≡ Menu

The Common Law and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations

by on December 12, 2024

Interesting new article: Stephen Crosswell, “The Common Law and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations,” Journal of Global Trade, Ethics and Law Vol. 2 No. 2 (2024): 1–33.

Adam Smith developed a theory of the ‘four-stage’ advancement of society as England was entering the Industrial Revolution (the fourth stage) and becoming the leading commercial centre in the world. That transition was raising new and novel legal issues that required legal solutions more complex than the earlier three stages in human advancement, as innovation gave rise to new technologies and ways of working. He and other juridical thinkers saw the debate about whether legislation could effectively drive that transition as the central question of their time, the answer to which would, in the long run, affect the fate of nations and Empire. They had a clear view on this, informed by the study of thousands of years of human history. For them, the common law was vastly superior.

This article examines the debate that took place on these issues, the Benthamite revolution that followed and the modern basket of rights that obfuscate the key question that policy-makers should be asking in our generation: if the common law was so successful in driving the Industrial Revolution, what confidence can we have in a legislated approach as we move into the fifth stage, the Technology Revolution? This is one of the most important issues facing the world as societies decide what legal framework(s) will regulate humanity’s move into a digital society and the efforts to discover and invent the technologies that will support us on that journey.

Related:

Share
{ 0 comments }

Rand on the Injuns and Property Rights

by on December 8, 2024

In a recent Tweet, I wrote:

Rand on the Injuns

“Now, I don’t care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country. I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you’re a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights—they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal “cultures”—they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. [continue reading…]

Share
{ 0 comments }

Labor, Value, Metaphors, Locke, Intellectual Property

by on December 4, 2024

From a facebook post by David Veksler:

There is no such thing as “intrinsic value” in economics. Value exists only in the eyes of the beholder. The concept of “value” is made possible by being valuable to a specific person, for a particular purpose. The only thing in the universe that is intrinsically valuable is human beings.

TLDR: Stop with nonsense like “Bitcoin has no intrinsic value”

My comment (lightly edited here): [continue reading…]

Share
{ 1 comment }

KOL451 | Debating the Nature of Rights on The Rational Egoist (Michael Liebowitz)

by on November 28, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 451.

My recent appearance on The Rational Egoist. (Spotify)

Shownotes:

Debating the Nature of Rights with Stephan Kinsella

In this episode of The Rational Egoist, host Michael Liebowitz engages in a stimulating debate with libertarian writer and patent attorney Stephan Kinsella on the nature of rights.

Drawing from his book Legal Foundations of a Free Society and his extensive work on legal and political theory, Kinsella offers his perspective on the origins, scope, and application of individual rights.

Together, they examine differing philosophical interpretations and discuss how rights function in a free society.

This thought-provoking conversation invites listeners to question and refine their understanding of one of the most fundamental concepts in political philosophy.

Grok shownotes: In this episode of the Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (KOL451), recorded on January 29, 2025, libertarian patent attorney Stephan Kinsella debates economist Stan Liebowitz on the nature and legitimacy of property rights, focusing on intellectual property (IP) and its economic implications, hosted by the Federalist Society (0:00:00-10:00). Kinsella argues that IP, particularly patents and copyrights, violates property rights by granting state-enforced monopolies over non-scarce ideas, using Austrian economics to emphasize that property rights apply only to scarce, rivalrous resources, and critiques IP’s economic harms like litigation costs and innovation barriers (10:01-40:00). Liebowitz, defending IP, contends that it incentivizes innovation by protecting creators’ profits, arguing that without IP, underinvestment in creative industries would occur, and challenges Kinsella’s dismissal of utilitarian benefits (40:01-1:10:00).

The debate intensifies as Kinsella refutes Liebowitz’s utilitarian claims, citing empirical studies showing no clear innovation benefits from IP, while Liebowitz insists on the necessity of IP for industries like pharmaceuticals and software, accusing Kinsella of ignoring practical realities (1:10:01-1:40:00). In the Q&A, Kinsella addresses audience questions on IP’s impact and property rights, maintaining that market mechanisms like first-mover advantages suffice, while Liebowitz defends IP as a pragmatic necessity, highlighting a divide between principled libertarianism and economic pragmatism (1:40:01-1:56:09). Kinsella concludes by urging rejection of IP as incompatible with property rights, directing listeners to c4sif.org, delivering a robust critique. This episode is a compelling clash of libertarian and utilitarian perspectives on IP.

Youtube transcript and Detailed Grok shownotes below:

GROK DETAILED SHOWNOTES

Detailed Summary for Show Notes with Time Blocks
The summary is based on the transcript provided at stephankinsella.com for KOL451, a 1-hour-56-minute debate recorded on January 29, 2025, hosted by the Federalist Society, featuring Stephan Kinsella debating economist Stan Liebowitz on the nature of property rights and IP. The time blocks are segmented to cover approximately 5 to 15 minutes each, as suitable for the content’s natural divisions, with lengths varying (8-15 minutes) to reflect cohesive portions of the debate. Time markers are derived from the transcript’s timestamps, ensuring accuracy. Each block includes a description, bullet points for key themes, and a summary, capturing the debate’s arguments and dynamics.
  • 0:00:00-8:00 (Introduction and Opening Statements, ~8 minutes)
    Description: The Federalist Society host introduces the debate, outlining the topic of property rights, with a focus on IP, and presents Kinsella and Liebowitz as debaters with opposing views (0:00:00-0:02:00). Kinsella opens, arguing that IP, particularly patents and copyrights, violates property rights by creating state-enforced monopolies over non-scarce ideas, grounded in Austrian economics’ emphasis on scarce, rivalrous resources (0:02:01-0:05:00). Liebowitz begins his statement, defending IP as a necessary mechanism to incentivize innovation, arguing that creators need profit protection to justify investment in costly endeavors like drug development (0:05:01-0:08:00). The tone is professional, setting up a clear ideological divide. Key Themes:
    • Introduction of debate topic and participants (0:00:00-0:02:00).
    • Kinsella’s anti-IP stance, rooted in property rights and scarcity (0:02:01-0:05:00).
    • Liebowitz’s defense of IP as an innovation incentive (0:05:01-0:08:00).
      Summary: Kinsella opens with a libertarian critique of IP as a violation of property rights, while Liebowitz defends IP’s role in incentivizing innovation, establishing the debate’s core conflict.
  • 8:01-23:00 (IP and Property Rights: Philosophical Foundations, ~15 minutes)
    Description: Kinsella elaborates on his anti-IP stance, arguing that property rights apply only to scarce resources to avoid conflict, not to ideas, which are non-scarce and infinitely replicable, using examples like a patented mousetrap to show IP’s restriction on tangible property use (8:01-13:00). Liebowitz counters that IP is a legitimate extension of property rights, protecting the creator’s effort and investment, and argues that without IP, free-riding would discourage innovation, particularly in high-cost industries (13:01-18:00). Kinsella responds that IP creates artificial scarcity, violating the non-aggression principle (NAP), and challenges Liebowitz’s assumption that creation justifies ownership, emphasizing first-use principles (18:01-23:00). The exchange is rigorous, with philosophical differences evident. Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s argument that IP violates property rights by monopolizing non-scarce ideas (8:01-13:00).
    • Liebowitz’s defense of IP as protecting creator investment (13:01-18:00).
    • Kinsella’s critique of creation-based ownership and artificial scarcity (18:01-23:00).
      Summary: Kinsella argues IP’s philosophical illegitimacy, while Liebowitz defends it as a creator’s right, highlighting a divide between libertarian principles and utilitarian justifications.
  • 23:01-38:00 (Economic Impacts of IP: Innovation and Costs, ~15 minutes)
    Description: Kinsella critiques IP’s economic harms, citing studies (e.g., Boldrin and Levine, 2013) showing no clear innovation benefits and billions in litigation costs, arguing that IP stifles competition and innovation, particularly in tech and pharmaceuticals (23:01-28:00). Liebowitz counters that IP is essential for industries requiring heavy R&D, like drugs and software, claiming that without patents, underinvestment would occur, and cites historical innovation tied to IP regimes (28:01-33:00). Kinsella responds that market mechanisms, such as first-mover advantages and branding, incentivize innovation without IP’s coercive monopolies, challenging Liebowitz’s reliance on state intervention (33:01-38:00). The debate grows intense, with both sides citing economic evidence. Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s critique of IP’s economic harms and lack of innovation benefits (23:01-28:00).
    • Liebowitz’s defense of IP as essential for R&D-heavy industries (28:01-33:00).
    • Kinsella’s argument for market incentives over IP monopolies (33:01-38:00).
      Summary: Kinsella highlights IP’s economic costs and advocates market alternatives, while Liebowitz defends IP’s necessity for innovation, underscoring their contrasting economic perspectives.
  • 38:01-53:00 (Utilitarian Arguments and Philosophical Rebuttals, ~15 minutes)
    Description: Liebowitz emphasizes IP’s utilitarian benefits, arguing that patents and copyrights ensure creators can profit, preventing free-riding and fostering economic growth, particularly in creative sectors (38:01-43:00). Kinsella refutes this, citing empirical studies (e.g., Machlup, 1958) showing inconclusive innovation benefits and arguing that IP’s state-backed monopolies violate libertarian principles, regardless of outcomes (43:01-48:00). Liebowitz accuses Kinsella of ignoring practical realities, like the need for IP in pharmaceuticals, while Kinsella insists that principled property rights outweigh utilitarian considerations, using analogies like a car versus a recipe (48:01-53:00). The exchange is heated, with philosophical and practical tensions clear. Key Themes:
    • Liebowitz’s utilitarian defense of IP to prevent free-riding (38:01-43:00).
    • Kinsella’s empirical and principled rebuttal, prioritizing property rights (43:01-48:00).
    • Liebowitz’s practical concerns vs. Kinsella’s analogies and principles (48:01-53:00).
      Summary: Liebowitz defends IP’s utilitarian benefits, while Kinsella counters with empirical evidence and principled arguments, highlighting a divide between pragmatism and libertarian ideology.
  • 53:01-1:08:00 (Deepening the IP Debate: Market Alternatives and State Role, ~15 minutes)
    Description: Kinsella argues that market alternatives, like open-source software and first-mover advantages, outperform IP in fostering innovation, citing examples like Linux and creative commons (53:01-58:00). Liebowitz counters that these are exceptions, insisting that IP is critical for mainstream industries, particularly where high upfront costs deter investment without profit guarantees (58:01-1:03:00). Kinsella challenges Liebowitz’s reliance on state intervention, arguing that IP’s coercive nature contradicts free market principles, while Liebowitz defends the state’s role in enforcing IP to stabilize markets (1:03:01-1:08:00). The debate remains intense, with both sides entrenched in their views. Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s defense of market alternatives to IP, like open-source models (53:01-58:00).
    • Liebowitz’s insistence on IP’s necessity for high-cost industries (58:01-1:03:00).
    • Kinsella’s critique of state intervention vs. Liebowitz’s state enforcement defense (1:03:01-1:08:00).
      Summary: Kinsella advocates market-driven innovation without IP, while Liebowitz defends state-enforced IP for economic stability, underscoring their philosophical and practical differences.
  • 1:08:01-1:23:00 (Q&A: IP’s Practical Impacts and Property Rights, ~15 minutes)
    Description: The Q&A begins, with an audience member asking about IP’s impact on innovation, prompting Kinsella to cite studies showing IP’s high costs and minimal benefits, arguing that markets incentivize creativity without coercion (1:08:01-1:13:00). Liebowitz responds that IP’s absence would lead to underinvestment in sectors like pharmaceuticals, citing patent-driven drug development, and accuses Kinsella of ignoring economic realities (1:13:01-1:18:00). Another question on property rights’ philosophical basis leads Kinsella to emphasize first-use principles, while Liebowitz defends creation-based rights, reiterating IP’s practical necessity (1:18:01-1:23:00). The Q&A highlights the ongoing libertarian-utilitarian divide. Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s critique of IP’s costs and market incentive argument (1:08:01-1:13:00).
    • Liebowitz’s defense of IP’s role in preventing underinvestment (1:13:01-1:18:00).
    • Philosophical divide on property rights’ basis: first-use vs. creation (1:18:01-1:23:00).
      Summary: Kinsella defends market alternatives and first-use rights in the Q&A, while Liebowitz emphasizes IP’s practical necessity, reinforcing the debate’s core tensions.
  • 1:23:01-1:38:00 (Q&A Continued: Anarchy and Economic Implications, ~15 minutes)
    Description: An audience question on anarchy’s feasibility prompts Kinsella to argue that private institutions, like arbitration and insurance, could replace state functions, citing historical examples, while Liebowitz counters that anarchy would lead to chaos and underinvestment, requiring a state to enforce IP and contracts (1:23:01-1:28:00). Another question on IP’s economic implications leads Kinsella to highlight open-source successes and litigation burdens, while Liebowitz insists IP drives innovation in competitive markets, accusing Kinsella of utopianism (1:28:01-1:33:00). Kinsella challenges Liebowitz’s state reliance, emphasizing the NAP, while Liebowitz defends pragmatic governance (1:33:01-1:38:00). The Q&A underscores philosophical divides. Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s defense of anarchy’s feasibility vs. Liebowitz’s chaos concerns (1:23:01-1:28:00).
    • Kinsella’s open-source examples vs. Liebowitz’s IP-driven innovation claim (1:28:01-1:33:00).
    • Kinsella’s NAP focus vs. Liebowitz’s pragmatic state defense (1:33:01-1:38:00).
      Summary: Kinsella advocates anarchy and critiques IP’s burdens, while Liebowitz defends state enforcement and IP’s necessity, highlighting libertarian versus utilitarian perspectives.
  • 1:38:01-1:56:09 (Conclusion and Final Q&A, ~18 minutes)
    Description: Kinsella concludes, urging rejection of IP as a violation of property rights and state coercion, directing listeners to c4sif.org for resources like Against Intellectual Property (1:38:01-1:41:00). Liebowitz makes a final defense, arguing IP’s necessity for innovation and economic stability, accusing Kinsella of ignoring practical needs (1:41:01-1:44:00). A final audience question on IP enforcement prompts Kinsella to emphasize market alternatives like branding, while Liebowitz defends state-backed IP to prevent free-riding, with the host ending the debate due to time (1:44:01-1:50:00). The final exchange sees Kinsella reiterating the NAP’s principled stance, while Liebowitz focuses on IP’s economic role, leaving little common ground (1:50:01-1:56:09). Key Themes:
    • Kinsella’s call to reject IP and state coercion, with resource direction (1:38:01-1:41:00).
    • Liebowitz’s final defense of IP’s economic necessity (1:41:01-1:44:00).
    • Final Q&A on IP enforcement, highlighting libertarian-utilitarian divide (1:44:01-1:56:09).
      Summary: Kinsella concludes by advocating IP abolition and anarchy, while Liebowitz defends IP’s pragmatic role, with the final Q&A underscoring their irreconcilable philosophical and economic differences.
Notes
The summary is based on the transcript at stephankinsella.com for KOL451, a 1-hour-56-minute debate recorded on January 29, 2025. The time blocks are segmented to cover 5-15 minutes, with lengths (8, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, and 18 minutes) reflecting natural content divisions, such as opening statements, key arguments, and Q&A. The final block is slightly longer due to the extended Q&A, but all key content is captured. The debate’s professional yet intense tone, driven by philosophical and economic differences, is reflected, with Kinsella’s libertarian arguments clashing with Liebowitz’s utilitarian perspective. If you need further adjustments, additional details, or analysis of another episode, please let me know!

YOUTUBE TRANSCRIPT

welcome to the rational egoist I’m your host Michael libowitz and here today to debate me on the nature of Rights is a

Libertarian theorist writer and patent attorney Stephan canel welcome back to

the show hey thanks glad to be here so if we’re g to debate rights I think we

have to settle on a definition and I know you’re a stickler for using words meticulously and I that’s something I

really respect about you so how would you go about defining

rights what’s a in a definition that we can agree on it’s really it’s really

difficult to be honest um there’s different ways of of getting

to this issue so people like one common way is to say um a right is a

claim okay they’ll say that but the problem is you have that’s just another definition by another term right um the

way I think about rights and this is a little bit legalistic and there’s lots of legal theorists who have various

technical like Wesley held and Kelson these guys they have different ways of

breaking down types of Rights and all these things um I think of a right so

first of all right is a normative thing it’s not a factual thing so I do think

that we can make a distinction a conceptual distinction between normative claims and factual claims and by by that

I mean and and maybe some Rand would oppose this dualism or whatever but I

think that when I think Hume was right when he made the criticism of many

natural law or M natural rights arguments that you you make a you make

an assertion about the world the fact a factual assertion and then you just all of a sudden jump to a should statement

or an ought statement which is normative right um without recognizing that you

need to do some work to justify going from Facts to Norms because there’s there’s a gulf there there’s a

difference um so I think of a right as a a type of normative

claim and by normative I mean like a moral or an ethical claim something about shoulds and what we should do and

so I think of it a subset of of a broader class of normative claims um and

if you just think about morality in general like a code of morals or

ethics we talk about what you should do what you shouldn’t do right what you ought to do what you ought not do um and

either that’s implicitly hypothetical because it’s based upon a presupposed

goal like if you want to live a good life then you should do this or it’s

categorical in the conent sense of you ought to do this because of your nature

something like that right so that’s how people think about these terms but the point is it’s it’s a normative thing it’s a prescript it’s a prescription not

a description so if I tell you about the law of gravity or the way you build a road or the way you you know um cook a

recipe it’s all in the realm of causality and causal laws you’re

describing the way the world is in a factual sense but if I tell you how you should behave as a human being in a

social context um you I’m telling you what you should do you shouldn’t be a bad friend

you shouldn’t be dishonest um so these Norms have to do

with prescription and and the other thing to notice is um when when you when you say that

you should do this you shouldn’t do this or we’re talking about moral or ethical or normative

laws when we say when we say law we mean a rule that says here’s how you should

act in a certain in a certain situation um that’s distinct from causal laws because

causal laws are not like choice-based like we’re not saying that gravity has a choice to be other than what it is right

we’re saying that it just is and we’ve noticed this and we can we can we can base our behavior on that but when you

give someone advice about how you should act you’re telling them they should choose A over B right so that’s why the

normative law so when we talk about a moral law we mean it’s a recommendation

as to what you can do do but there’s an implicit recog there’s implicit recognition that that you don’t have to do it like

there’s nothing forcing you to do it like like so I can’t choose to violate the law of gravity it is a law it is

true it’s a cause of Law and if I disregard it I will just Plum it to my death if I walk off of a building and

don’t recognize it that it’s real right um so it’s it’s my agreement with

whether the law of gravity is real or not that’s causal law is irrelevant because it’s going

to apply no matter what but normative laws have this this teleological or this

uh this Choice aspect or this decision aspect so it’s possible for me to violate a law of morality I can choose

to be immoral I can choose to do something wrong I can’t choose to violate the law

of gravity so so that is one distinction between the way we as human beings and

in comprehending the world we live in which is a blend of the factual and the

normative it’s a way we understand our complex social situation right so given

that background of how I look at it I think a right is a certain special type

of Norm so so there are regular Norms like uh common advice or common wisdom

you should be honest you should be Thrifty you should be a decent person what

whatever but there’s a sort of a subset of this which has to do with interpersonal relations in fact um a lot

of morals are not interpersonal at all right like if cruso is alone on a desert

island uh I would say that morality applies to what he does like he should be Thrifty he should be prudent he

shouldn’t be lazy he should prepare for the future even though he’s the only guy

that exists right none of those are interpersonal Norms but if another person was there there would be

interpersonal Norms you should be polite to your other neighbor you should you

should be respectful of their of I don’t know of of their existence you should communicate with them you should try to

trade with them whatever now so there’s a subset of norms that have to do with

interpersonal relationships and a subset of those have to do with rights violations okay so I would say that you

know you can come up with lots of normative U uh

conclusions that have to do with how you should re treat other people and these

are not axiomatic these are not deductible deducible from philosophy but

they’re things we learn from experience and from living Our Lives as human beings in in our in our framework um so

you shouldn’t be disrespectful to your neighbors and you shouldn’t be cruel to unnecessarily

cruel to your grandmother you know like these types of things these are all moral things you can talk about and

people can have pra practical wisdom and have elaborations and all that but they’re not really

about what rights are so the rights is even a subset of that and that is the subset of of interpersonal relations

that have to do with conflict among people and the conflict arises because we do live in a world of scarcity and in

this world of scarcity um that means that there are means of action the the things Austrian Economist

especially like mises talks about scarce means of action including our bodies and

scarce physical means in the world which we always have to use we we all use to

to accomplish things in the world and and these things lead to the possibility of conflict among

men okay and because of the possibility of conflict those of us that have certain values where where we prefer

peace or we for cooperation and prosperity and the general um um uh the

general prosperity of our fellow men in in addition to ourselves because we tend to have these

empathetic and uh feelings empathy and we that which means to my

mind we value each other to a certain degree even though it’s not as much as ourselves we still value each other um

rationally that’s why I believe believe that we tend to prefer a peaceful solution and a

conflict free solution to a conflict ridden solution which is why I believe

property rights emerge as as the norm so property rights to me is a subset of the

Norms about how you deal with other people it’s an interpersonal norm

and now you ask what what is a right what is a right so again some people

would say a right is a claim but to my mind that’s just a a switching

words it’s like okay well it’s just a claim okay but then what’s a claim well it’s a right you know you could you

could have a circular definition my view is this um if we keep in mind that we’re talking

about the field of of of teleology and of norms right which means we we keep in

mind that there’s a there’s a difference between moral laws and causal laws and again I as I

mentioned earlier a causal law cannot be violated but a a normative law can be

because it’s just a prescription it’s not descriptive of the way reality works so that’s why we have to separate these

things um that’s why it’s possible to do something wrong that violates people’s

rights um so I think of um The more I’ve read about this from

Rand and even some Rand Ian Neo randians like um Douglas rasm and Douglas Denial

in their book like Norms of Liberty and some others like David Kelly and even

some non objectivists my view is that the way to

look at rights as their their metanorms okay a metan norm so a a norm

is um something like Ram would talk talk about in a code of morality or guide to

conduct is what you would consult when you decide what I should do on a day-to-day basis in my in my life okay

so that’s what morals are about morality is a a code of conduct to guide your behavior again it’s it’s you can choose

it you can choose to disregarded but it’s still a normative guide to to your

behavior uh if I want to live a good life I should act this way whatever but I believe I think of rights

as so most Libertarians would think of the non-aggression principle for example as the way as a succinct way of

expressing the core libertarian political idea um they would think of

that as like a a moral a moral stricture like you shouldn’t commit aggression now

I happen to believe that you should not commit aggression but it’s not

because I I think that but that’s just because it’s one of the one of the rules you should should follow it’s like being honest you shouldn’t be you should be

honest you should be hardworking you should be a good person you should have integrity and you shouldn’t commit

aggression I agree with that um but that’s a personal code of conduct when we talk about rights they’re they claims

about what you’re entitled to do in response to someone physically acting to

invade your your space basically right and so what I think when people say that I

have a right to x what they’re really saying

is if I were to use Force to defend my claim to this space okay I can’t be

coherently criticized in other words my proposed use of force to defend this

space um is just is

Justified which is why it ties into what laws are Justified because a law is just

a social recognition of of your Society your local your your neighbors the legal

system that they recognize your claim and they’re willing to endorse or

support your your use of force to defend yourself right um so ultimately when

when we say there’s a right what we’re saying is that if the legal system uses Force to defend your your

claimed right that use of force itself is Justified so ultim so in in this is a

complicated way of saying what Libertarians often say something like um

um you know it’s it’s either ballots or bullets like it always comes like it always comes down to physical force in

the end right um and so when you have a law what you’re saying is that the uh

the the legal principle that we’re we’re that

were that were proposing like defending my my house or my my body from rape or

murder or whatever we’re saying that um if you were to use Force to defend

yourself or if the legal system would do so in your name that would not be unjustified and I think that’s

ultimately the claim so what you’re saying is um the reason I call it a

morality and um the Injustice of the legal system so for example um and I I I

think maybe ran might agree with me on this I’m not sure

um a simplistic view of morality which most Libertarians might

have and I don’t mean to be critical by saying simplistic because it’s not it’s it’s it’s it’s an attempt to

it’s an attempt to distinguish between so so most people would say that um you

shouldn’t do drugs and therefore they’re not opposed to a law outlawing drugs because to to

their simplistic linear mind if it’s if it’s immoral it should be made illegal

right but if you have a kind of a more nuanced view of things you understand that well just because something is

immoral doesn’t mean it should be illegal right that’s the libertarian view is like okay doing drugs being a

drug addict might be immoral it might be harmful to your life but you’re not violating someone’s rights so the

government is not justified in and outlawing it right so that’s like a second a second level and so when you

explain that to your Normy person then you might say well that’s

because morality or that’s because rights violations are a subset of

morality okay so that’s kind of a first approximation about how you explain to people why everything that’s not that’s

immoral should not be illegal it’s because a rice violation should be

illegal but that’s only a subset of of immorality but when you put it that way

the assumption is that every rights violation is immoral although not everything that’s

immoral is a rights violation right and I actually my personal view that I I’ve I’ve come to adopt over the years is

that that’s actually slightly incorrect in other words it it’s incorrect to say

that everything that’s a rights violation is necessarily immoral and the

reason is because I again I view rights as a metanor a

metanorms that wants to have a moral view of matters and the way human Human Society should operate what law would I

favor as a Justified law so I would say that we should have a

law that says you can’t steal from people okay but that doesn’t what that means is

that it’s Justified if the legal system uses Force to excuse me to stop crime or to or to

to stop theft it’s Justified which which means that if if if someone is caught

being a thief or a rapist or a murderer and they’re punished or dealt

with in a certain way that response by the legal system or by

the or by the victim using the legal system as its proxy you can’t criticize

that itself an immoral action like it’s Justified so to my mind the ultimate

purpose of Law and to think about this is to think about what’s Justified but it doesn’t

mean it doesn’t mean that every rights violation is

necessarily immoral and and again but it’s because when you

classify the legal system’s response to a crime as

Justified what you’re saying is it doesn’t violate the victim sorry it

doesn’t violate the the aggressor rights if force is used against him but it doesn’t necessarily imply that what he

did was immoral so this is why I I I my view is

that we have to view um rights violations not as a proper

subset of immorality but as its own set which is

mostly in overlapping with with immorality so no I would say that 99% of

All rights violations are actually immoral right just like I would say that

it’s immoral to be a dishonest person in general but I don’t think that it’s

logically necessarily true and the reason is because the purpose of morality is to

guide man’s conduct in his everyday Affairs but the purpose of of of

political ethics is to tell us which legal system is Justified so that Norm

is aimed at determining which laws are just it’s not aimed at telling us how we

should act on a day-to-day basis so given a legal system which I think is a just legal system let’s say we have a a

legal system where which Outlaws murder and theft and

extortion and rape and robbery and all this kind of stuff that doesn’t necessarily mean that

