by Stephan Kinsella
on March 7, 2024
BOB:
Dear Mr. Kinsella,
You have made the point that technically speaking a property right is not the right to control a resource but the right to exclude others from using a resource. [See LFFS, ch. 2, Appendix I, the section “Property as a Right to Exclude” —SK] If you have the time I would like to ask 2 questions regarding how this applies to easements like a right of way.
Positive easements like a right of way are commonly looked at as the right to USE OR DO something to the land that is the subject of the easement.
How would one look at a right of way or other such easements from the perspective of the “right to exclude”? What do you have the right exclude the primary owner from doing with their land in this case? [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on February 29, 2024
[From my Webnote series]
Last year I had an email discussion with a friend, Johann Gevers, about legal entities and corporations and such. Our discussion, lightly edited, is appended below, with Johann’s permission. For background see my post Corporate Personhood, Limited Liability, and Double Taxation.
GEVERS:
Stephan,
I’ve read Robert Hessen’s In Defense of the Corporation and found it excellent. I found it interesting that he disagrees with the notion that corporations are distinct entities, separate from the voluntary association of individuals (shareholders, board, executive, etc.) that makes up the corporation. Also interesting is his careful and insightful description of corporate liability for tort, distinguishing intentional and unintentional / negligence cases, and pointing out that principals (such as board members, executives, etc.) do not escape liability for their actions, i.e. cannot hide behind the corporate veil (though he doesn’t use this term). [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on February 27, 2024
Dear Mr Kinsella,
I had a question about eminent domain [expropriation] and who becomes the rightful owner of a resource, let’s say a house, after the state has expropriated (stolen) it from the original owner. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 29, 2024
As I tweeted here:
Walter Block’s pro-Israel WSJ article from October, “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas” (substack version) upset lots of libertarians, e.g. Scott Horton who says, at about 1:08:00 here, that Walter is now kicked out of libertarianism because of his Israel-Gaza views.
Kevin Duffy also criticized him; Walter responded here: “Have I Gone AWOL?” He argued that his views on Gaza are fine since it’s okay to disagree with Rothbard and still be a libertarian. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 4, 2024
I published the print version of Legal Foundations of a Free Society in September of 2023, in time for the 2023 Property and Freedom Society Annual Meeting. The Kindle edition is now available at Amazon. Nook version on Barnes & Noble, and a free online epub file, will be available in months to come. Enjoy!
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 1, 2024
I found this in some old files. Might be of interest to some. Other participants included fellow libertarian sci-fi authors J. Neil Schulman and Victor Koman. PDF
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 11, 2023
An intelligent observation from a reader of Legal Foundations of a Free Society (my comments interspersed)
Page 486 had a great example of nuggets in this book that give me a different perspective. Nothing earth shattering, just a more accurate way to understand.
Scarcity is a particularly poor term, for this reason: think of paper clips and why we call them scarce goods. At the root it has nothing to do with the class of paper clips. It’s rather about a specific instance of a paper clip. Now ask if 2 or more people can use that specific object simultaneously without conflict: no. That makes it an economic good. This means we can be talking about the Mona Lisa, of which there is 1, or that paper clip, of which there is (drumroll) … 1.
[continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
No time to clean this one up at present, so here it is mostly raw—
Now, the topic of Willful Negligence.
I looked at “The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld”. I understand the idea of a “spectrum between non-action or mere behavior”.
Where I get jumbled up, is on the combined topics of “willful negligence” and “action”. Example:
Joe is lounging in his easy chair holding his known-to-be-vicious dog on a leash. He falls asleep; dog gets out of the house and kills a child. Whatever other details we wish to add (front door open, etc) should show Joe as extremely willfully negligent. Even stipulate Joe shows no remorse, indeed, objects to any estoppel argument. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
No time to clean this one up at present, so here it is mostly raw. All the indented (and lighter colored) text is from my questioner:
QUERY:
This is not a question, more of a light-bulb insight the book helped clarify for me: Page 225 says “…acquiring and abandoning both involve a manifestation of the owner’s intent”.
Formerly, I would sense a gap between the nature of first-acquired title, versus subsequently title transfer.
Original appropriation seemed clean and straightforward. But acquiring already-owned resources always seemed interlaced with a history of title transfer…acquiring it from someone who themselves can show clear title from a former owner; and that former owner can show the same, and so on, as far back as the property’s history is known (reasonably). And indeed I intuitively saw nothing wrong with this. It just seemed complicated in comparison to pure homesteading.
[continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Q: Re page 424 at the top [“Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society], was the topic of exchanging a tangible for a service. This got me to thinking: how about service-only trades? I haven’t seen this covered, perhaps it falls outside libertarian legal framework.
How would we categorize an agreement whereby the parties exchange only their services (actions), AND make no provision for non-performance … therefore, no tangible resources are involved at all? An example: I’ll help set up for your party; you wash my car; and we don’t discuss what happens if one of us reneges. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Q: Hi Mr. Kinsella,
Am I right in understanding that, based on your estoppel theory, [see chs. 5-6 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society] it would NOT be a crime for A to say to B, “Give me $100 or I’ll punch C” (assuming C is unaware of this statement)? Because neither B nor C suffers any fear of receiving a battery. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 21, 2023
Interchange between me and Jessi Cowart on FB, starting here:
Jessi Cowart for LPTexas Vice Chair:
I’m a minarchist, and I reject the notion that this makes me any less libertarian than my brethren who identify as anarchists. This movement is about fighting the state. It’s not a pissing contest to see who’s more “hard core.”
Kinsella:
You are less libertarian. You’re partly libertarian and partly statist. A mini-statist.
Cowart:
Your purity test is tired. Anarchists who try to arbitrarily move the goal post on what it means to be libertarian – and call their allies statists – aren’t helping to advance liberty. [continue reading…]
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