KOL473 | The Universal Principles of Liberty, with Mark Maresca of The White Pillbox

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 473.

From The White Pillbox, Stephan Kinsella’s Universal Principles of Liberty. This is my discussion with Mark Maresca, of The White Pillbox, about The Universal Principles of Liberty. (Previous episode: Kinsella as “White Pill”: Maresca, “From the White-PillBox: Part 29. Achilles Heel edition 3”.)

Mark’s shownotes:

Recently Stephan published an exciting document, the Universal Principles of Liberty: https://stephankinsella.com/principles/

Stephan provides some background that led to the Principles, historical context, use cases, and so much more. As always, Stephan demonstrates why he is a true human White Pill.

He even challenged me to White Pill him, on my reasoning behind why true free societies may be coming sooner than we think.

Some of his key publications:

International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution (Oxford, 2020): http://www.kinsellalaw.com/iipr/

Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2001): http://c4sif.org/aip/

Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023): https://stephankinsella.com/lffs/

Links to other topics we covered in this episode…

The Law, by Frederic Bastiat: https://store.mises.org/The-Law-P408….

For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard: https://store.mises.org/For-a-New-Lib…

Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises: https://store.mises.org/Human-Action-…

The Remnant, from Isaiah’s Job, by Albert J. Nock: https://mises.org/mises-daily/isaiahs…

The Property and Freedom Society: https://propertyandfreedom.org/

Grok shownotes and transcript below.

Grok Shownotes

Overview of the Discussion

The episode of the White Pillbox features host Mark Maresca interviewing Stephan Kinsella, a prominent intellectual property attorney and libertarian writer from Houston. Recorded on September 06, 2025, the conversation delves into Kinsella’s latest work, the “Universal Principles of Liberty,” a document aimed at articulating a coherent framework for libertarian principles. This discussion provides listeners with an insightful exploration of libertarian thought, emphasizing practical applications and philosophical underpinnings in the context of transitioning to a freer society.

Background on Universal Principles of Liberty

Kinsella explains the genesis of the “Universal Principles of Liberty,” highlighting his involvement in various libertarian projects, including attempts to draft constitutions for new nations like Liberland. He critiques the traditional concept of constitutions as state-authorizing documents, advocating instead for a statement of principles that avoids legitimizing governmental authority. The project evolved from his earlier work, such as the “Fundamental Principles of Justice,” and was collaboratively refined with contributions from attorneys Pat Tinsley, Aleandro Fusillo, David Durr, and oversight from Hans-Hermann Hoppe, reflecting a broad consensus on core libertarian values.

Core Libertarian Principles

The core of the “Universal Principles of Liberty” rests on four key principles: self-ownership, original appropriation (homesteading), contract, and rectification. Kinsella argues these principles, derived from Roman and English common law, offer a decentralized, organic approach to law that contrasts with statutory legislation. He emphasizes that libertarianism, as a consistent application of these private law principles, rejects state-imposed exceptions like taxation or sovereign immunity, providing a foundation for a free society that can adapt through judicial interpretation rather than legislative fiat.

Practical Applications and Flexibility

Kinsella discusses the document’s practical use as a “guard rail” for free territories or communities, such as Liberland or Prospera in Honduras, where it could guide development and judicial decisions without mandating a top-down structure. The principles are designed to be flexible, allowing adoption by diverse groups—whether through explicit signing (as in Fremax’s project) or implicit acceptance as societal norms. This modularity supports both statist and anarchist contexts, serving as a subsidiary guide where local laws permit, ensuring consistency with libertarian ideals.

Addressing Common Concerns

A notable section addresses concerns about mass destruction devices, inspired by Fremax’s input, which Kinsella included despite initial reluctance due to its specificity. He clarifies that such devices are not banned per se but are deemed aggressive due to their likely impact on innocent lives, aligning with libertarian opposition to war and collateral damage. This provision also extends to potential threats like chemical or biological agents, with Kinsella suggesting private incentives, such as insurance, could mitigate risks in an anarchist society.

Rejection of Positive Law and Social Contracts

Kinsella critiques positive law, such as welfare rights or intellectual property, arguing they arise from legislation rather than organic legal processes and thus have no place in a libertarian framework. He also dismantles social contract theory by redefining contracts as title transfers rather than binding obligations, eliminating the basis for voluntary slavery or state legitimacy claims. This perspective underscores the document’s focus on individual consent as a communicated, revocable act.

Future Vision and Optimism

Looking ahead, Kinsella envisions a future where states wither into irrelevance, akin to the British monarchy, as liberty matures with economic and technological progress (e.g., Bitcoin, AI). He remains hopeful that shared human values of peace and prosperity, enhanced by economic literacy, will naturally support libertarian principles. Maresca shares this optimism, predicting a rapid transition within five to ten years, driven by the erosion of the myth of political authority.

Role of Technology

Both Kinsella and Maresca highlight technology’s role in this transition, with the internet decentralizing information and undermining propaganda, a process accelerated by smartphones exposing societal issues. Kinsella’s opposition to copyright stems from its threat to this communicative freedom, while Maresca sees Bitcoin and virtual communities as tools to starve the state, fostering enclaves of liberty that could adopt the principles organically.

Cultural and Historical Context

Kinsella draws on historical examples, like the Soviet collapse teaching the benefits of capitalism, to argue that societal shifts can occur without universal ideological conversion. He also references the pedagogical style of the Louisiana civil code, adapting it to make the principles accessible and illustrative for a pioneering libertarian legal system, given the relative newness of modern libertarianism (60-70 years).

Closing Remarks and Resources

The episode concludes with Maresca encouraging listeners to explore the “Universal Principles of Liberty” and anticipate Kinsella’s forthcoming annotated commentary and Fremax’s related project, expected in October 2025. Kinsella’s work, including his book “Legal Foundations of a Free Society,” is linked in the show notes, offering further resources for those interested in deepening their understanding of libertarian theory and practice.

Call to Action

Listeners are urged to stay tuned for updates, check the show notes for Kinsella’s publications, and embrace the “white pill” mindset of hope and action. This episode, aired at 10:51 AM CDT on September 06, 2025, serves as both an educational resource and a motivational call to participate in the ongoing struggle for liberty.

Youtube transcript

(with help from Grok and ChatGPT)

Topic: Introduction and State Skepticism

0:08

• Mark Maresca: You’re skeptical of the state. You’re getting over the myth of authority, but the state is still formidable. Or is it?
  0:16
• Mark Maresca: You’ve got a front row seat in the transition to a free society. Let’s dive head first into the white pillbox with your host, Mark Maresca. Greetings all. Thank you so much for joining today. Today I’m very excited to welcome as my guest Stephan Kinsella.

Topic: Guest Welcome and Background

0:35

• Mark Maresca: Stephan, thanks for joining me on the White Pillbox.
• Stephan Kinsella: Glad to be here. Now folks, please check out Stephan’s bio in the show notes. But for those of you unfamiliar briefly, Stephan is an intellectual property attorney and prolific libertarian writer from Houston. Some of his publications include international investment, political risk and dispute resolution, against intellectual property, Legal Foundations of a Free Society, and finally the topic of today’s interview, the universal principles of liberty, just published. And of course, I’ll link to that and all his other major works.
  0:59
• Mark Maresca: Okay. The universal principles of liberty. It is what it says. It puts me in the mind of sometimes when I’ve spoken to newbies and kind of introduce what I can about libertarian principles. Sometimes I’ll get a question like give me an elevator pitch. Give me sort of a very broad overview and sometimes it’s hard to refer them to a website or reference that kind of does it very compactly. This does it at least for certain types of mindsets. So can you give me a brief explanation of what this is and the background of the project?