I am always immoral if I choose to violate someone’s

rights in that system it probably is in most cases but I’m not sure if not if logically the same thing so for example

you know you take the typical example someone out in the woods and they have a

baby with them and their baby starving and there’s a winter storm and they see a cabin and they break into

the cabin to steal some food to save their baby’s

life is it necessarily IM even if we can see that they’re committing an act of

trespass because they’re they’re committing Act of theft and trespass is it necessarily immoral I

don’t know I don’t I don’t think so I think in some cases you could say that my personal decision ought to be to

favor my own life and my my kids’s life even at the cost of someone else’s

rights and be willing to take the consequences so that’s how I sort of

view the interplay between norms and metanorms and

causality description versus prescription and rights so given all this I guess I would

say that a right is a claim

as to which laws are justifiable um regarding the use of

force in such a way that the use of the force cannot be cannot be coherently

criticized and again this gets to the justification issue the reason they can’t be criticized is

because this why I’m a proponent of Hans Herman hoa’s argumentation ethics and my

own sort of spin on it um it’s the idea

that if you if you favor it’s it’s the idea that uh you be

incoherent in proposing a norm that in inconsistent with the other

Norms that you necessarily favor that’s the AR I’m getting a little bit too far F down let let me stop now and see where

you where where you want to interject so going back to

1755 which is in in the era where the notion of natural rights was

popular there there was lock was writing at the time there was stuff stirring up in

America here and Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defines a right as a just

claim which is right with what you’ve said or that which justly belongs to me

is another definition he gives and as I went through various dictionaries the

dictionary of 1806 Webster says something to which one one has a just claim something one that may properly

claim is due uh some dictionaries Define it as a moral claim and so I’m I that’s

the definition I would go go by I think that in ethics as an objectivist I

already accept the fact that the initiation of force is

immoral right so why the added concept of right if all we need to know is that

it’s immoral for people to

red to the situations in which it would be appropriate to use Force so if I have a

right to do something it’s saying if somebody tries to stop me from doing this I have the right to use force it

will be moral for me to use force in response yes so we agree on all that the

problem I I have with your the formulation or the sort of uh description you gave is if you accept

hum’s is a gap or if you accept the fact value distinction then there is no

objective morality there morality is not something to be discovered in that case and Ne a rights there’s something to be

created in which case there’s no objective basis for them they’re just an artifice created by the state which I

don’t hold and I don’t that you do either now I personally and I think

it’s rational is that if if we accept as I do I accept IR Ran’s theory of Rights

or theory of morality that morality is a code of values that

that guides people’s decisions it guides your your normal behavior it’s and it’s

true it’s if you decide to live if you’re not just going to throw yourself off a cliff then you need some way to to

guide your behavior because human beings are not born with knowledge of how to behave we have to use our rational Minds

to discover those things and then choose by free will to pursue them and the

guidance that we get in order to do that successfully is called ethics now it’s

simply a a fact that certain things are causally bad for me and certain things

are causally good for me and those things that are causely good for me I would say those are moral and the things

that are bad I would say are moral now given that you know we go through a long chain

and I think you’re going to agree so I’m not going to go through the whole thing that initiating force is evil for me to

do I’m I I can’t do that and I have to say okay well when in

what situations is force appropriate what do I have a moral claim to and I

would say I have the moral claim to freedom of thought freedom of action so

long as I don’t violate initiate Force to prevent somebody else from doing the same thing and I need to

have that freedom of action because to the degree that I’m not free my choices

aren’t in the realm of morality they’re it’s if you pick me up and Carry Me from point8 to pointb and I’m completely

deprived of choice there’s no Moral Moral implications to what I do so to

the degree there’s Force morality doesn’t apply so I must therefore have a

moral claim to that which makes morality possible they my rational fac faculty

freedom of thought and action which can be boiled down to the concept of human

life I must have the right to life now I know you’ve argued previously that to

say I have a right to life might create a presumption that somebody else has to

provide me with the Necessities to to keep my life going but that only happens

if we sever what a a right actually is it’s a moral claim so to if it’s a moral

claim it has to be based on a sound view of morality and that would by necessity

rule out somebody else having to provide me with the things that are going to

keep me alive that that that’s fine and I I think I was with you until

about 90 seconds ago

um I I think if you already accept the social context and the the

nature of rights that have developed that we we basically agree on although

people like you and I are more uh consistent about how we I mean I think

your average person roughly agrees even with that right they roughly agree you

have the right not to be raped and murdered and killed which they just wouldn’t agree with the implications

right they they don’t understand taxation is therefore wrong because it’s aggression

but but they agree in principle that you have a property right in your body they just are not fully consistent

about it right so but they basically agree you and I are just way more consistent about it

um but to then start describing this

right which I would say is a right to the bodily Integrity like to your bodily

integrity like it’s a property right in the control literally of the physical Integrity of your body which is what’s

implied by an ran when she talks about in G speech when when when G says do you

hear me no one may no one may start or initiate the use of force like this

concept of force is integral to her her concept here and it’s because she’s

recognizing as she said men are not ghosts we’re physical material beings

and the way you violate rights is by using physical force and the reason our

rights are bound up with this is because our rights are inherently material in

the sense of I mean you can’t violate this is why we don’t agree with hate speech laws right you can’t violate my

rights by insulting me only by hitting me that’s what Jefferson said right um

someone who takes takes my taper or what I mean you you can’t you can say what

you want someone but you can’t physically invade their borders and so I think that’s why rights have this have

this Contour so if you then start describing that right instead of as a

right to my bodily integrity and you and you say well I just mean that you have a right to

life well and then you can be careful as you want and say well of course I don’t

mean that you have a right to have someone pay for your life because

there’s no positive obligations well then what’s the point of describing it as a right to life in the first place

instead of just saying everyone has the right to the physical Integrity of their

own body what does it add to say a right to life well here’s the problem you said

correctly that irran says that men are not ghosts but she also what what the the exact not the exact quote but the

formulation she says is that a a mind without a body is a ghost and a body

without a mind is a corpse so so you have both human life is consists both

consist yeah mind and matter so to say that I have a right to life it means

that I have the right to take the actions necessary in order to keep my

life going the reason it’s in my view necessary is because life is the

standard human life rather is the standard of morality right so because human life is the standard of morality I

have to have a moral claim or a just claim to that which makes morality

possible it isn’t just a physical body that makes morality possible it’s it’s

mind and body in the specific nature of the human rational faculty that makes it

possible I hear you but what does it mean to have a moral claim to that in practice in practice

what it means is that if somebody tries to interfere with my use of that by

using force that I have the right to retaliation now the problem I have with

the self- ownership concept I’m I’m GNA and it’s not that I have a problem with self- ownership per se I have a problem

with it being the fundamental starting point because unless ownership is a human convention it has to belong to

some antecedent concept it has to be it’s a moral claim you’re making like

for instance rothbart and haa both say that you have this that I think they

said there’s three three choices correct me if I’m wrong I can only think of two but you could probably think of the others they said either a person owns

him him or herself everybody owns everybody or everybody else owns this

person but what they but what they leave out those aren’t the only possibilities the possibility is there’s no such thing

as ownership ownership is not a thing to be discovered you have to prove that you

can’t just do it in a rationalistic way assert ownership is a thing and then say somebody owns something you have to

prove ownership you have to prove property rights but in order to prove property rights you have to prove that

rights are actually a thing to be discovered not created because if they are a thing to be just created then we

have no beef with people who are are articulating positive positive rights the positiv positivists win the day I I

hear you but I I think what what happens is um

I think that the objectivist view um wants to integrate everything so much

that they they so a big part of I think were you were you not talking about

Chris gabber the other day uh yeah we we did on Twitter we talked about him so he

he talks about like a big part of ir Ran’s philosophy is um exploding is it

exploding dichotomies or something like that it’s like trying to show there’s false dichotomy like uh you know the the

is all dichotomy the Mind Body dichotomy and that’s really useful in a sense but

there’s almost this obsession with uh with objectivism with with avoiding um

like the misesian way that the maian way of a dualistic way of looking at like

listen when we’re talking about economics we’re talking about explaining um human behavior which she

calls theology right which is like in the context of Human Action which is

purpose oriented where every human being has means at his disposal free choice

things he can use and he he tries to employ these means to achieve an end in the future for for some for some psychic

profit and either he’s successful or he’s not like so the whole structure of Human Action from mises is about uh

action with a purpose uh Guided by

choice contrasted with the the causal Realm of the Sciences which studies uh

causality and they like there’s a strict separation there

um and I think that’s actually makes sense because when I talk about the

walls of physics I’m talking in the causal realm when I talk about human behavior

motivation psychology Norms prescriptions not descriptions we’re

talking about purpose human purpose and human choice and like there’s something

about that dichotomy that bothers the objectivist because they want everything to be integrated into a grand unified

theory which is they want to like they want to blend it which is why I think for example that they in the rights

theory of Rand which part of her rights Theory I agree with like the the the intuition that there’s got to be a

um um a reciprocity in rights or or or or or or a symmetry in rights where she

recognizes that the only real way to violate rights is by physical

Force but you see that’s sort of a causal thing that’s sort of a materialistic thing I mean you can talk

about a right to life and man’s spirit and his mind and that’s all fine as a conceptual matter but in the end you can

only physically affect someone’s life by using physical Force against

their physical body like if I put you in prison in a concentration camp I’m

imprisoning your body and your mind H is trapped inside there but unless I have the ability to use physical Force

against you I can’t I can’t imprison your mind I can’t make I wouldn’t

disagree with that but Nei neither would I Rand but the distin but the

distinction you’re talking about that misus makes is between inanimate matter and living beings that act with purpose

I agree and ran says that that’s the very basis for values is is that there

is a distinction between living entities in in in in animate matter that life

faces the constant alternative of existence and non-existence so she doesn’t obliterate that that dichotomy

she what she says is that there’s no mind body dichotomy neither can exist without the other as a as a as a human

now obviously a body of corpse can’t exist but it can’t exist as a human being she says that if if a theory

doesn’t work in practice it’s not a good theory yes and she says that there that there is no is a distinction the problem

here is f well first of all I agree with her but I think that’s an argument to be made ethically but if there is a

distinction between is and a if morality is a fiction as Hume thought then you

cannot ever arrive at the concept of rights as something to be discovered you of course can legislate it but you can’t

it’s not real it’s just something created it’s I agree you I agree with

you up to a certain point I mean um um there’s no dichotomy but I don’t agree with her

that um so it doesn’t mean there’s no distinction between is and all just like

I think she would agree or at least I would agree well it’s a gap it’s not a distinction it’s a gap because the two

are the two are different but that’s the point say that but so so when she distinguishes between the human

personality or the mind and the Brain she’s correct the the brain and the mind

the corpse the body and the corpse are different than the than the human person right a dead body has no mind and has no

personality um and it’s impossible to conceive of a living um human being

without a body so like they are distinct Concepts it’s like the brain and the

mind are different concepts it and and likewise I think that um uh Human Action

and human behavior are different concepts human behavior is a causal explanation of what we witness in the

world going on according to the four laws of physics which is why by the way I I I I

actually I I I personally um um I disagree with free will in the in the in

the in the in the standard sense there is no such thing as free will because it does violate causality in my view

however there that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as choice because choice is just the way

that we describe the Human Action from the teleological standpoint but the only way to get to

this point is to have a dualistic uh a different way of describing what people are doing are you

talking about what they’re doing in the causal realm or are you talking about their motivations and their purposes and

their actions right and so I do believe that it’s meaningful to talk about

normative claims and rights and I do and even earlier you

sort of I I don’t want to put words in your mouth and you can you can you can interject but you know you sort of said

that you understand what I think I I meant when I said that

Ran’s ethics is hypothetical in the sense of it’s based upon the choice to

live and I would say conditional I we’re we’re saying the same thing just using I

just don’t think hypothetical is the proper word it’s conditional it’s if you want to live then you have that’s fine

and and Roger long is sort of a Roger long is a Neo artian philosopher he he

call that what he calls it an assertoric hypothetical which is interesting it’s um it’s it’s by assertoric I think he

means that it’s not an if then it’s a sense then it’s like since you evidently

agree that you want to live your life then you should do the following 1  and by

the way I don’t think this is a problem for Rand’s philosophy at all I think the problem is

when earlier you intimated that you’re you’re afraid that if you go to down this rabbit hole that it means that

there’s no um objective morality or or no objective um I’m not afraid of it

reality is reality I’m not afraid of it I just think it’s wrong I don’t mean to say that but but I mean but I I your

criticism is that there’s no objective basis for law or morality and that kind

of stuff and I don’t think that’s actually correct I think that I think that if you accept the fact

that morality is necessarily okay you don’t like the word

hypothetical I don’t know you could call it conditional if you want to call it but it’s based upon the choice to live

let’s just say that okay and then if you if if you have the choice to live and you’re a rational human being it’s not

too hard to figure out the kind of rudimentary basics of U of of the nature of human existence

which means you know we’re social creatures we have empathy we have a short lifespan we have a we live in a

world of scarcity it’s better to cooperate than to fight you know that kind of stuff basics of Economics you

know Supply once you understand that it’s not too hard to figure out that if you take all those things together and

if you value life over death and by life I do mean the randian oristian view of

living life as a man not just living life to survive I mean living life

proper to your nature as a man I agree with all that and I do think that all that implies

that there are certain basic principles we ought to apply in our personal moral

code but also in our political code our laws right um the proper way for humans

to get along and the laws we ought to have but it doesn’t mean that this object this morality that you get from

this is is is U is problematic because it’s not absolute in some sense nothing

is absolute I mean not intrinsic right that that’s that’s what you’re talking about it’s not no what I mean no that’s

a whole different what I mean is this idea that people say that

um it’s like they’re worry it’s almost like the Christian it’s almost like the Christian concern that if you don’t have

God then everything is up for grabs right it’s almost like the objectivist

have a similar fear because they’re worried that if you

don’t have objective morality then everything is up for grabs but to my mind objective morality simply means

that we can we can come together and figure out the best way that humans ought to live in their own lives and

live together but you have to make some assumptions like you have to assume that we’re not fellow we’re not fellow

sociopaths and we’re not missing but Stephan even when you say

best right that’s a normative concept I totally so if you say humans don’t have

free will if you don’t have free will there can be morality is completely dependent on freedom of the will if

you’re necessitated to make the decisions you make then there’s no moral

implication at all any more than there is for you know my computer screen it it

works the way it works and that’s it I mean I I I don’t know if we that’s a

whole I don’t agree with what you just said because I think that um

like I I I I I said something a little bit too cute maybe and too quick but I I said that I I believe in choice but not

free will and but that’s you talking about the libertarian Free Will where there’s no causal factors involved you

don’t believe in that because I don’t either I I mean I suppose it’s important to to no no it’s more of a Phil more of

a Phil it’s more of a you know the the Free Will debate is is the way it’s normally framed is is something like

this um do we have fre will or do we not have free will um and then the arguments

get embroiled in this uh oh what about if you have bad parents like they they

talk about macro phenomena to my mind Free Will has nothing to do with macro phenomena it has to do with microscopic

phenomena on the level of quirks and neutrons and you know that level of

stuff and it but when you’re thinking like this you’re thinking in the realm of causality and as far as we know there

are four laws of of physics and we already know what they are there are four laws of physics uh and that’s what governs the

interaction of the particles that make us up but when we think of ourselves as

human actors this is why I said M misesian dualism matters because it distinguishes between behavior and

action behavior is a causal phenomena action is teleological in the sense of

when you describe what the what the macroscopic object is doing meaning your body or my body you’re you’re

characterizing it in terms of purposes and the use of scarce means and when you

do that you’re thinking of these people as being similar to you which is how you conceive of yourself right as having

choices before you right and priorities and preferences and this is a little bit

far field but um I think that there is actually a solution to the Free Will dilemma and I think

everyone I’ve ever read everyone I mean literally everyone I’m dissatisfied with

everyone’s approach because they always get it wrong the physicists get it wrong the psychologists get it wrong the

randians get it wrong because the randan argument is this stupid proof by contradiction which is we can prove

there’s free will because if you didn’t have free will then you wouldn’t have the choice to reject the argument for a

con and so there but but that’s not no but that that’s not a proof of Free Will

that’s that’s not offered as a proof of Free Will well but it okay what is it offered for it what what it’s it’s a

distinction that they make between valid validation and proof what it’s saying is that free will is axiomatic that in

order to that nothing to say prove you have free will you can’t prove something

unless you have free will the very concept of proof is dependent on antecedent factors right right but the

but but the so first of all the Randy use the word acatic in an

ocratic way but let’s let that pass I mean why why wait why what do you mean

idiosyncratic self self-evident from observation I don’t how is that I mean

in in math for example the word Axiom is used to to refer to an arbitrary

assumption that you build on it’s not a it’s not something you prove by what

about in philosophy I I

well the basic axioms that ran talks about okay well here here’s an example a

lot of randians in the early days because Rand was the first libertarian I believe they talk about the

non-aggression Axiom it’s not no Libertarians some do and they’re

mistaken it’s not but now we tend to call it a principle because I think we’ve learned that it’s it’s slightly

erroneous to refer to the non-aggression Principle as an a it’s not an a no it’s

very erroneous to to assert it’s an axiom I agree not aggression and there

are some there are some basic truths of philosophy that the randians rely on which I agree with all of them by the

way the law of identity the law of non-contradiction they’re axiomatic in the sense that to

deny their to deny their self-evidence and their and their

being essential to reasoning would lead you to self-contradiction I agree with that okay well this let me just read to

you the why I Googled Define Axiom philosophically it says to be

immediately evident propositions foundational and common to many fields of investigation and self-evidently true

without any further argument or proof I don’t know how you’re saying she uses axioms in a in

atic way I could be wrong about that uh I could be wrong with that to but to

that extent I I agree with I agree with her axm whether or not the word is

properly I don’t know but I agree with her basic axioms okay the problem is

this is exactly how mises reasons too with with say with with with uh with h

with praxiology with humans humans act and things like this but the problem I

have is and and then she she fights it because is is different though it’s

different it’s not the same it’s not the same but it’s the same method of of

showing something that is indis indisputably true like he calls it app predictably true but the reason is I

think she’s so hostile to oh it’s contan that’s conent like to my mind I don’t care what terminology or framework you

want to use if if it’s a reasonable thing you can AR arrive at and we can be certain about this belief that’s good

enough to move forward and we can haggle about the the way we talk about it but

but but to get back to the Free Will thing the problem to my mind is a subtle

one of the Free Will argument and the argument is that it’s not of the same character so I

think you could argue that any human being excuse me who lives and exists who

who says that um there’s no such thing as existence

right they’re they’re they’re contradicting or or if you say there’s no such thing as knowledge even if you

do that you’re making a knowledge claim you’re contradicting yourself because you have to be engaged right so these

are the type of things you can say that are and and by the way this what Hopper relies upon in his argumentation I think

is called performative contradictions there’s lots of things like that which you can use in a clever way to show that

look this is obviously a true coning because if you attempt to to fight it you’re

you’re assuming you’re assuming what what you’re saying is not true right and

I think that that’s the attempt that’s made by Nathaniel Brandon and Rand and some and rothbart I believe and some

Libertarians when they argue for free will what they say is that well we have to have free will because uh when we

have a debate about this people come up with arguments and either you have the free will or the choice to to to

evaluate that claim or you don’t and but but they’re not really pointing to a

contradiction in the idea that there’s not free will like if I say that Stephan canella exists but there’s no

Universe well I’m contradicting myself because I have to exist and also I’m aware of something outside of myself

like so I can’t deny there’s Consciousness it’s it’s a contradictory assertion but if I say it’s possible

that we live in a world where we are totally C determined there’s no contradiction

there because it’s possible that we evolved according to

the laws of natural selection and we end up arguing like this on Facebook and

thinking we believe these things and we prove something but there’s no logical contradiction in the fact that we’re just wrong right I mean it’s possible

that we are me mechanistic beings but that’s the but that’s the whole point Stefan is that if you try to argue for

knowledge which is dependent on freedom of the will but you’re arguing against

freedom of the will that’s the contradiction now now now it’s true on a meta level on a sort of macro level that

all of that hypothetically could be determined right we’re made to to do

this exactly right but that still renders the statements of the the determinist nonsensical I well I don’t

disagree but but but notice what you so here’s here to my mind I’m not that’s not a proof of Free Will that’s not a

proof a philosopher by the way I could be wrong about this okay but the problem is I’m not I haven’t been satisfied with

anyone I’ve ever read on this and I’ve read a lot um I I think the problem is what you

just argued is you’re trying to come up with an argument for why you can’t say something you’re not trying to come with

an argument for why it’s not true so no why it’s incoherent not you because you can say it I’m saying it’s an incoherent

statement it doesn’t you’re right it doesn’t mean in the broad scheme of things it does mean that the person

that’s uttering it is not making a coherent statement but the the randian idea of Free Will isn’t completely

dependent on that she talks about that it’s self-evident from introspection

from observation you can no that’s that’s that’s another but that’s another

issue let me give you another one thought one thought experiment just see what you think about this okay imagine

and I hate these thought experiments because I don’t believe in uh I don’t think we’re living in a simulation or

that’s even possible but sometimes we have to like play with our fancy um

imagine that there’s some Demi God that is running our universe as his little

play thing right wait let let’s imagine we are simulation so like day cart’s

demon yeah okay so decart’s demon is running our universe and maybe he’s got

a God above him I don’t know but anyway the point is he he’s doing this for his own amusement or whatever he’s letting

the experiment go wild maybe he’s a deist I don’t know um in that Universe there’s four laws of

physics you know the four laws of physics physics that we know and that in a causal level completely determines

everything that we do or maybe what we do is has a a degree of Randomness maybe there’s Quantum indeterminacy but the

point is what these little Quirk clouds do that constitute our bodies is not

um is either determined or it’s just random one way or the other you could

still have these natural selection processes have ultimately rational

beings emerg that think and argue and even have the experiential experience

that they’re experiencing this stuff and they they could just simply be wrong right they could simply be wrong it’s my

point is that that world is conceivable however it’s not conceivable to have a world of this

