KOL450 | Together Strong IP Discussion (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity feat Econ Bro)

hello it’s Matthew here from the nations of Sanity project I’m doing a video for the together strong project which is a

Project based on bringing people together for common cause more specifically this channel was focused on

bringing bringing libertarian thinkers together to discuss and debate various elements in the hope of getting closer

to Truth uh we’ve already had a couple of very interesting debates on this channel um but today we’re going to have

a discussion on intellectual property which is an area of libertarianism that

perhaps gets a bit neglected not always mentioned and often misunderstood by many people um so I’ve got two people

here with me to have this conversation one is Eon bro who’s a Libertarian who’s doing some tremendous work in Nigeria

educating people about property rights libertarian principles as well as things like inflation um and the other person I

have here to have this conversation probably the best person to speak to about intellectual property is Stefan

canella who in addition to being a very well respected libertarian author is an

anti-ip patent lawyer as he or patent attorney sorry um as he’s been well

known as and um so he knows obviously a lot about intellectual property um as it

exists in current law and also how it should exist or not exist as the case may be um before we kick off I just want

to say thank you uh and introduce econ bro first and just say thank you Eon for taking the time to have this

conversation if you just want to briefly introduce yourself to people listening um okay um thank you Matthew

thank you um stepan um as as you said I’m Eon bro that’s not my real name it’s

just the um name I use for my my work so I’m this is my

third time on the show and this is the first show I I don’t think I’ve ever been on any show okay just one other

show I’ve done twice and then this is my third time on your show so this has to be this is a record for me and it’s

great to be back here I’m I I not too comfortable with you calling

me a Libertarian thinker because I don’t particularly consider myself one I’m

relatively new to this as you know as I said um in our first meeting I got

introduced to um libertarianism in 2021 so I’m relatively new to this as I’m

sure you know so please don’t call me a Libertarian and thinker I don’t want Mr kinel to have his hopes up and then I

would have to dash those hopes so um what I do here since I I came to learn

of of libertarianism I consider myself a rothbardian and anarcho capitalist since

I I started to learn about um libertarian Anarchist values I decided

to um teach these things to young people in my to people in my country regardless of age um so I go from my strategy is to

go from University campus to University campus across the country talking to um

economic students students of philosophy and politics about the ideas that I’ve come to learn from um Roth Bard hoer and

pretty much David Redman and pretty much everyone I’ve um come across in my study

so that’s basically who I am and um what I do I don’t have much to offer to this

conversation but I guess I’m I’m willing to learn is yeah yeah thank you well I’m

sorry I am going to have to call you a Libertarian thinker I didn’t say you’re a Libertarian know at all but you’re

definitely a Libertarian thinker because none of us know at all but we’re all making the journey and refining our

understanding as we go um and a reason why I thought this would be a great conversation for you to be involved in

is because intellectual property is perhaps something um that you could kind of add to your repertoire of things to

talk about when you’re educating people in Nigeria about various elements about property rights and liberties arianism

um and as I say I don’t think there’s a better person to speak to about this subject than Stefan so in addition to

wanting to introduce you and Stefan to each other as I as you as I said before you’re both two of my favorite

libertarian thinkers you both approach the um the topic of Liberty with courage

and humility um and and deep thought and that’s that’s why I respect both of you

very highly so I’m very pleased to introduce you to each other um and I think it’s going to be a very productive

conversation because as I say intellectual property is something that I think a lot of people get wrong or a

lot of people just forget about altogether when we’re having the libertarian conversation and talking about these issues um Stefan canella

who’s very well known for doing a lot of country great contributions to libertarianism but he is in particular

very well known for his work on intellectual property um he knows a lot about the law as it is as he was a

patent attorney and he obviously knows a lot about how intellectual property should operate in a Libertarian Society

um so without further Ado I just want to pass over to Stefan now to say thank you for taking the time to have this

conversation um and if you could just introduce yourself as well sure happy to do it yeah I’m Stefan um I’m um kind of

a retired patent attorney here in Houston Texas I’m from Louisiana originally which is a civil law state

which most people don’t find interesting but I do um um I um

um have been interested in libertarian theory for quite a long time um probably

since uh high school and then in law school I started um studying more on the

theoretical side and started writing so I’ve written about of lot of topics about the foundations of libertarianism contract theory rights

Theory punishment Theory um causation U but intellectual property was one of the things I started writing

about and I did it out of necessity because um I was becoming more radical like I

was originally a randian like an objectivist right so I believed in the minimal State and believe strongly in

individual rights um um but then finally

the I became aware of the arguments of the anarcho capitalists and I’m and econ

I’m I I thought you were going to say I’m not a Libertarian yet I’m a classical liberal I’m not sure and then

you say I’m not a Libertarian but but I’m an anarcho capitalist so I’m a little bit I’m a little bit confused you

said you actually are you an inherent of the views of of of David freedan and

Murray rothbard and this kind of stuff right did I did I understand oh yeah I said I’m not I

don’t cons um I said I don’t consider myself a Libertarian thinker oh iew

called me I see I’m I’m I’m libertarian I’m an anarchist yes I see okay because I one of my friends Michael malice

always if you call him a Libertarian he says I’m not a Libertarian I’m an anarchist and I always find that um an odd thing

stubborn yeah in my view libertarianism is a broader category that encompasses

menist and anarchists and um um yeah now I do think that only the anarchists are

the cons they’re the only consistent Libertarians but um nonetheless I think the term is Broad enough to include um U

menus too even though they’re inconsistent Libertarians but anyway I I was just curious about that that point

but um so I I myself moved from sort of um um randian minarchism I used to call

it the night Watchman state that kind of idea um when I finally it was sort of

like becoming an atheist for me like when I was young I finally gave up the idea of God

because once you start challenging one part of the Catholic faith for example which I was raised in it all falls apart

because you know if you’re extremely into consistency and you’re into rationalism and reason you know that’s

the Hallmark of a questioner and that’s what happened with me I mean Rand to me I became a Libertarian out of nothing I

was never conservative I was never a lefty like a lot of Libertarians I was just nobody I was just a a kid who

didn’t know anything about economics or anything but when I read Rand in high

school this sort of focus on the individual and his rights this kind of

her logic of Rights and her other writing appeal to me it just makes sense right the only laws that are Justified

are laws that or aimed at uh preventing the use of force because force is

ultimately the only way to violate rights and that’s because property rights just are the right to control a

scarce resource including your body and then other things that we own so to me it all made sense but then of course if

you say the government’s Justified well then you have the question well then why don’t we have a one one

world government why wouldn’t that make sense um and the randians really have no

good answer to that in fact some of them if you push them they will say yeah theoretically we should have a one world

government with one uniform system of laws which shows that they’re more interested in uniformity and a final

result rather than Justice um and but they will admit that in today’s world it

would be it would be foolish to have a one war government because most of the country is not Western enough or

something like that so and it’s just a mishmash of ideas um in any case I I was

a because the randians initially and by the this is not intellectual property this is a Prelude but um the randians um

um had harsh criticisms of the Libertarians and because I was new to all this I at first thought Ein ran was

correct and and her her disciples like Peter Schwarz and Leonard POF they just

bashed libertarianism as sort of this like uh infiltrator that was a dishonest

IM IM imitator of her political philosophy and so in my first couple years I I thought libertarianism was

like the devil you know because I thought that they were just an impostor but I kept running into their

the pamphlets of the libertarian party on campus at at my my at my at my at my

my college and they all seemed identical to what I was believing so I went to I

went to uh this is 1988 when I was in law school by this point um and I went to uh or almost yeah

yeah almost in law school and I went to U he Ron Paul who was the libertarian Party candidate he came to campus I went

to hear him speak because I was curious like they seem they seem libertarian and the problem is I was at that point I was

a DieHard objectivist and my main focus was on abortion rights and Pro choice

and so Ron Paul was the one candidate the libertarian party has nominated that is actually sort of not really Pro he’s

pro- lifee right he’s not pro-choice and so I started I went to the classroom and I I I just wanted to I wanted to find

out what the libertarian position on abortion was um I assumed he was the spokesman for

libertarianism which he wasn’t right so I asked I remember I raised my hand and I asked him a question about wait are

you guys pro-choice or not because I was was getting mixed messages and uh he he

he hemed and haed and he kind of refused to answer the question which confirmed for me Ran’s suspicion that the

