KOL496 | Matt Sands and Kinsella on the Universal Principles of Liberty and the Nations of Sanity “Peace Agreement”

by Stephan Kinsella on August 15, 2026

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 496.

Matt Sands of the Nations of Sanity project and I discuss the possible interrelationship between his project and my The Universal Principles of Liberty. Recorded Aug. 14, 2026.

See also draft Liberland Constitution, Art. I, §1, ¶¶3, 4:

The Universal Principles of Liberty, adopted on 14 August 2025 and as they stand on the date of adoption of this Constitution, are hereby incorporated by reference and may be consulted for interpretive and suppletive purposes, to the extent that they are not incompatible with the provisions of this Constitution.
Any further amendment to the Universal Principles of Liberty shall have no force within Liberland unless adopted as an amendment to this Constitution in accordance with the procedures set forth herein.

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Summary (Grok)

Introduction and Project Overviews 0:00

Matthew (Matt Sands) introduces himself as being from the Nations of Sanity Project, which defines crime and law through individual self-ownership and frames this as the terms of a peace agreement. He invites Stephan Kinsella to discuss that idea, Kinsella’s Universal Principles of Liberty document, the addendum Kinsella is preparing, and possible synergy between their work.

Kinsella begins by explaining the origins of the Universal Principles of Liberty.

Origins of the Universal Principles of Liberty 1:14

Around 2022, at the Reno Libertarian Party convention when the Mises Caucus temporarily gained influence, Kinsella helped add a concise platform plank defining aggression and property rights. The core principles are self-ownership (a defeasible presumption), ownership of previously unowned resources by first use or homesteading, contractual transfer, and rectification for harms.

He later expanded these into the more detailed but still abstract Universal Principles of Liberty. He deliberately avoided contested topics such as abortion and immigration so the document could serve as a shared foundation.

Liberland Experience and Motivation for Drafting 4:36

Years earlier Kinsella had been consulted on an early Liberland constitution draft. He withdrew because the project became a committee effort with statist impulses aimed at constituting a state rather than pure principles. Liberland later added a clause allowing the Universal Principles to guide interpretation of ambiguities.

A separate project by Max Freemax, involving a largely uninhabited but habitable territory in Africa, finally prompted Kinsella to write the principles down as rules people could agree to live by, rather than as a constitution creating a state.

Abstract Principles versus Concrete Rules 7:09

Drawing on Roman law, common law, civil codes, and Randy Barnett’s distinction between abstract principles and concrete legal precepts, Kinsella designed the Universal Principles as a high-level foundation. Day-to-day rules would later emerge organically through custom, arbitration, case law, and voluntary agreements such as covenant communities.

He is now preparing two supporting documents: annotations explaining the drafting choices with further reading, and supplemental principles stating his own more detailed views on topics such as intellectual property, threats, fraud, standards of proof, and proportionality.

Limits of Armchair Theorizing 15:02

Kinsella rejects writing a complete civil code. Law develops organically from real disputes with full context, not from hypotheticals such as the flagpole case or button-pushing scenarios. Even Roman jurists used hypotheticals sparingly and within a rich existing system. The principles provide a useful starting point, but concrete rules must grow from actual practice in free societies that do not yet exist.

Gray Areas versus Areas of Disagreement 22:37

Sands and Kinsella distinguish genuine gray areas (fuzzy edges even under clear principles) from areas of disagreement where one side is simply mistaken. Intellectual property is given as an example of the latter: once scarce resources and first-use ownership are accepted, intellectual property is incompatible.

Abortion is treated as involving a genuine gray area around the onset of rights-bearing sentience, while the claim that a mother’s self-ownership permits killing a rights-bearing child is not gray. Practical considerations—legal systems must function among competent adults, restitution is preferable to punishment because of fallibility, and late-term cases might remain under family rather than community jurisdiction—further shape the contours.

Nations of Sanity Three-Part Peace Agreement 35:27

Sands outlines his proposed peace agreement in three parts: a basic statement of the non-aggression principle (for which the Universal Principles could serve as a useful foundation), “lines in the sand” that set limits of tolerance on differing interpretations of gray areas, and ratification of rightful ownership. He favors retaining elements such as the presumption of innocence and a high standard of proof for force, citing Chesterton’s fence.

Jurisdiction, Age of Consent, and Mens Rea 38:50

They discuss whether principles are geographically limited. Both agree that clear rights violations justify defensive action even across communities, though practical constraints remain. Age of consent is treated as a gray area best left primarily to parents as guardians unless clear abuse occurs.

Kinsella distinguishes intentionality (required for an action to exist) from purpose (which can affect the severity of the response). Mens rea matters, and purpose can justify greater leniency.

Ignorance of the Law and Burden versus Standard of Proof 48:06

Kinsella argues that the maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse” makes sense only for natural-law wrongs (malum in se) that everyone already knows; it is inappropriate for arbitrary statutory offenses (malum prohibitum).

A detailed exchange follows on burden of proof versus standard of proof. Property disputes require a decision and therefore use a preponderance standard so ownership can be recognized. Institutional punishment or physical force against a person properly demands a higher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. Kinsella expects a free society’s legal order to be overwhelmingly restitution-based rather than punitive, because the costs and risks of punishment are high.

They debate whether eviction after a property ruling still requires the higher standard. Kinsella maintains that once ownership is established by preponderance, continued occupation is clearly trespass. Sands remains unconvinced and suggests pinning the issue for later reflection. Both agree that voluntary covenants can adopt stricter evidentiary rules if participants consent.

Limits on Covenants and Voluntary Slavery 1:22:42

Covenants cannot alienate core inalienable rights. Consent to bodily use (including sexual or combat agreements) can be withdrawn; property transfers, by contrast, can bind. This tracks Kinsella’s earlier debate with Walter Block on voluntary slavery.

Precedents, Integration, and Closing 1:28:06

Sands emphasizes that a peace agreement is the only way to establish non-aggression principle law without contradicting the principle itself, contrasting it with top-down constitutions. He cites international law, the Law Merchant, and the abolition movement as partial historical precedents for bottom-up law.

Kinsella notes additional examples and suggests that a practical agreement could reference the Universal Principles (plus supplements) together with cleaned versions of existing private-law sources such as the Louisiana Civil Code or the Restatements. He mentions L. Neil Smith’s earlier Covenant of Unanimous Consent as a rough antecedent.

Both see clear potential for synergy. They agree to continue the discussion in a second conversation. Kinsella plans to share draft annotations and supplemental material when ready; Sands will review the existing principles for feedback.

Transcript (Grok)

Introduction to the Nations of Sanity Project and Invitation 0:00

Matthew: Hello, my name is Matthew. I’m from the Nations of Sanity Project. A project that’s based on the assertion that crime and law can and should be defined by the concept of individual self-ownership and establishes the terms of a peace agreement.

And I’ve invited Stephan Kinsella to have a conversation today about that idea and also about his Universal Principles of Liberty document as well as his addendum to that document that he’s working on at the moment and how these, how his work and mine have a certain synergistic potential in my mind and I’d like to kind of explore that more with you.

So perhaps, perhaps probably the best way to start this off if that’s okay with you Stephan is to hand over to you to just introduce the Universal Principles of Liberty document. So I’ll put a link in the description for people so they can check it out.

And sorry I haven’t properly introduced you to people but obviously most people know who Stephan Kinsella is. He’s a well-known author, libertarian thinker, former patent attorney, and a writer of many books, but also the writer of a document called the Universal Principles of Liberty. And yeah, sorry if I hand over to you. Stephan, thanks again for taking the time to have this conversation. And yeah, just tell us a little bit about this document.

Background on the Libertarian Party Platform and Core Principles 1:14

Stephan Kinsella: All right. So, as I was saying off air, so I’ve written a lot of things. Well, I spent years understanding liberty and economics and then trying to write about my opinion about how to correct it and the right way to view things and how to extend it. You know, that’s what libertarian writers do. We discuss, we inquire, we learn, we talk, we develop, you know.

I think around 2022 I was at the Reno Libertarian Party convention and I was a delegate and that was the year that the Mises Caucus took over and made it temporarily a little bit more Austrian and radical. It’s falling to shit again. But anyway, at that convention we were able to get added to their platform a more concise and more coherent statement of the general principle of what libertarianism is about which was, and I wrote it and it’s I think plank 2.1 of the platform and it basically defines what aggression is and you can take a look at that but that’s basically a little code.

It’s a little abstract statement or concise statement of what we believe in. And basically it’s that we oppose aggression but aggression is defined in terms of basically using someone’s resource without their permission or their property would most people say. So then the second part is well then what’s their property? The property so basically aggression is a dependent term that depends upon what our property rights are.

So I just said property rights are basically the right to self-ownership which is the defeasible or the default presumption of self-ownership. You own your body. That’s why that’s what it means to say that murder is murder is aggression or murder is a crime or murder is a rights violation. That’s what self-ownership means. They mean the same thing.

So owning my body is the same thing as saying using it without my permission or killing it or committing a murder or battery or you know is wrong. So they’re two sides of the same coin. So the first part is self-ownership or body ownership which is a presumption but it could be defeated. In other words, you could overcome it if someone commits an act of aggression. When you commit an act of aggression, you then make it permissible for someone to use your body without your consent because they need to defend themselves against you. Okay, so that’s the first part.

And the second part is ownership of previously unowned external resources which people call property which I don’t call property because it’s the wrong way to use the term but anyway it’s an owned resource and you determine ownership of resources by the first use principle which is homesteading or occupation and then or by contractual transfer. If you transfer the resource to someone by contract then they’re the owner.

So those three principles and one other subsidiary principle of rectification. If you commit a tort against someone or you harm them, you might have to transfer some resources to them for compensation. But those four principles, self-ownership, homesteading, contract, and rectification, those are the core principles of what I think libertarian principles are. And I stated them in a concise form. And then I started thinking we need to have a more elaborate version of this which is what the Universal Principles of Liberty became.

Experience with the Liberland Constitution 4:36

Stephan Kinsella: And it came that way because years ago maybe 10, 15 years ago I was consulted to help draft an earlier version of the Liberland constitution and it turned to a committee project with other people and you know it got out of hand. I didn’t like the way it turned out for two reasons. Number one there was too many cooks in the kitchen.

And then there was other impulses by Vit the president. They wanted to appeal to the community and they wanted to start a state. So when they said libertarian constitution, they were thinking take the US constitution but do it better, you know, make it more libertarian. But still it was a document setting up a state. And I’m an anarchist, so I’m like what, how can you have libertarian principles in a document that’s setting up an organization that violates rights? So I kind of withdrew from the project and now coincidentally you’re going to talk about the possible use of the principles which I wrote recently and maybe the Nations of Sanity or others.

I did go to the Liberland Christmas party just last year and they decided to incorporate into the Liberland constitution a clause saying that to the extent that there is ambiguity or the need to do gap filling then resort could be had to the libertarian, the Universal Principles of Liberty. So it wouldn’t override the status parts of it, but at least it’s there as sort of like a nudge or a hint like if you could try to interpret this document in line with the Universal Principles of Liberty.

Motivation from the Max Freemax Project 6:12

Stephan Kinsella: Anyway, I was approached by a guy named Max Freemax we call him because he had a competing project which I don’t want to go into in detail because it’s not public yet, but it’s another unowned area on the earth. It’s a big territory which is mostly uninhabited but it is habitable unlike Antarctic or something. It’s somewhere in Africa and he wanted to try to make that into a free society but he wanted to lay down the rules not a constitution which means to constitute or make up a state which is what the Liberland constitution is but just to lay down the principles everyone aspires to agree to that govern the interactions of the people. You know, the law of this of this area.

So, he finally motivated me to finally put down on paper my principles for the purposes of his project, but it just was an excuse for me to do it. So what I did was I tried to take those principles I put in the Libertarian Party platform and make them a little bit more detailed and elaborate, but I stopped short of writing on things that there is disagreement on or uncertainty among libertarians. Like I didn’t address abortion because that’s controversial. I didn’t talk about immigration.

Also, I didn’t talk about particular things because my study of the Roman law in law school and my understanding of the way legislation is one form of law in today’s legal systems is that when you have these codes like a constitution like a state constitution in the US or the American constitution or a civil code in Europe or in Louisiana, my home state, which is like a codification of the private law which was organically developed by the common law in England or by the Roman law in Rome or customary law in Europe. Those are seen as sort of special codifications of law and like for example the constitution in the US requires a very elaborate procedure to amend it. You can’t just amend it like regular legislation and it’s more abstract and it’s more aspirational like the Declaration of Independence is.

And a lot of it goes back to the common, the Magna Carta principles and common law principles. So, it’s sort of they’re infused with a little bit higher level of respect than just your average mundane legislation which the legislature can just make up any day any day that they want to. The point is in a constitution you don’t, you shouldn’t have particular laws in the constitution. It should be more abstract. It should have a framework that other laws are held up to or they govern the procedures by which other laws are developed.

But the, and Randy Barnett in his book The Structure of Liberty talks about this the difference between what he calls abstract principles and legal precepts or concrete legal rules. So any legal system that’s functioning and working has a series of day-to-day rules that develop over time. And hopefully if they’re just they’re compliant with a more basic set of principles. So that’s the way I was looking at it. Like the basic libertarian principles like non-aggression and property rights in your body, those are general and kind of abstract. But to have operational day-to-day guidance, you’re going to need in society a functional legal code.

So I wanted to write a more abstract series explanation of libertarian principles but also to avoid areas in which there’s strong disagreement or that it’s not settled yet. So that’s what the Universal Principles of Liberty are. Like for example, it says in general that a person which has a certain rational capacity has rights, but I didn’t specify whether that covers only humans or whether it would cover robots or space aliens or dolphins or children of you know or fetuses. You know, I didn’t. It was more abstract in those principles.

I contemplated that they would be like the foundational set of principles that a legal system that grows from that, thinking of how the Roman law and the common law grew would consult and would be built upon. So I contemplated in there that in any legal system and I’m contemplating that it’s not adopted by legislation these principles like the Liberland constitution would be and it’s not legislated it’s just what people largely believe and this is the codification of the principles widely shared in a free society.

But I contemplated in there that over time you would have a more developed body of law which I would call you could call them secondary rules or concrete rules or legal precepts. And some of those could form from custom they could form from negotiation from arbitration. They could form from case law they could form from agreements like you could have a community like Hoppe’s covenant community idea. You can imagine a region where people say we’re all entering this area or homeowners association something like that where people agree that okay we agree with the basic principles but here’s in this community you have to I don’t know to be Christian or something or otherwise you just have to leave something like that.

And as you’ve talked about and I think you’ve talked about with Mark Victor with his Live and Let Live project, there’s some understanding on everyone’s part that there are gray areas. There are areas where we should stay out of. There’s areas where it’s sort of discretionary about how you implement a certain rule. Like you might have I don’t know let’s say you might have the understanding that women of a certain mature physical maturity can consent to sex in one community but it might be higher in another but it’s still within a certain range that that’s kind of reasonable something like that.

So I was envisioning that this code would be supplemented with a concrete series set of laws and also with comments from commentators. So I contemplated that happening and now I’m doing it. So, what I’m writing is two things. I’m writing annotations, which is as the drafter of the document, I’m writing comments about how it was drafted and with footnotes saying, “Okay, this clause here, if you want more information on that, go see this article or this book.” It’s just like when you have a civil code or legislation in England or in an American state, you often have the statute, but you have legislative comments and they’re not part of the law, but they can help inform the court interpreting the law if it’s ambiguous.

So my purpose there was pedagogical and educational and that’s what I’m going to do. Second, I’m going to do that next. The first thing I’m going to do is the other thing. So, I’m going to write my annotations, which is as a drafter of the code, and I’m like the main drafter, but some a few other libertarians like Max and Alejandro Facio and two other lawyers help me on it, but I’m the main the main guy behind it. But I’m going to write Kinsella’s annotations on the code just as like more if you want more detail.

I didn’t want to put that in there because I didn’t want to do part of the code. So, you have the bare code. It is what it is and it says what it says. But then, you know, I might have footnote 12 for more elaboration on this point. See articles A, B, and C. And they might be ones that agree and disagree, but it’ll just be for further reading, basically.

But then I’m going to write the supplemental principles, which I think I personally, as Kinsella, believe follow from that, but not every libertarian does. So, I’m going to go into more detail there. Now, I did put intellectual property in there, at least in bare terms, because I think that even though there’s disagreement, I think they’re so wrong that I was okay putting that in there, but I might put in there some open borders immigration stuff that some people disagree with. I might put in there abortion. I put my view. So, that would be Kinsella’s second.

So then you could imagine a community that adopts the Universal Principles of Liberty as its foundational law but also adopts Kinsella’s supplemental principles or it might adopt Matt Sands’ supplemental principles. You know you could see different flavors in different communities doing that. That’s how I’m envisioning this. And I know by the way all of the statist lawyers in the world would say this is impractical. You have to have a government. But that’s because they believe in a government. They can’t imagine anything happening organically by voluntary consent anyway. So that’s what I’m doing.

Limits of Armchair Theorizing and Organic Law Development 15:02

Stephan Kinsella: So in the secondary principles supplemental principles, I’m going to go on and flesh it out a little bit more. But even if you combine the Universal Principles with my annotations and with my secondary principles, it’s still not going to be a full-fledged legal code. That would be taking these things together and having courts in a free society start arbitrating disputes and gradually forming an applied law which would be like a customary or a case law or just a secondary overlay of law which would be viewed as like so there’s four parts like three parts of the law.

If you ask a guy on the street in this free society what the law is, he would say well you have the principles which is like the constitution and then you have the supplemental principles which our community has adopted Kinsella supplemental and then you have all the case law that’s developed and the comments by commentators and treatises that have grown up since then. So that’s how I envision it.

And the reason that that final part is like if someone said, “Okay, Kinsella, you’ve done with number one, you’ve done with number two and number three. Now, why don’t you write like a full-fledged civil code?” So, what I could do is I could take like the Louisiana civil code because it’s in English and it’s pretty elegant and it’s basically a nice elegant codification of Roman private law principles which are largely consistent with my general principles. So, I could just take the Louisiana Civil Code and I could just edit it and take out the bad parts and reform the others, which is what you have Judge Narragansett doing in the final part of Atlas Shrugged when you know G’s utopia is kind of starting to be achieved and you have Judge Narragansett sitting by himself and he’s taking an ancient document which is the US Constitution and he’s striking out like he’s slightly tweaking.

Because of course Ayn Rand viewed the US system as almost perfect but it needed a few adjustments. So you could imagine some anarchical capital libertarian saying Kinsella one of you or some committee of guys why don’t you write your own legal system but to me that would be like Esperanto. It’d be like why don’t you design your own language. I mean if you understand how law develops it has to develop organically it could be based upon intuitive or basic principles and they could be like a recursive process they could be like you might start out with a kind of a rough formulation of your principles like don’t hurt don’t harm people, leave people alone.

But then over time you realize that’s not precise enough because there might come a dispute where that general formulation is not enough and the judge has to make a decision and when he does that he makes a decision and then people can criticize it as wrong or right but then it would help the theorists go back and refine their own abstract principles. And I think that’s what I’ve done and that’s what I think we’re at the point now 70 years into modern libertarianism where I think it was time to do my Universal Principles. We were it was right. It was a good time to do it. We didn’t have to wait any longer to get that done. And I won’t say they’re perfect, but I’m I think they’re I mean, I thought about this for so long and I really think there like it’s been a year since then, there’s nothing I would have changed in it really. So, I’m pretty happy with it.

I guess you could imagine someone else doing because it’s open source, someone could come up with, you know, Matt Sands augment or, you know, Universal Principles of Liberty part 2B or something, you know, then if someone wants to adopt it, they could. But I’m really happy with it. But to say some legal genius like me or whoever, a new Rothbard, whatever, should sit down and take these principles and let’s go on and write the legal system. Well, it’s number one, it’s premature because we don’t need it yet because, okay, let’s say I write it. It’s like a Dungeons and Dragons game or it’s like a new language no one speaks. I can write it, but then what are we going to do with it? It’s like there’s no free societies on the earth yet to do to do it.

And number two, that’s just not how law would be formed. Even if we got this Liberland or some new anarchist territory to adopt it in general, then you would have to wait and see how it develops based upon the realities of the situation, the context, the customs that that arise. You just couldn’t predict it ahead of time. So, it’s premature for two reasons. There’s an inability to for any one person to do it. Like like a Briton, there’s a limit to armchair theorizing. And one limit is that that’s not how law develops. And the other limit is that hypothetical cases are almost never fully specified.

So for example, you have this famous case, the flag pole example. Libertarians debate this shit in their dorm rooms late at night or at libertarian meeting. I’ve done it myself. They’ll say, “Okay, if someone falls off of a flag pole on the apartment above you and they catch on to they fall off a balcony on their apartment and they’re plummeting to their death, but they grab onto your flag pole, which is your property, and they’re knocking on the window, they want you to let them in, otherwise they’re going to drop and fall to their death. Do you have to let them in? Do you have a positive obligation to let them in? Or can they come in? Or do you have the right to just say, ‘Die. I don’t have to help you at all.'”

And these are interesting questions and I think there’s some intuitive answers, but the problem with it is it’s without context. Like it depends. What if there’s an agreement by the landlord saying that in emergency cases you have to let someone in, you know? I mean and in a real case in the real system in like the way the common law formed and the way the Roman law formed there was real cases by real parties between the court complaining about something and having a dispute over a given resource and they asked a judge for relief and the judge could ask questions. They could say they could have witnesses. They could have evidence. They could ask what the customs were. So they could fill in this context and make a more informed decision, which you just can’t do in a little stupid hypothetical.

It’s like the button pushing hypothetical. People say, if you could like Rothbard, if you could if you could push one button and abolish the Federal Reserve, would you do it? That’s there’s no clear answer to that question because the question is by what means, right? Because if the means is killing half the people on the earth or or you know it’s like the AI paperclip thing or if you gave a if you gave this robot the instruction make as many paper clips as you can to or make a bunch of paper clips it might kill every human on the earth to do it. It might you know it might be a runaway problem. So the point is you can’t answer these questions without specifying the means and that’s how law has to be formed I believe.

Now interestingly in the Roman law there was the rare exceptional case where these very smart jurists who had studied the Roman law for hundreds of years and they would gradually refine it by commenting on it and that’s how the way the law developed. Every now and then they would entertain hypothetical questions. They would say, “Okay, if A and B do this, what would be the result there?” And then they would come up with an answer, but even then it was sort of like a hypothetical what if and then it might be relied upon later, but it was still limited to a heavily context-rich system. So that’s my personal view is that there’s a limit to how much we can do from our armchairs and in any way is premature. But I think if I can develop my secondary principles and my annotations, then we have a core starting point for people to at least have a starting point to talk about. It illustrates what the core principles would be if you fleshed them out.

Discussion of Hypotheticals and Gray Areas versus Disagreement 22:37

Matthew: Anyway, yeah, I mean, well, I mean, with the hypotheticals, I feel like I mean, they’re very useful for us when we’re kind of testing the principle and kind of getting a better understanding of the principle, saying, “Okay, well, how would it apply in this circumstance, and that circumstance?” But like you say, it doesn’t cover all real world situations because the real life is much messier than the little hypotheticals that we make up in our head just to test a certain aspect of a principle or to illustrate a certain aspect of the principle. So no, I fully understand that.

Oh, there’s quite a lot I want to speak about. The, I mean one of the things I wanted to pick up on as well cuz you mentioned about like obviously and I understand the reasons why you omitted the areas where there was a lot of disagreement but then you’re obviously going into them with your kind of supplemental sorry supplementary work is obviously going to then kind of delve into some of these areas where there is disagreement and one of the things I think is quite an important point to make with that and why I think that supplement is very important is even though there’s a lot of areas where there’s disagreement I don’t think that’s the same as gray areas necessarily. Like there are a lot of gray areas where there’s disagreement, but there’s also a lot of areas that aren’t really gray areas, but there is disagreement because some.

Stephan Kinsella: That’s true. There is a distinction and I think that’s important to make that distinction. I don’t know how you articulated, but there is a distinction between gray areas and areas of disagreement and uncertainty. I mean, there is there is different distinctions about what types of problems we face when we face these issues. Well, I mean IP is a good example of that. That’s an area where a lot of libertarians disagree, but it’s not a gray area. The pro-IP libertarians are just wrong. You know, I don’t want to sound arrogant saying that, but they are when you kind of explore the kind of property rights and first use principles and all of these things and the whole fact that copying isn’t stealing. And there’s a lot of linguistic trickery that I think a lot of libertarians kind of fall prey to when they get on the pro-IP side of things that they just cuz it’s called property, they immediately think of it as property in their head. Or the fact that when they talk about stealing ideas, that’s like I say, that’s a bit of linguistic trickery because you’re actually just copying. You’re not stealing. If you steal, you’re taking it away from someone. When you’re copying, they still have.

Yeah, that’s why I put that’s why I put in property in there, even though some people disagree, is because it’s such an obvious implication of the only way to coherently state the libertarian principles like that to not say it, even if you didn’t say it, it’s implied. It’s imply if once you say that you have a property right in your body and you have a property right in scarce resources that you homestead or you acquire by contract that just doesn’t leave any room for intellectual property if you understand what intellectual property rights are. So I’m just spelling out what’s implied in a coherent restatement of abstract libertarian principles in the first place.

But for example, in my supplemental principles, I’m going to explain in more detail what and why threats and fraud and maybe things like stalking and things like that, why and how they should be considered. And also maybe in my annot in one of those documents things like the difference between criminal law and restitution or the standard and burden of proof like and also the difference in like proportionality as it applies to self-defense and to retaliation after the fact. Like all those things are interesting, but they just didn’t need to go in there. And I think some of those are more controversial and some of them are less controversial. And some of them are more gray area and some of them are not gray area. They’re just controversial. So there are these interesting distinctions there.

Matthew: Yeah. And I think it’s important that we separate or do the best we can to separate the areas where there’s just a lot of disagreement and the areas that are genuinely kind of gray area, you know, situations where there’s like a genuine even with the principles behind us and interpreting more properly, there is still fuzzy edges, you know, that’s just, you know, the nature of things.

I mean, I think I’ve spoken to you before about how in my own article I use the example of the desert and the grassland and the area in between. And I kind of use the desert as a metaphor for obvious non-aggression principle violations and the grassland as an example of obviously, you know, just exercising your self-ownership. And then there’s the area in between where one slowly becomes the other. And there’s like features of both. It might be arid, but there might be a few spots of grass. And that’s kind of I kind of liken that to the whole gray areas with principles.

That’s why we kind of like I like the abortion thing is a perfect example because some people say well what about the self-ownership of the mother and her bodily autonomy and then other people rightly point out well yeah but that she has a other self-owning individual inside her who you know and her self-ownership doesn’t give her the right to kill necessarily and then I mean my opinion the abortion thing really becomes a point of really defining when we have a sentient being that’s entitled to rights and the and a lot of the stuff around the abortion debate is kind of missing the point because like for example the self-ownership of the mother is perfectly granted but that doesn’t give her the right to kill her children. So it’s really about whether it is just her body.

Like I like for example I think it’s hard to argue scientifically to protect the baby back to conception because at point of conception it is just cells and the mother could say well it is my body and there is you know it may well develop into a sentient being with rights but at the moment it’s definitely not. But I think it’s all but on the other side of it it’s also fair to say that that becomes a sentient being long before it’s born. You know what I mean? So, there’s a kind of I feel like there’s a validity to protecting the baby before birth because there’s nothing magical about birth that suddenly makes it more sentient or more conscious or more kind of entitled to rights. But you could argue that that entitlement to right doesn’t go all the way back to conception. So, there’s like a genuine gray area there, but there’s not necessarily a genuine gray area over the mother’s self-ownership giving her the right to kill a baby.

Practical Considerations in Legal Systems and Abortion 28:47

Stephan Kinsella: I think that when you have I think it’s permissible to have nuanced more layered higher level considerations when these things get trickier because like you could take into account the reality of the world which is that the way legal systems work the nature of dependency and the fact that legal systems like it’s kind of an Ayn Rand point but legal systems have to basically be established and formed among the self-sufficient healthy non-psychopath humans. Like it has to be at least work for them.

But then if you have like extremely helpless and dependent people like I don’t know someone in a coma or or a fetus even if you say they have rights the fact is they are dependent upon the protection of those rights and the recognition of those rights by the healthy functional people. So that does change the analysis a little bit and also if you realize that a legal system is adopted practically for a function that is it’s to help us live together better than we could live without norms and without values and without laws because you can live in society with no norms at all. It’s just you’re always at threat of violence and theft.

But so the whole purpose of a legal system is to add a normative layer on top of the natural acts of using your body and using resources. Like the whole purpose of a legal system is to provide a normative communal support for the idea that we should try to avoid interpersonal conflict and violence by resorting to these norms that are widely shared. Like that’s the general high-level view. And once you see that, then you realize also that any working legal system is going to have costs as well as benefits. But the cost would be the fact that we’re infallible and the fact that their specialization so that any agency, even if it’s an anarchistic system, there’s always a danger of abuse and corruption by the law enforcers, right? You know, there’s favoritism and then there’s and there’s fallibility, there’s the possibility of mistake.

So those considerations would go into like if you have an institutional like if you have a if you have a rule that says self-defense is permissible like if you have to act as your own judge which is usually frowned upon in law but if you have no choice you can use self-defense. You have to be your own judge. You have to defend yourself. But that right that right is heavily restricted because if you let someone go out and become a vigilante and just enforcing the law when they feel like it because they have the right to there’s a danger of being biased in your own favor. There’s a danger of over punishment. There’s a danger of not even signaling to the community who’s in the right. If you see one guy taking a wallet from another guy, you don’t know if it’s a robber or if it’s someone retrieving his wallet. Okay. So, these rules develop that they allow some emergency action, but if you have the ability to invoke the community to like go to trial, that’s going to be favored. And if you don’t do that, you’re going to be seen as dangerous and an outlaw and then you’re going to pay ostracism costs or higher insurance costs or something like that. So, you can see all these things play together.

But what I’m saying is if you realize all these things and you say that we realize that if we make murder illegal, that’s just the legal analog of self-defense basically. Okay? And the very the fact that it’s possible for the court to convict and punish someone who’s actually innocent is not going to keep us from having a legal system because the only alternative to that is complete chaos. I won’t say anarchy, but chaos. So, we’re willing to pay the price of some mistakes that’s a result of our infallibility and our lack of omniscience because the there’s no other alternative. But we at least aware of that which would lead us to say, well, if you have an institutional criminal justice system, restitution should be favored over punishment. Even if you technically have a right to punish, the fact that you might be wrong because we know there’s a possibility of mistake means that we favor restitution as opposed to actual retaliation and punishment, which doesn’t infringe the right to self-defense in the moment.

But after the fact, if we have a nice working institutional system with courts and law and arbitration and insurance companies and jurors and all that, it might it’s probably going to be better to have a restitution-based system rather than a punishment system. And by the same token, even if we say that we’re going to have a system where you can try someone accused of a like theft or rape or murder, even with the possibility of a mistake, we might say that, yeah, but if you actually make abortion illegal, even if we grant that a late term fetus has rights, that kind of police and legal system would result in such an intrusion onto the family affairs and matters that it’s just it’s not feasible and practical and we’re not we’re going to exclude that from our community’s legal system. Just like we might exclude punishment from the system even though you have the right to technically. So you can see practical considerations factoring into those types of decisions which is my so my solution is which I wrote about I talked about it in Turkey at Hans Hoppe thing a few years ago.

I think the solution to the abortion issue is even if you regard abort late term abortion as murder when I think you could make an argument that late term abortion is a type of homicide the jurisdiction over that crime should be the mother or the family themselves not the outside community. It’s not until the baby is born that it’s now the subject of that external legal community. So you could see considerations like that shaping the contours of these different legal systems, you know, like it starts with the mother and the family and then the community’s legal system and then the outside world which is, you know, only evolving in war between groups or something like that like onions or layers like that. Anyway, does that kind of make sense what I’m saying?

Nations of Sanity Three-Part Peace Agreement 35:27

Matthew: Yeah, it does. I mean, one of the ways I kind of presented the approach to the kind of gray areas with the Nations of Sanity Project because the way I obviously I haven’t written articulated any document like you have, but I kind of presented the kind of proposed peace agreement for establishing the non-aggression principles law as a three-part peace agreement. And part one is just the kind of basic agreement which is the sort of thing that your Universal Principles of Liberty could serve as a very useful at least precursor for if not with the supplements maybe even you know something like that.

But then part two is called lines in the sand which is about drawing what I call the limits of tolerance over differing interpretations. Kind of acknowledging that there are gray areas but also saying but there’s also black and white and we need to draw a line where we kind of segregate the fuzzy edges that we can’t necessarily enforce with the black and white areas that we can enforce. And then part three is about ratifying rightful ownership. So my kind of approach to the kind of gray areas is I kind of because the thing is with enforcing the non-aggression principles law there’s a lot of elements of our current legal system like we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and there are certain certain elements of it that I think we would keep like innocent until proven guilty and also the kind of burden of proof as well with regards to beyond a reasonable doubt because as you say we live in a messy subjective world of yes human fallibility and all of those sort of things you know human interpretation we can’t completely escape that but what we can do look there’s a there’s a reason that these principles arose even on the positive status law there’s a reason that there’s a standard of proof and a burden of proof there’s a reason that it’s higher for criminal than for torts and for civil debt for contract breach actions I mean there’s a reason these things emerge and we don’t have to take it we don’t have to just rubber stamp everything that the legal systems have done but there’s some wisdom in there you know it’s like Chesterton’s fence you don’t tear a fence down if you’re not sure why it was put.

Now, a lot of the times offenses were put up because of murky concepts and a not complete consistent application of principles of justice and statist involvement and some legislation here and there. But, you know, you have to be a little humble when you do these things. And even in your black and white things, even there you could have hierarchies of how you treat them. Because for example, let’s suppose you have a community and you view action A as clearly on one side of black and white, which means it is clearly a rights violation or something like that. Even then, you might have differences in treatment of types of acts of aggression for outside communities. So there might be another community that’s 100 miles away that is totally wrong in your view on that issue, but you still leave them alone because you don’t you don’t you don’t extend the jurisdiction of your society to them unless they attack you like in an act of war. So even then even though you regard what they’re doing as wrong like let’s say they I don’t know let’s say they murder homosexuals over there. Okay. We still might say it’s still not within the jurisdiction of our legal system. We’re going to leave them alone. Like you see what I mean? I mean it’s we’d have to specify how this works out. But you see what I mean?

Jurisdiction, Enforcement, and Cross-Community Issues 38:50

Matthew: I understand but I think I probably would push back a little on there or or potentially disagree because I don’t I don’t really go with the kind of geographical jurisdiction when it comes to kind of beyond black and white things. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of practical reasons why you might not go invading another community because of blatant net violations, you know, in ways in which you wouldn’t be able to do so perhaps without treading on people’s rights or, you know, there may.

Stephan Kinsella: Well, are you are you visiting the entire world has adopted these universal principles?

Matthew: No, no, no. That’s that’s my point. That’s what I’m saying. It’s like you know there’s many there’s many practical reasons why let’s say for example we had a Nations of Sanity revolution and established NAP law in America and England and a few other countries but then there’s like Saudi Arabia where they’re still executing drug dealers and and whatever else and my point is is from a principal point of view like the I don’t I don’t I don’t accept the geographical jurisdiction. So from a principal point of view if we were able.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. So, we would be entitled to go in there and and.

Matthew: No, no, you’re right. You’re right.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My example is probably a bad one because you’re right cuz Yeah. I’m going back. I’m thinking Yeah. So, this is not like a police force that has a jurisdiction. It’s just it’s the legal rules that that apply where there’s enough community support to let them be put into practice. But, yeah, you’re right. We would say that by our principles and by our law by the law we agree with is is clearly black and white and justified then that community is abhorrent and yeah so if if you have a band of mercenaries or or what’s the right word liberators or heroes or you know what’s the thing in the US constitution where they they wanted to authorize privateers or something like that you know if if we would say look if you want to go over there and try to rescue the the women or the homeless homosexuals or whatever. Yeah. You have every right to do that. Of course.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think I think I mean because funny enough that was one of because although there’s a lot of similarities between the Nations of Sanity Project and the Live and Let Live project that was one of the differences we had with regards to the approach to the gray areas because the Live and Let Live project kind of did allow for like kind of community jurisdictions over gray areas. Whereas I kind of like rejected that because I felt like there’s no community, there’s no jurisdiction in that sense. There’s just. So yeah. So maybe an example would be that we can enforce and the gray that we can’t, you know.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. So let’s say some woman escapes from this Saudi Arabia thing and then she gets she hires a company to go kidnap the guy that tortured her or whatever and brings him back to justice in our free society. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with subjecting him to whatever the justice would call for. I totally agree with that. Now, you could imagine other cases, I guess, where there’s a reasonable difference, like, I don’t know, the age of statutory rape or something like that, right? Where it’s clearly considered rape if it’s a I don’t know, a 14-year-old girl here, but in this society, as long as she’s 12, it’s not, you know, I don’t know. And so, it’s rape here, but it’s not rape there. What I don’t know how that kind of thing would be worked out.

Age of Consent as a Gray Area Example 42:06

Matthew: Well, I mean I mean and I’d be interested to get your idea your feedback on this, but I think something like that because that like because again that’s age of consent is a good example of a gray area because we you know we know where we stand with vulnerable children. We know where we stand with competent adults but there’s that gray area in between but we can still kind of draw limits of tolerance over differing interpretations which kind of leaves this gray area in between. And this was one of the examples we kind of went through when I spoke to Mark Victor about our different approaches because I was like, okay, well, in that situation, rather than the community enforcing a specific age of consent within the gray areas, as far as I was concerned, if you’re going by self-ownership and staying loyal to the principal, then the person that has the authority over the gray areas in that domain will be the parents because they’re the rightful guardians of the child.

And if it’s a gray area, whether or not they’re able to release them as an adult and kind of, you know, wash their hands of responsibility or whether it’s a gray area of they’ve got to still, you know, continue their parental responsibilities. My point is is, you know, because because it’s a little bit like other elements of parenting, like, you know, we we might disagree over things like spanking or or even just how how you you know, the diet you feed your child or all of these different elements, but what we say is is unless someone’s crossing over that black and white, now they’re no longer a guardian, now they’re stepping into abuser kind of territory and violating their their duty of care to their children. Until they step over that line, we don’t really have the right to to govern the gray areas to the parents. Yeah, make sense.

Stephan Kinsella: I agree. But so let me let me try I’m trying to think of a good It’s probably hard to find a good example on the fly, but so let’s say that it’s fairly universally agreed that the age of consent for sex would have to be between 14 and 16, let’s just say. And some communities are 14, some are 15, some are 16. Okay. But now you have this other area where it’s it’s it’s 13. And we we all agree that that’s totally beyond the pale. And so in our community, a guy that does that to a 13-year-old girl is going to be treated a certain way. Now, if we go kidnap that guy from his community where it’s legal in his eyes at age 13, and we bring him here, we’re still going to treat him as an aggressor.

But you could see that they still might be treated differently, right? Because one guy did it in a system where it’s known to be illegal and the other guy did it where he’s operating under the assumption that it’s not illegal. So it it might be like he might get a lighter punishment or he might be treated like he might be given a little bit more lenience by the system just like there’s a difference there’s a difference in criminal intent, isn’t there? Like mens rea.

Intentionality, Purpose, and Mens Rea 44:42

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. It would go to it would go to the intent. It’s just it’s just like I’ve argued like if if you steal someone’s horse for one re you know there’s different examples but you know if you if you break into someone’s cabin cuz you’re just a squatter that’s that’s just pure trespass but if you break in there because it’s the middle of the winter and there’s an empty cabin and you have to feed your baby. They’re both acts of trespass but they might be treated differently by the owner themselves, right? and by the community they might be regarded differently because the the purpose that’s another thing in my writing I distinguish between intentionality and purpose they are different things they’re quite often conflated by laymen and by lawyers for an action to be something that you could be liable for. It has to be an action. An action by Mises is the use of a resource to achieve an end. That means it’s purposive. It means you’re trying to achieve a given purpose. That’s your end. But it’s intentional in that you it’s it’s not it wasn’t involuntary. Like if if if I have a seizure and I slap you with my hand, I’m not even liable at all because I didn’t do it. It was not an action. It was an involuntary thing.

So when we look at an action and we want to determine culpability or liability for doing something number one, it has to be intentional to be an action. So that’s the intent part of it, which people talk about mens rea, right, in the law. But the purpose is why you did it. If you did it to feed your baby, that’s different than doing it for some other shallower reason, right? And I think that the intentionality is what has to be there for there to be liability. But then the criminal system would look at if it’s even a criminal system, but you know, whatever call this system, whatever the whether it’s ostracism or restitution or even punishment, whatever it is, you take into account the purpose as well. And that’s where the leniency part might count in. So if this guy commits a girl rape on a girl, I don’t even want to call it statutory rape statutory because that that assumes legislation, but it’s the same concept. It’s like it’s too low. If a guy commits statutory rape on a 12-year-old girl in his homeland, but it’s not illegal there, then it’s still an intentional action. Though we still regard it as rape, but the the punish the punishment or the response might be moderated because his purpose wasn’t as sort of obviously evil. You know what I mean? Something like that.

Matthew: Yeah. I mean, it’s well, it’s a little bit like how obviously ignorance of the law doesn’t excuse breaking it. But there is a certain like you well like there’s a difference with intentionality with regards to the mens rea of and also going back to the example of like say the mother who maybe breaks into your home because her baby’s starving or something can take something. She might argue that well I was invoking implicit consent because I thought that in this situation you would give me consent. You could turn around and say well no I don’t give you consent and now you owe me for the apples you took. But that’s not the same as if she said knew that you didn’t consent and it wasn’t in any kind of emergency situation and she just a thief, you know. So there’s, you know, there is but but both in both situations she’s guilty of theft, but one of the situations actually there’s much more intentionality on her part. Criminal intent, mens rea, you know, however you want to kind of frame it. So yeah, I think.

Ignorance of the Law in a Just System 48:06

Stephan Kinsella: By the way, the comment you raised, not to nitpick because it’s it’s an interesting comment. You said ignorance of the law is no excuse. That maxim arose because and actually I disagree with that maxim because that maxim only makes sense in a world where there’s statutory law. In other words, where there’s malum prohibitum law as opposed to malum in se law in a in a just world in a libertarian world basically all law or at least the the all the principles or these common sense principles in my Universal Principles of Liberty and you could say that that’s what we say in the natural law they’re engraved on your heart. In other words, if the only law was you can’t commit robbery, rape or theft or murder, you know, then someone could not have a defense saying, “Well, I didn’t know that.” You would say, “You did know that because everyone knows that.”

But if you have a a system where no one knows what the law is because it’s just there’s thou literally millions of statutes like literally in England and in America and in Europe there’s not a single person there’s no organization who knows how many laws there are. No one knows because they’re just made up every day by regulatory agencies and statute and and by legislators. And they’re not like they’re not categorized by number or something. So no one knows how many laws there are. But when you have a system of arbitrary law, which is not just law, and which is malum prohibitum law, I think ignorance of the law should be an excuse to be honest. I think it should be, but the the government doesn’t want it to be an excuse because that would let you get out of too many arbitrary unjust laws. Just as a side point there. So I think really in a way ignorance of law is an excuse because there is no ignorance of the of the of the basic law of human nature. We all know these these themes.

Matthew: I agree with that. I suppose I was really talking in the terms of obviously disregarding arbitrary laws and only thinking about objective law because obviously and a point’s been often made to me particularly from people that kind of criticize my you know idea of NAP law when they sort of say well you know making it law doesn’t validate the NAP the NAP is you know valid as a principle regardless of whether you establish it as law and I say yes that’s true that is very you know just like before we abolished slavery it was illegitimate you know people didn’t have a right to own other people even before we abolished slavery. But until we made that formalized recognition that slavery is a crime, it was practiced as a you know as a legitimate part of commerce, you know. So I think it’s important that people kind of understand that distinction between you know yes we’re not saying that the NAP is only valid because we’re making it law but what I’m saying law to be made aware of you know you don’t have the right to rape somebody. So if you someone could say, “Well, I didn’t know there was a law against rape.” It doesn’t matter. You still.

Stephan Kinsella: I know. I know. But but but yeah, I think my support my point actually supports you because in the case of slavery and rape, ignorance of law is not an excuse because you’re not ignorant of the law. Everyone knows that it is wrong to commit murder and rape. Like even if it’s legal, you know that it’s wrong. Yeah. People knew the slavery was wrong.

Matthew: Yeah. No, I agree. I The point I’m making is is I No, I agree with that. But the point I’m making is is the reason why I wasn’t I was saying ignorance of the law is no excuse because I was thinking I was speaking in the terms of NAP law and there because my point is is ignorance of the law shouldn’t be an excuse because there shouldn’t be arbitrary laws imposed on people. Exactly. All of these additional arbitrary things should only be part of voluntary covenants and agreements and collectives that people consent to which you know like you mentioned you know like the whole covenant community idea that’s perfectly acceptable and probably a desirable course of action like if we were to establish the NAP’s terms of peace defining kind of crime in that kind of hard way that still provides a foundation where people can still get into collectives whether it’s a homeowners own homeowners association or whether it’s something like a covenant community. The fact of the matter is is there’s a lot of incentive for people to get that extra clarity in the gray areas where everyone knows where they stand.

But my point is is even absent those agreements, even absent those specific contracts, we still need to have our kind of black and white kind of foundation where we say, “Okay, well, everyone has a right and ownership only themselves.” And that at least gives us a kind of principle-based definition of crime and law even if we still have to kind of pass our way through, you know, certain specifics. Does that make sense?

Stephan Kinsella: Agree. It does. And and I guess I’m I’m actually agreeing with you because you’re right. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But the reason is because we’re not ignorant of the law. Because by law we mean the kind of self-evident obvious principles of human interaction, right? That are known by everyone. I mean, a a thief knows he’s a thief. He’s not ignorant of the fact that he’s a thief. He knows he’s stealing. A rapist knows he’s raping someone because he’s saying no. I mean, people are not ignorant of the law. And so anyway, it’s not an excuse cuz they’re not ignorant.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even animals understand aggression on a basic level. So, no human can rationally play plead ignorance on that front. So, yeah. You know, I mean, one of the things about, and this is another reason why I was so keen to have this conversation, not just to kind of discuss the Universal Principles of Liberty and how that kind of relates to, you know, like my own project and my own work, but also like there’s there’s certain kind of approaches to this that I think kind of come from the principle that I think we can clarify. Like again, it’s drawing that distinction between where there’s a lot of disagreement because people are misunderstanding things and getting things wrong and where there’s kind of genuine gray areas. And I think we can kind of segregate that and kind of bring a lot of clarity like like for example one of the things that’s often said to me about like you know this whole you know black and white and and separate you know the limits of tolerance and separating it from the gray areas and one of the things again I point to where we don’t want to throw the baby out the bath water with our current legal system. Now hold a second give me give me give me 10 seconds to grab a I need to grab a a bottle of water give me just a second.

Matthew: Yeah, no problem.

Stephan Kinsella: It’s all right. Oh, I’m back. Go ahead.

Matthew: I’m just. It’s 90 degrees out here in in Houston. Yeah. No, it’s it’s pretty hot here. I’ve got my bottle. Yeah. No, I’m just going like with regards to kind of the approach that I’ve taken with the Nations of Sanity. One of the things I’ve said with regards to drawing the limits of tolerance over kind of differing interpretations over what is aggression and what isn’t and I’ve kind of said well look we should take the same approach that we do you know when I said well we don’t want to throw the baby out the bathwater with certain legal approaches and one of the things is the innocent until proven guilty and the other thing is the burden of proof if we’re going to criminally convict someone we need to know beyond a reasonable doubt and like as you mentioned or alluded to there are important reasons for that and going with our NAP framework I would and the self-ownership framework I would say that the important reason for that beyond reasonable doubt standard is that if you convict somebody with you know with with with far less certainty then you’re guilty of criminal recklessness because you’re applying force on a potentially innocent person and I think not only can we apply this to whether somebody is guilty or not of committing you know say murder rape whatever the the crime is but also when we’re even talking about what is and isn’t a crime you know when we’re talking about that gray area versus the black and white over whether something is a non-aggression principle violation. I just take say we will we would take the same approach if it’s beyond a reasonable doubt that this is a non-aggression principle violation. You know doesn’t have to be I mean often likening it to a math thing. Sometimes it’s very simple. Rape is like 2 plus 2 equals 4. You don’t need to be a genius to work it out. Whereas maybe IP law is a little bit more like 42 plus 110. It’s still pretty simple but it needs a little bit more thought. And maybe some people get it wrong, you know. So my kind of approach with it is and that’s why I kind of segregated the the peace agreement into these three parts of saying we need the basic agreement we need our lines in the sand and our approach you know two differing interpretations and then part three as I say is about rightful ownership which is just ratifying property rights based on this principle but but I really think that we need to kind of take the same approach as we do would with regards to whether we’re ascertaining someone’s guilt of a crime as we would whether we’re even asserting whether the act is even a crime. Does that make sense?

Burden of Proof versus Standard of Proof 57:07

Stephan Kinsella: It does. And by the way, not to be nitpicky, but this is something you might be interested in. In the law, there’s a difference between the burden of proof and the standard of proof. Okay? The burden of proof is the is is what you have is the fact that one party has to satisfy a burden of proof to make their case. In other words, things are going to stay the same unless you prove your case. So, if someone is in possession of a house and you claim that you own it, you have you have the burden of proving that it’s yours if you want to get the house back or if you accuse someone of a crime to punish them, you have the burden of proving that they did it. But the standard of proof is how you have to prove it. So, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt or clear and convincing evidence or preponderance of the evidence. So, those are actually different concepts.

So for example, if there’s a property dispute about who owns I don’t know a house or a horse then the standard of proof is preponderance which means what who is so the person making the claim to change things has to satisfy his burden but he might prove it by what we call 51% just more likely than not because the legal system has to have an answer to the question who owns this house and you should give it to the one that has the better claim to it. So, it should be preponderance to the evidence because even if you make a mistake, you still have to give it to someone. So, you might as well give it to the one that there’s slight there’s better evidence for. But if you’re trying to upset the order and and commit an actual act of force against someone’s body, which is an act of aggression unless unless they actually committed the crime, that’s why you have to have a higher standard of proof standard of proof. And that’s why I think that a restitution system would be more feasible because you don’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Then if you want to punish someone, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s going to be harder to do, more expensive, and if you’re wrong, like like you said, you’re making you’re committing an act of aggression yourself, and now you’re liable. And also, insurance and reality is going to play a role in this. Unless you have an insurance carrier backing you up that keeps you from being regarded as a as a as a risk to everyone and uninsure an uninsurable outlaw or wild card, you’re only going to get insurance from a carrier if if you get enough coverage to cover you for acts of aggression or well for what for whatever you do. And they’re going to charge a lot more if you want to go punish someone rather physically beat them and maybe execute them. As opposed to just punishing them for you know getting money damage damages for them. So I just think the costs of the costs of a punishment system would be so prohibitive that it just wouldn’t be likely to emerge in an institutional way.

Property Disputes and Standards of Proof 1:00:06

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just going back to the property example, would it not make a difference? Like, for example, if there was a property dispute, let’s say, for example, a house was left in a will, but there was some ambiguity over who it was left to. So, neither person had the house. And you’re just kind of assign assigning, you know, who should get it. For me, then the preponderance, the 51% seems perfectly valid. But if if you say I come along and say I’m the rightful flown owner of your house that you’re currently living in, for me that’s when it steps into the beyond reasonable doubt because for me to take your house from you would be an act of aggression that I would be risking. Whereas like with the with the example of the house that’s left in the will, me just assigning it incorrectly, I’m assigning it to the one that has the preponderance to 51% more likely. I’m not aggress against anybody. Whereas I hear I I hear you.

Stephan Kinsella: Let me let me tell you why I think I disagree. Although again, this is a little bit academic because we’re trying to guess what all these nuances how they would develop in a practical legal system. But all we have to go by is how systems have done it before. And that’s why knowledge of the law is somewhat helpful. So these these situations are actually covered in the law. So the will so when there’s a when there’s a movable item a personal item or there’s an unowned or unpossessed house thing like a house is left in a will. Yeah, you’re right. There’s no reason that wouldn’t be preponderance because the legal system has to recogni so the legal system’s role is to recognize property rights by our basic principles and to apply them when there’s a dispute. Okay. And so the burden should be on the person trying to upset the the existing situation. And the standard should be preponderance. I think something like that. If someone’s in a house and then and then the law makes they have these interesting nuances like so if you’re in my house and I say I realize that when my grand say when my grandpa died he left it to me not to my my brother but he’s been living in it because you know we didn’t check or whatever. So now I want him to leave the house but I’m not I’m not going in and physically kicking him out. I’m taking him to court and I’m getting a court to make a decree about who owns it. And if the court says, “Okay, you’re actually the owner.” Now, that house is recognized as mine. Now, he is the trespasser. And if he doesn’t leave, he’s committing trespass against my property, right? So then, so then I just have whatever rights I would normally have to oust a possessor. So, I don’t think that it’s I’m not threatening commit aggression. I’m asking the legal system to recognize who owns the house. And once they recognize that by a preponderance of the evidence standard, then we can use whatever the legal system would do to kick any homesteader out of or any squatter out of my house.

But there’s another case where, for example, I go on vacation and I come back and there’s there’s some squatter in my house. So the law rightfully in my view treats is different the situation where the first situation and the second one. The second one is I I give a lease to someone for 10 years or they say it’s for 10 years, but I say it’s for one. We have a dispute and they’re in there illegally, but then they won’t leave. They’re not really possessing it illegally. There’s just a dispute about what the term is. And so that’s when you go to court. But if someone just comes into my house when I’m going on vacation, they’re a squatter. They’re not even rightfully possessing it. So the law actually distinguishes between ownership and the right to possess and then possession, which is a factual matter. So it’s sort of in between. And you can see how these things would emerge, right? So, I I think that I think that for for any property dispute, the the I probably the the burden should be on the person asking for you to change. But that might change in the case of someone who who came into my house when I was you still have the burden of proof of proving that he’s a trespasser, but once you prove he’s a trespasser, then he could be ejected. You know, I don’t have to go prove title back to Adam. Any anyway, I can see these nuances working out. But I I I still do I do cling to this idea that in a in any rational legal system, it would be almost all property and res and and restitution-based and not criminal punishment at all. So there would all be the the preponderance of evidence would be the standard for everything. It would not it would never be beyond a reasonable doubt because you’re never you’re never seeking permission to violate someone’s body.

Matthew: But would would could it not potentially come to that though if you know like if you’re talking about evicting people and things like that like that that’s why and you know I mean I may well be wrong on this but just to kind of clarify why I’m thinking the way I am about this. The reason why I don’t have a problem with the like the will example is because I don’t see any aggression there with assigning it one way or the other with a preponderance of evidence to 51%. But when it comes to me, you know, wanting to kick you out of your house and you’re disputing that, if I don’t have a beyond reasonable, you know, doubt, level of certainty, and I escalate that to some kind of violence against you where I’m, you know, physically removing you or or whatever.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah, but you’re not you’re not you’re going to the legal system, you’re getting a judgment, and then you’re using the legal system to enforce that judgment. You’re just to enforce your property rights.

Matthew: So would it be fair to say correct and correct me if I’m not thinking about this correctly, but would it be fair to say that the preponderance of evidence is being applied to the dispute over who the property owner is? Once you’ve got that, you’ve then got the beyond reasonable doubt standard that you’re trespassing because it’s not your property. Would that be a fair way?

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. I mean, well, well, let me ask you this. Suppose you’re on your farm minding your own business and some guy walks up and he he pulls a knife and he’s trying to stab you and you use lethal force to kill him. I mean, did you have did you prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt? See, there’s there’s no forum.

Matthew: Somebody else would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. No. So, so, so, so, but my my point is this, the the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt is not applicable to your individual actions like in the case of self-defense. It’s applicable to the way the legal system decides who is the owner of a resource. So, the legal system should consult its basic principles and its developed body of law, which tells it who owns this resource in the case of a dispute. And that’s going to rely partly on the facts that we know, the evidence that we hear, but sometimes there’s conflicting evidence. So you have to you have to go with the who has in in the end on balance the best claim to it. And whoever has the best claim ought to be recognized as the owner. And I don’t think I can’t see how that’s going to be. So if you make it a preponder a beyond a reasonable doubt standard, then if someone just takes my watch from me and they get away with it, now the only way I get that watch back is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was my watch. And I just see problems with that because it makes it too easy to get away with crime. Like it it basically makes the law almost nothing because it makes possession 99 hundreds of the law is you know and the whole point of a legal system is to be a layer on top of possession to say who should possess. But if if it’s just like yeah everyone who’s possesses should be the poss should be the owner too unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they’re not then the law does almost nothing.

Matthew: Well, I mean, I I think a desire for those sort of standards can still be, you know, put into like covenants and stuff like that, but I just I suppose the reason why I’m averse to the preponderance of evidence and and prefer the reasonable beyond reasonable doubt approach when it comes to this is because the way I look at it is well, as I said before, if if if we lack that beyond reasonable doubt certainty and we use aggression against somebody, then that seems to me that we are guilty ourselves of criminal recklessness. Do you know what I mean? It’s like like like for example if I you know I mean this is a big reason why a lot of people are against the death penalty because they say oh well you know what about the you know and I understand the death penalties are much more final than some kind of lesser kind of criminal punishment where some kind of restitution or correction can be made but the point still remains the same. If we don’t if we lack that beyond reasonable doubt certainty that someone is guilty of a crime, therefore the force we use against them is justified, then are we not ourselves guilty of criminal recklessness by applying force to people when there’s a genuine chance that they’re innocent?

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. I I yeah I think it’s it’s it’s tricky to settle it to sort it out. But like when we say that trespass is a crime, okay, any kind of trespass including rape and murder, that again is a dependent concept that rests upon principles of property ownership. And those property ownership principles are not a court. They’re not based upon beyond a reasonable doubt. Like if I say that committing murder or or committing an act of theft against me is is a crime if you can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. But the reason it’s a crime is because it’s using my resource without my permission. But how do we know it’s my resource? It’s my resource because the legal system recognizes property rights in in things that are contestable by the basic principles of self-ownership and and homesteading and contract. But it doesn’t say that you own your body if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. It doesn’t say that you own this owned field if you’re the first one to use it because of a reasonable doubt standard. It’s because the principle says that the first one to use an unowned field is the owner. Like that is just the property rights principle. It’s not anything to do with a burden of proof at all or even a standard of proof. So enforcing any kind of law that prohibits trespass or aggression presupposes a legal determination of the owners of things. And that legal determination is not based upon this this beyond a reasonable doubt standard. It can’t be because again it would mean that the legal system is nothing more than a a slight window dressing on top of bare possession and and might makes right.

Matthew: Why though? I’m not following you on that one. Like why is why I I I don’t I don’t see why if if law is if law is being applied with this beyond reasonable doubt standard across the board I don’t see how that’s making impotent like you know we apply that to criminal cases already even in our current legal system and we still are able to convict murderers and rapists and thieves you know based on that and that seems to me very much a kind of that’s part of the baby we don’t want to throw out with the bath water with regards to kind of our approach to punishing criminals because if because again I don’t want to kind of say the same thing again but it’s just to kind of you know kind of really specify my point or the reason why I have this position I do is from my I can’t get away from the fact that if I lack that beyond re like the same reason why I need a beyond reasonable doubt certainty to convict you of murder because the punishment that I’m going to administer would be itself a crime if you were innocent of this and if I lack the reasonable certainty that you or beyond reasonable doubt certainty that you are guilty. Then I am myself guilty of criminal recklessness. I can’t get away from that across the board violations, you know.

Stephan Kinsella: Okay. So, so let’s say that there’s I don’t know. Let’s say I I built a house in an area and no one’s around. It’s like it’s I’ve homestead in an area. I’ve homesteaded a house, but there’s I’m I’m alone. And then eventually people move in nearby and there’s a little neighborhood, right? There’s a little community. And as far as they know, I’m the possessor and I’m the owner of the house as far as they know. Right? I leave town. I come back. There’s a squatter in my house. Now he’s in the house and I want people to kick him out. Now, if your standard was if your standard was applied, I couldn’t eject him or I couldn’t get a judgment saying I’m the owner unless I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m the owner, which means that he got away with it. Like I’m I’m I’m screwed. I got to wait till he leaves town and then take it back. Do you see what I’m saying? So, in other words, I I I can’t I can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t need to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m the owner of the house. I just need to have a better claim than anyone else to own to show that I’m the owner of the house.

To use aggression against someone, and in fact, I don’t even think you need beyond a reasonable doubt to use aggression against someone. It’s just that beyond a reasonable doubt just means that the legal system can’t treat someone as an aggressor in an institutional way unless it’s proved that he certainly did it. Like that’s the whole point. So you might have someone get away. We we say they might get away with a crime, but he actually did the crime. But he did the crime because we recognized that the body that he that he touched was self-owned by the person that was the victim. We just can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. We can’t prove for sure he’s the one who did it. But we know, but we don’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person murdered owned his body. You see what I’m saying? The standard of proof only applies to the institutional punishment of a criminal. And I think that when you when you make a property decision about a dispute between a resource between two people, I mean, if you have a contract, like how would you like what what if what if the the two children who claim to inherit the house from their grandfather, they both claim they own it, but neither one can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they own it. Like each like one has a a 75% case and the other has a 25% case. So, does that mean no one can own the house now?

Matthew: Well, no. But like the reason why I don’t mind the preponderance of evidence in that circumstance is because is I’m not that’s not preceding an aggression against anybody because neither of them have the house. And then it’s just whoever has the higher claim of it is the one who’s going to be sort of recognized as the owner.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. So, if one happens to be living in the house, then he’s got he’s effectively got it. So, again, possession in your view is 99% 9900s of the law.

Matthew: Well I mean I suppose I suppose I’m not looking at it that way but I can understand why you’re saying that. I mean I I mean from my point of view it it just comes back to that if we need that level of certainty to to apply the force you know.

Stephan Kinsella: I know cuz what what So it’s what you’re thinking. I know what you’re what you’re thinking is if the court decides based upon anything other than certainty that the guy challenging the current possession is the owner that will lead to the use of force to evict the guy if he doesn’t comply. Right? So you’re you’re seeing the next step in the process which is true that in a sense like we say voting ballots is just another form of bullets right because all law is ultimately enforced by the point of a gun ultimately right and I agree with that but I I I’m very confident that I’m right but I need to think of a better way to articulate it. So, I I’m I’m thinking partly like a lawyer so used to the way this works because I can’t not only can I not see another way around it, but I don’t see a problem with it. I mean, I think that if someone if someone in a peaceful civilized system, if someone has your resource or you think they have it and you want to be civilized, what are you supposed to do other than taking the law into your own hands? You’re supposed to go to court and make a claim that it’s really mine. The guy should get out. And I just don’t see why you would have to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. Because if if let’s say you prove it with just a preponderance of the evidence, now it’s been judged by the court and the legal system that you’re the owner. That doesn’t necessarily have to lead to aggression. Now you have a guy that’s he’s the one committing aggression. And if he doesn’t leave, he’s committing aggression.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, that’s why I was asking if if the way you’re kind, if I’m thinking about it correctly, the way you’re laying it out is that even though you’re using a preponderance of evidence to ascertain the rightful owner, once you’ve done that, you then have the beyond reasonable doubt certainty that that person is trespassing because they’re definitely in the house and refusing to and I would agree with that. But I think that again, usually that standard is for court proceedings. It’s not for the So, the enforcement action would be look, I’ve gone to court. I’ve got a judgment that it’s my property. The guy won’t leave. I’m going to get the sheriff and go kick him out with force. And now we know we have a right to do it. And if he escalates, then we can escalate, right? So that’s when it would get But at that at that point, we’ve already we we’re going on the foundation of the of the recognized communal legal judgment of who owns what. And given that understanding, this guy is now using my house without my permission. And he’s committing an act of trespass and I can use reasonable proportionate force to make him leave and I can’t just go in there and shoot him, but I can escalate it if he escalates.

Anyway, we’re getting into details, but it is interesting stuff. But I mean, it’s probably perhaps we should put a pin in it because just as you said about like, you know, you maybe need to think about it in a better way to articulate it. I kind of need to as well, you know what I mean? Because this is not an area that I necessarily expected to have a have a disagreement over. And as I say, like from my point of view, I I I mean, I I tried to keep it simple in my kind of approach with it. And I suppose it is really just the because the force that I’m going to want a judge to use to evict somebody. I kind of I don’t see the fundamental difference than the force I would want to say that person’s a thief or a rapist or a murderer and we need to go and lock him up. Like either way, I’m asking someone to use force or I’m want to use it to use the force myself or whatever the situation is. And I’m just saying that it it seems to me intuitive that we need that standard of of certainty to administer force against people. Otherwise, we’re potentially guilty of criminal reckless aggression against other people if we lack that certainty. So, I mean, perhaps put a pin in it for now and and perhaps we can both have a sort of think about that and maybe revisit that element of it. Cuz yeah, cuz I I won’t lie, I’m not 100% convinced to abandon my beyond a reasonable doubt approach to NAP violations. Like I say, as long as they are black and white and I still think this still gives way, you know, because we can still go to covenants and collectives, which are all perfectly permissible upon the foundation of NAP law, where we can have these agreements to adhere to preponderances of evidence and, you know, and different gray area standards that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to enforce absent those agreements and covenants and and what have you. So, you know, we still have options of ways we can deal with it. And if it is unappealing pe for people to I mean in fact I think that’s very much how it would work in my when I think about how you know work I I you know as as much as I want this NAP law as this kind of universal black and white law I do think that communities and collectives would still formulate their own kind of more minutia rules but that will subject to consent. That’s the that’s the kind of fundamental like the reason why I separate the NAP law is because I don’t need consent from a rapist to enforce laws against rape, but I do need consent from say a homeowner to enforce a preponderance of evidence standard to a victim or something like that. That’s that’s kind of like my thinking on it.

Stephan Kinsella: I just think I think as a practical matter I think any working society you can imagine even if they went with your standard which I don’t think they would but if they did they would override it with an agreement they would say it’s just not we don’t have property rights that’s fine though but that’s fine though because that’s not overriding it that’s just playing within the within the par within the paradigm I’ve already set up you know because that’s why I don’t have you know because I and I do try to emphasize this you know I want NAP law but covenant communities and voluntary collectives and all of these things people can still enter to agree to other rules that have nothing to do with a NAP. I mean, some of them can be, you know, I mean, I think Dennis Pratt from the New Hampshire Libertarian thing, he he made the point to me about when I said about the NAPs the only enforceable law and he made the point, well, no, you can have all these other rules that people agree to as covenant communities. And I’m like, yeah, but that’s that’s not law that we’re enforcing on everybody. That’s rules that people are agreeing to which is just because the whole point of it is about self-ownership. The reason why I can enforce you know NAP law against you is because of self-ownership. You don’t have the right to rape, murder and assault. So I can use the force to stop you doing those things. But all these other kind of covenants that we would then enter into that’s still just an exercise of self-ownership. So for me it still just follows. And well, for the reasons you’ve laid out, I would argue that a lot of these covenants would be incentivized because they want these standards within the gray. But I just think that that requirement for consent, you know, we’ve still got our foundation of our black and white NAP. And then we’ve got the incentive to then have these more refined minutia rules, but those things would require consent, which I still think I think the incentives would still be strong for people to consent to that because, you know, you’re going to want to own a property where you’ve got these clear rules on on on on what protects your property and and what doesn’t, you know.

Limits on Covenant Agreements and Voluntary Slavery 1:22:42

Stephan Kinsella: Well, and I think that excuse me bless you. I think that this is a little bit a field but this is where the the debate about voluntary slavery and Walter Block’s views comes into play a little bit because I do think that there are limits to so some people say that you can agree to whatever you want ahead of time. I don’t know if I totally agree with that because you can’t give up certain rights in a sense. And one example is Walter Block came up with this. It’s called Murder Park. You know, I mean, look, if you want to have people boxing in a ring or fighting a duel with each other, I think that’s fine. But if I agree to box Muhammad Ali in the ring and he kills me, he didn’t commit murder cuz I consented. But if I agree to fight and I decide to back out or I’m in the middle of it and I I I want to jump out the ring and they say, “No, no, you agreed to stay in here. You can’t you can’t leave.” I agree. I I disagree with that. I think you can leave. So if you have a community where people have agreed to these things, you can’t agree that I hereby give up my right to leave for example. I think you can leave no matter what even if you promise not to.

And you can’t like have a store where the owner says oh there’s a sign up saying you know if you break if you break a pot you got to pay for it. Okay that’s reasonable. But if he has a sign saying, you’re on my property. If I if I judge in my sole judgment that that you do something I don’t like, I can kill you. And he does it, I think it’s murder, right? Or it could be depending on the context. So, I don’t think that the I think there’s a limit to these background rules that these that these covenant communities can adopt. But ultimately, I think that they’re they they are they’re they’re basically they’re setting default rules and standards of proof and presumptions, but they’re not you cannot alienate ultimately your core fundamental rights.

Matthew: Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t know if you remember, but I actually moderated a debate between you and Walter on voluntary slavery. In fact, I might put a link to that in the description because that’s definitely worth a watch. And I I do generally speaking, I might quibble about the murder example, but generally speaking, I agree with you on the voluntary slavery side of it, but and but and I’d be interested to know whether I agree with you for the same reasons that you make it. But basically the reason why I view like for example you can’t be held to a voluntary slavery contract or you can’t rape a prostitute who signed a contract or you know these things you have the right to back out because because basically what they’ve offered to give you in the contract is an inalienable right that they can’t really give you. You know so that’s kind of invalidated the contract or like they can they can give consent to a contract but they can withdraw consent and that doesn’t give you the right to murder them or rape them in the example of the prostitute stuff like that. But for example, if we had a prop property transfer and that’s why I think the property thing is different on this is let’s say for example you had a deal with a prostitute where you know like you you have sex if she backs out you get her car then for me perfectly acceptable is to say okay now you own her car. Agree.

Stephan Kinsella: Totally agree.

Matthew: Because that’s a different thing because she can give you her property but she can’t herself in a way that she can no longer withdraw her consent and stuff like that. Totally agree. I totally agree.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. So, but for me because the diff because because that difference is the inalienable right versus the property side of it. That’s why I still think the covenant thing is fine because we can still use covenant for all this minutiae with regards to property. But agree as long so basically as long Yeah. As long as an effect slavery covenants and things like that or at least not one could be enforced or rape covenants or anything like that because people’s right to consent. I mean, it’s a little bit like I mean, one example I often use with that is like, you know, we have quote unquote sex slaves today, but they’re not really slaves. They’re people that are indulging in fantasy horseplay, you know, and all that sort of stuff. They still have the right. And if one of these sex slaves, you know, said his safe word or, you know, said, “I’m don’t want to do this anymore, whatever,” and he he was forced to carry on, then that would they would be guilty of rape and assault and all the rest of it. You know what I mean? Because he he’s not really a slave in that in that in what we’re really talking about when we say slave just like the I mean you know cuz the end of the day and one of the things I felt like became very apparent in your debate with Walter was when it comes down to a voluntary slavery contract it’s really not much different to an employment contract you’re just promising to fulfill this particular role and you have the right to consent to that but you also have the right to withdraw that and your inalienable rights is always in intact throughout.

Stephan Kinsella: Totally agree.

Wrapping Up and Plans for Part Two 1:27:50

Stephan Kinsella: So, by the way, by the way, as administrative matter, I’ve got to go to about 15 minutes. So if you wanted to get to anything else like your maybe how to integrate the principles with your your Anyway, or we could we can do part two later if you want, but in about 15 minutes I’ve got to go.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. To I didn’t realize the time was was was creeping on that much. But yeah. Well, to be honest with you, I mean, perhaps we’ll go for another five, 10 minutes if we can, but I I think there’s a lot of more meat on this bone, so I’d be very much up for a part two another time if you would be up for that.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah, that would be great. I would.

Matthew: And and perhaps a little way to finish this conversation off and just kind of segue and prepare for a part two. Oh, yeah. Just to kind of because this is this is coming back to the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you because obviously I present my little Nations of Sanity Project saying you know we need to make the NAP the law and we need to do it through a peace agreement and one of the things one of the reasons why I really emphasized the peace agreement and I think you made a point on this when you were talking about the your aversion to this status was it constitution like things like that because it’s still there’s there’s a contradiction in the principle and one of big kind of selling points with the idea that I present is to say, well, look, this is the only way we can establish the NAP’s law without contradicting the principle. Rather than making it the takes of a ruling authority, which would obviously contradict the principle, we make it the terms of a peace agreement, like a bottom-up peace agreement. And one of the things I was talking to Adam Haymon, who who we both know, and he was doing a good job of really kind of pressing me for kind of more clarification on what it is I’m really kind of, you know, proposing. And one of the things I tried to do in response to him was kind of point to precedents that already exist. You know, like I I I very much liken what I’m trying to stir up and what the libertarian movement kind of is or at least should be in my mind, which is very much akin to a modern-day abolition movement. Like, you know, we had the slavery abolition. And I just feel like well libertarianism is really about just doing that but doing it right because we abolished this very narrowly defined form of slavery but we allowed statism which is just another form of slavery to continue. And also the other problem is is we abolished it un primarily under the dictates of ruling authorities. I know it was later ratified into international law through peace treaties but again that’s the other issue with the contradiction to the principle is this top down authority. And then also I pointed to things like international law because a lot of people struggle to conceptualize law and separate it from ruling authorities. They’re like, “Well, you can’t have law without governments.” And I’m like, “Well, you can because even today, as imperfect as it is, I can point to international law as an example of a bottom-up peace agreement that’s established a law.” Now, obviously, that’s between nation states, which are illegitimate, and what I’m proposing would be between individuals.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. There was also yeah there was also the the law merchant which was a functioning body of law for centuries which didn’t have any governing authority. And there’s another one you you made me think of oh and and there’s a there’s a great pair of articles by a guy named Alfred Cuzon. Have you ever read this article called Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy? It’s a classic article. It was in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, I think in 1977. He wrote a follow-up years later, but he’s not even a a libertarian or an anarchist, but his point is that it’s sort of like a sophisticated version of the libertarian critique of the state. Like we argue that you cannot have a binding constitution that limits the state because the state itself is the one that assumes the authority to interpret it. Right? So it just doesn’t make any sense. So if you really are Hobbesian, a Hobbesian and you think that law doesn’t make sense without a sovereign, but you want a limited sovereign, it’s just not you can’t have both really. But his point is that the state is not a it’s just it’s just a concept we use to describe a group of people doing things together. We organize our concepts around this concept of state like corporation or or whatever. But the people inside the state are just human actors and they’re all they’re all obeying certain like like you know if the president orders someone to drop a bomb, he’s not forcing them to do it by pointing a gun at them. There’s a there’s a there’s actual a hierarchy of authority. So there’s in a sense in the state itself there is anarchy in the state within the state like so you so that’s why he said do we ever really get get out of anarchy and we don’t in other words there’s always anarchy it’s just what form should it be so in other words there’s always a group of there’s 8 billion people on the earth and some of them are in this dotted line we we we call the state or the government right employees of that agency and they all are resting upon the sort of implicit legitimacy or authority of it, but that rests upon this hierarchy of, you know, of of the commands given by their boss and the courts supervising it and ordering things to happen. It’s very complicated, but it’s basically all every one of their actions rest upon voluntary consent among each voluntary responses among each other.

Because like I said, I mean, I’ve argued like like that like if you don’t believe in in in in responsibility for for joint crimes, which I agree with. I think the common law is right about that. Like if I’m a if I’m if I’m a mafia guy and I order my underlings to go commit a crime, rob a bank or or kill someone, I think it’s proper to hold the hitman guilty, but also me because I play a causal that’s just the reality of this. That’s the causal re reality of the situation. Even though but but some libertarians say no, no, no, it’s only it’s only the hitman because the other guy just spoke. He had free speech. He just he said he wanted you to do it. He didn’t force you to do it, you know. So, so by that logic, Adolf Hitler was was in principle guilt guiltless because he just gave people suggestions, you know, he wasn’t forcing all the Nazis to kill Jews with a gun. So, the example I gave is if you have like a Jewish woman kidnapped and her husband’s in the concentration camp and she’s Hitler’s maid and he’s alone in his office one night and she has a chance to grab grab the letter opener and kill him. According to these guys, she’s committing murder because he’s not he’s not an aggressor. It’s like ridiculous. Of course, he committed murder, right? So, context matters.

Matthew: Sorry, I was I say it was a little bit like the difference between you picking up a gun and shooting someone committing murder or you paying a hitman to pick up a gun and shooting somebody. In the first example, in both examples, you’re guilty of murder. But in the first example, you’re the only person guilty of murder because the gun isn’t an agent of itself. Whereas in the second example, you and the hitman are guilty of murder because you know you you know if if the gun was a human being that you were pulling the trigger of, then that person would also be guilty of murder as well. But in that because a gun isn’t a moral agent, obviously only you’re guilty, but you paying a hitman to do it for you doesn’t make you less guilty than it would if you pulled the trigger yourself. So no, no. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. So yeah, and and just getting back Yeah. So that’s kind of obviously, you know, as as we’re all doing as libertarians, we’re trying we’re working our way through this principle just trying to refine it and get better clarity and and and you know, see how it can be applied in the real world. And when I’m kind of looking at the the whole Nations of Sanity idea of of NAP law, you know, I I’ve been looking at these different precedents. I pointed to international law and you like merchant law is and there are other examples of you know law that’s established through terms of peace rather than through a a top-down dictate and I you know I looked at the abolition movement as an example of what we’re trying to do and but I also pointed to your Universal Principles of Liberty as an example of the non-aggression principle formalized into the form of an agreement. Now I do always whenever I’ve mentioned this I have always added the caveat that one you haven’t presented this you know as a purpose for establishing law and two in its current form it lacks a lot of the clarity that it would need to be established as the foundation for law which was why I was very interested when you mentioned about the addendum and the supplementary material that you’re working on because then I feel like that document would then get a lot closer to being something that could be a foundation for law but you’re saying it it would still probably fall short of that for for a long.