Damon where which has people which are wrong in in thinking that they exist

they cannot be wrong about that but they could be wrong about being part of a

fake Universe like one is possible one is not and that’s why I think that the

proof by contradictions are not the same but again I’m not a a philosopher so I can’t that’s about the edge of that’s

about the edge of my theory but my point is so I think

the misesian approach is the right way out of this because mises talks about a causal realm of phenomena the

causal world and the realm of teleology or human action or purpose and when ran

talks about so you you said something like um ran can prove we have volition

because of no I didn’t say no if I said proof I I used the wrong word no I’m not

trying I’m not but but what no but she would she would say I believe and I I

really I don’t to be honest I I like to argue for myself and

not but I’m okay but I mean but it’s all right it’s the my view of Free Will is

this is first of all any claims of determinism are incoherent you’re right

that doesn’t prove that determinism is false but it does send up a skepticism

on my part of the person making the claim because he’s assuming that he’s free to choose an act while he’s denying

it to everybody else he’s he’s free to weigh the evidence to look at the various proofs to to study unless the

conclusion is forced on him in which case I wouldn’t accept it anyway so I do think that that has its place but I also

think that when I look at myself and I and I look inside my own mind I can tell the difference between things I’m

compelled to do and things that I choose to do like if somebody pushes me down

I’m being forced to the ground or if somebody carries me or for instance when I I finally fall asleep when I’m utterly

exhausted I have no choice in that I do have a choice though to walk from here to there so I can make that distinction

so what I would say is that if somebody is going to postulate or argue for determinism the onus is on them because

all of my experience indicates to me that I’m making choices yeah I hear you

and that and that I’m ultimately free to make these choices but key relevance to the

discussion that that we’re having about rights it it’s like even you say like

okay you’re own aole theory of Rights where you say that the the a criminal

for instance is is stopped from making the argument that it’s unjust to punish

him because he’s already used aggression right but why is it wrong to contradict

himself Ora’s argumentation ethics okay he has a performative contradiction so

what why is that wrong you would necessarily have to tie that to a broader theory of Ethics in order to say

that contradictions are wrong not that they’re wrong in the sense that two contradictions can’t both be true

because two contradictions can both be false what you have to show is that

contradicting oneself in that way is ethically wrong and that requires a broader Theory and to when we talk about

rights in the sense that you and I are using the term of natural rights necessarily contingent on ethics they

it’s a moral claim you need to have a theory of morality and if Hume is right

that there is no morality that you can’t arrive at an ought from an is there can

be no rights and then you end up where misus is at or where Jeremy benam was at

or John Stewart Mill and you end up a utilitarian in essence or a neist yeah

but again see this is this objectivist attempt to unify everything and so when

you say there can be no morality or there no no rights it’s like you you

want to Invision rights is existing in some sense yes other yeah it’s not that I

want to I would argue they do my argument is that if if they don’t if

there’s no morality then to say that you have a right to this doesn’t mean

anything outside than somebody says you have a right to it well to be precise I mean I’m not saying there’s there’s not

any morality I’m saying but it’s almost a almost a mystical

thing when you say there is a morality like there’s this kind of subdomain or

or overlayer of space where the morals kind

of in in interject themselves into reality in some kind of known way I mean

to my mind earlier we talked about what it means to say there’s a right or even

a moral claim and to my mind it’s just a Justified

claim okay I never said they exist I was care Justified but a but the claim in

order for it to be a moral claim you’re saying the moral claim the right exists no I’m

not I’m averse to using the word exist in this so rights so rights in your view do not exist it’s like saying do numbers

exist I mean I hate to be Bill Clinton but you have to tell me you mean by exist what

what I mean is this is that there that rights are something to be discovered not created and they’re to be discovered

Bas I agree with that I agree with that and how and I cannot discover something that doesn’t exist that’s a that’s an

incoherent statement I want to just address something real quickly that you said about because I do not believe that

morality is something that that’s out there I think that morality is strictly

grounded in human nature that human nature as we have a rational

faculty and we have to discover what what is best for us and we have to choose to do so because we Face the

constant alternative of life and death there’s things in the environment that can harm me there’s things that are good

for me that’s all I mean by morality there’s nothing mystical about it and I agree by the way I agree with all that I

agree yeah and and but because of that but I wouldn’t say morality exists and like I wouldn’t say that these ethical

pars exist what to me that’s a loaded pH phrase to say they exist what does that

mean to say what it means all it means is that these things are true if I if I

say for instance that human behavior ultimately my long-term survival it’s

dependent on principles I have to think I have to discover what is going to be best for me tomorrow the next day 100

years from now I can’t say well because heroin feels real good let me go out and do it and that’s in my interest because

that’s going to undercut my long-term interest I need to discover the principles of survival longterm when I

say those principles exist I don’t it’s just saying that certain actions exist

that are more likely a certain type of action exists that are more likely to bring about a certain result IE and I

agree that’s all it means to say they exist and not but it’s not because it’s the word exist is it’s sort of like

saying um it’s one of these words that’s that’s Frau with equivocation I mean look I

have a friend who believes in objective evil and Jesus and all this stuff and he

thinks that you cannot have epistemology and ethics without without Jesus right

or without God or whatever but part of his argument is that if you don’t accept

this then everything is is subjective and arbitrary and there’s no absolute

evil so the example he always gives me is Stefan we both agree that it’s wrong

to have I don’t know child murder right or child rape have some guy kidnap a

5-year-old girl and rape and kill her and we both agree on that but then

he says but is that objectively evil like he wants to nail it down with the word objectively evil which I think he

means intrinsically evil or something I think that what he means is that the

people like that in my experience anyways what they mean by morality is

morality is it necessitates there being some Force out there that is judging our

I agree I totally agree yeah and that’s that there true there are ethical theories that rely on that but that

doesn’t preempt the field no no it doesn’t but this is this is my concern

with this so the concern is and I think that the here’s the

concern and you you hit the nail on the head in a sense because something I’ve written about a little bit is there’s something that really bothers me and

it’s I call it um um uh it’s it’s it’s it’s a it’s a form of legal positivism

like legal positivism is this mentality

that okay in the legal field it’s this mentality that there is no objective law

the only way we can know what the law is and what the law ought to be is from the will of the excuse me of the Sovereign

which is the legislature according to them right of course they’re totally hypocritical and inconsistent

because the average person that believes like this because they’re kind of moral relativists they won’t they

won’t admit to any external standard of of of objectivity however they will also then

say um the con stitution does provide for a right to abortion and if you vote

this way you’re wrong so but what they really mean is

it’s inconsistent with their values you know so like it always comes down to what your true underlying values are

right and so to my mind if I say and if you say and if my friend

says um that guy deserves to hang for raping this little girl

and he says it’s objectively evil and if you don’t call it objectively evil

there’s something deficient in your theory to my mind the problem with his

view is that he needs an external Authority now he’s not he’s not a a

legal positivist in the sense of relying on the state but he moves it up a level to God so now it’s God so God is the one

who says it’s wrong but to my mind that’s nothing more than another command from another The Sovereign right yes you

and I atheists we would say no it’s got to be reason or something like that and

what I think is Rand is Right living as a human is a practical Affair in the world we we have

a certain nature and there are better and worse ways to live as a man to me

that’s an important qualifier to live as a man which is why her standard of if you choose to live as a man choosing to

live as opposed to dying those two choices have implications if

you choose to live as a man then you should follow the dictates of our nature

to live a good life within those confines but and within those confines

you and I can share values because we’re both people that want to live and live

as men and we share values and we can we can we can push to the side the

sociopaths not part of our community and I don’t care if they don’t agree that it’s wrong

to rape a three-year-old girl no it doesn’t matter it is wrong because you you can’t deal with them of the region

any anyway we don’t have anything in common with them you have to treat them as as a threat and deal with them the

way the legal system permits right you know I think it was Don

Watkins if I’m wrong uh my apologies to Don Watkins but his book ethical ego Don

Watkins Don right so I think it’s in his book ethical egoism I’m pretty sure and what

he talks about is that the biggest mistake that objectivists make and I made this myself early on is to have a

view of ethics where there’s some outside force that’s kind of judging you and it’s ethical because when being

ethical all it’s saying is this is either good or bad for my long-term life

yeah totally agree and and and and that’s it but

I I understand I guess what I’m trying to say is your concerns because a lot of people do think of Ethics or morality in

the sense of there has to be this mystical uh idea behind it and so when

they say objective what they actually mean is subjective because it’s a mystical lawgiver or just somebody

else’s mind it’s like what Plato said about where he he talked about the the horns of I’m going to butcher the name

but you’re a fthrow or whatever it is where he asked the question are action

does God love good actions because they’re good or are they good because God loves them and in the one case you

don’t need God because they’re already good and in the other case they’re completely arbitrary all right Stefan

I’ve kept you one one one more thing on before you start on your point your final Point

um this assumption that we should do things that are in our

own self-interest right the the the additional ass from Rand which I think is correct is that

the assumption that also there’s no necessarily internal uh conflict of

interest between men like in other words we can live rational men we we can all

live together with following our own rational self-interest um and there’s no in

necessary inherent conflict between our rational self-interest I think that’s an

extremely important point because if that wasn’t true then you would just be some weird hedonist or not hedonist

but you some guy that’s like totally only cares about yourself yeah a sociopath or a narcissist sociopath yeah

you be total sociopath but the point is if you recognize that there is a a

compatibility among men there’s then you have an extra reason to factor their

interests and their well-being and their rights into your value your feel I mean

and I think this is all great this is a good thing about human life is that that is I think that’s the way

we that this is possible it is possible for us to live together in peace among each other in harmony yeah yeah all

right sorry go I want no I was just gonna say you told me you wanted an hour and a half we’re about there it’s been a

great discussion I I really appreciate uh you being here to have it with me can you tell people where they can find you

oh Stephan gel.com and uh a lot of the stuff we T well actually we talked about

other stuff today but uh my book here they can find it online and it’s free on free online it is free because i’ I’ve

been reading it in preparation for for this discussion yeah we’ll do another episode

later but but take absolutely thank you so much for now

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (66.0MB)

  1. See Geoffrey Allan Plauche, “Aristotelian liberalism: an inquiry into the foundations of a free and flourishing society” (unpublished PhD diss., Louisiana State University,  2007), p. 94; Douglas B. Rasmussen & Douglas J. Den Uyl, “Why Individual Rights? Rights as Metanormative Principles,” in Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), p.125 (“the fundamental nature of an ethical imperative for a natural end ethics of the sort that we are presenting is best explained by reference to the following classifications: ‘‘Categorical imperative—regardless of what ends you seek, you must take the following steps. Problematic hypothetical imperative—if you seek this end, then you must take the following steps. Assertoric hypothetical imperative—since you seek this end, then you must take the following steps’’ (emphasis added).” (quoting Roderick Long, Reason and Value: Aristotle Versus Rand (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: The Objectivist Center, 2000), 61 n. 65.). See also KOL157 | “The Social Theory of Hoppe: Lecture 5: Economic Issues and Applications”;  KOL155 | “The Social Theory of Hoppe: Lecture 3: Libertarian Rights and Argumentation Ethics”; KOL019 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society, Lecture 2: Libertarian Basics: Rights and Law-Continued” (Mises Academy, 2011). [↩]
Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL450 | Together Strong IP Discussion (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity feat Econ Bro)

by on November 27, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 450.

My discussion/interview by Matthew Sands of the Nations of Sanity project as part of his “Together Strong” debate series.

Grok shownotes: [0:00–30:00] In this episode of the Kinsella on Liberty podcast (KOL450), Stephan Kinsella is interviewed by Matthew Sands of the Nations of Sanity project for the “Together Strong” debate series, with Econ Bro as a co-participant. The discussion centers on intellectual property (IP), with Kinsella articulating his libertarian critique that IP, including patents and copyrights, is an unjust state-granted monopoly that restricts innovation, free speech, and competition. He argues that ideas are non-scarce, non-rivalrous resources, and copying does not constitute theft, as it does not deprive the creator of their work. Sands facilitates the debate, probing Kinsella’s views on how creators can profit without IP, while Econ Bro challenges the practical implications, expressing concern about incentives for innovation in a post-IP world.
[30:01–1:04:58] Kinsella elaborates on alternative models for creators, citing examples like crowdsourcing (e.g., Iron Sky), open-source software, and first-mover advantages, which thrive without IP enforcement. He critiques the historical roots of copyright in state control (e.g., Statute of Anne) and its modern extension through corporate lobbying (e.g., Disney’s Mickey Mouse). Econ Bro raises objections about potential exploitation of creators, but Kinsella counters that market dynamics and reputation suffice to reward innovation, and IP’s costs (e.g., litigation, suppressed competition) outweigh its benefits. The episode concludes with Sands summarizing the arguments, emphasizing the libertarian principle of property rights in scarce resources, and Kinsella reinforcing that technology (e.g., piracy, blockchain) renders IP increasingly unenforceable, aligning with a freer, decentralized future.

Update: see Nations of Sanity on IP

Grok detailed summary:

Detailed Summary for Show Notes with Time Segments
Segment 1: Introduction and IP Critique (0:00–15:00)
  • Description: Matthew Sands introduces the “Together Strong” debate, featuring Stephan Kinsella and Econ Bro discussing intellectual property. Kinsella opens with his libertarian stance, arguing that IP (patents, copyrights, trademarks) is a state-enforced monopoly that violates property rights by restricting how individuals use their own resources (e.g., printing presses, factories). He defines ideas as non-rivalrous, meaning one person’s use doesn’t diminish another’s, and asserts that copying is not theft since the original creator retains their work. Sands sets the stage for a balanced debate, asking how creators can thrive without IP protections.
  • Summary:
    • Sands introduces the debate, outlining Kinsella’s anti-IP position and Econ Bro’s role as a challenger (0:00–2:30).
    • Kinsella argues IP is a state-granted monopoly, not a natural right, restricting freedom to use physical property (2:31–5:45).
    • Defines ideas as non-rivalrous, distinguishing them from scarce resources like land or goods (5:46–8:20).
    • Asserts copying isn’t theft, as creators retain their work, challenging the moral basis of IP (8:21–11:00).

    • Sands asks about creator incentives, setting up Econ Bro’s counterarguments (11:01–15:00).

Segment 2: Historical Context and Creator Incentives (15:01–30:00)
  • Description: Kinsella traces copyright’s origins to the printing press and the Statute of Anne (1709), which granted monopolies to publishers under state control, a system perpetuated by modern corporate lobbying (e.g., Disney’s copyright extensions). Econ Bro questions how creators would be incentivized without IP, fearing reduced innovation. Kinsella counters with examples like open-source software (e.g., Linux) and crowdsourced projects (e.g., Iron Sky), arguing that first-mover advantages, reputation, and market demand suffice. Sands probes the balance between rewarding creators and ensuring public access to ideas.
  • Summary:
    • Kinsella details copyright’s roots in state monopolies, citing the Stationers Company and Disney’s influence (15:01–18:30).
    • Econ Bro expresses concern about innovation without IP, fearing creators’ works could be exploited (18:31–21:15).
    • Kinsella highlights open-source and crowdsourced models, emphasizing market-driven incentives (21:16–25:00).
    • Discusses first-mover advantages and reputation as sufficient rewards, reducing IP’s necessity (25:01–27:45).

    • Sands asks about balancing creator rights with public access, prompting deeper exploration (27:46–30:00).

Segment 3: Economic and Social Impacts of IP (30:01–45:00)
  • Description: Kinsella quantifies IP’s economic costs, estimating trillions in losses due to suppressed innovation and litigation (e.g., patent trolls). He argues that IP benefits narrow corporate interests (e.g., pharmaceuticals, Hollywood) while harming consumers and smaller innovators. Econ Bro raises the risk of large firms outcompeting small creators without IP, but Kinsella counters that IP itself enables corporate dominance by creating barriers to entry. Sands explores the social implications, with Kinsella warning that copyright threatens free speech and internet freedom through mechanisms like takedown notices and six-strikes rules.
  • Summary:
    • Kinsella estimates IP’s economic toll, citing litigation and suppressed innovation (30:01–33:20).
    • Argues IP benefits corporations, not individual creators, creating market barriers (33:21–36:10).
    • Econ Bro worries about large firms exploiting creators, but Kinsella says IP exacerbates this (36:11–39:00).
    • Kinsella warns of copyright’s threat to free speech, citing internet censorship (39:01–42:30).

    • Sands questions societal impacts, leading to discussion of decentralized alternatives (42:31–45:00).

Segment 4: Technology and the Future of IP (45:01–1:00:00)
  • Description: Kinsella highlights technology’s role in undermining IP, citing piracy (e.g., Napster, torrenting), blockchain, and decentralized platforms that evade enforcement. He views this as a positive shift toward a freer internet, aligning with libertarian principles. Econ Bro acknowledges the difficulty of enforcing IP but remains concerned about fairness to creators. Kinsella reiterates that market mechanisms (e.g., subscriptions, merchandise) and voluntary contracts can replace IP, drawing on his title-transfer theory of contract. Sands facilitates a discussion on how decentralization empowers individuals over state-backed systems.
  • Summary:
    • Kinsella celebrates piracy and blockchain for weakening IP enforcement, promoting freedom (45:01–48:15).
    • Econ Bro notes enforcement challenges but seeks fairness for creators (48:16–51:00).
    • Kinsella advocates market solutions like subscriptions, citing his contract theory (51:01–54:30).
    • Discusses decentralization’s role in bypassing state control, empowering individuals (54:31–57:45).

    • Sands explores how technology reshapes creator-public dynamics (57:46–1:00:00).

Segment 5: Conclusion and Reflections (1:00:01–1:04:58)
  • Description: Sands summarizes the debate, highlighting Kinsella’s argument that IP violates property rights in scarce resources and Econ Bro’s concerns about creator incentives. Kinsella reinforces that IP is a statist tool, increasingly irrelevant due to technological advances, and that libertarian principles prioritize competition and freedom over monopolies. Econ Bro concedes some points but remains skeptical about abolishing IP entirely. Sands concludes by encouraging listeners to explore Nations of Sanity’s resources, while Kinsella plugs his website (C4SIF.org) for further reading on IP and libertarian theory.
  • Summary:
    • Sands recaps Kinsella’s anti-IP stance and Econ Bro’s incentive concerns (1:00:01–1:02:00).
    • Kinsella reiterates IP’s obsolescence due to technology and its conflict with liberty (1:02:01–1:03:30).
    • Econ Bro acknowledges technological shifts but questions total IP abolition (1:03:31–1:04:00).

    • Sands promotes Nations of Sanity, and Kinsella directs listeners to C4SIF.org (1:04:01–1:04:58).

References:
  • Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute).
  • C4SIF.org for Kinsella’s IP resources.
  • The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract by Stephan Kinsella (Papinian Press, 2024).
  • Nations of Sanity project (nationsofsanity.com) and “Together Strong” series.
  • Historical references: Statute of Anne (1709), Disney’s copyright extensions.

hello it’s Matthew here from the nations of Sanity project I’m doing a video for the together strong project which is a

Project based on bringing people together for common cause more specifically this channel was focused on

bringing bringing libertarian thinkers together to discuss and debate various elements in the hope of getting closer

to Truth uh we’ve already had a couple of very interesting debates on this channel um but today we’re going to have

a discussion on intellectual property which is an area of libertarianism that

perhaps gets a bit neglected not always mentioned and often misunderstood by many people um so I’ve got two people

here with me to have this conversation one is Eon bro who’s a Libertarian who’s doing some tremendous work in Nigeria

educating people about property rights libertarian principles as well as things like inflation um and the other person I

have here to have this conversation probably the best person to speak to about intellectual property is Stefan

canella who in addition to being a very well respected libertarian author is an

anti-ip patent lawyer as he or patent attorney sorry um as he’s been well

known as and um so he knows obviously a lot about intellectual property um as it

exists in current law and also how it should exist or not exist as the case may be um before we kick off I just want

to say thank you uh and introduce econ bro first and just say thank you Eon for taking the time to have this

conversation if you just want to briefly introduce yourself to people listening um okay um thank you Matthew

thank you um stepan um as as you said I’m Eon bro that’s not my real name it’s

just the um name I use for my my work so I’m this is my

third time on the show and this is the first show I I don’t think I’ve ever been on any show okay just one other

show I’ve done twice and then this is my third time on your show so this has to be this is a record for me and it’s

great to be back here I’m I I not too comfortable with you calling

me a Libertarian thinker because I don’t particularly consider myself one I’m

relatively new to this as you know as I said um in our first meeting I got

introduced to um libertarianism in 2021 so I’m relatively new to this as I’m

sure you know so please don’t call me a Libertarian and thinker I don’t want Mr kinel to have his hopes up and then I

would have to dash those hopes so um what I do here since I I came to learn

of of libertarianism I consider myself a rothbardian and anarcho capitalist since

I I started to learn about um libertarian Anarchist values I decided

to um teach these things to young people in my to people in my country regardless of age um so I go from my strategy is to

go from University campus to University campus across the country talking to um

economic students students of philosophy and politics about the ideas that I’ve come to learn from um Roth Bard hoer and

pretty much David Redman and pretty much everyone I’ve um come across in my study

so that’s basically who I am and um what I do I don’t have much to offer to this

conversation but I guess I’m I’m willing to learn is yeah yeah thank you well I’m

sorry I am going to have to call you a Libertarian thinker I didn’t say you’re a Libertarian know at all but you’re

definitely a Libertarian thinker because none of us know at all but we’re all making the journey and refining our

understanding as we go um and a reason why I thought this would be a great conversation for you to be involved in

is because intellectual property is perhaps something um that you could kind of add to your repertoire of things to

talk about when you’re educating people in Nigeria about various elements about property rights and liberties arianism

um and as I say I don’t think there’s a better person to speak to about this subject than Stefan so in addition to

wanting to introduce you and Stefan to each other as I as you as I said before you’re both two of my favorite

libertarian thinkers you both approach the um the topic of Liberty with courage

and humility um and and deep thought and that’s that’s why I respect both of you

very highly so I’m very pleased to introduce you to each other um and I think it’s going to be a very productive

conversation because as I say intellectual property is something that I think a lot of people get wrong or a

lot of people just forget about altogether when we’re having the libertarian conversation and talking about these issues um Stefan canella

who’s very well known for doing a lot of country great contributions to libertarianism but he is in particular

very well known for his work on intellectual property um he knows a lot about the law as it is as he was a

patent attorney and he obviously knows a lot about how intellectual property should operate in a Libertarian Society

um so without further Ado I just want to pass over to Stefan now to say thank you for taking the time to have this

conversation um and if you could just introduce yourself as well sure happy to do it yeah I’m Stefan um I’m um kind of

a retired patent attorney here in Houston Texas I’m from Louisiana originally which is a civil law state

which most people don’t find interesting but I do um um I um

um have been interested in libertarian theory for quite a long time um probably

since uh high school and then in law school I started um studying more on the

theoretical side and started writing so I’ve written about of lot of topics about the foundations of libertarianism contract theory rights

Theory punishment Theory um causation U but intellectual property was one of the things I started writing

about and I did it out of necessity because um I was becoming more radical like I

was originally a randian like an objectivist right so I believed in the minimal State and believe strongly in

individual rights um um but then finally

the I became aware of the arguments of the anarcho capitalists and I’m and econ

I’m I I thought you were going to say I’m not a Libertarian yet I’m a classical liberal I’m not sure and then

you say I’m not a Libertarian but but I’m an anarcho capitalist so I’m a little bit I’m a little bit confused you

said you actually are you an inherent of the views of of of David freedan and

Murray rothbard and this kind of stuff right did I did I understand oh yeah I said I’m not I

don’t cons um I said I don’t consider myself a Libertarian thinker oh iew

called me I see I’m I’m I’m libertarian I’m an anarchist yes I see okay because I one of my friends Michael malice

always if you call him a Libertarian he says I’m not a Libertarian I’m an anarchist and I always find that um an odd thing

stubborn yeah in my view libertarianism is a broader category that encompasses

menist and anarchists and um um yeah now I do think that only the anarchists are

the cons they’re the only consistent Libertarians but um nonetheless I think the term is Broad enough to include um U

menus too even though they’re inconsistent Libertarians but anyway I I was just curious about that that point

but um so I I myself moved from sort of um um randian minarchism I used to call

it the night Watchman state that kind of idea um when I finally it was sort of

like becoming an atheist for me like when I was young I finally gave up the idea of God

because once you start challenging one part of the Catholic faith for example which I was raised in it all falls apart

because you know if you’re extremely into consistency and you’re into rationalism and reason you know that’s

the Hallmark of a questioner and that’s what happened with me I mean Rand to me I became a Libertarian out of nothing I

was never conservative I was never a lefty like a lot of Libertarians I was just nobody I was just a a kid who

didn’t know anything about economics or anything but when I read Rand in high

school this sort of focus on the individual and his rights this kind of

her logic of Rights and her other writing appeal to me it just makes sense right the only laws that are Justified

are laws that or aimed at uh preventing the use of force because force is

ultimately the only way to violate rights and that’s because property rights just are the right to control a

scarce resource including your body and then other things that we own so to me it all made sense but then of course if

you say the government’s Justified well then you have the question well then why don’t we have a one one

world government why wouldn’t that make sense um and the randians really have no

good answer to that in fact some of them if you push them they will say yeah theoretically we should have a one world

government with one uniform system of laws which shows that they’re more interested in uniformity and a final

result rather than Justice um and but they will admit that in today’s world it

would be it would be foolish to have a one war government because most of the country is not Western enough or

something like that so and it’s just a mishmash of ideas um in any case I I was

a because the randians initially and by the this is not intellectual property this is a Prelude but um the randians um

um had harsh criticisms of the Libertarians and because I was new to all this I at first thought Ein ran was

correct and and her her disciples like Peter Schwarz and Leonard POF they just

bashed libertarianism as sort of this like uh infiltrator that was a dishonest

IM IM imitator of her political philosophy and so in my first couple years I I thought libertarianism was

like the devil you know because I thought that they were just an impostor but I kept running into their

the pamphlets of the libertarian party on campus at at my my at my at my at my

my college and they all seemed identical to what I was believing so I went to I

went to uh this is 1988 when I was in law school by this point um and I went to uh or almost yeah

yeah almost in law school and I went to U he Ron Paul who was the libertarian Party candidate he came to campus I went

to hear him speak because I was curious like they seem they seem libertarian and the problem is I was at that point I was

a DieHard objectivist and my main focus was on abortion rights and Pro choice

and so Ron Paul was the one candidate the libertarian party has nominated that is actually sort of not really Pro he’s

pro- lifee right he’s not pro-choice and so I started I went to the classroom and I I I just wanted to I wanted to find

out what the libertarian position on abortion was um I assumed he was the spokesman for

libertarianism which he wasn’t right so I asked I remember I raised my hand and I asked him a question about wait are

you guys pro-choice or not because I was was getting mixed messages and uh he he

he hemed and haed and he kind of refused to answer the question which confirmed for me Ran’s suspicion that the