Topic: Background of Universal Principles of Liberty

1:46

• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. So over the years I have been aware of and sometimes involved in various projects, different libertarian activist projects or attempts to form new nations things like that Liberland being one of them all these floating cruise ship nations and there’s also been talk over the years on occasion even Rothbard mentions this in For a New Liberty about how you know in the future we could imagine a libertarian law code he calls it which is sort of the constitution or the principles or the legal system of an anarchist free society and you’ve had different people have attempted to draft more libertarian sort of foundational documents like that like they will say Bernard Siegan has written a book on because he was consulting on the revisions of constitutions in Latin America modeled after the US constitution and after the Soviet Union fell. A lot of the former Soviet constitutions of these emerging republics adopted new constitutions modeled after the US constitution in part. And that was viewed as a more liberal or western or even proto libertarian way of doing government right in other countries. And then there’s been libertarians, even anarchists like Roderick Long and others, who’ve written a draft constitution, say for maybe a more libertarian constitution for a more libertarian region in the past.And with Liberland, for example, I was asked to help draft a constitution, and I was always conflicted on what that meant. Because number one, I’m an anarchist and I’m a libertarian. And a constitution is a document that authorizes and sets up a new government or a new state. That’s what the US Constitution was. Everyone thinks it’s a protection of our rights because that is one of some of the features of it that were used to sell it in a propaganda sense. But if you just think about the word constitute constitution, it means to make up to create a new government. It establishes the authority and the legitimized powers of that state. And true, it says here’s what the government can do, but here’s what it can’t do, which is it can’t violate your rights, the Bill of Rights, things like that. So it grants powers to this new state, but it also tries to limit them and keep them from being totally unlimited. But the fact that this new state is restricted from completely violating the rights of the people in the territory that it governs doesn’t mean that its purpose is to protect rights. Its purpose is to authorize and get this new government going, this new state going, which is what it did.
• So for like Liberland, I was, I was like, well, who owns is is it like going to be like a piece of land that you’re just like this guy Vit who started at Liberland. Are you just claiming ownership of this land just by fiat and so now you own it and it’s more like you’re the proprietor of a shopping mall and you set the rules. So that’s not really a constitution. That’s sort of like how you want to do business or and which is what they wanted. They want to be recognized by other nations in the world. So to do that you have to play the game of pretend to be a sovereign, have a government, have a legislature, have a population, all the criteria for statehood under the international sphere. And of course that meant I’m just writing another constitution. It might be more libertarian than others, but it’s just another statist criminal gang. And it ended up devolving into all kinds of crazy things like animal rights and environmentalism. And so that failed. Also the idea some people is this more utopian idea that we should have these libertarian theorists like I don’t know Walter Block and Rothbard and what others just write the libertarian code for the future society. And there’s several problems with that. Number one, it’s premature. There’s like no need to do it yet. I mean, there’s no pressing need to have a code that I mean, you could write it, but then who’s going to use it? It just be a hypothetical thing. You might as well write a novel and make some money off of it. you know, that has that in it. And the other problem with it is that it it’s based upon this sort of legal positivist mentality that everyone has now, which is even libertarians sometimes have it, which is where they equate law with what’s written down by a legislature, which is legislation or statutes. And that’s because we’ve lost the connection just like in the modern age. We’ve lost the connection to we we’ve forgotten what life used to be like in the pre-industrial age. Like you know, life was nasty and short, right? Solitary and brutish. You living with nature is not nice. And so we’ve kind of forgotten that because we have so many creature comforts and wealth now. And of course this means this leads to the socialist and the welfare type just wanting to redistribute it and take take the wealth and redistribute it forgetting that if you start doing that too much you’re going to undermine the incentives and the property rights needed to create it in the first place right and in like vain we have forgotten that law originally arose over thousands of years in primarily in two main systems in the Roman law and in the English common law.
• The Roman law was the earlier one. It started around 500 BC and lasted for about a thousand years. And it developed in that 1,000-year period. The Rome developed an extremely sophisticated body of private law developed in a in a kind of decentralized case law type system. It wasn’t by legislation primarily. There was some legislation, but the body of the rules were developed by judges hearing disputes and trying to do the just thing and gradually arising upon solutions and that became the private law of Rome. And then the similar thing happened in England for about the last 10,000 years the English common law. Both were decentralized systems that developed largely similar bodies of private law, property rights, marriage issues, contract, torts, crime, that kind of thing. But over in the last 100 or so years, ever since the emergence of democracies and the abolition of monarchies after World War I, let’s say, with the emergence of the bureaucratic state and the welfare state and the modern central planning state, legislation became an increasingly dominant source of law to the point where when people say like these income tax protesters, these libertarians who say that the income tax is voluntary, they’ll say, “Show me the law.” And what they mean is, “Find a statute that says it’s illegal to evade income tax.”
• And I’m not getting to the argument about whether they’re right or wrong. They’re wrong, I believe, as a legal matter. But the thing is they’re thinking of law as what’s written down. And that’s because most people now think of the law as what’s written down in a in a statute because they’ve come to identify law that way. Anyway, these libertarians who want these these libertarian philosophers to write down the legal code, they imagine law as being written down, number one, maybe not by a legislator, but by some smart philosopher. And but they’re thinking when they say law code, they’re thinking analogous to legal codes, which are usually statutes like the civil codes of Europe and things like that. And they’re forgetting that law emerged in a process. Now it is true that law always is based upon certain primordial fundamental values that are widely shared in society like peace and prosperity and the opposite of that conflict and violence. The whole purpose of law is to come up with property rights that identify owners of scarce resources that have that could be conflict over so that disputes are minimized because people know how to avoid violating others property rights and so that when there’s a dispute we can determine who really is the owner and we can move forward. That’s the whole purpose of private law. But the point is that it emerges from these basic principles but it emerges slowly over time in a in a decentralized lawfinding process. So it would be futile for a libertarian theorist to write it down from his armchair because whenever law happens, whenever law develops in a decentralized process, it’s always in a context of a dispute between two or more real people over a real resource in a given context. That is in a given history, in a given time, with a given set of customs. The court can call witnesses. It can get evidence. It can take into account whatever is relevant and then it can make a decision trying to do justice and that’s how the law develops.
• But when you have all these armchair hypotheticals, they’re almost always unspecified, which is one problem like I have with these libertarians who say something like would you push the button to abolish the state? And yeah, they’re trying to get at the fact, are you a radical or not a radical? Are you are you a mediotist or a gradualist? And that’s all fine, but what they’re forgetting is that the hypothetical is not usually specified enough to answer the question. Like there’s another famous hypothetical like if you in a in a tall building in New York and someone falls off off the balcony above you and on the way down they grab onto your flag pole that’s jutting from your apartment and they’re hanging from it and they want to come in, right, to save their lives. If they come in, would that be trespass or do you have an obligation to let them in? Or if you if you refuse to let them in and they fall to their death, are you responsible? Right? And the problem with these types of hypotheticals is there’s not enough context. I mean, if this was a real case, the judge or the jury could ask questions that you could you could have a witness. You could say, “Was there a contract?” Like, “Who owned the building? Did the owner of the building have a contract or an understanding or a term that everyone is secure in their apartment? But if there’s an emergency like this, you have to let someone in. I mean, we don’t know because we didn’t ask the question because the hypothetical wasn’t specified enough. So, that’s one problem with trying to generate a code from hypotheticals.
• With all that as a background, I do think that it is good to have a coherent statement of libertarian principles. Now, this is separate and apart from a sustained argument defending these principles, right? So, but it’s actually useful to state them. So, now you can know what to defend, right? So like my book Legal Foundations of Free Society provides a lot of my arguments in favor of these principles and elaborations of what the principles should be. But it’s also useful to like libertarians are used to saying libertarianism is about the non-aggression principle not initiating force but that’s actually that’s obviously a compact and shorthand way of pointing to what our principles are. It’s not complete because it’s more like metonymy. It’s like using a concept to refer to a bigger group of concepts that are associated with it.

