[From my Webnote series]

See also, on reasons law cannot be fully deduced:

• On the Core Principles of Libertarian Property Rights (this post)
• The Essence of Libertarianism? “Finders Keepers,” “Better Title,” and Other Possibilities
• The Universal Principles of Liberty
• Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform
• Legal Foundations of a Free Society, p. 372 n.42
• Article 3653 of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure
• On Pushing the Button–the problem with magic
• The Limits of Armchair Theorizing: The case of Threats
• Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases
• Libertarian Answer Man: Corporations, Trusts, HOAs, and Private Law Codes in a Private Law Society
• KOL359 | State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PFS 2021)
• KOL345 | Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PorcFest 2021)

same reason esperanto failed. Or as Holmes said, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience”

More seriosly, for the same reason most hypos are not answerable–because not enough context. https://t.co/NaXh7F8GDO https://t.co/wVzBgzjNpL . to decide a dispute…

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) June 26, 2025

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 11:

Those types of arguments and reasons are not justifications. There has to be an objective best link.^[15] So how does that work out? In Western private law and in libertarianism, which is a far more consistent working out of this, there are basically two types of links—the type of link applied to your body, which is a unique scarce resource; and the type of link applied to external resources in the world, which were previously unowned scarce resources. For the body, the link is a self-ownership link. You own your body, and the reason is because of your direct control over it, which I will get to in a minute.

And then for scarce resources in the world, they’re always owned first by someone first using them from their unowned state. That’s called homesteading or original appropriation. And then ownership can be transferred for two reasons: contractually—that’s a voluntary transfer of your ownership title of the resource to someone else, either by sale or by gift; or for purposes of rectification, which can be seen as a subset of contract because it’s also a transfer of title from an owner to someone, but it’s because the owner committed a tort against the victim and thus gave him a right to recover some of the aggressor’s property as damages. ¹

So original appropriation, contract, and rectification are basically the only three principles to determine ownership of external resources in case of a dispute. So these four principles—body-ownership due to direct control, with an exception made for forfeiture of this right due to committing aggression,^[16] plus the three principles for external resources—are how we determine the best link, and this is the core of all property rights, and of all just law. A developed body of private law, to be just, has to be based on these core principles, and just entails working out the details as the law develops.^[17] And every socialist system, and every law not based on these core principles, including IP law, always ends up deviating from these core private property law principles in one way or another.

^[15] See “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4).

^[16] See “Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith” (ch. 10) and note 18, below. See also the Libertarian Party Platform language quoted in note 27, below.

^[17] See “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society” (ch. 13), in general, and “Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law” (ch. 19), the section “Abstract Rights and Legal Precepts.” See also Hoppe’s pithy summary of these basic rules, in “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013; https://www.hanshoppe.com/2014/10/a-realistic-libertarianism/) and in “Of Common, Public, and Private Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization,” at pp. 85–87, and the LP Platform language mentioned in note 27, below. As Hoppe writes in “A Realistic Libertarianism”:

But who owns what scarce resource as his private property and who does not? First: Each person owns his physical body that only he and no one else controls directly (I can control your body only in-directly, by first directly controlling my body, and vice versa) and that only he directly controls also in particular when discussing and arguing the question at hand.… [A]s for scarce resources that can be controlled only indirectly (that must be appropriated with our own nature-given, i.e., un-appropriated, body): Exclusive control (property) is acquired by and assigned to that person, who appropriated the resource in question first or who acquired it through voluntary (conflict-free) exchange from its previous owner. For only the first appropriator of a resource (and all later owners connected to him through a chain of voluntary exchanges) can possibly acquire and gain control over it without conflict, i.e., peacefully.

For elaboration of the basis for the property acquisition rules, see Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), n. [42] and accompanying text, including references such as: Kinsella, “How To Think About Property,” StephanKinsella.com (April 25, 2021); Kinsella, “The Limits of Libertarianism?: A Dissenting View” (citing Roderick Long and Robert Nozick); also idem, “KOL345 | Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PorcFest 2021),” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (June 26, 2021); and “Nobody Owns Bitcoin,” StephanKinsella.com (April 21, 2021). See also Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge, 2012), at ch. 2.E, pp. 64–65 , et seq., elaborating on the “baseline possessory rules” corresponding to original appropriation and contractual title transfer.