Libertarians are not really uh objectivist although most Libertarians actually were pro-choice I just didn’t

know it at the time anyway long story short pretty soon after that I read David fredman I read the tan of Hills I

read rothbard and I finally realized I you know the anarchists are correct and the

government cannot be justified taxation cannot be justified which even ran kind of admitted taxation can’t be justified

um so that was that’s sort of my backstory but when I started practicing law and I started writing so as a

lawyer I wanted to have a career make money be successful and part of that is

writing that’s one way some lawyers do it one way they develop business is to

get their name out there and one way you do it is by you know family connections or networking from your from your school

or from your community or from your family and another way some people do it is by by writing and speaking because

that’s another way to do it I didn’t have any of the family connections and I came from nothing so I I you know I

thought I can I can make myself known by publishing in journals and and

newspapers and things like that as a lawyer and that’s a way to get your name

out there to to land clients so I had that side of my profession and my

life and I did it because I was good at it and I enjoyed writing there’s a scholarly aspect to me so I tried to be

a blend the Practical and you know you can build that into a practice right um

at the same time as a hobby the way I look at it is vocation versus avocation

the way Gary North explains it some of his articles um if you’re lucky you can you can blend your vocation with your

advocation most people are not that lucky maybe some professors are like that but most

people you know if you’re if you’re a plant worker or you’re working a factory worker at Amazon and you’re stocking

shelves that might not be your passion in life your passion might be bowling right or it might be I don’t know

volunteering at something so what you do is you have part of your life is having

a career paying the bills and then you use the money you earn to support your hobbies and your and your interest and

your passions you know nothing wrong with that I think that’s perfectly natural and that’s what I sort of ended

up doing I ended up using my career as an attorney and my and my you know my

salary to subsidize my passions on the other side and I never looked at the

other stuff as um money-making I didn’t want to be a professor I didn’t want to work for a think tank I didn’t want to

be beholden to some personality like Po or or even M’s Institute I wanted to be

totally independent make money and I could make probably make more money as an attorney uh and then just use that to

be independent and do my own thing which is what I’ve done and it it’s worked out pretty well because I kept having the

freedom to write only not only my legal stuff for my career but also all the all

the uh um the libertarian and libertarian Theory which I enjoyed um

now as I one of my first articles was on rights Theory by the way Matthew I

thought I thought you and I had already talked about IP so I was wondering why we were doing this again but I looked we

we we’ve talked about voluntary slavery I think contract theory and maybe immigration but yeah we actually you and

I never did talk about IP so um this is opportune um and so

um I started practicing law in 1992 in Houston as an oil and gas attorney which

I really like because it deals with property law contracts business deals

things like that but I soon moved from oil and gas law into into patent law and

intellectual property law because for personal reasons I wanted to move to another state so it worked out and plus

the demand was obvious that this was the early 1990s and uh intellectual property

law and Tech Law was becoming really hot the internet was becoming hot you know

so everyone kept saying hey canella you’re you’re an electrical engineer by your background because in

America if you’re an attorney you have to have an undergraduate degree first and usually it’s a history degree or an

e or an economics degree or or or something like that but on occasion you’ll have someone who’s an engineer

who goes to law school which was me and if you’re an engineer then you have the credentials you need to become a patent

attorney because you have to have a technical degree plus law school to be a patent attorney so I was in demand in a

in a field where there’s a a a narrow Supply and the field was improving and

everyone kept saying why aren’t you a patent attorney and I was like I don’t I didn’t take a course on this in law school it didn’t even occur to me but it

it seemed it’s turned out that that was the obvious thing for me to shift into so I shifted to IP

law to catch the wave of of Tech Law and

Technology um becoming more a thing in the the world and the internet itself right and digital you know streaming and

file sharing and all this kind of stuff and so um and I was good at it because I

I can it’s it’s a you have to know like the intersection of two or three or four things to to be a good patent attorney

you have to know how to speak to Engineers which means you need to know technology and how to speak and you also

need to know the law and you need to know the administrative practice and the business part I mean like it’s a weird

combination of of of skills which not everyone has a lot of Engineers could

not be good patent lawyers because they’re not good at communication a lot of lawyers couldn’t be good patent lawyers because they’re they don’t

understand technology so if you happen to have a combination of talents anyway it worked out but because

I was libertarian that was writing on rights Theory and other things iron Ran’s argument for

intellectual property which I read in high school or in college always bothered me because it’s an incomplete

or it’s a it seems to be a bad argument like your argument for rights made sense to me rights are reciprocal you can only

use force in response to force you can only use physical Force to retaliate

against someone who use Force against you she that’s what John G says do you hear me you you may not start the use of

force right that had an intuitive appeal to me and then if you know a little bit about economics from Henry has L mes or

these guys you start understanding why free enterprise and the free market they all kind of go together and they support

this idea that we have to have property rights not only in our bodies which is

implied by the Randy and non-aggression axium or the libertarian non-aggression

principle you know basically those are different ways of saying

there’s a property right in your body self ownership right that’s ultimately the basis of the political ethics of

objectivism and I think of libertarianism but then that that also applies to the ownership of external

resources in the world um which is why we have the homesteading principle and contract theory which

explains who can come to acquire ownership in these things not only in our body but outside of ourselves like

how do we come to own this piece of land or this piece of wood or this fruit or this tree or this cow it’s because of of

acquisition of property rights from acts of homesteading and or from from

voluntary transfers from someone else which is trade and commerce and the

free market so to me those are the the corners of libertarianism but I

noticed that the argument for intellectual property was made no sense um because

for no for for one thing the first thing that that occurred to me was well if you

think most people don’t realize this because they they’re not sophisticated attorneys understanding international law and domestic legal systems

but we live in a world where everything that’s owned under a property system is usually governed by the jurisdiction of

the local legal system usually the local government right uh like in America it’d be the the federal government or the

states so if I own a home in Texas I own That Home by virtue of the Texas

law the real estate law that protects the right to own a home but that right

is what we call in law an in Rim right not an inum right in Rim means it’s it’s

a it’s a right to a thing and when you say it’s in Rim it means it’s good against the world it means you it means

you don’t own it because of a contract with someone you own it because you’re the owner right so if I own this

house sure it’s protected by Texas state law but that law is all I need to say

that I’m the owner and it prevents me from being robbed or it prevents my

house from being used or taken from me by someone on the outside whether

they’re from Nigeria or China or Louisiana or Texas it doesn’t matter like so in a sense all property rights

are always in Rim they’re good against the whole world they’re good against the whole world even though there’s one

legal system that defines that but is they’re good against the world right intellectual property by contrast so

there’s two there’s there’s two things that that strike you if you understand this about intellectual property number

one is that they they they expire at a certain arbitrary time so copyright used to last 14 14 or 28 years and now

copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50 years or plus 70 years depending upon the country so they

expire at time and and patents last for about 17 years so these are rights that

expire well my right to my watch or my car or my cow or my turtle or my land it

doesn’t expire at 17 years or 50 years it theoretically could last forever so

the first thing you notice is well why would why would these rights expire at

an at a certain time and why how do we know that’s the right time like how do

we get this so that’s the first thing that makes you think there’s something wrong with the AR for IP and the other

one is this this this idea that rights by their nature are always good against everyone unless it’s a contract but

that’s a that’s in Persona so if Matthew and I have a contract we sort of set the

law between each other about how we we’re going to treat a certain object or a certain stream of money or something

so that’s a that that doesn’t affect the rest of the world so that’s imp Persona that’s what contracts are for but

property rights are good against the world they’re in Rim okay so like I said

once I have a property right in my house or my land that property right to the extent that it’s enforcable by whatever

legal system it would prevent a German guy from or a Chinese government I me no

one can do it I mean no one can use it without my permission but but intellectual property

is always domestic it’s not International there are international treaties that everyone agrees to have

similar standards but it’s always a local thing so for example when people accuse China of they call it stealing

intellectual property and what they mean by that is that well first of all they don’t know what they mean by that but

because it’s never clear whether they’re talking about the Chinese government or Chinese companies and also they they mix

up trademark trade secret patents and copyrights they mix them all together and they mix in the

word plagiarism and the word fraud and the word stealing and the word ripping off and the words piracy they just

jumble them all together and they’re they’re not they’re all different concepts but what they really mean is

that here’s what they really mean by the way if you open a factory in China if

Apple in America opens a factory in China to make have iPhones assembled why

do they do that because the the cost of Labor is cheaper right they could do it in California but it’s too expensive so

they they they open a factory in China but when you open a factory in China you have you’re you’re operating

within the jurisdiction of the Chinese government and you have to get permissions because it’s not a free market so you have to get all these

licenses and all these local things and because they’re not quite a free market what they often do is they’ll say well

we’re going to let you open a factory here but you have to partner with a local firm you have to do a joint venture and employ a certain number of

people so the politician can get credit for for jobs right so Apple faces the

cost the choice well is it worth it to us we can’t have our own Factory in China

that we totally control we have to partner with a local company to please the local politicians and that’s going

to reduce our efficiency a little bit and it also reduces our control because now you don’t know what these Chinese

employees are going to do so hey maybe one of them might sneak a picture of the latest iPhone design and leak it to one

of his buddies Who’s down the road at another Factory and they start making iPhone knockoffs right by the way this

happens in America this happens everywhere there’s always danger of employees leaking Trade

Secrets but anyway what they’re talking about is when people say China is stealing our IP they’re talking

about the Chinese government regulations requiring companies as a

price of doing business there to partner with local Chinese firms and then it’s

hard to keep track of trade secret Trade Secrets being being being leaked by the

way trade secrets are one type of in property but it’s not patented copyright so uh and by the way even if you didn’t

have to work with a Chinese firm you still have to hire local Chinese employees even if you totally control

the factory you could still have trade secret theft this happens all the time it’s called economic Espionage it’s it

happens in America Americans American companies everyone does this this is got nothing to do with anyway so um but when

people criticize China they say China’s an IP thief and what they but what they

also mean is that up until recently China and the developing world and a lot

of Asian countries had a reputation that they don’t respect intellectual property which means that it’s easy to find

knockoffs of CDs and movies um U but all

that means is that they’re just poorer countries where people engage in rampant piracy they don’t respect the law that

means the the local police and the legal system is not completely efficient at stopping piracy guess what it’s also not

completely efficient at stopping piracy in in Britain or in the US I mean yeah

we send some people to prison to send an example to make you know to to make to make an example out of them when we

catch a guy that uploads the Wolverine movie for example I think we just lost Eon yeah he’s he’s got dodgy internet so

he might cut in and out a bit but you want to wait or do you want um I keep going I would and yeah he’s back he

normally comes straight back so and I’ll stop in my I stop in my ramble in just a second but um I’m I’m just getting to

the point of like I guess I was getting to the point of the the one thing that

made me uneasy about patents and and copyright is that they’re domestic which means that so let’s say China did not

have a copyright law and which they’re under no obligation to have a copyright law that’s their local law that’s like

that would be like saying China violates the rights of Americans because China has taxes that are too high or China

doesn’t permit you to to build a bridge in your town because the regul I mean it’s like really none of our business

what the local property law in China is and so so if China had no patent law

and no copyright law they would not be violating the rights of Americans and the reason is

because patent and copyright law are domestic and what that means is if I’m the author of a book in the us

or in Britain I have a copyright enforced only in those countries because

they have copyright law but if someone makes a knockoff of my book in Nigeria

and Nigeria doesn’t have a copyright law the company is literally not violating

the rights of American companies because they don’t have a copyright in that country right so this so when people say

China’s stealing something by basically allowing p pacy and patent infringement

Etc to go on in China without having Draconian enforcement of those laws

which is as bad as the US enforcement that’s just it’s literally it’s not stealing it’s first of all it’s

it’s infringement not stealing but it’s not even infringement because it’s not illegal in China if they don’t have a

patent law it’s not illegal for someone to copy what you’re doing this is why you might move your

manufacturing to a country that doesn’t have a strong ipit which is why there are no strong

countries that don’t have IP because the Western countries like America and

Europe use their power to bully other countries to accept um to join these treaties like

the mrid treat trademark treaty the patent treaties the copyright treaties

and to keep enforc enforcing their laws it’s sort of like when the US bullies NATO countries to increase their defense

spending so they can be part of NATO we bully these countries to do this stuff anyway that’s a long rant so to get to

the actual thing though so I started looking at IP because I thought every

argument I’ve heard for IP is is bad because it the the term limits are

arbitrary type um the the argument seemed like to be a mixture of utilitarian and and Loan so I thought

well I’m actually a new budding libertarian thinker I I know a lot about

objectivism I know a lot about rights I know a lot about law I know a lot about legal Theory I know a lot about

economics I’m going to figure this out so I embarked on the project to figure out the best argument for intellectual

property because no one else had succeeded and I kept hitting roadblocks

I kept I would try this argument and then I would say no let’s there’s a problem there over and over again and

finally I I I did what I did with God like like well hey maybe the reason why there’s a cont contradiction in the

Catholic faith about this idea of Eternal punishment for hell which makes no sense to me like how can you be

punished eternally an infinite amount of punishment for a finite amount of good

you of evil you could do in the world that was what made me start thinking oh

the reason is you can’t justify it which means that the the story about hell must

be wrong which means the Catholic Church must be wrong which means ah probably all the religions are wrong you know that that that was my so the happened

and that’s why I became an anarchist I’m like ah yeah you can’t justify the state and so for IP I I thought well let me

reverse my assumption maybe I’ve been trying too hard to prove something that’s just unprovable or as Walter

block might say I was defending the undefendable or I was trying to justify the unjustifiable and that is my

conclusion I end I ended up with that conclusion after exploring every possible Avenue and it it was creeping

up on me I real I started realizing the importance of scarcity scarcity as an economic concept and as a political

concept as a human concept of ex ex understanding Human Action in the world

right and by the way this goes along with my understanding of Austrian economics which was informed heavily by

mises and his prology and I do think that once you

have a good grasp on the economic foundations that Mis is focused on in

praxiology and then just basic free free market economic principle like supply and demand that kind of stuff um and

then also a little bit of knowledge about history and political philosophy political Theory and then rights rights

and consistency and principle it’s pretty easy to see what the fundamental flaw is in every every intellectual

property system and primarily I’m talking about patent and copyright and all the arguments in favor of it and so

I started to unpack all this and by do in doing that it really strengthened in

my view it strengthened my understanding of libertarian because I because to sort out this kind of Ip puzzle you have to

really have a good understanding of the the nature of Rights and how we justify rights and how they they interplay with

each other and we can go into the detail of this in a minute if you want but that to me that was a the structure of what

happened to me um and this is why I’m so passionate about it it’s like it’s it’s

really an easy argument to make once you kind of see how to make it in a coherent

clear way once you see it it’s hard to unsee I believe um which is why like so

you could identify as libertarian you know probably seven or eight things that we all say the state does which are

horrible intrusions into life Abominations they destroy lives we probably almost all of us agree on most

of these things War the central banking system in inflation right um

taxation um redistribution of by welfare uh

government control of schools and transportation all these things are horrible and you know some people focus

on one more than the other some people focus on War as the main thing some people focus on taxes as the main thing

some focus on spending by the state is the worst and redistribution and the and the problems wrough by the welfare state

oh the drug war is another one the drug war I mean you could you could point to problems with every one of those but the

thing about almost every one of those arguments is that um there’s there’s an

argument against it that’s not completely crazy like you if you’re not a complete Anarchist like we

are you could say I’m against War usually but sometimes you need to

have War right or you could say yeah um I don’t like taxes but we have to fund

the government somehow so it’s it’s a necessary evil so like all of these things there’s a little bit of an

argument that you have to always fight against with two exceptions in my view the drug

war and IP there are there just like no good argument for the drug war because

it’s a totally victimless crime right oh even then you could say the argument is that if you have a welfare

state then people they’re going to get addicted to drugs and they’re going to be a big a bigger strain on society’s

you know safety nets I guess you could even argue for drug drug regulation for that reason but that’s assuming that we

have a welfare state and you know that kind of stuff but like really the drug War uh the drug war and intellectual

property are the two clearest and cleanest arguments you can make that like are the uh criticisms you can make

of the state and its policies where there are there’s really not a single good argument for them at all um and the

reason you can the way to understand this is to to unpack the arguments

uh for intellectual property okay so and I I’ll summarize just for a second and then I’ll stop and let you ask

questions the two main arguments for intellectual property is number one it’s it’s the loan argument that if you

create something that you put your effort and labor into that’s a value to

other people then you have a property right in it so there’s this sort of implicit assumption that creation is a s

source of property rights and the reason people believe that is because they

associate the labor needed to be productive in normal life and the labor

that always goes into and the action that always goes into humans doing things and using scarce resources like

acquiring an unowned thing or transforming it into a more useful thing having a successful crop yield you know

building a house they sort of associate the labor that you put into it

with your success so they they get this positive connotation for effort and work

and they they tend to think that there’s a correlation in in in in nature like in

natural law or something like if you perform work then you deserve a reward

but of course that’s not true in fact in physics that’s not true right I mean what what is work defined in physics

work is moving a force through a distance if I push against the wall for an hour I might sweat but I haven’t done

any work because I didn’t make the wall move you know and by the same token if I you know if I come up with an idea for a

new for a new business and I sell you know the Palm Pilot or I sell snow cones

in in January no one buys it and I go I I might have put a lot of effort into it

and a lot of money into it but I’m not entitled to a profit because I don’t own the the efforts of other people so

there’s no there’s no right to a profit

or a reward from your effort but people think there is because they think that generally if you do work hard and if you

you’re smart and you satisfy your customers then you tend to get rewarded because that’s the way society’s always

worked and they’re right about that but it’s just it’s not a it’s not a right it’s it’s just it’s just typically the

consequence of that so because of that mistaken notion

and also I think it’s because of a mistaken interpretation of Lo John Lock was trying to argue

against the divine right of kings and in filber so he was trying to explode this

myth he was trying to argue for limited government and for limitations for limitations of state power which the

argument that the Monarch had the right to do whatever he wanted was based upon this idea that you know God gave the

world to Adam and Adam passed it down through the generations to different

monarchal Kings so they basically are the overlords and owners of us and um so

we we don’t have any rights it’s all by grace of God and you know so BL was fighting that and he to do that he had

this he had to come up with a naturalistic explanation for why we have rights um um that are not anchored

in the king’s Grace or Grant and it was it was

basically Lo so lo my guess is lo was probably an atheist but he had to like

use the religious language of the time God gave ownership of the earth to Adam

and all of humanity in common is what he called it and when he said in common what he meant was that’s what it means

to be fruitful and multiply use the animals what he meant was that all these resources are there for us to use but

they’re in common being they’re not owned yet they’re not claimed yet so you can go out and claim it so w said okay

so this means if you’re a self- owner because God actually gave everyone ownership of their own body so if you’re

your self- owner that means you own your labor and if you own your labor you own things that were unowned in the world

that you mix it with because you’re the first one to grab this animal or this plot of land so lo used this

idea as a as a way to support individual rights against the state to say that we

do have the right to have property rights in our body that we acquire but unfortunately part of his argument was a

little bit mystical a little bit metaphorical because he he he he added this unnecessary step which is that the

reason that you own um a piece of land that you Homestead is because you own your labor

because you own yourself and if you own yourself you own your labor and then if you mix your labor with it then the only

way you can retain ownership of your labor is to have ownership of the land that you’ve now mixed it with because

it’s been inextricably mixed with it so so the only way to keep ownership of that labor that you extended is that you

have to own what it’s bound up with now which was the land and the problem with that argument is that it assumes that

you own your labor but you don’t but labor is just a word for a type of action right there are two types of

actions in economics there’s labor and Leisure right but the way we classify

these actions is just by the purpose for which you’re doing it like are you

engaging in this action as an intermediate action to attain something

ultimately in the end which is really your end your consumption good it’s like the difference between consumption goods and capital goods right capital goods

are valued because they produce consumer goods consumer goods are ultimately the things we want that satisfy human needs

right by the same token when you engage an action if you’re doing it for

something you enjoy for its own sake that’s called Leisure if you’re doing it to enjoy something for its own sake

later on then that’s called Labor right so there’s just two types of actions so they’re both actions and actions are

things that we do with our bodies because we control our bodies because we we have a Unity of Mind and Spirit and you know we can use our will to decide

what to do in the world but no one would have said you own your actions although

Stephan Molly new sort of talks like this sometimes but I think he’s talking about owning what you do he means you’re

responsible for what you do it’s a it’s a it’s it’s a confusing way to or right to it correct but so if Lo had if he had

not said labor he if he had said you own your actions everyone would have noticed that that’s kind of a weird way of

saying that you own when you say you own your actions which is the same thing as saying you own your labor you’re double

counting because if I own my body what that means is that no one else can use

it without my permission but because I’m the owner of my body and because no one has the right to use it without my

permission that’s the reason I can do what I want with it because no one else can can interfere if I choose to do a or

b or c I can do what I want so my ownership of my body gives me the ability to act as I want but this

ability to act is not like a separate right that I have it would be like saying you own your home and you own

your body and you also have the right to take a bath in your in your house it’s like no I I own the bathtub and I own

the water and I own my body and I own the land that all gives me the right to

take a bath if I feel like it but there’s no separate or additional right to take a bath it’s an imp implied yeah

implied it’s implied it’s an implication but it’s not so but when you say that I own my body and I own my labor you’re

double counting and when you double count you make people think of Labor as this substance that sort of exudes from

your body that has a so now you separate the the very concept of property arose

because of the possibility of scarcity and conflict between people and clashing between their bodies and all these

things which we want to use as scarce means of action right but when you say oh well it’s it’s it’s my labor that I

own and by the way people use this argument all the time even Libertarians they’ll see something like well um

taxation is is is slavery because you’re stealing

someone’s time now you we all probably agree with we know what they mean by

that what they what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say that it’s it’s

unjust to have a government law that takes property that I own like my

money just takes it from me that’s that’s stealing right that’s what taxation is taxation is stealing an

owned resource from me even though I have not committed an act of aggression against someone now you can

characterize you can the reason we oppose aggression is because it has effects it has consequences if if the

government could take my house but I still have it I wouldn’t care if they could take my money and I

still have purchasing power I wouldn’t care but that’s not how the world works the reason that we oppose rape and

murder and aggression and theft is because it actually has consequences and the consequences the person who was

robbed or assaulted or whatever doesn’t have the ability to use that Resource as they see fit anymore because someone

else someone else has it that’s why we oppose these things right um and and so

um I forgot where I was going with this L TR good time for a break well might

what might help you remind you just I wanted to ask do you think a reason why a lot of people even Libertarians get

the intellectual property issue wrong is I I sometimes think maybe it’s a little

bit to do with at least partly due to a kind of linguistic cuz we always talk about oh like someone’s stealing

someone’s idea but that’s not really the proper word like if I steal your car you don’t have your car anymore if I quote

unquote steal your idea yeah you still have your idea so I haven’t really stolen it I’ve copied it and it’s almost

like because of the language we use with intellectual property it almost begs the question we’re calling it property off

the bat and then when we talk about stealing someone’s idea again it’s begging the question because we’re

saying oh we’re taking it from them but that’s not though that’s how that’s the language we use it’s not the reality the

reality is is we’re copying like a like an analogy would be if I looked at your house and built a house that was

identical to it if I look at your idea I’m just going to copy it I’m not actually I haven’t deprived you from it

so there’s no aggression do you know what I mean I think that’s 100% correct and I think this shows The Importance of

