KOL457 | Sheldon Richman & IP; Andre from Brazil re Contract Theory, Student Loan Interest Payments, Bankruptcy, Vagueness, Usury

okay I’m recording Um hey this is Stephan Canella Uh this is going to be

probably Canella on Liberty 457 Um I’m sitting outside today As

people listening to the show know I don’t usually do my own podcast but on occasion I do And Sheldon Richmond is my

old buddy And we were talking and thought we would catch up and I would just kind of talk to you about your history of your your IP views And then

there was another guy I was talking to and I’ll I’ll introduce I’ll let you introduce yourself in a second Um there’s another guy I was talking to a

guy from Brazil who had some questions and I thought I was going to talk to him but maybe he’ll join us in a few in 30

minutes Um so Sheldon um most people listening probably know who you are You’re an old-timer in the movement well

known Where what are you doing now And give give a brief introduction of yourself

Well I uh I am the executive editor of the Libertarian Institute which is a uh

gosh I don’t know how many years old it now is It can’t be getting too far from its

can’t be too far from its 10th anniversary which is you know mainly a website and book publisher that was

organized by primarily by Scott Horton but I I and Will Grigg the late Will

Grigg uh were involved in the initial setup we were like the three main people

beginning the thing but I got I think that the the heavy work was really done by Scott And so it’s a website He’s

added lots of authors to it So every day there are new articles as well as reposts I I write a weekly column every

Friday which is my TGIF column which stands for the goal is freedom which is actually a column goes way back to my

days as editor of the Freeman back in the late 90s into up to about uh I don’t

know 2012 or 13 I was the editor of the Freeman published by the foundation for

economic education And so this is a column I’ve carried along in a few different organizations and plus my own

blog called free association uh where I comment on you know the news or sometimes economic theory anything I

feel like writing about that’s somewhat related to libertarianism Austrian economics things like that So I whatever

Is this sort of like your is it like your full-time job Are you retired or Well I look officially I’m retired I’m

certainly I’m certainly past the official retirement age Uh so yeah I I’m

not working full-time and I don’t really have to account for my time to anyone

but I do some freelancing I uh for tax purposes I mean I report every year a

good bit of 1099 income okay Which has always been true but I’m still doing that So yes I I still am making making

money through my labor And you and I have known each other a long time I own my labor I won’t say I

own my labor because I know you have a problem with that for Well and I think maybe a lot of people

are some people I used to think of you as a left libertarian but you’re I don’t know if you changed or if I just had

that wrong because you you’ve never been quite a left libertarian Um oh well I’m glad you asked that because that’s

something I’ve been indicating in writings although more ex implicitly than explicitly I was using that term in

the early 2000s Okay And to me though I always regarded it as a matter of emphasis not a different ideology really

So I my views have not changed but I first of all I won’t use that term because it’s not understood

right I don’t I don’t think right and left are understood They’re like roarshock tests I really like the book I really like the book by those two

brothers the Lewis brothers Myth and myth of left what’s it called Myth the

myth of left and right And so they’re pretty useless terms I’m not a tribalist

So I’m just a liberty advocate a libertarian I’ll call myself a full classical liberal I use terms like that

But I’ve always I’ve never been a lefty or righty I’ve always been I came from

nothing I wasn’t conservative or anything And I just became a libertarian And I’ve always thought the terms were useless because the right I always in my

simplistic Randian days I thought the right was just kind of a a hodgepodge of

incoherent I mean what does it mean to be conservative You’re conserved what you know and then the left I thought the

left was sort of like just uh partial socialists you know they like they’re

moderate socialists They’re socialist light Yeah Um but I call I call them moderate communists Right But hapa hapa

has something where he said like it appeals to me a little bit He said that basically the right at least among

libertarians are what he calls realistic and the and by that I think he means having no problem recognizing the

necessity for and the reality of uh differences between people and hierarchies which is anti-galitarian And

then the left is more egalitarian like thinking like that the ideal state or the natural state is everyone to be

equal but I I don’t know what that means to be equal except from a libertarian point of view of having equal rights but

um I don’t know if that distinction makes any sense to you but well when I was using the term left libertarian I

was what I wanted to do there was uh speak to any good faith

uh status leftist status just assuming those terms have meaning right you know for sake of discussion and try and try

to argue to them now you could excuse me of naive and I’ll plead guilty to it try to argue to them that what you want is

what the free market delivers because consumers and and here and I would quote

Mises all over the place I love Mises I’m an I regard myself as an Austrian uh

what I said what I tried to sell to the left was you say you once quote social

control of the means of production Mises shows that if the the the people who are

who legally and politically own the means of production if they don’t satisfy

consumers the consumers are going to find other owners right through bankruptcy through

purely uncoordinated you know not a not at a big mass meeting but just through their abstaining from buying they are

going to shift the ownership and control of the means of production to people that they uh you know hope will will

better serve them and then do the same thing if those people don’t serve them Well no leftist was going to buy that

And and I say no doesn’t mean you can’t find you know surely somebody maybe would be convinced by that but by and

large they’re not They hate the market I think I think it’s very much an aesthetic aversion to the market Not

just political not just ethical I think there’s it’s a matter of aesthetics that these moderate socialists moderate

communists don’t like markets I mean you know Chsky thinks that that what he

calls renting labor is almost as bad as as owning other people’s labor as

slavery As slavery Yeah It’s just a little half step from slavery for him And that’s so immoral It’s so immoral

It’s so immoral to that position that I can’t believe it So I the term doesn’t

communicate I won’t say I’m not a left libertarian Do you think that u some of these modern kind of I won’t say right

libertarians but these sort of the prepper types and the ones that want to grow their own chickens and things I

mean they’re a little bit anti- capitalist too in a sense don’t you think

Yeah I mean you gota you know it depends on who we’re talking about I don’t have anybody in particular in mind I’m sure

you’re going to find some of that The other thing that uh that I never really

fully bought into I didn’t really buy into I shouldn’t say fully bought into with le libertarianism was and not not

every left libertarian does this but there was the prediction that in a pure free market the free market that both

you and I want high hier relates to something you said companies would

either would have less hierarchy or even like flatten and that more and more

people would own their own businesses And well it’s quite possible that more people would own their own businesses if

government get out of the way But tons of people don’t want to own a business

First of all small businesses fail at a very high rate It’s a big headache You probably have a lot of sleepless nights

when you own a business You don’t go home at five o’clock I think a lot of people want to be employees Yeah we have

to proudly say that And that’s a good ex mutual exchange voluntary exchange And

this is what you find in Misesus and Rothbart and and all the people that praise the marketplace Um so those

predictions never made me comfort comfortable that big businesses would disappear I don’t buy that I think

there’d be national companies I think there’d be international companies because entrepreneurs would find a way

If the government hadn’t built interstate highways entrepreneurs would have figured it out because there’s just

such gains to be made and we would have had globalization if the government you know without the government helping it

along Uh entrepreneurs do that I recently wrote an article in praise of it’s called corporate is not a

four-letter word You notice how people use the cor word corporate as a projorative the corporate media Now that

media may be bad because that’s the old line legacy media but what’s bad about them is not that they’re organized as

corporations It’s because they parrot the government’s line or other reasons not because it’s not qua corporation

that we should dislike them So I defended the corporation and the basis of my article was Robert Hessen’s 1979

book in praise of the corporation who was a very hardcore free market guy It

was an anarchist in in defense of the corporation And did didn’t you do an interview Was it you that had an

interview with the was it Bob Murphy or someone about um you were interviewed with me Murphy interviewed me He Yeah

Right He interviewed you about Murphy at the corporate media and I contact Right

Right Right Why do you do that I did it I tried to do it with some other people too like um uh what’s his name John Pola

And also uh I I also brought to the attention of Michael Malice but he didn’t go for he didn’t well I do

similar I you know I do similar things like that like uh well first of all corporate form is just one form of business organization It’s not there’s

nothing special about it People don’t understand these things Same thing with in intellectual property They use the

word intellectual property to refer to my IP to mean their ideas But IP is an

intellectual right that is it’s different than the subject of it uh you know I even try to when I when I can be

careful to distinguish state from government because government is ambiguous because it can just mean the

institutions of governance which could be private law and courts So the way the

way I look at it is a state is a distinct entity and the state has monopolized certain functions including the function of governance just like

it’s monopolized education and roads but those things are not naturally part of the state They just happen to be

monopolized by the state I think you’ve influenced Murphy on that Uh I think

government is too is too much too for too long has been used as a synonym for the state That’s my point Right So I

wouldn’t call it I would I don’t mind talking about governance Right And also saying what I mean by that But I would I

wouldn’t distinguish government and state Albert Albert J No the great Albert J you know wrote the book our enemy of the

state 1935 and he distinguished government from state and he was thinking of really Jeffersonian very

local right well it’s just it’s just it’s just semantics in a way but it’s sometimes important to get them straight but the other reason is in our

federalist system in America you have these libertarian centralists like the KO types I don’t know where you stand on

that I assume you’re pretty sensible about federalism and all this and enumerated powers of the federal

government but when you just talk like a Randian or like centralist and you say the government shouldn’t do this It’s

like well which government do you mean Because often they mean a state law is bad but but that means the federal

government has the right by its courts to strike down these bad laws So they they mix the two types of government

together by using the word government Yeah I I would I’m not sure I wouldn’t share your characterization of KO First

of all there a lot of different people at KO Well I’m thinking specifically of Roger Palon um and Randy Barnett who’s

not really there and and Kimberly Shankman and um the guys that that want

to expand the interpretation of the 14th Amendment So they’re against You’re saying they’re against the 10th

Amendment but pretend it’s not there Well no but they think that the 14th amendment did give federal the federal

government broad supervision supervisory power through the through the uh privileges and immunities clause to

basically review state laws for being kind of unlbertarian in a way right So

it’s it’s kind of that um so they they actually viewed the 14th amendment as granting a power to the feds um to

review state laws Yeah Well I certainly am not an expert in that That’s and I I haven’t had a law

education as you have and many people have So yeah I’m not in really up on the

technical things there I I do first of all state governments as we know from Jonathan RT Hughes uh the governmental

habit that uh states always did a lot of regulating and and and and things that libertarians

wouldn’t like So we shouldn’t assume the states are going to be much better when you know when Patrick Henry and this is

in my book about the Constitution when Patrick Henry first read a draft of the Constitution which of course he he

didn’t like he was a anti-federalist he said this leaves nothing to the states

but building the roads and taking care of the poor right that means so that means the states at the time were

building the roads and taking care of the poor why would he say that otherwise so they were not they were hardily

havens of less affair well I know that’s my point but the point is the the the

states had plenary power like most states in the world do They have plenary power Plenary meaning full legislative

power They can legislate on whatever they want unless there’s a limitation But the federal government and there’s some other I used to think it was only

the US but there are some other like Switzerland and Australia I think and maybe even Canada Those federal

governments don’t have plenary power Now they have way broader legislative power than the US government does but they

they still don’t have complete power um because they have a provincial system

And our states all have constitutions Not that I’m an expert Correct But it doesn’t grant them the power to legislate It limits their power to

legislate Yeah But here’s another point about the the national constitution When when uh Madison Madison is considered

the the you know since in what is it Federalist 10 he talks about the powers are few and defined of the federal

government Few defined in the constitution However I think there’s something dishonest about that Mhm He

might have meant it at the time because that was in the federalist papers before the Constitution was was ratified But

when he was pushing the Bill of Rights because he was the primary mover of those amendments that became the Bill of

Rights because he had promised there would be a bill of rights when the what became the 10th amendment although at

the time it was the 12th because there were others that didn’t get didn’t get well one of them is now the 27th Yeah

But the Okay So the one we call the 10th it says that something about all you know all powers not delegated to the

federal government and Thomas Tudtor Tucker this is in my book too in the constitution I’ll do a plug he’s who was

a congressman member of the house from I believe South Carolina and stood up made an as proposed an amendment he wanted to

change it to all powers not expressly delegated Madison this was in the

committee Madison opposed it Madison opposed arguing

all constitutions have to have powers by implication Madison was the father or at

least a subscriber to the implied powers doctrine That’s not his reputation today

And and when it got to the full house he made the same objection and beat it So

it would have been a better amendment if it had had expressed it Well but you still have the necessary and proper clause which people like Randy Barnett

and others have said well that does give more power to the the necessary and proper clause also Um um and you made

another point Every now and then I’ll write something like things I’ve changed my mind on because I like to try to be honest and like I’ve changed my mind on

intellectual property I’ve changed my mind on anarchy over the years And you kind of changed my mind on something I

think related to what you said here if I’m remembering right you had the point that a lot of libertarians say something

like “Oh well a lot of libertarians say something like um we’re not a democ

democracy We’re a republic.” Which is kind of like kind of a stupid semantic argument I mean we do have it’s it’s a

it’s a combination but but we also say something like well the federal government doesn’t have broad legislative powers The interstate

commerce clause which the government has used to justify broad federal legislative power was never meant to be

a broad grant of power And I think you had a point that well it kind of was or it was arguably that way right like like

they kind of they kind of hid that they they sold it one way but it really could be read to be much broader than we

that’s in my book too which these were originally that book on the constitution that I wrote it’s called the constitution

revisited it’s called America’s counterrevolution the constitution revisited those were originally articles

in the freeman amazingly I actually published those all in the freeman and I forget the name of the the scholar I was

drawing on because you and I had exchanges on that very Yeah And you you changed my mind on that Yeah You you

that that list that that list was not a not limits to Congress’s power article

in section 8 It was simply for instance it’s as if it had said for example

here’s what Congress can do It wasn’t like this is all Congress can do And he made a pretty good argument which I

found persuasive Now I kind of I I as an anarchist I don’t want to argue that And

as a as a realist and as a skeptic and a cynic of the of of positive law I kind

of tend to agree with John Haznas in his criticism of the rule of law at least when it applies to legislation and

artificial laws like the Constitution that there’s really no objective meaning quite often in in these things So you

could in you could argue for an interpretation of the interstate commerce clause that doesn’t give the federal government as much legislative

power as they have now And I would argue that in court and I would argue that that’s a defensible interpretation But

still I think your point was good But um let me let me ask you this So um how

long what how long would you say you’ve been a libertarian Oh shortly

before 1970 So probably about 68 The Goldwater campaign in ‘ 64 got me

thinking about politics I had an older brother who was not a libertarian but he was interested in Goldwater So that’s

the first time I was ever thinking about politics So I think I read the conscious of a conservative But then I was still

in high school or maybe I was even in junior high school I was 14 in ‘ 64 I was born in the in the first at the end

of the first full year of Harry Truman’s own term right He succeeded Roosevelt

but then he and then he ran in 48 I was born at the end of 49 So that just to just to locate locate me on the timeline

So 64 I was 14 I was interested in gold order I wasn’t thinking about foreign

policy which of course was not very good but I liked his idea about individual liberty and government supposed to be

limited That sounded great Um then as I when we get to like 67 68

I’m meeting classmates who are saying well if you like that you ought to read Henry Hasslet’s uh economics and one

lesson And you know from there you’re just down the slippery slope right And how how old were you then Well in in in

1968 I was 18 So I was Okay I was uh already at co Yeah In 70 Well no in 67 I

started college at Temple University in Philadelphia So that would be the fall of ‘ 67 I was 17 going on So And what

were you were you political before then or like a conservative Well I hadn’t heard the word libertarian so I probably

considered myself a conservative because I like Goldwater at least Okay you’re conservative Okay hold on a second But I

didn’t know the word Hold on a second I So I just I just allowed um what I’m going to do is I’m going to I’m going to

introduce real quickly um Andre who’s um a friend an an internet friend

libertarian from um Brazil Uh Andre can you say hello

Hello How are you Hi Um I don’t know if you want you can leave your video like you can you can turn your video on or

leave it off It’s up to you Sheldon and I are talking and um and I’m just going to keep going over some things with him

and then um Hi Um and when when we’re ready to get Pat to the IP issue we’ll

talk about um the things you and I were chatting about previously Okay no problem So Sheldon I don’t know Do you

know Sheldon No Hello Hello Nice to meet you

Good to meet you Okay So let me just continue with

Sheldon for a while Um I’m just going over his his background in history in the movement So Sheldon you were um kind

of Goldwater and then you in around 18 you got interested in um in 67 or 68 I

started hearing this word libertarian Uh in college I then in Phil was a

hotbed for libertarians who were still in YAF because they hadn’t split from

YAF yet the Young Americans for Freedom conservative William Buckley founded group and that’s all that’s all detailed

in that great Jerome to Chile book right It usually begins with Ein Rand but the and the and the the some of the main

libertarians in Yaf were in Philadelphia So I quickly met met them They had an

office downtown and and before you know it I’m reading Rand and and Rothbart and

Mises and and so yeah I was just already in there Uh what were you doing Were you were you from Philly or what were you

doing in Philly I No I was from Philly I was born and raised northeast Philadelphia Oh that’s right Yeah you I

think I told you I lived in Very Democratic neighborhood Very Jewish Democratic neighborhood My

parents were the rare Republican Jews in northeast Well I I think I told you we

lived in Philly for 97 to 98 and I enjoyed it We lived in What’s that I

forgot that Where did you where in Philly Uh well I worked at at Dwayne Morris and Schneder Harrison these two

law firms in the city But my wife and I lived in New Town Square in Delaware County

and it’s just the the western suburbs They’re just beautiful I just love I love my drive to the train station every

morning but um um I had enough of Philly after about three years I was ready to return to the south Um they’re not as

welcoming to outsiders as people in Houston are put it that way Um that was the impression I got but I did like it

Um um so you got so you went what what was did you complete college and all

that Yeah Did four years on time graduated in 71 Went to work as a newspaper reporter in Chester County

Pennsylvania which was right near Yeah I lived I lived there first Yeah In Chester Then we lived and worked there Worked as a reporter I worked for the

Associated Press briefly I didn’t like it very much That was in downtown Philly And then gave up reporting got tired of

it in uh uh after about six or seven years spent a year editing being a

consultant to companies on editing of technical papers I was part of a small

firm that went in and taught people how to do effective writing Like for example we’d go to the Dupont company where

chemists needed to write clear reports for salespeople who were not chemists So

we were teaching really intelligent people who knew their stuff but who couldn’t write clearly how to write I

did that for about a year and then I got a call from Charles Ko believe it or not

I was living in Delaware Oh because I also worked for the Delaware uh News Journal for a bit And then uh I get a

call saying uh we’re putting up we’re starting a new organization called the Council for Competitive Economy and we’d

like you to come down and be the director of research David Bose was part of this he was starting he was starting

to organize it They didn’t even have they didn’t even have an office yet And I said ‘Well gosh I’ll come down for the

summer and try it out and if I like it I’ll stay And he said ‘That’s fine because I had the summer off from this

writing course thing And uh I liked it so I stayed And but I was a call from

from Charles Ko Now um

um so and I got into libertarianism in co in in in college Well actually in

high school but but I really it really started writing and stuff in like around college around around my law my law

years And of course I got into intellectual property And as you know my impression is that the early

libertarian movement sort of ignored or took the intellectual property issue for granted and most of them were fa in

favor of it partly because like it was just assumed to be part of the constitution and capitalism and Einran

was in favor of it Um and I was initially in favor because I read iron rand and until I started questioning it

and developed my views and then so my impression is that the movement was roughly agnostic about it except for

that brief period in the in the 18 late 1800s with Benjamin Tucker and um u the

guys arguing in the in the magazine Liberty the old magazine Liberty which Wendy Mroy has written a lot about Um

there was a brief but then it sort of faded and then I think that um then you

had um basically uh Tom Palmer started in in the in the 1889 in 1899 199 sorry

1989 started writing um uh about scarcity and that kind of stuff and and and being anti-IP and then and then um

and then um um who copyrights guy conchkin and Wendy

Moy and um and then and then me and Rodrik Long and then Jeff Tucker and

others sort of joining in Um and can I do a quick can I do a quick timeout Yeah

we are three pipe smokers Yeah I see Andre smoking a pipe Okay that’s back to

our back to our regularly scheduled program I’ll just talk to Andre while you go Would you need to refresh your

pipe No no because I’m in my apartment And I don’t smoke in the apartment What do you want to do Oh no I don’t want to

do anything I just wanted to I broke in to make that point Now I’m back Oh I thought you would take a time out Sorry Sorry

No you’re absolutely right First of all we should mention Lysander Spooner who was a very hardcore defender of IP Yes

In the 19 middle of the 19th century unlike Tucker who loved Spooner but he

didn’t agree with Spooner on this because he Tucker was not a natural whites person anyway Yes Uh but I first

heard Okay So I never heard an anti-IP word in my in those formative years You

never heard Say again You never heard what an anti-IP argument in my formative

years So you assumed everyone was proip Yeah But I didn’t even think much about it Right Okay Now now I do remember

having a conversation with some of my fellow libertarians at Temple because we had a Temple Libertarian Club and some

of and we were kind of objectivists too And of course Ran defended IP right I

don’t remember discussing IP but I remember and I brought it up What do we think of liable So we’re getting we were

getting close to it We’re getting close to it And I I think I decided yeah I

guess you could justify liable Not because not because you can own a reputation but it’s it’s income you

would have had except for the liers’s action something like that Right now the first time I started hearing anti-IP

arguments were from Tom Palmer at the very time you’re talking about and Fred

Smith the late Fred Smith of this competitive enterprise institute Really Okay Was very vigorous in making his

case and it was the first time I was hearing this Wait he was antiip Fred Smith He was anti See I don’t think I

have him on my radar Has he ever died just recently Sad to say after Did he write on this Do you know Did he talk

about he must have somewhere but I don’t know where Okay I’m going to look into that Um um maybe on maybe CI this stuff

might still be there Well and you know I recently wrote an article in the last year and I argued that

defamation should So IP right now is a is a it it didn’t used to be called IP

It used to be called privileges or or trademark trade secret patent and

copyright And then in the 1800s the free market economist started started

attacking mon uh mostly patents as as a privilege that should be abolished and

then in in in in response the defender started calling it a natural right or intellectual property right So the

classical IP rights are considered to be patent copyright trademark and trade secret They basically force team

themselves with patent with trademark and trade secret which are sort of common law things um to get the to to to

to justify calling them one type of right But defamation rights or

defamation law protects what I would call a reputation right and that’s considered separate But I argued uh last

year in this article that you should consider it to be a type of um IP right

because it’s very similar in its form and its effect and in its justification to to trademark law Um but I guess I’m

question I’m cur I assume you’re you’ve changed your mind on defamation law and you’re against the defamation law now

like like Walter Block and Rothbart were Yes I mean it was Rothbart really who

convinced me about this Okay Although I must say I now and then come revisit the revisit the subject because right and

this may be part of a different conversation really or principle but and tell me what

you think of this I’d be glad to you know be talked down or you know just see what you say Uh I’m starting kind of at

the end of the process If I don’t I don’t like the idea and I’m sure you

don’t and Block Dozen and Murray wouldn’t I don’t like the idea that someone’s life could be ruined right by

someone else systematically telling malicious lie about So I want to So I

you know that doesn’t sit well with me I I don’t like it either But on the other hand IP people don’t like the idea that

you can put your effort into something and have someone quote steal it But yeah but that’s not quite the same That’s not

the same to destroying somebody You know you you are spreading that someone is a

child molester Peter correct And man you know forget it Correct Yeah Now to be

over and you’re right defense I’m not saying No no no no It’s it’s something worth thinking about and it is a

separate topic Real briefly I’ll tell you So and Jeff Dice by the way who’s a friend of mine Jeff Dice has argued that

he he’s he’s arguing maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to to condemn the cause of action for

defamation partly because it it it emerged more naturally and spontaneously in a decentralized legal system like the

common law So maybe we should give it some presumptive validity or something like that Um I’m not quite so um um

anyway I don’t think it’s as well I would say it’s not as damaging as patenting and and and copyright but I

kind of do think it’s probably worse in its effects than trademark and trade secret law So I would say if you rank

the the damage done by these types of IP rights if you want to call it would be

patent first copyright second and then defamation or reputation rights would be third Um now in my in a chapter in my

book uh the one that came out two years ago legal foundations of a free society I chapter eight it’s about causation I

think in some cases you could make an argument that actions you some actions you take that do that play a role in

causing physical damage to someone um can be actionable Like that’s why I

disagree with Walter Block and Rothbart when they say that incitement is never um uh is never uh u you can never be

liable for inciting a crowd to do something I think you could be liable because the crowd is liable or the lynch

mob is liable but also you’re liable if you lie on the witness stand and to get someone you dislike to be criminally

punished Yeah you could blame the state’s legal system You could blame the jury You can blame the judge You can

blame the jailer But you can also blame the guy lying So words can play a causal role in committing aggression but I

think you would have to limit defamation harm to something like that but not not

anchored to a reputation right because strictly speaking people have people have the right to rely on what

information they want even if it’s bad information and they have the right to believe whatever they want about people

so yeah so with that caveat I would say it’s worth exploring and it it is it

could be treated differently but let’s return to basically patent in copyright So you were initially pro-defamation law

in a sense because you took it for granted and then you also took for granted sorry you you you took for

granted the case for IP until you started hearing um Tom Palmer and Fred Smith you were saying yeah because I

hadn’t really thought about it so it wasn’t like they had to talk me out of it It was just something you inherit you know from the culture and of course Ran

had defended too I thought you know I didn’t even give Ran’s article much thought about that because it was

something I already thought was you know true But and so so it was a new thing

for me when I started hearing Palmer and and I was having conversations with these guys I wasn’t just reading stuff I

was in DC working uh Council for Competitive Economy Inquiry magazine So I was seeing these guys at receptions

and and social occasions And uh and Fred was particularly excited about it and

was willing to talk to anybody who you know was willing to listen to him and it

just was making sense that how do you how do you own a pattern of words What does it mean to book Well I know what it

means to own a you know the physical book I can go buy a book Uh but so so

you became antiP and then I think then probably Sam Conan and Wendy started writing a little bit about it but I I

think it still didn’t get a lot of attention until not even not even Palmer because this was ‘ 89 I think it started

getting attention when the internet hit so the internet became a thing around around 90 and 95 and that’s when people

started paying attention because they started noticing oh wait what’s going on with people getting you know their

website shut down for streaming music and that’s when people started looking at it Oh yeah Um but so you were already

fairly solid on this and I’m trying to remember when did you start writing kind of I don’t know when I wrote the I

must have written something written something in the Freeman I didn’t become editor of the Freeman till about 98 97

98 Okay So I think I had an article just called you know patently absurd or

something like that Right I remember that article So that was sort of after I had written and um and Rodri Long was

starting to write but you had already formed your views but we all sort of you and me and Jeff Tucker and these guys we

all sort of were kind of allies on this area So Um that’s awesome Um okay now

uh I’m gonna So Andre are you there

Andre there you have Okay Hey why don’t you introduce yourself Uh and we’ll chat a little bit Um

um well I’m a I’m a Brazilian libertarian I’m a libertarian since my my

uh high school It would be 201 12 Like I I knew libertarian

American sense that in Brazil we have another another meaning over libertarianism what we call libertario

would be just an arco capitalist that follow the ethics like the property ethics not utilitarists not renians and

anything like that just like today in the modern sense like uh the

contemporary discussion is devolving is like should we adopt uh the the American

libertarianism or as we have the term liberal for classic liberals not

leftists Well they are leftist in my opinion but okay Um should we how should you

organize So just telling you this difference Um I’m I was born and raised on the frontier uh of Brazil and

Argentina in Uruguay So I developed uh my own practical theory uh as

um as a what must be done but Brazilian addiction edition you know because here

in Brazil the political system is not federated like uh the United States it’s

um centralized so you cannot repeal uh higher laws you know like this the

county cannot repeal a state law or anything like that and not allow for someone

to reinforce it or in some ways because I know in United States if I’m not mistaken the sheriff can just like oh

pot is out loud in this state but over here will not prosecute so you can make a de facto

legalization if not the jure right and

uh I am one of the main I have a small YouTube channel 20 um uh 20,000

subscribers but I I pack a lot of punch in this case because I brought

the hopian ethics to Brazil like in um in a made it more popular and discuss it

because back in the day people just talk about the NAP uh it was like the the

gold standard for libertarians and all the discussions over here is oh does this aggress or not and I was like we

are discussing the wrong matter because you are just talking about like a material point of view not

a a rational let’s say uh about justifications and I developed my my own

strategies like frontism from what I call it’s like to is like a

digital nomad but using uh nearby jurisdictions to to have more advantages

For example Argentina be before mele was really cheap to buy stuff like meat

wines and stuff even even uh cigars and tobacco that I this one is imported from

Denmark for example here in Brazil is in 90 Brazilian eyes it would be almost $18

in Argentina would be like 10 you know so you have these advantages I know some Americans do that like going to Mexico

to buy some stuff and then come back but I start to defend that as

um let’s say like like a system a system systematic way to prevent yourself to pay taxes in some places and stuff It’s

just a flag theory but in a more analogic way you know like you can just do with your car and you’re on two feet

going around and I was like in a low point not doing

many videos and stuff but after a and gave me a challenge I start to record

everything again and and take retake all my main points for example I don’t

believe private keys from Bitcoin are yours they are just intellectual property They are just a secret for

example and there is a big discussion over here because many Bitcoiners in Brazil are saying there is the Bitcoin

is the only private property anything else is not like right you are arguing

with your body you’re doing it something wrong right right and I’m trying to push

a concept of fiduciary property like property um that is not natural is not

um you cannot homestead you and just take it by contract by consensus you

know like Bitcoin and and deeds and titles and stuff contracts And now I’m I start to discuss

with some friends a Catholic priest I’m an agnostic more like an atheist you know

but I have friends in many religions here in Brazana the city I live there is a Muslim community many Catholics and I

have a lot of contact with traditional Catholics in Argentina and I’m doing my new argument

is like oh I think there is a limitation over contractual relations

that you cannot do you cannot like let’s say build an unsolvable contracts I I

don’t know how to explain that that if that touch can Yeah Yeah Well before hold on before you go on let me let me

um interrupt for a second Um I was talking earlier today with another guy named Brian Gladish about building IP on

contracts I might have gotten him So you and I we weren’t talking about IP really were we We were talking more about the

contract issue but you are have arguments over IP I I follow more your your vision I have a just a small let’s

say input over defamation right but there is that

is uh is not the the topic we are talking about right and um okay so um

and and uh and Sheldon so we’ll turn we’ll turn to for in a second to your um

to your contract theory but Sheldon where where do you stand on the um are you sort of like familiar with and a

follower of Rothbart cards title transfer theory of contract and that kind of stuff

Yes Uh that’s been my framework ever since he began publishing that He and Bill Everest began publishing on that in

the first issues of the Journal of Libertarian Studies I remember when it was a yellow journal it became blue

later on I was reading that stuff and as a friend of mine used to say this is pure oxygen We just loved every issue of

that And that’s where I learned and thought about contracts for the first time Like I said I I’m not a lawyer I

never went to law school All I have brothers my brothers were were lawyers and went to law school My father offered

to pay my way through law school until the day he died and I just didn’t want to go to law school I said “Sorry I

don’t want to do that.” So so I don’t know it in detail but that always made total sense to me Well I’ve always

thought since I read it I I think it’s one of Rothbart’s most brilliant and overlooked uh achievements And he wasn’t

a lawyer either Neither was Evers who Evers William said and Evers and Rothbart together sort of pioneered this

theory And I think it’s a it’s it’s kind of a a brilliant way to break out of the

deadlock that lawyers and the and the legal positivists and and and the law has the way it looks at contracts And I

think it it helps to it helps to shore up the I and understand the IP case and also property rights in general Like you

you get back to basics like there’s there’s possibility of physical conflict in the world which is what violence and

aggression is about That’s why the non-aggression principle that’s even inran said no one may start the use of

force but the word force is in there Force is a physical thing It’s the way we use our physical bodies to manipulate

physical things in the world to get things done I mean it’s people say you’re being physicalist or reductionist

but it’s just that’s that’s an aspect of our lives that we can’t avoid That’s what scarcity is all about Um and

Rothbart’s view Now I think because he wasn’t a lawyer and because he was pioneering a theory there are some mistakes he made which I’ve tried to

build on recently and a few few years ago too um to kind of clarify and extend

and and improve his contract theory but it was basically his um and um I think

actually if he had followed it consistently he would have realized that um his his kind of contract argument for

common law what called common law copyright is confused and and doesn’t even it’s not consistent with his own

contract theory but um uh and before we so I I know that there are some people

so once you view contracts as just the disposition of control rights over a

resource it’s owned by an owner by his manifestation of his consent uh whether that consent is temporary or permanent

right then the whole concept of contracts being a promise that’s binding

that gives rise to legally binding obligations just disappears It’s got nothing to do with obligations It’s just

it’s just the transfer of ownership uh or a claim to some resource whether it’s

now or whether it’s in the future If it’s in the future there’s some differences because the future thing doesn’t exist yet And so future

contracts are always uncertain and they’re always conditional because the condition is

that the thing that you’re transferring has to exist if nothing else Um so that that makes a difference Um so when you

have a loan contract for example this where Rothbart went wrong Rothbart said that in theory if you don’t repay a loan

you’re violating the contract which means you’re stealing you’re you’re engaged in what he called implicit theft

which I think is a nonsense concept you’re implicitly stealing something and so theoretically debtor’s prison would

be justified although then he he tried to save that by saying but that would be disproportionate according to his punishment theory so he sort of ran

himself into a hole that he tried to dig out of but I think you just don’t need to say that failure to repay a loan in

the future is theft because theft is just the use of something without someone’s permission and you can’t steal

something that doesn’t exist So if if you’re bankrupt on the due date you there’s nothing to steal Um now that

that’s sort of the implications of my sort of more consistent reworking of Rothbart’s contract theory Um before we

turn to uh Andre’s um scenario do do you have any comments on that or do you

think that rate makes rough sense Uh Sheldon Yeah I think so I mean it’s these are very fine points that I have

not busied myself trying to learn the implicit theft The bankruptcy

presents an interesting scenario but let’s say you’re not bankrupt You just don’t want to give the money right I I

wouldn’t have had a I didn’t don’t think I had a problem with the idea of it being theft because me neither It’s not