See also Gary Chartier, “Intellectual Property and Natural Law”; The Essence of Libertarianism? “Finders Keepers,” “Better Title,” and Other Possibilities

Update: Simon Guenzl, “Public Property and the Libertarian Immigration Debate,” Libertarian Papers, 8(1) (2016): 153–177, at p. 165 & n.15, writes:

Pursuant to Rothbardian philosophy, property can only come to be justly owned in one of three ways.

First, someone can homestead previously unowned property using legitimate means. Here, the individuals who compose the state cannot be held to have properly homesteaded state-claimed land because they used illegitimate means (at a minimum, stolen income) and the taxpayers have not performed any homesteading acts of their own.

Second, a person can receive property through consensual transfer from a prior legitimate owner (such as through a gift or purchase). In this case, neither individuals within the state nor the taxpayers received the state-claimed land from a prior legitimate owner, because there was none.

Third, a victim may exercise remedial claims, by force if necessary, to an aggressor’s legitimately-owned property. Here, the aggressors (individuals within the state) do not legitimately own the state-claimed land, and thus the victims’ (the taxpayers’) rights cannot extend to such property (nor can the aggressors offer the victims such property or any benefits arising from it in lieu of other enforcement action).¹⁵

^15. This method of acquiring legitimate ownership of property is not commonly articulated as the third limb of Rothbardian property rights theory, except perhaps by Kinsella (for instance, Kinsella [2014]). This may be because Kinsella has written extensively on both property rights and punishment, and thus has been able to integrate the two fields. Note that the libertarian literature characterizes remedial rights in various ways. See for instance, Randy Barnett (1977), Roger Pilon (1978), Kinsella (1997; 1998-99), and Rothbard (2002, chapter 13). In all cases, however, the literature is clear that the victim’s enforcement rights are against only the aggressor’s legitimate property (or person). Note also that the reason these remedial rights can be characterized as a third means of acquiring legitimate title to property is because, unlike homesteading and consensual transfer, this method relies on force—the aggressor would not normally yield his property rights absent the threat of force from the victim—with the distinction being that such force in response to initiated aggression is justified.

It is true that most libertarian commentators are not explicit about this “third limb,” and in recent years I have been explicit about this. But this insight is not original to me. For example:

Nozick:

The subject of justice in holdings consists of three major topics. The first is the original acquisition of holdings, the appropriation of unheld things. This includes the issues of how unheld things may come to be held, the process, or processes, by which unheld things may come to be held, the things that may come to be held by these processes, the extent of what comes to be held by a particular process, and so on. We shall refer to the complicated truth about this topic, which we shall not formulate here, as the principle of justice in acquisition. The second topic concerns the transfer of holdings from one person to another. By what processes may a person transfer holdings to another? How may a person acquire a holding from another who holds it? Under this topic come general descriptions of voluntary exchange, and gift and (on the other hand) fraud, as well as reference to particular conventional details fixed upon in a given society.

… If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings.

1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.

… Not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the two principles of justice in holdings: the principle of justice in acquisition and the principle of justice in transfer. Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another. And some persons acquire holdings by means not sanctioned by the principle of justice in acquisition. The existence of past injustice (previous violations of the first two principles of justice in holdings) raises the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice in holdings. If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify these injustices? What obligations do the performers of injustice have toward those whose position is worse than it would have been had the injustice not been done? Or, than it would have been had compensation been paid promptly? How, if at all, do things change if the beneficiaries and those made worse off are not the direct parties in the act of injustice, but, for example, their descendants? Is an injustice done to someone whose holding was itself based upon an unrectified injustice? How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustices? What may victims of injustice permissibly do in order to rectify the injustices being done to them, including the many injustices done by persons acting through their government? I do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of such issues.² Idealizing greatly, let us suppose theoretical investigation will produce a principle of rectification. This principle uses historical information about previous situations and injustices done in them (as defined by the first two principles of justice and rights against interference), and information about the actual course of events that flowed from these injustices, until the present, and it yields a description (or descriptions) of holdings in the society. The principle of rectification presumably will make use of its best estimate of subjunctive information about what would have occurred (or a probability distribution over what might have occurred, using the expected value) if the injustice had not taken place. If the actual description of holdings turns out not to be one of the descriptions yielded by the principle, then one of the descriptions yielded must be realized.^*

^2. See, however, the useful book by Boris Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (New York: Random House, 1973).

