StephanKinsella.com

Mi Ecuadorian amigo Juan F. Carpio is translating my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) into Español. He’s ideally suited to it since his English is perfecto and he understands Austro-libertarian concepts like no normal translator could.

Anyway while getting ChatGPT to assist, in the middle of the translation of chapter 1 (which is only about 5 or 6 pages), it inserted about 30+ pages of made-up text. I didn’t write any of it and I am not sure where it got it from. Some of it sounds like some of the other chapters in the book that it is also helping to translate, some of it sounds like Ayn Rand. It’s as if it was trying to just write a rambling essay in my style, like a chapter that could have been in the book but wasn’t, or an overview or introduction. I’m not sure. I only skimmed it and nothing seemed exactly wrong, but lots of it is written in a style I would never use and expressing things I would never express. But a lot of it sounds like me, or a version of me.

Anyway, Juan and I got a kick out of it. The text has a few breaks as if ChatGPT was starting a new section, sort of arbitrarily or randomly, so I indicated some of those by dingbats.

(Interesting question: who has the copyright in this text? Open AI? No one? My guess is: no one (like the monkey (macaque) selfies), or maybe me, to the extent it’s a derivative work.)

What is libertarianism?

What does it mean to be a libertarian? What constitutes the essence of libertarian thought? Although there are disagreements within the movement on specific issues, and even on fundamental philosophical questions (such as anarcho-capitalism vs. minarchism), there is a kind of common core, a consensus, that defines the libertarian spirit. And that core is composed of a belief in individual rights—especially property rights—and in the illegitimacy of aggression.

To put it in its most basic terms, libertarianism is a political philosophy centered on the idea that every person is his or her own master and that the use of physical force against others is permissible only in self-defense. This basic ethic—the nonaggression principle—serves as the basis for deriving property rights over external resources: those that were first appropriated, acquired by contract, or voluntarily exchanged. This is not an arbitrary rule, but a normative conclusion derived from respect for self-ownership and social peace. [continue reading…]

As I’ve recounted in various biographical pieces, ¹ in college (LSU) I dabbled in writing letters to the editor to local newspapers and the student newspaper, and then columns for the LSU Daily Reveille as well The Wonderland Times, an underground student newspaper published briefly around that time. ²

As I mentioned in The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory:

When I was younger I was interested both in STEM topics as well as philosophy, but had almost no views on political or economic topics. I was basically tabula rasa. Reading Ayn Rand in high school catapulted me into deeper interest in philosophy, political theory, economics. I ended up going to LSU and studying electrical engineering (started in 1983), but I was also devouring this other kind of material “on the side.” I started getting the itch to have conversations or interactions on these topics with others, but it was hard to find anyone to talk about them with. Frustrating. You can’t find engineering students who care about this stuff. And there was no Internet back then. This itch is probably one reason I eventually gravitated towards law school. I gradually realized I would not be satisfied being a practicing engineer. I liked using normative and verbal and legal type reasoning and argumentation too much, plus the scholarship opportunities a law career can offer. I liked writing. Engineering would not have suited me—it would have been too stultifying and boring. [continue reading…]

1. See The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory, Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (2025) and others here. [↩]
2. See The LSU student press: an annotated bibliography (part 3); Streakers, R-rated movies and chickens: A century of shenanigans in the LSU student press. [↩]

[From my Webnote series]

Not yet organized—

• A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders, LewRockwell.com, September 1, 2005
• I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders
• Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan
• Reply to Neverfox on immigration: “Whatever Mileage We Put On, We’ll Take Off”
• Boudreaux on Hoppe on Immigration
• Transcript: “Liberty Forum Debate vs. Daniel Garza: Immigration Reform: Open Borders or Build the Wall?“, by Stephan Kinsella, Daniel Garza, and Jeremy Kaufman, New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Manchester, NH (Feb. 7, 2019) [KOL258]
• Kinsella on Anarchy Time Discussing Immigration
• Discussion with Bieser on Immigration

In response to this LewRockwell.com blog post, Immigration Idea (2; about selling citizenship, and No Treason’s Chattering Punks), and Hoppe’s article on immigration, these threads sprang up (my reply: Palmer on Hoppe, Hoppe on Coase, and Re: Palmer on Hoppe):

• Stephan Kinsella Ought To Shut His Stupid Cake Hole (No Treason)
• Yet Another Problem With Hoppe’s Immigration Column (No Treason)
• Hoppe: “The best one may hope for…” (no-treason)
• Heroic market anarchist takes on market anarchist (Anti-State.com)
• Gary North, Lew Rockwell, and the Politics of Stoning Heretics and Homosexuals to Death (Tom Palmer)
• An Immigration Policy that Would Exclude Its Author (Tom Palmer)

