the legislature of a government which is a criminal agency

anyway to prove what the law is they’ve lost the connection to between morality

and the law so I agree with you and there was a classic debate 50 years ago between HLA Hart a sort of a legal

positivist and blond Fuller about even using these words you’re using like some

people like you maybe are reluctant to call a bad law a law because you think

you’re blessed it with this cloak of credibility because you’re thinking like the old world to think about things like

you’re thinking that people used to I would call it a rule an edict you know you could there are various words you could use Tobe I’m okay with how you

want to describe it look I I get in trouble with some of my libertarian friends who are mainstreamers when I say something like um the Supreme Court

because even like you mentioned economic laws are more like Tendencies they’re

realities well there there are AR priority laws too there are logical laws there are philosophical law based on

human behavior things like that depends on your take on economics but if you if you accept the epistemological approach

of the austrians or some of the austrians there are AR priori truths we can know and there are AR priori truths

or yeah when I say AR priori I just mean there are things that we know that let’s

put it simply they’re hard to deny it’s hard to deny that we exist

it’s hard to deny that there’s such a thing as Consciousness right it’s hard to deny the law of noncontradiction it’s hard deny the law

of supply and demand it’s just just I would say it’s impossible but we don’t need to prove these things with an

empirical experiment we don’t need to we don’t need to prove that if you raise the minimum wage you’re going to cause

unemployment we know this by logical reasons so that’s a whole different issue but the point is there are

different categories or types of Law and I would say that the one of the main distinctions is the one mises makes

which is the distinction between the normative or the teleological realm and

then on one hand and the causal realm on the other the descrip the descriptive versus the prescriptive and when we talk

about law it’s an interesting intermixture and again the people that think that law ought to be moral and

based on on certain values and certain justifiable principles they’re reluctant

to call like the income tax law or certain legislative decrees like IP

rights they’re reluctant to call it law because they’re afraid that they’re going to give us some legitimacy or blessing I understand that I think we’ve

lost that game because if you want to communicate with people I don’t like the terminal for property I don’t like to

use it but if I’m going to criticize a set of laws that should think should be

abolished I’ve got to use language people can understand so it can get tedious to every time say I’m against IP

rights ask yeah they’re not kind like Mike Maloney making the distinction between currency and money and every

time someone says M corrects them as currency it’s not money you know I do the same thing with the word State like

I I’ll point out that like libertar I’m an incus libertarian I’m not against

government or law or order but the thing is is pick roads for example most people

are so used to the way things are or even social government provided Healthcare in other countries they’re so

used to the fact that the government provides healthare they can’t even conceive of a system where the government doesn’t take care of

healthare same thing with roads people or or things like money or Communications or education people are

so used to these things being provided by the government I’m sorry the state

that they couldn’t conceive of it happening without it so if you say I’m against government roads what they hear

is you’re against roads because they don’t think it’s possible to have roads without the state and the same thing is

true of the of of Law and Order what I call the institutions of

governance or governance itself so because they think that to have Law and

Order you need a state they believe that if you say I’m against the state you’re against

governance right because it’s to them it’s a package deal if so sometimes I

will try to be carefully clear in my language it always results in it’s a disaster because people confuse but I’ll

I’m with you I’ve I’ve given into a colloquial way of speaking where I I I know that I’m being imprecise with my

terms and so on just because I I misuse words like money and things like that just because

if you want to talk in a way that people can understand you have to be a little bit a little bit about that yeah so I

usly say I’m against like people Libertarians now they they they say they’re against government schools okay

and I could be I could be nitpicky and next say You’re really against State

schools right because government is like an ambiguous term um but I know what

they mean so I’m not going to fight them on that right they’re against the schools that are run by the government

but the the way I think of it conceptually is the government is has just like roads have been monopolized by

the state the functions of governance have been not monopolized by the state the state’s the state is the fundamental

problem the state is an agency a monopoly force and law in a given area

that’s what it is and because of that Monopoly they they outlaw competition in

the provision of governmental services but there’s nothing wrong with government per se you could have law

the family right parents govern their children companies have governance that that govern them your local chess club

has governance I want to return to the Nelson Nash Institute and give you a little bit of I I think now I was with

the Nelson Nash Institute and I want to give a little bit of History so I not being a member I might be a little bit off the infinite banking concept was I I

would say discovered by Nelson Nash in the 1980s because the idea predated him so

whole life insurance had existed for over a 100 years and so the methodology you proposed was

at least theoretically possible and I do believe there were people doing it but no one had really formalized it into a

system written a book about it so um I’m giving Nelson Nash his due but when

people say that he created it I’m like well I don’t know about that but even if he did be that ASE he wrote the book on

it it’s called becoming your own Banker it’s a book that is like the seminal work on the banking concept and then the