^* If the principle of rectification of violations of the first two principles yields more than one description of holdings, then some choice must be made as to which of these is to be realized. Perhaps the sort of considerations about distributive justice and equality that I argue against play a legitimate role in this subsidiary choice. Similarly, there may be room for such considerations in deciding which otherwise arbitrary features a statute will embody, when such features are unavoidable because other considerations do not specify a precise line; yet a line must be drawn. ²

Roderick Long (citing Nozick): Libertarian property rights are, famously, governed by principles of justice in initial appropriation (mixing one’s labour with previously unowned resources), justice in transfer (mutual consent), and justice in rectification (say, restitution plus damages). ³

Gary Chartier also elaborates on the “baseline possessory rules” corresponding to original appropriation and contractual title transfer. ⁴ In a separate section he argues in favor of restitution in the case of injuries resulting from aggression. ⁵

***

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 9:

“In other chapters I argued that rights in our bodies stem from the fact of our direct control of our bodies, drawing on Hoppe’s arguments, while property rights in external, previously unowned resources arise from original appropriation or title transfer from a previous owner by contract or for purposes of rectification.51

51. See “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4) and “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce” (ch. 18). See also Hoppe’s pithy summary of these basic rules, in “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013; https://www.hanshoppe.com/2014/10/a-realistic-libertarianism/) and in idem, “Of Common, Public, and Private Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization,” pp. 85–87.”

The Problem with Intellectual Property, Part II.C:

The purpose of property rights is to support actors in the pursuit of their goals by enabling them to employ resources, including their own bodies, free of physical conflict and interference from other actors. Property rights are inherently practical. For this reason legal systems and their corresponding property rights from time immemorial have always exhibited certain core features in the private law, to one degree or another: self-ownership, original appropriation, contractual transfer, and transfers for rectification.

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 2:

“The libertarian view is that individual rights—property rights—are assigned according to a few simple principles: self-ownership, in the case of human bodies; and, in the case of previously-unowned external things (conflictable resources), in accordance with principles of original appropriation, contractual title transfer, and rectification.11”

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 4:

“FIRST USE AND HOMESTEADING OF UNOWNED RESOURCES”,

ch. 4:

“The libertarian view is that individual rights—property rights—are assigned according to a few simple principles: self-ownership, in the case of human bodies; and, in the case of previously-unowned external things (conflictable resources), in accordance with principles of original appropriation, contractual title transfer, and rectification.”

note 11:

also

“ “KOL259 | ‘How To Think About Property,’ New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (Feb. 9, 2019).”

“Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform,” StephanKinsella.com (May 30, 2022);”

1. The term “solatium,” “compensation for emotional rather than physical or financial harm,” is sometimes used as a synonym for or in connection with restitution or rectification, and in connection with eminent domain takings. Scotland: Damages Act, §4(3)(B): “The sums of damages are–– (a) such sum as will compensate for any loss of support which as a result of the act or omission is sustained, or is likely to be sustained, by the relative after the date of A’s death together with any reasonable expenses incurred by the relative in connection with A’s funeral, and (b)such sum, if any, as the court thinks just by way of compensation for all or any of the following–– (i) distress and anxiety endured by the relative in contemplation of the suffering of A before A’s death, (ii)grief and sorrow of the relative caused by A’s death, (iii)the loss of such non-patrimonial benefit as the relative might have been expected to derive from A’s society and guidance if A had not died.” Explanatory notes: “These damages are in addition to the damages that a victim is entitled to claim under the general principles of the common law of delict or under statute for solatium, that is damages for the pain and suffering that the victim endures as a result of the injuries, and for patrimonial loss that such a victim has suffered or is likely to suffer in the period up to the expected date of death.” South Africa: “a solatium is “[a]n award for non-financial deprivation, irrespective of what form it takes”. Outside the context of restitution, an award of a solatium is similarly defined as an award for sentimental damages that is “intended to neutralise the wounded feelings of the plaintiff of having to suffer a wrongful act.” Florence v Government of the Republic of South Africa [2014] ZACC 22, n.8; see also Shah and Others v Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform and Others (LCC93/2014) [2024] ZALCC 41 (6 December 2024), p.9: “Solatium is compensation awarded for injury to the feelings.” Re eminent domain takings: India: SC Upholds Retrospective Application of 2019 Ruling on Solatium; Umamaheswari and Latha, “Doctrine of Eminent Domain in India,” International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics 120, no. 5 (2018): 1771–1780. [↩]
2.  Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), ch. 7, §1, pp. 150–153. [↩]
3. See my post The Limits of Libertarianism?: A Dissenting View; Long, Why Libertarians Believe There is Only One Right. [↩]
4. Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge, 2012), at ch. 2.E, pp. 64–65, et seq. [↩]
5. Ibid., ch. 5.I, 5.C.1, 5.C.2, pp. 263, 265, 266 et seq. [↩]