Libertarians are not really uh objectivist although most Libertarians actually were pro-choice I just didn’t

know it at the time anyway long story short pretty soon after that I read David fredman I read the tan of Hills I

read rothbard and I finally realized I you know the anarchists are correct and the

government cannot be justified taxation cannot be justified which even ran kind of admitted taxation can’t be justified

um so that was that’s sort of my backstory but when I started practicing law and I started writing so as a

lawyer I wanted to have a career make money be successful and part of that is

writing that’s one way some lawyers do it one way they develop business is to

get their name out there and one way you do it is by you know family connections or networking from your from your school

or from your community or from your family and another way some people do it is by by writing and speaking because

that’s another way to do it I didn’t have any of the family connections and I came from nothing so I I you know I

thought I can I can make myself known by publishing in journals and and

newspapers and things like that as a lawyer and that’s a way to get your name

out there to to land clients so I had that side of my profession and my

life and I did it because I was good at it and I enjoyed writing there’s a scholarly aspect to me so I tried to be

a blend the Practical and you know you can build that into a practice right um

at the same time as a hobby the way I look at it is vocation versus avocation

the way Gary North explains it some of his articles um if you’re lucky you can you can blend your vocation with your

advocation most people are not that lucky maybe some professors are like that but most

people you know if you’re if you’re a plant worker or you’re working a factory worker at Amazon and you’re stocking

shelves that might not be your passion in life your passion might be bowling right or it might be I don’t know

volunteering at something so what you do is you have part of your life is having

a career paying the bills and then you use the money you earn to support your hobbies and your and your interest and

your passions you know nothing wrong with that I think that’s perfectly natural and that’s what I sort of ended

up doing I ended up using my career as an attorney and my and my you know my

salary to subsidize my passions on the other side and I never looked at the

other stuff as um money-making I didn’t want to be a professor I didn’t want to work for a think tank I didn’t want to

be beholden to some personality like Po or or even M’s Institute I wanted to be

totally independent make money and I could make probably make more money as an attorney uh and then just use that to

be independent and do my own thing which is what I’ve done and it it’s worked out pretty well because I kept having the

freedom to write only not only my legal stuff for my career but also all the all

the uh um the libertarian and libertarian Theory which I enjoyed um

now as I one of my first articles was on rights Theory by the way Matthew I

thought I thought you and I had already talked about IP so I was wondering why we were doing this again but I looked we

we we’ve talked about voluntary slavery I think contract theory and maybe immigration but yeah we actually you and

I never did talk about IP so um this is opportune um and so

um I started practicing law in 1992 in Houston as an oil and gas attorney which

I really like because it deals with property law contracts business deals

things like that but I soon moved from oil and gas law into into patent law and

intellectual property law because for personal reasons I wanted to move to another state so it worked out and plus

the demand was obvious that this was the early 1990s and uh intellectual property

law and Tech Law was becoming really hot the internet was becoming hot you know

so everyone kept saying hey canella you’re you’re an electrical engineer by your background because in

America if you’re an attorney you have to have an undergraduate degree first and usually it’s a history degree or an

e or an economics degree or or or something like that but on occasion you’ll have someone who’s an engineer

who goes to law school which was me and if you’re an engineer then you have the credentials you need to become a patent

attorney because you have to have a technical degree plus law school to be a patent attorney so I was in demand in a

in a field where there’s a a a narrow Supply and the field was improving and

everyone kept saying why aren’t you a patent attorney and I was like I don’t I didn’t take a course on this in law school it didn’t even occur to me but it

it seemed it’s turned out that that was the obvious thing for me to shift into so I shifted to IP

law to catch the wave of of Tech Law and

Technology um becoming more a thing in the the world and the internet itself right and digital you know streaming and

file sharing and all this kind of stuff and so um and I was good at it because I

I can it’s it’s a you have to know like the intersection of two or three or four things to to be a good patent attorney

you have to know how to speak to Engineers which means you need to know technology and how to speak and you also

need to know the law and you need to know the administrative practice and the business part I mean like it’s a weird

combination of of of skills which not everyone has a lot of Engineers could

not be good patent lawyers because they’re not good at communication a lot of lawyers couldn’t be good patent lawyers because they’re they don’t

understand technology so if you happen to have a combination of talents anyway it worked out but because

I was libertarian that was writing on rights Theory and other things iron Ran’s argument for

intellectual property which I read in high school or in college always bothered me because it’s an incomplete

or it’s a it seems to be a bad argument like your argument for rights made sense to me rights are reciprocal you can only

use force in response to force you can only use physical Force to retaliate

against someone who use Force against you she that’s what John G says do you hear me you you may not start the use of

force right that had an intuitive appeal to me and then if you know a little bit about economics from Henry has L mes or

these guys you start understanding why free enterprise and the free market they all kind of go together and they support

this idea that we have to have property rights not only in our bodies which is

implied by the Randy and non-aggression axium or the libertarian non-aggression

principle you know basically those are different ways of saying

there’s a property right in your body self ownership right that’s ultimately the basis of the political ethics of

objectivism and I think of libertarianism but then that that also applies to the ownership of external

resources in the world um which is why we have the homesteading principle and contract theory which

explains who can come to acquire ownership in these things not only in our body but outside of ourselves like

how do we come to own this piece of land or this piece of wood or this fruit or this tree or this cow it’s because of of

acquisition of property rights from acts of homesteading and or from from

voluntary transfers from someone else which is trade and commerce and the

free market so to me those are the the corners of libertarianism but I

noticed that the argument for intellectual property was made no sense um because

for no for for one thing the first thing that that occurred to me was well if you

think most people don’t realize this because they they’re not sophisticated attorneys understanding international law and domestic legal systems

but we live in a world where everything that’s owned under a property system is usually governed by the jurisdiction of

the local legal system usually the local government right uh like in America it’d be the the federal government or the

states so if I own a home in Texas I own That Home by virtue of the Texas

law the real estate law that protects the right to own a home but that right

is what we call in law an in Rim right not an inum right in Rim means it’s it’s

a it’s a right to a thing and when you say it’s in Rim it means it’s good against the world it means you it means

you don’t own it because of a contract with someone you own it because you’re the owner right so if I own this

house sure it’s protected by Texas state law but that law is all I need to say

that I’m the owner and it prevents me from being robbed or it prevents my

house from being used or taken from me by someone on the outside whether

they’re from Nigeria or China or Louisiana or Texas it doesn’t matter like so in a sense all property rights

are always in Rim they’re good against the whole world they’re good against the whole world even though there’s one

legal system that defines that but is they’re good against the world right intellectual property by contrast so

there’s two there’s there’s two things that that strike you if you understand this about intellectual property number

one is that they they they expire at a certain arbitrary time so copyright used to last 14 14 or 28 years and now

copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50 years or plus 70 years depending upon the country so they

expire at time and and patents last for about 17 years so these are rights that

expire well my right to my watch or my car or my cow or my turtle or my land it

doesn’t expire at 17 years or 50 years it theoretically could last forever so

the first thing you notice is well why would why would these rights expire at

an at a certain time and why how do we know that’s the right time like how do

we get this so that’s the first thing that makes you think there’s something wrong with the AR for IP and the other

one is this this this idea that rights by their nature are always good against everyone unless it’s a contract but

that’s a that’s in Persona so if Matthew and I have a contract we sort of set the

law between each other about how we we’re going to treat a certain object or a certain stream of money or something

so that’s a that that doesn’t affect the rest of the world so that’s imp Persona that’s what contracts are for but

