I was an impromptu guest at the FreeTalkLive tent at PorcFest 2022 today (June 23, 2022), with host Mark Edge (and Aria) discussing corporations and limited liability, and also the recent “Reno Reset” at the Libertarian Party’s 2022 Convention in Reno.
“Thus human economy and property have a joint economic origin since both have, as the ultimate reason for their existence, the fact that goods exist whose available quantities are smaller than the requirements of men. Property, therefore, like human economy, is not an arbitrary invention but rather the only practically possible solution of the problem that is, in the nature of things, imposed upon us by the disparity between requirements for, and available quantities of, all economic goods.”
See also Heath Pearson, Origins of Law and Economics: The Economists’ New Science of Law, 1830–1930 (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics), p. 151; and Josef Sima, “Praxeology as Law & Economics,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 18, no. 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 73–89, at 78.
This is my discussion with Eric John on Twitter Spaces, on June 18, 2022, about intellectual property—its genesis, common fallacies and misunderstandings, the labor theory of property, libertarian “creationism,” and so on. We discussed ownership of information and touched briefly on ownership of bitcoin.
Tom Jump, of the TJump Youtube channel, had me on to discuss anarcho-capitalism and related issues. I was not familiar with him or what position he would be coming from; turns out he’s a self-professed “centrist liberal” but was very intelligent, and surprisingly civil despite espousing some views completely contrary to libertarianism and my own beliefs.
Is it possible that we’ve been snookered into believing in a nonsensical concept? Is it possible to “own” an idea? Stephan Kinsella walks us through copyright, patent, trademarks, and trade secrets from a libertarian perspective, and also considers the utilitarian arguments for intellectual property.
[Note: I mistakenly posted this as a blog post instead of a podcast entry on March 28, 2022; please see comments on the original post here.]
I had some exchanges with Voice of Reason in the comments section for a Mises.org article on IP a few weeks ago about intellectual property so we decided to have a discussion. Here it is. FWIW. (See the comments section of the Mises.org article titled Why Intellectual Property Isn’t Necessary to Reward Innovation.)
If anyone has links to the original thread send them on and I will include them.
Same people: Project Lifeboat: “From the people who brought you the Oceania project so many years ago comes the Lifeboat project. An attempt to create a spaceship for the purposes of saving the human race from the singularity predicted by Vernor Vinge.”
The “Creative Common Law” project, an anarcho-capitalist project in which I was enlisted as an advisor, only for it to later turn from “Creative Common Law 1.0: Anarcho-Capitalism” to “Creative Common Law 2.0: Anarcho-Socialism/Syndicalism”
“The Libertarian Constitution” by Ilya Shapiro, Tim Sandefur, and Christina Mulligan: “This was probably an easier project for us than for our conservative and progressive counterparts because the current United States Constitution is fundamentally a libertarian or, more precisely, classical liberal document. So much so that, at the outset, we joked that all we needed to do was to add “and we mean it” at the end of every clause
Tom Bell’s “Ulex,” or “Open Source Legal Operating System”;
Galt’s Gulch Chile, a scam that ended in disaster;
Roderick Long’s “Imagineering Freedom: A Constitution of Liberty Part I: Between Anarchy and Limited Government” and Michael Darby’s “Draft Constitution for a Reviving or New Nation,” both at http://freenation.org/a/
Siegen, Bernard H. (1994) Drafting a Constitution for a Nation or Republic Emerging into Freedom. 2d ed. Fairfax, Virginia: George Mason University Press.
“The @LPRadicals agree; our platform plank on IP:
2.13 Intellectual Monopoly and File Sharing
The phrase “intellectual property” is a misnomer. What the state calls intellectual property is more accurately referred to as “intellectual monopoly” as the state grants a monopoly on the use of an idea, or goods and services derived from an idea, to a certain limited group. We call for the elimination of the protection of such monopoly thereby freeing the market, encouraging content providers and product developers to improve on existing products thereby bringing more and better choices to the market.
In particular, we call for the end of the prohibition of online file sharing, just as we oppose all victimless crimes. When content is shared it is not stolen as no one loses any property, only a potential loss of some future revenue, which is natural in any open market.”
The Libertarian Party’s 2022 convention, in Sparks (Reno) NV is over. It was an exhausting but interesting 3 full days. The Mises Caucus swept the LNC. I was also elected to serve on the Judicial Committee (see below). A few ad-hoc amendments to the LP Platform were made as well as a larger set of amendments recommended by the Platform Committee.
My main goal in joining the LP about 5 years ago was to have it field more principled, libertarian candidates and to have clearer, more principled libertarian messaging.
To that end I worked to help develop a definition of aggression and property rights to add to the Platform, since there the current LP Platform (https://www.lp.org/platform/) contained no clear definition of aggression or property rights or the relation between these two fundamental concepts. It is critical to include a clear, general statement to this effect to distinguish what makes the Libertarian perspective unique and to clarify our political principles. [continue reading…]
I posted on Facebook about a new book, The Essential Women of Liberty [website; pdf] which includes 10 profiles including that of Deirdre McCloskey, formerly Donald. The editor, Aeon Skoble, a former friend, has now defriended me as have some other longtime friends/acquaintances. Oh well. Their loss. I’m not backing down.
Incidentally I was featured heavily in Sciabarra’s book Total Freedom1 and featured in his book The Dialectics of Liberty2 and was telephone and email friends with him for many years, and also gave Reason Papers lots of assistance by converting all their back issues to PDF (see Skoble’s editorial for issue No. 32), even though at the time I was publishing a similar/”competing” journal, Libertarian Papers, and for years have been on their editorial board. I also met and was friendly with McCloskey when I met him in South Dakota for Freedom Fest in 2021, even though he was wearing woman-face and anyone wearing blackface today would be socially shunned. I will put up with people I disagree with but will not put up with former friends accusing me of cruelty, bigotry, just because I will not lie and say a man is a woman.
Screenshot
In case Facebook censors the post, I am reproducing it below: [continue reading…]
Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Penn State University Press, 2000), pp. 367–69. [↩]
A high school student sent me a question. Here’s my dashed-off reply:
On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 4:21 PM E wrote:
Hey Mr. Kinsella, I’ve found myself very interested in your works concerning argumentation ethics. I find myself pretty convinced of it, but I do have a few questions about it. I think I have a hang-up on particularistic norms, and their invalidity.
Your justification seems to be that when two agents are engaging in argumentation, they (prima facie) assume some common, morally relevant quality which is sufficient to grant self ownership to both of them. If they posit another property (such as only people with brown eyes have rights), they have to demonstrate how it is grounded in the nature of things.
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