Here’s what I’ll add: you say yours is a moral argument. You say you’re a Rothbardian. I don’t think you could defend that position, especially given that Rothbard was wrong concerning all rights are property rights, and self-ownership is their source. I believe I soundly… https://t.co/dGqcgY4BPC
“Here’s what I’ll add: you say yours is a moral argument. You say you’re a Rothbardian. I don’t think you could defend that position, especially given that Rothbard was wrong concerning all rights are property rights, and self-ownership is their source.”
Isn’t being anti war a gutless, virtue signaling position? I mean, most people would rather there not be a need for war, but sometimes it’s either war or being conquered.
Not any more than your being opposed to aggression is virtue-signaling. Your way of wording is loaded since it subtly implies an analogy or similarity between self-defense by an individual and that by a state. This is a bit disengenuous. As I pointed out previously…
I haven't weighed in much on the Walter Block/Mises Institute/Hoppe Israel stuff, since I know what areas I specialize in and this is not one of them (libertarians often want to chime in about things they know little about; I try to resist this or provide appropriate…
Completely disagree. Just like with IP. The case against IP is not anarchist and doens't rest on anarchy, only on understanding the nature and basis of property rights. Similarly even if you are a minarchist you can recognize that justifying individual self defense is different…
I previously appeared on Joshua Smith’s Break the Cycle, in July 2021 (KOL349 | CouchStreams Ep 58 on Break the Cycle with Joshua Smith). I had forgotten but we also did a short “CouchStreams After Hours” segment for subscribers which was, and still is, behind a paywall. We discussed various things—my scooter ride with Antony Sammeroff in Austin and travels with Sammeroff the previous months (see KOL330 | Lift Talks #2 With Kinsella & Sammeroff and KOL329 | Lift Talks #1 With Kinsella & Sammeroff), skiing accidents while skiing with Sammeroff, my joining the Libertarian Party, the Mises Caucus, loser brigade libertarians and the Hoppe photo with Michael Malice’s helicopter gift (see below), when I was offered a job at Cato, when I was Disinvited From Cato, and so on. I had forgotten about this but stumbled across the file on my computer looking for something else, so decided to upload and podcast it. It’s been long enough. Youtube transcript and Grok shownotes below.
Earlier this month I attended and spoke at the APEE 49th Meeting in Guatemala City and had a great time. 1 The APEE Annual Meetings alternate between Las Vegas and other cities, sometimes in the US, sometimes in other countries. It’s been held in the past in Guatemala because of its connection to the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (where my old friend Bill Marina 2 used to teach), but apparently it’s been over 10 years since it was held there. Most of the meeting was held at the Westin Camino Real, just a couple miles from UFM, but the opening reception and dinner was held at UFM.
As I mentioned previously, 3 the CEES (Centro de Estudios Económico-Sociales; see UFM page), a group affiliated with Universidad Francisco Marroquín and in fact started by Manuel Ayau, who also founded UFM, 4 holds a monthly colloquium with UFM and other local students and members to discuss a book or work, normally on a Saturday night. The impression I get is that CEES was originally founded as very classical liberal and libertarian but nowadays has a lot of members interested in Rothbard, Hoppe, Austro-libertarianism, and so on. They sent me a very kind invitation to lead a discussion on the Monday night of my APEE talk (April 7), on the topic of self-ownership and natural rights, based on “How We Come To Own Ourselves,” chapter 4 of my recent book. 5[continue reading…]
This is my appearance on Adam Haman’s podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack), episode HN 119, “Stephan Kinsella Expounds on Philosophy And The Life Well Lived” (recorded Feb. 6, 2025—just before the Tom Woods cruise). We discussed philosophy and rights; my legal and libertarian careers (see Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story), and so on. Shownotes, links, grok summary, and transcript below. [continue reading…]
I have not yet confirmed these–got help from ChatGPT, Grok, and NotebookLM—
“The present work attempts to fill this gap, to set forth a systematic ethical theory of liberty. It is not, however, a work in ethics per se, but only in that subset of ethics devoted to political philosophy.”
— The Ethics of Liberty [continue reading…]
Mi Ecuadorian amigo Juan F. Carpio is translating my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) into Español. He’s ideally suited to it since his English is perfecto and he understands Austro-libertarian concepts like no normal translator could.
