StephanKinsella.com

Famous ‘IP’ Lawyer Argues Against Patent and Copyright Law (Video)

Where the author, Dr. Roy Schestowitz, recommends some of my anti-IP materials. This is an anti-software patent blog and site.

Kevin Carson: Sympathy for the Devil, BP. I reply in detail in the comments.

Sheldon Richman, Self-Regulation in the Corporate State: The BP Spill. My comments to Richman:

This is a good piece–unlike Carson’s (uncharacteristically) weak one on this topic. Of course, Lew’s comments were not a defense of BP of the type Sheldon rightly criticizes; none of us are under any illusions that there is no corporatism going on here. And even if BP was too careless and negligent, that doesn’t mean we ought not feel sympathy for them (presupposing they will in the end take the brunt of the costs of the damages).

Tokyo–of course the state should get out of the incorporation business altogether, just as it should get out of marriage. Of course it should end its limited liability grants (and it should also end its court system that would impose liability for torts etc. in the first place).

The question is: in a free market, with the state out of the way, if a contractual-”corporation” were formed–call it a Hessen–would passive “shareholders” have liability for torts committed by employees/agents of the Hessen they held a share in? You have to argue for it, carefully. Pilon and Hessen have explained why there is no need for a limited liability grant b/c there is no reason to impose vicarious liability on a shareholder in the first place — https://stephankinsella.com/2009/10/26/pilon-on-corporations-a-discussion-with-kevin-carson/ .

To argue otherwise you would need to articulate a careful, libertarian-based theory of causation and responsibility which none of the left-libertarian opponents have done, to my knowledge. Rather they just assume it’s obvious that a shareholder should be liable and would be, if not for the pernicious limited liability privilege. They just point to a few “moral hazards” and incentive effects they don’t like, as if consequentialism were not controversial. Or they just trot out an unthinking “owners are responsible for their property”–which is doubly flawed: first, owners are responsible for their actions, not their property; second, relying on the state’s own legal classificaiton scheme to call a shareholder an “owner”–ownership is the right to control and obviously the shareholder can’t fly the corporate jet or use the corporate boardroom or set policy or manage employees etc. see http://blog.mises.org/8993/the-over-reliance-on-state-classifications-employee-and-shareholder/

So the shareholder’s role in the company is limited, and if you come up with an ad hoc vicarious responsibility conclusion to get what you want, it’s going to rest on an at least implicit causation idea that is so broad that you would also have to say that many other actors connected to the Hessen are also vicariously liable for its torts: employees, creditors, suppliers and other vendors, consultants, customers, attorneys, accountants, stakeholders, and on and on.

Yesterday, totally out of the blue, my six year old drops this one on me. We had not even been talking about taxes or anything for weeks. Last serious political talk was right before Earth Day, when I spent an hour inoculating him from propaganda–which, to my pleasant surprise, didn’t occur; his Montessori school hardly mentioned it.

Anyway, he says:

“Dad, wouldn’t it be cool if you could live in a helicopter?”

Yeah, I say, sort of like a houseboat, I guess, but it would be pretty expensive!

“Yeah,” he says, laughing.

And you would have a hard time ordering things from Amazon!–I point out

He starts laughing, imagining FedEx throwing packages up to your house-helicopter.

“And Dad, it would be so cool, that no one could tax you. You would just fly right over them! And if the police try to get you to tax you? to take your money? You just fly right away!”

I chimed in too:

***

Klein has an excellent point. Röpke is right that we just have to be careful when we use the term. We have to distinguish it from crony-capitalism or corporatism. Clearly “capitalism” denotes an important aspect of the economy of an advanced libertarian social order. We need words and concepts to understand and discuss this.

See also Jeff Tucker’s Why Klein’s Book Is an Event to Celebrate. From Klein’s blog:

The Capitalist and The Entrepreneur: Available Now!

13 May 2010
| Peter Klein |
My new book, The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets (Mises Institute, 2010), is now available. For a limited time, you can get it for just $15 — a bargain at half the price! Actually, the resource-constrained among you can read the Full Monty here, free of charge. A PDF version is also available. A promotional essay appears today on Mises.org.

The editorial and production staff did a terrific job, and I’m thrilled with the volume’s look and feel. The contents aren’t bad either!

Order two or more and I will personally send you a set of Ginsu knives.