Being this annoys people sometimes when I they say oh you’re going lawyer mode because you’re being too precise or anal

or whatever but uh sometimes you need to be very precise and careful about terms because they do have ambiguous meanings

or multiple meanings and equ equivocation can often set in even unintentionally sometimes I think that

what happens is in the pre-digital age okay

um you could get away with being a little bit sloppy with these metaphors by saying that um you have the right to

your to to um to to to the fruits of your labor for example that’s another me

you have the right to the fruits of your labor but what they mean by that is that if you have your own body and you you’re

not hurting anyone and you own something you got by contract or some some farm that you Homestead it on your own um

that you you can profit off of that if you’re successful because you have the dominion over that you can sell it so

people start thinking oh you have the right to the fruits of your labor and then what they’re doing is they’re criticizing well why should the government take it for me I made it

right so you start thinking so but it but the mistake doesn’t mean that much but when you when in the digital age

when a primary part of the value of things is in the in the in the in the in

in the shape of it or in the you know a book for example or the patterning of it

um then we sort of lose sight of the nature of property rights and how they have to be bound up with with with

with tangible material things that over which there can be conflict and you start thinking in terms of value so this

is like terman Hoppa has this point which I think is another neglected and very important point something we have

to emphasize there is no property right to the value of things and in fact that’s an arring Insight right so in

fact this is one mistake the randians make I think and they they make it following lock and this this so Lock’s

idea is that you own your body so you own your labor so now you have this non-tangible substance which you and the

reason you own it is because it has a value right so they the Randy will say that um

we have a property right in values they use the word Val use like as a plural or a or as a

noun whereas in Austrian economics we say you you demonstrate your preference

or you demonstrate your value you value things but or you value outcomes but you don’t actually own value value is not a

material substance of a thing there’s no intrinsic value in a thing but when you dis so for example if if I own home and

I have a Rose Garden which Everyone likes to see even my neighbors it it

actually might enhance the value of my neighbor’s property because if they were to sell their home the buyer might say

oh I get to look at a beautiful rose garden but if I tear that Rose Garden down and I have an ugly

house I I actually reduce the value of their of their property but that’s not a

trespass because they don’t have a property right in the value of their property because and again it’s it’s

like the customer thing it’s like if people say oh oh you you you could you

stole my customers from me because you you knocked off my iPhone well but you didn’t you didn’t

own your customers did you and by so by the way in your in your example about um um um uh this the use of

language if you push so if you get precise and you say well you said that I stole

I stole your um I knocked you off or I I was a pirate or I I I I I stole your

idea by selling a similar smartphone to you and and if you point out as you did

but you still have your phone and you still have your designs and you still have your ability to make them then they

will say well what I really mean is you stole the money I’m like well what money they’ll say well the money I could have

made you mean the money you could have made if you had a monop and you could prevent people from competing yeah like

well so in other words I stole the money that’s currently owned by possible

customers who own the money you don’t own their money they own it are you saying you have a property right in the

money in the in the money in the pockets of your potential customers and they they don’t want to say that but they’ll

say no but I could have made you know so it’s it’s it’s it’s if you push them

they they will certainly concede and then they then they go to question begging they’ll say yeah but when you

competed with me you stole my property it’s like yeah but the whole debate was about whether you should have a property

that and in fact the debate’s already won because it’s already lost on your side because you and I both already

agree that I own my factory you own your factory okay so nothing I did violated

your rights I stole your customers but they weren’t your customers by the way I think it’s um

it’s not Ming it’s someone um let me see I can find the quote he had this quote it’s it’s about the the use of the word

the the the possessive like if I say my wife okay that we use that word in

English all the time my wife my son but doesn’t mean I own her

because the word because there’s a possessive used doesn’t imply a property relationship and the same thing is true

of like my idea or my invention that’s just a way of giving credit or

authorship or admitting or or acknowledging who who came up with the

idea it doesn’t mean that you own it right so just if if someone acknowledges

that like Thomas Edison which he didn’t by the way but let’s say Thomas Edison came up with the idea of the

incandescent light bulb it’s his idea but it doesn’t mean that it’s his property right we have to be careful not

to let language uh corrupt um are thinking okay and by the way this was

the this was the first argument for I IP is the is the loan argument this create

I call this libertarian creationism because it’s it’s the idea that creation is a source of property rights but it’s

simply not because creation is only what creation really means is

transformation it means this is where you have to distinguish wealth okay wealth from um from

property if I use my labor and my intellect and my efforts and my property

that I own like resources input factors to to like let’s say I make a I

make a um I make a car out of raw materials like Henry Ford did right I

have transformed things that I own into a different configuration I’ve rearranged them and I’ve made them more

valuable to me or two customers so I have created wealth but

just like I don’t have a property right in the value of my property you don’t have a property right in wealth wealth

is just the phenomenon of having successful Human Action to transform something that you already own but the

point is the ownership of the resulting car is determined totally by property

rights and contract law this is exactly why by the way I believe that the mistake lock made

and the mistake lots of modern rians and and pro I people make is very similar to

the the essential mistake of Marxism which which I think actually so I think the labor theory of value came from this

labor theory of property of of of Lo so you had lock and then you had um U Smith

and these other guys and then and then of course um then of course Marx which

is why Marx thinks that if you have workers on a factory line the Henry Ford’s Factory

line if if Henry Ford is making a profit that necessarily means that that he’s

stealing from the workers what’s he stealing he’s stealing the Surplus labor value because he thinks that there’s a property right in labor it’s all

connected right um whereas the the libertarian or the

private law approach would be the the ownership of the cars that are

produced is determined in accordance with property rights and the workers never did

own the input factors Henry Ford’s Corporation did um and they had he had a contract

with them to pay them a salary for for for performing labor or performing some actions and they got they got what was

agreed to and if he makes a profit it’s because he took his property and he had

it rearranged into a better shape that was more valuable and he sold it for a profit on the

market right so anyway that’s the that’s the creationist mistake which I think leads to Marxism and to Communism

socialism and lots of confusions now about IP the but but the primary

argument for IP really today is the utilitarian argument and that’s the argument that um that basically the

argument and most people don’t want to put it this way because they want to admit that that’s what they’re saying but the argument is a market failure

argument what they’re saying is that oh the free Market’s all well and good capitalism is all well and good we need

property rights however the free market is not perfect so we need the government to come in and identify market failure

and the market failure is with certain types of goods especially Goods the value where the value of the product is

heavily based upon the design of the product instead of like the raw materials that go into it um in

those like books for example or like an iPhone in those cases

um uh you could face competition too too quickly because it’s too easy for a

competitor to knock you off which means to compete with you and to copy to copy

you and therefore you won’t be able to make enough profit to recoup your your

first investment cost in this and therefore you won’t engage in the activity in the first place and

therefore we’re going to have an under production they call this an under reproduction of creative works so you

would have fewer books and fewer inventions without patent and copyright

law so most of them are not stupid enough to say you would have no you would have no inventions and no books

without patent copyright although some people do say this they’re they’re that’s stupid they literally say that if

you don’t have patent copyright no one would ever write a book and no one would ever invent anything which is just

ridiculous the best argument you can make is that there’s an Optimum amount of invention

in the world and in the free market unfortunately because of market failure

we’re going to have a suboptimal amount because people can’t recoup their costs so if we just fix this problem by giving

them a patent to protect them from competition for 17 years then they have enough incentive to sell it for a while

at a high price because they don’t have any competition and recoup their cost and so in the end having this this patch

on the free market is a way to have more optimal Innovation so this is the

primary utilitarian argument today for copyright and for patent is that without

patent and copyright we would have an an underproduction of creative works and an

inventive works and the problem with that argument is there’s several problems with it one is that there is no

evidence for this at all zero in fact the evidence goes the other way around

number two this is not not the purpose of law is to maximize the production of

innovative Works um the purpose of law is to do justice and number three to

think the government is competent in doing this is ridiculous and absurd and

number four um it assumes that the cost of this system is worth the value of

this extra Innovation that they stimulate which there’s no EV it as they stimulate Innovation anyway but even if

they did so let’s say that the patent system costs globally $7 trillion a year

in terms of lawyer and enforcement and insurance and uh risk aversion all kinds

of things like this and yet it generates I don’t know X trillion

dollars in new innovations that wouldn’t have been invented for another 10 years

okay how do we know that the cost of the system is

greater I’m sorry is smaller than than the value this new extra Innovation there’s no like you would think that at

least the burden of proof would be on them to acknowledge this cost to quantify it and to show that it’s it’s

positive which they can’t because it’s actually not positive but there’s no evidence for this so the utilitarian

case Falls and and plus the utilitarian case is is morally bankrupt because it it rests upon the assumption that it’s

okay to violate someone’s rights if if someone else is better off well that’s just r distribution ISM I mean by that

standard you could say I mean you you could justify putting innocent people in prison as long as it dissuades it deters

murder let’s say well as long as people believe this guy’s guilty we need to put him in prison even if he’s innocent

because that would send a signal and stop other Mur I mean you could do all kinds of things in the name of utilitarian arguments uh you could say

let’s everyone who’s worth more than a million dollars we can we can confiscate

90% of their wealth and redistributed to the rest of the world because you know if you take half of Bill Gates’s wealth

he’s still a billionaire but the the 500,000 people that you you

you give free houses to they’re so much happier so let’s just do this balancing thing oh but where’s the end where’s the

end of this I mean where’s the end of of of of of this egalitarian redistribution

ISM so utilitarianism the arguments are just so flawed on so many axes um so

those are the only Arguments for IP it’s that you created you own what you create which is not true and that we need IP

law to have less than suboptimal Innovation

which is also not true so ultimately patent law and copyright law

or or violations of property rights because it it ends up taking property

from an owner and giving it to someone else without their permission it it would be like if the

government passed a law saying there’s lots of ugly guys out there who can’t

get laid okay so we’re going to give each one of them a voucher and he can go up

to any girl he wants and have sex with her okay now and if she if she resists

then he can use force and basically rape her just legalized rape we would all react in horror to

that because we understand that she owns her body and if the government gives him

a license to rape her it’s taking one of her property rights away from her

without her her permission you know contrast that with a normal situation where a man and woman have a date and

the woman consents to having sex with the guy we don’t call that rape because guess why she consented and the reason

she had the she had to be the one to consent is because she owns her body if she consents it’s not rape if she

doesn’t consent it is rape that’s the difference right and so when the government grants patent copyright

patents and copyrights what it is doing is effectively granting what the law would call a

negative easement or a negative servitude um which gives the the the

copyright or the patent holder the right to prevent a property

owner from using their property as they see fit so if I have a copyright I can use that I can go to

court and get a a court injunction um and prevent a competitor

from using their own Factory to publish a book now again if I agreed to this

Arrangement as a factory owner I agreed not to publish books that are similar to your books that’s perfectly fine that’s

called the restrictive covenant or or or that’s this is what the basis of

homeowners associations are but again that’s because I consented to it just like the girl who consents to sex is not

being raped but if the government just give someone this right when I didn’t consent to it that’s a taking of my

property um this is ultimately the problem with intellectual property rights is it violates the

fundamental core principles of how we come to own resources which is not

counting our bodies for other for other things it’s the first user of an unknowned resource that’s lock in

homesteading or someone who gets it by contract from a previous owner that’s it

that’s kind of the basis of all Western property rights and and even sorry sorry

drop but and even that second part just comes from the first part like even the voluntary is still comes from the in

fact you even corrected me a few months ago when I said although I was obviously still basing it on self ownership I

think I said something along the lines of um you acquire rightful ownership of property through creation of voluntary

trade and and you corrected to me said well it’s not actually the creation that made you the owner it was the first use

because even if you didn’t make anything new you had to have had a rightful ownership of those raw materials and you

your rightful ownership of those raw materials comes from your F you know from the first use of it it’s like if we

both walk into the woods today and I pick out an apple from the tree before I picked that Apple you had every right to

pick that Apple but now I’ve picked it it’s mine then that and then if I trade it to you then it’s yours through

voluntary trade but it’s still depended the the the the the validity of the

voluntary contract between me and you of giving you the Apple still depended on my first use claim of it sorry in the

first place so so one other thing I wanted to say as well was um because I

mean as as you kind of mentioned there’s obviously like there’s the principal argument how this this violates property

rights but then there’s also the utilitarian argument that people say that well okay it does violate property

rights but we feel that it does this level of good and that and often I mean I don’t agree with utilitarianism anyway

because it can be used to justify all manner of Horrors if you think that you know they whole great or good argument

but the other thing is is often these AR utilitarian claims aren’t even true as you’ve mentioned yourself I mean for

every person that says oh well who will ever research like a new drug for example without a patent protecting

their profits it’s like well if they don’t have that Pro patent protecting their profits is also not prohibiting

other people from you know and and if any Innovation thrives on the competition

and the sharing of information which is all restricted and prohibited by um IP

laws and stuff so if anything though I agree with you that the utilitarian argument on its own isn’t you know isn’t

valid and has its own problems with regards to justifying you know all sorts of evils but also often a lot of the

utilitarian claims with intellectual property aren’t even true and often the opposite is true often the the

intellectual property laws are actually stifling Innovation more so than they would if people were just free to copy

and also the other thing I wanted to say because when people talk about the market failure it’s like well yeah but the market is operating with IP laws so

you know for I’m I’m a musician and I’ve spoken to musicians about this kind of thing and they say well what what would

I do then if I how are musicians going to make money if people could just copy their songs and they’ve got no protection and stuff and it’s like well

the thing is if that became a problem the market demand for music would create other maybe we’d have academies to fund

musicians you know all there’s all sorts of but the thing is we don’t go down those routes because at the moment we’ve

got intellectual property instead so you know what I mean it’s kind of like it’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy

with regards to all these things that they say you know would happen as a result it’s like well no they’re only

happening because of the intellectual property and if you took that away the market would have the freedom to adjust

in whatever ways is kind of you know yeah it’s it’s almost like I won’t say it’s a laziness but it’s like a it’s

like a a fear of of getting rid of the status quo that we’re used to so you you

you for example you have people make an argument which I think is a bad argument and sometimes it’s dis dishonest and

sometimes it’s just confused but the argument is that well I think this like Richard EP like some of these utilit

they’ll say that well patent patent like let’s let’s the copyright system is just an efficient way of doing what you could

do by contract on the free market so what they’re saying is that well if you

don’t have copyright people are going to have all these um crazy arrangements with each other like to do what you’re

saying right uh and and but in the end this going to end up with royalties and all this so why don’t we just make it

simpler for everyone it’s like the ASCAP system in the US I don’t know what you have in Europe but you know this royalty system where you can you can use

someone’s song but you have to pay them royalty part of the ASCAP system but it’s sort of built upon the copyright system but what they’re saying is that

like uh the government comes in with this this statutory scheme this regul

regulatory scheme which just makes it more efficient for people to do what they would do anyway now the flaw on

that argument is that they think that you could you could build something like copyright or patent

based upon private contracts which rothbart sort of thinks to he’s he’s he’s also confused but I will tell you

something all these people sort of know all the patent law lawyers all the copyright lawyers all the people that

are in favor of like Disney Hollywood all the people dependent upon these these IP

systems they all know that if you got rid of copyright there’s no way you could recreate the system we have by

private contract so that’s why they don’t want to do it it’s it’s not because they think the copyright system

is like an efficient way to just do what people would do on the free market no they want they want to Short Circuit

what people would would do on the free market by supplanting it and then people get lazy they say well why should we

have to do that we we could just I don’t want to give up my right to have royalties I want to be life to be easy

and that kind of thing and by the way you probably know this as a I don’t know amateur musician or whatever or

Enthusiast most most artists don’t to this day most authors of books don’t

make any money or much money anyway um partly because they have to if they’re

successful they have to go to a studio and they they get most um in fact you know when I have debates

online it’s always amusing to me when someone debates with me about IP and they

say what incentive would I have to um to

come up with artistic work or creative work if I’m not going to get paid for it I said but you just replied to me on

Twitter with an argument and you’re not getting paid for that like like literally you’re doing

everything you’re doing right now you’re doing for free so so what are you talking about well it’s like if we want

it we will you know that that’s the whole point of market demand isn’t it if people want it then they’ll find ways to

to create it and if that requires a different you know a different kind of like I saym or all sorts of things

before um because we’re getting towards the end of I know econ’s time um before we um kind of wrap it up I just wanted

to ask econ because like Stefan mentioned about obviously intellectual property obviously we’ve spoken about

how it should be or should not be as the case is um but we’ve also spoken about like how it exists in different

countries and how it’s different I wondered if you could give us a little bit of insight into what it’s like in Nigeria is is IP something that’s

heavily pleased or is there a lot of piracy is it something that’s not heavily pleased what’s the situation

there um we have the law against piracy but um nobody really does much to

enforce it so people just do whatever so um if we have patent laws in Nigeria and

honestly I don’t even know if we have I’d have to ask my lawyer I don’t know if we have patent IP laws in Nigeria one

thing I do know is if you take an idea to so probably shouldn’t be saying this but

I’m going say it anywhere I I I had an idea that I took to the government a while this was before I became

libertarian so please forgive me so I had an idea that I took to the government um so it was it was it was an

application I wanted them to build an app to for something and I took it to the

government I’m not going to give details so I don’t get haunted down um so I took it to the government and I was like this

is the idea they’re like this is spectacular this is beautiful so I went for meeting after meeting after meeting

and eventually nothing came of it and a a friend of mine who was working on the

same project with me um all the way from the UK sent me a news article um showing

me how the government had done the exact same thing I would I proposed to them

without telling me and they were having difficulty running the application right

so I I I can’t say for a fact that it was my idea that the government took I

can’t say that for a fact but it’s Nigeria is possible so the point I’m trying to make is this even if you have

and patent LS in Nigeria if you have IP LS in Nigeria um Things Are corrupt here that

the government might actually be the one to sell the idea to some to the highest bidder so it’s not really a big um thing

here anybody people so you’re better off not patenting any idea if such a thing

exists in Nigeria I I would just like to say something um in response to everything Mr kinsella has said so I

don’t I I didn’t really know much about the intellectual property argument and

again because it’s not something um so I’m Eon bro for a reason because we have

economic issues in Nigeria right so I’m focused on economics that’s my the major

thing I emphasize on is economics here I do dabble into politics and a couple of

other things so IP isn’t really a problem but I I just gave it um basic

thought you know I didn’t think too much about it and um as as you both have rightly said the the the reason why I

thought intellectual property is silly is because um there’s no scarcity right if you if

you have an idea um so with other property like land like

um a car or anything goods and services are scarce right but ideas are not

scarce as um you rightly said if if you seal my idea I don’t I still have the

idea so that was how I came to the conclusion that or one of the ways I came to the conclusion that um IP is um

nonsense and then the second thing that helped me come to that conclusion was thinking of how it was going to be

enforced so by default I’m anti-state right so I thought about it if we have

um IP laws then you’re going to need the government to enforce it and I was like there’s no way in the world I’m

supporting um the government um I mean as you’ve rightly said in order to

enforce um property um intellectual property right you have to violate another person’s right to his or or her

property so and by the way how how how how do you even know that I didn’t think

of the idea first right so I just thought it was first of all when when I

first heard of intellectual property it was actually tied to Mr Kella someone um

tweeted about it and I was like these libert this was when I was new to libertarianism I was like these people

are crazy you know um why why should why shouldn’t we have um um intellectual

property right you why isn’t property what I thought then I to give it some thought

and um so that was how I came to where I am now I just I haven’t thought about it

as deeply as you have obviously I haven’t but I guess the summary of what I’m trying to say is thank you you’ve

given me many more arguments because I’m I’m I’m building my case for a better

Nigeria and this is actually going to come up eventually and I guess I’m saying thank you for Mr Kella and

Matthew for setting this so this adds to I’m going to listen to this later again

when it’s out and then read your book I already have it so or the the 50 page

essay you wrote I I have you seem to have the right instincts because you’re focusing on scarcity and the skepticism

of the claims yeah uh yeah is that you or

me hold on not me um what I was going to say say is

um are what from your point of view kind of being exposed to this what what are

the questions you have about the or what are the things you you’re still not sure about about uh say patented

copyright or are you pretty um of the

idea no I’m I’m I’m all on board I I I agree with everything you said I can’t any holes in your argument but then

again I would have to go back and think about it like I usually say to Matthew I have to go back listen English isn’t my

first language so I have to go back and listen carefully and then think it through but I don’t think just um

instinctively I don’t think there are any holes in your argument everything you’ve said um resonates makes a lot of

sense to me and I’m relatively smart so I guess one of the one of the one of the

points I made early on I had this article I I wrote a letter so there’s there’s a there was a journal

called iOS Journal by the uh David Kelly’s group when he split off from uh

um from from the iron ran Institute and he started the institute for objectivist studies which I think now is the Atlas

society and he had this journal called the iOS journal and he had an article in

there by Murray Frank who was one of ir Ran’s U IP

lawyers and Murray Frank had an article defending intellectual property so I

wrote a gentle letter are basically suggesting that there’s some problems

with that argument right and um and one of the things I pointed out was that um

most of us Libertarians and objectivists we sort of are are we we are sympathetic

to our natural rights arguments like the idea of natural rights and natural law

right that’s what we think we have a natural right not to be murdered right to our body um but on the legal side

what we think of is most of these rights got developed and fleshed out in the

private Western Law of the Roman law and the common law of England right and

so trespass mder all these things were gradually developed in a PRI in a quasi

private decentralized legal system and in the last

100 years the secondary role of legislation

which is another way that the government the state which controls the legal

system um Can intervene and make special laws by just by decree That’s What

legislation is right um and most of us sort of have a sense that this sort

making law by Fiat or by decree by a government committee which is what A legislature is is not really compatible

with how we should discover and develop and protect law it should be found by scientists and thinkers and philosophers

and judges and juries kind of gradually finding the the just solution to a given

thing which is how again the Roman and the private the private Roman law and the private Western common law developed

so I simply pointed out that um that should be the way we Libertarians should

favor the development of Law and legal principles is a decentralized voluntary

gradual process by a common law type system and that

legislation is not the way we ought to make law in fact we shouldn’t think of laws being made at all um and so

whenever you have something that is an intrusion on the free market and on the

decentralized common law legal system which is a statute basically we should be very skeptical of

it and my point was that copyright comes from something

called the statute of an in 1709 in England and patent comes from the

statute of monopolies of 1623 in England copyright and patent both came about

from a statute and the reason is because they never emerged on the common law the

common law was perfectly able to to develop and find solutions to conflict

and trespass and prohibit rape and murder and theft and extortion and all

these kinds of things uh but it never did come up with um patent and copyright

law because those things were purely artificial creations of the monarchs and

the crown and then statutes right so my point was that if you really believe

that the common law and the and the organic decentralized law is the way to

make law then you have to have a deep skepticism about about legal systems

that only could emerge and that only did emerge from legislation which is what

patent and copyright are and when I pointed that out to David Kelly and to Murray Frank Murray Frank’s response was that

there’s nothing wrong with legislation we might need to legislature to step in every now and then to correct the

mistakes of the common law so they they sort of see the government as the decider who has this this legislative

power to basically create law to modify the law that the judges came up with and

to just do whatever they want and I think that that that sort of betrays a deep problem with the argument

the natural rights argument for patting copyright because they’re clearly not natural rights they’re not they’re not

products of natural law they if they were they would have emerged on the common law naturally um but they

didn’t and and and by the same token if you abolish the patent copyright patent

law and the stat and and patent statutes and the copyright statutes in in most

countries in every country then there would be nothing to fill the Gap I mean it just wouldn’t exist it which shows

that they’re just creatures of Statute so to my mind that’s a that’s another Dale in the coffin another problem with

statutory schemes it’s just like all these laws we have in Europe and America and the West anti-discrimination laws

and Welfare laws and um just these regulatory schemes that

were not the product of natural law um at all they’re just they’re just edicts by Regulators they just arbitrary at the

end of the day is like you know like the law that we kind of ident defies

Libertarians all comes from the presupposition so it’s like logic based you know it’s like well if we own

ourselves then this then that not only does IP not come from that but if

anything the opposite to IP come law comes from that like the arguments against IP law comes from there hold up

can can you give me can you give me 30 seconds uh yeah I think econ’s got to go so he might have to say goodbye and but

I’ll still be here and I’ll finish up with you in a second I just did uh uh okay Eon it was

nice having you on I enjoyed it and let’s let’s stay in touch all right you’re Eon un mute

yourself sorry about that um I said I wait for Mr Kella to return because I want to ask him a question

it’s give two minutes yeah no problem hang on I’ll hang on for a m and I could

chat till yeah you return oh yeah I wasn’t sure if you

needed to get off in a hurry so I didn’t want to leave you late for your next appointment um I I I I have I have great difficulty

walking away from um something I like to complete so even though I have something

to do um I’ll give it a couple more minutes before I um yeah because I would

hate to not see where this ends yeah I mean well this is why I thought it would be a really interesting

conversation because the thing is is the work I mean as I say I i’ got a lot of respect for you and I got a lot of

respect for Stefan every time the reason why you two kind of two of my favorite libertarian thinkers and I am going to

keep calling you that no matter what you say but the reason why you two are is because every

time I speak to you both both of you there’s there’s the courage to

explore ideas there’s the courage to um contemplate where you may be wrong

on something and and listen to challenges there’s the humility to you know accept those possibilities you

every time I’ve spoken to you or Stefan and you’re not the only people but you’re two people that stick out in my mind as people that when I speak to

about these ideas I know that the other person’s actually listening and actually considering and not not not agreeing or

disagreeing for any other reason than that’s their honest thought you know what I mean and the thing is is all one

of the things about this together strong project that I’m really trying to kind of um make and funny enough although

this is your third appearance with me this this particular video is actually going on the together strong project so

it’s your first appearance on the together strong project even though it’s your third um conversation with me

because the other two were on the nation of Sanity Channel um but this together strong project is about bringing trying

to bring Libertarians together because there’s areas where we disagree and those areas we should debate because we

can learn something from our disagreements and then there’s areas like this one where we don’t necessarily

disagree but it’s an important it’s important it’s an important element that needs to be explored IP is something

that often gets forgotten about people don’t always realize the importance of

it you know like like with the economics there’s a lot of economic implications with IP and stuff like that um so yeah I

just thought it would be really good for I mean apart from it’ be really good to introduce you and Stefan to each other because you’re both very important

people in libertarian so like I say my favorite people um and I thought it’d be good for you to sort of know each other

but also the other thing is I thought that you’re doing all this great work and you are doing a lot of great work educating people in Nigeria um and I

thought that I mean IP Stefan does a lot on Law and other elements of libertarianism as well so it’s not just