Topic: Continuation Approval

13:20

• Mark Maresca: You’re doing perfect because this is leading to essentially what the purpose of writing it was. That’s perfect.

Topic: Refining Libertarian Principles

13:27

• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. Okay. So, and so the non-aggression principle is not sufficient. And as I’ve thought about this over the years and I’ve realized that the non-aggression principle is not fundamental or primary because it refers to your so when we say we’re against aggression that’s another way of saying that someone is an owner of their body. Okay, they’re just alternative ways of saying the same thing. So if I say I’m against aggression against someone’s body, that’s another way of saying they own their body, right? There are alternative ways of saying the same thing. But when you say that then libertarians extend that principle and they say aggression includes trespass against people’s owned resources like walking across their lawn or stealing their car. But it’s a little bit awkward to refer to that as aggression because aggression usually means physically striking someone’s body. That’s what aggression is.So I think the best way to look at it is that opposing aggression means agreeing that people are self owners of their bodies, but the reason they’re self owners of their bodies justifies extending their ownership onto other things. So by homesteading or by contract. So then when you think about it that way, you realize that aggression is a derivative term or concept because you can’t know what aggression is unless you identify what property rights are. And after all, that is the purpose of rights is to establish borders and control linkages between people and resources so that other people can avoid committing aggression or using people’s resources without their permission if they want to do that and so that we can remedy it after the fact in a court proceeding.So once you look at it like that you realize we the fundamental thing for libertarians is to define and identify what people’s rights are and in very sum form which is the core of my principles that I wrote it is everyone is a presumptive owner of their body and for external resources that were previously unowned and unused when there’s a conflict over that resource there’s a need to identify who the owner is the owner is determined in accordance with three very simple principles of the private law. The Roman law and the common law and those are original appropriation or homesteading or occupation. That is the first person who started using an unknown thing is the presumptive initial owner and then contract because the owner can transfer it to someone else by contract or by gift. And then the third principle would be rectification. That is if you commit a violation a tort against someone else that is a trespass you use their resource their body or another resource that they own without their permission then you owe them some kind of compensation or rectification and so you might have to transfer some of your resources to them to compensate them.So those are those four principles are like the core of the private law and they’re the core of libertarian principles. What I would say is they’re the core of libertarianism because libertarianism is a more consistent working out of the principles of the private law of the Roman law and the English law. Those two systems are roughly defined by those principles, but not fully consistently because they make lots of exceptions because the state was involved, right, with legislation and with the need to tax and with exceptions for the state, sovereign immunity, taxation power, that kind of thing. So, the principles were not fully implemented or respected, but they were mostly respected. That’s the core essence of the private law is these four principles which is self ownership, ownership of a resource by original appropriation, by contract or for purposes of rectification for a tort. So that’s basically it.And therefore I thought it would be useful to and I think at my point in my life and my writing and thinking I’ve written on intellectual property. I have a good understanding of law, practical law and legal theory and libertarian theory, political philosophy, history, American constitutional law, utilitarianism, minarchism and anarchism, Austrian economics, which I think is critical to have a solid understanding of the social sciences, and also intellectual property, which I had to figure out because it was a big puzzle. But doing that helped me deepen my understanding of the bases of other aspects of libertarian property rights. So I thought I was at a position where I could do this.

  Now I was approached by a guy with a project. His name is Fremax. Now he’s going to have an announcement in the next few weeks about the project. I agreed to join on as an excuse to motivate me to finally do this. I have been asked for example over the years like by the Mises caucus or by the libertarian party itself for its platform to help them draft their platforms which is sort of like a similar project coming up with a codified statement. It would be embedded in a platform so it would have other things too and I actually did that about three years ago at the Libertarian Party convention when I was involved and I became a member of the judicial committee but before that I was with the Mises caucus and I was asked to reformulate their statement of principles about property rights. Now, the purpose of doing that was we were going to put in there an anti-intellectual property plank. We actually didn’t end up having time to do that because time ran out. But as a precursor to that, I did sort of formulate these rules that I just mentioned.

  I said libertarianism is opposed to aggression and aggression is the use of someone’s resource without their consent. And their resource is defined in accordance with these principles which is self ownership, original appropriation, contract, and rectification. That’s it. So to me, that’s the most important thing. So that is in the Libertarian Party platform right now and like the Mises Caucus has asked me to do something similar. So when this guy Max asked me if I wanted to help him draft a constitution for his new country, I said no, let’s not do a constitution because it’s not going to be a country. Let’s just have a statement of principles which identifies and defines what libertarians believe in. And then that could be used as the basis for any region wanting to adopt principles of liberty. To the extent you want to adopt the principles of liberty, you could point to and say we all agree to this universal statement of principles.

  Now my first draft which I wrote by myself was I called it the fundamental principles of justice. At that point in time I got Max and I enlisted three other attorneys that I’m good friends with and very familiar with their work. One is an American named Pat Tinsley who co-authored with me chapter eight of my book on causation. He’s an attorney in Boston and Aleandro Fusillo who’s an Italian and German attorney who I know from Property and Freedom Society meetings in Turkey and also David Durr a Swiss attorney from the same thing from the PFS meeting. So they helped and Hans Hermann Hoppe sort of looked over our shoulders on this. So I using my fundamental principles of justice we came up with together collaboratively the universal principles of liberty which incorporates that and had made some changes. So it was a collaborative effort. I was probably the primary author but it was a collaborative effort between all five of us. We published it about a month ago, two, three, four weeks ago.

  And now we’re going to now my next thing is I’m going to write a commentary on it, which I did not want to do as part of the I didn’t want to have footnotes and legislative comments, so to speak, because they’re not officially part of it. And I also avoided certain topics which are not universally agreed upon by libertarians. Like we didn’t mention abortion or the age of consent. We left that open because and we debated about whether to include intellectual property because although we all agreed with me on IP, some libertarians don’t agree with that, but it’s such an intellectual outcome of the way the principles are worded. We put that in there. But we didn’t put in abortion. So there might be secondary codes by other people or by me which would be like an augment or supplement like so you could have some region adopt the core principles but then they might adopt a secondary version of it like on top of that or maybe they might adopt the American restatements as a way to interpret it to the extent that they’re consistent with those principles or you might adopt the civil code like the French civil code if you wanted to those are like the secondary layers or more optional layers.

