by Stephan Kinsella
on February 15, 2024
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 424.
This is my appearance on Robert Breedlove’s What Is Money podcast (WiM430; Youtube channel; recorded Feb. 2, 2024; released Feb. 15, 2024). This one is independent of the “Stephan Kinsella Series” as it is about my own new book, instead of focusing on Hoppe’s work.
Episode Summary: Stephan Kinsella joins me to discuss his book, Legal Foundations of a Free Society. We talk about the concept of self-ownership, the classification of rights, the significance of contracts, and the state monopoly.
// OUTLINE //
00:00:00 – Coming up
00:00:21 – Intro
00:01:54 – Helping Lightning Startups with In Wolf’s Clothing
00:02:41 – Introducing Stephan Kinsella
00:03:39 – The Concept of Self-Ownership
00:07:45 – Classification of Rights
00:10:25 – Defining Liberty
00:13:18 – The Non-Aggression Axiom
00:16:23 – Understanding the Nuances of Intellectual Property Rights
00:22:14 – The Right to Exclude
00:26:00 – The Rules of Ownership
00:30:21 – Finding Objective Link to Prevent Conflict
00:33:22 – The Right to Self-Ownership
00:38:50 – Transformation of Libertinism
00:42:05 – Run Your Business from Anywhere with NetSuite
00:43:10 – Secure Your Bitcoin Stash with the iCoin Hardware Wallet
00:44:20 – The Right to Self-Defense
00:47:00 – Self-Ownership and Slavery
00:49:29 – Violation of Contracts
00:54:47 – Contract: Independent Title Transfer
00:56:51 – Terms of the Contract
01:02:11 – Loan and Repayment
01:06:00 – Enhance Your Brain Power with Mind Lab Pro
01:07:06 – Take Control of Your Healthcare with CrowdHealth
01:08:13 – Purpose of Political System
01:15:01 – The State Monopoly
01:20:30 – Where to Find Stephan on the Internet
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:59 — 74.2MB)
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 31, 2024
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 423.
My appearance as the first guess on Adam Haman’s new podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack).
As I noted in the initial discussion, this is the fourth or fifth podcast for which I was the first guest, the others being KOL374 | The Intellectual Contributions of Hans-Hermann Hoppe: The Great Fiction Podcast Ep. 1, KOL078 | Lions of Liberty Podcast Inaugural Episode: Intellectual Property, KOL244 | “YOUR WELCOME” with Michael Malice Ep. 001: Intellectual Property, Prostate Cancer, and KOL347 | This Time I’m Curious Ep. 1: The Libertarian Movement, AI Rights, UFOs, Music, Movies, Alcohol. [continue reading…]
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:16 — 37.8MB)
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 29, 2024
Related:
- Overview and resources: A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre
Walter E. Block, Alan G. Futerman and Rafi Farber, “The Legal Status of the State of Israel” A Libertarian Approach,” The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law III (June 2016): 435–553- Walter E. Block and Alan G. “Futerman,” The Classical Liberal Case for Israel (Springer, 2021)
- Block and Futerman, “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas,” Wall Street Journal (Oct. 11, 2023): “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.”
- Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” LewRockwell.com and HansHoppe.com (Jan. 31, 2024)
- David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya, “The Classical Liberal Case For Israel,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 2, 2024; Mises.org version)
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- 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)
- Walter E. Block and Oded J.K. Faran, “Self-defense and its libertarian enemies,” Walter’s Newsletter (substack) (July 2, 2026)
- Stephan Kinsella, “Block conflating individual self-defense with collectivist state action,” PFS Blog (July 3, 2026)
As I tweeted here:
Walter Block’s pro-Israel WSJ article from October, “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas” (substack version) upset lots of libertarians, e.g. Scott Horton who says, at about 1:08:00 here, that Walter is now kicked out of libertarianism because of his Israel-Gaza views.
Kevin Duffy also criticized him; Walter responded here: “Have I Gone AWOL?” He argued that his views on Gaza are fine since it’s okay to disagree with Rothbard and still be a libertarian. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 8, 2024
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 422.