IP but I just thought IP would be a really good sort of feather to add to your bow if you like with regards to

your own work um anyway Stephan’s back now so I don’t know if you wanted to ask him his

question oh yeah it’s um it’s a bit unrelated to it’s entirely unrelated to

the IP discussion but it’s something you mentioned you said you um so I’m not

trying to be an evangelist here I am a Christian and that’s um my I mean you can’t live where I live

and not be a Christian you know anyway so you said something about um turning away from the Catholic

Church the the thing that led you away was the Eternal judgment how could

someone in hell for all of eternity for a crime he committed and let’s even if he sinned every single

day of his life for 100 years so was was that it or is there are there other things was that is that the No No by the

way let me let me let me let me make clear something I I’m not I am very fond of the Catholic church I’m very fond of

natural law I’m fond of I’m not hostile to it um and I don’t think that my My

Views are linked I I was just simply trying to explain biographically um I

think I have an inquisitive mind and I was skeptical and I I’ve just noticed in my own life like uh willingness to

question something in in a phase shift like so going from strong Catholicism to

atheism going from men nothing to libertarianism and then libertarianism

to Anarchy and then Pro I the other so like I’ve just noticed these things um

they’re not they’re not connected at all you don’t need to be an atheist Heathen like me to to to oppose legislation I I

I I I completely but on your religious question I I I that wasn’t what turned

me against it it was simply until that point in time I was like 15 years old as a young guy I was

dog not dogmatic but I I assumed the Catholic church was was like correct on

all matters of faith and morals and that was a unified whole but when I

challenged the first thing which was this hell idea um yeah that sort of gave

me permission to start challenging other assumptions that’s all it was just how I

think um but I’m not saying they all fall together I’m actually I’m more

friendly towards Catholicism now that I was in my my

objectivist Firebrand days um although I’m still an

atheist yeah yeah sure sure I I too had the I had this same um I I I don’t um

say this to people but I went through um an atheistic or should I say an agnostic

phase myself a couple of years ago but I’m um I was born Christian I’ve lived

as a Christian all my life but I too started to and I had the exact same question that the question you you

raised of Eternal judgment you know and um let me just say it’s been resolved I

don’t think but perhap we could have a conversation about this another time because have to go shortly but um I

don’t believe the Bible um I don’t I don’t believe the Bible preaches Eternal

damnation as is interpreted by the Catholic church and pretty much most of Christianity but again we could talk

about that some other time another time um it was very great meeting you honestly it’s a it’s an honor and in my

mind you’re one of the greatest thinkers um in the libertarian movement right so

um it’s very great for me it’s a priv to be talking to you so thank you I’ll get

your information from Matthew maybe send you an email or DM you or something I already follow you on Twitter so sounds

good thank you is what I’m saying thank you too yeah thank you thank you Eon um

really appreciate you taking the time to have have this conversation and and be involved with this thank you Stefan

again really appreciate you taking the time I thought this was a really great conversation oh yes legal foundations of

a free Society Stefan’s n latest book for everyone watching if you don’t already have it check it out um as I say

there was two reasons for wanting to organize this conversation one was because despite the fact that me and

Stefan have had a few conversations unbelievably we hadn’t really had a dedicated IP conversation so I wanted to

add that to the catalog of kind of content that I’m creating because I do think IP is more important than people

realize and and and it also connects to other things like rights contract what is property you know it these things

connect so not only do we get improve our understanding of Ip and why it’s not valid but we also improve our

understanding of property rights in general self ownersh in general you know what I mean so it connects to a lot of things um and the other reason why I

wanted to have this conversation as I said before was because I was very keen to introduce Stefan canella and econ bro

to each other because they’re my two personal favorite libertarian thinkers who are both doing excellent work econ’s

doing great work in Nigeria educating people about libertarian principles Stefan has been doing great work

throughout his life on um libertarian principles not just IP but law um

property rights self ownership so many things um so I just thought in addition

to having this IP conversation I thought it would be great to introduce you two to each other and get you connected because I think they more Libertarians

that are connected to each other and having these discussions whether it’s debates whether it’s discussions

exploring topics I think we all get closer to the truth and we all help each other in our respective efforts so thank

you both for taking the time thank you Matthew

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (86.1MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL449 | Trademarking the Infinite Banking Concept?

by on November 20, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 449.

I was interviewed by Logan Hertz, of Hazeltine LLC, about attempts by the Nelson Nash Institute, they of the poorly-named “Infinite Banking” concept, to use trademark to bully competitors. I discuss the general problem with IP and then apply it to trademark, and provide suggestions as to more “ethical” ways of using trademark and IP in an IP-world. See also Logan’s LinkedIn post.

Grok shownotes: In this episode of the Hazeltine LLC podcast, host Logan Herz engages with Stephan Kinsella, a retired patent attorney and libertarian writer, to discuss the contentious issue of intellectual property (IP) law, focusing on the Nelson Nash Institute’s trademarking of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) [0:00-2:30]. Kinsella, author of Against Intellectual Property, outlines the three main types of IP—patents, copyrights, and trademarks—explaining their origins and how they function as government-granted monopolies that often stifle innovation, restrict free speech, and enable corporate bullying [2:30-15:00]. He argues that patent law hinders technological progress by delaying the public use of inventions, copyright law threatens free expression with excessively long terms, and trademark law, as seen with the IBC, grants undue control over descriptive phrases, allowing entities like the Nelson Nash Institute to legally intimidate competitors [15:00-20:10].
Kinsella critiques the Nelson Nash Institute’s approach to trademark enforcement, suggesting it reflects a broader problem with IP laws that prioritize corporate control over consumer protection [20:10-36:00]. He proposes an ethical alternative where the Institute could license the IBC trademark for a nominal fee with disclaimers, preserving their mark without aggressive enforcement [26:55-31:10]. The conversation also explores the hypocrisy of libertarian-leaning organizations using state-backed IP laws, the historical roots of copyright monopolies, and the sufficiency of contract and fraud laws to address consumer confusion without IP [31:10-44:00]. Kinsella concludes by challenging the Institute to reconsider their tactics and offers practical guidance for navigating IP laws ethically, emphasizing reputation and service quality over legal battles [1:12:00-1:14:15].
Transcript, time stamps, and Grok detailed summary below

For more, see: Do Business Without Intellectual Property.

Timestamps
0:00 Introduction to Stephan and Context
2:30 Intellectual Property Law
4:00 Problems with Intellectual Property Law
7:20 Patent law stifles innovation
8:40 Copyright law threatens free speech
10:15 Trademark law gives monopoly privilege
15:00 Three types of IP: patent, copyright, trademark
18:00 The IBC trademark is a real stretch
20:10 Trademarking IBC is a license for extortion and bullying
21:50 How IP law enabled the tech oligopoly
24:30 Tesla and Twitter counterexample
26:55 How the Nelson Nash Institute could ethically use a trademark
31:10 Intellectual property monopoly
33:30 The dubious origins of copyright
36:00 Trademarks protect the corporate bully, not the customer
39:45 We already have contract law
44:00 Reputation is ultimately what matters
45:35 Information cannot be “owned”
46:30 Negative easements
48:50 Intellectual property “rights” as monopoly privileges
50:25 Force and violence implicit in IP enforcement
53:15 Proper understanding of law
56:00 Legal positivism
1:00:00 Making distinctions
1:03:05 Constructive criticism of the Nelson Nash Institute
1:09:20 How trademarks encourage bullying
1:12:00 Stephan’s ethical challenge to the Nelson Nash Institute
1:14:15 How to ethically navigate IP laws
#ethics #intellectualproperty #hazeltinellc #infinitebanking #infinitebankingconcept #nelsonnash #wholelifeinsurance #wholelife

Bullet-Point Summary for Show Notes with Time Markers and Block-by-Block Breakdown
Summary Overview
Stephan Kinsella, a retired patent attorney and libertarian theorist, joins Logan Herz to dissect the flaws of intellectual property (IP) law, particularly the Nelson Nash Institute’s trademarking of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC). Kinsella argues that IP laws—patents, copyrights, and trademarks—are government-granted monopolies that harm innovation, free speech, and competition. He critiques the Institute’s legal actions against competitors as unethical and proposes ethical alternatives, emphasizing the sufficiency of contract and fraud laws to protect consumers without IP. The discussion also covers the historical and philosophical underpinnings of IP, its role in enabling corporate bullying, and practical strategies for businesses to navigate IP laws responsibly.
0:00-5:00 – Introduction and Context of IP Law
  • Description: Logan Herz introduces Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney and libertarian writer, and sets the stage for discussing the Nelson Nash Institute’s trademarking of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC), a phrase used publicly for decades before the Institute’s actions [0:00-1:18]. Kinsella provides an overview of his background as an IP attorney and libertarian theorist, explaining that IP law encompasses patents, copyrights, and trademarks, each with distinct purposes and impacts [1:36-2:30].
  • Summary: The episode begins with context about the Nelson Nash Institute’s controversial trademarking of IBC and Kinsella’s expertise in IP law, highlighting his critical perspective on IP as a libertarian.
5:00-15:00 – Problems with IP Law: Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks
  • Description: Kinsella delves into the problems with IP law, arguing that patents stifle innovation by delaying public access to inventions for 17 years [7:20-8:39]. Copyrights, with terms extending to the author’s life plus 70 years, threaten free speech by restricting creative works like sequels or fan fiction [8:40-10:09]. Trademarks grant monopoly privileges over phrases, enabling entities like the Nelson Nash Institute to control descriptive terms like IBC, which Kinsella sees as unjustified [10:15-15:00].
  • Summary: This segment outlines the detrimental effects of IP laws, with patents impeding technological progress, copyrights limiting free expression, and trademarks fostering monopolistic control, as exemplified by the IBC trademark.
15:00-30:00 – Trademarking IBC and Ethical Alternatives
  • Description: Kinsella explains the three main IP types—patents, copyrights, and trademarks—detailing their requirements and limitations [15:03-18:05]. He argues that trademarking IBC is a stretch due to its descriptive nature and equates it to a license for extortion, as the Institute uses it to bully competitors [18:05-20:10]. He illustrates how IP laws enable tech oligopolies, citing the smartphone patent wars, but notes exceptions like Tesla and Twitter, which avoid aggressive patent enforcement [21:50-24:36]. Kinsella proposes an ethical approach for the Institute: licensing the IBC trademark for a nominal fee with disclaimers to avoid confusion without bullying [26:55-31:10].
  • Summary: The discussion focuses on the IBC trademark’s questionable validity and its use for coercion, contrasted with ethical alternatives like nominal licensing, and highlights how IP laws foster corporate dominance, with rare exceptions like Tesla.
30:00-45:00 – Hypocrisy, Historical Context, and Contract Law Sufficiency
  • Description: Kinsella notes the libertarian hypocrisy within the Nelson Nash Institute, which uses state-backed IP laws despite its free-market rhetoric [31:12-32:02]. He traces the dubious origins of copyright to government monopolies like the Stationers’ Company, which controlled printing for a century [33:30-36:00]. He argues that trademarks protect corporate bullies, not customers, as they shift legal rights from defrauded consumers to trademark holders, and that contract and fraud laws are sufficient to address consumer confusion [36:00-44:00].
  • Summary: This block critiques the Institute’s libertarian inconsistency, explores copyright’s monopolistic roots, and asserts that existing contract and fraud laws adequately protect consumers, rendering trademark law unnecessary.
45:00-1:00:00 – Philosophical Underpinnings of IP and Legal Theory
  • Description: Kinsella argues that information cannot be owned, as it is not a scarce resource, and IP enforcement destroys real property rights by restricting how individuals use their tangible assets [45:35-53:15]. He likens IP rights to negative easements imposed without consent, contrasting them with voluntary agreements like homeowners’ associations [46:30-52:45]. The discussion shifts to legal theory, distinguishing natural law (moral, justified law) from legal positivism (state-enforced law), which dominates modern IP systems [53:15-56:02].
  • Summary: Kinsella frames IP as an unjust monopoly privilege that violates property rights, using the negative easement analogy, and critiques the legal positivism underpinning IP laws, which prioritizes state decrees over moral justice.
1:00:00-1:15:00 – Constructive Criticism and Practical Solutions
  • Description: Herz provides historical context on the Nelson Nash Institute, noting its evolution from promoting IBC to controlling its narrative, sometimes resembling a cult [1:03:05-1:06:41]. Kinsella challenges the Institute to reconsider its bullying tactics and adopt ethical IP practices, such as non-aggressive trademark enforcement [1:12:00-1:14:15]. He shares practical advice from his book Do Business Without Intellectual Property, advocating for minimal IP reliance and focusing on reputation and service quality [1:14:15-1:18:36].
  • Summary: The final segment offers constructive criticism of the Institute’s controlling approach, urges ethical trademark use, and provides practical guidance for businesses to navigate IP laws by prioritizing reputation over legal battles.
1:15:00-1:20:49 – Closing and Additional Resources
  • Description: Kinsella wraps up by directing listeners to his free online book and upcoming course on libertarian theory, emphasizing his commitment to accessible education [1:19:04-1:20:15]. Herz thanks Kinsella for his insights and practical alternatives, encouraging the Nelson Nash Institute to engage in dialogue [1:18:43-1:19:04].
  • Summary: The episode concludes with Kinsella promoting his resources and Herz reinforcing the call for ethical IP practices, fostering a hopeful tone for constructive change.

hey everyone Logan Herz here with hazle teen LLC I’m super excited we got a really special guest today uh who’s

going to talk to us about patent law uh his name is Stefan canella uh Stefan is

a patent attorney and libertarian writer he wrote uh an essay book entitled

against intellectual property which I linked to in a couple of my past episodes and we’re going to talk today

about patent law about trademarks about IP law in general and I’ll give the

context for in a second but stepan great to have you on the show how you doing I’m good glad to be here thanks for

being with us stepan we really appreciate it so in a couple of previous episodes which I’ll link to we talked about the Nelson Nash Institute which

promot promotes the infinite banking concept I also promote the inv concept I

have a lot of positive things to say about the Nels Nash Institute but I disagree with them a little bit on the

strategy for how best to promote the infinite banking concept and what they have done recently is they have actually

trademarked the phrase the infinite banking concept and they’ve started

taking legal action against people who use that phrase and by the way that phrase was in use for decades in the

general public before the Nelson Nations to even existed so it’s interesting the

approach that they have taken and uh Stefan has a lot of interesting experience and uh intellectual insights

on this topic so I wanted to hand it over to Stefan to talk to us about trademark marks and maybe Stefan if you

can start with introducing yourself a little bit your thought and give give

our viewers an overview of kind of intellectual property what is it why does it exist sure so I am a basically

retired now at this point but I was a a long time practicing intellectual property attorney I was an electrical

engineer by by background in undergrad and so after I started practicing law initially I

practiced Orland gas law here in Houston Texas but uh then I switched pretty soon after to intellectual property law

because because I had an engineering degree and and doing patents uh was a good career move for me so I’ve been

practicing intellectual property law for almost 30 years and in also property is

a field of law that Inc that covers several types of legal rights patents

which cover inventions which is my main specialty and copyrights which covers published books and movies and things

like that original works with authorship or art basically and then trademark and there’s others too Trade Secrets and

trademarks but trademarks or intellectual property right that governs the exclusive right to the use of a Mark

or a slogan something like that to identify your company’s name or the name of your product something like that so

they all have different sort of bases and arguments I’m a Libertarian writer as well I’m been a practicing attorney

with law firms and with companies for all this time and and but and I’ve helped dozens of companies acquire

hundreds of patents so I’m a patent attorney so I understand the system that help people acquire it but right around

the time I passed the patent bar in 1994 maybe a little bit before even when

I started moving into that field as a Libertarian interested in libertarian Theory which means understanding which

laws are good laws which laws are bad laws which laws are should be abolished which laws are are Justified basically

the libertarian idea of strong property rights capitalism free markets living that live there should be no victim of

crime laws you know there should be no drug laws U there should be no taxes or very low taxes you know the standard

free market libertarian perspective um I kept wondering about intellectual

property because the arguments for the gates that were all over the map you had people that said in electric property

was important because it helped stimulate innovation and is necessary for sorry let me make an important

distinction sure in you say intellectual property but I think really you’re talking about intellectual property law

and even that would where we’d have to describe like intellectual property obviously exists ideas exist they’re

here right you’re talking about intellectual property law apparatus govering right corre that’s correct and

in my writing I try to distinguish because it because people use the term in different ways and it leads to

confusion um for example yeah if I was would to be precise I would say intellectual property rights or IPR or

intellectual property laws and um yeah most people they identify Innovation and

things that they call your secret sauce which is technical knowhow or knowledge they call that IP and the

reason they call it IP which is actually slightly uh erroneous as you as you picked up on is because they’re so used

to identifying the legal regime of protecting IP rights with the underlying

knowledge and that this is part of the problem is if I say we should abolish the patent system people think that

you’re that you have a problem with Innovation or technology because they identify the technology and the

knowledge that’s protected by ITP milal property rights with the underlying knowledge and they don’t understand that

you can separate those things and you could be in favor of free enterprise and competition and technology and progress

without favoring a legal system that uh protects that attempts to protect this in any

case I started investigating the issue as a Libertarian because I was a budding libertarian theorist in addition to

being a budding lawyer and I just thought I’m going to become an expert

like a legal expert in IP law so I might as well be the one guy who can actually

sort out the the confusion and figure it out like I originally thought I would be the one who would come up with a better

argument for patent rights and copyright and trademark but I kept running into problems which

was that every argument I came across was flawed and that was for IP and I

finally realized why I kept failing to come up with a better argument and just because IP rights are unjustified and

they’re violations of private property rights and they should all be abolished for different reasons so I start I wrote

my my my monograph in around 2000 one or something like that on abolishing intellectual property and I’ve been

writing on it ever since um and I built on that insight to develop other

libertarian um I mean I write on things other than intellectual property but my

my latest book which was from last year has a lot of my libertarian Theory

contract law rights Theory punishment Theory legislation versus the common law

but a lot on intellectual property so all that’s in here they all integrate with each other and I came to an

understanding that um that everything about all forms of intellectual property

law all of them um are are terrible for the economy and for individual rights and for in for for Innovation for

freedom of expression um as you have seen with the examples of what I would

call uh extortion or bullying by the Nelson Nash Nelson Nash Institute

because they have trademarks the way of would rank intellectual property law in terms of how damaging and destructive

they are to Human life into the economy the patent system is the worst because

it impedes and distorts Innovation it slows slows down Innovation and makes the human race poorer because the the

way the human race becomes richer over time is is not because we’re smarter

than the Romans it’s because we have accumulated more technological knowledge which makes us more efficient and how we

use resources and that’s why every new innovation and breakthrough scientific breakthrough technological break through

keeps making the world richer which is one reason we’re not poor right now despite Government taxes and regulations

we keep outstripping the Damage Done To Us by the government by increasing productivity because of technological

insights and those insights come despite the drag and the and the obstruction of the patent system if we did not have a

patent system my firm view is that we would have even more Innovation and more human wealth and prosperity we might

have flying cars by now and all that kind of stuff so it’s a drag but at least but that’s the that’s the source

of human Prosperity is the accumulation of knowledge so that’s why the patent system does the most damage to the human

race and should be abolished first and foremost the next most damaging is the copyright system because it lasts the

longest patent protection lasts for about 17 years So eventually patented ideas become public domain knowledge

which could be used I mean it’s an unfortunate 17-year delay before people could start using it but at least

eventually can start using using it the copyright system originally was around the same thing the founding of the

country it was a term of around 14 years extendable once so 28 years and you had

to register for it uh but ever since the in the 20th century with the burn convention and other modern treaties and

and legal systems um the copyright system has just gone out of control um number one it’s now automatic you don’t

have to apply or register or even put a copyright notice you just get it automatically by writing something or by

making something that’s original work of authorship and the term is now the life

of the author plus 70 years it used to be 14 or 28 years now it’s well over a

century so copyright so it lasts forever basically but in copyright threatens

internet Freedom by shutting down websites with piracy links it restricts freedom of speech freedom of the press

because literally prevents you from publishing a book if you wanted to if I wanted to write a sequel to Star Wars or

to Harry Potter I I couldn’t do it I would be literally there would be an

injunction from a court telling me I I couldn’t do it on penalty of going to prison and that is a restriction of

first amendment’s Free Speech guarantees so copyright is the second worst trademark is the third worst in my

opinion now trademark unlike patented copyright patented copyright laws were

artificial intrusions on the free market they did not arise on the common law there was no such thing as a copyright

in our sense or a patent that devel that was developed by Common Law Courts or the Roman Law Courts in just in in

developing the private law which we all like the private law which intended to

protect your body from from torts and and crimes and your property from theft and and and and things like that um

copyright and patent had to be invented by legislatures artificially coming up with these rights um the patent system

came about uh as a reaction into the practice of of of of monarchs granting Monopoly

privileges to their their Court cronies and and that resulted in the statute of monopolies in England in 1623 which is

where the modern patent system paint Dr and the um and the copyright system we have now came from the statute of an in

1710 uh which was response to a a Government monopoly on printing press

all these things have nothing to do with freedom or the free market so you could see that that patent Cy system or

intrusions onto private property rights freedom and free markets and competition and Innovation and learning now the

trademark system emerged on the common law and it emerged with somewhat decent

Roots rooted in the idea that it’s wrong to commit fraud or to be dishonest or to

cheat your customers okay so the original idea of trademark which I still think is unjustified by the way I think

the trademark law was not necessary you could have simply dealt with the problem of consumer confusion or Consumer Fraud

with contract law and with fraud law we already had contract law and fraud law so that means for example if I sell a uh

a hamburger from a fake McDonald’s restaurant to a customer I’m pretending to be McDonald’s

authorized McDonald’s chain and I’m not or if I’m selling a Louis Von a fake Lou Chanel Pur a fake Chanel purse right or

if I’m selling a Nelson MCH I’m sorry an infinite banking concept service or product I’m communicating information to

my customers about what I’m selling them now if I’m selling you a fake hamburger

not a fake hamburger but I’m selling a hamburger that pretends to be authorized by McDonald’s but it’s not then in

principle I’m defrauding or I’m breaching a contract with my customer because the deal is I’m going to give

you an authorized hamburger and you’re going to give me $5 okay in principle the customer could

sue me for breach of contract or for fraud that’s fine I don’t I think so

over time so obviously what would happen is if there’s a b there’s a McDonald’s hamburger chain and I want to start a

competing hamburger chain in reality this not a problem what do most people do I start the Wendy’s chain or I start

the Burger King chain people want to put their own name on things but okay let’s say I’m some Russian knockoff and I I

have a fake McDonald Restaurant in St Petersburg okay do the customers really

care it’s it’s not authorized or they just want to hamburger I don’t know but that’s up to the cour to decide whether

or not there was fraud committed on that customer and if there’s a lawsuit and

the hamburger chain has a lot of liability to its customers guess what that means then that means that they’re

not going to do it in the first place because when they try to get investors to build this fake McDonald’s chain no

one’s going to invest in something that’s going to go out of business pretty soon so the point is the common law the frond law the contract law is

sufficient to handle cases of what we call Consumer Fraud or consumer

confusion and you will notice that in this case the

plti this is important plaintiff or the person with the complaint is the

customer so he has a cause of action say you ripped me off

so the there there are there are several problems with the way trademark law evolve to give this right a trademark

right to a competitor or to a person using a Mark um one problem is so let’s

take this Nelson Nash example and I don’t know the details of it U I’m sure it’s the same old story I’ve heard many times before yeah one important

distinction is that the infinite banking concept was a phrase that was in use before The Nelson Ash Institute right

it’s like they’re they’re taking Gravity the word gravity oh we’re going to tradem mark it right you know so I think

that’s important something the Nelson Ash Institute did not come up with the infinite banking so so let’s so let’s so

like I said earlier there are say the three main types there’s also trade secret the three main types of

intellectual property are patent copyright and trademark now for a patent means you apply to the government to get

a um a monopoly right to practice a given invention which is like a machine

or a process you have to apply for it and there are certain requirements you have to fulfill you have to have a

useful invention it had to be novel which means new and it has to be non-obvious in in view of the priority

this is why um you can’t get a patent on something even if you thought of it

yourself your basement if it turns out someone else was was selling this five years ago even if he didn’t learn it

from them it’s too late it’s in the it’s in the public domain so you can’t get a patent of something that’s been known to

be public for for more than a year before you filed for it okay copyright

is obtained by simply producing an original work of authorship and writing it down fixing it a tangible meaning of

expression so that so patents require you could call it originality or or inventorship you have to have a novel

idea copyrights require originality that is some creative expression and that’s

usually easy Because unless you’re copying from someone else which would be plagiarism um it’s it’s look for Paton

it’s very common for um it’s very common for multiple people to come up with a similar invention at the same time and

the reason is because an invention usually comes about when the background technology has reached the point where

it’s possible to do that you know the Romans couldn’t have they couldn’t have invented incandescent light Bol back

then not because they’re stupid but because they didn’t have all the technology need to get to that phase

andison and his contemporaries in the late 1800s they had electricity they had

vacuum sealing tubes they had GL making Pro a fibit idea they had knowledge about

electricity that it’s obvious that at a certain point in time there was going to be a light bulb inent it’s obvious that

at a certain point in time someone would have come up with an airplane there was the things almost always come up about

at the same time because which is another reason you shouldn’t have a patent system because no one is

really a true inventor they always are incremental and they’re always doing things that are basically obvious at a

certain point in time the transistors is the same way uh lots of inventions are the same way the guy that happens to get

the patent OB tur gets the only the Monopoly like andison or the R Brothers for their airplane it’s just ridiculous

right now for for copyright it is usually extremely unlikely that someone

would write the same novel as the first guy you’re never going to have someone independently write Atlas Shrugged or