Against Intellectual Property has been translated into Farsi (Persian):  کینسلا، استفن (۱۴۰۱). علیه مالکیت فکری. ترجمه محمد جوادی. تهران:‌ نشر آماره. ۱۸۸.

Trans. Mohammad (Amir) Javadi, Alayh-e Malekiat-e Fekri (Tehran: Amareh Press, 2022). (online) [continue reading…]

Interesting post by Jake Desyllas. See below.

Update: see also A Critique of Stephan Kinsella’s Approach To Rights Theory August 6, 2025. Quick comment: he criticizes my approach to rights in ch. 4 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society, but it’s not clear what he disagrees with in my conclusion. Does he thinks that we do not have rights at all, or that we never acquire them? I’d be curious to see where he thinks my motivated reasoning was wrong, or what about it is incorrect other than how I got there.

I think a case can be made for rights, that they have to do with our nature as rational agents, and so on. I was talking to libertarians who already accept humans (a) have rights, and that (b) they must have them for some reason, and thus, (c) they must arise at some point. If you want to deny humans have rights, that rights can be justified, or that aggression can be justified, or that we have right but never acquire them or that we have them for no reason at all…. okay, let’s see it. Have at it. It seems uncontroversial to me to ask when and why we have rights, taking for granted that normal adult humans do have rights, when talking to people who already agree that adult humans have rights. But I obviously do not object to arguments about why rational adult human actors have rights, as I argue elsewhere (e.g. ch. 5, 6, etc. of Legal Foundations of a Free Society).

I do not know what he means that rights are inherent. Inherent in what? In being human? What about other forms of intelligent life? See:

• • KOL443 | Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach (PFS 2024)
  • Block, “Does Trespassing Require Human Action? Rejoinder to Kinsella and Armoutidis an Evictionism”
  • KOL465: Sheldon Richman on Corporations, Limited Liability, Price Controls, Thickism, Abortion, Pipes

h/t John Riganti

Dear Mr. Kinsella:

[continue reading…]

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 435.

I was interviewed by Daniel Morena Vitón and Luis Abram for a Spanish libertarian podcast, as he initially told me: “The interview is about some legal questions of libertarianism, for a new libertarian association in Spain founded by Jesús Huerta de Soto, the ‘Austrian Libertarian Association.'” I believe there were technical problems with the recording of the first question or two, so I was asked to repeat my answer near the end; sure how they ended stitching this together or editing this.

From their shownotes (Google autotranslate):

Stephan Kinsella will give the keys regarding various topics from intellectual issues that concern libertarianism such as intellectual property and the challenges that it entails, as well as more current topics such as libertarians in politics or the current libertarian parties that the political landscape houses.

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:49:38 — 100.4MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 434.

My appearance on The Rational Egoist: Exploring The Objectivist Ethics with Stephan Kinsella. (Spotify)

[continue reading…]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (46.0MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 433.

This is my appearance on The Big Questions with Big John. From his shownotes:

Libertarian Stephan Kinsella shares his background as an engineer turned lawyer. A conversation on IP rights delves into arguments against patents & copyrights.

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (77.7MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 432.

My appearance on Adam Haman’s podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack), episode 27. I have previously argued against “school choice” (KOL419 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Corey Deangelis: School Choice). Adam wrote an article promoting school choice and I objected to it. He invited me to come back on his show to discuss and I did and, well, he kinda sorta changed my mind, or at least softened my opposition.