Nelson Nation Institute was founded later I don’t know maybe 2010 I’m not sure the exact date and in order to

promote the infinite banking concept and what happened was over time

it’s I don’t know if it morphed or if this was always the original intent but I believe it started as a way to promote

the infinite banking concept and to give support and training and encouragement to life insurance agents who actually

want to do the infinite banking concept which is a very special way of

leveraging whole life insurance policies okay to become your own Banker right and

we don’t have to get into all that but and so they started creating a

program where you could pay them some money get some training and get like officially authorized as an infinite

banking practitioner and it has morphed into controlling the narrative it has

morphed into there like all things it started off with a real problem there is

a problem which is that there are of course people who use the infinite banking concept they use that phrase and

then but when they’re actually doing is something quite different that may not be in the client’s best interest and we don’t have to go into all the details on

that so they see this real problem and then they start playing this whack-a-mole game of trying to smack

down those other people right rather than trying to promote encourage the infinite banking concept and then uh

whether explicitly or implicitly allying with government in order to do that

and I think also there’s sort of a personal emotional almost spiritual

aspect to it where I don’t know how familiar you are with the Nelson Nation but if you listen

to the leadership you listen to people talk about it it has become a religious cult fortunately where the infinite

banking concept is to them more than just a brilliant Financial strategy it is basically a form of religion and so

when you criticize Nelson Nash MH or when you misuse the infinite banking

concept or do it in a way that they don’t like it’s not just a disagreement

it’s now a religious war and when you elevate things to that level then all of a sudden no holds SP right and so

because of that you can see it in the way that these people some of them some

of them because there are a lot of them that respect let me be clear about that I’m actually positive on the Nelson Nash Institute so I hope this is taken as

constructive criticism that some of them get very shrill and very angry and when you get very shrill

and very angry you are just not going to be effective it doesn’t matter how right your message is people are just going to

see that you’re bitter that you’re shrill that you’re angry and that you’re trying to control other people yeah and

that’s not attractive and so my constructive criticism to the Nelson ntion Institute would be hey we agree on

the infinite banking concept we agree that these other people are misusing the infinite banking

concept the question is what do you do about it that’s the question and I think

it’s also partly the psychological phenomena that we often see which is that when you get bullied you often

times become a bully right that’s the way it works and we in the infinite banking footprint have absolutely 100%

been persecuted and bullied by the Wall Street Bullies who don’t like the the

financial philosophy the financial strategy that Nelson Nash is proposing because it would probably take profits

and power away from the Wall Street Bullies sure and because we get so unjustly beat up by these

compliance departments who enforce arbitary rules that were written by their Wall Street superiors right and

we’ve been persecuted the Temptation then is to become like the Wall Street

Bullies and unfortunately I think there’s some of that in the Nelson Nations too do you think there’s a

parallel to the Bitcoin thing where you know there’s there’s been hostility towards Bitcoin um among the sort of

professional CL and the money managers and the the old world the old way of doing things I actually don’t think so I

think that’s a different phenomena quite frankly I think when it comes to bitcoin I think a lot of the animosity just

comes from Envy because they see these little people who supposedly don’t know anything who got rich buying Bitcoin and

but it’s also you don’t think it’s a threat to the the old way of investing

and say using Banks um look you have Craig r who is this notorious sort of

Bitcoin troll who’s tried playing he Satoshi and use trademark and copyright

to prevent other people from using the word b even the Li l Rand think letter

PE off they’ve sent these let they found lawsuits or send threatening letters

telling people you can’t use the word objective as a we own another example of Tri even the libertarian party in the

recent years has used that against some Renegade state libertarian party

Affiliates for using the word libertarian party in their name and

again half the time be you have no choice in a sense to police your mark As I said but you can see how this in in

the case of n nashon you’re talking about okay if there’s a quasi religious or a fervor about this thing and and

that there’s hostility from the outside that also worry about Renegade groups that are not under their control you

could see how in a free market where there was no trademark rights the trademark rights exacerbate our