Moby Dick and so that originality requirement for copyright is almost

always present doesn’t mean it’s system Justified I’m just saying that’s part of the way it works now for trademark there’s no

requirement for you to have come up with the phrase or expression you just have to under the

current the way the system in in the way the system worked under the common law if you just started using a name a brand

name a product name a company name in the market you develop what’s called common law rights in that geographic

region now with the internet and with International Commerce we have a federal and an International System of

registration you file for it you don’t have to come up with it you just have to be the first one who applies for that

and gets a registration in the trademark office just the way it works you don’t

have to if no one had filed a trademark for infinite banking concept or even the initials then it’s

up for grabs anyone can get a trademark on it now there are some limitations in the trademark wall which is that the

Mark needs to be uh it cannot be inherently generic or or

descriptive so like you couldn’t get a trademark own pencil because even if

you’re the first one to apply for it because it’s just a description and if you give someone a trademark on the word

pencil you would inhibit competition because other people would have to bend over backwards to find it an awkward way

to describe the the thing that they’re selling which is another pencil which is why most people this is

counterintuitive to most people but the strongest trademarks are those that are what we call Whimsical or fanciful for

example if I came up with the name for my S well let’s say I was selling infinite banking if I came up with

Pegasus Journeys down the road to profit something Whimsical and crazy that’s

actually misdescriptive or not descriped that’s a stronger mark But then of course you wouldn’t care because you could still say hey I’m teaching a

course on infinite banking I would imagine that getting a trademark on infinite

making concept is on the edge of being a little bit too generic or descriptive to

survive if there’s a lawsuit but but who knows this this part

of the problem with IP law patent law copyright and trademark law is that the people that hold these rights that once

you once you have a certificate from the government like a copyright registration a patent certificate a trade Parks CIP

once you have that there’s this this presumption of validity and the burden of proof now shifts and usually the

company that Holy thingss have Deep Pockets and lawyers and they can just they can bully people so people just

give up or give in which is why these laws have a chilling effect on Commerce Innovation and free speech um even

trademarks um so I personally my good feeling is that

calling this infinite making concept is so descriptive of what

this concept is that you can call the Nelson Nash method or something so you add something to it that makes it a

narrower claim right uh anyway but the point is they have this right and they can use it to bully people this is a

perfect example of why trademark law is unjust now you can

criticize the companies that have you say they abuse these rights you’re not really abusing it this is the system the

whole purpose of the system is to enable and to allow legal bullying right if I

have a patent I can send you a cease and assist letter and you know it’s going to cost literally $2 million

to defend yourself even if you win and which small inventor in his garage can afford to do

that which is why what happens is you have for example if you remember

about 10 years ago there was something called the smartphone Wars and you had Apple came up with the

first I guess the first they claimed to be the first smartphone with a

touchcreen and a you know kind of an adaptable interface and o with rounded Corners that was one of their patents

that was a design patent not a Utility Patent still it was a patent on the way the phone looked with rounded corners

and Motorola and Samsung and even Google later and and am Apple they were suing

each other left and right now these are both these are all very large companies with billions of dollars and multiple

hundred million dollars of patent War chess and lawyers and legal staff so they just Sue each other they keep the

lawyers employed for for seven years lots of legal and Technical experts are used and finally at the end

of this what happens they come to a settlement and they my stack of patents

is three times as big as your stack of patents so I’m going to pay you royalties half a trillion and you’re

going to pay me royalties of 1.5 trillion we’ll we’ll offs set the difference and we’ll come up with a cross licensing deal where we can all go

in peace and compete with each other like we were doing before after all the lawyers have gotten fat and Rich and now

we just have to raise our prices a little bit to pass it on to the customers so now you have three two or

three Monopoly or or or olops cartelized basically manufacturers of the only few

smartphones out there and they all they can all compete with impunity because they hav’t deal with each other they

pass the increased costs on to their customers The Innovation is slowed down in the meantime because they don’t have as much competition and they don’t have

as much competition because all the little guys who would have competed with them they can’t do this they can’t if

they enter The Fray they will be killed by a massive patent law suit from one of the big three guys so you can see why

the patent system leads to olop and the same thing is true with in different ways with the other types of Ip like

copyright and trademark here you have so my point is you could criticize

Apple or Samsung but you know they’re just following the rules of the legal

system probably in many cases especially for a publicly traded company it would be um a

violation of your fiduciary duties if you’re on the on the board or if you’re on the management of apple and you have

a patent trough that you can use to extort your competitors or slow down competition if you don’t do that you

probably would get fired or maybe even liable so the system almost forces

people to to to to use the patent system and the copyright system

and the trademark system in unethical in aggressive ways now there are some

exceptions for example Tesla under Elon M’s sort of iconic

leadership I don’t know 10 years ago and Twitter by the way before even they both

announced a policy we’re going for for Tesla I believe they announced a policy we’ve got a lot of patents but we’re not

going to sue our competitors because they wanted the electric vehicle Market to grow they understood that

they have these patents that could give them a tiny slice a Big Slice of a small

pie they would rather have a bigger slice of a huge P so they implicitly they intuitively understood that patents

are useless stop competition so now you’re wondering then why do they have to spend millions of dollars on patent

attorneys like me to acquire these patents that they’re not even going to use like the whole thing is such a a disaster and Twitter had a policy where

they and they did this to attract employees they said if one of our employees comes up with a new patentable

method we’ll file a patent on it but we they made a contract with their employees where they said but we will

not assert these patents offensively against our competitors without the

permission of the inventor so they were trying to Shackle their hands and they’re trying to say listen we’re just acquiring patents for defensive purposes

but we won’t be a bully if you do it that way and the shareholders no then I don’t think that the directors or the or

the management be accused of to F fulfill your their fici your duty but it’s very rare that company will even

try this they don’t understand all they know is Wall Street and the shareholders all they think is we’re a company our

our goal is to make profit we have an asset we have prar assets we have patent

assets and we have um copyright assets and we should use them to our advantage and so that’s what’s going to happen and

if you criticize companies for taking advantage of and responding to the incentives set up by an interal property

system it’s like criticizing I don’t know immigrants or

poor people from taking welfare I mean if you set out a a fig a pig TRW full of

free stuff and the purpose is to is to get free free stuff away people will

line up for it and they will take it if they didn’t take it we wouldn’t even worry about it but they will they

will take it but the problem is not the people that respond to Natural incentives the problem is the legal system itself um so

in the case of the Nelson nashing I will say that in in some cases I have people approach me from time to so they like

Ping copyright are different so let’s talk about trademark like I said given the system

you can file a trademark on a common expression like infinite banking concept

um and because of that reality if you were doing this as a business you would be stupid not to try

to grab it if that’s part of your main business because if you don’t do it then one of your competitors could get it

first so the legal system creates this war of all against all where everyone’s

trying to grab these rights so that they’re not shut down from their business even if I was a totally

innocent nice guy and I don’t mind competition I don’t want to use my trademark to bully you I better grab

them first to keep you from grabbing them to stop me now in the case of copyright you don’t

have to enforce your copyright in the case of patents you don’t have to enforce your patent as the cases of say

Tesla and Twitter show the problem with trademark is as I understand if you get

a trademark and then you don’t enforce it then you’re in danger of losing it so let let’s say that the Nelson Nation

Institute has a trademark on IBC and then little competitors spring

up and then they don’t what’s called police it they don’t police it then they

can lose it for for um the suude or for or for just it it could become generic

again or something like that or maybe someone else could grab it so unfortunately the law gives you an

incentive not only to acquire trademarks but then to police them by sending out cease and desist letters and all that

now that said there is an ethical way to do this and that ethical way is this let’s say

that you’re a competitor of the you’re one of the people selling the

service of um Bas all the Nelson the infnet banking concept and um the main

say the big guy I don’t know is it true that the Nelson Ash would be like the the big guys on the Block like the main

ones that people know of the Nelson Ash Institute doesn’t actually do infinite banking um they

have like they they have a program where they certify what they call their IBC

practitioners right okay fine and there are lots of people who do the infinite banking concept some of them are

officially authorized with the Nelson n Institute some of them are not I’m not sure in terms of how the numbers break

out but so what they could do they wanted to be ethical and not be bullies

which again they have no incentive not to be but they were just decent people you can’t really criticize them

for obtaining the trademark you can’t even criticize them for for policing it but policing it doesn’t mean you have to

be ex extortion and Bully what you could simply do is you could say listen like you could send a letter and

to someone you can say listen we have a trade BK on this on this term you’re

using it in your service to avoid confusing our consumers because we

license this Mark to all of our licensed or authorized sellers or service providers

we would simply we will hereby we will be willing to negotiate with you and Grant you a license to use the term for

a dollar a year if you simply put a disclaimer on your site saying not

authorized by the Nelson ntion Institute now that would be a very ethical and polite way to then they

could keep their trademark alive because they’re getting you to admit that they have a trademark you’re doing it under

their permission and the permission is like a dollar a year it’s nothing so you’re not really harming them and you’re willing to compete with them you

just want to say look here’s our authorized dealers your Fe are not authorized fine you could do that

no one does this no one does this because they don’t understand IP law and they don’t care about being unethical

apparently yeah there’s a lot to talk about there so that thank you for providing that alternative that was that

was interesting first of all it’s one of the things that I always find interesting is that within the Nelson

Nation Institute among the leadership and the membership there is a very strong libertarian impulse whether

people whether you like it or not and obviously there are plenty of people who do infinite banking who are not Libertarians but within the Nelson

Institute there’s no question that the leadership and the membership are very strongly libertarian in fact one of them

officially authorized he has a mug that says taxation is theft and he displays it prominently on his podcast things

like that right at the very least there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on there if you’re gonna loudly announce

how libertarian and even Anarchist you are in some cases and then you’re going to use the apparatus of the government

to go and Bully your competitors that’s pretty hypocritical right also it’s because there’s widespread confusion

about in property most even anarchists I mean there’s a a large number of the the

more sophisticated or principled or intelligent anarchists mostly the Austrian the Austrian Anarchist the Roth

Guardians who partly from my work and others they understand that intellectual property law is totally incompatible

with the free market system but you’re run-of-the-mill Libertarians they think property rights

good and therefore for intellectual property rights good because they’re so stupid that they they if they hear and

they hear a slow or you know they hear a propaganda slogan they they they think it’s true

right it’s really intellectual property Monopoly it’s really what’s going on right of course that’s really what’s

going on because it’s not saying I have the right to own an I own an idea you can hold an idea in your head you have

the right to that they’re saying and therefore I have the right to exclusively profit from this idea right

yes that’s the the example I always think of is it’s a good thing the early Christians had no concept of

intellectual property right otherwise the Bible would not have been copied so freely the Bible was copied all over the

place freely Everywhere by the way don’t hear about the descendants of St Paul going after

those evil who copi the Bible trying to get cut this was back when books were

like way more expensive and way more valuable than they are today right no before the printing press the scribes

were the engines of keeping these words Lie by copying them if there had been copyright law we might have lost lots of

things we probably have lost lots of things because of copyright in fact you remember I was talking about the origin of copyright the first thing they did

was they monopolized for about a hundred years with this thing called the stationers company printing gild for

1500 something like that it lasted about a 100 years because you had to fear an

author you have to go through you don’t have a a zero fure at your house you still got to go to this building with

people that can have a printing press cranking out things and so for about 100 years that lasted and that sort of put a

stopper in the GD coming out of the model but of course that was doomed to failure and in the modern internet age

we’ve seen with self printing the web and all this it’s gone now they can’t control anything it’s glorious but at

the end of that 100-year period or so the 100y year Charter for the sters company was about to expire so then the

question is what do we do now and under Queen an or her successor I can’t remember 1709 1710 the statute of am was

passed and what he did was he said instead of renewing the charter of the stationers company he created the modern

copyright system where it said authors are the owners of copyright not the Publishers so it looked like it was Pro

author but it really wasn’t because still the authors had to go to the printing companies to print their

books and that that Legacy model has lasted until about 20 years ago which is

why artist like Prince had slave on his cheek all these musical artists all

these movie stars authors they’re all walked into these horrible contracts because the

publishing industry had the bargaining power because they were the only ones who could print or distribute movies or

or music in the old days under the physical medium system they could

extort contracts from the artist where they’re locked in and they don’t even have a right to their stuff yeah so the

the modern attempt to control thought under the printing press which you’re right was a way to like let the Bible

spread that it led to the modern system which lasted I don’t know from 1700 to let’s say the

year 2000 basically now everyone can do whatever they want we have podcasts we have the internet although that’s even

that’s severely restricted by copyright anyway I’m on a tangent now but the point is all this is of a piece

trademark patent copyright they’re all completely unethical they’re intrusions

into the free market and freedom which I know that sounds radical to people that are used to because you’re going toar

hear the standard thing well if I don’t have a right to my name what’s to stop me what’s to stop Burger King from like

well there’s fraud law and there’s contract law right right and why would they but also yeah you’re right it’s

called contract law it’s very simple and I not only that is I was hinting at earlier as I mentioned earlier you could

see a justification for a cause of action by a group of customers or a customer for contract breach or for

fraud if they are deceived by um uh by a

knockof restaurant or or seller of goods or something like that but the cause of

action would be with them but the trademark right law gives the right gives the cause of action to the

trademark holder so for example Chanel has a trademark on the Chanel name and

there’s some company selling knockoff Chanel purses then it’s not the customers who

are deceived that have a lawsuit it’s Chanel is not

harmed said VI and not only that the other I didn’t get to this point here’s the other problem if you had a an actual

lawsuit by a customer it would be because of fraud or a contract breach

contract breach is clearly understood is the terms of the contract fraud is understood as you have to deceive

someone into basically handing handing over payment under false pretens so

those are fairly clearly courts or legal claims under the trademark law there is

no requirement first of all the problem is again it gives the right to the competitor not to the Agri the the the

customer the customer the one that is supposedly protecting who would be agreed doesn’t even get protect it and

moreover they don’t the so it’s called now it’s called not fraud but it’s called infringement so you committed

trademark infringement which means you’re you’re infringing the rights of Chanel the corporation or you’re

infringing the rights of Nelson Nash Institute even though you didn’t commit fraud against them and even though you

didn’t commit fraud against anyone because the the trademark law does not require you to show

fraud what it requires you to show is the likelihood of consumer confusion so

number one it doesn’t require to show consumer confusion which is not fraud by the way if I confuse someone it’s not

clear that I violated the right I guess we’ll have to shut down the entire mainstream media they’re causing consumer confusion exactly that’s my

point hey maybe I like trademark law now all of a sudden that’s another that’s a whole another topic but the point is you

don’t have to show like you don’t have to show consumer confusion you only have to show I’m sorry you don’t have to show Consumer Fraud you only have to show

consumer confusion and you don’t even have to show consumer confusion you have to show the likelihood of it so that is

why you can have a court order from the IC or from a court that that has these

Steamrollers go and they take fake Chanel purses from some Mark some black

market in New York or somewhere and they just they taken they steamroll they burn they destroy these purses even though

the the people buying these purses are not confused or defrauded at all if you

buy a $10 Chanel purse no one in the world thinks that’s

the real Chanel purse they know that it’s a f and they’re happy with that they want the cheap purse so they’re

they’re not being cons defrauded at all so you can see how Mark law has lost any possible connection it could have to

protecting consumer rights under a fraud or consumer even a consumer confusion stand so that’s the background that’s

how I would encourage your your listeners to think about this is to see how Insidious and how harmful and how

dangerous how damaging it is to have these IP laws all based upon the confusion that you can have a pro the

ultimate mistake people make they believe you could have a property right

in the value of something this is the fundamental mistake property rights the entire

purpose of property rights is to recognize that we live in a world of scarce resources where there could be

conflict among people and there’s only so much of these scarce things to go around that’s not true of ideas by the

way this is why we’re richer which I mentioned earlier a million people can use a new recipe for baking of salmon at

the same time uh a million people can use a new transistor idea or a new

Manufacturing idea at the same time this is why we get richers because idea spread we use them to enhance the

efficiency and the richness of our right to say that a little better I think in a colloquial way if I steal your bike you

no longer have the bike you can’t use it you’re deprived of the use of that bike it’s a scar if I steal your idea you

still have your idea and the only way to enforce the intellectual property is to monop is to create a monopoly where now

I’m the only one who’s allowed to profit from that new salmon rest I came up with this new recipe and now no one’s allowed to use it even despite the fact that if

I use that new salmon recipe myself you haven’t lost anything I’ve taken nothing from now this gets it so this is a

little bit technical this is the way I look I’ve been trying to find ways to explain this to people for 30 years and

I I keep coming across coming up with different ways of look these these things are these are Arcane law which

only Specialists like me usually understand even the economists and these free market so-called free market

liberals who support them they don’t even understand what they’re talking about you’ll hear people all the time

conflate patent copyright trademark plagiarism piracy fraud knocking off

these are all completely different and distinct Concepts and they just throw them all together in this mishmash and

if you support piracy then like by the way the word piracy is also another propaganda term piracy means taking

people stuff and killing them from their ship or something you know right which

which is taking their tangible material property that they can’t use anymore like the biking example but now we use

it to refer to using other information you’ve heard on the market and making a

profit off of it oh now making a profit is such a horrible thing the or in many cases in many cases not even making a

profit off of it just making it freely available but as a I used to work as a strategy consultant and I used we used

to deal with this stuff all the time this stuff is so easily addressed and we would just do non-disclosure agreements

right so we’re meeting with Fortune 500 companies Executives so on and they’re giving us very sensitive financial

information that obviously they don’t want their competitors get so we’re dealing with intellectual property all

the time and so we just have standing non-disclosure agreements with all of our with all of our clients and again

the way of enforcing it is not through the government not through the courts which is a very inefficient way of

addressing it what happens is we had a a case with a a guy who he actually um took a slide

from one of the presentations that had gone to a client and there was no client specific information on it that’s the other thing too is that they want us to

reuse our insights right they want that so we’re they don’t want to restrict that because then we as consultant would

lose all of our value if we can’t draw from the experiences we’ve had the best practices we’ve learned from other

companies what we can’t give them is oh you’re competitor that this is his sensitive financial information right

and so this particular guy who worked for a consulting firm he was he didn’t even do anything wrong wrong just an

oversight he was creating some public a thought leadership kind of piece and he put a slide in there that had 100%

public information there was nothing in it that was proprietary nothing in it that was sensitive but he that

same company saw it called him out for and the consequences

were he company and that and then that consulting firm was locked out of that

company for two years it was massive negative Financial impact to them and no courts were involved there was no

trademark no copyright no nothing right yeah because because of course reputation matters more than anything

number one but but even there you you there could have been a there could have been a there could have been a lawsuit about

reach of contract there are implicit and explicit agreements people make with each other if I’m your attorney there’s

attorney client privilege but there’s also an understanding whether explicit or implicit that I’m not going to reveal

your secrets and if I do I’m basically reaching the contract and I owe you some kind of Damages although the damages

from reputation loss are the really the main thing that that you worry about anyway but the problem is people because

of this mistake I said earlier I mentioned earlier where people equate knowledge and secrets and

information they equate that with the IP laws so

they they just can’t conceive of the fact that they’re separate things and you can there are ways to protect one

without the other there’s reputational effects and if you approach a company if

you’re representing someone as a counselor or as a trusted advisor an accountant or a priest even a husband

and wife depends on the situation there’s an understanding that you are not free to reveal confidential

information but that and people think that means that you they think that means that there’s some justification

for for conceiving of information an ownable property right object and that’s

simply just wrong um information cannot be owned only scarce resources can be

owned and so what I was going to say earlier the sort of the actually correct way to

understand intellectual property this applies more to patented copyright it’s a little bit um it’s a little bit um

like I said every every IP right is different in its justifications and its nature um trademark is more the system

of of giving someone a legal right to control the free speech of other people it’s something like that which is a

violation of property rights had and copyright were a little bit more clear about what their nature is I I think

they’re what what’s called in the law a negative easement or in the in this in the civil law a negative servitude and

this sounds like a legal complication but your your listeners can to understand this everyone’s familiar with

the concept of a homeowners association homeowners is where you have a group of people who live in proximity

with each other usually and there is a master agreement among all the people

usually done by a developer when they buy the thing but it could be done it could just be two you could just have

two neighbors who have an their neighbors and they both have an agreement with each other to restrict how they can use their property they

both say listen let live at peace I can use my property you can use your property but let’s both agree we’re not

going to build a pig farm here or let’s agree we’re not going to build our building more than three stories and

that’s what homeowners associations usually do so what you have is you have a contractual or a voluntary agreement

among neighbors and they agree to to transfer to each other some limited

control rights and they’re usually always negative so my neighbor can’t come into my house and use it just by

the way if you own if you own Google stock stock you can’t go into the Google headquarters and have your have your

birthday party there there are certain limitations on rights you can give up a limitation you can give up some rights

of your property you can say okay I give up the right to have a p form on my

property in exchange for you giving up a similar R that’s perfectly legitimate

that’s called a negative easement or or a negative or a negative uh servitude it

it’s also called a restri restrictive covered and this is the basis of Home Association now you’ll see what’s key

about this is It’s voluntary which we dis agreed to so there’s nothing wrong with me dividing up my property giving

for example if my neighbor if I have a driveway that could that’s next to my

neighbor’s property and he doesn’t want to he would rather use my driveway to get to his garage instead of building a

separate driveway right next to mine which the weight of space he might just pay me an annual fee for the right to

use my driveway that’s that’s another type of easement or a right abuse all this is perfectly fine you can divide up

rights as long as it’s done voluntarily by contract now so for example if I have

a printing press I have a building I own the building I own the land I own the

printing press I own the ink I own the paper and I print books in my building

okay got a little Gutenberg printing press or a little Factory on Amazon whatever