Here’s my comment: Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism.Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. Capitalism. Capitalist! Capitalism. Capitalist. [continue reading…]

Latest notable terms from this and last week’s Slate Culture Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page). [continue reading…]

[From my Webnote series]

Gene Callahan, in Private Domains and Immigration, in 2003, concluded, in a critique of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s views on immigration:

giving more power to the state, based on an arbitrary set of ideals as to who should be allowed to come to the US (or any other country), ideals that are divorced from any actual entrepreneurial judgment, is not the answer to these problems. True freedom is the only answer.

Callahan, in 2010, in The Nature of Ideology, drawing inspiration from cow-psychologist Temple Grandin and his “second stay in Switzerland,” now writes:

Spending more time there on trip two, I thought I was in the most naturally orderly and civic-minded place I had ever been – and, I realized, if the Swiss ever adopted the open border policy I had advocated until then, that place would be gone in a decade. Now, when I recently expressed some reservations about unrestricted immigration on a libertarian blog, I was immediately accused of being a ‘xenophobe.’

Interestingly, these latter observations are similar to those of Ralph Raico and Hoppe. Raico argued:

Free immigration would appear to be in a different category from other policy decisions, in that its consequences permanently and radically alter the very composition of the democratic political body that makes those decisions. In fact, the liberal order, where and to the degree that it exists, is the product of a highly complex cultural development. One wonders, for instance, what would become of the liberal society of Switzerland under a regime of “open borders.”

In other words, the argument is that relatively liberal societies would certainly soon become less libertarian if they opened their borders.

And Hoppe argues here ¹ (emphasis added):

It is not difficult to predict the consequences of an open border policy in the present world. If Switzerland, Austria, Germany or Italy, for instance, freely admitted everyone who made it to their borders and demanded entry, these countries would quickly be overrun by millions of third-world immigrants from Albania, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria, for example. As the more perceptive open-border advocates realize, the domestic state-welfare programs and provisions would collapse as a consequence. This would not be a reason for concern, for surely, in order to regain effective protection of person and property the welfare state must be abolished. But then there is the great leap—or the gaping hole—in the open border argument: out of the ruins of the democratic welfare states, we are led to believe, a new natural order will somehow emerge.

The first error in this line of reasoning can be readily identified. Once the welfare states have collapsed under their own weight, the masses of immigrants who have brought this about are still there. They have not been miraculously transformed into Swiss, Austrians, Bavarians or Lombards, but remain what they are: Zulus, Hindus, Ibos, Albanians, or Bangladeshis. Assimilation can work when the number of immigrants is small. It is entirely impossible, however, if immigration occurs on a mass scale. In that case, immigrants will simply transport their own ethno-culture onto the new territory. Accordingly, when the welfare state has imploded there will be a multitude of “little” (or not so little) Calcuttas, Daccas, Lagoses, and Tiranas strewn all over Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. It betrays a breathtaking sociological naiveté to believe that a natural order will emerge out of this admixture. Based on all historical experience with such forms of multiculturalism, it can safely be predicted that in fact the result will be civil war. There will be widespread plundering and squatterism leading to massive capital consumption, and civilization as we know it will disappear from Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Furthermore, the host population will quickly be outbred and, ultimately, physically displaced by their “guests.” There will still be Alps in Switzerland and Austria, but no Swiss or Austrians.

As for Callahan getting smeared as a “xenophobe” for having reservations about unrestricted immigration, this is common–from criticisms such as he himself leveled at Hoppe, and so on (followup). Make of this what you will.

(To be clear, I’m pro-immigration and opposed to state restrictions on immigration.)

Update: See some recent tweets:

Tweet:

