Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 380.
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.
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 379.
This is my umpteenth appearance on the Tom Woods show: from Ep. 2145 Does Intellectual Property Exist? From his shownotes:
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.
Related:
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 378.
[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.
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[From my Webnote series]
Related:
Others:
Update: Colorado IP Socialists Trying to Amend LPCO Platform to Include IP
Update: Tweet:
“The @LPRadicals agree; our platform plank on IP:
2.13 Intellectual Monopoly and File SharingThe 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.”
Adapted from my Facebook post:
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.
Update:
Resolved: @AeonSkoble owes Kinsella an apology, for groundless accusations of bigotry: ( see https://t.co/dwgEMAEn9O )
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) May 10, 2022
Incidentally I was featured heavily in Sciabarra’s book Total Freedom 1 and featured in his book The Dialectics of Liberty 2 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…]
LIBERTARIAN ANSWER MAN TIME
A high school student sent me a question. Here’s my dashed-off reply:
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.
“Lançamento do livro A Grande Ficção, de Hans-Hermann Hoppe” [Permalink: https://perma.cc/2U28-WPJ8], “Afterword,” in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline (Laissez Faire Books, 2012) and “Afterword” [PDF] (Second Expanded Edition, Mises Institute, 2021).
Related:
by Stephan Kinsella
Free Life, 19 April 2022
In a discussion with some fellow libertarians about the current Russia-Ukraine war, I noticed some of them kept avoiding condemning Russia’s invasion, criticizing pro-Ukraine western media and state propaganda, and kept changing the subject to the baleful role the US and NATO have played. NATO should have disbanded after the Cold War ended; NATO is “provoking” Russia, and so on. “Of course Russia doesn’t want NATO on its doorstep and perceives it as a threat; how would the US feel if Russia were to position missiles in Canada?” And so on. They didn’t come right out and take Russia’s side, but I have seen some people literally defend Russia and claim it is simply defending itself from aggression from the US/NATO and Ukraine or via Ukraine, and, moreover, that Russia is exercising heroic restraint in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damages. Read more>>
Permalinked at https://perma.cc/9KX6-QKNW
[Update: See also Murray Rothbard, “Just War,” in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War:
Much of “classical international law” theory, developed by the Catholic Scholastics, notably the 16th-century Spanish Scholastics such as Vitoria and Suarez, and then the Dutch Protestant Scholastic Grotius and by 18th- and 19th-century jurists, was an explanation of the criteria for a just war. For war, as a grave act of killing, needs to be justified.
… Classical international law … should be brought back as quickly as possible.
Update:
In response to the simpleminded but common comment and legal positivistic sentiment that international law is not real or that international law does not exist, because there is no sovereign state and enforceable legislation (see, e.g., Ben Shapiro here at 10:30 or so; Konstantin Kisin here at 47:20 or so
All the bleating about “international law” shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become.
International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades. It was never real and now the world has reverted to its default setting: Great Power politics.…
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 4, 2026
), see, inter alia, Anthony D’Amato, “What ‘Counts’ as Law?,” in Law-Making in the Global Communkty, Nicholas G. Onuf, ed. (1982), Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 11-02, and many other treatises and papers. Also Is international law real? Professor José Alvarez weighs in (“almost all 0:18 states comply with almost all international law almost all the time. 0:22 Most people focused on the almost, but the fact is that they do comply it’s 0:28 just not front page news when they do”); International Law Explained | Kal Raustiala | Big Think; Philip Allott – The True Nature of International Law. 1
Update: In a recent Human Action Podcast, Bob Murphy and Peter Klein have an illuminating discussion about international law, in Dr. Peter Klein on International Law and “Might Makes Right”. A relief to have some fellow libertarians support the concept of international law, as I get some pushback when I support it, as here and elsewhere, 2 e.g. from Bircher and anti-UN types who identify international law with the UN and its globalist and somewhat leftist agenda. Or from legal positivists and brutalists and might-makes right thuggocrats and postlibertarians.