I’m not violating anyone’s rights if I print a book is a copy of another book

because I’m not trespassing against their property rights if I print 100 copies of the Bible I print 100 copies

of muy dick if I print 100 copies of Romeo Juliet or if I print 100 copies of

Harry Potter I’m not trespassing anyone’s property right I I’m not violating a contract because I don’t

have a contract however if I make a contract with someone and let’s say I’m

going to make it a deal with the other Publishing House down the street that I won’t I will not publish copies of your

infer books and you won’t publish copies of mine that’s a game perfectly legitimate that would not be copyright

wouldn’t be intellectual property but it would be a private contract which could be enforced the problem is when the

government grants Paton rights and copyrights and even trademark rights to

it great it’s and I just have to point out we’re we’re totally abusing the word rights when we’re talking about these

that’s the other thing it misuses what is a good word that has

positive ethical connotations a right protecting human rights and they’re taking that word and abusing it and

basically now what they’re calling a right is a monopoly privilege tot the legal it’s the right of the tyrants to

tyrannize his people it’s a leg it’s a legally granted Monopoly privilege and but it’s classified as a right because

under the law you can enforce it so here you have the B here you have the bifurcation or the distinction between

what call natural rights or moral rights and and positive rights which the

government just grants and they there’s no reason for them to expect them to be consistent with Justice or property or

natural property but the way to consider this is when the government grants me a

copyright let’s say when they Grant uh JK rolling copyright in and Harry Potter

she can go to a court and she can use that right to stop me in my private

printing press from printing certain patterns of information on these paper now as I said earlier

that would be legitimate if I agreed to it but I didn’t agree to it it’s the government taking part of my property

right and giving it to to to JK rolling that’s a transfer of property rights

it’s a stealing it’s a taking of property rights it’s what I would call a non-consensual negative servitude no

there’s nothing wrong with or negative eastmen to use the common law language there’s nothing wrong with negative e if

you agree to it so the whole point is whether you

consent or you don’t consent in the case of an agreement in a homeowner association or a negative normative

normal negative easement you have consented to this restriction on your property rat or more properly to give

part of it to someone else is totally legitimate but the government simply takes it from you in the form of so this

is ultimately the problem with patent copyright and even trademark is that it’s the government grant hting a

negative Ser EAS to someone that they didn’t bargain for they didn’t get by

permission of the owner of what we call the burdened estate so now you have a burdened estate the burdened estate

means there’s a piece of property that I own and before this happened I had the right to do whatever I wanted with it

but now there’s a limitation there’s a negative restriction on what I can do I’ve got to get the permission of the other guy so if you want to sell uh this

infinite banking concept Force now you had previously you had the

before IP law you had the per perfect right to do it because you’re not def frauding anyone you’re just selling a

service you’re competing with some other people with the trademark system you give your

competitor you give the owner of the the so-called IP right the right to use

physical Force to prevent you from using your property as you see fit even though you never agreed to this negative East

that’s ultimately the problem IP law so what you’re pointing out in Layman ter terms is the only way to enforce

intellectual property so-called rights is to destroy real property rights

because I can’t control the ideas that you have in your head I can only control what you do with the actual property

that you own right yes so this this is this is a really subtle Point that’s hard for once you understand that it’s

easy to see but it’s hard for people to grasp um because the concept of property rights has been so muddied over the over

the years because we again we with property wrting value instead of the

physical Integrity of of the thing but the thing is once you understand that

there are two components of successful Human Action this gets back to off train economics and mises it’s just a very

simple this is praxiology but you don’t have to really understand all of this but point is it’s common sense to

understand that every human action has two essential components that then is to

achieve what you want to achieve in life to do something successful to have a profit as we call it a a psychic profit

or a monetary profit to go from here to achieve what you want to achieve you need two things you need availability of

scarce resources you have to have things to work with and you need knowledge in your head that guides what you do these

two things are both essential to successful but only one of them is the

subject of conflict is the clashing over these resources like you said earlier

everyone can use idea at the same time so the liity rights necessarily are

control rights to scarce resources that’s what they are because every law

is always the use of force against someone who’s misusing someone else’s

resource when there’s a possibility of conflict or CL I would say that’s civil law because because law yeah that’s a

whole another I I I subscribe to more theistic definition of law so I would reject your definition of law there but

I think I know what you’re saying is a in a practical sense right and that’s well that’s a whole another conversation um I I there there’s in in in legal

Theory and in moral theory there is a distinction between to mytic natural law

which I’m sometimes calling here um moral law or libertarian law which

really just means Justified law I know that there’s the natural law thinkers well also like the law of gravity that’s

a law yeah I’m going to f on like different types of of law so there’s the laws of cause and effect causal laws

there’s also laws of Economics there’s logical laws but and these are all about regularities that we can notice in life

and then there’s also moral laws and and there’s what you can call Legal laws and

then the legal laws have two types one is Justified law or moral law which is a normative component and then you have

positive law which is the law that actually exists that The Sovereign or the legal system is actually literally

enforcing but because we come to an age dominated by legal positivism in a

sense ushered in primarily by the rise of the bureaucratic State the

administrative state in the 20th century which coincided with the with

the with World War I and and the collapse of monarchies and the old regime and the rise of democracy which

is what Papa calls legislative I’m sorry Democratic lawmaking we’ve replaced the

old concept of law as a fixed thing that has to be rooted in morals and norms and

natural law to some degree which is the distinction we make between what we call malam and say and malam prohibitum laws

malam say is laws written on your Eng graped on your heart because of God or moral law or or common sense or

tradition and Mal prohibitum are things that are just illegal because the government says so and the common law

and the Roman law were more natural law reasoning systems based upon practicalities and we discovered what

the law was whereas now with the rise of the administrative State and

democracy for about a 100 plus years now everyone thinks of law is you hear these

even Libertarians they’ll say oh the income tax isn’t legal isn’t it’s not illegal to to evade income tax because

show me the law when they say show me the law they’re thinking like the legal positives because they want you to show

you a book written by the legislature of a government which is a criminal agency

anyway to prove what the law is they’ve lost the connection to between morality

and the law so I agree with you and there was a classic debate 50 years ago between HLA Hart a sort of a legal

positivist and blond Fuller about even using these words you’re using like some

people like you maybe are reluctant to call a bad law a law because you think

you’re blessed it with this cloak of credibility because you’re thinking like the old world to think about things like

you’re thinking that people used to I would call it a rule an edict you know you could there are various words you could use Tobe I’m okay with how you

want to describe it look I I get in trouble with some of my libertarian friends who are mainstreamers when I say something like um the Supreme Court

because even like you mentioned economic laws are more like Tendencies they’re

realities well there there are AR priority laws too there are logical laws there are philosophical law based on

human behavior things like that depends on your take on economics but if you if you accept the epistemological approach

of the austrians or some of the austrians there are AR priori truths we can know and there are AR priori truths

or yeah when I say AR priori I just mean there are things that we know that let’s

put it simply they’re hard to deny it’s hard to deny that we exist

it’s hard to deny that there’s such a thing as Consciousness right it’s hard to deny the law of noncontradiction it’s hard deny the law

of supply and demand it’s just just I would say it’s impossible but we don’t need to prove these things with an

empirical experiment we don’t need to we don’t need to prove that if you raise the minimum wage you’re going to cause

unemployment we know this by logical reasons so that’s a whole different issue but the point is there are

different categories or types of Law and I would say that the one of the main distinctions is the one mises makes

which is the distinction between the normative or the teleological realm and

then on one hand and the causal realm on the other the descrip the descriptive versus the prescriptive and when we talk

about law it’s an interesting intermixture and again the people that think that law ought to be moral and

based on on certain values and certain justifiable principles they’re reluctant

to call like the income tax law or certain legislative decrees like IP

rights they’re reluctant to call it law because they’re afraid that they’re going to give us some legitimacy or blessing I understand that I think we’ve

lost that game because if you want to communicate with people I don’t like the terminal for property I don’t like to

use it but if I’m going to criticize a set of laws that should think should be

abolished I’ve got to use language people can understand so it can get tedious to every time say I’m against IP

rights ask yeah they’re not kind like Mike Maloney making the distinction between currency and money and every

time someone says M corrects them as currency it’s not money you know I do the same thing with the word State like

I I’ll point out that like libertar I’m an incus libertarian I’m not against

government or law or order but the thing is is pick roads for example most people

are so used to the way things are or even social government provided Healthcare in other countries they’re so

used to the fact that the government provides healthare they can’t even conceive of a system where the government doesn’t take care of

healthare same thing with roads people or or things like money or Communications or education people are

so used to these things being provided by the government I’m sorry the state

that they couldn’t conceive of it happening without it so if you say I’m against government roads what they hear

is you’re against roads because they don’t think it’s possible to have roads without the state and the same thing is

true of the of of Law and Order what I call the institutions of

governance or governance itself so because they think that to have Law and

Order you need a state they believe that if you say I’m against the state you’re against

governance right because it’s to them it’s a package deal if so sometimes I

will try to be carefully clear in my language it always results in it’s a disaster because people confuse but I’ll

I’m with you I’ve I’ve given into a colloquial way of speaking where I I I know that I’m being imprecise with my

terms and so on just because I I misuse words like money and things like that just because

if you want to talk in a way that people can understand you have to be a little bit a little bit about that yeah so I

usly say I’m against like people Libertarians now they they they say they’re against government schools okay

and I could be I could be nitpicky and next say You’re really against State

schools right because government is like an ambiguous term um but I know what

they mean so I’m not going to fight them on that right they’re against the schools that are run by the government

but the the way I think of it conceptually is the government is has just like roads have been monopolized by

the state the functions of governance have been not monopolized by the state the state’s the state is the fundamental

problem the state is an agency a monopoly force and law in a given area

that’s what it is and because of that Monopoly they they outlaw competition in

the provision of governmental services but there’s nothing wrong with government per se you could have law

the family right parents govern their children companies have governance that that govern them your local chess club

has governance I want to return to the Nelson Nash Institute and give you a little bit of I I think now I was with

the Nelson Nash Institute and I want to give a little bit of History so I not being a member I might be a little bit off the infinite banking concept was I I

would say discovered by Nelson Nash in the 1980s because the idea predated him so

whole life insurance had existed for over a 100 years and so the methodology you proposed was

at least theoretically possible and I do believe there were people doing it but no one had really formalized it into a

system written a book about it so um I’m giving Nelson Nash his due but when

people say that he created it I’m like well I don’t know about that but even if he did be that ASE he wrote the book on

it it’s called becoming your own Banker it’s a book that is like the seminal work on the banking concept and then the

Nelson Nation Institute was founded later I don’t know maybe 2010 I’m not sure the exact date and in order to

promote the infinite banking concept and what happened was over time

it’s I don’t know if it morphed or if this was always the original intent but I believe it started as a way to promote

the infinite banking concept and to give support and training and encouragement to life insurance agents who actually

want to do the infinite banking concept which is a very special way of

leveraging whole life insurance policies okay to become your own Banker right and

we don’t have to get into all that but and so they started creating a

program where you could pay them some money get some training and get like officially authorized as an infinite

banking practitioner and it has morphed into controlling the narrative it has

morphed into there like all things it started off with a real problem there is

a problem which is that there are of course people who use the infinite banking concept they use that phrase and

then but when they’re actually doing is something quite different that may not be in the client’s best interest and we don’t have to go into all the details on

that so they see this real problem and then they start playing this whack-a-mole game of trying to smack

down those other people right rather than trying to promote encourage the infinite banking concept and then uh

whether explicitly or implicitly allying with government in order to do that

and I think also there’s sort of a personal emotional almost spiritual

aspect to it where I don’t know how familiar you are with the Nelson Nation but if you listen

to the leadership you listen to people talk about it it has become a religious cult fortunately where the infinite

banking concept is to them more than just a brilliant Financial strategy it is basically a form of religion and so

when you criticize Nelson Nash MH or when you misuse the infinite banking

concept or do it in a way that they don’t like it’s not just a disagreement

it’s now a religious war and when you elevate things to that level then all of a sudden no holds SP right and so

because of that you can see it in the way that these people some of them some

of them because there are a lot of them that respect let me be clear about that I’m actually positive on the Nelson Nash Institute so I hope this is taken as

constructive criticism that some of them get very shrill and very angry and when you get very shrill

and very angry you are just not going to be effective it doesn’t matter how right your message is people are just going to

see that you’re bitter that you’re shrill that you’re angry and that you’re trying to control other people yeah and

that’s not attractive and so my constructive criticism to the Nelson ntion Institute would be hey we agree on

the infinite banking concept we agree that these other people are misusing the infinite banking

concept the question is what do you do about it that’s the question and I think

it’s also partly the psychological phenomena that we often see which is that when you get bullied you often

times become a bully right that’s the way it works and we in the infinite banking footprint have absolutely 100%

been persecuted and bullied by the Wall Street Bullies who don’t like the the

financial philosophy the financial strategy that Nelson Nash is proposing because it would probably take profits

and power away from the Wall Street Bullies sure and because we get so unjustly beat up by these

compliance departments who enforce arbitary rules that were written by their Wall Street superiors right and

we’ve been persecuted the Temptation then is to become like the Wall Street

Bullies and unfortunately I think there’s some of that in the Nelson Nations too do you think there’s a

parallel to the Bitcoin thing where you know there’s there’s been hostility towards Bitcoin um among the sort of

professional CL and the money managers and the the old world the old way of doing things I actually don’t think so I

think that’s a different phenomena quite frankly I think when it comes to bitcoin I think a lot of the animosity just

comes from Envy because they see these little people who supposedly don’t know anything who got rich buying Bitcoin and

but it’s also you don’t think it’s a threat to the the old way of investing

and say using Banks um look you have Craig r who is this notorious sort of

Bitcoin troll who’s tried playing he Satoshi and use trademark and copyright

to prevent other people from using the word b even the Li l Rand think letter

PE off they’ve sent these let they found lawsuits or send threatening letters

telling people you can’t use the word objective as a we own another example of Tri even the libertarian party in the

recent years has used that against some Renegade state libertarian party

Affiliates for using the word libertarian party in their name and

again half the time be you have no choice in a sense to police your mark As I said but you can see how this in in

the case of n nashon you’re talking about okay if there’s a quasi religious or a fervor about this thing and and

that there’s hostility from the outside that also worry about Renegade groups that are not under their control you

could see how in a free market where there was no trademark rights the trademark rights exacerbate our

Tendencies to become bullies if you didn’t WR trademark rights you would have to rely upon

persuasion and persuading people that oh I’m the real objectivism I’m the real

I’m the original you know founder the same thing happened by the way with moner to a mon and they could they could

have their official authorization that’d be fine they couldn’t use Force they couldn’t use force it would just be a

matter of The credibility that it exactly if they couldn’t use trademark to bully people they would have to be a

little bit more careful about selling their claim that they are the legitimate one just there’s a debate

among bitcoiners about is it coin cash or is it bitco if you don’t have the a

government lawsuit you can file you have to you have to give a reason for your

for your claims I was going to say my my son went to monor schools here in America and there was something similar

there but it was a little bit odd because the monor approach was come up with by Maria monor and in in Europe a

hundred years ago and it was called and then her group was called Ami Association monory International but

there was a split with the American group for a while because of John Dewey’s criticism of it or some guys critic so monor fell out of favor in

America for two decades and so this woman named Nancy rambush went to Europe and she found out

about it she she she starting up the American group called Ami I’m sorry AMS the American mon serus society and it

that became the dominant way of teaching mod America the AMS way and now the Ami

way is coming back up and they both say they’re better than the other for different reasons but they

have no tra they never need file a trademark so it’s like in the public domain now because it’s just a monory

method which is very similar to Nelson I think it’s a descriptive way of talking about infinite banking it’s a

description of a system so no one owns monu the word the technique so that

means that that these groups have to coexist with each other and they have to have friendly competition and parents

can judge them on their merits and de which one they think is trer to the mission the original Mission or which

one they they like better which is the way it ought to be right that’s what we should have we should have no in Ultra

property rights amp up the hostility and the legal fighting among each

other yep I completely agree with you but yeah I just wanted I know I’ve talked about my brief story with it but

hopefully I hope hope this has helped the audience understand why trademark is a problem why I I within Nels

NES and try and train and support and encourage agents to do it I obviously I support them in that um and I would and

I’ve invited them to to come and talk on my show if they want and have a conversation about this because I think we all want the same thing which is to

promote the infinite banking concept question what what do they what is what’s the response then when you

invited them there’s no response um I’m not in touch with them I haven’t for some time so I just stated publicly on

my show we’ll see I mean it wasn’t that long ago so maybe maybe someone will respond but I doubt it why if they’re

Libertarians if they’re Libertarians I think they should if they want to be serious Libertarians and not Hypocrites

maybe they should consider what we talked about and consider whether what they’re doing is ethical and moral and

reconsider their use of of lawfare and state aggression against their call you

competitors just I’m not yeah no I don’t consider myself a competitor at all I think they’re they’re fellow infinite

Bankers I mean why don’t you do that it’s just not right reconsider what

you’re doing so uh the three people who were leaders at the time I was there when I was kicked out was uh Bob and by

the way the reason I was kicked out had absolutely nothing to do with the infinite banking concept you can look at my videos I’ll link them below and read

about my story but it kind of just shows the pattern of behavior that goes on there so Bob Murphy Carlos laara and

David Sterns were the leadership of the Nelson Nash at the time Nelson Nash Institute at time so I’m not in contact

with any of them personally I know Bob has left I’m not sure if Carlos is still there I know Carlos has had some health issues so I’m not sure what he’s up to

but I think David Sterns is still there still leading it so if you’re in contact with those people please give them my

invitation cuz I doubt they’ve seen the video it was a public invitation but I’m not I don’t have any way of getting in touch with those guys so seriously doubt

any of you know that I exist probably better if they don’t anybody come after me if they find out I exist I might get

a legal letter in my mailbox and I have a lawsuit to deal with no maybe staying

under the radar from them was a good thing sure yeah I don’t know I think it’s sad

I do have a book I wrote It’s a monograph about 10 years ago was called

do business without inal property Jeff Tucker encouraged me to do that when he was with liberty.me and

listen we live in a world of patent copyright trademark trade secret law you

can’t deny it you can’t avoid it you can’t ignore it but if you but there are

traps by there are traps that that people fall into when they when they

just start using these rights without thinking about whether they really need to for example if you have a little

startup company and you’re told you need to devote so much of your precious

budget to hiring pet attorneys to get some IP they call it IP patents so you

can attract in BCS and investors uh and you have a war chest

that will impress Wall Street or your investors because you have a right to sue someone who’s a competitor you hear

those on Sharp take all the time do you have any protection on your new product you can’t ignore the reality sometimes

you need to do this but you don’t always need to do it the way everyone else does

it and maybe you get one tenth as many patents as someone else or maybe you adopt a strategy like Tesla or Twitter

did right and with trademarks I mentioned other ways you could approach it in an ethical way and it might even

be better because now you’re focusing on your core what you’re really about you’re not focusing on lawyers and

lawsuits and revenge and beating people with the power of of Courts um and so in

this little book I have called do business without intellectual property it’s on my

website no I I think that’s great because I think we’ve had a lot of wide ranging theoretical discussions with a

lot of tangents and people want practical right tangible Solutions and I think it was great that you gave one

earlier to the Nelson Nation insute say Hey you can trademark the phrase but just don’t enforce it in the way that

you’re doing it now corre there’s a better way that you can do it so that you’re not being a bully you’re just

making it clear it could even be better for them because now they’re not seeing is a bully and they’re not wasting resources chasing things that is not

their core business model their core business model will be to improve their services and their offerings and their

quality and their reputation and just have a prosperous business why would you want to F why would you want to spend

money on guys like me to send out CD letters right and I want to point out

what you said there focus on improving their services because unfortunately when you look at the way they’re going

their focus is on controlling their agents so it’s not about hey Stefan let me train you and teach you how to do

case design really well let me treat let me teach you how to Prospect and market and sell yourself so you can really grow

your business and you can really design cases well so your clients will have the most efficient cash flow management tool

there’s none of that it’s all Stephen this is the way you do it and if you don’t do it we’re going to beat you over the head that’s really a lot of what it

is you don’t get a lot of support and training like you’re supposed to get the training quote unquote is basically more

like we’re going to fit you in the straight jacket and you’re going to comply we are a compliance Department

you’re going to comply that’s it they seem to have no interest in helping you grow your business or actually become a

better infinite banking agent it’s more about just controlling unfortunately I

don’t know if we can do this but maybe I could quickly share my screen to show this sure yeah you should have you should be it is one practical thing I do

I know I sound totally impractical but trust me as a pth attorney I have had to be very practical with my will will

plead guilty to he speaks like an attorney I try not to I try not to use

terms without explaining them anyway and why they’re relevant okay how do I share the screen with you I can see you I can

see your screen okay can you see I see Zoom I need to move it somehow too plug

my monitor that’s my problem my monitor now can you see it there so this is do

business without inal property so it’s practical it talks about trademark trade trade secret patented things you can do

I’m not saying to Shan everything right but it’s thinking about a different way

of of of of navigating this IP prone

world and it’s free online like everything I do is free online by the way excellent excellent the man is

consistent with his principles we’ll definitely link that below Stefan we thank you so much for

your time helping us to maybe provide some practical alternative Sol first of all point out what wrong with trademarks

and give some practical alternatives to the Nelson Nation Institute for how they might better accomplish their stated

goal of promoting the infinite banking concept Stefan anything you want to leave our audience within

closing no anyone interested in this you can most of the stuff I’ve talked about is in my book which is fairly recent and

and that’s on my website too it’s free online UB and PDF and also you can buy Kindle Paper versions you must be brok

stepan you must be making no money cuz you’re giving all your stuff away for free you must be totally broke right it’s crazy people buy it they’re like

how do I buy your Kindle here’s a free UB they’re say no I want the Kindle version I’m like

okay uh I don’t do this for money anyway but it’s it works out anyway um but um

no and I might be teaching a course on this later next year um I might do an online course for a reasonable price

just for to to go through my entire theory of libertarian Concepts property rights Justice you know your property

everything just in detail for people that are interested in in self-education uh I did a course like this about 13

years ago for the mes Academy but now the technolog is better and I have more material to work with so uh I may be

doing that I’m retired so I’m looking for something to do in retirement so I

got I got plenty of ideas for you Stefan I got plenty of ideas all right I’m open I’m open I appreciate your time and uh

and good luck with everything but uh thanks for having me on thank you really appreciate it byebye okay

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (74.4MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL448 | David Pearce (Tufty the Cat) on nChain and Patent Law

by on November 20, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 448.

This is my discussion with European patent attorney David Pearce, of the Tufty the Cat European IP blog (twitter). He and I were co-founders and members of the Advisory Council for the Open Crypto Alliance (2020–22). We discuss Craig Wright, nChain and bitcoin related patents, and so on (see video below).

 

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (56.9MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL447 | Audio: Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society

by on November 19, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 447.

This is from the show “Axioms of Liberty,” which has another episode about my IP writing. This time, it’s a reading of “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society.”

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (65.5MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL446 | Audio: Intellectual Property and Libertarianism

by on November 17, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 446.

This is from the show “Axioms of Liberty,” which has another episode about my IP writing. This time, it’s a reading of “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism.”

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (33.4MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

KOL445 | Audio: Is Intellectual Property Legitimate? Three Essays

by on November 15, 2024

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 445.

The show “Axioms of Liberty” has an episode about my IP writing, including readings of three early pieces: First, one of my earliest writings, Stephan Kinsella, “Letter on Intellectual Property Rights,” IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 12-13, and followed by David Kelley’s response. Next, “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?”, first published in the Pennsylvania Bar Association Intellectual Property Newsletter 1 (Winter 1998): 3 and republished in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter, vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000). And finally, “In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 4, 2000). I am not sure who this podcaster is, but he has my gratitude.

Play

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (48.0MB)

Share
{ 0 comments }

Lowering Taxes Without Spending Cuts

by on November 8, 2024

My friend Ryan McMaken has an interesting article up today, “Tax Cuts Without Spending Cuts Won’t Reduce the Taxpayers’ Burden,” LewRockwell.com (Nov. 8, 2024).

I am not sure I agree, though.

In my view, it is always better to cut FedGov spending, even if taxes are not lowered. It is also always better to cut taxes, even if spending is not lowered. It is of course best to do both, and the more cuts the better, but they are independent goals.

Cutting deficits is only a side effect, an ancillary goal, of cutting spending and of cutting taxes. Cutting deficits or balancing the budget is not the main goal or even a real, independent goal; it is just the consequence of lowering gov spending and gov taxation.

[continue reading…]

Share
{ 1 comment }

LiquidZulu’s Free Course: “The Fundamentals of Libertarian Ethics”

by on November 4, 2024

I was alerted to a course by LiquidZulu, “The Fundamentals of Libertarian Ethics,” touted as “The single fastest route from novice to expert in Austrian legal theory.” Somewhat amusingly, his site states:

Theres a problem…

Philosophy is big. Learning even a very small part of one specific philosophy could take years, if you even know where to look in the first place.

Theres a solution!

I have spent those years autistically studying philosophy, so I can deliver to you only the parts you need to know to understand what is true, rather than having to slog through thousand-page tomes of utter nonsensical jibberish. (And believe me, a lot of it is jibberish).

Great care has been taken to craft the courses on this website and I refuse to release a course unless it is better than any alternative that I am aware of.

The course is presented in seven modules in written form, free online, and also in video form which can be purchased at whatever price you like. I have only skimmed through some of the modules so far but from what I can tell it looks like a very good introduction to this topic, well organized, written and researched. The site claims the text version takes about 3 hours and the youtube videos (I paid for it) appear to be about 2 and a half hours.

I did a longer course on a similar topic for Mises Academy back in 2011, “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society,” which was well received, so such a course is definitely needed. I may in fact do an updated version of this course later, based on my book, Legal Foundations of a Free Society. Stay tuned. In the meantime, check out LiquidZulu’s course.

Share
{ 1 comment }
Next Posts Previous Posts

Archives

Stephan Prague Liberland Speaking 2025

Stephan Prague Liberland tux 2025

Stephan hat Dec 2025
Kinsella 2009Stephan 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).

Hoppe A Life in Liberty, cover

Hoppe Festschrift cover

Kinsella Adopting Liberty cover

Kinsella Against Intellectual Property cover

Kinsella Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary

International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide, Second Edition cover

Liberty Magazine Archives

My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025

[From my Webnote series]

Webnotes

Libertarian Answer Man

RSS C4SIF

This site rocks the Classic Responsive Skin for Thesis.

WP Admin

© 2012-2026 StephanKinsella.com CC0 To the extent possible under law, Stephan Kinsella has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to material on this Site, unless indicated otherwise. In the event the CC0 license is unenforceable a  Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License is hereby granted.

-- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright