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Sheldon Richman notes in IP Debate Breaks Out at FEE that “At a recent FEE seminar, a debate over intellectual ‘property’ broke out spontaneously among Ivan Pongracic (second from right), Paul Cwik (second from left), and me (left, where I belong). Who won?”

There is no doubt that in just 10 short minutes Richman completely dominates with his clear and concise thinking on this issue (as he did in Sheldon Richman on Intellectual Property versus Liberty). Pongracic and Cwik just re-hash the standard arguments, which are full of holes (as Cwik did in his presentation at the 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference, on the IP panel on which I was a discussant; Cwik’s argument was incredibly weak (as several audience members noted to me), as the IP argument has to be; Cwik’s working paper, “Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics?”, is available here).

[Mises cross-post]

After some problems, not to speak of the whole Mark Skousen debacle, the venerable Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) seems to be on the right track.

But an interesting PC episode has been on my mind recently. The November 1996 issue of The Freeman contained a Book Review (2; 3) by Hans-Hermann Hoppe of The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger).

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Republished as “Legislation and Law in a Free Society,” Mises Daily (Feb. 25, 2010). See archived comments below.

For a more in depth treatment of these issues, see “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023).

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From the Archives:

“Legislation and Law in a Free Society,” 45 The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty 561 (September 1995)

Legislation and Law in a Free Society
By N. Stephan Kinsella • September 1995 • Volume: 45 • Issue: 9

Mr. Kinsella practices law with Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis in Philadelphia. This article is adapted from a longer essay forthcoming in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, which contains detailed references to the authors and works cited here.

Libertarians and classical liberals have long sought to explain what sorts of laws we should have in a free society. But we have often neglected the study of what sort of legal system is appropriate for developing a proper body of law.

Historically, in the common law of England, Roman law, and the Law Merchant, law was formed in large part in thousands of judicial decisions. In these so-called “decentralized law-finding systems,” the law evolved as judges, arbitrators, or other jurists discovered legal principles applicable to specific factual situations, building upon legal principles previously discovered, and statutes, or centralized law, played a relatively minor role. Today, however, statutes passed by the legislature are becoming the primary source of law, and law tends to be thought of as being identical to legislation. Yet legislation-based systems cannot be expected to develop law compatible with a free society.

Certainty, which includes clarity of and stability in the law, is necessary so that we are able to plan for the future. Often it is thought that certainty will be increased when the law is written and enunciated by a legislature, for example in the civil codes of modern civil-law systems.

As the late Italian legal theorist Bruno Leoni pointed out, however, there is much more certainty in a decentralized legal system than in a centralized, legislation-based system. When the legislature has the ability to change the law from day to day, we can never be sure what rules will apply tomorrow. By contrast, judicial decisions are much less able to reduce legal certainty than is legislation.

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From the Archives…

Book Review (of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993)), The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, November 1994.

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Book Review: The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
By N. Stephan Kinsella • November 1994 • Volume: 44 • Issue: 11

Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers • 1993 • 265 pages • $59.95

In 1989, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe published A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics (Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), arguably the most important book of the decade, if only for the revolutionary “argumentation ethic” defense of individual rights presented in Chapter 7, “The Ethical Justification of Capitalism and Why Socialism is Morally Indefensible.” Hoppe continues to produce a significant assortment of articles elaborating on his argumentation ethic and the epistemology that underlies it, as well as on his impressive economic writings.

His new book, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, is a collection of many of these related writings published up until 1992.

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From the archives…

Perspective: Pride and the Nanny State

The Freeman • April 1996

I do not come from a rich family, and the other day it struck me that I am, in a way, glad of this. My wife and I recently purchased our first house, and, after we had inspected it one Sunday while it was still being completed, I remarked to her that it was a satisfying feeling to be purchasing the house ourselves.

While other aspects of our lives, such as relationships with spouses, family, and friends, are undeniably meaningful and essential to achieving happiness, we humans also live in the economic world. So it is natural that surviving, flourishing, and prospering would also be a significant source of happiness. It is deeply satisfying to have truly earned something—a car, a new computer, a job, even if these are derided as “material” by some.

But this source of satisfaction is being threatened by the welfare state of liberals’ and socialists’ dreams.

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In July 2002, I delivered three lectures at the wonderful Rothbard Graduate Seminar (original link) at the Mises Institute in Auburn (other lecturers included Walter Block, David Gordon, Hans Hoppe, Guido Hülsmann, Roderick Long, Ralph Raico, Joe Salerno, and Mark Thornton). It was truly a great week.

My three lectures were entitled: “Natural Law and Positive Law,” “Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality,” and “The Theory of Contracts.” Strangely, I didn’t even think to include a lecture on IP even though I had just published a lengthy article on this topic in the JLS. Apparently, even as recently as 2002, it was not clear yet how much visibility the IP issue would soon attain.

I believe the lectures were recorded, but the tapes have not yet been located, as far as I know. I intend to write further on some of these topics, but for now I have uploaded my fairly detailed and comprehensible notes for these lectures. (Subsequent to this talk, I did publish A Theory of Contracts: Binding Promises, Title Transfer, and Inalienability, Journal of Libertarian Studies 17:2 (Spring 2003); and, on the topic of punishment and rights, had previously published Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach, 12:1 Journal of Libertarian Studies 51 (Spring 1996) and New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory, 12:2 Journal of Libertarian Studies (Fall 1996).)

Children are using the Peace Table to discuss a conflict and come to resolution prior to resuming activities.

