KOL493 | Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape (Porto, Portugal)

by Stephan Kinsella on June 29, 2026

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 493.

This is my talk “Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape,” delivered at “100 Years with Rothbard,” Porto, Portugal, June 27, 2026. (From my iPhone audio; professional video and audio will be uploaded at a later date.)

This was a simply wonderful event. As noted here, 100 Years with Rothbard was held yesterday in beautiful Porto, Portugal (June 27, 2026), sponsored by several Portuguese libertarian groups: Mises Portugal, Catalaxia, Don’t Trust Verify (bitcoin podcast), ZugaTV (libertarian podcast), and Golpe de Estado Podcast (ancap podcasters). It featured and was attended by a number of Property and Freedom Society (PFS) members, including myself, Hans Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, Saifedean Ammous, Thomas Jacob, Gregory and Joy Morin, and Alessandro and Domitia Fusillo. Hoppe, and Ammous and I spoke at the conference along with others. It was a wonderful event, attended by hundreds from Portugal and many other countries.

In addition to the speeches, the cloth print version of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment was presented and released yesterday, as was its Brazilian Portuguese translation, 100 Anos de Rothbard: Uma Homenagem e Apreciação, as well as Fundamentos Legais de uma Sociedade Livre, the European Portuguese translation of my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023).

A full report of the conference will be published presently. In the meantime, for an outside commentary see Rothbard 100, in Porto: A Misunderstood Genius in a Room of People Who Understood.

A few pictures and tweets below, and my speaking notes.

Grok Notes from my Shownotes

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape

Recorded live at the Rothbard at 100 conference
Porto, Portugal • June 27, 2026
Presented by Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org

In this entertaining and insightful talk, Stephan Kinsella delivers his personal “greatest hits” selection from Murray Rothbard’s enormous body of work — the ideas, arguments, and even the funniest moments that have influenced him most over the decades.

Show Notes & Key Points

Libertarianism and Rothbard

Kinsella has been a libertarian since high school (age ~15) — about 45 years.
He became a Rothbard fan just a couple of years later, as soon as he started reading him.
He has been an intellectual property attorney for ~33 years (since 1993) and has been opposed to IP for the same length of time.

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits – A Personal Mix Tape

In his chapter in the new book Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (edited by Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe), Kinsella highlights Rothbard’s most important and interesting insights.

He compares the talk to making a “Rothbard greatest hits” mix tape — the kind he used to make for girlfriends — or even a mix containing only the guitar solos from his favorite band, Rush (another passion he’s had since age 15).

Others’ Favorite Rothbard Works

Rothbard was incredibly prolific. Here are some of his most popular and influential works mentioned:

Man, Economy, and State
Power and Market
For a New Liberty
The Ethics of Liberty
Conceived in Liberty (multi-volume)
America’s Great Depression
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
The Betrayal of the American Right
Anatomy of the State
The Progressive Era
“War Guilt in the Middle East”

Highly recommended collections:

The Free Market Reader
The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000)
Making Economic Sense (1996)
Economic Controversies (2011)

One of the best pieces ever written about Rothbard is Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty.

Kinsella’s Personal Favorites

These are the ideas and writings Kinsella has found most useful, interesting, or clever:

The Dog That Did Not Bark (Rothbard on IP)

At a 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and others, someone asked Hoppe whether personal sovereignty extends to knowledge and ideas.

Hoppe’s answer: “In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.”

Rothbard remained silent. Hoppe later said he believes Rothbard was “almost there” and would have adopted the full anti-IP position had he lived longer.

Contract Theory – Title-Transfer Theory

One of Rothbard’s most important contributions (developed with Williamson Evers) is the title-transfer theory of contract. Rothbard suggested the idea, Evers wrote it up, and Rothbard later used it in The Ethics of Liberty.

This theory finally makes coherent sense of contract law as an extension of property rights rather than a separate mystical category.

Utility and Welfare Economics

In “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics” (in Economic Controversies), Rothbard emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared — a point also stressed by Mises.

