I did look into Zionism a little bit when researching my controversial 2001 LewRockwell.com article “New Israel: A Win-Win-Win Proposal.” 3 But as a general matter, my eyes have always glazed over at people going on about “Zionism,” things such as “postmillennial pietism,” “eschatology,” and so on. My mind always preferred hard sciences, philosophy, and seems to be annoyed by all this fluffy, weird, silly religious, mystical and slippery type talk. (See my Appendix below.)
This is no doubt my personal defect; we can’t all do everything and I prefer to stick to what I know and am good at and interested in, to avoid falling prey to Rothbard’s Law: “People tend to specialize in what they’re worst at.” 4
In any case, the Zionist stuff is just not my area, not my interest, and certainly not my strength. This is an issue I mostly listen to others on. I don’t pipe up. I’m fine with letting others have passionate views on this and staying mostly out of it. Division of intellectual labor and all that. (I wish ignoramuses with an opinion about IP would have the same hesitation. As Rothbard said, “It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”) 5[continue reading…]
Murray N. Rothbard, “Anarcho-Communism,” in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, R.A. Childs, Jr., ed., 2d. ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2000), p. 202, originally published in Libertarian Forum, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1, 1970), in The Complete Libertarian Forum, Murray N. Rothbard, ed., Volume 1: 1969–1975 (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2006). [↩]
I regard you as an expert in libertarian legal theory and I gladly follow your work as it has helped me get a better understanding of liberty.
This document is an attempt at refuting the Non-aggression principle that was sent in a forum I am a part of. This is not my writing, so I don’t claim any grammatical errors. I have read it and I think it doesn’t really hold up, but I would be very thankful for your insights. If you would be so kind as to review it and give me your thoughts on it, it would help me examine if my thought process of thinking was correct.
Thank you in advance and kindest regards.
In liberty,
In this rejoinder, we return to the question of the ownership status of public property by criticizing Dominiak, Israel, and Fegley (2025). According to these authors, the public domain is legitimately owned collectively by domestic taxpayers in virtue of the so-called accession principle. The present paper demonstrates that the use Dominiak, Israel, and Fegley make of the accession principle is untenable since it (a) runs counter to the very purpose of introducing accession to libertarian theory as another mode of title acquisition, and (b) predicts conflict-generating property claims. We also argue that even if the approach under criticism were correct, it would fail to offer what DIF believe it does: a non-ideal theory comprising policy recommendations for politicians in power. In addition, the paper challenges the second pillar of the approach of these three scholars: their ideas for public property management. As we show, those nostrums are at odds with some elementary insights of Austrian economics.
Pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers all seem to be going apeshit about this, from various angles. I’m no expert, I don’t follow all this nonsense closely, I’m just a caveman lawyer.
Faith Seeking Freedom: Libertarian Christian Answers to Tough Questions (Libertarian Christian Institute Press, 1010; Amazon) is an important book written several of my Christian libertarian friends. 1 All four of the authors are intelligent, well-read, articulate, and principled libertarians. As my endorsement my notes:
Achieving liberty will require enlightening our fellow men about its eternal truths. The contributors to this volume, Christians who are also principled and articulate libertarians, argue for a more libertarian interpretation of Christian teachings, and seek to explain to fellow Christians and other people of faith the glory and morality of liberty in terms they will already relate to. Liberty is ultimately about peace, love, and cooperation, which is a message that can appeal to the 2.4 billion Christians on the planet. This is a big potential audience. This is an important book and undertaking.
A second, expanded edition is forthcoming. I look forward to it. My blurb:
Achieving liberty will require enlightening our fellow men about its eternal truths. Building on the success of the first edition, this updated and expanded second edition of Faith Seeking Freedom features additional authors and new insights from Christians who are also principled and articulate libertarians. They argue for a more libertarian interpretation of Christian teachings, explaining to fellow Christians and other people of faith the glory and morality of liberty in relatable terms. While remaining accessible and not overburdened with scholarly jargon, it still manages to show that libertarian principles are supported by Biblical teachings—such as the explanation, in Sections 12, 14, and 15, of the connection between the libertarian principles of non-aggression, self-ownership, homesteading, and production, on the one hand, and the Biblical teachings about treatment of neighbors, stewardship of the gifts God has bestowed, and the admonition to be productive—to “be fruitful and multiply”—on the other. These insights and principles support and complement each other.
Liberty is ultimately about peace, love, and cooperation—a message that can appeal to the billions of Christians worldwide. This remains a big potential audience, and this enhanced book is an even more important undertaking. In addition, while the book is aimed at Christians, its linkage of principles of freedom to deeper moral truths is valuable to nonreligious libertarians as well. Liberty is not an isolated value; connecting related but different areas of thought is important. I am delighted that this book exists.