But it’s not implicit It’s it’s actual theft It’s not implicit Possession Correct Were supposed to turn it over

and you didn’t do it Correct So it would be fraud I don’t I wasn’t bothered by calling that theft Now the bankruptcy

issue Yeah it doesn’t make sense Well I think it would not be fraud Technically what it would be is this On day one I

transfer to you a future thing that I own on the condition that I own it and that it exists And on that so I’ve

already set in motion the transfer of title to this future thing And on that future due date when that condition is

satisfied that is the condition is the date has arrived and um and the thing

exists and I own it then the ownership automatically becomes that of the of the

of the other guy Um so now I’m I’m in possession of it and merely possessing someone else’s thing is not theft

because presumably I’m holding it by permission of the new owner because that was the arrangement But if I refuse to

turn it over now I’m detaining something that someone else owns So that is a type of theft or trespass Yeah that’s that’s

way however you want to call it We call which means like when you possess

something that you should not uh have it you know it’s like it’s a crime here in

Brazil Like you not the one who stole but for example you bought it you know you bought from a from a from the guy

who stole the the property So and that is really annoying because sometimes people sell stolen property at a

discount and Correct Correct And and so I think um um now if you possess

something on the moment it transfers I don’t think you’re committing anything wrong because presumably you’re the you

have the permission to hold it To transfer you need to possess it So yeah

well well what I’m saying is that the the the guy that owns the property that becomes transferred legally to the to

the next guy he’s holding it temporarily until it’s demanded by the owner But

when it’s demanded by the owner if it if if you don’t hand it over now you’re detaining something someone else owns The law has different ways of

characterizing that but I think the general libertarian concept is you’re using someone’s property without their permission or you’re detaining it or

you’re committing trespass or you’re stealing it Yeah It’s an aggression in some way It’s an aggression That’s that’s the main thing is you and the

essence of aggression is using someone’s resource without their permission That’s that’s it Now you now I know that there

are some Bitcoiners for example and you’re right I have argued that Bitcoin is not property Actually I don’t say

that I say that there you cannot own Bitcoin It’s not a type of thing that can be owned Just like ideas and

information are not types of things that can be owned But Bitcoiners take that as a criticism of Bitcoin It’s not a

criticism It’s it’s when when I think what happens is people use colloquial language quite often So when they say

you own that Bitcoin what they mean is you possess it or you have the phys you have the practical ability to to keep it

to keep it under your control and to transfer it when you want to And because the purpose of legal ownership in a

juristic sense is to support the right of possession or the ability to possess

in the practical world they conflate those terms They conflate ownership with possession And so in the Bitcoin world

there’s only possession but they call the word ownership Yeah right for control but there’s no right Go ahead

question now Bitcoin I know less about Bitcoin than I know about contract theory Why can’t what So this is just an

open question to you to both of you Why can’t you own Bitcoin I would say you I

would say you can’t own it because Bitcoin doesn’t exist as a corporeal or a phys physical thing that can be owned

uh for the same reason you can’t own information information is what guides your action and a bitcoin is just the

way we conceive of um an entry on a spreadsheet And this spreadsheet is just an abstract uh mathematical structure

which is stored in the memory cells of 10,000 computers around the world that

participate in the blockchain So the Bitcoin doesn’t really exist as a thing It’s just the way that the memories of

different people’s computers are arranged and we interpret it as humans as as signifying uh entries or in a

ledger or a spreadsheet So it’s for the same reason that you can’t own a recipe

because to own the recipe it doesn’t it it’s just information that doesn’t exist in a vacuum It’s always stored on an

underlying physical medium Like if I own a book I don’t own the way it’s arranged I own the book itself the physical book

the information the the pattern of a novel has to be stored somewhere and

whatever it’s stored on is owned by some owner That’s why you can’t own information because if you own the information it would have to give you a

property right in the physical things on which the information is stored which would which is where where you get

copyright or IP from So it’s it’s that kind of argument which I’ve made Um so what are you what what are you buying

when you buy when you pay for Bitcoin what are they people think they’re well

not what they think what are they actually buying and this this gets to another thing I wrote about in chapter I

think 11 or 13 of my book um about we have to distinguish between the concepts

between economic and normative concepts when we use words like sell so the way I

think of it is this in in contracts um if you think of it in Rothbart’s terms if a contract is just the transfer of

title to an owned resource Okay that’s got to be done by some communication manifesting your consent but it could be

just be a one-way title transfer a gift for example or it could be done for some reason But the point is you’re always

doing something in human action for some reason right You’re you’re doing something to achieve some end And in a

typical simple exchange where two people own things like an apple and an orange

and I consent to give you my orange and you consent to give me your apple in exchange for each other doing that where

we both want possession of the other other person’s piece of fruit but we also want ownership of it So um in that

case the end of these actions is to get ownership and possession of the other person’s thing But in other contracts we

call we use the word sell So in that case that we would use economically we would say you sell it and legally you

sell it too like so they coincide Um but if I just perform an action for you that

you want me to perform like painting your fence or what we call sale of labor or an employment contract or something

or a service contract We we use the economic terms sell and buy because that describes what people are doing But then

we tend to think well that must mean if you’re selling something in an economic sense you must be you must be owning it

too in a legal sense But that’s actually that’s the mistake I think people make So if I agree to move my body in a way

like to perform a dance for you and you agree to pay me for it there’s only one title transfer in a legal sense You’re

you’re agreeing to pay me money that you own which you presumably have physical title of u in conditioned upon me doing

something performing an action but it doesn’t mean you bought the action um in a legal sense you could in economic

terms you can describe it that way this why it gets confusing because we use the same terms okay so in in case of bitcoin

if I buy a bitcoin I let’s say I give let’s say I perform a service for you to make it simple I’m working for you and I

say I’m going to perform from 3 hours of work for you And if I do that you have to agree to transfer to me a bitcoin Um

what that means is you have to uh you have to transfer a bitcoin to me as a as

an action And if you don’t do that then we we assume presumably have sub subsidiary or auxiliary contracts that

say something like “And if you don’t then you owe me damages which would be you have to pay me you

know $3,000 worth of your property or your resources.” So there’s always a backup enforcement mechanism But

basically in that case you could say it’s just two actions like I’m acting to paint your fence or to do whatever you

want me to do and you’re acting to to take motions that give me physical control of your Bitcoin That that’s how

I would look at it It’s un it’s it’s but it’s physical but it’s physical control It’s physical control but you’re saying

it’s not ownership I’m having a correct It’s not ownership And the reason it’s not ownership is for the s so if if you

were to have ownership of a book you wrote the reason that the problem that

that’s a problem is it gives you a property right interest in other people’s printing press you can stop them from printing a book right that’s

the real that’s the problem with IP if it was if it’s totally intangible if it’s like you say you have an IP right

and it’s not enforceable except in non-physical force then we wouldn’t care the only reason we care is if it

actually affects other people’s property um and in the case of Bitcoin If you say you own a Bitcoin but the

Bitcoin is just an abstract conceptualized entry on a distributed

ledger and that ledger is stored on 10,000 people’s computers then so let’s say

uh someone steals my Bitcoin okay Like they they they go into my house and they

they commit a crime they commit trespass and they break into my computer and they transfer my Bitcoin to them to their own

account Uh now I think you could prosecute them for for the trespass they committed They breached a contract or

they used my property without my permission But if you say they also stole your Bitcoin that you own then

theoretically you have a right you would have a right to get an injunction from a court to apply to every Bitcoin node

operator in the world who has their own computer and give them an order to reverse the blockchain to give you your

Bitcoin back And you don’t have that right because they own their own

computers And just like defamation is not a right People have the right to think what they want People have the

right to arrange the blockchain pattern on their own computer however they see fit So it just makes no sense to say you

have a property right in a Bitcoin because it would sound like an argument against Bitcoin No it’s an argument It’s

an argu No it’s an argument against ownership of Bitcoin But it doesn’t but but the reason it’s it doesn’t matter is

because it’s it’s the the whole reason for ownership is to give you an an

additional normative or legal security for for actual physical possession that

you need to do in the real world It gives you extra security against the possibility that people could can take

your your your your house from you or your cow from you But in the case of Bitcoin you don’t actually even need

that because it’s like almost impossible for them to take it from you So the the physical control of Bitcoin is better

than super property rights and other things because you don’t you don’t even need a lock You just need to not tell

people your password or your your security keys and then they can’t take it And so you can analogize it to

ownership but it’s not really ownership Just like if you go stand in line in New York for a play people say “I have a

spot in line.” But that’s just an analogy It’s a contractual thing by the owner of the establishment or the

sidewalk that lets you organize your affairs that looks like a property right but it’s not really a property right

Yeah Right I think most people would agree with you I I So go ahead So that’s

the background So now let’s get to your question about interest No just over over this topic Uh go ahead I I made a

article It is in Portuguese but I I think you can give to Chad DPT and it can translate properly um about the idea

of fiduciary property which is the property or the ownership let’s say uh

unquote over a consensus something that is derived from a consensus or a

contractual structure because Bitcoin is not like a physical thing it’s just a a

share over a balance allocated into a wallet Okay and you cannot own it Uh it’s not a a

physical resources that you can appropriate It’s it does not exist outside a wallet or correct and stuff So

it’s not like gold in this way Correct Uh the other uh thing is uh the the the

consensus the code and and all the nodes and miners they they they come together

and they have rules how to transact and how to create bitcoins in this case because you have correct the block being

uh doing it So the main idea is you are not the owner in a private property

sense but you are the uh the fiduciary owner like who holds the key who holds

the secret holds the control and the that is my main point is like oh there

is no real argument over I’m the owner of the bitcoin against the the

blockchain because the secret owner the the private key owner the seed as we call uh is the the factor control and

the the jour is the external conception over the uh the

Bitcoin uh uh let’s say the environment you know like it’s not something built

in on Bitcoin it’s a external conception that we transpose over Bitcoin are are

you are you imagining a scenario where u sort of a norm would would would emerge

among the all the participants in the Bitcoin network where if there was some

kind blatant act of theft They might agree to I don’t know there is there they already made that they have tainted

bitcoins on which like some not they have a second uh consensus on which they

say these bitcoins are tainted and you should not accept these transactions right and they just like um uh so if you

get this received they t your your address and your wallet and but this is

just like a social limitation not technical like and I totally agree with that by the way think

that it’s it’s sort of like yeah I I have no problem with that as long as you distinguish it as you did if you add an

adjective like fiduciary ownership or something which is just like when people say ownership and I say well it’s like a

deed or a title it’s like it but it’s not the same thing right so yeah not the same thing because the the title and the

deed they are uh emitted by a central figure or most correct yeah just like

your place in line is not really a property right but it acts like one and it’s it’s good enough and someone can

steal your place in line and by and the rules you can just uh yeah language is

malleable and we we have analogies and metaphors and and words have different meanings as long as you keep in mind the

fact that we’re using a metaphor in this case and and and that’s all no I just did this argument because a lot of

people are saying it’s the only property and I say no you cannot argue that if it’s arguing it you recognize the body

so you recognize at least two correct yeah it’s certainly it’s certainly less primary and more fundamental less

fundamental It’s it’s based upon an implicit recognition of the fundamental nature of of property rights in scarce

resources acquired in accordance with homesteading or occupation and contract

and contract any any other property does not need uh

social uh like social agreement like uh uh let’s say if I took wood and make

this pipe I’m the owner of the pipe does not matter what people think about it like oh correct you should not have it

and stuff so it’s less a social construct let’s say in this way even

sounding like a woke guy but no I’m not it’s a lot less a social construct but

Bitcoin is purely a social construct is derived from a social interaction not totally totally agree totally agree and

and isn’t it the case that with physical property it’s still no physical property

I am the owner against all other people It’s not a right so much in the thing Correct The thing is it’s ominous The

the my physical property is ominous against everyone The Bitcoin is needs to be recognized by the the consensus to be

mined let’s say Yeah Yeah But but I think Sheldon is making Yeah But Sheldon is making a different point I think I

think your point Sheldon correct me if I’m wrong is that Yeah Not only are real property rights ergom on this or good

against the world without agreement right They’re just good against everyone But also it’s not really a right to the

property It’s a right with it’s a right against other people with respect to the property Is that what you’re getting at

Sheldon That is what I’m getting at Except isn’t it also case that in older

use of the word property like I’m talking about now the 18th century or so

they would say you had a property right in a thing They wouldn’t call they wouldn’t say that’s your property They

would say you have a property right Exactly the Yes And I think I hinted at that earlier when I was talking about state versus government Uh I I in the in

in the in the in the careful legal writers there’s one I cite in my writing named uh Yiannopoulos who was a a

well-known um civil law scholar in Louisiana Yeah He makes the point that listen and he wrote a treatise called

property And in his treatise he points out that yeah if you want to be technically precise and careful the word

property should not refer to the thing that you own It’s it just it means there’s a property right in that thing