  But I’m going to write my own commentary on it. Including footnotes, references, and some suggestions as to way like I think, article 7 should be interpreted this way. But it’s just my opinion as a secondary scholar or commentator and other people might have different views. So that’s where we are now in the process. And I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. And one more thing, because I’m really familiar with the civil code of Louisiana, my home state, and the Roman law, and I’m very familiar with the restatements of law, the universal commercial code, with legislation in general. I have a love for the Roman law and the civil law. And I tried to write the code, knowing everything I know now. I try to write my principles in an elegant way more similar to the way the Louisiana civil code is written like it gives some examples is somewhat pedagogical and but not completely and it doesn’t give arguments for the principles but it does give some motivations sometimes but I tried to write it generally it’s not going to read to a common lawyer like a common law statute would it’s more general and it should be more general because these are the core principles that we hope that future justice tribunals would refer to when they’re deciding adding new cases, new problems, and where they’re having to develop the law, but hopefully based upon and consistent with the core principles.

Topic: Practical Applications and Use Cases

23:34

• Mark Maresca: Yes. And that does seem to be at least from my impression it’s most likely use case meaning either at the point where entrepreneurs or developers are establishing some sort of free territory free community they’ll want to introduce this as a sort of guard rail for everything else that follows or as they develop and as they evolve as judges are adjudicating specific cases and they run into some gray area. This is sort of a guide to make sure we don’t want to deviate from these fundamental rules.
• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. And you could even imagine you could imagine like a more statist like Liberland or some kind of more statist or maybe this Dubai there’s a Dubai free market zone or maybe in Prospera in Honduras they could adopt these principles to the extent not inconsistent with their basic constitution. So the way we’re doing it is the opposite. We’re saying that these principles cannot be violated. So any secondary codes you want to put on top are fine. Like if you want to say we’re adopting the American restatements of law as a restatement of the American Anglo-American common law but only to the extent that they’re compatible with the fundamental principles because there are some parts of the common law which are not libertarian.And by the way I’m that’s but I’m going to Turkey in about two weeks for the annual property and freedom society meeting and the topic of my talk is where the common law goes wrong. So, I’m actually going to talk about how the common law and the Roman law, how they’re largely compatible with these principles, but there are some areas where we don’t agree with it. Like, for example, the common law has reputation rights under defamation law, and it makes blackmail a crime, but a strict reading of libertarian principles would say, “No, you can’t have those type of laws.” So there are some adjustments you might have to make to the common law. Right. So, but anyway, the point is we’re saying that yeah, a judge in a given community which has adopted the principles we have could adopt the restatements as a guiding secondary source, but only to the extent compatible with the principles. But what I’m saying is you could have a more statist like a more minarchist document like Liberland could have could say the Liberland constitution has the following principles like let’s say it had taxation is permitted up to 5% or something like that. That’s incompatible with mine. But so he could say something like we adopt the universal principles of liberty to the extent not incompatible with our constitution. So mine would be subsidiary, but it still could inform how the Liberland law would be interpreted in a new case or a case where law needs to develop, but it wouldn’t you couldn’t use it to say let taxation is banned because it is permitted by the constitution, something like that. So I could see it being used in cases like that as well.

Topic: Modular Design and Adoption Flexibility

26:30

• Mark Maresca: Yeah. And the more I read it, the more it did seem to have that higher level use case. Because at first I guess I read the fundamental principles first and in that you actually have a signatory area and there isn’t a signatory area in the final universal principles and that made me realize yeah let me explain that. So my original idea was I thought it would I would thought of this in a modular way. You would have say four documents. Number one would be a declaration sort of like the Declaration of Independence but more like an individual thing like we hereby declare that we agree with the fundamental principles. So you would have a declaration of adoption which has a signature line. By the way J Neil Smith the science fiction writer tried something like this about 40 years ago called the covenant of unanimous consent which is similar to mine except it’s less detailed and it’s more aspirational. Anyway, so you have a declaration, you have the principles, and then you would have secondary principles. And I was going to put in there the things that are controversial, like abortion, and then I forgot what the fourth one was. I was going to have maybe commentary or something, but anyway, I was going to do it in three or four parts, but when we drafted the principles, we decided to do it as just one document. However Max has added a signature page to the one and he’s using that as part of his project which he’s going to get more details on in a few weeks. So one use of it is to add a signature page for people to indicate their ascent to these principles. So you could have people sign it and that would make sense I guess if a person like Max let’s say said I want to use this for this specific purpose. If we think forward though in the transition to free communities and so on, is it something you would expect the common man to have to sign before they could, let’s say, join that community or could they simply not even be aware of it? It’s just really just part of society.
• Stephan Kinsella:I think it could be either way. I mean, I think it so it depends upon your view about how we’re ever going to achieve liberty. So if we imagine a future world of liberty and I personally think liberty is a spectrum is a degree and it’s also a binary in the sense of a free society has to be anarchist because you have to have no state because as long as you have a state and the state is an institutionalized agent of aggression then you have a major source of aggression. So you will never have total freedom, let’s say, as long as the state’s around. But even if you get rid of the state, you’re going to always have private aggression. So you can never have a totally crime-free or justice respecting society. It is you can only aspire to it. But my personal view is liberty is possible. And you can imagine it happening as the human race matures, gets richer, gets more evolved in a sense.As the state withers away and as that happens, more and more civil liberties and regular liberties will be naturally respected by people. They might not even know why. Just it might become as the human race grows up and matures. Or it could be because Bitcoin the state collapses, I don’t know, the aliens come down and make us become libertarian. I don’t know. But so you could imagine these principles being used as like someone goes, “Oh, this is an elegant restatement of the principles we already pretty much all agree with here in this territory.” Or it could be explicitly adopted by people like major players move into an area and start developing it and they all agree indicate that they agree with these principles and that’s what they intend to do and then people moving there know that they’re moving into an area where most people agree with that already. You know, like there’s some there’s like a town I read about this this Hasidic town, this Jewish town in New York, which is like 100% Jewish. I mean, you’re welcome there if you’re not Jewish, but no one moves there who’s not Jewish and everyone dresses conservatively. It’s just the local customs and you could imagine things like that happening in different regions. This is all speculative. We don’t know exactly, but we’re trying to do our part by having something in writing that people can point to at least however they end up adopting it, whether it’s implicitly, you know, by a code by some private developer or by some private court system saying it.

