An acquaintance passed on to me this PDF file of a Powerpoint presentation on global warming by MIT Professor Richard S. Lindzen. As my friend said, “it is a powerful rebuttal to those who are sure that humans are causing global warming.” The file is: Global Warming: What is it all about?, Rockhurst University, February 11, 2009.
Missouri GOP Calls for Revolution notes that “Missouri’s Lafayette County Republican Central Committee has put up a billboard proudly advising citizens to prepare for the violent overthrow of the US government.” The billboard (see right) reads: [continue reading…]
I saw this sign by the 610 loop in Houston today, and snapped this picture with my iPhone. The sign displays an ominous looking Texas state agent, and the words read:
THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU: Cellular Phone Users: please call 911 to report criminal activities or emergencies.
You know, like if mommy and daddy don’t recycle or pay their taxes.
[LRC cross-post]
I wonder if leftists are happy about the recession and unemployment–think of all the wage-slaves that are being freed of their shackles!
As I mentioned in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, in in In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) modified previous holdings regarding the patentability of software or business-method patents in upholding the rejection of patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard earlier this month. This entire area of patent law is very arcane, but the main issues and the oral arguments are explained very well by the heroic IP-abuse reporter Joe Mullin in Bilski v. Kappos Oral Arguments: Supreme Skepticism Toward Method Patents.
Take a look at Mullins’ discussion of the oral arguments–it’s fascinating seeing the Justices grapple with the absurdity of patent law. A few choice excerpts: [continue reading…]
From the Mises blog, Nov. 25, 2009
(Archived comments below)
I’ve done a good deal of writing on Hoppe’s argumentation ethics defense of libertarian rights and related matters (see Revisiting Argumentation Ethics, Mises and Argumentation Ethics). I was reminded recently of Guido Hülsmann’s superb and unique presentation of argumentation ethics in his paper “The A Priori Foundations of Property Economics,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004), in particular the section “The Foundations of Property Economics,” starting on p. 50. It’s really an excellent take on this, and has a fantastic discussion of the nature of appropriation, including his “Counterfactual Analysis of Appropriation.” Highly recommended for those interested in argumentation ethics.
In his paper, Hülsmann draws on the work of both Reinach and Hoppe. The paper was based on a presentation at a symposium on “Austrian Law and Economics: The Contributions of Reinach and Rothbard” held at the Ludwig von Mises Institute on March 29-30, 2001, papers resulting from which were published in Vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004) of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. The late Larry Sechrest also presented a paper, Praxeology, Economics, and Law: Issues and Implications, which also discusses argumentation ethics at pp. 36-38. For further information on Reinach’s writings, see Adolf Reinach’s “The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law” and “On The Concept of Causality in the Criminal Law,” by Adolf Reinach. For additional material on argumentation ethics, see Revisiting Argumentation Ethics.
November 25, 2009 at 12:33 pmHe also slaps Coase around real nice. I could almost see him smiling while writing it.
November 25, 2009 at 2:49 pmHulsmann drops the ball here:
“The settling of conflict requires some form of communication and argument. But arguing would be
senseless if it could not change the opinions and actions of others. The point is precisely that we want our discussion partners to think and act differently. We acknowledge that they have control over their wills and bodies, and moreover we want them to exercise this control. In other words, in any exchange of argument, all discussion partners agree at least on two things: (1) that each of them is the factual owner of his will and body, and (2) that each of them should exercise this control.”
We may want them to exercise that control *given that they have it*, but that does not mean we agree that they “should” have such control in the first place. Hulsmann cooks up a normative statement out of nothing.
November 25, 2009 at 4:36 pmWe may want them to exercise that control *given that they have it*, but that does not mean we agree that they “should” have such control in the first place. Hulsmann cooks up a normative statement out of nothing.
Uh, isn’t that kind of the point?
November 25, 2009 at 5:13 pmTalk about an uncharitable (and wrong) reading of Coase.
November 25, 2009 at 6:06 pmFourier = [bad word]
November 25, 2009 at 7:06 pmone-liners are the white noise of blogs.
November 25, 2009 at 7:14 pmVol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004) of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
this link doesn’t work
November 25, 2009 at 9:50 pmGood job Guido. You think Coase doesn’t understand that value is subjective.
Only the Austrians ever realised that! (Except those that realised it too much — like Hayek, he was wrong too).
November 26, 2009 at 6:57 amHow nice of Fourier to [DELETED] share his wisdom here.
November 26, 2009 at 9:02 amDon’t you have [DELETED]
November 26, 2009 at 9:24 am[DELETED]
November 26, 2009 at 3:26 pmMy first visit to the Mises blog. Hoping this discussion isn’t representative of the normal level of dialogue here.
November 26, 2009 at 3:45 pmMandelbrot, when Fourier’s involved, it is.
November 26, 2009 at 4:44 pmBeefcake thinks he’s doing economics. Poor him, if only he read something other than A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.
November 26, 2009 at 7:29 pmFourier is [DELETED]
November 27, 2009 at 2:25 pmActually dear Fourier, he is doing economics. You on the other hand… econostrology? Maybe.
November 28, 2009 at 7:14 am[DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 8:05 amFourier [DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 9:15 amInquisitioner, what type of economics is he doing? My history of thought of this area is bad. But it seems to me that he’s doing insulticism[DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 9:49 amFourier, [DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 10:08 am[DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 2:20 pm[DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 2:59 pm[DELETED]
November 28, 2009 at 10:15 pmEconomics of planned economies. But you knew that, didn’t you? Or no wait you probably didn’t because you’re a clueless troll. Also, l2read, it’s Inquisitor.
November 29, 2009 at 9:51 amInquisitioner, who are you? What are you doing here?
Why are you preaching Hellsmennian Irrelevanticism and Hoppean Insulticism.
December 6, 2009 at 9:54 am December 6, 2009 at 11:52 amShouldn’t ALL of Fouriers posts be deleted? He’s just trying to be insulting.
December 6, 2009 at 6:52 pm December 6, 2009 at 9:06 pmStephan,
It’s a seasonal mutation I go through. In truth, I prefer the purple light, so I’ve gone back to it. I may, however, change my title from Lord to Pope. Still thinking about it.
December 6, 2009 at 10:04 pmyou’re safer with “lord”. pope’s have been fond of proffering the ring for kissing.
but more importantly, this link still doesn’t work!
Vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004) of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
December 6, 2009 at 10:17 pm[bad word]? isn’t that a tad too quaint?
Well, not quite. But this post’s title is based on a little linguistic joke passed on to me by Paul Vahur. He informs me that the word “hallitus” means “government” in Finnish, but in Estonian it means “mold”. (Estonian and Finnish are similar languages like German and Swedish are.)
In response to recent comments by Emily Bazelon on the Slate Political Gabfest, I posted the following on their facebook page:
Two bones to pick with Emily. First, she is infuriated with Palin for not giving credit to feminism, even though she “gained” from victories of feminism. I am no Palin fan, and as a libertarian am not completely opposed to the feminist agenda. But criticisms like these seem incredibly unfair to me. They seek to muzzle people by virtue of their gender or race. It’s okay for a white man to oppose affirmative action but not Clarence Thomas since he “benefited” from it; a man can criticize feminism … but not a woman? People have a perfect right to hold whatever views they want, regardless of their gender or race etc.; they can even disagree with a policy that has affected (even benefited) them. (I oppose patent law even though I’ve made money off of it; a tax lawyer can oppose the income tax; a cancer doctor can oppose cancer, etc.)
Second bone: Emily accuses Palin of lying because of the Death Panels remark. The other lies or errors that I’ve heard of seem trivial, and this one does not seem like a lie. See Lew Rockwell here:
On Morning Joe today, all the Republicans employed by the Obama …regime via MSNBC were united with the Dems in chastizing Sarah Palin for her comment that Obamacare would lead to death panels promoting euthanasia and infanticide of the “unfit.” How could the mobs possibly think this? After all, Obama supports federal funding for killing the unborn, and his plan will massively expand this program. He sends his predator drones to kill those unfit for life, according to his calculus, in Afghanistan. He supports a war in Iraq that has taken a million lives. He has ethnically cleansed millions in Pakistan. He is the product of an ideological movement that is pro-euthanasia. Of course, Obamacare will eventuate in killing people.
We libertarians recognize the state is nothing but a killing machine, an agent of destruction and death. You liberals are very inconsistent about this. As the great Ludwig von Mises said, “No socialist author ever gave a thought to the possibility that the abstract entity which he wants to vest with unlimited power—whether it is called humanity, society, nation, state, or government—could act in a way of which he himself disapproves.”
[LRC cross-post]
Related:
Here’s my reply to Bob Murphy’s post “Can God Own Your Soul?”:
Bob,
I’m not surprised you bring this up–you raised a similar notion as some sort of criticism of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics years ago in this piece. In my reply thereto, I noted:
MC introduce supposed “counterexamples” of God and slavery. … As for God – you can’t just posit that God owns everyone and “therefore” we are not self-owners. Moroever, even if God does own us, it could be that we are still self-owners vis-a-vis each other. In any event, this in no way refutes the conclusion that only the libertarian norms can be argumentatively justified in discourse.