I love these kind of real conversations when people actually listen to each other with the shared goal of promoting liberty and reaching the truth, and with no ego or other investments involved that could prevent you from seeing reason or truth or the other guy’s position and even being willing to change your mind. And I like when I lose! I mean it rarely happens, but I like it–it means I learned something. Which is also increasingly rare. Enjoy!

[continue reading…]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:26 — 37.0MB)

Stephan Kinsella, “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Œuvre,” in Walter Block – Anarcho-Capitalist Austro-Libertarian, Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds. (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, 2025). Book Introduction; contents; sample.

The somewhat clumsy Abstract:

Some of the essays acknowledge what Walter Block regards as hiscontributions to the promotion of Austrian economics and the libertarianpolitical economic philosophy, while others go further, far more so, and pushout the boundaries of what we know about these two disciplines. Topicscovered by this Festschrift include: labor economics, the philosophy of freeenterprise, environmentalism and economic freedom, business ethics, privateproperty rights, tax evasion, free market transportation, radicallibertarianism, constitutional economics, libertarian punishment theory,corporate governance mechanisms, etc.

Text below; pdf. Audio: KOL482 | A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre: Audio. The book also contains Leo Krasnozhon, “Walter Block on Externality, Public Goods, and Voluntary Government“ (pp. 391–399). My friends Doug French and Jacob Huebert told me they had submitted chapters, but for some reason they are not in the book. Walter did not know why but indicated they could perhaps be put into a second volume. (Doug’s was eventually published as “Entrepreneurship Can’t Be Taught in a College Classroom,” Mises Wire (June 21, 2025), and then included in Doug’s book When Movements Become Rackets and Other Swindles: The PFS Trilogy; Huebert’s is “Walter Block, Fearless Inspiration.”)

Update: Dominiak, Łukasz, and Igor Wysocki, “Libertarianism and the Paradox of Blackmail,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 29 (2) (2026): 138–58

This piece has a somewhat convoluted publication history. In brief: I was invited to contribute to this volume in early 2023 and submitted a piece on defamation. It was longer than the maximum length but Walter was fine with it. As the project was taking a while (the working title was at the time A Passion for Justice: Essays in Honor of Walter Block), it occurred to me that I could write a sampler/overview of Walter’s work. I knew it was unorthodox to include two pieces by the same author in such a book, but there were other non-standard things about this project so I figured what the hell—maybe they could use it as an introductory type chapter. Walter approved this too. So I wrote “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre.”

Months later, Walter wrote me complaining that I had two chapters in his book, and each one was twice as long as the maximum word count, even though he had explicitly approved all this. Probably he had forgotten. Absent-minded professor syndrome. So I withdrew the defamation chapter since the Tour chapter was specific to Walter and not suitable for publication elsewhere. The defamation piece because “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property,” in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024).

Subsequently there arose controversy over Walter’s views on Israel-Gaza as well as his views on Covid (and, later, Milei). I felt my “tour” article was incomplete without mentioning the Israel and Covid controversies and my disagreements with Walter on these issues; yet I also felt it was inappropriate to include such critical commentary in a Festschrift honoring the subject. Plus, Walter had already complained about its length. So I withdrew this piece as well and just published it here.

Some time later Walter absent-mindedly asked me if he could use my piece after all. Since I had published the draft paper under a CC0 license, I explained that my permission was not needed for republication or reuse, and so the editors decided to include it after all.

Notes and Errata

This article is not a comprehensive overview of all of Walter’s publications, and does not include mention or criticism of his pro-covid lockdown writing ¹, his more recent Israel-Gaza related publications, ² or his pro-Milei views. ³ As noted above, this is one reason I had withdrawn this piece from the volume, as I agree with Tucker (and Hoppe) on the covid/infectious disease lockdown issue, with Hoppe on Israel-Gaza issues, and also with Hoppe on Milei issues.

Some additional updates, notes, and non-errata:

See: Collectively Homesteaded Easements and the Enclosure Movement

See also Block on Defamation (criticizing a recent piece by Walter arguing for expansion of defamation law).