Anyway while getting ChatGPT to assist, in the middle of the translation of chapter 1 (which is only about 5 or 6 pages), it inserted about 30+ pages of made-up text. I didn’t write any of it and I am not sure where it got it from. Some of it sounds like some of the other chapters in the book that it is also helping to translate, some of it sounds like Ayn Rand. It’s as if it was trying to just write a rambling essay in my style, like a chapter that could have been in the book but wasn’t, or an overview or introduction. I’m not sure. I only skimmed it and nothing seemed exactly wrong, but lots of it is written in a style I would never use and expressing things I would never express. But a lot of it sounds like me, or a version of me.
Anyway, Juan and I got a kick out of it. The text has a few breaks as if ChatGPT was starting a new section, sort of arbitrarily or randomly, so I indicated some of those by dingbats.
(Interesting question: who has the copyright in this text? Open AI? No one? My guess is: no one (like the monkey (macaque) selfies), or maybe me, to the extent it’s a derivative work.)
What is libertarianism?
What does it mean to be a libertarian? What constitutes the essence of libertarian thought? Although there are disagreements within the movement on specific issues, and even on fundamental philosophical questions (such as anarcho-capitalism vs. minarchism), there is a kind of common core, a consensus, that defines the libertarian spirit. And that core is composed of a belief in individual rights—especially property rights—and in the illegitimacy of aggression.
To put it in its most basic terms, libertarianism is a political philosophy centered on the idea that every person is his or her own master and that the use of physical force against others is permissible only in self-defense. This basic ethic—the nonaggression principle—serves as the basis for deriving property rights over external resources: those that were first appropriated, acquired by contract, or voluntarily exchanged. This is not an arbitrary rule, but a normative conclusion derived from respect for self-ownership and social peace. [continue reading…]
As I’ve recounted in various biographical pieces, 1 in college (LSU) I dabbled in writing letters to the editor to local newspapers and the student newspaper, and then columns for the LSU Daily Reveille as well The Wonderland Times, an underground student newspaper published briefly around that time. 2
When I was younger I was interested both in STEM topics as well as philosophy, but had almost no views on political or economic topics. I was basically tabula rasa. Reading Ayn Rand in high school catapulted me into deeper interest in philosophy, political theory, economics. I ended up going to LSU and studying electrical engineering (started in 1983), but I was also devouring this other kind of material “on the side.” I started getting the itch to have conversations or interactions on these topics with others, but it was hard to find anyone to talk about them with. Frustrating. You can’t find engineering students who care about this stuff. And there was no Internet back then. This itch is probably one reason I eventually gravitated towards law school. I gradually realized I would not be satisfied being a practicing engineer. I liked using normative and verbal and legal type reasoning and argumentation too much, plus the scholarship opportunities a law career can offer. I liked writing. Engineering would not have suited me—it would have been too stultifying and boring. [continue reading…]
No trolling. I mean: I have said “I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders”–pretty explicit, no? Just b/c I think Raico and Hoppe make arguments worth pondering doesn’t mean I am closed borders. Some of us are tolerant enough to hear differing views https://t.co/gZvXS5lzd1 /1
favor immigrants over citizens (forced integration). This is why Hoppe’s approach is radical decentralization tending towards anarchy so that both problems evaporate; or in the meantime, a policy that wd reduce forced exclusion by permitting immigrants who have an invitation. /5
In the meantime we can recognize that in the current US system, immigration policy will violate rights in two ways: forced exclusion (for people who want to invite outsiders but are prevented) and forced integration (because of state roads, antidiscrimination law, welfare, voting…
I think in our current system, imposing stricter immigration controls violates rights (what Hoppe calls forced exclusion) and opening the borders violates rights (forced integration). In the US system, I tend to think we should increase the number of legal immigration.
Hoppe is for anarchy in which there would be no INS etc. He simply points out that with a welfare democracy, there are costs to whatever immigration policy is adopted: either forced exclusion, or forced integration. Both are costs imposed by the state’s existence.
This is why I use conflictability (or rivalrousness) instead of scarcity, 1 since the latter term is ambiguous and has different connotations. In common usage it just means lack of abundance. In terms of praxeology and property rights it means the opposite of…
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