If there is a God, since He is Good, we can assume he’s libertarian and has decreed a libertarian moral law within his universe. So even if God owns A and B, A still has a better claim to A’s body than B does. [continue reading…]
SEE NOW:
I was invited to be a guest on The Peter Mac Show last night and ended up staying on for both hours. It was a pretty in-depth interview. The host asked impressively intelligent questions for someone who had just started coming around to the anti-IP position (after reading my Intellectual Property and Libertarianism just the day before (!)). The MP3 files are here: hour 1; hour 2 (on Peter’s site, hour 1, hour 2). [Local files: hour 1; hour 2]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:40 — 10.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Update: KOL207 | Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Are Not About Plagiarism, Theft, Fraud, or Contract; Kinsella, “If you oppose IP you support plagiarism; copying others is fraud or contract breach,” in “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property” (C4SIF)
From the Mises Blog; archived comments below.
Defenders of patents commonly say they are against innovators’ ideas being “stolen” or “plagiarized.” This implies that patents simply permit an innovator to sue those who copy his idea. This position betrays either disingenuity or ignorance about patent law. Let me explain.
Under copyright law, someone who independently creates an original work similar to another author’s original work is not liable for copyright infringement, since the independent creation is not a reproduction of the other author’s work. Thus, for example, a copyright defendant can try to show he never had access to the other’s work, as a defense. The reason for this is that the fundamental copyright is, well, a right to copy one’s original creative work. By the nature of creative works that are subject to copyright, it is very unlikely someone would independently create the same novel, say, or painting, as another author. (And if copyright only protected literal copying, it would be much less a problem; but unfortunately it protects a bundle of rights including also the right to make “derivative works“.) But, in the rare case where author 2 independently creates a work very similar to that of author 1, it is not an infringement of author 1’s copyright, since author 2 did not copy anything. [continue reading…]
Archived comments below.
From the Mises blog.
I posted the following comment to Cory Doctorow’s BoingBoing post Competition and Google Book Search:
Cory, Google is not perfect but the attacks on them for attempting this seem to me to be demonizing the wrong party. The problem is copyright law–a state legal system. The state is, as usual, to blame. Why some people are trusting the same state that foists IP law on us to protect is us mystifying. In attacking Google they are allying with the state (see my post Google Digital Library Plan Opposed by German Chancellor), which is the real enemy. I don’t see any choice for google to accomplish the quasi-digital libertarian of orphan and other works other than its creative legal-settlement route.
Lohmann writes:
“Nobody likes this “only-for-Google” aspect of the settlement–in fact, Google has said that it would support orphan works legislation that would empower the Registry to make the same deal (or even a better deal) with others who want to use these unclaimed works.”
I am not sure I see the concern here–seems to me only someone who cares about copyright would object to this.
“The settlement agreement even has a provision that makes it clear that the UWF can license others “to the extent permitted by applicable law”–what amounts to an “insert orphan works legislation here” invitation.”
I’m not sure what is wrong with this. Even partially libertaring orphan works from the confines of copyright law would be good.
“But absent some legislative supplement to the revised Settlement 2.0, it still seems that any other company would have to scan these books, get sued, and hope for a class action settlement. That, of course, is the kind of barrier to entry that any monopolist would envy.”
Again, it seems to me that Google is doing it the only way they see possible, given the terrible state regime.
“…But we shouldn’t be satisfied with antitrust law here.”
This line really bothers me. The EFF and others supposedly concerned with individual rights should recognize the state as the enemy. They should recognize antitrust law is completely unjustified; the real monopoly is the state, which arrogates a true monopoly to itself. This line implies that antitrust law is okay; it’s not. It’s immoral and unjustified. All antitrust law should be of course abolished.
See my An Open Letter to Leftist Opponents of Intellectual Property: On IP and the Support of the State and Eben Moglen and Leftist Opposition to Intellectual Property.
[Mises blog cross-post; Against Monopoly cross-post]
Seattle
Stephen, it’d be a wise idea not to mistake the EFF for an organization concerned with individual rights.
Think of them as the NRA: They’re a lobbying group whose beliefs happen to intersect with a very small subset of ours.
Curt Howland
Agreed, Seattle.
I would add that the EFF, like the ACLU, focuses almost exclusively on the 1st Amendment, forgetting everything else, including the 9th and 10th which put everything else in perspective.
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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