It’s hard for an ancap to support the INS, or any other federal goonds. OTOH it’s hard to support mass subsidized immigration either. Hoppe himself sees the heart of the problem is one caused by state democracy, welfare, and intervention: if the state prevents a citizen from inviting some outsiders, that violates his rights; it is what Hoppe calls forced exclusion. He specifically criticizes state immigration policy when it violates the rights of its citizens to invite whoever they want to their property. OTOH if the state subsidizes mass immigration and forces people to support and associate with and employ and give voting rights to these outsiders by means of antidiscrimination laws, welfare, and public roads and transportation and other state owned public property and facilities, this violates the rights of citizens by way of forced integration. Both forced exclusion and forced integration violate property rights of the citizens, according to Hoppe. Hoppe’s solution–the “first best”–is to abolish the state so that neither forced exclusion nor forced integration occur. Barring that, his “second best” solution as to a reasonable way to minimize both, to reduce the rights violations from either forced exclusion or forced integration, is to deny outsiders the use of public resources owned by citizens (because given welfare and other legal rights, they will have access to this as soon as they are permitted access) unless they are invited by a citizen who takes responsibility for them. By prohibiting them from accessing public resources (without an invitation) you reduce forced integration and related costs and rights violations; by permitting someone who is invited by a citizen, you reduce the forced exclusion problem (and by making the invitee-citizen responsible, you further reduce the forced integration problem since presumably there is a lower chance the immigrant will be a criminal or on the dole, since a citizen has to vouch for and to some degree even be responsible him). Until we abolish the welfare state, voting, and the state itself, you can see why his solution has an appeal to some libertarians: it’s an attempt to reduce both types of rights violations perpetrated by the state: forced exclusion, and forced integration/mass-subsidized immigration. See relevant quotes here https://stephankinsella.com/2007/09/boudreaux-on-hoppe-on-immigration/… n.b.

1. Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem (Vol. 16 Num. 1, Winter 2002): 75-97, in The Great Fiction). [↩]

China is widely viewed as a “threat” to the US because of its perceived rapid and unstoppable economic growth. This is, in my view, doubly confused. First: if the premise were true, this would be good, not bad. Second: I don’t think China is in such great shape. Unfortunately.

Some free market economists think otherwise. Peter Schiff “predicts that China will overtake the U.S in terms of Gross Domestic Product before 2020.” Jim Rogers thinks “China will likely constitute tomorrow’s most powerful nation-state.”

I’ve been working for years now for a company with factories and extensive dealings in Taiwan and China. It’s been my opinion for some time that China is a primitive basket case. Land is leased, not owned. The communist party corruption is everywhere. The Asian mentality is far different than the western one; they are less innovative, more subservient and servile, more order-following, more collectivist and less individualistic. Poverty and peasantry are rampant. Asians are far more racist and superstitious than Americans (everyone is more racist than Americans in my experience). You have to get permission for everything. There are currency controls. Contracts are not respected–they are signed because they are viewed as red tape and then they start being renegotiated the next day. And on and on.

In my view, America is, for all our faults, still, by far, the strongest and best large economy in the world. Who can match the US? Canada is too small. Japan is not quite our size and has its own problems. Europe is like an older, more kleptocratic version of the US–and is probably second best in the world. South America is a basket case of banana republics. Africa is even worse. Russia and Central Europe?–mired in pessimism and corruption and the tendrils of the wreckage of communism. Of the rest, I think India has a better chance than China, for two reasons: they speak English, and they inherited the English property rights system–unlike in China where you still have to lease land from the state for 50 years instead of buying it. And I think India is a basket case too, unlikely to improve much for many decades. So the US is and will remain preeminent, in my view–despite all our problems. (See also Jonathan Bean’s America’s Hidden Strength: Babies, Immigration.) Unfortunately, this will allow our parasitical state to maintain its warfare-welfare state (see my post Hoppe on Liberal Economies and War).

An American friend of mine living in China sent me some of his thoughts, which I provide, with editing, and anonymously, below:

China is [screwed], I tell you. This place is one big pile of poo. Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are wrong, at least about China. Jim Chanos is right! [See also Jim Rogers: China not in a bubble, Chanos couldn’t spell China; China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says. Also note: Mark DeWeaver, who has written for the Mises Institute before, recently gave a speech about Chinese monetary policy. There’s some interesting meat in both the audio and corresponding slides.] [continue reading…]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (17.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS

I was on The Peter Mac Show on May 12, 2010, with my fellow Libertarian Standard co-blogger Rob Wicks. We discussed a variety of matters, including whether libertarians should use the word “capitalism,” also anarchy, IP and other topics. The MP3 file is here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

My reply to one “Chris George’s” post No, The Non-Aggression Principle is Not Enough (see Reply to Left-Libertarians on “Capitalism” for other discussions with Chris):

Chris, you are getting better. Glad you accept the NAP as a basic rule of thumb. But confusions remain.