In this piece I forgot to mention Walter’s defense of suing some parties under defamation law, even though in principle he is against it: see Walter Block Defends His Libel Suit Against The New York Times; A Libertarian Analysis of Suing for Libel (“How … can I justify suing the New York Times for libel? It is simple. The libertarian case against suing for libel applies only to innocent people, and this newspaper does not at all qualify. Rather, this organization is a member in good standing of the ruling class, and all bets are off for criminals of that ilk.”); and Randy Barnett, “What’s Next for Libertarianism?”

One other update: re my mention of his “two teeth for a tooth” rule: I criticize it in KOL020 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society: Lecture 3: Applications I: Legal Systems, Contract, Fraud” (Mises Academy, 2011):

And then there’s caveat emptor, which is the buyer beware. Was he defrauded, or did he—should he have known better? And then Walter Block and Murray Rothbard’s idea where they say, well, there should always be the two-teeth-for-a-teeth punishment rule. I mean I understand the sympathy there and the reasoning, but it seems to me a little mechanical and a little bit armchair. We can’t say it would be exactly two teeth for a tooth.

This is similar to some other criticisms I have made of Walter and also Rothbard for being too ad hoc. See, e.g., the section on “Incitement” below; Kinsella, “Causation and Aggression,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society, p. 182 et seq.; also in ch. 24.

Update: Libertarian Answer Man: On Restitution going Beyond Two Teeth for a Tooth.

On disagreement with Block over pacifism, as well as Israel, etc., see

• Kinsella, “Block on Israel, Self-Defense, Pacifism,” StephanKinsella.com (April 24, 2025)
• Kinsella, “Ammous vs. Block on Israel,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 29, 2024)
• Kinsella, “Van De Haar and Besada on Hayek, Mises, Rothbard on Zionism,” StephanKinsella.com (March 8, 2026)
• Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” HansHoppe.com (Jan. 31, 2024)

Re the “Incitement” section: see also “The Libertarian Case Against Punishing a ‘Conspiracy’” (2); as I commented there, “You set up the hypo but just announce the conclusion, as if it’s obvious, and present no argument.”

Also, on others who support voluntary slavery, e.g. Gerard Casey and Nozick, see KOL442 | Together Strong Debate vs. Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity). And Grotius; see Richman on Inalienable Rights.

Re abortion/evictionism: See Rothbard, Editor response to James Sadowsky, S.J., “Abortion and Rights of the Child,” Libertarian Forum, XI, no. 4 (July-Aug. 1978). Rothbard writes: “to correct a misunderstanding, while Walter Block and I agree on many things, we are not a monolith. In contrast to Walter, who agrees that the foetus is human, I simply made the assumption for the sake of argument, in order to grant the anti-abortionists their best case. In fact, if I had to “vote” on the issue, I would probably say that the foetus only acquires the status of human upon the act of birth. If so, then of course the foetus has no rights, and the thorny abortion question would be eliminated forever. It seems to me that the problem with the Block-Sadowsky thesis of asserting the foetus to be human is that that act of birth, which I had always naively assumed to be an event of considerable importance in everyone’s life, now takes on hardly more stature than the onset of adolescence or of one’s “mid-life crisis.” Does birth really confer no rights?”

Errata

N. 27 (n. 26 in the pdf version), the link to “Libertarianism, Positive Obligations and Property Abandonment: Children’s Rights” is now bad as Walter’s has lost the domain to his website. See instead https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1889454.

In n. 44 (n. 43, pdf), I should reference also Stephan Kinsella, “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract,” Papinian Press Working Paper #1 (Sep. 7, 2024).

Also, I could have mentioned my disagreement with Walter’s “Ragnar” example as I note in On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library.

Re McElroy and Hitler:

• Wendy McElroy, “Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler,” Liberty 9, no. 5 (May 1996): 46–47 (html)
• Libertarian Answer Man: Voting, for Libertarians
• See others collected at “I Don’t Vote,” Openly Voluntary
• Walter E. Block,”Voting: Rejoinder to Casey, McElroy, Ward, Pugsley, Konkin and Barnett,” Political Dialogues: Journal of Political Theory (2018): 23–38
• ——, “If You Have To Vote for a President,” LewRockwell.com (June 28, 2004)
• ——, Why “Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages Them” Isn’t Libertarian  Oct 22, 2025

❧

A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre

[draft]

Stephan Kinsella[*]