A few comments. First, Klein is right to distinguish different senses of the concept law, as I also discuss other talks. 3 Another distinction that can be made is normative versus descriptive laws, e.g. which comes into play regarding positive law vs. just law. 4 Understanding these distinctions is critical when economic analysis presupposes legal rights and concepts. 5
And those who say that international law is not real law because there is no sovereign also miss the point made by Cuzán, that even within a state, various actors have to count on voluntary compliance by others. 6 This is implicitly recognized by the concept of international law which requires recognition and consent of other nations to “enforce” international law. Klein mentions that even the US is not the world policeman since other nations, like Russia, don’t obey it.
But a deeper point is that even if there was a one-world government, such as that depicted in Orwell’s 1984, this does not imply that law makes sense only if there is a sovereign like this, for a few reasons. First, no law is perfectly enforced. Even prisons cannot stop drugs, crimes. Not all murders are caught, not all tax evasion is stopped. So a law can be a law even if it’s not always enforced. Same with international law. Second, as Cuzán notes, even inside the state–even inside a one-world state–actors are in a state of anarchy with respect to each other. Third, even the MAGA and might-makes-right and thuggocrat and “only results matter” postlibertarian types who for example talk about Trump buying Greenland implicitly presuppose international law; for what does it mean for one state (the US) to “buy” territory from another (Denmark): to have a binding treaty, or contract of sale—which presupposes the international law rule pacta sunt servanda.
Murphy and Callahan slightly mangle the description of how judges in the common law develop law; it true that that they do not “make” law as legislators do, but it is not really “codification” as they describe it. Codification refers to legal experts assembling, organizing, streamlining, legal principles developed by a decentralized legal system such as the English common law, or the Roman law—and usually in legislated form, such as the European civil codes. What judges do is develop and advance the law by applying general and fundamental legal principles, and previous precedents, to novel cases, so that the law grows organically over time. 7 And though Murphy and Klein recognize the Law Merchant and common law and international law as examples of a non-legislated order, they omit the important example of Roman Law, perhaps because of a misconception that its modern instantiation, European civil law, is legal positivistic. That is not quite true, but in any case, both the Roman and common law are good examples of how law can develop organically. 8
I did find it somewhat amusing that Murphy spoke of a international law, a normative concept, in terms of “facts,” e.g. at 46:00:
just because the UN is impotent or filled with a bunch of hypocrites doesn’t mean therefore the US can do whatever it wants as long as we you know our officials think it’s in the interest of the United States government and that there’s, you know, that it doesn’t even make sense to say, is there a fact of the matter that what we just did was illegal besides merely being perhaps imprudent.
Related tweet:
@petergklein and @BobMurphyEcon have an excellent discussion about international law here https://t.co/eR5DyngWHh. I’ve been feeling isolated defending international law from the legal positivists e.g. Ben Shapiro, Konstantin Kisin, even some libertarians who associate it with…
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) January 16, 2026
And in this regard, see also my comments in Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment about the hostility of some libertarians to my pro-international law views, and my updated comments there about Rothbard’s comments on classic international law.
***
In this tweet, I respond to Elon Musk’s promoted tweet where Jeffrey “Sachs” explains “How the US Provoked the Invasion of Ukraine.”