• immigration (15) posts
• Immigration Threads and Posts

Tweets

https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434617199570964484

No trolling. I mean: I have said "I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders"–pretty explicit, no? Just b/c I think Raico and Hoppe make arguments worth pondering doesn't mean I am closed borders. Some of us are tolerant enough to hear differing views https://t.co/gZvXS5lzd1 /1

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 5, 2021

https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434618580667092994

favor immigrants over citizens (forced integration). This is why Hoppe's approach is radical decentralization tending towards anarchy so that both problems evaporate; or in the meantime, a policy that wd reduce forced exclusion by permitting immigrants who have an invitation. /5

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 5, 2021

https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1770500516298068282

In the meantime we can recognize that in the current US system, immigration policy will violate rights in two ways: forced exclusion (for people who want to invite outsiders but are prevented) and forced integration (because of state roads, antidiscrimination law, welfare, voting…

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) March 20, 2024

https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434599843926847492

I think in our current system, imposing stricter immigration controls violates rights (what Hoppe calls forced exclusion) and opening the borders violates rights (forced integration). In the US system, I tend to think we should increase the number of legal immigration.

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 5, 2021

https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1379588048531427338

Hoppe is for anarchy in which there would be no INS etc. He simply points out that with a welfare democracy, there are costs to whatever immigration policy is adopted: either forced exclusion, or forced integration. Both are costs imposed by the state's existence.

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 7, 2021

From a twitter post. Kinsella on fie-ya.

This is why I use conflictability (or rivalrousness) instead of scarcity, ¹ since the latter term is ambiguous and has different connotations. In common usage it just means lack of abundance. In terms of praxeology and property rights it means the opposite of…

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 19, 2025

*** [continue reading…]

1. On Conflictability and Conflictable Resources [↩]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (10.8MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 460.

I mean the title says it all. I kept getting interrupted by calls and deliveries. Oh well, what you gonna do.

[continue reading…]

George Reisman

I’ve long been a great admirer of Objectivist economist George Reisman, author of the towering Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996). I devoured his book The Government Against the Economy (1979) and other writing in college and have listened to many of his lectures and courses.

I think the first time I met George was when I presented “The Legitimacy of Intellectual Property,” which later became Against Intellectual Property, at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn, Alabama, on March 25, 2000. I believe he had recently split with the Ayn Rand Institute, and had reunited with his old friend Ralph Raico at the Mises Institute event. George was standing in the back of the room during my lecture and his questions to me indicated he was a bit stunned at my argument.

In any case, he had long offered for sale a 10-CD lecture set, “Reisman’s Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism.” I suggested he might want to put them online so people could more easily access them. His own website, capitalism.net, was in disrepair and there was no immediately obvious way to remedy this, so I volunteered to organize the material and host it on my site, and upload it to Youtube, which I did: George Reisman’s Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism.

Jeffrey Tucker and I have warned libertarians for years that their work could be lost because of copyright and standard publishing models and paywalls which can make it hard for people to access the work, or to republish or reuse it after they are gone. ¹

I discussed this with George and he has decided to free all his work, to which he holds copyright, upon his death, by means of a CC-BY 4.0 dedication and license grant, which he gave me permission to post here (pdf).

1. See How long copyright terms make art disappear; First Amendment Defense Act of 2021; Remembering Tibor Machan, Libertarian Mentor and Friend: Reflections on a Giant, Authors: Don’t Make the Buddy Holly Mistake, On Leading by Example and the Power of Attraction (Open Source Publishing, Creative Commons, Public Pomain Publishing), and Do Business Without Intellectual Property (Liberty.me, 2014); also Jeffrey A. Tucker, Authors: Beware of Copyright (also on LewRockwell.com and in his Bourbon for Breakfast) (Along with related chapters: “”If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?”, “Is Intellectual Property the Key to Success?”, “Books, Online and Off,” and “Mises.org in the Context of Publishing History”). [↩]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (52.1MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 459.

In response to lots of froth on Twitter related to Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law,” which was echoed by Elon Musk (Musk and Dorsey: “delete all IP law”) I decided to attempt to host an impromptu Twitter Spaces about this. After overcoming some technical glitches, here is the result (and thanks to @Brunopbch, @NotGovernor (Patrick Smith), and @TrueAmPatriot86 for assists). I proposed to the space: “Fielding Questions About Abolishing Intellectual Property, about IP, and About Libertarian Property Rights”, and that’s basically what we ended up talking about. The Twitter spaces can be viewed here; I have clipped off the first 8 minutes or so of setup talk for this podcast episode.

Grok summaries and shownotes and Youtube Transcript below. [continue reading…]