Taxonomy of State Intervention

In Power and Market, Rothbard systematically classifies state interventions as:

Autistic
Binary (e.g., taxation)
Triangular (e.g., antitrust, licensing, and intellectual property)

Kinsella notes that IP is a classic triangular intervention — a nonconsensual negative servitude that lets the IP holder control other people’s property.

The Funny Rothbard

Rothbard had a sharp wit. Some highlights Kinsella loves:

“Mozart Was a Red” — a hilarious play mocking “dimwit and serioso” Randians.
“Hoppephobia” (Liberty magazine, March 1990) — Rothbard’s response to a critical review of Hoppe’s book. Classic line: Hoppe’s work has the “remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
The Galambos story: A Galambosian author who believed in perpetual IP sent Rothbard a $100 check for using his ideas. Rothbard returned it, saying that if the author really believed in owning ideas, he owed all his royalties, not just $100.

Critiques of Nozick and Georgism

Rothbard’s devastating critique of Robert Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in “Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.”
Complete demolition of Georgism in “The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications” and the reply to Georgist criticisms. (Kinsella adds: “Egads, I hate Georgism.”)

Method

Next to The Ethics of Liberty, Kinsella finds Rothbard’s essays in Economic Controversies (especially Part One: Method) among the most useful. He compares them to the first 100 pages of Mises’ Human Action on methodology.

Resources & Further Reading

Book: Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment — Available at PropertyAndFreedom.org
Kinsella’s chapter & related article: Read here
IP as Negative Servitudes: C4SIF.org article
Stephan Kinsella’s site: StephanKinsella.com
C4SIF: C4SIF.org
Property and Freedom Society: PropertyAndFreedom.org

Kinsella Slide Shownotes

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits: A Personal Mix Tape

Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society • C4SIF.org

100 Years with Rothbard
June 27, 2026
Porto, Portugal

Libertarianism and Rothbard

Libertarian since high school: I’ve been a libertarian since high school, about age 15. So 45 years.
I became a Rothbard fan just a couple years later, as soon as I started reading him.
Anti-IP since passing the patent bar: I have told people before that I have been an intellectual property attorney for about 33 years, since 1993 or so, and that I also have been opposed to IP for about the same amount of time.

Rothbard’s Greatest Hits

Rothbard chapter: In my chapter in our book presented here today, Rothbard at 100, I explain why Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe’s thought is so important to Austro-libertarian thought.
There I highlighted some of his most important and interesting insights and writing.
Which is convenient, since that is what I will do today.
Think of it like a Rothbard greatest hits, or a mix tape, the sort I used to make for girlfriends.
Or the time I took about 40 of the best songs of my favorite band, Rush, and made a mix of only the guitar solos.
Coincidentally I’ve been a Rush fan since about age 15 too and in fact am going to see them next month in New York with two libertarian friends, one of whom is here today.

Others’ Favorites

With Rothbard we have an embarrassment of riches.
If one was to try to survey his thought comprehensively and with any level of detail, it would take hours and even then would only be a summary presentation.
I remember back in 2002 I was one of 9 faculty members presenting a full 5 days of lectures on Rothbard’s thought at the Mises Institute.
Faculty, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (topics: Natural Law and Positive Law; Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality; The Theory of Contracts) (July 28–Aug. 2, 2002).
He was so prolific and has such a treasure trove of works that appeal to different libertarians and Austrians.

There are his most famous or popular works: Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, For a New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, America’s Great Depression, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, The Betrayal of the American Right, Anatomy of the State, The Progressive Era, “War Guilt in the Middle East”, etc.
He also wrote a great deal in periodicals such as Libertarian Review, The Libertarian Forum, Reason Magazine, Liberty Magazine, New Individualist Review, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (1965–1968), The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rampart Journal, Libertarian Vanguard…
Other great collections include: The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty; The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000) (from Rothbard-Rockwell Report); Making Economic Sense (1996); Economic Controversies (2011) (previously The Logic of Action 1997).
And then there is the great collection of commentary on his thought in Man, Economy, and Liberty, his 1988 Festschrift; and now in Rothbard at 100, his posthumous Gedenkschrift.

And for one of the best things ever written on Rothbard, there is Hoppe’s “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” his introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty.
Hans also has a great discussion of Robert Nozick’s “methodologically non-committal” approach to libertarianism, which “was deemed respectable by the academic masses”: his “disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle,” compared to Rothbard’s more substantive attempt to treat political philosophy not just as a game but as a serious attempt to find answers and truth in an important field of human life.

Kinsella’s Favorites

Now my chapter in the book highlights some of his most important insights and contributions. I will briefly mention some of them, and a few others, here.
These are basically some of my personal favorites.
The ones that I have drawn on or found especially useful or interesting, or just clever or amusing.
Among his books, the ones I cite and rely on the most would probably be The Ethics of Liberty and Economic Controversies.
Let me start with a favorite thing Rothbard did not say, as in Sherlock Holmes’ “The Dog That Did Not Bark.”
Now Rothbard was critical of patents but in my view his arguments for “common law copyright” or contractual copyright was somewhat confused.
1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, and two others.

Owning Thoughts and Labor [Rothbard and Hoppe on 1988 Panel], Mises Blog (Dec. 11, 2006).
Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …
Hoppe: … In order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
Rothbard did not say anything.
Hans believes that had he lived, he would have of course adopted the anti-IP stance; “he was almost there.”
“I suspect Rothbard would have come around on this issue [inalienability, implicit theft, debtor’s prison, etc.] had he lived longer. After all, he accepted Hoppe’s argumentation-ethics defense of rights as an improvement on his natural law-based defense. I believe he also would have come around on intellectual property. Alas.”
Cite my recent article w/ Hoppe footnote: https://propertyandfreedom.org/books/rothbard-100/kinsella-mises-rothbard-hoppe-indispensable-framework/#identifier_47_5554: “Stephan Kinsella, ‘Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property,’ StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 16, 2025). See also Kinsella, ‘A Libertarian Theory of Contract,’ n. 52.”

The Funny Rothbard

Mozart Was a Red, a funny play mocking the “dimwit and serioso” Randians.
This was a term he used in a 1993 article:
“When Lew Rockwell, in response to the doctored Rodney King-tape, humorously suggested outlawing camcorders, he was deluged by protests from dimwit and serioso libertarians. But he was the first person to raise a serious concern that must be dealt with.”
See Rothbard, in “The December Surprise,” in The Irrepressible Rothbard (Feb. 1993).
Reminds me of Professor Hoppe’s reference to naïve “Students for Liberty” type libertarians as “Stupids for Liberty” or “Liberallala-Libertarians” in a 2017 speech.
Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change (2017).
I also love that he derided left-libertarians and libertarian “technologists” as “Space Cadets.”
Rothbard on Libertarian “Space Cadets”; Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets.

Another funny one is “Hoppephobia,” Liberty Magazine (March 1990), which was a response to libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. He had two hilarious lines:
“The Lomasky review is an interesting example of what is getting to be a fairly common phenomenon: Hoppephobia. Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet.”
Muttering and chewing the carpet!
“[Lomasky] is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is ‘no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.’ Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.”
Love that “Heavens to Betsy” line.

Now I have long mocked Andrew Galambos, his “serioso” Galambosian followers, and his ridiculous arguments for intellectual property.
One story I heard was that some author published a book that was based on Rothbard’s ideas.
The author was a Galambosian who believed in inalienable and perpetual intellectual property rights, so he sent Rothbard a $100 check.
Rothbard returned it, noting that he didn’t agree with Galambos’s notion that you could own ideas, but if the author did, he owed Rothbard all his royalties, not just $100. I mean why just $100?

Nozick, Georgism

But on to more serious topics:
Speaking of Nozick, Rothbard has one of the best criticisms of Nozick’s argument for the minimal state in Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.
He points out that the dominant PDA has no ban on competing agencies on the grounds that they are “too risky.”
Rothbard also completely demolishes Georgism in his The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications and A Reply to Georgist Criticisms.
Egads, I hate Georgism.

Method

As I noted, next to The Ethics of Liberty, the essays in Economic Controversies are among the most useful to me, especially Part One: Method.
Just as the first 100 pages or so of Human Action, on methodology, is my favorite and the most important, and why The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is my favorite Mises book.
Close second: Epistemological Problems of Economics and Theory and History.

Contract Theory

To my mind, maybe his more important contribution is his title-transfer theory of contract, developed with Williamson Evers.
Rothbard suggested it, Evers wrote it up, Rothbard then relied on this in a chapter in Ethics of Liberty.
Neither was a lawyer.
It’s groundbreaking, and finally makes sense of contract law, as an adjunct of property law.
The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract.

Utility and Welfare Economics

“Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (1977), which emphasized that value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.
As Mises also said, prices are not a measure of value.
See, on this, Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Part I.D, n. 19; and idem, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.A, both in LFFS. See also idem, “Money Prices Not a Measure of Value,” StephanKinsella.com (July 21, 2025); Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022).

Taxonomy of State Intervention

Taxonomy: systematically classifies state interventions as autistic, binary, or triangular.
Power and Market, in the chapter “Fundamentals of Intervention.”
Taxation and government expenditures are binary interventions into the free market.
Antitrust law, licensing, etc., amount to grants of monopoly privileges to some and thus is a type of “triangular intervention” in which the state regulates the terms of exchange between a pair of its subjects.
This also applies to intellectual property.
IP is a type of nonconsensual negative servitude granted by the state that allows the IP holder to control someone else’s resources.
This is a Rothbardian’s triangular intervention:
It is like a compelled exchange between all property owners and the patent owner.
Kinsella, https://c4sif.org/2011/06/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/

Photos

Rothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 – Manuel Ogando, the organizer

Rothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 – Kinsella on Stage

Rothbard at 100 Porto June 2026 Rothbard chocolates

Tweets

I stole your photo. Apologies for not mentioning you, I arrived late https://t.co/vAMa9BkNVq

— beegarc. (@beegarc_) June 28, 2026

The Rothbard 100 conference in Porto was an amazing success

With H. H. Hoppe, @NSKinsella, @saifedean and many others

Congrats and many thanks to the organizers, especially @mcaogando https://t.co/3iCBFcp2e1 pic.twitter.com/LV58GtDSt7

— Yorick de Mombynes (@ydemombynes) June 28, 2026

FYMNR! pic.twitter.com/8X72NbRJwZ

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) June 27, 2026

Terminou o evento https://t.co/vcORQSJOpN

O melhor e mais memorável evento que participei e vejo que é opinião também de muitos dos palestrantes.

O libertarianismo português lembra muito o brasileiro pre-covid.

A oportunidade que eles têm nas mãos é gigantesca e o conteúdo…

— Fhoer 🧉 (@Fhoer_here) June 27, 2026

Listening to the greats, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and @NSKinsella, at the Rothbard at 100 conference in Porto. pic.twitter.com/OcL1z4Tv9M

— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) June 27, 2026

A palestra do Kinsella no evento deixa algo muito claro: Não se levem tanto a sério, ao menos não o tempo todo

O aprendizado ficar mais palatável, leve e até mesmo cativante.

O Rothbard dos livros, artigos e teses era o mesmo das piadas, peças e memes.

Se você não conseguir… pic.twitter.com/y48MqYkduT

— Fhoer 🧉 (@Fhoer_here) June 28, 2026

Podcast with @R38TAO, so to speak https://t.co/ERtwAtMIp0

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe (@HoppeQuotes) June 28, 2026

A palestra do Kinsella no evento deixa algo muito claro: Não se levem tanto a sério, ao menos não o tempo todo

O aprendizado ficar mais palatável, leve e até mesmo cativante.

O Rothbard dos livros, artigos e teses era o mesmo das piadas, peças e memes.

Se você não conseguir… pic.twitter.com/y48MqYkduT

— Fhoer 🧉 (@Fhoer_here) June 28, 2026

Happy 100th birthday Murray Rothbard, so to speak!

With @NSKinsella in Porto 🇵🇹https://t.co/koamzNCSzJ pic.twitter.com/lP89ikB9Eb

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe (@HoppeQuotes) June 28, 2026