Ryan–you’re right that “Montessori, unlike Dewey or the other anti-individualist educators, actually liked children and thought they had intrinsic value. For her, the purpose of education was not to make people “productive” or good taxpayers or good wage slaves or whatever”–and that “most government educators violently hate Montessori.” In fact Montessori usually is hated both because it’s different, and because it’s private. It’s widely misunderstood; people ignorantly say that it has “no structure,” etc. I’ve grown to love the Montessori approach. My post Out of the Mouths of Babes pointed out its wonderful pro-peace approach to dispute resolution. And of course the state and statists hate Montessori’s “citizen of the world” approach which emphasizes our common humanity instead of our nationality.

[cross posted at LRC]

Teegeegeepea has some insightful comments here:

“If too much of “this stuff” takes away our empathy and understanding that this is a tragedy – albeit not worse than someone being shot anywhere else, then that perhaps is a problem of revisionism.”

That was the sentence from Bradley Smith’s reaction to the shooting at D.C’s Holocaust Museum I found most interesting. It reminds me of the debate over desensitizing violent video games some years back. I believe the same arguments were made about pornography before my time. From what I’ve heard evidence (compiled by liberal academics who hate America, families and children in particular) does not support those theories. My own opinion is that weirdos are more likely to be drawn to holocaust denial in the first place, and Von Brunn in particular was a producer rather than a mere consumer of such literature.

Does one have a responsibility to watch what one says based on the reactions of the audience? In the main I agree with Stephan Kinsella’s take on the instigator of a riot in Causation and Aggression. I would say that goes beyond explicitly ordering people to go riot and would (if this actually happened) cover Jim Morrison’s use of crowd psychology to provoke concert-goers. That covers people who deliberately seek to create such a reaction, what about a result that is not sought but was foreseeable as a likely cause of one’s actions? The law provides manslaughter and other crimes of recklessness which do not require mens rea. I think a similar idea applies here and is a reason to include disclaimers if you think listeners might get the wrong idea. All of us speak considering the consequences on our audience. Otherwise we wouldn’t even need to bother speaking the same language or explaining when a bit of technical jargon does not mean what they might assume it does. Given the difficulty of establishing a causal link between the actions of a single person (out of an unknown number of people who may have heard the message) and what has been said, I don’t propose that we introduce anything to criminal or even tort law to cover dangerous publications. All the same, a legal fiction should not delude us into believing a phenomenon is fictitious.

Love the last point.

The Video Record of Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (Program) are now available, including:

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Role of the Property and Freedom Society in a Crazy World” [Spanish translation; German translation]
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution. Reflections on Social Evolution” (Mises Blog post with further information)
• Guido Hülsmann, “The Great Crash of 2009: Causes and Consequences”
• Robert Higgs, “The Costs of the American Empire”
• Paul Gottfried, Why Does the Managerial State Deny Human Inequality?
• Steve Farron, The Affirmative Action Hoax
• Douglas French, On Good (Commodity) Credit and Bad (Fiduciary Credit). Experiences of a Former Banker
• Thomas DiLorenzo, The Unholy Alliance: State and Central Bank. American Experiences
• Mustafa Akyol, Kemal Ataturk: The French Connection
• Peter Mentzel, Conflict Arbitration in a Multi-Legal System: The Case of the Ottoman Empire
• Sean Gabb, What is the “Ruling Class?”
• Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice
• Steve Sailer, Barack Obama: America’s Half-Blood Prince
• André Lichtschlag, “Political Correctness” in Germany. A Report from the “Anti-Fascist” Front Line
• Carlos Gebauer, Public Health and Private Sickness – The Law of Governing Bodies, Administrative Corpses, and Ailing Citizens. Illustrations from Germany
• Carlo Stagnaro, Global Warming? So What!
• Robert Grözinger, “Interview of Sean Gabb”

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I’m far from a fan of the moronic “Glenn Beck,” but look at what this Huffington Post lefty, “Joseph Palermo,” has to say about him:

Yesterday afternoon Glenn Beck and two of his guests argued that Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party were “leftwing”; that “political correctness” led the committed white supremacist, James Von Brunn, to shoot a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC; and that ultimately President Barack Obama is the one responsible for the violence because his “bailouts” and “Socialistic” policies are engendering widespread anger. Beck denounced those who claim he is “churning the pot” because, he says, “the pot is already boiling.”

Seeing this spectacle with subtitles at the gym led me to wonder if there are any laws on the books against using the public airwaves to incite violence. Because that is clearly what Beck is doing. I only caught about ten minutes of the show (about all I can stand) and it was a white reactionary tour de force — incendiary, stupid, and racist.”

Look at the bolded text. This supposed lefty advocate of tolerance is obviously calling for the use of state force–criminal punishment, etc.–against people like Beck who dare to publicly decry the leftist orthodoxy. Despite the fact that Beck’s comments simply sound like the conservative mirror-image of comments of lefties. These guys are out of control.

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[From Mises Blog.]

Copyright is very sticky!

January 14, 2009 7:26 PM by Stephan Kinsella | Other posts by Stephan Kinsella | Comments (24)

Often we opponents of socialistic, legislatively-created, utilitarian-based, property-redistributing, artificial, arbitrary, inconsistent, irrational, innovation-hampering, monopolistic, anti-competitive, and wealth-destroying intellectual property laws are accused of hypocrisy when we “copyright” our articles and books.

I’ve pointed out to such people innumerable times, to little avail, that copyright is a noun, not a verb–that you don’t “copyright” something–you have a copyright in your original works of authorship as soon as you write them, automatically, courtesy of federal law. No copyright notice is required. No copyright registration is required. You have the right, whether you like it or not.

Well, then, why don’t you just “make it public domain,” some then, a bit unreflectively, retort. The problem is, there is no clear and good way to do this.

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