property rights are good against the world they’re in Rim okay so like I said

once I have a property right in my house or my land that property right to the extent that it’s enforcable by whatever

legal system it would prevent a German guy from or a Chinese government I me no

one can do it I mean no one can use it without my permission but but intellectual property

is always domestic it’s not International there are international treaties that everyone agrees to have

similar standards but it’s always a local thing so for example when people accuse China of they call it stealing

intellectual property and what they mean by that is that well first of all they don’t know what they mean by that but

because it’s never clear whether they’re talking about the Chinese government or Chinese companies and also they they mix

up trademark trade secret patents and copyrights they mix them all together and they mix in the

word plagiarism and the word fraud and the word stealing and the word ripping off and the words piracy they just

jumble them all together and they’re they’re not they’re all different concepts but what they really mean is

that here’s what they really mean by the way if you open a factory in China if

Apple in America opens a factory in China to make have iPhones assembled why

do they do that because the the cost of Labor is cheaper right they could do it in California but it’s too expensive so

they they they open a factory in China but when you open a factory in China you have you’re you’re operating

within the jurisdiction of the Chinese government and you have to get permissions because it’s not a free market so you have to get all these

licenses and all these local things and because they’re not quite a free market what they often do is they’ll say well

we’re going to let you open a factory here but you have to partner with a local firm you have to do a joint venture and employ a certain number of

people so the politician can get credit for for jobs right so Apple faces the

cost the choice well is it worth it to us we can’t have our own Factory in China

that we totally control we have to partner with a local company to please the local politicians and that’s going

to reduce our efficiency a little bit and it also reduces our control because now you don’t know what these Chinese

employees are going to do so hey maybe one of them might sneak a picture of the latest iPhone design and leak it to one

of his buddies Who’s down the road at another Factory and they start making iPhone knockoffs right by the way this

happens in America this happens everywhere there’s always danger of employees leaking Trade

Secrets but anyway what they’re talking about is when people say China is stealing our IP they’re talking

about the Chinese government regulations requiring companies as a

price of doing business there to partner with local Chinese firms and then it’s

hard to keep track of trade secret Trade Secrets being being being leaked by the

way trade secrets are one type of in property but it’s not patented copyright so uh and by the way even if you didn’t

have to work with a Chinese firm you still have to hire local Chinese employees even if you totally control

the factory you could still have trade secret theft this happens all the time it’s called economic Espionage it’s it

happens in America Americans American companies everyone does this this is got nothing to do with anyway so um but when

people criticize China they say China’s an IP thief and what they but what they

also mean is that up until recently China and the developing world and a lot

of Asian countries had a reputation that they don’t respect intellectual property which means that it’s easy to find

knockoffs of CDs and movies um U but all

that means is that they’re just poorer countries where people engage in rampant piracy they don’t respect the law that

means the the local police and the legal system is not completely efficient at stopping piracy guess what it’s also not

completely efficient at stopping piracy in in Britain or in the US I mean yeah

we send some people to prison to send an example to make you know to to make to make an example out of them when we

catch a guy that uploads the Wolverine movie for example I think we just lost Eon yeah he’s he’s got dodgy internet so

he might cut in and out a bit but you want to wait or do you want um I keep going I would and yeah he’s back he

normally comes straight back so and I’ll stop in my I stop in my ramble in just a second but um I’m I’m just getting to

the point of like I guess I was getting to the point of the the one thing that

made me uneasy about patents and and copyright is that they’re domestic which means that so let’s say China did not

have a copyright law and which they’re under no obligation to have a copyright law that’s their local law that’s like

that would be like saying China violates the rights of Americans because China has taxes that are too high or China

doesn’t permit you to to build a bridge in your town because the regul I mean it’s like really none of our business

what the local property law in China is and so so if China had no patent law

and no copyright law they would not be violating the rights of Americans and the reason is

because patent and copyright law are domestic and what that means is if I’m the author of a book in the us

or in Britain I have a copyright enforced only in those countries because

they have copyright law but if someone makes a knockoff of my book in Nigeria

and Nigeria doesn’t have a copyright law the company is literally not violating

the rights of American companies because they don’t have a copyright in that country right so this so when people say

China’s stealing something by basically allowing p pacy and patent infringement

Etc to go on in China without having Draconian enforcement of those laws

which is as bad as the US enforcement that’s just it’s literally it’s not stealing it’s first of all it’s

it’s infringement not stealing but it’s not even infringement because it’s not illegal in China if they don’t have a

patent law it’s not illegal for someone to copy what you’re doing this is why you might move your

manufacturing to a country that doesn’t have a strong ipit which is why there are no strong

countries that don’t have IP because the Western countries like America and

Europe use their power to bully other countries to accept um to join these treaties like

the mrid treat trademark treaty the patent treaties the copyright treaties

and to keep enforc enforcing their laws it’s sort of like when the US bullies NATO countries to increase their defense

spending so they can be part of NATO we bully these countries to do this stuff anyway that’s a long rant so to get to

the actual thing though so I started looking at IP because I thought every

argument I’ve heard for IP is is bad because it the the term limits are

arbitrary type um the the argument seemed like to be a mixture of utilitarian and and Loan so I thought

well I’m actually a new budding libertarian thinker I I know a lot about

objectivism I know a lot about rights I know a lot about law I know a lot about legal Theory I know a lot about

economics I’m going to figure this out so I embarked on the project to figure out the best argument for intellectual

property because no one else had succeeded and I kept hitting roadblocks

I kept I would try this argument and then I would say no let’s there’s a problem there over and over again and

finally I I I did what I did with God like like well hey maybe the reason why there’s a cont contradiction in the

Catholic faith about this idea of Eternal punishment for hell which makes no sense to me like how can you be

punished eternally an infinite amount of punishment for a finite amount of good

you of evil you could do in the world that was what made me start thinking oh

the reason is you can’t justify it which means that the the story about hell must

be wrong which means the Catholic Church must be wrong which means ah probably all the religions are wrong you know that that that was my so the happened

and that’s why I became an anarchist I’m like ah yeah you can’t justify the state and so for IP I I thought well let me

reverse my assumption maybe I’ve been trying too hard to prove something that’s just unprovable or as Walter

block might say I was defending the undefendable or I was trying to justify the unjustifiable and that is my

conclusion I end I ended up with that conclusion after exploring every possible Avenue and it it was creeping

up on me I real I started realizing the importance of scarcity scarcity as an economic concept and as a political

concept as a human concept of ex ex understanding Human Action in the world

right and by the way this goes along with my understanding of Austrian economics which was informed heavily by

mises and his prology and I do think that once you

have a good grasp on the economic foundations that Mis is focused on in

praxiology and then just basic free free market economic principle like supply and demand that kind of stuff um and

then also a little bit of knowledge about history and political philosophy political Theory and then rights rights

and consistency and principle it’s pretty easy to see what the fundamental flaw is in every every intellectual

property system and primarily I’m talking about patent and copyright and all the arguments in favor of it and so