Tendencies to become bullies if you didn’t WR trademark rights you would have to rely upon

persuasion and persuading people that oh I’m the real objectivism I’m the real

I’m the original you know founder the same thing happened by the way with moner to a mon and they could they could

have their official authorization that’d be fine they couldn’t use Force they couldn’t use force it would just be a

matter of The credibility that it exactly if they couldn’t use trademark to bully people they would have to be a

little bit more careful about selling their claim that they are the legitimate one just there’s a debate

among bitcoiners about is it coin cash or is it bitco if you don’t have the a

government lawsuit you can file you have to you have to give a reason for your

for your claims I was going to say my my son went to monor schools here in America and there was something similar

there but it was a little bit odd because the monor approach was come up with by Maria monor and in in Europe a

hundred years ago and it was called and then her group was called Ami Association monory International but

there was a split with the American group for a while because of John Dewey’s criticism of it or some guys critic so monor fell out of favor in

America for two decades and so this woman named Nancy rambush went to Europe and she found out

about it she she she starting up the American group called Ami I’m sorry AMS the American mon serus society and it

that became the dominant way of teaching mod America the AMS way and now the Ami

way is coming back up and they both say they’re better than the other for different reasons but they

have no tra they never need file a trademark so it’s like in the public domain now because it’s just a monory

method which is very similar to Nelson I think it’s a descriptive way of talking about infinite banking it’s a

description of a system so no one owns monu the word the technique so that

means that that these groups have to coexist with each other and they have to have friendly competition and parents

can judge them on their merits and de which one they think is trer to the mission the original Mission or which

one they they like better which is the way it ought to be right that’s what we should have we should have no in Ultra

property rights amp up the hostility and the legal fighting among each

other yep I completely agree with you but yeah I just wanted I know I’ve talked about my brief story with it but

hopefully I hope hope this has helped the audience understand why trademark is a problem why I I within Nels

NES and try and train and support and encourage agents to do it I obviously I support them in that um and I would and

I’ve invited them to to come and talk on my show if they want and have a conversation about this because I think we all want the same thing which is to

promote the infinite banking concept question what what do they what is what’s the response then when you

invited them there’s no response um I’m not in touch with them I haven’t for some time so I just stated publicly on

my show we’ll see I mean it wasn’t that long ago so maybe maybe someone will respond but I doubt it why if they’re

Libertarians if they’re Libertarians I think they should if they want to be serious Libertarians and not Hypocrites

maybe they should consider what we talked about and consider whether what they’re doing is ethical and moral and

reconsider their use of of lawfare and state aggression against their call you

competitors just I’m not yeah no I don’t consider myself a competitor at all I think they’re they’re fellow infinite

Bankers I mean why don’t you do that it’s just not right reconsider what

you’re doing so uh the three people who were leaders at the time I was there when I was kicked out was uh Bob and by

the way the reason I was kicked out had absolutely nothing to do with the infinite banking concept you can look at my videos I’ll link them below and read

about my story but it kind of just shows the pattern of behavior that goes on there so Bob Murphy Carlos laara and

David Sterns were the leadership of the Nelson Nash at the time Nelson Nash Institute at time so I’m not in contact

with any of them personally I know Bob has left I’m not sure if Carlos is still there I know Carlos has had some health issues so I’m not sure what he’s up to

but I think David Sterns is still there still leading it so if you’re in contact with those people please give them my

invitation cuz I doubt they’ve seen the video it was a public invitation but I’m not I don’t have any way of getting in touch with those guys so seriously doubt

any of you know that I exist probably better if they don’t anybody come after me if they find out I exist I might get

a legal letter in my mailbox and I have a lawsuit to deal with no maybe staying

under the radar from them was a good thing sure yeah I don’t know I think it’s sad