Stephan Kinsella joins the Bitcoin Infinity Show to talk about why praxeology is the hardest science in economics, how Austrian theory explains Bitcoin’s unique monetary properties, and whether you can truly own a Bitcoin or merely act as if you do. The conversation covers the foundations of property rights and natural law, the subjective nature of fungibility, and what a hyperbitcoinized future might actually look like. Kinsella and Knut also explore why intellectual property restrictions threaten the very knowledge accumulation that makes humanity richer over time.
I delivered the following lecture yesterday: “The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property,” Loyola Economics Club and Louisiana Mu chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, Loyola University—New Orleans, Miller Hall (12:30 pm–1:45 pm, Feb. 24, 2026). Hosts were the aforementioned Econ club and econ honor society, as well as Walter Block and Leo Krasnozhon. 1 Audio for the Q&A portion was poor due to some technical mishaps, but has been boosted as much as possible.
Slides streamed below. Pictures, transcript and shownotes below.
I love law reviews. In law school I aced grades the first semester so thought I was a shoo-in, but then I started relaxing, figuring hey, law school is easier than I thought, so I started slacking, playing too much Robotron (I even rented a Robotron arcade game for a few months to get it out of my system), 1 grades fell and I missed the law review cutoff. I tried to write on and thought I was a shoo-in because my paper was ossum, but… no go. Anyway, jokes on them because I’ve now published in many law reviews now (as well as books), not only libertarian topics, but also purely legal topics. 2 Anyway they just fascinate me. 3 I even love footnotes. 4[continue reading…]
For a while I toyed with the idea of writing corrections of Supreme Court opinions which are often wrong and, even when the results are right (e.g. A Libertarian Defense of Kelo and Limited Federal Power), the reasoning is typically often still confused, muddled, statist, legal-positivist, anti-decentralist (anti-antifederalist), and economically illiterate (other than that, it’s just fine). I would play Shadow Justice. Great use of my time. See, e.g., my short-lived blog The Shadow Justice which I discontinued because I was lazy too busy.
Anyway in a recent case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Feb. 2o, 2026), 1 the Supremes struck down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, holding that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. (I also thought Roberts was basically right to conclude that Obamacare’s mandatory fees are permissible, by characterizing them as a “tax.” Unfortunately.) [continue reading…]
“What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Humans act in incredibly stupid, as well as incredibly clever ways. Trade and production coexists alongside murder and rape. The application of deductive reasoning to actions such as trade and production (“praxeology“) gives us interesting insights into economics. We can deduce trade to be mutually beneficial and artificially low interest rates to cause an unsustainable economic boom. However to apply praxeology only to trade and production, as if they were the sum total of human activity, would be somewhat of an understatement. Us humans know some other tricks.
As mentioned in Robert Pascal, R.I.P., after law school I became friends with retired Professor Emeritus Robert Pascal, a famous law professor at LSU that I never met until after I graduated (likewise, I also became friends and correspondent with LSU Law professor Saúl Litvinoff after graduation). 1 We had a good deal of correspondence in the 1990s and even after, when I was an attorney in Houston and then Philadelphia, and would meet on occasion at his home in Baton Rouge when I would return home for visits. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 102.
Much of his correspondence with me was elegantly hand-written. It spanned from 1993 to 2011, and I have at least 75 pages worth. I may post it some day after reviewing it more closely, even though some of my youthful enthusiasm and desperation to find anyone intelligent to converse with is a bit embarrassing now (this was before the Internet starting making it easier to discourse with remote people in our Phyles). 2
But as I mention him in Herman, The Louisiana Civil Code: A European Legacy for the United States, I’ll post below some selected text from two of our interchanges in 1993–1994, concerning, in part, the “Tournament of Scholars” between Pascal and Batiza. As was clear in our first discussion, Pascal was a leftist and what he called a “catholic communist,” small-c catholic, he emphasized. But he was smart and courtly and decent and I really liked and admired him. [continue reading…]
Phyles; se my note here: Re phyles, I am reminded of the idea behind “flag theory” discussed in Emile Phaneuf III and Rahim Taghizadegan, “Jurisdiction Shopping: The Forgotten Logic Behind Flag Theory,” The Daily Economy (February 2, 2026): “Harry Schultz, who coined the term “flag theory,” framed his thinking in an explicitly Austrian register, crediting Friedrich Hayek as his main economic inspiration and frequently citing Ludwig von Mises and Mises’s American student Hans Sennholz. The same pattern appears among other popularizers of international diversification such as Jerome Tuccille and WG Hill. In other words, the “flags” idea did not arise in a vacuum. It grew naturally from a worldview that treats institutions as constraints to compare, compete, and, when necessary, exit.” [↩]
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