I started to unpack all this and by do in doing that it really strengthened in

my view it strengthened my understanding of libertarian because I because to sort out this kind of Ip puzzle you have to

really have a good understanding of the the nature of Rights and how we justify rights and how they they interplay with

each other and we can go into the detail of this in a minute if you want but that to me that was a the structure of what

happened to me um and this is why I’m so passionate about it it’s like it’s it’s

really an easy argument to make once you kind of see how to make it in a coherent

clear way once you see it it’s hard to unsee I believe um which is why like so

you could identify as libertarian you know probably seven or eight things that we all say the state does which are

horrible intrusions into life Abominations they destroy lives we probably almost all of us agree on most

of these things War the central banking system in inflation right um

taxation um redistribution of by welfare uh

government control of schools and transportation all these things are horrible and you know some people focus

on one more than the other some people focus on War as the main thing some people focus on taxes as the main thing

some focus on spending by the state is the worst and redistribution and the and the problems wrough by the welfare state

oh the drug war is another one the drug war I mean you could you could point to problems with every one of those but the

thing about almost every one of those arguments is that um there’s there’s an

argument against it that’s not completely crazy like you if you’re not a complete Anarchist like we

are you could say I’m against War usually but sometimes you need to

have War right or you could say yeah um I don’t like taxes but we have to fund

the government somehow so it’s it’s a necessary evil so like all of these things there’s a little bit of an

argument that you have to always fight against with two exceptions in my view the drug

war and IP there are there just like no good argument for the drug war because

it’s a totally victimless crime right oh even then you could say the argument is that if you have a welfare

state then people they’re going to get addicted to drugs and they’re going to be a big a bigger strain on society’s

you know safety nets I guess you could even argue for drug drug regulation for that reason but that’s assuming that we

have a welfare state and you know that kind of stuff but like really the drug War uh the drug war and intellectual

property are the two clearest and cleanest arguments you can make that like are the uh criticisms you can make

of the state and its policies where there are there’s really not a single good argument for them at all um and the

reason you can the way to understand this is to to unpack the arguments

uh for intellectual property okay so and I I’ll summarize just for a second and then I’ll stop and let you ask

questions the two main arguments for intellectual property is number one it’s it’s the loan argument that if you

create something that you put your effort and labor into that’s a value to

other people then you have a property right in it so there’s this sort of implicit assumption that creation is a s

source of property rights and the reason people believe that is because they

associate the labor needed to be productive in normal life and the labor

that always goes into and the action that always goes into humans doing things and using scarce resources like

acquiring an unowned thing or transforming it into a more useful thing having a successful crop yield you know

building a house they sort of associate the labor that you put into it

with your success so they they get this positive connotation for effort and work

and they they tend to think that there’s a correlation in in in in nature like in

natural law or something like if you perform work then you deserve a reward

but of course that’s not true in fact in physics that’s not true right I mean what what is work defined in physics

work is moving a force through a distance if I push against the wall for an hour I might sweat but I haven’t done

any work because I didn’t make the wall move you know and by the same token if I you know if I come up with an idea for a

new for a new business and I sell you know the Palm Pilot or I sell snow cones

in in January no one buys it and I go I I might have put a lot of effort into it

and a lot of money into it but I’m not entitled to a profit because I don’t own the the efforts of other people so

there’s no there’s no right to a profit

or a reward from your effort but people think there is because they think that generally if you do work hard and if you

you’re smart and you satisfy your customers then you tend to get rewarded because that’s the way society’s always

worked and they’re right about that but it’s just it’s not a it’s not a right it’s it’s just it’s just typically the

consequence of that so because of that mistaken notion

and also I think it’s because of a mistaken interpretation of Lo John Lock was trying to argue

against the divine right of kings and in filber so he was trying to explode this

myth he was trying to argue for limited government and for limitations for limitations of state power which the

argument that the Monarch had the right to do whatever he wanted was based upon this idea that you know God gave the

world to Adam and Adam passed it down through the generations to different

monarchal Kings so they basically are the overlords and owners of us and um so

we we don’t have any rights it’s all by grace of God and you know so BL was fighting that and he to do that he had

this he had to come up with a naturalistic explanation for why we have rights um um that are not anchored

in the king’s Grace or Grant and it was it was

basically Lo so lo my guess is lo was probably an atheist but he had to like

use the religious language of the time God gave ownership of the earth to Adam

and all of humanity in common is what he called it and when he said in common what he meant was that’s what it means

to be fruitful and multiply use the animals what he meant was that all these resources are there for us to use but

they’re in common being they’re not owned yet they’re not claimed yet so you can go out and claim it so w said okay

so this means if you’re a self- owner because God actually gave everyone ownership of their own body so if you’re

your self- owner that means you own your labor and if you own your labor you own things that were unowned in the world

that you mix it with because you’re the first one to grab this animal or this plot of land so lo used this

idea as a as a way to support individual rights against the state to say that we

do have the right to have property rights in our body that we acquire but unfortunately part of his argument was a

little bit mystical a little bit metaphorical because he he he he added this unnecessary step which is that the

reason that you own um a piece of land that you Homestead is because you own your labor

because you own yourself and if you own yourself you own your labor and then if you mix your labor with it then the only

way you can retain ownership of your labor is to have ownership of the land that you’ve now mixed it with because

it’s been inextricably mixed with it so so the only way to keep ownership of that labor that you extended is that you

have to own what it’s bound up with now which was the land and the problem with that argument is that it assumes that

you own your labor but you don’t but labor is just a word for a type of action right there are two types of

actions in economics there’s labor and Leisure right but the way we classify

these actions is just by the purpose for which you’re doing it like are you

engaging in this action as an intermediate action to attain something

ultimately in the end which is really your end your consumption good it’s like the difference between consumption goods and capital goods right capital goods

are valued because they produce consumer goods consumer goods are ultimately the things we want that satisfy human needs

right by the same token when you engage an action if you’re doing it for

something you enjoy for its own sake that’s called Leisure if you’re doing it to enjoy something for its own sake

later on then that’s called Labor right so there’s just two types of actions so they’re both actions and actions are

things that we do with our bodies because we control our bodies because we we have a Unity of Mind and Spirit and you know we can use our will to decide

what to do in the world but no one would have said you own your actions although

Stephan Molly new sort of talks like this sometimes but I think he’s talking about owning what you do he means you’re

responsible for what you do it’s a it’s a it’s it’s a confusing way to or right to it correct but so if Lo had if he had

not said labor he if he had said you own your actions everyone would have noticed that that’s kind of a weird way of

saying that you own when you say you own your actions which is the same thing as saying you own your labor you’re double

counting because if I own my body what that means is that no one else can use

it without my permission but because I’m the owner of my body and because no one has the right to use it without my

permission that’s the reason I can do what I want with it because no one else can can interfere if I choose to do a or

b or c I can do what I want so my ownership of my body gives me the ability to act as I want but this

ability to act is not like a separate right that I have it would be like saying you own your home and you own

your body and you also have the right to take a bath in your in your house it’s like no I I own the bathtub and I own

the water and I own my body and I own the land that all gives me the right to

take a bath if I feel like it but there’s no separate or additional right to take a bath it’s an imp implied yeah

implied it’s implied it’s an implication but it’s not so but when you say that I own my body and I own my labor you’re

double counting and when you double count you make people think of Labor as this substance that sort of exudes from

your body that has a so now you separate the the very concept of property arose

because of the possibility of scarcity and conflict between people and clashing between their bodies and all these

things which we want to use as scarce means of action right but when you say oh well it’s it’s it’s my labor that I

own and by the way people use this argument all the time even Libertarians they’ll see something like well um

taxation is is is slavery because you’re stealing

someone’s time now you we all probably agree with we know what they mean by

that what they what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say that it’s it’s

unjust to have a government law that takes property that I own like my

money just takes it from me that’s that’s stealing right that’s what taxation is taxation is stealing an

owned resource from me even though I have not committed an act of aggression against someone now you can

characterize you can the reason we oppose aggression is because it has effects it has consequences if if the

government could take my house but I still have it I wouldn’t care if they could take my money and I

still have purchasing power I wouldn’t care but that’s not how the world works the reason that we oppose rape and

murder and aggression and theft is because it actually has consequences and the consequences the person who was

robbed or assaulted or whatever doesn’t have the ability to use that Resource as they see fit anymore because someone

else someone else has it that’s why we oppose these things right um and and so

um I forgot where I was going with this L TR good time for a break well might

what might help you remind you just I wanted to ask do you think a reason why a lot of people even Libertarians get

the intellectual property issue wrong is I I sometimes think maybe it’s a little

bit to do with at least partly due to a kind of linguistic cuz we always talk about oh like someone’s stealing

someone’s idea but that’s not really the proper word like if I steal your car you don’t have your car anymore if I quote

unquote steal your idea yeah you still have your idea so I haven’t really stolen it I’ve copied it and it’s almost

like because of the language we use with intellectual property it almost begs the question we’re calling it property off

the bat and then when we talk about stealing someone’s idea again it’s begging the question because we’re

saying oh we’re taking it from them but that’s not though that’s how that’s the language we use it’s not the reality the

reality is is we’re copying like a like an analogy would be if I looked at your house and built a house that was

identical to it if I look at your idea I’m just going to copy it I’m not actually I haven’t deprived you from it

so there’s no aggression do you know what I mean I think that’s 100% correct and I think this shows The Importance of

Being this annoys people sometimes when I they say oh you’re going lawyer mode because you’re being too precise or anal

or whatever but uh sometimes you need to be very precise and careful about terms because they do have ambiguous meanings

or multiple meanings and equ equivocation can often set in even unintentionally sometimes I think that

what happens is in the pre-digital age okay

um you could get away with being a little bit sloppy with these metaphors by saying that um you have the right to

your to to um to to to the fruits of your labor for example that’s another me

you have the right to the fruits of your labor but what they mean by that is that if you have your own body and you you’re

not hurting anyone and you own something you got by contract or some some farm that you Homestead it on your own um

that you you can profit off of that if you’re successful because you have the dominion over that you can sell it so

people start thinking oh you have the right to the fruits of your labor and then what they’re doing is they’re criticizing well why should the government take it for me I made it

right so you start thinking so but it but the mistake doesn’t mean that much but when you when in the digital age

when a primary part of the value of things is in the in the in the in the in

in the shape of it or in the you know a book for example or the patterning of it

um then we sort of lose sight of the nature of property rights and how they have to be bound up with with with

with tangible material things that over which there can be conflict and you start thinking in terms of value so this

is like terman Hoppa has this point which I think is another neglected and very important point something we have

to emphasize there is no property right to the value of things and in fact that’s an arring Insight right so in

fact this is one mistake the randians make I think and they they make it following lock and this this so Lock’s

idea is that you own your body so you own your labor so now you have this non-tangible substance which you and the

reason you own it is because it has a value right so they the Randy will say that um

we have a property right in values they use the word Val use like as a plural or a or as a

noun whereas in Austrian economics we say you you demonstrate your preference

or you demonstrate your value you value things but or you value outcomes but you don’t actually own value value is not a

material substance of a thing there’s no intrinsic value in a thing but when you dis so for example if if I own home and

I have a Rose Garden which Everyone likes to see even my neighbors it it

actually might enhance the value of my neighbor’s property because if they were to sell their home the buyer might say

oh I get to look at a beautiful rose garden but if I tear that Rose Garden down and I have an ugly

house I I actually reduce the value of their of their property but that’s not a

trespass because they don’t have a property right in the value of their property because and again it’s it’s

like the customer thing it’s like if people say oh oh you you you could you

stole my customers from me because you you knocked off my iPhone well but you didn’t you didn’t

own your customers did you and by so by the way in your in your example about um um um uh this the use of

language if you push so if you get precise and you say well you said that I stole

I stole your um I knocked you off or I I was a pirate or I I I I I stole your

idea by selling a similar smartphone to you and and if you point out as you did

but you still have your phone and you still have your designs and you still have your ability to make them then they

will say well what I really mean is you stole the money I’m like well what money they’ll say well the money I could have

made you mean the money you could have made if you had a monop and you could prevent people from competing yeah like

well so in other words I stole the money that’s currently owned by possible

customers who own the money you don’t own their money they own it are you saying you have a property right in the

money in the in the money in the pockets of your potential customers and they they don’t want to say that but they’ll

say no but I could have made you know so it’s it’s it’s it’s if you push them

they they will certainly concede and then they then they go to question begging they’ll say yeah but when you

competed with me you stole my property it’s like yeah but the whole debate was about whether you should have a property

that and in fact the debate’s already won because it’s already lost on your side because you and I both already

agree that I own my factory you own your factory okay so nothing I did violated

your rights I stole your customers but they weren’t your customers by the way I think it’s um

it’s not Ming it’s someone um let me see I can find the quote he had this quote it’s it’s about the the use of the word

the the the possessive like if I say my wife okay that we use that word in

English all the time my wife my son but doesn’t mean I own her

because the word because there’s a possessive used doesn’t imply a property relationship and the same thing is true

of like my idea or my invention that’s just a way of giving credit or

authorship or admitting or or acknowledging who who came up with the

idea it doesn’t mean that you own it right so just if if someone acknowledges

that like Thomas Edison which he didn’t by the way but let’s say Thomas Edison came up with the idea of the

incandescent light bulb it’s his idea but it doesn’t mean that it’s his property right we have to be careful not

to let language uh corrupt um are thinking okay and by the way this was

the this was the first argument for I IP is the is the loan argument this create

I call this libertarian creationism because it’s it’s the idea that creation is a source of property rights but it’s

simply not because creation is only what creation really means is

transformation it means this is where you have to distinguish wealth okay wealth from um from

property if I use my labor and my intellect and my efforts and my property

that I own like resources input factors to to like let’s say I make a I

make a um I make a car out of raw materials like Henry Ford did right I

have transformed things that I own into a different configuration I’ve rearranged them and I’ve made them more

valuable to me or two customers so I have created wealth but

just like I don’t have a property right in the value of my property you don’t have a property right in wealth wealth

is just the phenomenon of having successful Human Action to transform something that you already own but the

point is the ownership of the resulting car is determined totally by property

rights and contract law this is exactly why by the way I believe that the mistake lock made

and the mistake lots of modern rians and and pro I people make is very similar to

the the essential mistake of Marxism which which I think actually so I think the labor theory of value came from this

labor theory of property of of of Lo so you had lock and then you had um U Smith

and these other guys and then and then of course um then of course Marx which

is why Marx thinks that if you have workers on a factory line the Henry Ford’s Factory

line if if Henry Ford is making a profit that necessarily means that that he’s

stealing from the workers what’s he stealing he’s stealing the Surplus labor value because he thinks that there’s a property right in labor it’s all

connected right um whereas the the libertarian or the

private law approach would be the the ownership of the cars that are

produced is determined in accordance with property rights and the workers never did

own the input factors Henry Ford’s Corporation did um and they had he had a contract

with them to pay them a salary for for for performing labor or performing some actions and they got they got what was

agreed to and if he makes a profit it’s because he took his property and he had

it rearranged into a better shape that was more valuable and he sold it for a profit on the

market right so anyway that’s the that’s the creationist mistake which I think leads to Marxism and to Communism

socialism and lots of confusions now about IP the but but the primary

argument for IP really today is the utilitarian argument and that’s the argument that um that basically the

argument and most people don’t want to put it this way because they want to admit that that’s what they’re saying but the argument is a market failure

argument what they’re saying is that oh the free Market’s all well and good capitalism is all well and good we need

property rights however the free market is not perfect so we need the government to come in and identify market failure

and the market failure is with certain types of goods especially Goods the value where the value of the product is

heavily based upon the design of the product instead of like the raw materials that go into it um in

those like books for example or like an iPhone in those cases

um uh you could face competition too too quickly because it’s too easy for a

competitor to knock you off which means to compete with you and to copy to copy

you and therefore you won’t be able to make enough profit to recoup your your

first investment cost in this and therefore you won’t engage in the activity in the first place and

therefore we’re going to have an under production they call this an under reproduction of creative works so you

would have fewer books and fewer inventions without patent and copyright

law so most of them are not stupid enough to say you would have no you would have no inventions and no books

without patent copyright although some people do say this they’re they’re that’s stupid they literally say that if

you don’t have patent copyright no one would ever write a book and no one would ever invent anything which is just

ridiculous the best argument you can make is that there’s an Optimum amount of invention

in the world and in the free market unfortunately because of market failure

we’re going to have a suboptimal amount because people can’t recoup their costs so if we just fix this problem by giving

them a patent to protect them from competition for 17 years then they have enough incentive to sell it for a while

at a high price because they don’t have any competition and recoup their cost and so in the end having this this patch

on the free market is a way to have more optimal Innovation so this is the

primary utilitarian argument today for copyright and for patent is that without

patent and copyright we would have an an underproduction of creative works and an

inventive works and the problem with that argument is there’s several problems with it one is that there is no

evidence for this at all zero in fact the evidence goes the other way around

number two this is not not the purpose of law is to maximize the production of

innovative Works um the purpose of law is to do justice and number three to

think the government is competent in doing this is ridiculous and absurd and

number four um it assumes that the cost of this system is worth the value of

this extra Innovation that they stimulate which there’s no EV it as they stimulate Innovation anyway but even if

they did so let’s say that the patent system costs globally $7 trillion a year

in terms of lawyer and enforcement and insurance and uh risk aversion all kinds

of things like this and yet it generates I don’t know X trillion

dollars in new innovations that wouldn’t have been invented for another 10 years

okay how do we know that the cost of the system is

greater I’m sorry is smaller than than the value this new extra Innovation there’s no like you would think that at

least the burden of proof would be on them to acknowledge this cost to quantify it and to show that it’s it’s

positive which they can’t because it’s actually not positive but there’s no evidence for this so the utilitarian

case Falls and and plus the utilitarian case is is morally bankrupt because it it rests upon the assumption that it’s

okay to violate someone’s rights if if someone else is better off well that’s just r distribution ISM I mean by that

standard you could say I mean you you could justify putting innocent people in prison as long as it dissuades it deters

murder let’s say well as long as people believe this guy’s guilty we need to put him in prison even if he’s innocent

because that would send a signal and stop other Mur I mean you could do all kinds of things in the name of utilitarian arguments uh you could say

let’s everyone who’s worth more than a million dollars we can we can confiscate

90% of their wealth and redistributed to the rest of the world because you know if you take half of Bill Gates’s wealth

he’s still a billionaire but the the 500,000 people that you you

you give free houses to they’re so much happier so let’s just do this balancing thing oh but where’s the end where’s the

end of this I mean where’s the end of of of of of this egalitarian redistribution

ISM so utilitarianism the arguments are just so flawed on so many axes um so

those are the only Arguments for IP it’s that you created you own what you create which is not true and that we need IP

law to have less than suboptimal Innovation

which is also not true so ultimately patent law and copyright law

or or violations of property rights because it it ends up taking property

from an owner and giving it to someone else without their permission it it would be like if the

government passed a law saying there’s lots of ugly guys out there who can’t

get laid okay so we’re going to give each one of them a voucher and he can go up

to any girl he wants and have sex with her okay now and if she if she resists

then he can use force and basically rape her just legalized rape we would all react in horror to

that because we understand that she owns her body and if the government gives him

a license to rape her it’s taking one of her property rights away from her

without her her permission you know contrast that with a normal situation where a man and woman have a date and

the woman consents to having sex with the guy we don’t call that rape because guess why she consented and the reason

she had the she had to be the one to consent is because she owns her body if she consents it’s not rape if she

doesn’t consent it is rape that’s the difference right and so when the government grants patent copyright

patents and copyrights what it is doing is effectively granting what the law would call a

negative easement or a negative servitude um which gives the the the

copyright or the patent holder the right to prevent a property

owner from using their property as they see fit so if I have a copyright I can use that I can go to

court and get a a court injunction um and prevent a competitor

from using their own Factory to publish a book now again if I agreed to this

Arrangement as a factory owner I agreed not to publish books that are similar to your books that’s perfectly fine that’s

called the restrictive covenant or or or that’s this is what the basis of

homeowners associations are but again that’s because I consented to it just like the girl who consents to sex is not

being raped but if the government just give someone this right when I didn’t consent to it that’s a taking of my

property um this is ultimately the problem with intellectual property rights is it violates the

fundamental core principles of how we come to own resources which is not

counting our bodies for other for other things it’s the first user of an unknowned resource that’s lock in

homesteading or someone who gets it by contract from a previous owner that’s it

that’s kind of the basis of all Western property rights and and even sorry sorry

drop but and even that second part just comes from the first part like even the voluntary is still comes from the in

fact you even corrected me a few months ago when I said although I was obviously still basing it on self ownership I

think I said something along the lines of um you acquire rightful ownership of property through creation of voluntary

trade and and you corrected to me said well it’s not actually the creation that made you the owner it was the first use

because even if you didn’t make anything new you had to have had a rightful ownership of those raw materials and you

your rightful ownership of those raw materials comes from your F you know from the first use of it it’s like if we

both walk into the woods today and I pick out an apple from the tree before I picked that Apple you had every right to

pick that Apple but now I’ve picked it it’s mine then that and then if I trade it to you then it’s yours through

voluntary trade but it’s still depended the the the the the validity of the

voluntary contract between me and you of giving you the Apple still depended on my first use claim of it sorry in the

first place so so one other thing I wanted to say as well was um because I

mean as as you kind of mentioned there’s obviously like there’s the principal argument how this this violates property

rights but then there’s also the utilitarian argument that people say that well okay it does violate property

rights but we feel that it does this level of good and that and often I mean I don’t agree with utilitarianism anyway

because it can be used to justify all manner of Horrors if you think that you know they whole great or good argument

but the other thing is is often these AR utilitarian claims aren’t even true as you’ve mentioned yourself I mean for

every person that says oh well who will ever research like a new drug for example without a patent protecting

their profits it’s like well if they don’t have that Pro patent protecting their profits is also not prohibiting

other people from you know and and if any Innovation thrives on the competition

and the sharing of information which is all restricted and prohibited by um IP

laws and stuff so if anything though I agree with you that the utilitarian argument on its own isn’t you know isn’t

valid and has its own problems with regards to justifying you know all sorts of evils but also often a lot of the

utilitarian claims with intellectual property aren’t even true and often the opposite is true often the the

intellectual property laws are actually stifling Innovation more so than they would if people were just free to copy

and also the other thing I wanted to say because when people talk about the market failure it’s like well yeah but the market is operating with IP laws so

you know for I’m I’m a musician and I’ve spoken to musicians about this kind of thing and they say well what what would

I do then if I how are musicians going to make money if people could just copy their songs and they’ve got no protection and stuff and it’s like well

the thing is if that became a problem the market demand for music would create other maybe we’d have academies to fund

musicians you know all there’s all sorts of but the thing is we don’t go down those routes because at the moment we’ve

got intellectual property instead so you know what I mean it’s kind of like it’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy

with regards to all these things that they say you know would happen as a result it’s like well no they’re only

happening because of the intellectual property and if you took that away the market would have the freedom to adjust

in whatever ways is kind of you know yeah it’s it’s almost like I won’t say it’s a laziness but it’s like a it’s

like a a fear of of getting rid of the status quo that we’re used to so you you

you for example you have people make an argument which I think is a bad argument and sometimes it’s dis dishonest and

sometimes it’s just confused but the argument is that well I think this like Richard EP like some of these utilit

they’ll say that well patent patent like let’s let’s the copyright system is just an efficient way of doing what you could

do by contract on the free market so what they’re saying is that well if you

don’t have copyright people are going to have all these um crazy arrangements with each other like to do what you’re

saying right uh and and but in the end this going to end up with royalties and all this so why don’t we just make it

simpler for everyone it’s like the ASCAP system in the US I don’t know what you have in Europe but you know this royalty system where you can you can use

someone’s song but you have to pay them royalty part of the ASCAP system but it’s sort of built upon the copyright system but what they’re saying is that

like uh the government comes in with this this statutory scheme this regul

regulatory scheme which just makes it more efficient for people to do what they would do anyway now the flaw on

that argument is that they think that you could you could build something like copyright or patent

based upon private contracts which rothbart sort of thinks to he’s he’s he’s also confused but I will tell you

something all these people sort of know all the patent law lawyers all the copyright lawyers all the people that

are in favor of like Disney Hollywood all the people dependent upon these these IP

systems they all know that if you got rid of copyright there’s no way you could recreate the system we have by

private contract so that’s why they don’t want to do it it’s it’s not because they think the copyright system

is like an efficient way to just do what people would do on the free market no they want they want to Short Circuit

what people would would do on the free market by supplanting it and then people get lazy they say well why should we

have to do that we we could just I don’t want to give up my right to have royalties I want to be life to be easy

and that kind of thing and by the way you probably know this as a I don’t know amateur musician or whatever or

Enthusiast most most artists don’t to this day most authors of books don’t

make any money or much money anyway um partly because they have to if they’re

successful they have to go to a studio and they they get most um in fact you know when I have debates

online it’s always amusing to me when someone debates with me about IP and they

say what incentive would I have to um to

come up with artistic work or creative work if I’m not going to get paid for it I said but you just replied to me on

Twitter with an argument and you’re not getting paid for that like like literally you’re doing

everything you’re doing right now you’re doing for free so so what are you talking about well it’s like if we want

it we will you know that that’s the whole point of market demand isn’t it if people want it then they’ll find ways to

to create it and if that requires a different you know a different kind of like I saym or all sorts of things

before um because we’re getting towards the end of I know econ’s time um before we um kind of wrap it up I just wanted

to ask econ because like Stefan mentioned about obviously intellectual property obviously we’ve spoken about

how it should be or should not be as the case is um but we’ve also spoken about like how it exists in different

countries and how it’s different I wondered if you could give us a little bit of insight into what it’s like in Nigeria is is IP something that’s

heavily pleased or is there a lot of piracy is it something that’s not heavily pleased what’s the situation

there um we have the law against piracy but um nobody really does much to

enforce it so people just do whatever so um if we have patent laws in Nigeria and

honestly I don’t even know if we have I’d have to ask my lawyer I don’t know if we have patent IP laws in Nigeria one

thing I do know is if you take an idea to so probably shouldn’t be saying this but

I’m going say it anywhere I I I had an idea that I took to the government a while this was before I became

libertarian so please forgive me so I had an idea that I took to the government um so it was it was it was an

application I wanted them to build an app to for something and I took it to the

government I’m not going to give details so I don’t get haunted down um so I took it to the government and I was like this

is the idea they’re like this is spectacular this is beautiful so I went for meeting after meeting after meeting

and eventually nothing came of it and a a friend of mine who was working on the

same project with me um all the way from the UK sent me a news article um showing

me how the government had done the exact same thing I would I proposed to them

without telling me and they were having difficulty running the application right

so I I I can’t say for a fact that it was my idea that the government took I

can’t say that for a fact but it’s Nigeria is possible so the point I’m trying to make is this even if you have

and patent LS in Nigeria if you have IP LS in Nigeria um Things Are corrupt here that

the government might actually be the one to sell the idea to some to the highest bidder so it’s not really a big um thing

here anybody people so you’re better off not patenting any idea if such a thing

exists in Nigeria I I would just like to say something um in response to everything Mr kinsella has said so I

don’t I I didn’t really know much about the intellectual property argument and

again because it’s not something um so I’m Eon bro for a reason because we have

economic issues in Nigeria right so I’m focused on economics that’s my the major

thing I emphasize on is economics here I do dabble into politics and a couple of

other things so IP isn’t really a problem but I I just gave it um basic

thought you know I didn’t think too much about it and um as as you both have rightly said the the the reason why I

thought intellectual property is silly is because um there’s no scarcity right if you if

you have an idea um so with other property like land like

um a car or anything goods and services are scarce right but ideas are not

scarce as um you rightly said if if you seal my idea I don’t I still have the

idea so that was how I came to the conclusion that or one of the ways I came to the conclusion that um IP is um

nonsense and then the second thing that helped me come to that conclusion was thinking of how it was going to be

enforced so by default I’m anti-state right so I thought about it if we have

um IP laws then you’re going to need the government to enforce it and I was like there’s no way in the world I’m

supporting um the government um I mean as you’ve rightly said in order to

enforce um property um intellectual property right you have to violate another person’s right to his or or her

property so and by the way how how how how do you even know that I didn’t think

of the idea first right so I just thought it was first of all when when I

first heard of intellectual property it was actually tied to Mr Kella someone um

tweeted about it and I was like these libert this was when I was new to libertarianism I was like these people

are crazy you know um why why should why shouldn’t we have um um intellectual

property right you why isn’t property what I thought then I to give it some thought

and um so that was how I came to where I am now I just I haven’t thought about it

as deeply as you have obviously I haven’t but I guess the summary of what I’m trying to say is thank you you’ve

given me many more arguments because I’m I’m I’m building my case for a better

Nigeria and this is actually going to come up eventually and I guess I’m saying thank you for Mr Kella and

Matthew for setting this so this adds to I’m going to listen to this later again

when it’s out and then read your book I already have it so or the the 50 page

essay you wrote I I have you seem to have the right instincts because you’re focusing on scarcity and the skepticism

of the claims yeah uh yeah is that you or

me hold on not me um what I was going to say say is

um are what from your point of view kind of being exposed to this what what are

the questions you have about the or what are the things you you’re still not sure about about uh say patented

copyright or are you pretty um of the

idea no I’m I’m I’m all on board I I I agree with everything you said I can’t any holes in your argument but then

again I would have to go back and think about it like I usually say to Matthew I have to go back listen English isn’t my

first language so I have to go back and listen carefully and then think it through but I don’t think just um

instinctively I don’t think there are any holes in your argument everything you’ve said um resonates makes a lot of

sense to me and I’m relatively smart so I guess one of the one of the one of the

points I made early on I had this article I I wrote a letter so there’s there’s a there was a journal

called iOS Journal by the uh David Kelly’s group when he split off from uh

um from from the iron ran Institute and he started the institute for objectivist studies which I think now is the Atlas

society and he had this journal called the iOS journal and he had an article in

there by Murray Frank who was one of ir Ran’s U IP

lawyers and Murray Frank had an article defending intellectual property so I

wrote a gentle letter are basically suggesting that there’s some problems

with that argument right and um and one of the things I pointed out was that um

most of us Libertarians and objectivists we sort of are are we we are sympathetic

to our natural rights arguments like the idea of natural rights and natural law

right that’s what we think we have a natural right not to be murdered right to our body um but on the legal side

what we think of is most of these rights got developed and fleshed out in the

private Western Law of the Roman law and the common law of England right and

so trespass mder all these things were gradually developed in a PRI in a quasi

private decentralized legal system and in the last

100 years the secondary role of legislation

which is another way that the government the state which controls the legal

system um Can intervene and make special laws by just by decree That’s What

legislation is right um and most of us sort of have a sense that this sort

making law by Fiat or by decree by a government committee which is what A legislature is is not really compatible

with how we should discover and develop and protect law it should be found by scientists and thinkers and philosophers

and judges and juries kind of gradually finding the the just solution to a given

thing which is how again the Roman and the private the private Roman law and the private Western common law developed

so I simply pointed out that um that should be the way we Libertarians should

favor the development of Law and legal principles is a decentralized voluntary

gradual process by a common law type system and that

legislation is not the way we ought to make law in fact we shouldn’t think of laws being made at all um and so

whenever you have something that is an intrusion on the free market and on the

decentralized common law legal system which is a statute basically we should be very skeptical of

it and my point was that copyright comes from something

called the statute of an in 1709 in England and patent comes from the

statute of monopolies of 1623 in England copyright and patent both came about

from a statute and the reason is because they never emerged on the common law the

common law was perfectly able to to develop and find solutions to conflict

and trespass and prohibit rape and murder and theft and extortion and all

these kinds of things uh but it never did come up with um patent and copyright

law because those things were purely artificial creations of the monarchs and

the crown and then statutes right so my point was that if you really believe

that the common law and the and the organic decentralized law is the way to

make law then you have to have a deep skepticism about about legal systems

that only could emerge and that only did emerge from legislation which is what

patent and copyright are and when I pointed that out to David Kelly and to Murray Frank Murray Frank’s response was that

there’s nothing wrong with legislation we might need to legislature to step in every now and then to correct the

mistakes of the common law so they they sort of see the government as the decider who has this this legislative

power to basically create law to modify the law that the judges came up with and

to just do whatever they want and I think that that that sort of betrays a deep problem with the argument

the natural rights argument for patting copyright because they’re clearly not natural rights they’re not they’re not

products of natural law they if they were they would have emerged on the common law naturally um but they

didn’t and and and by the same token if you abolish the patent copyright patent

law and the stat and and patent statutes and the copyright statutes in in most

countries in every country then there would be nothing to fill the Gap I mean it just wouldn’t exist it which shows

that they’re just creatures of Statute so to my mind that’s a that’s another Dale in the coffin another problem with

statutory schemes it’s just like all these laws we have in Europe and America and the West anti-discrimination laws

and Welfare laws and um just these regulatory schemes that

were not the product of natural law um at all they’re just they’re just edicts by Regulators they just arbitrary at the

end of the day is like you know like the law that we kind of ident defies

Libertarians all comes from the presupposition so it’s like logic based you know it’s like well if we own

ourselves then this then that not only does IP not come from that but if

anything the opposite to IP come law comes from that like the arguments against IP law comes from there hold up

can can you give me can you give me 30 seconds uh yeah I think econ’s got to go so he might have to say goodbye and but

I’ll still be here and I’ll finish up with you in a second I just did uh uh okay Eon it was

nice having you on I enjoyed it and let’s let’s stay in touch all right you’re Eon un mute

yourself sorry about that um I said I wait for Mr Kella to return because I want to ask him a question

it’s give two minutes yeah no problem hang on I’ll hang on for a m and I could

chat till yeah you return oh yeah I wasn’t sure if you

needed to get off in a hurry so I didn’t want to leave you late for your next appointment um I I I I have I have great difficulty

walking away from um something I like to complete so even though I have something

to do um I’ll give it a couple more minutes before I um yeah because I would

hate to not see where this ends yeah I mean well this is why I thought it would be a really interesting

conversation because the thing is is the work I mean as I say I i’ got a lot of respect for you and I got a lot of

respect for Stefan every time the reason why you two kind of two of my favorite libertarian thinkers and I am going to

keep calling you that no matter what you say but the reason why you two are is because every

time I speak to you both both of you there’s there’s the courage to

explore ideas there’s the courage to um contemplate where you may be wrong

on something and and listen to challenges there’s the humility to you know accept those possibilities you

every time I’ve spoken to you or Stefan and you’re not the only people but you’re two people that stick out in my mind as people that when I speak to

about these ideas I know that the other person’s actually listening and actually considering and not not not agreeing or

disagreeing for any other reason than that’s their honest thought you know what I mean and the thing is is all one

of the things about this together strong project that I’m really trying to kind of um make and funny enough although

this is your third appearance with me this this particular video is actually going on the together strong project so

it’s your first appearance on the together strong project even though it’s your third um conversation with me

because the other two were on the nation of Sanity Channel um but this together strong project is about bringing trying

to bring Libertarians together because there’s areas where we disagree and those areas we should debate because we

can learn something from our disagreements and then there’s areas like this one where we don’t necessarily

disagree but it’s an important it’s important it’s an important element that needs to be explored IP is something

that often gets forgotten about people don’t always realize the importance of

it you know like like with the economics there’s a lot of economic implications with IP and stuff like that um so yeah I

just thought it would be really good for I mean apart from it’ be really good to introduce you and Stefan to each other because you’re both very important

people in libertarian so like I say my favorite people um and I thought it’d be good for you to sort of know each other

but also the other thing is I thought that you’re doing all this great work and you are doing a lot of great work educating people in Nigeria um and I

thought that I mean IP Stefan does a lot on Law and other elements of libertarianism as well so it’s not just

IP but I just thought IP would be a really good sort of feather to add to your bow if you like with regards to

your own work um anyway Stephan’s back now so I don’t know if you wanted to ask him his

question oh yeah it’s um it’s a bit unrelated to it’s entirely unrelated to

the IP discussion but it’s something you mentioned you said you um so I’m not

trying to be an evangelist here I am a Christian and that’s um my I mean you can’t live where I live

and not be a Christian you know anyway so you said something about um turning away from the Catholic

Church the the thing that led you away was the Eternal judgment how could

someone in hell for all of eternity for a crime he committed and let’s even if he sinned every single

day of his life for 100 years so was was that it or is there are there other things was that is that the No No by the

way let me let me let me let me make clear something I I’m not I am very fond of the Catholic church I’m very fond of

natural law I’m fond of I’m not hostile to it um and I don’t think that my My

Views are linked I I was just simply trying to explain biographically um I

think I have an inquisitive mind and I was skeptical and I I’ve just noticed in my own life like uh willingness to

question something in in a phase shift like so going from strong Catholicism to

atheism going from men nothing to libertarianism and then libertarianism

to Anarchy and then Pro I the other so like I’ve just noticed these things um

they’re not they’re not connected at all you don’t need to be an atheist Heathen like me to to to oppose legislation I I

I I I completely but on your religious question I I I that wasn’t what turned

me against it it was simply until that point in time I was like 15 years old as a young guy I was

dog not dogmatic but I I assumed the Catholic church was was like correct on

all matters of faith and morals and that was a unified whole but when I

challenged the first thing which was this hell idea um yeah that sort of gave

me permission to start challenging other assumptions that’s all it was just how I

think um but I’m not saying they all fall together I’m actually I’m more

friendly towards Catholicism now that I was in my my

objectivist Firebrand days um although I’m still an

atheist yeah yeah sure sure I I too had the I had this same um I I I don’t um

say this to people but I went through um an atheistic or should I say an agnostic

phase myself a couple of years ago but I’m um I was born Christian I’ve lived

as a Christian all my life but I too started to and I had the exact same question that the question you you

raised of Eternal judgment you know and um let me just say it’s been resolved I

don’t think but perhap we could have a conversation about this another time because have to go shortly but um I

don’t believe the Bible um I don’t I don’t believe the Bible preaches Eternal

damnation as is interpreted by the Catholic church and pretty much most of Christianity but again we could talk

about that some other time another time um it was very great meeting you honestly it’s a it’s an honor and in my

mind you’re one of the greatest thinkers um in the libertarian movement right so

um it’s very great for me it’s a priv to be talking to you so thank you I’ll get

your information from Matthew maybe send you an email or DM you or something I already follow you on Twitter so sounds

good thank you is what I’m saying thank you too yeah thank you thank you Eon um

really appreciate you taking the time to have have this conversation and and be involved with this thank you Stefan

again really appreciate you taking the time I thought this was a really great conversation oh yes legal foundations of

a free Society Stefan’s n latest book for everyone watching if you don’t already have it check it out um as I say

there was two reasons for wanting to organize this conversation one was because despite the fact that me and

Stefan have had a few conversations unbelievably we hadn’t really had a dedicated IP conversation so I wanted to

add that to the catalog of kind of content that I’m creating because I do think IP is more important than people

realize and and and it also connects to other things like rights contract what is property you know it these things

connect so not only do we get improve our understanding of Ip and why it’s not valid but we also improve our

understanding of property rights in general self ownersh in general you know what I mean so it connects to a lot of things um and the other reason why I

wanted to have this conversation as I said before was because I was very keen to introduce Stefan canella and econ bro

to each other because they’re my two personal favorite libertarian thinkers who are both doing excellent work econ’s

doing great work in Nigeria educating people about libertarian principles Stefan has been doing great work

throughout his life on um libertarian principles not just IP but law um

property rights self ownership so many things um so I just thought in addition

to having this IP conversation I thought it would be great to introduce you two to each other and get you connected because I think they more Libertarians

that are connected to each other and having these discussions whether it’s debates whether it’s discussions

exploring topics I think we all get closer to the truth and we all help each other in our respective efforts so thank

you both for taking the time thank you Matthew