“If we got down to the really nitty gritty, I’m sure you could find plenty of people who would deny my libertarianism at all since I’m a rationalist, anarchist, localist, pluralist, and moral subjectivist before I’m a libertarian”

As long as you are opposed to aggression we don’t “deny your libertarianism.” We welcome your opposition to aggression. THe word “before” is confusing; you don’t mean chronologically, and you won’t give an example of where you value something more than non-aggression such that you would condone aggression. (BTW this is exactly what conservatives say: “Hey, we are as against aggression as the next guy, but unlike you libertarians it’s just one of MANY “values” we hold. So we have to balance them.” So they leave the door open for moral majority laws etc. This is what you are doing too, in principle–you need to work to root that out. we must oppose aggression *on principle*. Your *reasons* can be your own. But it has to be a principled opposition, not a mere tentative rule of thumb).

You also write: “While I don’t accept the NAP absolutely do to issues of property and efficacy, it’s something that I think should be looked to first in the majority of cases.”

you mean “due” to. But still, you seem to want to leave the door open to condone aggression against private property due to some kind of leftist sentimental abhorrence of property rights. But all human rights are property rights, of course. You cannot be against agression and a libertarian without objecting to trespass against private property rights, of course.

” If we can define a decent standard of property/possession/whatever-you-want-to-call it,”

we have already done this. Next!

““no, the NAP is not enough.” Let me explain and it doesn’t lead to specifically “left” answers.

For the most part, the reason is strategic. Simply put, most people don’t want to hear some philosophical gibberish about “aggression” or “how ethics ‘derived’ from the nature of man are the ‘correct’ ethics.””

As for your first “reason,” I stopped reading there. You are conflating truth with strategy and persuasiveness, a common mistake of the activist mindset (see my The Trouble with Libertarian Activism, http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella19.ht… .) You cannot say the NAP is wrong because it doesn’t persuade many people. this makes no sense at all.

Then you get to your “second” reason which is equally confused:

“The second reason the NAP is not enough is just simply due to its relative worthlessness in real life. Would you really want to live in a world where the only constant is non-aggression? A world where everyone was a shallow, selfish dickhead who avoided aggression would suck.”

This again makes no sense. Libertarianism is a narrow philosophy concerned with interpersonal violence. But we are not just libertarians. As humans we can and should oppose meanness and shallowness, etc. Living in a good society means (a) being free from aggression; and (b) a lot of other things, like culture, art, benevolence, civilization, civility, charity, and so on.

Recognizing this in no way argues against the non-aggression principle! Just because living a crime-free life is “not enough” does not mean we should not oppose crime on principle!

Think straight, man. You have potential, but you have got to get out of this muzzy, confused, left-emotional way of thinking. Think clearly and all this is easy to sort out.

It is clear that the left-libertarians have lost in their campaign to demonize the word “capitalism.” Nice try, fellas, but you lost. Libertarians are not buying your strained arguments and pointless attempt to fight semantic battles. Capitalism as a word just means private ownership of the means of production. I point you to a dictionary. This is obviously compatible with libertarianism, and arguably an essential part of the economy of an advanced libertarian society. Crony capitalism and corporatism are unlibertarian, but laissez-faire capitalism is not. The origin of the term may be interesting but does not change what meaning it has now. There is nothing wrong with using capitalism to describe a key aspect of a libertarian social order, as long as one is clear to distinguish it from crony-capitalism. See: Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism; Rothbard: “True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism”; Reply to Left-Libertarians on “Capitalism”; Left-Libertarians Admit Opposition to “Capitalism” is Substantive.

And it is not we libertarians who have things to learn from the left: rather the opposite is true. We non-prefix libertarians are not left, but we are also not right, and it’s wrong of left-libertarians to accuse us of being “right” merely because we reject the equally confused and false doctrines of the left. We already know that crony capitalism is wrong. Furthermore, we are aware of the fact that state intervention has distorted the market. We also do not just rubber stamp and endorse current land holdings out of some fetish for the status quo; non-prefix libertarians believe that if someone can show a better claim to a given piece of property than the current legal owner, he should prevail. But unless and until this occurs, the current legal owner, so long as he is private, has a better claim to the property than anyone else and should be its owner (property held by the state should be taken from it, of course).

Go capitalism, go! Here is some recommended recent pro-capitalist libertarian reading:

• Peter Klein’s new book The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets
• Thank Goodness for Capitalism, by Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan, Mises Daily (Tuesday, May 11, 2010)
• Crony Capitalism Is NOT Capitalism, Dominick T. Armentano, Independent.org (May 10, 2010)