Topic: Organic Evolution and Individual Rights

30:59

• Mark Maresca: Well, that and that it’s important, I think, to emphasize that because we don’t want to we don’t want this to appear top down. You know, you have to sign it. It’s going to, you know, there’s only one way to implement it. Not at all. It’s really just going to be part of the organic evolution of whatever type of arrangement. So Max may want people to sign it. Someone else may say no, you know, people are adopters by default. You know, they’ll have to demonstrate they don’t agree with it or whatever it may be. One of the things I love about it, though, is all the nuggets of getting out of the pitfalls of the typical areas that could hang us up sometimes. So when you for example when you define I love up in the definition section you could just stay with that and play with that for days and realize how fruitful it is. When you define person you make it very clear it does not extend to any kind of collectivized fictitious or legal associations. So right there you’re eliminating a lot of problems by trying to imply or by the other side implying that say corporations have rights. Were you thinking of that when you define that?
• Stephan Kinsella:Yes. And we also kept the we didn’t say the word human, we said persons because we left it general. So and so for example that doesn’t specify where the age of personhood begins. So that’s why it doesn’t foreclose having different views on the abortion issue. And it also doesn’t foreclose AIs or space aliens or animals having rights if they’re intelligent enough to have rights. So we left it general enough because again there’s disagreement about this, but also it’s not necessary in a general statement of principles. Sure you even call them sentient beings I think. So I mean that doesn’t have to be an organic, biological, human.And the other thing about it is it also excludes class rights. A class of workers wouldn’t have rights because rights is in the definition section. Rights is clearly an individual sentient being oriented framework. Yeah. Because this is rooted in is rooted in Austrian economics understanding of human action. Right. Human action. Of course he’s talking only about humans because there’s only humans that were the subjects, but human action or praxiology would refer to purpose of action by any sentient being. So but anyway but it so it’s it’s it’s defined in the context of an understanding of human action as the purposive use of means to achieve ends which is which is always an individual action because only individuals can choose to do things and can employ means and have individual goals. So it’s all bound up in individualism, methodological individualism of Mises and of the Austrian school and just the idea that the individual is the primary actor in society and in community and it’s the actors that use resources and that can have disputes with each other or conflict with each other which is the purpose of law and rights. So it’s all natural. It’s all a natural thing.And another reason, by the way, that we left it the principles as sort of not particular like a detailed statute and not something you have to sign on to is because they’re meant to be a restatement and a consistent way of stating the intuitions most people have already. So most people are peaceful and want they want their neighbors to do well. Even if they have a higher interest on themselves and their own life, they still are basically have well you know they have empathy for others. That’s why we’re social beings. So most people already value they disvalue conflict and they value peace and prosperity and overall well-being of humankind. Those values inform and imbue the principles and they inform the natural intuitions most people have in who are against rape and murder and theft and stealing.

Topic: Ownership and Joint Property

34:54

• Mark Maresca: Also under the definition section under ownership, I like how you avoided the pitfall of making clear that resources may be owned by individuals or jointly. There’s a wing, I guess, of the libertarian movement that doesn’t see as legitimate joint ownership. All ownership of all resources must be individual. You’re familiar with that?
• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. Yeah. There’s been a debate recently. There’s been two related debates. One is about the concept of the ownership status of state-owned property and this comes into play in the immigration debate and the other one is about co-owned property. And it’s related because so some of the opponents of state controls over immigration, one of their arguments is that the state has no right to exclude from private public property like roads outsiders because this the property is unowned. Now I think that’s wrong. It’s not unowned. I’d say it’s rightfully owned by the citizens. So it’s not unowned, number one. And number two, if you say that the state is the legal owner of resources that are rightfully owned by the taxpayers, let’s say, or the citizens, then that means that they have a claim on it. And if we could abolish the state, which would be the ideal, then that property would be returned to the owners, the rightful owners, which are the citizens, but it would have to be returned to them somehow because in other words, it means they have a joint claim against that resource. So they are joint owners right now. And if we abolish the state, they would be joint owners until we decided what to do with it.Like if we maybe they sell maybe they sell it off and they get the money, everyone gets a pro rata share of the money or something. But the point is there’s a period of time where there would be joint owners. So joint ownership is possible and property controlled by the state is not unowned except for like the untransformed mountains or something that are natural resources that are not you could argue those are unowned but you know roads and bridges and government buildings warships and other things are not unowned. So the principles is meant to recognize that recognize that there can be joint ownership and the reason there could be joint ownership by the way is that once you recognize that there could be individual ownership of homesteaded resources and there could be contracts which is the second way to transfer ownership then if you just combine those things you can have effectively what’s what we could call co-ownership.To me the terminology doesn’t matter. You if you want to be a stickler and be and you want to say there’s always only one owner of a resource at a given time then you’re just fighting common usage of words because if you have a husband and wife let’s say who agree to buy a house together with their joint resource to pull their resources in a communal way then they effectively have a combination of ownership and contract rights which gives them enough ownership rights over that resource that we can always decide who is the who has the right to use it. So a third party has no right to use it unless he has the permission of the husband and the wife. And as between them, if they have a dispute, well, they’re supposed to be partners and they’re supposed to figure this out on their own. But if they can’t figure it out, then they have to get a divorce. And then in the divorce, you have to split the assets anyway. So, and the contract between them would say who gets what. So the combination of Lockean homesteading or original appropriation on an individual basis plus the right to contract between people is enough to come up with a situation where we could describe that as co-ownership.

Topic: Elimination of Positive Law Pitfalls

38:42

• Mark Maresca: Another thing you did was tying together the concepts of resources law and rights and by doing that you basically eliminated I think the pitfall of the conception of positive law emerging such as welfare rights.
• Stephan Kinsella:Yes. And another way to think about that is it’s one argument I’ve made in the intellectual property context. I’ve tried to point out to people that let’s talk about patent and copyright only, not trademark. I say trademark it did emerge on the common law and it’s a mistake. That’s one of these areas of common law that is a mistake of the common law like defamation law, trademark law, reputation rights, blackmail. But patent and copyright did not emerge on the common law. They emerged by statute only. And once you understand that property rights can only be protected by a legal system that emerges based upon these core principles and in a decentralized legal process that generates these rules, right? Once you understand that, you understand that legislation is not only an inferior way of making law. It’s not a way of making law at all. It’s just an intrusion into the law.So that’s an auxiliary argument against patent and copyright is that they came about from legislation and they can only come about from legislation. They could never have emerged on the private law. The reason is because private law is generated when there’s two disputants over a resource and they go to court and the judge’s job is to do justice and try to allocate the ownership of that resource to one of the parties based upon evolved principles of law and intuitions of fairness and property rights and that kind of stuff. And in such a system you just could never have I mean I think Bastiat makes exactly the same point in the law. You could never have someone in court say I’m entitled to some of this guy’s money because I have a welfare right to positive support. Or you could never say I have a right to some of his money because he fired me from a job at his company and that violates my right to be not discriminated against according to the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Because that’s not part of the private law. Judges don’t have the authority to just make statutes up.The only way you get these positive rights is by legislation and so they just could never emerge in a decentralized form on the law can make mistakes about property rights like defamation or trademark law but it can’t just wholesale invent a new legislative scheme that grants positive rights so yeah we were thinking about that but by recognizing that raw law has to be based upon these intuitive principles which emerged from the Roman law and the common law applying the basic values people already have. Then you could never you could never have something that contradicts that emerge later. You can only have that with legislation which is the whole purpose of statutes and legislation is to change the course of the developed law that is organically grown which is why we should always oppose legislation which is not law. That’s the opposite of law and we should oppose any type of law that can only come about from legislation like patent copyright welfare rights like the right to vote even equal protection laws like anti-discrimination laws the Americans with Disabilities Act all these types of laws are just purely creatures of statute and could never be compatible with the private law and could never emerge on the private law because there’s no such thing as legislation in a free society.