Stephan Kinsella: Well, I could I could I could see like and we could talk about this later, but I could see let’s see you you come up with some kind of skeletal or draft concept for your whatever form your agreement is going to be. And that agreement says this agreement is based upon and has reference to the Universal Principles of Liberty, maybe the supplemental principles and also say the Louisiana civil code as a starting point to the extent that is compatible with those things, you know, and then exercise the get rid of the status parts and just keep the the rest. Basically, you you don’t have to do it. Say you you could say it in your in your agreement would say we apply these fundamental principles they’re primary and the supplemental principles and also or you could or the universal commercial code in the United States or or the or or the or the restatements of the law in the United States or if there’s something else equivalent in some other country or you can even say the civil codes of France you know Germany and Belgium to the extent that they’re compatible with the basic principles I mean you could you could you could set out a starting point that you would direct your arbitrators to consult in the first cases and then they would gradually develop a body of law. But it would it wouldn’t be too skeletal. It would be an agreement among real people that you would write this agreement. It would just be informed by the other principles and the other starting points.

Matthew: Well, and also to I think this is the sort of thing that would lead a kind of stepping stone to other covenants as well because you could let’s say for example, you know, I had my little NAP revolution and we had this kind of peace agreement established. Then you would have say different communities, agencies, regulatory bodies, you know, whatever individuals, all of that. They could all say, “Okay, yeah, we agree to this, but we agree to the Stephan Kinsella interpretation as outlined in this supplementary document, you know, you know what I mean?” So at least then people can kind of make sure that everyone knows where they stand with regards to our interpretations of this principle, even though we’re all on the same page of the the basic understanding. And yeah, not to get too legalistic because I I think this stuff’s interesting, but when you.

Stephan Kinsella: But for example, there are ways of doing this stuff. Like as an example, I’m in in a couple weeks I’m going to Prosper. You know Prosper is? It’s the thing in Roatan in Honduras. The the the Free Cities meeting is having their annual meeting there, but it’s in Roatan in Prosper, which is one of these island. It’s is an enclave within this this thing that that Honduras set up a few years ago. They they allow basically free areas to exist within they can’t have drug trafficking and stuff that that Honduras has agreed to in international treaties. They can’t do certain things, but basically there’s no taxes. It’s up to them to do it. So it’s like there’s not even a tax, but there’s like a 2.5% administrative fee you have to pay, but it’s all contractual. But in that agreement, they just have common law, but they I think they say something like common law as as elaborated in the restatements of the law, which is a really good private law, non-legislated American project that codifies and restates the common law principles developed over over over decades and centuries. But then they say they have exclusions. Is they’ll say like we we hereby adopt the restatement of the law second of contracts except for provisions A, B, and C. We don’t agree with those because they’re too statist. So like you could actually carve out you could or you could do what I say and just say we adopt the restatement of law to the extent that it’s not incompatible with the universal statement of principles. Like so there’s different ways you could draft it, but it would be part of an agreement. And I think you’re envisioning an actual agreement people might consider signing up to if they had a free area they could practice it in.

You know, the thing that I wrote, so the Constitution of Liberland, the problem I had with I was like, well, you’re writing this Constitution to set up a state that governs this island which is unowned, but you’re sort of claiming ownership of it just by claiming. And like the whole thing was just it wasn’t clear who I was writing it for. And it wasn’t even an agreement. It was just a declaration of the governing principles of a government that claims to run this island that’s claimed to be owned by a guy named Vit. I mean like it was all that’s why I had a problem with it. But when I wrote my principles I like I said I did it because Max wanted to present it to these tribesmen on this on this kind of deserted area of Africa that he’s hoping to get something going there. But he wanted me to put signature lines at the bottom where they could sign it. Like, and I don’t care if you add a signature line. That’s fine. And you could, you know, it’s not written as an agreement, but signing your name to it shows that these are the principles you’re willing to live by. And that’s how you get a free society going. You could make it more formal and elaborate like you’re doing. Like now, I would imagine what you would do instead is mine would not be signed. It would just be these principles which is a codification of our principles and maybe the supplementary but it’s a body of just written documents that explain things and then in your agreement if you’re envisioning people signing it then people sign it somehow. And then by reference it adopts these principles.

I mean L. Neil Smith did this you’ve heard of L. Neil Smith I’m sure the science fiction writer he wrote oh he was a libertarian science fiction writer. He died a few years ago, but he wrote several great three great novels. One’s called The Probability Broach, what’s called The Gallatin Divergence. They’re alternate histories of the US. But anyway, he wrote this thing called the Covenant of Unanimous Consent. And he he would advertise this thing in libertarian magazines like in the 70s and the 80s and and you you were supposed to print it out and sign and send it in. And they would put your name on this. It’s sort of like the Mormons how they they identify people’s souls or something. I don’t or they save them or something. But you know, it it was a kind of a crude idea of trying to form You should look into this cuz this was like an early version of what you’re thinking of. It’s called the U u I’ve got some L period Neil Smith. It’s called the Covenant of Unanimous Consent. And he had people you could print it out. It was like a little constitution sort of familiar. Covenant unanimous consent sounds familiar. So I’m Yeah. And you were supposed you were supposed to sign it and send it in somewhere and I it was not clear what it the purpose was. Like I said it was a hybrid of a constitution and a contract and a statement of principles. That’s why when I did mine I just said I’m going to write the statement of principles and then they can be used creatively by others in some kind of way and we’ll see. But, you know, I I was distinguishing the different roles, trying to be clear about what we’re doing. Here’s what we believe. Here’s what most of us believe. Here’s more elaborate ways you could apply it. And here’s some working codes in the law that are a little bit status, but overall they’re pretty good. And they they could be guides to start from, like the restatement or the uniform commercial code or the Louisiana civil code, something like that. And then you could have an overarching umbrella agreement. Like I say, this starts getting a little legalistic in a way, but there’s there’s no way around that. You have to have a conceptual understanding of how these parts fit together.

Matthew: Yeah. No, I agree. And I mean, I know we got to wrap up now, but I’ll just kind of I’ll finish off by saying and I’m looking forward to speaking with you again about this, but that that is why I was so keen to speak to you about the Universal Principles of Liberty because even though this it may not have been your intent when you were writing it for this to be like a foundation for law or anything like that, but with regards to my own work, as I say, it’s very important for me to help people visualize what I’m talking about by showing precedent, saying, well, look, you know, we have law established through peace agreements, international law, merchant law. These are all examples of it, but also to show them the non-aggression principle articulated into the form of an agreement was also very important. And although you know you’ve written a lot of great books and done a lot of great work and contributions to libertarianism but I think this might even be your most important contribution in the sense of providing this because it’s so important for people to visualize something to be able to see you know and the the one thing that the Universal Principles of Liberty provides is that it’s the is the NAP articulated into an agreement and I think with the supplementary material as well giving that little bit of extra depth and clarity in a way. I think if even if it on its own is not enough for law, it’s certainly yeah and I like I agree in a way it’s a culminate the other stuff is necessary to get there. It was a culmination of that but yeah the other stuff is was the precursor to something like that. And I no I envision it could be used in any number of creative we’ve never done anything like this before in the world so I don’t know but and and it I don’t know if today is too early but I’d be curious to see if there’s anything in there maybe before we talk next time I’m going on the Tom Woods cruise next week and I might have time on the boat to do it to talk if I have good internet we’ll see and Adam Haymon is going to be on that boat too but I’d be curious to see if there’s anything in the principles as that’s a written Now, anything you think is wrong or should be corrected, anything that is a bright line thing that’s obviously a libertarian principle that should have been included that’s also general. You know what I mean? I’m curious if you think there are any things that are wrong in it or that should have been included.

Matthew: I mean, there are things that should have been included, but it’s just too general for that. Shouldn’t they shouldn’t be in there, but that that should be that are general and abstract, but also they they’re missing from it. They should be in there that they’re they’re bright line enough not to have any dispute over them anymore. Well, I mean, I’ll I’ll certainly have a a closer look at that, but I mean, my from when I looked at it before, my first impression was not so much that there was anything wrong with it, but really just at least for the purposes that I wanted to apply that there was just a bit missing with regard to, you know, these, you know, things like IP and abortion and stuff. I think there needs to be a certain degree of extra clarity just for my purposes. Like I say, I understand why it’s not included, you know, for for for what you were creating. But I do think that supplementary material would be very important for the sort of purposes that I would want to kind of employ. And and one final thing just to kind of kind of round off this conversation and like I said, I’m very much looking forward to having a part two. So, yeah. But I think this is a good example of how a lot of our work can really synergize. I mean, I had a conversation with Patrick Smith a couple of weeks ago, who I know you know, and we were talking about his anti-subjectivism manifesto, and he was reading out about the kind of the choice he was presenting. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but I’ll put a link in that as well. But he was kind of presenting the kind of choice that he was presenting about, look, you know, we got a choice. We can live the law of jungle or we can live as civilized people. And that’s where we invoke things like ownership and rights and concepts like that. And then obviously if we do that we want to apply it consistently. And as he was reading it out I was like that’s almost a perfect precursor for me to then present the Nations of Sanity Project as the peace agreement. And then I immediately then brought your Universal Principles of Liberty which is a perfect example of that agreement articulated. And I just feel like all these different contributions can really be put together to present a beautiful path to liberty which doesn’t guarantee it but yeah.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. Don’t disagree. I think synergy, of course, that’s how that’s how we learn. We we talk to each other, we learn, we build on each other’s ideas. They they they they breathe with each other. There could be synergy. Yeah. All right. Well, let’s let’s talk again and I’ll let you know what my schedule is like in the upcoming weeks pretty soon.

Matthew: Yeah. Okay. And in the meantime, I’ll have a good look at Universal Principles of Liberty with that request in mind and really think about anything else I can give you with regards to feedback. But at the moment, it’s really just a case of I didn’t really see much I disagree with. It was more just a case of saying I need a bit more here and there for the purposes that I want to apply. But I think your supplementary material would would do a would go a long way to fulfill a lot of those missing pieces.

Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. And I I I can I I’m just not publishing it yet because it’s it’s preliminary, but I I don’t mind showing showing it to you where where it is when I get to that point. But like I said, I’m doing the annotations first and then I’ll do the supplementary. But I’ll I’ll be happy to keep you apprised on all that. Maybe even share share a back door to it or something. But anyway, we’ll we’ll talk later about these details offline.

Matthew: That’s great. Excellent. Okay. Well, okay. Once again, really appreciate you taking the time, Stephan. Thanks everyone for it.

Stephan Kinsella: All right. Have a good weekend and you, mate. Take care. Bye.