Um or own So I am the owner of a thing or I have a property right in the thing

like a car But what people do is they become careless and they’ll say well um

that car is my property But what they really mean is I have a property right in that thing And the reason that it’s

not nitpicking to point this out is because if you make the mistake of saying the car is my property well then

when we have a debate about intellectual property then the question is hey canella disagrees with me and he says

that uh ideas can’t be property And that’s not the argument is not that ideas can’t be property The idea is that

all property rights are control rights or they’re technically they’re exclusion

rights but they’re they’re control rights to the control of a physical resource over which there could be

conflict right And so that thing is a scarce resource and that is the resource

that you have a property right in And we have certain conception of of what rules

justify how we determine who the owner is And those rules are basically self ownership in the case of your body And

in the case of other things that used to be unowned that became possessed and used at one point is simply

occupation or homesteading people call it and contractual title transfer That’s

basically it Um and one other which is is is a side point rectification But um

so once you understand that then when my argument is not that ideas or information can’t be property it’s that

ideas are just the way a resource is is configured and someone already owns that

in accordance with the first two rules And if you say there’s a property right in the way it’s arranged now you have

what Rodri Wong calls a universal You have ownership of a universal Like if it

it’d be like if I owned a red car and I claimed that that means I own redness Well now that means everyone else’s red

thing I own that too Um so it’s it’s a way of violating the the very strict

rules of property assignment which is original occupation and contractual

title transfer So I we don’t say that ideas can’t be property We say that

information is not the type of thing in which you can have a property right because information doesn’t exist on its own It’s just the way you that an

existing thing that can be owned is shaped or configured or arranged And

Einr Rand and and and Rothbart Mises all kind of say this They say and even on Rand said that we never create anything

abonio We only rearrange the way things are And she should have realized what that meant was that you own the you own

the thing but you don’t own the way that it’s arranged Because if you own the thing and the way it’s arranged you’re

double counting and that would give you the right to control other people’s things that are similarly arranged

That’s the that’s the fundamental mistake One of your most powerful arguments And I and I was already on the

anti-IP side when I heard you say this some years ago You I was super impressed with it that uh if you own wood you own

all the materials that are going to make a house and then you make the house So

so Ran wants to say and Rothbart want uh I guess Rothbart would say well no he

was he was against patents wasn’t he He he was but he did he did he did nod to

the locking idea that that you can own something by homesteading it Yeah Or by creating it

It’s like well but you can’t really create something You have to own it to Yeah to create a product there So the

Ram if you if you design a if you’re Howard Ror and you you own the you bought the wood you bought the materials

all honestly you know you now own it because you can own materials right so you bought the materials now you have

this brilliant idea and you construct a house too so you make the house and so

Ran wants to say she wants to make the key thing that that brilliant design you

had in your head at first and then put on paper and then built but You know it’s like AAM’s razor Maybe

this is Canella’s razor You already owned it Yes The idea is add anything to

the ownership It’s which is not to say it’s not important Of course No That’s that’s what they they confused You

already owned it Why do you need to say “Yeah but he came up with the design.” Because because the Randians they focus

on the importance of being able to create value which is they’re correct about that But to to have that right you

just have to have the right to have secure property rights in physical resources and then you can do what you want with it I mean in a way this why I

argue that there the mistake log made which I think I I know why he made the mistake He was trying to o overcome

Filmer’s argument stuff like that But he he added this unnecessary step that you own your labor and therefore you own

what you mix it with But that labor theory of property I think probably in a

way led to the labor theory of value right of of of Smith and Marx And this

is why in a way this IP argument is marxian because you know when the when the left criticizes employment and

capitalism for stealing the surplus labor value of employers of employees

it’s because they’re imagining that by their effort they’re creating the cars that they make Okay But they lose sight

of the fact that okay the owner of the car that’s produced on the assembly line depends upon who own who owns the raw

materials that went into it Right So you know if I if I steal some marble from my

neighbor’s property and I carve a statue into it I did create the statue but I I don’t own that piece of marble Yeah But

at the surplus value this will take us this will be a segue into what you wanted to talk about The surplus the

so-called surplus value which is denied the worker and collected by the uh

capitalist is interest Correct Now now it’s other things too There may be wages in there and there

may be pure entrepreneurial profit in there too Kursnerian miscessian profit But the probably the larger part of it

is interest because time has passed and the workers were paid present dollars at

the present and the capitalist agreed to do the waiting Correct Get future dollars

in the future if they materialize if if he can sell the product That’s a risk Correct But the pro the problem with

this interest you cannot own time You can’t own time I agree You can’t own time Time I don’t think time

even is not a physical thing It’s like you cannot own labor

No problem saying you own your own labor I I don’t have a problem with that I

don’t see where that leads No it’s a position in this case It’s just like

analogy But you cannot own labor because labor is not storeable You cannot have

it It’s not tangible like when you do when you you labor is a economical

economic good but it’s not property because when you when you do a labor for

example if I write you um a a letter let’s say when I finish

writing my labor was already consumed so I cannot store it oh I can store the fruits of my labor but not the labor

itself that is that would be the main point I think maybe resting up is

storing your labor I Sheldon I think one way to think of it is you know economically we we distinguish two types

of action There’s just like we say there’s two types of consu of goods There’s consumption goods things

consumed for their own sake or made for their own sake and and production goods right Intermediate goods that that

capital goods And so by the same token we distinguish two types of of action Uh

one is labor and one’s leisure right Leisure is what you do for its own pleasure and sake and and labor is what

you do to obtain something else So it’s like an intermediate thing like like capital is and if you divide action into

two types like there’s two types of action There’s labor and there’s leisure I don’t know if there’s a third but

logically speaking I can only think of those two labor and non- labor Um now it

would seem unnatural and and and and absurd to say that you own your leisure

right or or even better to say you own your action because action is just what you do with the things that you have

control of your body and other resources that you can control So it just like it wouldn’t make any sense to say you own

your action because your action is what you do over time using resources you

have control of It wouldn’t make sense to say you own your leisure or you own your your labor Those are just types of

things you do Yeah I see your point But as you said earlier language is metaphorical Correct

Even poetic Correct A slave owner would claim that he owns the labor of the

slave Correct And and and and like if so if you are enslaved or you’re murdered you could you could say you or or if

you’re taxed let’s say you could say that the effect of the government taxing

me is to steal my labor Now that’s a colorful metaphorical way of saying it Technically speaking what the state is

doing is the state is is coercing you with a threat of physical force against

your body or things you own to make you do what they want you to do on pain of

administering force to you But the effect of that is to is to get you to give them some of your money which they

claim ownership of Right So and you could say well they’re stealing my labor because the time I spent acquiring these

resources I could have I I I I I used it for the benefit of the state So it is

true you can put things that way but you have to keep in mind that it’s only a metaphor Yeah And they you know the uh the

abolitionists called the slave the slavers manstealers Exactly Exactly That

that’s my point And so and so you could measure the damage done or the restitution owed by various criteria Um

and you can think of it in that term But theoretically speaking it’ be it’s like saying you have a right to life I mean

the right to life is just sort of a general principle by which we condemn um

acts of aggression because it interferes with your ability to live your life as the way in the way you want to live it

The the again the problem is saying you own your labor is that if you take it literally then you start thinking of it

as like a substance that’s owned and when you sell it for money then you’re selling something you own and if you own it then you own things you mix it with

and that then you get to the labor the marxian labor theory of value um and you

get to what I call libertarian creationism and IP because if you labor on something um to create something

valuable or useful then you should have so they start thinking that is a source of property rights I’m not sure I buy

that I the fact that people make a misstep with it doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the original concept I mean

you you just said the the worker you know who owns the material So how can

own the finished product when he didn’t own any of the materials He just under contract exerted effort regarding

material So that seems to be the answer You know I don’t Yeah I I I agree I just

think and I’m not really criticizing it so much as saying the way it was presented and the way it’s understood is

the explanation of why people get confused about intellectual property There’s a danger You were saying there’s a danger No it’s really a danger because

here in Brazil as many many libertarians are not fluent in English My English is

not very good too But uh this get really mixed up even in translations They mix

up all the time So mainly what I do is just like no yeah you can say that in a

metaphorical way and people just say oh you are just annoying like or you just

want to annoy people No I want want to get things straight Like you should not

say you are the owner of your labor Like you can say that yeah the state is stealing my labor because I need to work

for him but it’s not like you are the owner that point like it’s common for people to get it wrong and even if you

start to translate it’s worse because then you start to pile up layers of mistakes in this case Yeah And now you

know related to this I mean who owns what and who you know how relevant is ownership of the materials One of the

thoughts you’ve inspired to me some years ago Stefan and I think I wrote this somewhere is is if if Howard Ror’s

evil twin sneaked onto your property where you had wood glass all the makings of a

house right And he’s he’s as brilliant as Howard Work is and he builds this

totally unique never done before in that design with your stuff Yeah He builds this magnificent thing Yeah Um does he

own it Well of course the answer is no And you have a right to bomb it like the other Harold work does in the novel I

mean you which is another way of showing that creation is not creation is not creation

is not a source of ownership Creation Here’s the thing Creation is a source of wealth But wealth is just a subjective

phenomena is the way we value the utility of a of an arrangement of a given resource Um uh and by the way this

one reason I I I I’m still not quite sure why The Fountain Head was the book that inspired me to become a libertarian

because now I think of it as like I mean Atlas Rugged is great but The Fountain Head is is a book of IP

terrorism mixed in with narcissism and and and and sexual domination kinks and

quasi rape I mean The Fountain Head is like the weirdest novel I don’t know But it’s it’s a story about an IP terrorist

Um Yeah No the building is blown up He makes sure no one gets hurt but it’s

built And by the way interestingly the law the positive law and I’m not sure whether I agree with this or not It’s

it’s neither here nor there but the positive law actually has a way of dealing with with the situation you

mentioned at least if it’s an accident So for example um a simple example let’s

suppose I’m I’m I’m hired to paint a guy’s house but I go to the house next door

instead on accident and I paint that house And let’s say I don’t botch the house I actually the house needed a

paint job And let’s say the new owner of the home the owner of the other house sees me doing it and doesn’t stop me He

goes “Oh [ __ ] I’m going to get a free paint job from this guy.” So the law would perform form what’s called a quasi contract or or or they would have

something called unjust enrichment And the idea is that if you made a mistake and you you unjustly enrich someone it

would be unjust to to not compensate me somewhat especially if the other guy’s bidding getting a benefit And by the

same token with a more direct example if I were to go into let’s say you have a a

let’s say you have a boulder in your front yard just a natural boulder in your front yard and I’m your neighbor

and I go into your your front yard at night and I spend all night carving a a majestic statue in your

boulder Now I have created a statue It might even be worth a lot So then the question is well I’ve created the statue

Do I have a a partial claim for for unjust enrichment or ret or restitution from you because I’ve given you

something worth a lot of money even though I basically trespassed against you and those details you know the world the law can work out you know how

intentional it was whether it mistaken in cases where there’s you can’t undo the undo it but you can see

that it it would be an exceptional case and and you can see that what this means is that creation is simply not a source

but let me get back let me get back to work for a second I want to Okay so I have some second thoughts about this

which I had previously but I forgot that I had them Uh why can’t work say I’m not

claiming IP I don’t I’m not saying I own the design I’m saying I agreed to come up

with a design under the condition that it will be built as I designed it And that’s

what Keing did Now maybe Kading didn’t have authority to do that Correct Maybe So So in other words he wasn’t really

making it It wasn’t an IP argument was it It was a fraud Yeah But yeah the the pro of course it’s a it’s a novel It’s

fictional and Rand doesn’t get into a lot of legal details or assumptions but it basically rests upon the same

assumption Rothbart made when he argued that you could have um the problem is

it’s question begging It it presupposes it’s a hidden presupposition of ownership of intangible things

because when Rothbart argued that okay I don’t believe in patents but or copyrights but if I own a

mousetrap and I sell it to you on the condition that you don’t copy it then

I’m only giving to you the physical mousetrap not the right to copy it and

so then the question is okay another way of saying that is you and I have a contract that is in a way we’re

co-owners of the mousetrap Or you could even say there’s two contracts here I’m selling you my mousetrap design but you

agree not to copy it and sell a copy of it And if you do you’ve got to pay me

some sum of money to compensate me for breach of contract That’s the way to look at it So there’s two there’s two title transfers One is the transfer of

the mousetrap and the other is a future conditional transfer of money from the buyer back to

Rothbard that if you copy it right So it that condition would trigger the payment

of money So they’re just two title transfers But then the question is what about third parties like Brown Um I

think that’s the example Rothbart used And the problem is in snaring third parties and what’s a private contract

regime which is what you need to do to make IP rights real rights or or ominous

good against the world And Rothbart says well you can only sell what you own And if I buy a mousetrap and it’s missing

the right to copy and I give it to someone else they don’t also have the right to copy So then they’re bound by

this contract It’s such a bad argument because number one the third party Brown doesn’t have to buy the the mousetrap to

make a copy of it He might just see it So there’s no way you can say he was a signatory to any contract then Um it’s

just the whole idea that you can you can own a physical object that’s missing the right to use it is almost nonsense

because uh because that doesn’t get you where you want to go It doesn’t get you to a

limitation on other people’s right to use the same information to modify their own property to make similar mouse traps

So you do so you think this is analogous to the case I’m going to give I mean it sounds close to it but I I’m still want

to resist it Let’s say I’m this worldrenowned architect Yeah And you

want you you come to me and you want to you want me to design your home and I say I’ll do it on the condition that you

oh yeah as designed If you don’t like it you don’t like it But if you accept it

we’re going to build it as designed And then unbeknownst to me you put Grecian columns Right Right Now I would say if

it was against you Yeah Yeah So let’s So let So you’re I got off track of So the

the the the case in you could try to justify what Ror did based upon this kind of contract thing by saying Ror

agreed to do it with Keing only on the condition that uh that I guess Keading

makes sure that only a certain building be made based on or something like that But the the real problem in the way the

the way the way the way that law has to work and it has to work in the real world and it does work in the real world

is that as a you know as a practical matter first of all rock’s involvement was secret and it was meant to be secret

and rock knew that it had to be secret um and he he had to know that Keading

had no author Keading did not by his contract get any property title in the buildings that his client was going to

make So there simply now if ROR had insisted ROR would have had to insist

okay I’m only going to do this if you under penalty of a damage payment you have to pay me if you don’t do this you

have to make sure in your agreement with the client you have to put a clause in there saying if you adulterate my design

then you basically transfer partial ownership of your building to me and give me a ne a negative easement over it

that prevent that allows me to prevent you from building what I don’t want built with it If you’d done all that

then yes Ror’s actions would have been theoretically justified It’s just I don’t think that the scenario Ran’s

imagining can could encompass that because Ror’s involvement was secret And I don’t think Peter’s contract with the

client gave him any rights like that That’s the problem with that Well and it was a really bad misjudgment on Ror’s

part for those reasons Plus Keading was such a wimp Why would he ever think

Keading was going to stand up Exactly What’s what’s the expression Wasn’t even private right It was a government

authority So why would any confidence in Keon Well that’s that’s the only thing you could justify what work did I think

it was a government housing project So you could say that RO uh ROR uh

dynamited something that status property but then of course RO and Rand are not anarchists They’re minarchists They

believe the government’s legitimate So you couldn’t even make that argument But um yeah Anyway that’s uh bombing which

makes the bombing all the more uh ironic right That not that a non- anarchist was

was blowing up this building Yeah In fact but he was and you could say he’s en he he was he was aiding and

abetting this enterprise by going along with it And and again in the law we have these these these these rules of thumb

like caveat mour you know like buyer beware I mean Ror was well aware of Peter Keading’s sniveless nature you

know and and aware that he was dealing with a government and he was also aware that his design probably would be

adulterated That was his concern He knew this was going to happen I mean this wasn’t a surprise to anyone

Okay It was it was a novel Yeah it was Yeah Maybe I’m too hard on it Some

extent So all this is about an hour of background just to get to I think the question of interest which I think I

think Andre had So what what were you asking me uh in the Twitter message

thread we had about my problem is not not against interest itself but the uh I

think there is uh a problem over a known uh how can I how I told you

because I I remember what I say in Portuguese but not in English most of the times uh it’s like uh I think it

would be not binding to have a continuous not like a promise of back

pay but a continuous uh charging interest Mhm Which has no uh limitation

in a guarantee and this guarantee should not be monetary because money has the use of being spent So you cannot have a

a guarantee over money labor and stuff like that And uh I think like if you

taken into the into if you stress the point let’s say you would get into the

idea which you can can become a depth slave indentures servant right okay so

let me interrupt you for a second I’ll let you continue um this gets I think Sheldon and I were h touching on this

maybe before you joined about bankruptcy um there is an issue in libertarianism I

believe because if you believe as I do and I think Most libertarians do that rights are inalienable to your body You

can’t sell yourself into a slavery contract Yeah I agree Uh your argument about limited

limited anal alien you know inalienability Yeah

Yeah that’s uh I I agree with that I have the same position like no it’s not

uh the strong not the weak it’s the limited one And Sheldon I Sheldon I agree I assume you you’re not in favor

of the enforcability of voluntary slavery contracts like about 1978 or so

or nine I had an article in Murray’s Libertarian Forum making that very point

drawing on Spooner because Spooner makes an argument against what what did you argue I argued that they’re not valid

contracts Right And the thing is I think I could count on my my right hand um I

think Walter Block Nosik hinted at it and Gerard Casey uh

those three are the only three libertarians I know that really want to say that you have the right to uh and Walter Walter is surprising because

Walter claims to agree with Rothbart’s title transfer theory of contract Um so

I if you really believe that slavery contracts are um are are

enforcable number one that goes against Rothbart’s own explicit denunciation of that in his own title transfer theory

but it also would transform every contract into a binding promise which is

what Rothbart’s whole theory is against They’re saying that you don’t view contracts as binding promises that are

enforcable They that give rise to binding obligations They’re just transfers of title to the things that

you own Now Andre that’s what I’m not going to nitpick on your English We’re lucky you’re speaking our language

instead of the other way around Um but when you say um um a binding or I think

what you mean is enforceable What you’re saying is you have an agreement to be paid interest um in perpetuity or

something like that We can get into a spec I think we should get into a specific example but you’re saying that that should be uninforceable Not not

that it’s binding but uninforceable And there are some arguments you could make based upon

inalienability based upon this kind of concept of bankruptcy where listen if you take an obligation to transfer

future things that you own to someone forever to the limit you could effectively kill them or enslave them

because they could never even eat Because you could say every time someone gives you a piece of food if you’re

bankrupt to just keep you alive then you could take that food from them too because they don’t even own that You

could and you you you could imagine a libertarian system that says “Listen you’re basically killing this guy by not

letting him even get a donation of food.” So there there could be arguments for some limitations on the

enforcability of future conditional title transfers if it would effectively result in the enslavement of someone I I

I don’t want I don’t know the answer to that I think you could imagine an argument But short of that I think that

any contractual title transfer would be normally recognized to be enforcable And

it doesn’t matter whether or not the thing exists anymore Like in patent law for example there’s a there’s a there’s

an interesting anomaly where so let’s say I have a patent that lasts for for 10 years 10

more years and I I I threaten to sue you unless you pay me a royalty for making

widgets that are that are too similar to the patented uh claim of that patent And

so you pay me a royalty Well what the law says is that um we can we can we can

we can have a fair market a free market um a fair market value of a royalty

payment but it can only last for the duration of the patent And if you go beyond that it’s called abuse of patents

And that’s because in the law there’s a conflict or a tension they call it between antitrust law and between

patents which grant monopolies in antitrust law which supposed to stop them So they say you can’t abuse your patent rights You can only have it last

until the patent expires But you can make an agreement now that

would cover the next 10 years of the patent But if the patent got invalidated in five years in a court action it would

still the original agreement is still valid for 10 years because it was in good faith and all this kind of stuff

But the point is you could only bundle into it so much for the for the for the for the 10year present market value of

that of that royalty period Um and so by the same token what you could say is

that um if if I loan you some money why don’t we take a real example G give me

one example a clear example of a loan where you think the interest payments would be a problem Andre uh student

loans on the United States they are indispensable If you go bankrupt they keep charging you Wait say say again I

didn’t hear The student loans on the United States some student loans have this characteristic They have no limits

they c they keep charging interest Uh they have no you cannot dis like you cannot anul

them by getting bankrupt So they are like for life They they they are worse

than a curse you know Okay But but but couldn’t you find other problems with those because in there in that case the

states involved and and and and there’s lots of other objections you can make to a contract between my point about user I

call user but I redefine it to to fit into libertarian theory without like

going against interest like not interest for me is a valid thing but the problem

is li when you you need to have constraints on it Okay hold on But but

but c can we come up with an example that’s not like let’s let’s imagine an anarchist society with a free market and

private property rules that are respected and contracts that are respected according to Rothbart and all this stuff There’s no state Give me an

example of a contract in that context that that you would you have a problem with or possib Yeah the the problem is

that I don’t recognize this as uh uh as a right you know like a enforceable

biting all this kind of biting okay as you said that it’s just like how I use the words bit cramy but okay uh but why

I use this example is like I think this kind of usery that I’m I’m pointing to

is what constitute the modern state the fra fractional reserve and the modern

banking system is all like the the heads of the same idra which is the everyone

everything is constituted around it around this view a violation So this

would be like the best way to show it in in some way because now you have all the the institutional structures around uh

this kind of of contract of of this corruption that I I think well look if

you want to I can I can do another example like but I’m just saying like this one is I think it’s the best one to

show the the real world problem Well before we get into that let me let me say something for Sheldon and for the listeners benefit There is a there are

some Bitcoiners like Sedina Moose and I don’t know if this is related to your point or not I thought it was when you mentioned this Um they’re trying to find

they’re trying to find a way to justify this sort of Muslim and maybe Jewish you know the this idea that there’s

something wrong with interest And he’s trying to say well in a Bitcoin world you wouldn’t really have interest because you’d have um uh you wouldn’t

have even loans really you’d have just people investing in companies and and and like it’s all there’s all these

workarounds shenanigans which by the way I think the Muslims and Jews do that they they they have exceptions to their

to their bands on interest they call it something else just instead of interest they call it something else or they it’s okay to have interest if it’s with a

with a gentile or I mean there’s all these things but um uh I think that’s the origin of this sort of dispute at

least in my mind um and I just think it’s pointless because I I think and And

by the way if you wanted to argue against the current system mired in the student loan process or the government involvement or if you want to argue that

this this eternal payment that you’re settled with violates your rights because it violates inalienability

because you need to have some kind of bankruptcy right I think that’s an argument you can have but I just think

it’s it’s different than an argument showing there’s a defect in the title transfer theory of contract No no it’s

not against title transfer It’s not uh it is They’re saying like it’s not uh

it’s not uh something that you can make a title over because you cannot make a title over your own body like in a in a

way you cannot enslave yourself Okay Okay So it is an inalienability argument You’re saying that effectively this by

not having a guarantee a guaranteed limit like for example I give my my house as a a collateral for you I take

your money give my house for you but I keep using my house Then interest no problem But after the interest like

snowball a lot you just take my house But and and it it cuts the the the loan

you know like I I do not owe you anything else But the problem is is if you don’t have a limit then you can for

example if there is a market crash you can just take my house and then charge me the difference between the the set

price and and stuff Well you can see why I brought up the patent example then because the patent example they also try

to put a limit on how much you can extract in a future title transfer based upon the present economic value of a

limited monopoly in time So you see it’s a similar type of structure But I’m not saying there should be like I am the

dictator of limits but saying like should there be a consideration of a limit like well and that’s why I think

that this this ultimately devolves into the argument about inalienability and bankruptcy issues which is I think an

unexplored issue in libertarianism and I have I’ve only hinted at it I’m not sure what the right answer is Um but if you

take in general let let this is why I think I told I told you in in my the paper I pointed you to my title transfer

paper my most recent one I tried to point out this one it helps it helps to

clarify if instead of saying like okay there’s a loan for money I give you

money present in the present right now which is certain money now conditioned

uh non-conditionally transferred to you for you to spend and in exchange you give me a future sum of money Now we

usually we usually describe that sum as a repayment of the loan and it’s the original principal plus interest But

when you think of it that way that’s why it’s easier to make the mistake Rothbart and Block do that you’re stealing something when you don’t repay the loan

You’re not really repaying a loan There are two separate title transfers There’s a current title transfer to present

money which is consumed and gone by the by the borrower And then there’s a future title transfer But if you make it

different things it makes it clear Like if you don’t make it a a sum of money that is just varies by a rate of

interest If you say I have a hammer I’m going to give you this hammer now and in exchange you give me a future wrench So

there are two physical objects One exists now that I own and one is a future possible wrench that you might

own which you have to transfer to me in the future In that case there should be full contractual freedom to have that

agreement enforced Which means and by say by enforced it just means we the legal system recognizes the ownership of

the wrench in the future transfers to the original lender of the of the hammer

right That’s all it means Yeah that is not a problem in in what I’m what I’m

pointing to is the problem like oh but uh for time elapsed now you get uh to

owe me more ru w r w r w r w r w r w r w r w r w r w ranges you know that is a problem like what is the yeah yeah okay okay but would would you so so let’s say

you can have like a contractual compensation for for people like taking

more time than than what is allowed in the contract but sometimes these contracts they are open-ended like you

have uh you don’t have a a end You just have like oh if you pay until this time

there will be more or less this Sheldon Did you have a point you were going to make Sorry No no no I’m watching this

with great interest Okay So So I I think that you could first of all you could criticize some contracts by being

sufficiently vague that there’s no clear consent There’s no clear consent as to what was agreed to That’s certainly a

way that you could Yeah Contracts have to be definite because all contracts are trans

or what trespass is is it’s the use of someone’s resource without their consent Now that’s a general formulation but it

means that the owner has the right to say yes or no ultimately and that has to be done by language or by some kind of

communication right that could be informed by custom and could be informed by default rules of understanding but

ultimately it’s it’s a communication and the question of whether the communication was sufficiently clear as

to alert the community as to who owns what is up to the parties and in the case if it’s too murky it’s got to go to

an arbitrator and it might just be uh you might have to throw your hands up and guess but that’s the fault of the

parties for in entering into an agreement or or or an interaction where

the signs are not clear enough to everyone And so of course if the wrong party loses then that’s going to give

people an incentive lawyers an incentive to draft the contract with more particular terms to use a standard form

and and so over time these things will become more and more more and more minimized So I I think but if partially

I agree uh the problem is the system that we have today is made in in some

way that you uh like here in Brazil for example just to give an example uh uh

it’s against the law usery like I cannot lend you money uh um charge interest

okay okay uh or if I do it should not be over 3% uh one or 2% monthly in uh it

should not be compounding if I’m not mistaken but any bank or any financial institution can do it for like 300% a

year for example credit card and I say and what happened is uh you have this

limitation over here in Brazil but I what I think it is the problem is not really defined what is the uh I don’t

know the word in English is like a scope is the scope of the contract like the

the the object you know for example imagine that I you rent me a house and

then I you or or something you know but when I give you back the the object you

want the same object but I just use No I can give you any house any object No you

need to have this defined The problem that I see is like a loan should should have have a non-monetary guarantee but

it should be alienable guarantee not not your body like there there are some

arguments saying like oh but maybe you can just be an indentured servtor for like seven years and stuff like that

because there are biblical arguments for that but but in the way like okay if you’re going

to say that put in writing because if you don’t put that in writing then you

you are opening to a limitless uh um a limitless enforcement of this uh

interest fee and then you just have like a mechanism for contractual expropriation in this case and that is

what happened here sometimes like you just keep uh putting fees and people cannot pay because the fees are greater

than the salary you know than the income Yeah And I think that to me that’s just it’s interesting but it’s

just it’s it’s not that interesting about what a a justice seeking court in a free

market libertarian system would do in a case like that I mean I don’t know It

dep it just depends on so many so many factors over the arbiter most of the time But but in general I would say that

so so let’s let’s imagine a case where um I take a simple example and my

criticism of the of the block Rothbart idea that if you don’t repay a loan you’re committing theft is that people

think that if I don’t say it’s theft then that means that if you happen to be bankrupt on the day your loan is due

then you get all scot-free like they have no imagination that contracts can have subsidiary clauses and and exactly

and cons and and ancillary either implied or expressly stated So what you

would imagine is it would be like I loan you $1,000 now and in exchange you you

pay me $1,100 in a year if you own it But if you don’t then

interest acrru at a certain rate in the future until you come into ownership of money or other resources by

which you can pay me Like so if it takes 10 years to pay off a one-year loan then the debtor might owe $10,000 right But

he could pay that out of like if he has a house worth a million dollar then he might have to sell the house and pay 10,000 from that But it would be it it

has to be defined It’s just that I don’t as a libertarian I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have a user thing where it’s too much or

excessive as long as it’s clear It’s not about the the rate It’s not about how much you’re paying interest It’s just

like uh how you write that in a contract or you have a

contract Like for example I say when I say I think it’s enforceable It’s like for example you said oh the guy can sell

the house Yeah there is not a problem But if you are bankrupt you don’t have a house to sell like or if you sell

someone else we’re going to take the money first then you can pay the uh the correct Yeah I I I I think of this

almost like the ink blot argument that that Robert Bark made about um how you can’t enforce natural rights in the

ninth amendment because it it’s not clear what it means And so it would be like if someone spilt an ink block on it

and it says Congress shall make no blank We don’t know what it means So we there’s no way to enforce it And

likewise you could say that if someone has a contract but they they’re so they’re so vague about what the terms are that no court or legal community or

community outside the court knows who owns what then it’s just effectively

it’s not an effective contract It doesn’t do anything because no one knows what it says And again this comes back to the issue that any contract has to be

the the the communication by language of consent by the owner Exactly It has to

be sufficiently clear So people know who owns what That’s all Can I break in here Yeah We seem to have divorced this

conversation from the marketplace and entrepreneurship and and and specifically competition which I call

the universal solvent Yes You’re both discussing problems in writing a

contract so a bad thing doesn’t happen or think right is undesirable and we may not be the three

of us may not be able to come up with that solution or maybe we will but

correct but in the real in the real what we could be accused of simply do engaging in ivory tower rationalism here

Correct How does it get from here or from the journal article that one of you may write or whatever an article a post

on a website how does it get from there to the ground and I’m I’m wondering if

the missing there’s a missing link and I’m wondering whether a name we should invoke here is David Freriedman because

you know I came up through the rand and then Rothbard ranks so that’s my orientation Freriedman we always knew

about Freriedman and he was very different from that but I’m more and more appreciating

the link that he’s providing Yeah Since he talks about the market for law

something Murray doesn’t talk about Maybe that’s the answer It’s not a

specific answer because how do we we the three of us may come up with a spec

specific answer to question here but who cares So the three of us think it’s that

perfect libertarian solution but who no one else cares I I by the way I completely agree with you and that’s why

I’m I’ I’ve become increasingly reluctant and skeptical of this idea of these hypothetical issues because the

hypothetical issues you can never pro provide enough context to answer it from your armchair And so the answer is you

have to have the general set of principles and to the extent that society is just then you you’re going to

have to have some practical system that generates the outcome and and we can’t

predict ahead of time what that would be And so I I think I totally agree with you I don’t know what the answer is in

these cases I I just think the general principles are what has to guide us and hopefully they permeate society enough

that they go into the courts and people make up and and and and by the way no it

it’s literally impossible for any contract to ever be complete It’s impossible because there’s there’s an

infinite number of it’s it is it will it would be inefficient to try That’s why at a certain point in time people put as

many clauses as they can but then they they finally put in there an arbitration clause saying and if we can’t come to a

decision we got to give it to someone who make it make a decision and that guy might have to just it might be he might

have to roll the dice because there might be and and by the way that risk is worth taking in most contracts It’s like

okay in the very minuscule chance that I’m going to get stiffed because we can’t imagine what’s going to happen

then I still think it’s contract worth going into ahead of time You know as I understand it during that

in the time of the law merchant right in the middle ages there was no appeal They all agreed there wouldn’t

because they didn’t want to take the time They’ll just a ruling and move on It’s not worth a lot A lot of arbitrations like that too But if the

states are smaller it’s not worth it to That’s why people do things by by hand because it’s not worth to get a lawyer

and to draft it They’re willing to take that tiny risk that something might happen because in most cases it doesn’t

And by the way reputation of course is going to play a bigger role in this anyway If you want to have repeated

business in the community have a reputation You’re going to bend over and make things right for the guy anyway You’re going to work out a reasonable

compromise or something That’s a big I own I ownation chamber So yeah I know

the how to solve these problems most of the time But the that is the point that I’m saying like when you start to

alienate un unalienable unaliignable things I I forget the word uh then you have a real

problem because not arbitration cannot solve it but you cannot measure it in a

in a form of of pricing you know you cannot there is a problem so how much is

the limit if you don’t set a limit how much is life worth you know but by the

way people that engage in negotiation contracts They’re aware of the fact that value is subjective and they’re aware

that you can only measure things quantitatively in money terms and they’re aware that their subjectivity

even in the judge or the arbitral community That’s why a lot of times in contracts they put what’s called a liquidated damages clause So they just

say “Listen I don’t really know how much it’s going to cost me if you don’t sing at my daughter’s uh if you don’t if if

you’re like Madonna you’re supposed to sing at the let’s that’s an old example but you know

some popular singer you’re paying a million dollars to sing at the Super Bowl and if you don’t show up I don’t

really know how much it’s going to damage me but let’s just I’m going to put a $10 million liquidated damages

clause.” Um and that’s just what it’s going to be Uh but the problem is the courts won’t enforce those because they

call them punitive and they say it’s up that that’s punitive and that’s the that’s the job of of the criminal law

which the state monopolizes So the state just won’t give us total freedom of contract But if you had total freedom of

contract people would come up with with ways to solve these problems They would buy insurance right They would they

would rely on reputation They would have they would have a an arbitration clause saying we will agree if we can’t agree

to go to arbitration with no appeals because it’s just not worth it to go beyond that Well one bite at the apple

and then that’s it Yeah The only appeal that you’ll have is like if there is um

a problem with the arbitration for example the uh partial arbiter or something like that or a biased and

biased arbitrator But even even then the arbitration the arbitration agency has a reputation to look out for if they start

doing that kind of stuff They’re not going to be chosen in the future So yeah know I I I know it’s like that is one of

my trades So but but the main point is like uh what I think is the main problem

today that we have is this matter is not common because you have interference of

the state to keep the the Federal Reserve the central banking system All

all this kinds of stuff needs need a way to expropriate people by creating debt

by printing money doing all this kind of stuff And loans in my in my view is a

way like laws can be legit but the problem is they can be corrupted to to

um for for for let’s say

um for they can be used by in better faith So the main problem that I see is

like there is not today a differentiation over this kind of loans

like the the predatory loans let’s say but it’s not about the interest rate or or if it’s compound or simple rates it’s

just about the guarantees that you give because uh you told about the the one

what is it called the liquidation clause that you told uh if the the singer do

not show up uh there’s not does not make any sense on a loan because how can you

liquidate someone for example in a monetary value as they are taking a monetary value because they don’t have

it so that is the problem is a is a contradiction does not make sense like uh in this way for example I cannot pay

you because I don’t have the money okay if you don’t have the money then you pay me this money but I don’t have the money to pay you how I gonna pay you know so

in this way my my suspicion is that in a free market you would have the effective

market-based equivalent of of bankruptcy because just like in some loans now uh

there’s what’s called a non-reourse loan I think my friend Doug French wrote a book called Walk Away Like there are some like if I borrow money to get a

mortgage to to buy a house if it’s a non-reourse loan then the lender’s only

recourse is against the value of that property It’s defined it’s definite it’s clear But if it if the market falls and

it’s not there’s not enough collateral to pay them back then they they lost on that loan and they

they move along And I have a feeling that if if you had a company that tried

to be too draconian and and get every little bit of money out of you till the end of your days even though they’ll

never get fully repaid instead of just finally writing it off and calling it a loss at a certain point they wouldn’t do

good business I mean I think at a certain point in time you have to let market pressure and customs and and the

reputation of of of the lender is going to affect the way that loans are collected So I I I maybe we we’ve we’ve

done as far as we can do on this We’ve been speaking two hours and uh I I’ll let you if you guys want to say anything else we can but I think we should kind

of wrap it up because we probably all have places to go I I I don’t think that so much because if you if you if that

like it’s true yes the the the market can correct itself but if you have this interferences in these non nonproperties

properties let’s say the these things that are not property they are not just they are not property to have but being

considered uh right right or anything like that you have a a distortion and this distortion can mount up and maybe

let’s say explo clothing into a or implod into a state in some way to to

transform this kind of corruption into something aromous in this case But yeah

and about the discussion before uh about discrimination uh and freedom of of

speech and reputation uh you don’t uh I have a small contribution I don’t know if it’s a contribution but if you guys

agree but yeah you don’t own your reputation reputation is something that other people have over you know how they

recognize you uh and but discrimination uh if they are in a way of for example

Sheldon gave an example using uh calling someone uh a child molesting a pedophile

Uh this is a fake fake accusation of a crime So the guy who call me a pill for

example he needs to prove that I am that they can they cannot just tell that I’m

a criminal without showing the proof like he has a burden of proof So if he cannot show that or I think you you are

entitled to compensation for example Okay go you you thought that I am a criminal show me that I’m a criminal

Like why why why could why couldn’t you argue that people listening to this guy make that

accusation have the right to trust his accusation or to do their independent

research In other words why could you Yeah they can do it But the problem is when I tell you that you are a criminal

uh I’m making a allegation of a wrong deed that you made That is the main

problem I I see it’s like uh some some things that you need to prove and some things that you say you don’t even need

to prove For example if you don’t say like there is a a causal necessity or like a necessity to

prove then threats will not be an aggression because threats are just speak in this way like well I would say

a threat is a communication of one’s a communication

about what what one intends to do with one’s actions that other people are entitled to um to take into account in

determining whether you’re going to do it and then how to respond Yeah And that

can be real or just a bravato just like a fake threat For example if you don’t stop smoking or

pipe right now we’re going to fly over there and make you stop like yeah that is nothing like does not even make sense

you know But I see for a false accusation uh someone needs to prove the

the accusation They can say allegedly Well well hold on Okay but hold on a second So so in the case of a threat the

clearly there’s a gray area between a clear threat and something that’s not a threat And then there’s a judgment call

by the legal system as to how to determine whether there was an actual threat made in a given case But we all

agree that we all agree if there’s a threat what you’re doing is you’re you’re giving rise to the right to

respond on the part of the victim because otherwise the the aggressor might

actually Yeah For example are going to beat you and you don’t you

don’t consider a realtor because Brazil but then I just show up in your yard What are you going to do Right But but

but but if I say that if I say you’re a criminal it’s just a statement of my opinion or a fact Other people don’t

have to act on that They they’re in other words if you say that if you say I have to prove it then you I think you

are implying there’s a reputation right which does justify a form of defamation law

Yeah Like I’m not saying that there is a right for your to your reputation but uh

if someone accuse you of a crime they should have the burden of the burden of proof is on them Okay Saying the but I

don’t know if you mean the burden of proof in an argument or you’re saying that if they don’t satisfy the burden of proof then they’ve committed a crime

because if they committed they don’t satisfy like if I if I’m a criminal and they say oh you’re a criminal and here

is the proof No problem Then you’re just stating a fact No no no But what what if I lie and I say you are a criminal and I

I I refu I refuse to justify my my assertion Oh I see You can just uh sue

the guy and say “Okay prove.” Yeah but but so then you do But you’re accusing me I’m just suing you for like I’m doing

you Yeah But but accusing Accusing is not making is not a threat Accusing is

No I’m just saying like if that is not a problem then I don’t see why a threat would be such a problem because people

can say like “Oh I’m not was not talking I was not a stinking a fact because

because the threat the threat is the threat to do something you don’t have the right to do We all agree with that

But yeah but but lying lying is just stating a falsehood I mean I think you

have to either accept reputation rights or not I mean it’s it’s one way or the other And I don’t say that you have a

right for what people think about you But I say like you should not be charged

Not charged What is the name um someone uh spread a lie accuse for a crime that

you don’t did Like if they are accusing you so okay prove it you know Yeah But

yeah but when you say prove it what you’re saying is you don’t have the right to make that accusation if it’s false because you have the right to make

the accusation But the pro the point that I’m saying like you should have the you as the accused the guy you you are

being accused you should have the right to tell the guy okay so let’s start a litigation you prove that and no problem

because well we might disagree with that because and Sheldon I and that’s another

matter that is why I put my foot in this one because I knew that a real fight but

yeah but I I think like if the guy just they don’t accuse you what how you can

defend yourself just say I didn’t do it and the guy oh he definitely did it okay

let’s let’s put in a table I think it’s like what Sheldon said earlier it’s a reputational thing it’s If you go around

making accusations then your reputation is going to suffer

You can have a remedy that’s not based on ownership of reput I I there’s a

problem with you own your reputation because it’s minds So Rothbart convinced

me of that a long time ago But what I’m wondering about and I’m only wondering because I don’t have the answer Uh is

there a way to uh to justify legal action by this

person who’s been lied about that doesn’t entail ownership of reputation

Well what could it be I it seems to me that they go hand in hand because I such

a monstrous look such a monstrous in uh uh thing could happen right Picture a

guy who’s a teacher or a clergyman and pe somebody maliciously spreads falsely

the word that he’s a pedophile I mean he there have been suicide externality He’s

using his body to cause harm in in some way Yeah But harm okay but harm is not a crime in libertarianism Causing harm is

not a crime It’s only aggression Yeah Yeah but because it’s impression but this

scenario it just makes me wonder is there a way consistent with libertarian rights Well I could I could imagine So

here’s here’s here’s something I imagine I imagine market-based solutions reputation based and market solutions So

for example under today’s system liable is a crime or it’s at least uh it’s at

least a cause of action And because of that it actually gives liel more potency

because people assume that if you make a dangerous accusation against someone that it’s true because they wouldn’t do

that under that penalty In other words they assume that if you’re accused of being a pedophile if you don’t sue

someone for liel then you’re admitting that it’s correct If there was no such thing as liel law then no one would give it a default presumption of truth in the

first place because because of they know that you you have that option to sue with a liable because you don’t have

that option to sue for liel So I think that liel laws actually make liable more potent now in a society with sure ruffer

did argue with that and and in a society yeah he did and in a society with no liable um what I could imagine arising

is someone’s accused of something and then you you hire some agency to vet it

and and and if the guy doesn’t go into like a p a private forum to defend what

he said then he would be kind basically ostracized by everyone Like he would have a bad social credit rating in

effect He’s a liar So you would have a a penalty that would be paid not only

informally by having the reputation of being someone who runs around crying wolf all the time but there could be

agencies that you know they they say “Look we’ll investigate this and we will put our reputation on the line saying

you know this this guy that was accused of being a pedophile is not and the other guy’s a liar unless he can prove.”

Now you kind of you put the burden you you put the bur of proof on him Why you put it on him but but just by social

pressure and just by the threat of sort of ostracism and by reputation being ruined as part of your protection agency

and insurance laws that if I’m ever the victim of malicious lies uh this company

will set up a forum invite that person to come and demonstrate it and if the person doesn’t come that’s bad for him

What’s bad for him Absolutely And people don’t they don’t think they don’t think of these solutions now because they can go to the courts and use a liel case But

if there wasn’t liel law then maybe things like that would emerge as sort of quasi judicial forums to to defend to

rehabilitate someone call the guy and if I would say like if the guy just

um does not don’t show up then uh like uh for how can I say or he shows up and

he cannot prove that you can even set up some kind of compensation or something like that But yeah it would be more like

agreement and maybe and maybe employers would say “Listen I want everyone to sign on this petition saying I’m an

innocent victim of liel and this guy needs to apologize or put up a shut up and I think maybe everyone should agree

not to hire him not to sell him a house not to live to removal so to speak.” Yes

Yes Again to invoke David Freriedman the the lieler presumably has a protective

agency and the victim has a protection agency So those agencies already have a

contract Correct And they have they’ve agreed that they’ll go to the XYZ

arbitration if if ever they have clients in Yeah I’m tending now to agree with

you guys Yeah there’s there’s ways we can work these these things out with U Yeah you

cannot enforce the guy into sue you Yeah that that’s true Like the the main point

that is like okay if you’re accusing me prove it then you know you show show like proof you know because if you if

you had a proof against me that I’m a criminal that I’m a crook and you are feel so confident that you can say that

out loud that I will not let’s say pop you you know why you don’t do that on court Well not only that you you could

you could make a this would be a stretch maybe but you could make the argument um that if you actually have proof or

evidence that I am a pedophile which could be used to convict me in some kind of private criminal

court right And if you refuse to do it you’re sort of aiding and abetting me Now you’re on Exactly That is my point

Why you helping me to be a criminal That is why I say like you should have the uh I’m implying that you should have the

way to sue the guy to sue you because if you don’t accept that he’s in

contradiction he’s helping me to go scot-free you know and we have how he’s

helping him I mean he’s bringing he’s bringing this forward How is he helping the the alleged pedophile Well we we we

have a a soft version of this now When someone makes an accusation to someone then the guy that’s on the other side

someone will you’ll sometimes challenge him to a debate Well then let’s have a debate about it and then you can prove it there And it’s sort of like the old

days of dueling like you you you you insulted my honor Need to come back Yeah

Yeah Dueling needs to come back Yeah We should we should we should definitely legalize dueling again If I’m not mistaken they’re illegal

All right But they have a lot of limitations I think we should probably wrap it up here Sheldon I appreciate your time jumping on here It’s kind of

ad hoc and impromptu but uh good talking to you again Yeah No this has been great fun

And And Andre enjoyed it too So uh maybe we’ll do it again Enjoy too Uh thanks for your time Mr Canella Nice to meet

you Sheldon Uh if you can send me your email or any way to get in contact I

would love to to talk with you And Mr I think uh this point you just like help

me to to push forward with my point against usery because I think I need to

state it more clearly like for me it’s clear in my head but yeah maybe I need to make an international case in this

case try to translate my stuff Okay thank you very much for Okay guys I appreciate it Thanks a lot We’ll we’ll

be in touch later