Topic: Consent and Social Contract Critique

42:18

• Mark Maresca: Exactly. And you know on the flip side of that you covered consent itself and right there you’re telling us that the presumption in consent is the most recent communication of consents and that prevails and I think that all but eliminates any concern over introducing a social contract type of consent.
• Stephan Kinsella:Correct. Correct. So consent is consent is an aspect of ownership. So ownership means the who the owner of something is and to own means the right to exclude by withholding your consent for someone to use the resource. And consent has to be a matter of language and communication. You have to communicate your consent. You got to say yes or no to for someone to have permission to use something you own or for them to not have permission. So it’s all part so that’s why we consent is a communicated consent of the owner to either grant permission or to deny permission and that’s at the root also of contractual transfer of resources.So if you once you understand that your body rights are your rights because they’re you basically now again the principles don’t justify this that’s a different argument. The justification is given in my book. The justification is your is your unique connection to your body. But anyway, that’s the reason for it. But the connection is this. And so once you understand that and you so consent is always yes or no, you can touch my body. In the case of resources which you acquire which were previously unowned, you acquire them not as mere possessor but as an owner which means you have the intent to own. Gain intent, the expression of your intent to own is a matter of communication with others. That’s what putting borders around things. That’s why that’s significant. That’s why homesteading, part of that is establishing a publicly visible connection between you and a resource, either by possessing it or by embroidering it or transforming it, doing something that sets up a connection between you and the thing. But then contract is just the owner abandoning it in favor of someone else by transferring it to them.Once you think of rights that way, a contract is is is not an obligation that arises because you make a promise. And again, this is why I felt the time was right to write this because I felt equipped to do it because I had completely absorbed Rothbard’s radical understanding of contracts as being different than what the law has in the past as being the law views it as being a binding obligation. Once you view contracts as binding obligations, then you have the argument for social contract theory for for for slavery for voluntary slavery contracts, things like that. Once you realize that ownership of a resource gives you the right as owner to get rid of it by abandoning it, it’s just a transfer of title to someone else. It’s not any it’s got nothing to do with promises or binding obligations. Then that whole issue doesn’t even emerge. So the whole social contract argument would just would make no sense because we don’t even think of contracts as binding obligations in the first place.

Topic: Aggression and Restitution

45:30

• Mark Maresca: Uh on aggression itself how would you handle within the context of the document the concern that without consent how would you justify a restitution claim? So there’s a restitution claim the person or a claim let’s say and then the person who committed the aggression says I don’t consent to that. We in a sense we don’t see the traditional non-aggression principle phraseology there. Don’t initiate aggression.
• Stephan Kinsella:It’s implied by the logic of the way it’s structured because aggression means the use of someone’s resource without their consent. But the principles clearly say in a couple places that there there’s a right to self-defense. So it distinguishes between the initiation of force or aggression and defensive force or responsive force forces in response to that. And because it also recognizes the concept of rectification for trespass, it implicitly recognizes that if you commit an act of aggression, then a use of force against you like in self-defense, for example, is not aggression, which means that you have basically in a way you’ve consented to self-defense. If you’re an aggressor, you’ve consented to you’ve effectively granted consent or permission for someone to use your body to defend themselves against your act of aggression. In other words, you can’t complain about it.And by the same token, if you’ve trespassed against them and committed damage or harm to them by using their property without their permission, that calls for rectification or compensation, which can only be satisfied by them taking some of your property to compensate them, which means that the property title has to change, which means that it doesn’t require your permission, right? Which means that it’s implied in your act of aggression that you’re effectively transmitting some of your resources to the victim for compensation. So you can think of it as a type that’s why in some of my formulations I won’t say struggled but I debated whether to include rectification as a subtype of contract or as its own thing. It doesn’t really matter how we classify it, but you could view it as the primary property right is from original occupation or appropriation. And then the subsidiary right is the right to use your ownership to transfer it to someone else. And there could be two types of that. One is a voluntary normal like a gift or a sale. But the other would be when you commit an act of aggression, now you’re consenting to transfer some of your property to the victim as compensation. Like it’s implied in your act.Just like when you commit an act of aggression, it’s implied that you’re consenting to self-defense, defense of force being used against you, you’re also consenting to a transfer of the resource to someone else. And you can’t complain. That’s why at first I was as I perused it the first time I thought he never mentioned a stopple. He never mentioned a stopple. No, because that’s a justification. Yeah, that’s a justification of the principles, but the principles themselves stand alone. Someone might not agree with my estoppel principle or with Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, but they would if they’re a libertarian, these principles are supposed to accurately codify and restate what they already implicitly believe to the extent that they’re a libertarian for whatever reason. Even if they’re an intuitionist or utilitarian or a consequentialist or have a theological basis, it doesn’t really matter what the reason for. To the extent that you’re a libertarian, these principles are supposed to be an accurate elegant and fairly comprehensive restatement of that.

Topic: Natural Law and Mass Destruction Devices

49:20

• Mark Maresca: Yeah, exactly. That’s why you’re not getting into, you know, we’re basing it on natural law versus anything else. Because those they’re in the mind of the person reading it if they’re a natural law person they’re going to derive those foundational principles themselves. Uh I like how you put in a little section there about devices of mass destruction. That was very interesting. You once again sort of undercut one of the common concerns about libertarian or an anarchist society. Wouldn’t it be wouldn’t it happen that anyone now could build a nuclear bomb in their basement? By the way, I don’t know why it’s always the basement. I guess that’s sounds a little creepier. But you addressed that by well, why don’t you go into that a little?
• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah, that was that was actually Max’s idea, Freemax’s idea. I was a little bit reluctant to put that in the principles, not because I disagree with it, but because it’s a little detailed. And just like I posted about this the other day. I was thinking about it back in law school at LSU in Louisiana. There was a vote coming up where the citizens could vote on various like 13 amendments to the Louisiana Constitution. And I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper giving my libertarian reasons for voting yes or no on each one of those 13 things. Like I said, well, this one seems like it would increase taxes, so no. This one seems like it wouldn’t hurt anything, so yes. But one of my professors who’s a deep civil law scholar, Professor Hardgrave, pulled me aside and he says, “I don’t disagree with what you said, but you should have said vote no to all of them because none of them belong in a constitution.” Constitution.So I was thinking like just like a libertarian yes or no. Do I agree with this principle? But a constitution is supposed to be and that’s what civil codes are. Civil codes are elegant restatements of the law just like the restatements of the law and the uniform commercial code or sort of restatements of the common law. But it’s not supposed to get into a lot of detail like common law statutes typically do like the ADA would do or like the civil rights statutes would do. So it just was out of place. So I thought maybe the prohibition on weapons of mass destruction shouldn’t be in there. It should be held for a secondary code. But he thought it was good to put in there because it’s such a big issue. And I was simply careful to write it in a way that didn’t make them per se illegal because you could imagine context like it like let’s say you have a nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb, and you want to use it for asteroid mining or something or scientific experimentation in an area where no one else is around. If you could use it peacefully, then there would be no objection to that.It’s just that as most libertarians have written in the past in today’s world, their only use would be it would have to kill innocent people. Which is one reason libertarians are opposed to war. It’s not because we’re pacifists. It’s because when the state engages in war, the modern state always commits aggression because number one, it has to tax or conscript its own citizens to pay for it. And number two, it almost always kills innocent people on the other side. That’s collateral damage we call it. So that’s the and then if you have the nuclear bomb, it’s always going to kill innocent people. So it’s per se libertarian because it’s per se aggressive. So that’s one reason we put that in there and I’m happy with it.

Topic: Broader Threat Considerations

52:41

• Mark Maresca: I think it’s fruitful though in other respects or it can be for example it doesn’t have to be mass destruction. Couldn’t it also be I don’t know chemical or biological? He’s doing research. But he’s got such a deadly virus or a deadly biological agent that it could I’ll ask you, do you think something like that could still pose a standing threat if you don’t know what kind of precautions they’re taking?
• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. And you could make arguments that things that are even not covered by that paragraph are still within the principles. You just have to make the argument. And my personal view has always been that in a future anarchist society lots of the things people are worried about like nuclear weapons even if you didn’t have these principles that basically had a statement like this making it clear would probably be prohibited by custom or by insurance companies. Like an insurance company is not going to give insurance to people in a given region if they don’t all agree not to have nuclear weapons because the damage from that could be so severe that the insurance it could bankrupt the insurance company. So you could imagine private incentives working to allay these fears anyway.And by the way and another advantage of having a provision like that in there is pedagogical or exemplary. In other words, when you have a clear statement of something in there like that that’s concrete, that can help inform how you interpret the more general provisions in there, which is another reason why we had at the end that statement of illiberal or unjust laws, which is sort of like our bill of rights. I don’t know if you were going to get to that, but that at the end or whatever, but we debated whether to include that, but we decided to just like in the US Constitution, the framers had to add the Bill of Rights as a condition of the other states agreeing to adopt the Constitution in 1787. So, they they I’m sorry, 1789. So, in 1791, the Bill of Rights was added as had been agreed that they would do. Even though some people said it’s not necessary to have a bill of rights because the federal government is not granted the authority to violate free speech rights, the anti-federalist wanted it anyway in there anyway as extra precaution against a state which is dangerous.So we don’t have a state. We’re not endorsing a state in our statement of principles, but we are saying what the principles are and saying that for example the following types of laws are clearly unjust in light of the above principles is a way to help you interpret those principles in other cases. So we said for example that patent law and copyright law and laws banning firearm possession. I can’t remember what else we put in there, but we gave some our drug laws or taxation. We to be extra sure, we said, listen, if in case there’s any doubt, the laws against aggression, the rule against aggression does mean that you can’t have a law that requires taxation or conscription or a drug law.

Topic: Transitional Relevance and Legislative Influence

55:44

• Mark Maresca: Yeah. I think you absolutely need something like that especially at this transitional period because the carryover inertia of the past is going to make people think that oh well sure but yeah my governing developer still it’s going to have a monopoly on say money you covered money welfare rights things like that and it helps just sweep that away at the outset.
• Stephan Kinsella:Yeah. Another thing I found interesting is most legislation around the world is common law based and is very detailed and the reason it’s more detailed is because in the common law countries the presumption is that the common law is the basic law and the judges are sort of jealous of their turf and they’re going to interpret any statute narrowly that tries to come in and change the common law. So, that’s one reason statutes are so detailed is because they’re trying to force the judges to ignore the common law and to go a new direction. So they’re not principled, they’re ad hoc, they’re very detailed, but one thing they almost never do is give examples because their purpose is just to force the judge to do what they want to do.In the civil law countries like in Europe and in Louisiana, my home state, which are basically they’re legislation, but they’re codifications of the Roman law basically. So they’re more elegant. They’re not as particular as statutes because there’s not as much hostility towards the codes because the judges there are more administrators of the law and they’re aware that and there’s not a common law tradition there to fight against and they’re aware that the purpose of these civil codes was a restatement of the customary law in Europe and the Roman law. So the judges are happy to apply it. So it doesn’t have to be as detailed. So they’re more elegant. They’re more general and abstract sort of like our principles are. But in some countries, in some areas, they’re also more pedagogical.So for example, in Louisiana, which adopted the first civil code was the French civil code of 1804, which Louisiana adopted a version of in 1808 because it was a French territory in a Spanish territory. So one of the early civil codes was in Louisiana and it was a codification based upon the French code and the Spanish law of Roman law. Okay. But in 1825 and then the real civil code was 1825. So in 1825 Louisiana there were no law schools, there wasn’t a lot of lawyers, there wasn’t a lot of reading material, there wasn’t a lot of treatises and one of the purposes of the civil code was to promulgate what the legal principles would be for the benefit of the lawyers and the judges, but also for the citizens. The citizens were supposed to be able to read this to know what the law was, which is a noble goal. And because of all that, sometimes the civil code would give examples. So it was partly pedagogical in the sense of it would it didn’t give the reasons always but it would give like it would say something like you know this is this is a category of rights for example and it would give an example. So it’s a concrete application of the principle that was just stated and that was one reason that inspired me to have a little bit of that flavor in the principles.And the idea was that yeah, the civil code in Louisiana in 1825 was in a developing territory without a lot of legal materials and a lot of lot without a lot of law schools and all that stuff. But we’re in a similar position now because we’re trying to pioneer and do something new. Libertarian law is still new because libertarianism has only been around in the modern form for about 60 70 years. So this is still pretty new. So it doesn’t hurt to have a few illustrative examples of these principles without doing what Walter Block and these armchair theorists want to do and have an answer for everything. We can still say the things that we’re pretty settled on now, we can give a few of those examples here and there to help flesh out the way we these principles should be interpreted in the future.

Topic: Future of Free Territories

59:34

• Mark Maresca: Right. Right. It’s awesome. Uh, we’re about at the hour. I had another question, but how’s your time?
• Stephan Kinsella:I’m good for time. This is I just want your view on this. It has nothing to do directly with the detail or content of the document. It’s more about the emergence of free territories or free cities, whatever it’s going to happen in our future as we hope anarchist societies form. Do you expect that the developers or entrepreneurs who kind of spearhead these things, do you think they’ll have to be ancap or do you in other words do you think the success of free territories is causally dependent on these initial people being libertarian enthusiasts or do you think that just by being entrepreneurs who respect contracts and insurance which is going to be part of development they’ll eventually converge anyway to ancap societies?
• Stephan Kinsella:No, that’s the latter is my view. No, I don’t think it has to be that way and I hope it doesn’t have to be that way. Otherwise, we’re screwed. Now there is one unique possible development coming up which Max will announce in the next month or two which is an interesting situation where the principles may might play a role. But no, I think that I think it’s useful to have them for several the principles for several reasons. Number one, have a beacon, have an aspiration, have a point of discussion, clarify thinking going forward. I mean, if libertarian theorists study this, then when they write in the future trying to justify a given or to criticize a given law, they could maybe orient their thinking around this. And so I it could contribute in that way.But it can also like I said earlier you could imagine a constitution a minimal state constitution Liberland or even the operating principles of a free city like let’s say you had some multi-billionaire bitcoin billionaires buy up some land in Utah or in an Indian reservation or in Honduras and they try to set up within that system it’s still owned by the corporation but they might try to set up something that emulates the way anarcho-capitalist law would work, they could draw on to the extent they could the principles that way. And I personally think that if we ever get liberty on a systematic widespread basis where the state has basically either withered away or shrunk into the background, like I imagine you could imagine a world a 100 years from now where you still have states, but they’re sort of like the monarchy in England. Like it’s still around, but it’s like a curiosity piece. And everyone is so rich and powerful and independent operating outside the zone of the state that they just tolerate the federal government’s existence as a curiosity and it’s irrelevant. That’s kind of my hope, my best hope for the future.But in that case, that would be because people have by osmosis or somehow I think it’s because liberty works, right? Freedom works and liberty works. Liberty, as Ayn Rand said, the moral is the practical. And I do think that liberty can work and that it’s the expression of values that most people luckily have because we are an empathetic and social species and most people are decent people and they do share the core values of peace and prosperity and once they get a little bit more economic literacy, right, and they understand the history like I always point out in some of my talks, when The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 or whenever that was 90 91 up until that point in time there was a debate for 30 40 years about which system was better communism or capitalism right well that the collapse of the Soviet Union everyone recognized that socialism lost and capitalism won now that wasn’t because everyone in the world has read Henry Hazlitt or Mises or Rothbard they just they from one experience for one moment in history, they’ve learned that collective, you know, central planning of the economy doesn’t work. And we need capitalism to some large degree. So that’s a teaching moment that has taught people the overwhelming benefits of freedom, right? They’re not consistent about it, of course, but it has taught them something.So my hope is that over time as we get richer and we see the benefits of trade and we get we get richer because of Bitcoin and because of gradual liberalization and technological developments like AI and robots that the ground will be set for the maturing of the human species and the deepening of our of our already decent base principles.