I dare say no single person has ever read all of Walter Block’s massive corpus of publications. There are just too many. Walter’s writing spans a large number of topics in Austrian economics and libertarianism as well as in other areas, published over a more than fifty year period. This includes innumerable popular articles, 32 or so books, and hundreds of scholarly journal articles. His first articles were published in 1969; his first piece in a refereed journal was published in 1971,[2] a year before he received his Ph.D. As Walter tells his friends, one of his goals is to publish 1,000 articles in refereed journals and law reviews,^[3] and by his count, he’s currently at about 700. So he is on track to meet his goal in about twelve years. He’s only 82 now, after all. [continue reading…]

1. See Walter Block, “Forced Vaccinations,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 4, 2013); see also Libertarianism and Compulsory Vaccinations and others listed here. And more recently, Walter Block, “A Libertarian Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” J. Libertarian Stud. 24 (2020): 206–37. Jeffrey Tucker criticized Walter for some of these views here; a few days later the same program had Walter on to defend his pro-Covid lockdown/mandate views he had expressed at the height of the pandemic lockdown period. Tucker also rightly called out Block for his illiberal and unlibertarian views on infectious diseases, including his bizarre defense of jailing “Typhoid Mary,” in The Downfall of the Gurus. See, e.g., Walter Block, “My Response to Jeffrey Tucker on COVID,” Epoch Times (Feb. 8, 2023; substack version); Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Downfall of the Gurus,” Epoch Times (Jan. 23, 2023); Block’s appearance online talking about the Typhoid Mary issue. And Walter Block, “Rejoinder to Slenzok on COVID,” J.Libertarian Stud. 25 (1) (2021): 264–68. [↩]
2. See Walter E. Block & Alan G. Futerman, “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas,” MEST Journal (2024) which is a response to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 31, 2024). See also David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya, “The Classical Liberal Case For Israel,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 2, 2024; Mises.org version) and Walter’s response, Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block, “Rejoinder to Gordon and Njoya on Israel and Libertarianism,” MESTE Journal (Position Paper) (2024). [↩]
3. On Milei, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “PFP280 | Special: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024),” Property and Freedom Podcast (Dec. 23, 2024); idem, “Resignation from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany,” HansHoppe.com (Aug. 18, 2025); idem, “PFP290 | Hoppe: Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian (AERC 2025),” Property and Freedom Podcast (March 23, 2025); idem, “A ‘Great Thinker’ at Work,” Power & Market (June 19, 2025); Kristoffer Mousten Hansen, “PFP306 | Kristoffer Mousten Hansen: Mileinomics (PFS 2025),” (Jan. 12, 2026).  See also, concerning Milei and the (non-)closure of Argentina’s central bank, Hoppe, “A ‘Great Thinker’ at Work,” and the recent interchange between Philipp Bagus and Jörg Guido Hülsmann, beginning with Philipp Bagus, “Credit Money, Pesos, Dollars and Argentina,” Power & Market (Oct. 20, 2025), first published, in German, as Philipp Bagus, “Kreditgeld, Pesos, Dollars und Argentinien,” Ludwig von Mises Institut Deutschland (Oct. 20, 2025). The Power & Market article contains links to others in the interchange.[↩]

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 431.

My appearance on The Rational Egoist: Exploring Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics with Stephan Kinsella. (Spotify)

[continue reading…]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:43 — 63.8MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 430.

This is my presentation, “An Insider’s Introduction to Austrian Economics,” Bastiat Society—Houston, American Institute for Economic Research, The Briar Club, Houston Texas (May 2, 2024). From their shownotes:

Join AIER’s Bastiat Society program in Houston for an event with Stephan Kinsella, libertarian writer and registered patent attorney in Houston.

Mr. Kinsella is both an internationally recognized scholar on libertarian legal theory and a former Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute. The Mises Institute’s purpose is to promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. In the foreword to Stephan’s most recent book, Legal Foundations of a Free Society, the great Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe said, “Henceforth, then, all essential studies in the philosophy of law and the field of legal theory will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Kinsella.” Stephan will be introducing Austrian economics that is in part shaped by the rare insights one can only get as a scholar and insider.

This is my first talk on a purely economic topic. I tried not to dumb it down but also not talk over people’s heads, but I only had 45 minutes. This is the recording I made on my iphone. [continue reading…]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (35.8MB)