I do have a book I wrote It’s a monograph about 10 years ago was called

do business without inal property Jeff Tucker encouraged me to do that when he was with liberty.me and

listen we live in a world of patent copyright trademark trade secret law you

can’t deny it you can’t avoid it you can’t ignore it but if you but there are

traps by there are traps that that people fall into when they when they

just start using these rights without thinking about whether they really need to for example if you have a little

startup company and you’re told you need to devote so much of your precious

budget to hiring pet attorneys to get some IP they call it IP patents so you

can attract in BCS and investors uh and you have a war chest

that will impress Wall Street or your investors because you have a right to sue someone who’s a competitor you hear

those on Sharp take all the time do you have any protection on your new product you can’t ignore the reality sometimes

you need to do this but you don’t always need to do it the way everyone else does

it and maybe you get one tenth as many patents as someone else or maybe you adopt a strategy like Tesla or Twitter

did right and with trademarks I mentioned other ways you could approach it in an ethical way and it might even

be better because now you’re focusing on your core what you’re really about you’re not focusing on lawyers and

lawsuits and revenge and beating people with the power of of Courts um and so in

this little book I have called do business without intellectual property it’s on my

website no I I think that’s great because I think we’ve had a lot of wide ranging theoretical discussions with a

lot of tangents and people want practical right tangible Solutions and I think it was great that you gave one

earlier to the Nelson Nation insute say Hey you can trademark the phrase but just don’t enforce it in the way that

you’re doing it now corre there’s a better way that you can do it so that you’re not being a bully you’re just

making it clear it could even be better for them because now they’re not seeing is a bully and they’re not wasting resources chasing things that is not

their core business model their core business model will be to improve their services and their offerings and their

quality and their reputation and just have a prosperous business why would you want to F why would you want to spend

money on guys like me to send out CD letters right and I want to point out

what you said there focus on improving their services because unfortunately when you look at the way they’re going

their focus is on controlling their agents so it’s not about hey Stefan let me train you and teach you how to do

case design really well let me treat let me teach you how to Prospect and market and sell yourself so you can really grow

your business and you can really design cases well so your clients will have the most efficient cash flow management tool

there’s none of that it’s all Stephen this is the way you do it and if you don’t do it we’re going to beat you over the head that’s really a lot of what it

is you don’t get a lot of support and training like you’re supposed to get the training quote unquote is basically more

like we’re going to fit you in the straight jacket and you’re going to comply we are a compliance Department

you’re going to comply that’s it they seem to have no interest in helping you grow your business or actually become a

better infinite banking agent it’s more about just controlling unfortunately I

don’t know if we can do this but maybe I could quickly share my screen to show this sure yeah you should have you should be it is one practical thing I do

I know I sound totally impractical but trust me as a pth attorney I have had to be very practical with my will will

plead guilty to he speaks like an attorney I try not to I try not to use

terms without explaining them anyway and why they’re relevant okay how do I share the screen with you I can see you I can

see your screen okay can you see I see Zoom I need to move it somehow too plug

my monitor that’s my problem my monitor now can you see it there so this is do

business without inal property so it’s practical it talks about trademark trade trade secret patented things you can do

I’m not saying to Shan everything right but it’s thinking about a different way

of of of of navigating this IP prone

world and it’s free online like everything I do is free online by the way excellent excellent the man is

consistent with his principles we’ll definitely link that below Stefan we thank you so much for

your time helping us to maybe provide some practical alternative Sol first of all point out what wrong with trademarks

and give some practical alternatives to the Nelson Nation Institute for how they might better accomplish their stated

goal of promoting the infinite banking concept Stefan anything you want to leave our audience within

closing no anyone interested in this you can most of the stuff I’ve talked about is in my book which is fairly recent and

and that’s on my website too it’s free online UB and PDF and also you can buy Kindle Paper versions you must be brok

stepan you must be making no money cuz you’re giving all your stuff away for free you must be totally broke right it’s crazy people buy it they’re like

how do I buy your Kindle here’s a free UB they’re say no I want the Kindle version I’m like

okay uh I don’t do this for money anyway but it’s it works out anyway um but um

no and I might be teaching a course on this later next year um I might do an online course for a reasonable price

just for to to go through my entire theory of libertarian Concepts property rights Justice you know your property

everything just in detail for people that are interested in in self-education uh I did a course like this about 13

years ago for the mes Academy but now the technolog is better and I have more material to work with so uh I may be

doing that I’m retired so I’m looking for something to do in retirement so I

got I got plenty of ideas for you Stefan I got plenty of ideas all right I’m open I’m open I appreciate your time and uh

and good luck with everything but uh thanks for having me on thank you really appreciate it byebye okay