Topic: White Pill Optimism and Timeline

1:04:18

• Mark Maresca: Very well said. And it’s white pilling because it’s how we really think, you know. You wanted to white you said you wanted to white pill me. Go ahead. Make your pitch. Oh, actually that was for Adam. Adam Okay. You’re talking. Yeah. But you’re pretty white pill. I mean what you just said kind of encapsulates what I think. I think it’s going to be organic. The only difference might be that I at least to the extent I thought about it, I’m confident it’s going to happen a lot sooner than later. I don’t have a hundred-year timeline. I think five to 10 years from now we amongst us will not be debating whether we’re in this transition we will all be agreeing we’ve started it’s happening it’s not it hasn’t happened 5 years from now but I think the debate will be over what do you think because I see what will the precip what will be the precipitating event that will make this radical hockey stick start to happen I think that my focus is psychological and okay I think that what sustains the state is basically the myth of political authority. It’s psychological. It’s in the head. And since and then since what people believe translates into actions, those actions are I want to vote. I want my governor to do something for me. There ought to be a law. Those actions are an environment. The environment is basically conducive and hospitable to the bullies, the people who like to boss others around. And that’s essentially why you end up with the attributes and external trappings of a state. In other words, the state happens because of that psychological foundation.
• Stephan Kinsella:I agree. And so, and the only thing that sustains that over time is propaganda. In other words, the government or and its handmaidens like the corporate media have to propagandize in order to sustain that myth in the heads of people. Exactly. Right. Exactly. It’s like a hamster wheel, right? That’s just going to keep going and it has gone for millennia. The only thing that stops the hamster wheel is something on the outside coming in and sort of disrupting that system, that toxic codependency. And that happened and that happened 25 years ago the internet came along and that was the first possibility that propaganda can be undermined because now information flow is decentralized. And if that’s happening, which the first time in history it’s happening, now we’re seeing actually the outward tangible signs that propaganda is failing.If propaganda is failing then that myth of political authority legitimacy is going to be eroding and we already see that to a small extent. It’s the baby steps. I don’t see any reason except an asteroid hitting us or them blowing up the world with nuclear conflagration. I don’t see any reason that trend won’t stop. So to me that’s it’s just a matter of time before the propaganda failed so much that the myth itself erodes to the point where it’s no longer that attractive environment for the even the COVID debacle has helped to some degree disillusioned people. I’m not quite as confident. I mean it’s possible and I’m hopeful. I’ve always saw it as a combination of these things. So I think it’s a and there’s a confluence of other things too that are support. So I do think the internet is a huge which is one reason I am such a strong opponent of copyright is because anything that restricts freedom on the internet is harmful to the probably the greatest tool we have against the state which is communication and information right among people. I mean, so I this why I cannot it boggles my mind when you have libertarians support copyright law because it is clearly a threat to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the internet. So I don’t know why they would support something that is impeding our greatest tool for freedom or now the other tools for freedom could be robotics, AI and post scarcity and Bitcoin those things and they’re all positive for liberty possibly. So I think those four or five things together bode well for the future. How quickly it’s going to happen, I don’t know.

Topic: Technological Convergence and Conclusion

1:08:14

• Mark Maresca: I agree with that. I mean it’s technology in all these different respects including well you said bitcoin money that could just starve the state eventually. And I guess that’s essentially how it would look is that all these other attributes of life that people can avail themselves of will just crowd out the state and it becomes this irrelevancy and fades away. But meantime you have all these enclaves that are that are starting up or potentially starting up including network type of or virtual communities which has promise there too. Subscribe to the various I think Doug Casey calls them files these sort of affinity groups. They don’t have to be geographically connected. They’re files which is what we’re doing now in a sense, right? So maybe these, you know, maybe we don’t have to imagine a territorial area adopting the principles. It could be files or different subgroups of people. So and there’s something I’ve written about before. It’s this idea of Albert J. Nock called the remnant. And you know, we keep the candle burning for the remnant. So that when freedom emerges, it’s a little bit pessimistic in a way, but it’s an explanation of why it’s worth being on the right side of history and being part of the good side. If only to keep the flame burning. But I think we’re doing more than that. I mean activism is one thing and fine but even honing keeping to perpetuating the word of liberty spreading it and developing it and honing it as I try to do with my principles is part of the battle you know for the light for the good not to be too metaphorical poetic but that you know it’s what motivates me to do what I do because I like liberty and goodness and the human race and justice and I like being part of the struggle for what’s good in life and opposing what’s bad and hopeful that the human race can keep improving and maybe radically in our lifetimes or our kids lifetimes.
• Stephan Kinsella:That that is exactly what white pills or that has motivated me. I completely predate the internet in my adopting of libertarianism, anarchism. I go way back to the late ’70s. And you’ll know this and any of us who are old enough know that it was pretty grim back then. You had no idea about when are these ideas going to eventually spread across the world. So yeah, we did think of ourselves as you know all you’re doing is keeping these ideas alive trying to tell others. If we were grown up enough we would realize it’s we’re not going to see it in our lifetime because there was no method by which it would be get spread. Then the internet happens and it did take a few decades to mature to the point where you know it’s basically causing the corporate media to buckle, public schools to buckle, monopoly of money to buckle and we’re here Stephan witnessing it and I never thought we’d witness it and also cell phones and cameras and smartphones that everyone has them connected to the internet but I think cell phones or smartphones are a big part of this as well because you can film so many things now. People are so aware. I mean, a lot of people get pessimistic and they say, “Oh, look how bad things are.” So, I think they’ve always been bad. It’s just now we’re seeing it, right? We’re exposing it.
• Mark Maresca: Right. Right. Right. So, that’s a great place to wrap it up. I encourage everyone to take a look at his universal principles of liberty, which is a wonderful document and very much looking forward to the updates and supplements you’ll be giving us. You said those will be in the next weeks, months.
• Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. I mean I plan to write an annotated commentary on it giving with footnotes and with like if you want to read further see why this principle is in there you can read this document by Rothbard or me or someone else. And here’s my suggestions how it could be modified in the future. But then also Max will have another project which is going to relate to this which will be of interest I think in the next probably in October I think something like that he’ll announce that. So just stay tuned.
• Mark Maresca: Oh perfect perfect. I’ll be excited to read that. Okay, so with that, I think we’ll wrap things up for today. Thanks so much, Stephan, for your generous time today. Really appreciate it.
• Stephan Kinsella: Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
• Mark Maresca: Of course, everyone, please check out Stephan’s work linked in the show notes. Thank you all for joining. Take care and see you next time. Thanks so much to all subscribers and everyone who joined today. And remember, keep looking for those white pills.

Topic: Closing

1:12:40

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