From my tweet:
“This is not how international law works. There was no binding international obligation at all from these “promises.” Russia and other states are akin to “sophisticated parties” in large business deals; there are rules for what constitutes a binding treaty under pacta sunt servanda, for what gives rise to an actual binding legal obligation under international law. For example, like Russia’s agreeing to Ukraine’s borders after the USSR fell, and like the USSR’s accession to the UN Charter which makes it illegal to invade another sovereign state. See my article “International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War” stephankinsella.com/2022/04/intern. Expanding NATO is not a threat to Russia. Even if they pretend to perceive it that way, which I doubt they actually do. They are mostly upset at being treated like the thuggish threat they are and having their expansionist and imperialist ambitions thwarted. That said, am not saying NATO should have expanded and provoked thuggish, irrational Russia; I think NATO should have been disbanded. But let’s not pretend Russia has a valid excuse here. Still, a reasonable solution ought to be reached by negotiation. The US should stand ready to remove all financial support for Ukraine, agree to take Ukraine membership in NATO off the table for X years, get Russia to agree to a neutral zone for the contested territories, agree not to put NATO missiles etc. inside Ukraine, have Russia agree to Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU, and revive the old cooperation between Russia and NATO to reduce tensions (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro-Atla). The US and its allies could also agree to ease various sanctions on Russia. This could be a win-win for everyone including the mixed populations in Crimea etc.“
Back in 2019 one Mario Demolidor asked me to field some questions. I replied to one of them at length. It was:
1) People often dislike libertarianism because they do not see how a fully contracted private justice system can work. So, I ask, how can we deal in a libertarian society with criminals or suspects who deny justice and make no contracts to elect a judge? How to get them to trial?
I have just been made aware that he later published an edited and rearranged version of my responses at Stateless Justice | By: Stephan Kinsella (March 10, 2020). I reprint his article below in case his is ever lost (this happens all the time), and append after it my original emailed response to him (unedited) for completeness and in case there are any errors or omissions from his version (I have not checked). [continue reading…]
Bob “Werewolf” Wenzel
This libertarian movement of ours has its fair share of drama, crazy stories, eccentric personalities, losers, weirdos, and so on. I’ve been involved since the late 80s, 1 so have seen my fair share of this bullshit.
I just heard Murray Sabrin, on a fairly recent episode of the Tom Woods podcast (ep. 1988), speak positively about the late Bob Wenzel of “Economic Policy Journal” (sic, as it wasn’t a “journal”; it was just a clickbaity blog) as being the rare person who could give financial and investment advice from an Austrian perspective.
Robert “Bob” Wenzel, Raymond Nize, or whatever his real name was
(You’ll note I said “late.” Bob, or whatever his real name was, allegedly died last year. See David Gordon, “Robert Wenzel, RIP” (May 27, 2021); Robert Wenzel – 1957 to 2021; Taylor Lewis, “Rest in Peace, Robert Wenzel” (June 12, 2021); Walter Block, “Bob Wenzel, RIP” (June 1, 2021); Daniel McAdams, “Robert Wenzel, RIP” (May 26, 2021). I say “allegedly” and express skepticism that Bob Wenzel was his real name for reasons that will become apparent below.)
Interesting discussion re a new book from Billy Christmas, whom I also published in Libertarian Papers: “The Possibility of Thick Libertarianism” (2016), the abstract of which is:
“Abstract: The scope of libertarian law is normally limited to the application of the non-aggression principle (NAP), nothing more and nothing less. However, judging when the NAP has been violated requires not only a conception of praxeological notions such as aggression, but also interpretive understanding of what synthetic events count as the relevant praxeological types. Interpretive understanding—or verstehen—can be extremely heterogeneous between agents. The particular verständnis taken by a judge has considerable moral and political implications. Since selecting a verständnis is pre-requisite to applying the NAP, the NAP itself cannot tell us which one we ought morally to choose. Therefore the application of the NAP calls on moral and political considerations outside of the NAP itself. Since some of these are more consistent with an endorsement of the NAP than others, libertarianism is not a “thin” commitment to the NAP alone, but a “thick” commitment to the NAP and other supporting moral and political considerations.”
In a recent tweet, I said:
I’m continually puzzled at the hatred some lowbrow libertarians have for the UN and international law. Did they miss the “we are not Birchers” memo?
[Update: See also Murray Rothbard, “Just War,” in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War: “Classical international law … should be brought back as quickly as possible.” See also:
I got the expected flack. Including a private comment from a friend I respect who said, in essence:
There is nothing good about the UN and nothing bad about the Birchers. The UN is funded by fiat inflation and tax dollars. It’s not a voluntary organization. It’s built on theft. How can a libertarian find that anything but criminal?
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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