A new podcast by Dumo Denga, ManPatria, has just released an audio narration of my article “What Libertarianism Is” for its first episode, entitled “What is Libertarianism.” This narration appears to be based on the original article, not the updated version that appears as chap. 2 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society.
There is also a previous narration of this article by Graham Wright (KOL005).
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:14 — 50.9MB)
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 4, 2024
I published the print version of Legal Foundations of a Free Society in September of 2023, in time for the 2023 Property and Freedom Society Annual Meeting. The Kindle edition is now available at Amazon. Nook version on Barnes & Noble, and a free online epub file, will be available in months to come. Enjoy!
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by Stephan Kinsella
on January 1, 2024
I found this in some old files. Might be of interest to some. Other participants included fellow libertarian sci-fi authors J. Neil Schulman and Victor Koman. PDF
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 11, 2023
An intelligent observation from a reader of Legal Foundations of a Free Society (my comments interspersed)
Page 486 had a great example of nuggets in this book that give me a different perspective. Nothing earth shattering, just a more accurate way to understand.
Scarcity is a particularly poor term, for this reason: think of paper clips and why we call them scarce goods. At the root it has nothing to do with the class of paper clips. It’s rather about a specific instance of a paper clip. Now ask if 2 or more people can use that specific object simultaneously without conflict: no. That makes it an economic good. This means we can be talking about the Mona Lisa, of which there is 1, or that paper clip, of which there is (drumroll) … 1.
[continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Related:
No time to clean this one up at present, so here it is mostly raw—
Now, the topic of Willful Negligence.
I looked at “The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld”. I understand the idea of a “spectrum between non-action or mere behavior”.
Where I get jumbled up, is on the combined topics of “willful negligence” and “action”. Example:
Joe is lounging in his easy chair holding his known-to-be-vicious dog on a leash. He falls asleep; dog gets out of the house and kills a child. Whatever other details we wish to add (front door open, etc) should show Joe as extremely willfully negligent. Even stipulate Joe shows no remorse, indeed, objects to any estoppel argument. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Related:
No time to clean this one up at present, so here it is mostly raw. All the indented (and lighter colored) text is from my questioner:
QUERY:
This is not a question, more of a light-bulb insight the book helped clarify for me: Page 225 says “…acquiring and abandoning both involve a manifestation of the owner’s intent”.
Formerly, I would sense a gap between the nature of first-acquired title, versus subsequently title transfer.
Original appropriation seemed clean and straightforward. But acquiring already-owned resources always seemed interlaced with a history of title transfer…acquiring it from someone who themselves can show clear title from a former owner; and that former owner can show the same, and so on, as far back as the property’s history is known (reasonably). And indeed I intuitively saw nothing wrong with this. It just seemed complicated in comparison to pure homesteading.
[continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Q: Re page 424 at the top [“Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society], was the topic of exchanging a tangible for a service. This got me to thinking: how about service-only trades? I haven’t seen this covered, perhaps it falls outside libertarian legal framework.
How would we categorize an agreement whereby the parties exchange only their services (actions), AND make no provision for non-performance … therefore, no tangible resources are involved at all? An example: I’ll help set up for your party; you wash my car; and we don’t discuss what happens if one of us reneges. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on December 10, 2023
Q: Hi Mr. Kinsella,
Am I right in understanding that, based on your estoppel theory, [see chs. 5-6 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society] it would NOT be a crime for A to say to B, “Give me $100 or I’ll punch C” (assuming C is unaware of this statement)? Because neither B nor C suffers any fear of receiving a battery. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 21, 2023
Interchange between me and Jessi Cowart on FB, starting here:
Jessi Cowart for LPTexas Vice Chair:
I’m a minarchist, and I reject the notion that this makes me any less libertarian than my brethren who identify as anarchists. This movement is about fighting the state. It’s not a pissing contest to see who’s more “hard core.”
Kinsella:
You are less libertarian. You’re partly libertarian and partly statist. A mini-statist.
Cowart:
Your purity test is tired. Anarchists who try to arbitrarily move the goal post on what it means to be libertarian – and call their allies statists – aren’t helping to advance liberty. [continue reading…]
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